Ordinary People (26 page)

“I don’t know! I wish I knew!” She sobs, and then her voice is calm, more subdued, and she speaks slowly. “I just know how people try to manipulate other people.”

“Oh God, Beth, I don’t believe that! I don’t believe he went all that way to try to manipulate us! What happened—what he did—he did it to
himself
! Can’t you see anything except in terms of how it affects you?”

“No! Neither can you! Neither does anybody else! Only, maybe I’m more honest than the rest of you, maybe I’m more willing to recognize that I do it. You’re right,” she says, her voice low and strained, “he didn’t do it to you. He only did it to me. I don’t know what he wants from me, and I’ve never known! Does he want me to throw my arms around him when he passes a chemistry exam? I can’t do it! I can’t respond, when someone says, ‘Here, I just did this great thing, so love me for it!’ I can’t!”

“I don’t think he wants that,” Cal says. “I think he just wants to know that you don’t hate him.”

“Hate him? How could I hate him? Mothers don’t hate their sons! I don’t hate him! But he makes
demands
on me! He tries to blackmail me!” She looks up at him. “Where did you get that? About my hating him? Did he tell you that about me? Is that what he told you up in his room?”

“Beth—”

“And you let him say that to you?” Her voice is trembling. “You see? How you accept his feelings without question? But you can’t do the same for me, can you?”

Ward moves toward her. “Honey.”

“I don’t know what you want from me any more, Cal. I don’t know what anybody wants from me!”

“Honey, nobody wants anything from you,” Ward says. “We all just want—Cal and Con and everybody, we all just want you to be happy.”

“Happy!” She looks at him. “Oh, Ward! You give us all the definition, will you? But first you’d better check on those kids. Every day, to make sure they’re good and safe, that nobody’s fallen off a horse, or gotten hit by a car, or drowned in that swimming pool you’re so proud of!”

“Beth!” Audrey says, turning her back, her hands to her face.

“And then you come and tell me how to be happy.”

He closes his eyes, not listening any more, letting blackness surround him, blackness into last year, when he stood outside the bathroom door, begging to be let in. No sound, the silence was screaming at him. He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to believe it was happening
Con, open the door! Let me in!
His shoulder bouncing, crashing against the door, the jamb splintering, giving way to the nightmare of blood, the towels soaked with it, leaking their overflow onto the rug, the floor. His arm curved, hiding his face. A sea-fan of dried blood on the wall behind his head.

And in the hospital.
Let me die.
His eyes bright with the drugs they had given him, strapped down in the high, criblike bed, his face pale against the green emergency-room sheets.
I want to die.

In shock, watching the bottle, upside down in its rack as it drained healing liquid into that arm. In shock, unable to think, already broken by the note they had found on his desk:
I wish I knew why but I just don’t.

After the accident, after they had towed the boat in, on the way from the dock to the hospital, he had moaned over and over, “Mama, I’m sorry! Dad, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

That second time. There had been no apology. A bloody, vicious thing. She is right. It hasn’t killed her, but it has done something to her; something terrible. Circles and more circles, where does it end? How can it end?

The moon scuds from behind a cloud, a flat, pale slice of light. The air smells of darkness, of endless space, as he stands on the porch, an extension of it, and Beth, inside reading, Conrad upstairs doing his homework, all, all extensions of it. Space. And time. These dimensions that embrace him, control him.

This afternoon on the plane, Beth sat, fragile and untouchable beside him, and he had left her alone at last, knowing that if he tried to approach her, she would simply move her seat.
Let her move her seat, let her believe what she believes, you cannot change her anyway, you are not God, you do not know and you are not in control, so let go.

He has finished the work he promised Ray he would have done by tomorrow.

Conrad teased him when he saw him seated in the den, his books and papers piled around him. “The indispensable man, huh?”

It had made him flinch. Another illusion hits the dirt. This feeling that he has existed
in order to
understand, to control, to predict. This idea that he was
necessary.
To organizations, to his family, to his wife. To life. All these things, including himself—they exist all right, but not
because of anything.

Then, are no decisions required? Is there nothing to be done? No action to be taken?

Right. Sit tight.
Never confuse movement with action,
says Hemingway. She had been reading him one day. She told him that, declaring her agreement with his statement. Maybe she won’t then. Confuse movement with action.
Lie back. Don’t be hasty. Haste makes waste.
He is inundated with Howardisms suddenly; all true, those old and wrinkled maxims, proverbs, clichés.
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Well, who needs moss anyway?
Oh,
hell. He is abruptly disgusted with himself.
Do not clutch so at things, it is useless, useless. And do not be paralyzed. It is better to move than to be unable to move, because you fear loss so much: loss of order, loss of security, loss of predictability.

Better sometimes not to know what to expect. Like tonight at dinner. She was perfect. The perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect hostess. Conrad picked the restaurant—Naroffs—the small Italian place in Highwdod. And Conrad did all the talking, while she and Cal listened, quietly attentive. Once she reached out to pull the collar of his shirt from under the neck of Conrad’s black pullover, and he sat, not moving under her touch, but drinking in every ounce of her attention, knowing that, mysteriously, he had done something right tonight, maybe just walking in the door and being glad to see them, or maybe it was his description of the impromptu picnic on the school lawn in thirty-degree weather, to celebrate the coming of spring.

“—and we damn near froze our asses off!”

And, when he refused dessert, even her correcting his table manners seemed right and proper: “You don’t need to say, ‘I’m full.’ Just ‘No, thanks’ is sufficient.”

“Sure. Okay. Wait, let me write that down, will you?”

“You’ve got a mind, haven’t you? Just retain it.”

“—I’ve told you fifty times!” he teased her.

Now he stands on the stairs, as Cal comes back inside.

“I’m going to bed,” he says. “See you in the morning.”

“All through studying?” Cal asks.

He nods. “It’s just a quiz in trig. Shouldn’t be hard. I’m tired. It was sort of a rough week.”

“What happened?” he asks. “Your grandmother give you a hard time?”

“No. Nothing like that. She was fine. I’m just—I’m glad you’re back, that’s all.”

And he goes to
her,
then, without any hesitation; it is what he has come downstairs for, obviously. He bends his head, puts an arm around her in a quick, clumsy embrace.

“G’night.” His voice is thick. He exits swiftly, his face turned away.

She sits on the couch, her legs curled under her, the book in her lap, just as he has left her. She is staring off into space. Then, after a moment, her head drops over her book again, her hair spilling over her shoulder. Her face is hidden from Cal, also.

“Already I’m thinking about next fall,” Jeannine says. “Isn’t that dumb? I don’t want to go away now.”

They are sitting on the floor in her living room, their backs against the couch, as Conrad picks out chords on Mike’s guitar. Conrad has Mike’s cowboy hat on, pulled low over his eyes.

“I don’t want you to go, either,” he says.

“Don’t you?” She reaches up to snatch the hat from his head, but he grabs her wrist.

“Ah, ah, no you don’t—” He settles the hat more firmly on his head. “Why don’t you hang around here for another year? Wait for me?”

“I can’t,” she says.

“You can’t.”

“No. Did you write that, Con? It’s beautiful. Play it again.”

“It’s not anything special. Just note patterns. Fooling around. Here’s a good one.” And he plays her the song he has composed upstairs in his bedroom over the past week. He loves doing this; the mathematics of it, organizing the notes into definite pictures. She sits watching him, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands.

“I love it. Let’s notate it, okay? I’ve got some paper. Here, play it again. It’s so lovely and clean—”

He laughs. “I’ve got some dirty ones, too.”

“No, I mean it’s neat. Pleasant and orderly and neat.”

“Those are horrible adjectives. Rapturous. Passionate. Use those. Pleasant and neat do not make it.”

He fingers the chords, one at a time, and she copies them briskly on staff paper.

“You should write words for this one.”

“I’m not too good at that.”

“You used to write poetry, didn’t you?”

“Who told you that?” he asks. “Lazenby?”

She nods. “Are you mad?”

“No. Surprised, though. How did he happen to tell you?”

She smiles at him. “How do you think? I asked him. I said, ‘Tell me everything you know about Conrad Jarrett.’ So he did.”

He laughs. “The hell you did!”

“The hell I didn’t,” she says calmly. “You were the mysterious figure. I wanted to know about you.”

“Mysterious? I was just scared, that’s all.”

“I saw Suzanne in school today.”

“—Suzanne—”

“—Mosely. She asked me if I was still going out with you. I said yes. Then she asked me if I was ‘serious,’ or was I just having a good time?”

He looks at her from under the hat. “What did you say?”

“I said ‘both.’ She’s crazy about you, Con.”

“I’m sure!”

“She is. She told me she was. She told me that you were the only nice boy in the whole school, and she would be very disappointed in me if I were just fooling around with you.”

“I can’t believe she said that. She never even talks to me—”

“She’s shy. She has a terrific inferiority complex.”

“Tell her to join the club.”

“You tell her.”

He snorts. “That is not my style.”

“Oh? And what is your style?”

He grins at her. “Well, on Friday nights, I perform bakery B and E’s and babysit with some twerpy eleven-year-old and his sister.”

“That’s a joke, isn’t it? You performing a B and E, I mean. You, who couldn’t even say hello in the hall, unless I said it first.”

“Hey, that’s not true. There were always guys around you, what was I supposed to do?”

“Oh, sure. Well, at least they were friendly, they paid some attention.”

“I paid attention,” he says. “I paid a lot of attention in my mind. I used to sneak looks all the time in choir. I like to look at you.” To illustrate, he pulls the cowboy hat lower over his eyes. They sit, side by side, he playing and she notating, until he is tired of it, and stretches his arm back over his head to drop the guitar on the couch.

“Enough.”

“If you don’t write them down, you’ll forget them.”

“If I forget ’em, they weren’t worth writing down anyway.”

“That isn’t true. You certainly don’t have a very clear idea of what you do well,” she says, “and what you don’t do well.”

“I don’t?” He tilts the hat back to look at her. “What don’t I do well?”

She laughs. “I knew you’d say that. Okay. You don’t accept compliments gracefully. Like, when I told you how much my mother likes you—”

“I’m just waiting for the rest of it, that’s all. My mother likes you, my brother likes you, thanks for everything and I’ll see you around.”

“Oh, you’re hopeless, you really are.”

But she is not laughing. Instead she is looking at him with a solemn, wide open expression. His mouth is suddenly dry, his head feels queerly light. A highway is moving toward him and he is on it, traveling with such force and speed, all his senses open again. He turns toward her, puts his arms around her gently. Her mouth opens under his, her breath is sweet-smelling, like apples, her eyes closed. The eyelids are small, delicate curves that he touches with his lips, his fingertips. Her tongue in his mouth, exploring. He cannot concentrate any more, gathers her against him tightly as his groin hardens, spreads warmth through his whole body. His face in the hollow of her neck, he rocks her slowly, gently in his arms.

 

 

They lie drugged and submerged, facing each other on the bed. Conrad’s head is on his arm, one hand curved around her breast, eyes closed, shielding himself from the shining look of her; smooth, pale peach skin glowing in the light from the hall. His heart floats inside his chest. His skin feels branded everywhere that she has touched him, with fingers as light as bird wings. Comfortably and perfectly tired, yet his mind is engaged, recording bits and pieces. Data for assimilation, but later, later. She moves, drawing closer to him, drawing her arms inside his, her hands against his chest. He opens his eyes to look at her.

“Cold?” he whispers.

She nods and he reaches down to the foot of the bed to pull the blankets over them. Gently he asks her, because now he is her protector against the world, “Did I hurt you?” and, with his fingertips caresses again the rounded curve of her breast.

“No.” She shifts her body slightly, and her knees bump against his. “I want to tell you something, Con. I’m not—you know—a virgin.”

“Okay.” His hand travels over her back; soft angles of shoulder blades, a hollow between.

“Do you care?”

“No.”