Short Cuts (6 page)

But now it was a Sunday night in November and the children were asleep and Ralph was sleepy and he sat on the couch grading papers and could hear the radio playing softly in the kitchen, where Marian was ironing, and he felt enormously happy. He stared a while longer at the papers in front of him, then gathered them all up and turned off the lamp.

“Finished, love?” Marian said with a smile when he appeared in the doorway. She was sitting on a tall stool, and she stood the iron up on its end as if she had been waiting for him.

“Damn it, no,” he said with an exaggerated grimace, tossing the papers on the kitchen table.

She laughed – bright, pleasant – and held up her face to be kissed, and he gave her a little peck on the cheek. He pulled out a chair from the table and sat down, leaned back on the legs and looked at her. She smiled again and then lowered her eyes.

“I’m already half asleep,” he said.

“Coffee?” she said, reaching over and laying the back of her hand against the percolator.

He shook his head.

She took up the cigarette she had burning in the ashtray,
smoked it while she stared at the floor, and then put it back in the ashtray. She looked at him, and a warm expression moved across her face. She was tall and limber, with a good bust, narrow hips, and wide wonderful eyes.

“Do you ever think about that party?” she asked, still looking at him.

He was stunned and shifted in the chair, and he said, “Which party? You mean the one two or three years ago?”

She nodded.

He waited, and when she offered no further comment, he said, “What about it? Now that you brought it up, what about it?” Then: “He kissed you, after all, that night, didn’t he? I mean, I knew he did. He did try to kiss you, or didn’t he?”

“I was just thinking about it and I asked you, that’s all,” she said. “Sometimes I think about it,” she said.

“Well, he did, didn’t he? Come on, Marian,” he said.

“Do you ever think about that night?” she said.

He said, “Not really. It was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Three or four years ago. You can tell me now,” he said. “This is still old Jackson you’re talking to, remember?” And they both laughed abruptly together and abruptly she said, “Yes.” She said, “He did kiss me a few times.” She smiled.

He knew he should try to match her smile, but he could not. He said, “You told me before he didn’t. You said he only put his arm around you while he was driving. So which is it?”

“What did you do that for?” she was saying dreamily. “Where were you all night?” he was screaming, standing over her, legs watery, fist drawn back to hit again. Then she said, “I didn’t do anything. Why did you hit me?” she said.

“How did we ever get onto this?” she said.

“You brought it up,” he said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what made me think
of it.” She pulled in her upper lip and stared at the floor. Then she straightened her shoulders and looked up. “If you’ll move this ironing board for me, love, I’ll make us a hot drink. A buttered rum. How does that sound?”

“Good,” he said.

She went into the living room and turned on the lamp and bent to pick up a magazine from the floor. He watched her hips under the plaid woolen skirt. She moved in front of the window and stood looking out at the streetlight. She smoothed her palm down over her skirt, then began tucking in her blouse. He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her.

After he stood the ironing board in its alcove on the porch, he sat down again and, when she came into the kitchen, he said, “Well, what else went on between you and Mitchell Anderson that night?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I was thinking about something else.”

“What?”

“About the children, the dress I want Dorothea to have for next Easter. And about the class I’m going to have tomorrow. I was thinking of seeing how they’d go for a little Rimbaud,” and she laughed. “I didn’t mean to rhyme – really, Ralph, and really, nothing else happened. I’m sorry I ever said anything about it.”

“Okay,” he said.

He stood up and leaned against the wall by the refrigerator and watched her as she spooned out sugar into two cups and then stirred in the rum. The water was beginning to boil.

“Look, honey, it
has
been brought up now,” he said, “and it
was
four years ago, so there’s no reason at all I can think of that we
can’t
talk about it now if we
want
to. Is there?”

She said, “There’s really nothing to talk about.”

He said, “I’d like to know.”

She said, “Know what?”

“Whatever else he did besides kiss you. We’re adults. We haven’t seen the Andersons in literally years and we’ll probably never see them again and it happened a
long
time ago, so what reason could there possibly be that we can’t talk about it?” He was a little surprised at the reasoning quality in his voice. He sat down and looked at the tablecloth and then looked up at her again. “Well?” he said.

“Well,” she said, with an impish grin, tilting her head to one side girlishly, remembering. “No, Ralph, really. I’d really just rather not.”

“For Christ’s sake, Marian!
Now
I mean it,” he said, and he suddenly understood that he did.

She turned off the gas under the water and put her hands out on the stool; then she sat down again, hooking her heels over the bottom step. She sat forward, resting her arms across her knees, her breasts pushing at her blouse. She picked at something on her skirt and then looked up.

“You remember Emily’d already gone home with the Beattys, and for some reason Mitchell had stayed on. He looked a little out of sorts that night, to begin with. I don’t know, maybe they weren’t getting along, Emily and him, but I don’t know that. And there were you and I, the Franklins, and Mitchell Anderson still there. All of us a little drunk. I’m not sure how it happened, Ralph, but Mitchell and I just happened to find ourselves alone together in the kitchen for a minute, and there was no whiskey left, only a part of a bottle of that white wine we had. It must’ve been close to one o’clock, because Mitchell said, ‘If we ride on giant wings we can make it before the liquor store closes.’ You know how he could be so theatrical when he wanted? Soft-shoe stuff, facial expressions? Anyway, he was very witty about it all. At least it seemed that way at the time.
And very drunk, too, I might add. So was I, for that matter. It was an impulse, Ralph. I don’t know why I did it, don’t ask me, but when he said let’s go – I agreed. We went out the back, where his car was parked. We went just as … we were … didn’t even get our coats out of the closet, thought we’d just be gone a few minutes. I don’t know what we thought,
I
thought, I don’t know
why
I went, Ralph. It was an impulse, that’s all I can say. It was the wrong impulse.” She paused. “It was my fault that night, Ralph, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done anything like that – I
know
that.”

“Christ!” The word leaped out of him. “But you’ve always been that way, Marian!” And he knew at once that he had uttered a new and profound truth.

His mind filled with a swarm of accusations, and he tried to focus on one in particular. He looked down at his hands and noticed they had the same lifeless feeling they had had when he had seen her on the balcony. He picked up the red grading pencil lying on the table and then he put it down again.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“Listening to what?” she said. “You’re swearing and getting upset, Ralph. For nothing – nothing, honey! … there’s nothing
else
,” she said.

“Go on,” he said.

She said, “
What
is the matter with us, anyway? Do you know how this started? Because I don’t know how this started.”

He said, “Go on, Marian.”

“That’s
all
, Ralph,” she said. “I’ve told you. We went for a ride. We talked. He kissed me. I still don’t see how we could’ve been gone three hours – or whatever it was you said we were.”

“Tell me, Marian,” he said, and he knew there was more and knew he had always known. He felt a fluttering in his stomach, and then he said, “No. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s all right. Actually, I guess I’d just as soon leave it at that,” he said. He thought fleetingly that he would be someplace else tonight doing something else, that it would be silent somewhere if he had not married.

“Ralph,” she said, “you won’t be angry, will you? Ralph? We’re just talking. You won’t, will you?” She had moved over to a chair at the table.

He said, “I won’t.”

She said, “Promise?”

He said, “Promise.”

She lit a cigarette. He had suddenly a great desire to see the children, to get them up and out of bed, heavy and turning in their sleep, and to hold each of them on a knee, to jog them until they woke up. He moved all his attention into one of the tiny black coaches in the tablecloth. Four tiny white prancing horses pulled each one of the black coaches and the figure driving the horses had his arms up and wore a tall hat, and suitcases were strapped down atop the coach, and what looked like a kerosene lamp hung from the side, and if he were listening at all it was from inside the black coach.

“… We went straight to the liquor store, and I waited in the car until he came out. He had a sack in one hand and one of those plastic bags of ice in the other. He weaved a little getting into the car. I hadn’t realized he was so drunk until we started driving again. I noticed the way he was driving. It was terribly slow. He was all hunched over the wheel. His eyes staring. We were talking about a lot of things that didn’t make sense. I can’t remember. We were talking about Nietzsche. Strindberg. He was directing
Miss Julie
second semester. And then something about Norman Mailer stabbing his wife in the breast. And then he stopped for a minute
in the middle of the road. And we each took a drink out of the bottle. He said he’d hate to think of me being stabbed in the breast. He said he’d like to kiss my breast. He drove the car off the road. He put his head on my lap.…”

She hurried on, and he sat with his hands folded on the table and watched her lips. His eyes skipped around the kitchen – stove, napkin-holder, stove, cupboards, toaster, back to her lips, back to the coach in the tablecloth. He felt a peculiar desire for her flicker through his groin, and then he felt the steady rocking of the coach and he wanted to call
stop
and then he heard her say, “He said shall we have a go at it?” And then she was saying, “I’m to blame. I’m the one to blame. He said he’d leave it all up to me, I could do whatever I want.”

He shut his eyes. He shook his head, tried to create possibilities, other conclusions. He actually wondered if he could restore that night two years ago and imagined himself coming into the kitchen just as they were at the door, heard himself telling her in a hearty voice, oh no, no, you’re not going out for anything with that Mitchell Anderson! The fellow is drunk and he’s a bad driver to boot and you have to go to bed now and get up with little Robert and Dorothea in the morning and stop! Thou shalt stop!

He opened his eyes. She had a hand up over her face and was crying noisily.

“Why did you, Marian?” he asked.

She shook her head without looking up.

Then suddenly he knew! His mind buckled. For a minute he could only stare dumbly at his hands. He knew! His mind roared with the knowing.

“Christ! No! Marian!
Jesus Christ
!” he said, springing back from the table. “Christ! No, Marian!”

“No, no,” she said, throwing her head back.

“You let him!” he screamed.

“No, no,” she pleaded.

“You let him! A go at it! Didn’t you? Didn’t you? A
go
at it! Is that what he said? Answer me!” he screamed. “Did he come in you? Did you let him come in you when you were having your go at it?

“Listen, listen to me, Ralph,” she whimpered, “I swear to you he didn’t. He didn’t come. He didn’t come in me.” She rocked from side to side in the chair.

“Oh God! God
damn
you!” he shrieked.

“God!” she said, getting up, holding out her hands, “Are we crazy, Ralph? Have we lost our minds? Ralph? Forgive me, Ralph. Forgive –”

“Don’t touch me! Get away from me!” he screamed. He was screaming.

She began to pant in her fright. She tried to head him off. But he took her by the shoulder and pushed her out of the way.

“Forgive me, Ralph!
Please.
Ralph!” she screamed.

He had to stop and lean against a car before going on. Two couples in evening clothes were coming down the sidewalk toward him, and one of the men was telling a story in a loud voice. The others were already laughing. Ralph pushed off from the car and crossed the street. In a few minutes he came to Blake’s, where he stopped some afternoons for a beer with Dick Koenig before picking up the children from nursery school.

It was dark inside. Candles flamed in long-necked bottles at the tables along one wall. Ralph glimpsed shadowy figures of men and women talking, their heads close together. One of the couples, near the door, stopped talking and looked up
at him. A boxlike fixture in the ceiling revolved overhead, throwing out pins of light. Two men sat at the end of the bar, and a dark cutout of a man leaned over the jukebox in the corner, his hands splayed on each side of the glass. That man is going to play something, Ralph thought as if making a momentous discovery, and he stood in the center of the floor, watching the man.

“Ralph! Mr. Wyman, sir!”

He looked around. It was David Parks calling to him from behind the bar. Ralph walked over, leaned heavily against the bar before sliding onto a stool.

“Should I draw one, Mr. Wyman?” Parks held a glass in his hand, smiling. Ralph nodded, watched Parks fill the glass, watched Parks hold the glass at an angle under the tap, smoothly straighten the glass as it filled.

“How’s it going, Mr. Wyman?” Parks put his foot up on a shelf under the bar. “Who’s going to win the game next week, Mr. Wyman?” Ralph shook his head, brought the beer to his lips. Parks coughed faintly. “I’ll buy you one, Mr. Wyman. This one’s on me.” He put his leg down, nodded assurance, and reached under his apron into his pocket. “Here. I have it right here,” Ralph said and pulled out some change, examined it in his hand. A quarter, nickel, two dimes, two pennies. He counted as if there were a code to be uncovered. He laid down the quarter and stood up, pushing the change back into his pocket. The man was still in front of the jukebox, his hands still out to its sides.