Thunder and Roses (35 page)

If you could call them thoughts, he reflected.

The product of his anger was a cold projection, and took the form of an unspoken dictum to Beverly. He found that with his new reflexes he could give the matter his full attention, since now his hands seemed quite able to drive by themselves, and even, it appeared, to read route signs.

So, echoing noiselessly in his mind, this structure built: This is not the end, Beverly, because the end must have been long since. You are not a woman living her life; you are a half-person living mine. Your ambition could not push me ahead, your senses could not know when I was in torture, your taste is not your own, and your abilities are limited to a dull search for what might please me and a trial-and-error
effort to get it for me. But aside from me you are nothing. You do not and you could not earn your own living. Cast out on your own resources you could not so much as fill a receptionist’s chair, or even run a summer resort. If nothing whatever had happened to me during these three days, what we have could never be called “marriage” again, not by me. I have looked into the sun, Beverly; I have flown; I can never crawl the mud with you again. I was too much for you before; what then am I now?

So it ran, turning and elaborating itself but always returning to a silent scornful chant, buoyed up by glimpses of freedom and far horizons. After about an hour of this he sensed her gaze, and turned to look at her. She met his eyes and smiled her old smile. “It’s going to be a lovely day, Yance.”

He turned abruptly back to the road. Something in his throat demanded attention, and he found that he could not swallow it. His eyes stung. He sat, unwillingly examining his feelings, and slowly it came to him that among his other traits, that characteristic called empathy—the slipping on of other people’s shoes, the world seen through the eyes of others—this quality too had suffered a sea-change and was heightened more than was comfortable. What, to Beverly, had happened? Numbly, perhaps, she had been aware that something was amiss at the lake. He seriously doubted if she had identified the something. She’d known it was important because she’d okayed their leaving so abruptly without asking any questions. But what was this “lovely day” business? Did she think that because their backs were turned to the unidentified threat, it had ceased to exist? Why, that must be exactly what she thought!

Oh Beverly, Beverly, are you going to get a kick in the teeth!

But a day went by and no such thing happened. It didn’t happen the first week, either, or in a month. Part of this was because of his work. He went back to it with a new sense, an awareness. He became totally sensitive to a condition called “integration,” himself with his job, his job with his office, his office to the firm, and the firm itself in the economic mosaic. He wasted no motion in his job, and found himself spending his working day in pondering the structure of his
surroundings. His first new effort was expressed through the suggestion box. It was perfect of its kind. It was an idea simple enough to have been thought of by his pre-accident self, and unlikely to be advanced by anyone not in this particular job. It eliminated the job and Yancey was advanced two grades and given new work to do. So he was busy, immersed, engaged, even at home. That in itself was enough to submerge his feelings about Beverly.

But it was only a part of his procrastination. (He called it that at first: sooner or later, he thought, there would be changes made.) Largely, he delayed because of this accursed empathy. Beverly was so
happy
. She was happy and proud. If he became unaccountably silent, she tiptoed about the place, quite convinced that the great man was dreaming up something else for the suggestion box. If he was short-tempered, she forgave. If he bought her something, or approved something she had bought, she was grateful. Home was harmonious; Beverly was so happy she sang again. He realized that it had been a great while since she had sung.

And all the while he knew how she felt. He knew it surely and painfully, and was fully aware of the impact she would suffer if he broached to her his inner thinking. He’d do it; oh yes, he’d do it, some day. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt anything if she got that new winter coat she had eyed so wistfully in the Sunday paper.…

So a year went by and he did nothing about the matter. Actually, he thought less about it after a year, though there were moments.… But work was more engrossing than ever, and home was such a pleasure—though a quiet one—and Beverly was fairly blooming. If a man has the virtue or the curse of empathy, he has to be kind. He must, for the most selfish of reasons: any time he kicks out at another human, he will find bruises on his own shins.

Once, suddenly, he asked her, “Beverly, have I changed?”

She looked puzzled, so he enlarged it. “Since last year, I mean. Do I seem different?”

She thought about it. “I don’t know. You’re—nice. But you were always nice.” She laughed suddenly. “You can catch flies,” she teased. “Why, Yance?”

“No reason. The new job, and all.” He passed the reference to
flies. One had been bothering her last fall and he had absently reached out and caught it on the wing. It was the only time he had come near betraying some of his new talents. She had been astonished; in eight years he had never demonstrated coordination like that. She would have been more astonished if she had noticed that he caught the fly between his thumb and forefinger.

“The new job hasn’t gone to your head,” she said, “if that’s what you mean.”

He maneuvered a situation in the office which required attention in an out-of-town branch and arranged matters so that sending him out there was only logical. He was gone two weeks. He had seen to it that it was not the kind of task that required genius, just application and good detail work. He met two girls while he was there, one brilliant and high in the company, the other far better than anything the company would ever be able to hire. He left them alone, disliking himself not a little because he knew, in his heart of hearts, whom he was being faithful to.

And it was good, good to get home. Due to what he had done out of town, he was raised another notch but had to reorganize his new office, so there was no vacation that year. He could easily have analyzed this development, and determined for himself whether he had purposely avoided a vacation, but he did not. He’d rather not know.

There was a company picnic, and Beverly sang. People reacted so enthusiastically—especially to Yancey, as if he had invented her—that he coaxed and goaded her into auditioning for a television show. She won the audition and appeared. She lost the audience vote to an eight-year-old boy with an accordion, but she was incandescently happy because Yancey had cared, Yancey had helped.

In the matter of Beverly, Yancey began to like himself.

That, in Yancey’s private code, was the Year of the Big Christmas. They took a week off and went to a ski lodge in New Hampshire. They did a number of things together, and nothing was wrong about any of it. And one night they sat before a Christmas-card kind of fireplace with a crowd of kindred souls, drinking
glögg
and roaring carols, until they were too sleepy to move. After everyone else
had gone to bed, they sat holding hands silently and watching the fire go out. As it will at such moments, when one is living, not dying, his life whisked across his inner eye and stopped here at this hearth, and on it was superimposed the uneasy question
What am I doing here?
Over him came a flood of tenderness for Beverly, poor Beverly. For the first time it occurred to him that the fantastic thing that had happened to him might have a grim and horrible result. His metabolic efficiency, his apparent immunity to everything from the common cold up, his outright inability to get too little rest or too little food … suppose he should live—well, not forever, but—

He glanced at his wife, and though she was young-looking for her age, his quick mind vividly supplied a wrinkle here and there, a little sag. He’d be able to conceal his feelings about it, of course, but would she? Empathetically, he went through a brief torture with her future, seeing her wither while he went on as he was.

He averted his face, and his eyes filled with tears.

Gently she disengaged her hand. He felt it stroking, stroking his wrist. And she had the wit, or the luck, to say absolutely nothing as she did it.

When he thought back on it, much later, he thought too that though there were many women who could do many things Beverly couldn’t do, not one of them would have done just that, just that way.

In the spring he turned down a promotion, sensitive as he was to the feelings of his co-workers; this would benefit him far more in the long run. And again it was summer, and this time there would be a vacation.

Well—where? He would choose a place, and Beverly would say, “If that’s what you want, darling,” and off they’d go. He thought, and he thought about it. With his total recall, he recreated a great many scenes for himself. He all but decided, and then he hesitated; and then, sitting at his desk in the office, he said aloud, “No! No, not yet,” and startled some people.

They went to New England, to a place new to them, craggy, rugged, sparkling, where sailboats notched the skyline and the wind smelled clean and new and quite unused by anyone else. For four
days they fished and swam, danced, and dug littlenecks. On the fifth day they stayed snugly indoors while the sky pressed down like a giant’s palm. At three o’clock the small-craft warnings went up. At four the Coast Guard called and warned them away from their rented shack; yes, it was a hurricane, a real hurricane and not just a storm.

They loaded the car haphazardly and tumbled into it, and already there was a blinding fog of spume blowing horizontally across the coast road. They ground up the hill to the town and pulled into the hotel yard.

The hotel, of course, was full, with a bed laid in the linen room and a cot set up behind the desk.

“What are we going to do?” Beverly wailed. It was not distress, not yet. This was exciting.

“We’re going to have a drink. Then we’re going to have some hot chowder. Then we’re going to think about what we’re going to do.”

With their lungs full of ozone and their eyes full of sparks, they went to the dining-room.

There was a picture which, say, a year ago, Yancey used to call to mind so often that it was as familiar as his safety razor. A slim back, wide shoulders clad in rich brown moleskin: lamplight glancing from dark obedient hair, and a long brown hand resting lightly against an ivory cheek. When he saw it now, right before his eyes, he discounted it as an unwelcome phantom, a trick of the charged air. But Beverly squeezed his elbow and cried, “Yance—look!” and before he could draw a breath she sprang away from him to the table.

“Lois! Lois, whatever in the world are you doing here?”

This, Yancey told himself heavily, just had to happen. He went forward. “Hello, Lois.”

“Well …!” It was a single syllable, but it contained warmth and welcome and … but how would you ever know, even when she smiled? A mask can smile. “Sit down, please sit down, Beverly. Yancey.”

There was a rush of small talk. Oh, yes, she had sold the resort, last spring. Worked for a while in town. Resigned, looking for something better. Came up here to let the wind blow the smog out
of her hair. “Now I’m afraid it’ll take the hair too.” Oh yes, Beverly was saying, so warmly, so proudly … two promotions … turned down another one too; he’ll run the place in another year, just you watch … and a good deal more, while Lois watched her hands and smiled a small smile. “What about you, Lois, are you married or anything?”

“No,” said Lois huskily, “I’m not married”—and here Yancey dropped his eyes; he couldn’t bear to meet hers while she said it—“or anything.”

They had a drink, and another, and then some superlative New England chowder, and beer, and another drink. And then it was over, and Yancey, paying the check, was telling himself glumly, “You did fine, boy; so if you’re a little on the silent side for a day or two, what’s that? I’m glad it’s over. But I wish …”

Rising, Beverly said, “You’re staying here?”

Lois smiled oddly. “There’s nothing they can do about it.”

Before he could stop himself Yancey said, “Now what exactly does that mean?”

Lois laughed quietly. “I just got in an hour and a half ago. I never dreamed I’d need a reservation—funny, isn’t it, after my experience? Anyway, they’re full up. I shall just sit here until they want to close the place. I will then be a problem, and it’ll be up to them to solve it.” She laughed again. “I’ve solved worse ones in my time.”

“Oh, Lois, you can’t! They’ll make you sleep on the bar!”

She shrugged, really not caring.

“Yancey,” said Beverly. She was flushed and urgent. “Do you remember a time when two wet strangers couldn’t find their beds, and what happened to them?”

He did meet Lois’s eyes this time. This was when his heart began hammering.

Beverly said, “It’s our turn. We’re going down the coast. We’ll find a place. Come on. Come
on
, Lois!”

Yancey thought, listen to her, taking the bit in her teeth. Doesn’t she usually find out first what I want? And he answered himself, no; most of the time she just does what I want without asking. And he told himself further, stop talking like a damn fool.

Ten miles south there was a town with a hotel. Full up. Four miles further, a motel. Packed to the eaves. The next stretch was twenty miles, and it was getting late. It was raining the kind of rain they had slogged through to Lois’s cabin two years before, but this time they had a howling gale along with it.

And by the time they reached the next town, the warnings were in; the hurricane, true to its unpredictable breed, had swung east leaving rain and a maddened sea, but no further danger. So they drove into the slick shining streets of a city still quaking in its boots, but vastly relieved.

Here and there a store was open. There were three hotels, two of them full. They stopped at an all-night drugstore to ask directions to the third and Lois bought cigarettes and Beverly found a bookclub edition of
Anna Karenina
and scooped it up with joy; she said she’d always wanted to read it.