“I wonder if we’re related? You—”
“He was my teacher at Central High,” said Jonathan Hughes, quickly.
“And still am,” said the old man. “And still am.”
And they were home.
He could not stop staring. All through dinner, the old man simply sat with his hands empty half the time and stared at the lovely woman across the table from him. Jonathan Hughes fidgeted, talked much too loudly to cover the silences, and ate sparsely. The old man continued to stare as if a miracle was happening every ten seconds. He watched Alice’s mouth as if it were giving forth fountains of diamonds. He watched her eyes as if all the hidden wisdoms of the world were there, and now found for the first time. By the look of his face, the old man, stunned, had forgotten why he was there.
“Have I a crumb on my chin?” cried Alice Hughes, suddenly. “Why is everyone watching me?”
Whereupon the old man burst into tears that shocked everyone. He could not seem to stop, until at last Alice came around the table to touch his shoulder.
“Forgive me,” he said. “It’s just that you’re so lovely. Please sit down. Forgive.”
They finished off the dessert and with a great display of tossing down his fork and wiping his mouth with his napkin, Jonathan Hughes cried, “That was fabulous. Dear wife, I love you!” He kissed her on the cheek, thought better of it, and rekissed her, on the mouth. “You see?” He glanced at the old man. “I very much love my wife.”
The old man nodded quietly and said, “Yes, yes, I remember.”
“You remember?” said Alice, staring.
“A toast!” said Jonathan Hughes, quickly. “To a fine wife, a grand future!” His wife laughed. She raised her glass. “Mr. Weldon,” said, after a moment. “You’re not drinking?...”
It was strange seeing the old man at the door to the living room.
“Watch this,” he said, and closed his eyes. He began to move certainly and surely about the room, eyes shut “Over here is the pipestand, over here the books. On the fourth shelf down a copy of Eiseley’s The Star Thrower. One shelf up H. G. Wells’s Time Machine, most appropriate, and over here the special chair, and me in it.”
He sat. He opened his eyes.
Watching from the door, Jonathan Hughes said, “You’re not going to cry again, are you?”
“No. No more crying.” There were sounds of washing up from the kitchen.
The lovely woman out there hummed under her breath. Both men turned to look out of the room toward that humming.
“Someday,” said Jonathan Hughes, “I will hate her? Someday, I will kill her?”
“It doesn’t seem possible, does it? I’ve watched her for an hour and found nothing, no hint, no clue, not the merest period, semicolon or exclamation point of blemish, bump, or hair out of place with her. I’ve watched you, too, to see if you were at fault, we were at fault, in all this.”
“And?” The young man poured sherry for both of them, and handed over a glass. “You drink too much is about the sum. Watch it.”
Hughes put his drink down without sipping it. “What else?”
“I suppose I should give you a list, make you keep it, look at it every day. Advice from the old crazy to the young fool.”
“Whatever you say, I’ll remember.”
“Will you? For how long? A month, a year, then, like everything else, it’ll go. You’ll be busy living. You’ll be slowly turning into... me. She will slowly be turning into someone worth putting out of the world. Tell her you love her.”
“Every day.”
“Promise! It’s that important! Maybe that’s where I felled myself, foiled us. Every day, without fail!” The old man leaned forward, his face taking fire with his words. “Every day. Every day!”
Alice stood in the doorway, faintly alarmed.
“Anything wrong?”
“No, no.” Jonathan Hughes smiled. “We were trying to decide which of us likes you best” She laughed, shrugged, and went away. “I think,” said Jonathan Hughes, and stopped and closed his eyes, forcing himself to say it, “it’s time for you to go.”
“Yes, time.” But the old man did not move. His voice was very tired, exhausted, sad. “I’ve been sitting here feeling defeated. I can’t find anything wrong. I can’t find the flaw. I can’t advise you, my God, it’s so stupid, I shouldn’t have come to upset you, worry you, disturb your life, when I have nothing to offer but vague suggestions, inane cryings of doom. I sat here a moment ago and thought: I’ll kill her now, get rid of her now, take the blame now, as an old man, so the young man there, you, can go on into the future and be free of her. Isn’t that silly? I wonder if it would work? It’s that old time-travel paradox, isn’t it? Would I foul up the time flow, the world, the universe, what? Don’t worry, no, no, don’t look that way. No murder now. It’s all been done up ahead, twenty years in your future. The old man having done nothing whatever, having been no help, will now open the door and run away to his madness.”
He arose and shut his eyes again.
“Let me see if I can find my way out of my own house, in the dark.”
He moved, the young man moved with him to find the closet by the front door and open it and take out the old man’s overcoat and slowly shrug him into it
. “You have helped,” said Jonathan Hughes. “You have told me to tell her I love her.”
“Yes, I did do that, didn’t I?”
They turned to the door.
“Is there hope for us?” the old man asked, suddenly, fiercely.
“Yes. I’ll make sure of it,” said Jonathan Hughes.
“Good, oh, good. I almost believe!”
The old man put one hand out and blindly opened the front door.
“I won’t say goodbye to her. I couldn’t stand looking at that lovely face. Tell her the old fool’s gone. Where? Up the road to wait for you. You’ll arrive someday.”
To become you? Not a chance,” said the young man.
“Keep saying that. And—my God—here—” The old man fumbled in his pocket and drew forth a small object wrapped in crumpled newspaper. “You’d better keep this. I can’t be trusted, even now. I might do something wild. Here. Here.”
He thrust the object into the young man’s hands. “Goodbye. Doesn’t that mean: God be with you? Yes. Goodbye.”
The old man hurried down the walk into the night. A wind shook the trees. A long way off a train moved in darkness, arriving or departing, no one could tell.
Jonathan Hughes stood in the doorway for a long while, trying to see if there really was someone out there vanishing in the dark.
“Darling,” his wife called.
He began to unwrap the small object.
She was in the parlor door behind him now, but her voice sounded as remote as the fading footsteps along the dark street “Don’t stand there letting the draft in,” she said.
He stiffened as he finished unwrapping the object. It lay in his hand, a small revolver. Far away the train sounded a final cry, which failed in the wind.
“Shut the door,” said his wife.
His face was cold. He closed his eyes.
Her voice. Wasn’t there just the tiniest touch of petulance there?
He turned slowly, off balance. His shoulder brushed the door. It drifted. Then:
The wind, all by itself, slammed the door with a bang.
Long Division
You’ve had the lock changed!”
He sounded stunned, standing in the door looking down at the knob that he fiddled with one hand while he clenched the old door key in the other.
She took her hand off the other side of the knob and walked away.
“I didn’t want any strangers coming in.”
“Strangers!” he cried. Again he jiggled the knob and then with a sigh put away his key and shut the door. “Yes, I guess we are. Strangers.”
She did not sit down but stood in the middle of the room looking at him.
“Let’s get to it,” she s
aid.
“It looks like you already have. Jesus.” He blinked at the books divided into two incredibly neat stacks on the floor. “Couldn’t you have waited for me?”
“I thought it would save time,” she said and nodded now to her left, now to her right. “These are mine. Those are yours.”
“Let’s look.”
“Go ahead. But no matter how you look, these are mine, those are yours.”
“Oh, no you don’t!” He strode forward and began to replant the books, taking from both left and right sides of the stacks. “Let’s start over.”
“You’ll ruin everything!” she said. “It took me hours to sort things out.”
“Well,” said he panting, down on one knee. “Let’s take some more hours. Freudian Analysis! See? What’s that doing on my side of the stacks. I hate Freud!”
“I thought I’d get rid of it.”
“Rid of it? Call the Goodwill. Don’t fob the dumb books off on strangers, meaning your former husband. Let’s make three stacks, one for you, one for me and one for the Salvation Army.”
“You take the Salvation Army stuff with you and call them.”
“Why can’t you call from here? God, I don’t want to lug the lamebrain stuff across town. Wouldn’t it be simpler—”
“All right, all right, natter, natter. But stop messing with the books. Look at my stacks and then yours and see if you don’t agree—”
“I see my copy of Thurber on your side, what’s that doing there?”
“You gave it to me for Christmas ten years ago, don’t you remember?”
“Oh,” he said, and stopped. “Sure. Well—what’s Willa Cather doing over there?’
“You gave me her for my birthday twelve years ago.”
“It seems to me I spoiled you a lot.”
“Damn right you did, a long time ago. I wish you were still spoiling me. Maybe we wouldn’t be dividing up the damned books.” He flushed and turned away to kick the stacks quietly, gently with the tip of his shoe.
“Karen Horney, okay, she was a bore, too. Jung, I like Jung better, always did, but you can keep him.”
“Thanks a billion.”
“You always were one for thinking too much and not feeling.”
“Anyone who carries his mattress around with him on his back shouldn’t talk about thinking or feeling. Anyone who has bite marks on his neck—”
“We’ve been over that and it’s past.” He knelt down again and began to run his hand over the titles. “Here’s Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools, how in hell did you ever get through that? It’s yours. John Collier’s short stories! You know I love his work! That goes over in my pile!”
“Wait!” she said.
“My pile.” He pulled the book out and tossed it along the floor.
“Don’t! You’ll hurt it.”
“It’s mine now.” He gave it another shove.
“I’m glad you’re not running the main library,” she said.
“Here’s Gogol, boring, Saul Bellow, boring, John Updike, nice style but no ideas. Boring, Frank O’Connor? Okay, but you can keep him. Henry James? Boring, Tolstoy, never could figure out the names, not boring, just confusing, keep him. Aldous Huxley? Hey, wait! You know I think his essays are better than his novels!”
“You can’t break the set!”
“Like heck I can’t. We split this baby down the middle. You get the novels, I get his ideas.”
He grabbed three of the books and shoved them, skittering across the carpet. She stepped over and began to examine the piles she had put aside for him.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Just rethinking what I gave you. I think I’ll take back John Cheever.”
“Christ! What gives? I take this, you grab that? Put Cheever back. Here’s Pushkin. Boring, Robbe-Grillet, French boring. Knut Hamsun. Scandinavian boring.”
“Cut the critiques. You make me feel like I just foiled my lit. exam. You think you’re taking all the good books and leaving me the dimwits?”
“Could be. All those Connecticut writers picking lint out of each other’s navels, logrolling down Fifth Avenue, firing blanks all the way!”
“I don’t suppose you find Charlie Dickens a dud?”
“Dickens!? We haven’t had anyone like him in this century!”
“Thank God! You’ll notice I gave you all the Thomas Love Peacock novels. Asimov’s science fiction. Kafka? Banal.”
“Now who’s busy burning books?” He bent furiously to study first her stack, then his. “Peacock, by God, one of the great humorists of all time. Kafka? Deep. Crazy, brilliant. Asimov? A genius!”
“Ho-hum! Jesus.” She sat down and put her hands in her lap and leaned forward, nodding at the hills of literature. “I think I begin to see where everything fell apart. The books you read, flotsam to me. The books I read, jetsam to you. Junk. Why didn’t we realize that ten years back?”
“Lots of things you don’t notice when you’re—” he slowed—“in love.”
The word had been spoken. She moved back in her chair, uneasily, and folded her hands and put her feet primly together. She stared at him with a peculiar bright ness m her eyes.
He looked away and began to prowl the room. “Ah, hell,” he said, kicking one stack, and moved across to kick the other, quietly, easily. “I don’t give a damn what’s in this bunch or that, I don’t care, I just don’t—”
“Do you have room in your car for most of these?” she said, quietly, still looking at him.
“I think so.”
“Want me to help you carry them out?”
“No.” There was another long moment of silence.
“I can manage.” “You sure?”
“Sure.” With a great sigh he began to carry a few books over near the door.
“I’ve got some boxes in the car. I’ll bring them up.”
“Don’t you want to look over the rest of the books to be sure they’re ones you want?”
“Naw,” he said. You know my taste. Looks like you did it all right It’s like you just peeled two pieces of paper away from each other, and there they are, I can’t believe it.”
He stopped piling the books by the door and stood looking at first one fortress of volumes on one side and then the opposing castles and towers of literature, and then at his wife, seated stranded in the valley between. It seemed a long way down the valley, across the room to where she was.
At that moment, two cats, both black, one large, one small, bounded in from the kitchen, caromed off the furniture and ricocheted out of the room, with not a sound.
His hand twitched. His right foot half turned toward the door.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” she said, quickly. “No cat carriers in here. Leave it outside. I’m keeping Maude and Maudlin.”
“But—” he said.
“Nope,” she said.
There was a long silence. At last, his shoulders slumped.
“Hell,” he said, quietly. “I don’t want any of the damned books. You can keep them all.”
“You’ll change your mind in a few days and come after them.”
“I don’t want them,” he said. “I only want you.”
“That’s the terrible part of all this,” she said, not moving. “I know it, and it’s impossible.”
“Sure. I’ll be right back. I’ll bring the boxes up.” He opened the door and again stared at the new lock as if he couldn’t believe. He took the old key from his pocket and put it on a side table near the door. “Won’t need that anymore.”
“No more, no,” she said, so he could hardly hear her.
“I’ll knock when I come back.” He started out and turned, “You know all of this was just talking around the real subject we haven’t even discussed yet?”
“What’s that?” She looked up.
He hesitated, moved a step, and said, “Who gets the kids?”
Before she could answer, he went out and shut the door.
Come, and Brin
g Constance!
His wife opened the mail at Saturday breakfast. It was the usual landslide.
“We’re on every hit list in town, and beyond,” he said. “I can stand the bills. But the come-ons, the premieres you don’t want to attend, the benefits that benefit no one, the—”
“Who’s Constance?” asked his wife.
“Who’s who?” he said.
“Constance,” said his wife.
And the summer morning passed quickly into November shade.
She handed over a letter from an old familiar dip up at Lake Arrowhead who was inviting him to a series of lectures on Primal Whisper, Extra Sensory Transubstantiation, EST and Zen. The man’s name, scribbled below, seemed to be, “J’ujfl Kikrk.” As if someone in the dark had typed the wrong letters and never gone back to correct.
The P.S. read: “If you come, bring Constance.”
“Well?” said his wife, putting too much butter on her toast.
“I don’t know any Constance,” he said.
“No?”
“THERE IS NO Constance,” he said.
“Really?”
“Indian scout’s mother’s honor.”
“Indians are dirty, scouts are buggers, and your mother was an easy lady,” said his wife.
“There never was, never is, and never will be,” he threw the letter in the wastebasket, “a Constance.”
“Then,” said his wife, with a lawyer’s logic, leaning against the stand, “why,” she articulated, “is,” she went on, “her name,” she enunciated, and finished: “in the letter?”
“Where’s the fan?” he said.
“What fan?”
“There’s got to be one,” he said, “for something awful to hit.” Meanwhile he was thinking quickly. His wife watched him thinking and buttered her toast twice over again. Constance, he thought, in a panic.
I have known an Alicia and I have known a Margot and I have met a Louise and I once upon a time knew an Allison. But—
Constance?
Never. Not even at the opera. Not even at some tea.
He telephoned Lake Arrowhead five minutes later.
“Put that dumb stupid jerk on!” he said, not thinking.