them

  “Tomorrow is so soon,” Jules said, disappointed.

  “No, he’s always gone. He flies to New York all the time.”

  “What is he like?”

  She brought his hand up to her face. She pressed her cheek against it. Jules wanted to laugh hysterically—a broad grin actually broke across his face but shattered into something else. He had a sudden vision of himself strangling this woman. He put his hands around her throat, and the two of them sat very still, looking down, breathing swiftly. She seemed to acquiesce, allowing him to lead the way. But he only said, “You’re very beautiful. It’s much more than before, much different. I don’t think I can stand it.”

  “Would you marry me then?” Nadine said.

  “Yes.”

  “If you ruined my life, I mean my life here,” she said, confused, looking around the room, “would you give me another life? You’d marry me?”

  “I’ll marry you right now.”

  “You won’t abandon me?”

  “How could I abandon you?”

  “But I abandoned you, I left you.”

  Jules waved this aside.

  “I left you in that room. You were sick—”

  “I shouldn’t have gotten sick,” Jules said with a laugh.

  “I loved you. I don’t know why I ran away.”

  “Forget about it.”

  “I loved you. I did love you. I was sick with love for you and I tried to get over it, but I never did.”

  Jules, in the presence of a woman, felt a certain dizziness, a golden glow that seemed to emanate from her, a warmth that was unconscious and comforting; it was a little dangerous because it was unconscious. He was drawn to women as if toward something warm, drawn out of the cold, gravitating forward and eager to lose himself in such warmth. With Nadine the instinct was richer and blinder. He felt the danger more sharply, as if, through half-closed eyes, he were really making out the shapes of rocks underfoot while pretending to see nothing. He was deaf with the expectation of joy. Sounds came to him as if through rocking waves of water, his own blood muffled and inarticulate. He did not want to see or to hear. He wanted to be violated in a strange, light, painless way, violated without his understanding.

  He said in confusion, “Well, I loved you too, of course. I still love you. It isn’t any choice of mine. What can I do about loving you?” His agitation took him back to those sweaty hours in motel rooms, lying on top of sleazy bedcovers. With his fingers he caressed her throat. He thought to himself, Now this woman wants me, and the knowledge calmed him. He could sense her paralysis. He could imagine her waiting for him for several days, a woman waiting for a man, sitting and standing and walking about in a lovely house, her face just so, made up to be fragrant and lovely and yet alone, waiting, incomplete; a woman’s mind might crack under that. He felt her blindness too, her strange deafness. A sudden vision came to him of the two of them afloat on a river—sitting on this sofa of green velvet—rocking gently, floating downstream, hearing and seeing nothing on shore. He could not recall the years when he hadn’t seen her and in a way he could not recall that younger, less important Nadine.

  “I won’t ruin your life,” he said. “Everything will be the way you want it. Just tell me what you want.”

  She seemed to be sensing his words, caressing them. He felt the two of them drifting relentlessly downstream….He said, “But you do love me?”

  “I’ve never forgotten you, or anything. I love you.”

  “I’m a different person now. I don’t run around stealing cars and things, knocking people on the head. It all seems fanciful, all that, but I know I did it. I’m older. I never thought I would live to be thirty,” Jules said. He was uneasy; his words did not really convey his feelings.

  “I wanted to see you again,” Nadine said. “I tried to write to you but I didn’t know where to write. I looked up some names in the telephone book—it was very confusing. When I got back to Detroit I was sick myself. They took care of me at home for a while and then put me in a hospital.”

  “How were you sick?”

  “I couldn’t sleep or eat. I kept crying all the time,” she said impatiently. “All I could think about was you. I tried to starve myself. I felt sorry for myself and I wanted to punish my parents. I kept thinking about you, only you. Jules, I had to leave you, I had to get out of that place. I remember the way I was. You were so sick, it wasn’t even you, it seemed to be a stranger. And I kept thinking about you sick, a stranger, so that I wouldn’t have to love you, but I could never really believe in it. I wasn’t free. I had to leave, but when I left I never got over it. I took your car a few hundred miles, then it broke down. I called home. They both flew down to get me.”

  He wanted to tell her, Forget about the car, then he realized that she had forgotten about it; she had never thought about it.

  “I had to get out and leave you. I had to escape. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand.”

  “I wrote long letters for you, crazy things. They put me in a kind of hospital, a very nice place. I didn’t ever go back to school in any ordinary way but took courses by myself. Well, it wasn’t very nice, I don’t know why I said that, it was a place for people sick in the head. We all carried ourselves like glass, we were very breakable. My father got me tutors from the University of Michigan. It wasn’t far from there. I kept looking at these men and listening to them, but I didn’t see them or hear them, I kept waiting for them to change into you. I couldn’t think of a man who wasn’t you, they all seemed to be you.”

  Jules stared at her.

  “It was very strange to me how a man, a young man, could have a face of his own that wasn’t yours,” Nadine said dreamily. “I would look at the parts of his face, his eyes, his mouth, and figure out how they could be yours, belong to you. I don’t know what makes faces different. The eyes might be the same except for color. Mouths look alike. I don’t know—how people are different people, how they keep separate. But none of those men was ever you.”

  Jules felt a sensation of danger. He said, “Is there anyone else in this house?”

  “Not today.”

  He felt as if he were going to explode and the violence would kill Nadine. She was motionless and dreamlike, leaning against him, her arms around his neck. Their embrace was formal. If he were losing his mind it was an accident of her presence, her voice, the green sofa, the persistent waves that bore them along. But what if this woman were not Nadine, what if some other woman had put her arms around his neck and was hypnotizing him? What if in another moment the spell broke and she reached around under one of the sofa’s cushions and drew out a gun?

  “I’ll come to you somewhere else,” Nadine said. “Downtown. Somewhere else, not here.”

  “A hotel? When?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “When does your husband get home?”

  “Around three, but he won’t call, the car is at the airport—”

  “Which airport?”

  “Metro.”

  “He won’t expect you to be home?”

  “I will be home when he gets home. I’ll be back by three-thirty.”

  “Will you come downtown then? The Sheraton-Cadillac?”

  “Yes.”

  “You really will do this?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Should I get a room, should I wait for you? How early can you come?”

  “Eleven.”

  “But don’t do this if you…if you’re going to be upset.”

  “I won’t be upset.”

  “I think you will.”

  “No, I have to do this. I need you,” Nadine said.

  He felt a helpless, painful sympathy for her. But could he believe in her? Her limpness, her sense of doom, her frightened breathing, seemed to him unnatural, an exaggeration of his own fear. The trembling he felt in her body was exactly like the trembling he held back
in his, as if the two of them were fated for some final convulsion, locked in each other’s arms, their mouths fastened greedily together in a pose neither had really chosen—like gargoyles hacked together out of rock, freaks of mossy rock. Jules said quickly, “We don’t have to do anything right away. We could see each other a few times—”

  “No, I’ll come down tomorrow.”

  “We can talk—”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “I think there is. Do you really want to marry me?”

  She pressed her forehead against his shoulder. She thought.

  “You want to get a divorce and marry me? Jules Wendall?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Anything you want then.”

  “I want you. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  “What about your marriage?”

  “It’s a good marriage, he’s a good man, but…but he isn’t you. I married him a few years ago when it was time for me to get married. He was like those students from Michigan, those graduate students; he never turned into you. There’s nothing for me to say about him. As soon as I saw you in that restaurant I began to lose connection with other people, even with what I was saying. Everything is jerky but dreamlike, not connected. I sound crazy. It isn’t really like me to be this way, I’m much older and different from the way I was when you knew me. I had to go through some bad months to get over that. But I got over it. But now…With you, Jules, I can’t think of my life or remember what it is. I can’t remember myself. It’s as if I were walking somewhere and music began to play very loud, making me deaf, and someone took my hand to lead me away—why not? How can I remember who I am, what does it matter? I’ve been waiting for you for three days. Every hour or so it would become clear to me that I should get out, go to my mother’s or just get out, go somewhere. I shouldn’t have to go through all this again, with you. But I couldn’t leave. Then I thought you weren’t coming or were going to insult me by coming a few days late, which you did, but still I kept waiting. Everything in my life seemed to lean toward you—it was like something falling slowly over. I realized that I didn’t care about anything else, though I wanted to care. But I didn’t.”

  They were silent. Jules said finally, “Well, I’ve thought of you. In those years.”

  “You did?”

  “I didn’t exactly love you, it was something deeper. I wanted to get hold of you again, like this. No, not like this. Not like we are now. I wanted to get hold of you…” He could not explain.

  She said, “I understand.”

  “Have you been lonely?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even with your husband?”

  “Yes, very lonely. With him and with everyone.”

  “Is it hard for you, for a woman, to be lonely?”

  “I’ve survived. What about you?”

  “I’ve survived.”

  They smiled at each other. Jules felt the possibility of their becoming friends!

  “What did you do after I left you?” she said.

  “I got well after a few days. Got some jobs, bummed my way around, got back on my feet. I had to make money to eat. I kept going. Finally I got back up to Detroit, when I was ready for Detroit again. I tried not to think of you but you were always there, in the back of my mind.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She began to kiss him. Jules embraced her eagerly. They seemed to fall stony-eyed into this embrace, breathing with relief and pain. As soon as he kissed her he wanted to speak: he wanted to explain to her how unfulfilled his life was. Blinded by her, he felt a sudden clarity about his love for her—it was not really his own, nothing he could control, but a torrent of emotion he had somehow been trapped in, an old-fashioned fate. A lovely golden light seemed to blind him; he moved his hands desperately upon her body. The light was a radiance that came partly from her face and partly from the furniture of this gleaming room. He said, very excited, “People are always falling in love with me, or they want something from me I can’t give. I have to pick them off me. I have to get rid of them. None of them are ever you,” and his voice cracked with this truth.

  “You’re very good. You’re not selfish like me.”

  “Couldn’t we go upstairs here? Right now?”

  “No.”

  “Nadine?”

  “No,” she said miserably, “not here. I can’t. I’m married to him, I—”

  “All right.”

  “Jules, please—”

  “I understand, all right. Should I leave now?”

  “In a minute.”

  He laughed. He framed her face with his hands and laughed. “You’re so beautiful, this can’t be happening. What is the good of it after all? Is there any way to use it? What good will it do for us to be in love again? What can we do with love?”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I’m face to face with your female ego—your soul—what can I ever possibly do with it?”

  “Don’t make jokes. I never cared for your jokes.”

  “Jokes are the sign of a desperate man,” Jules said. He stood up and smoothed down his hair, straightened his clothes. He was a desperate man. “Just tell me what you want, Nadine, and I’ll give it to you. Make up your mind.”

  She looked up at him. The skirt of her dress had been pulled up to her thighs. He saw her skin, smooth under the material of her stockings, this private Nadine that was in his possession—like a rag doll she seemed, in his possession, reckless of herself. Yet he did not really own her and had no idea what she was thinking.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “I’m thinking this,” she said wearily. “A woman is like a dream. Her life is a dream of waiting. I mean, she lives in a dream, waiting for a man. There’s no way out of this, insulting as it is, no woman can escape it. Her life is waiting for a man. That’s all. There is a certain door in this dream, and she has to walk through it. She has no choice. Sooner or later she has to open that door and walk through it and come to a certain man, one certain man. She has no choice about it. She can marry anyone but she has no choice about this. That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Yes.”

  “It isn’t exaggerated?”

  “That man isn’t you, exactly. It’s what I need to do with you, in order to keep alive. I need you for myself, for my life. I need to love you.”

  “You won’t run away afterward and leave me?”

  “I’m older now. I’m a married woman.”

  “But I won’t share you with another man.”

  “All right.”

  She followed him out to the door. They were both shaky, yet their movements were light and airy. Jules felt intoxicated. He took her hand and covered it with kisses, delighted at the freedom he had with her, this limp, warm hand, a part of the body that was going to belong to him, and even the big diamond on her finger was going to belong to him.

  “Tomorrow morning then. And you’re not going to be upset?”

  “No.”

  “All right. I love you. We’ll see what happens.”

  “I love you, Jules.”

  Driving back home, he saw everything clearly: billboards, restaurants, gas stations, other cars. He saw everything and left no imprint of himself upon them, so free had he become and so strong. It was only at about ten o’clock that night, alone in his room, that he realized what was going to happen, what had already happened. He was overcome by a sense of depression.

  Would he get out of this alive? Would anything remain in the world to astonish him?

  12

  He checked into the hotel at nine the next morning. His room, at sixteen dollars a day, was a disappointment; the window looked out upon a nearby wall. It surprised him to find himself in so ordinary a room, nothing magical about it. A steady sound of running water came from the
bathroom and he couldn’t see what was wrong, or if anything was wrong. He walked back and forth from the window to the bed, trying to calm himself.

  Last night his mother had given him a pathologist’s report about his uncle. He had read it swiftly, and certain key words had stuck in his mind—cytology, Leukeran, blood count, remission possibility—and amazed him, for now it seemed that his uncle was dying of a kind of cancer. Was that possible? To enter the hospital for one reason, to die for another? He had felt a kinship with his uncle, their being inescapably married to one fate—what did it matter how they got there? Jules lay on his bed as if awaiting his own fate, waiting for it to flow into him and drown him. He stared at the ceiling. So his uncle was dying. One less. His father was already dead and forgotten. His other uncle, his healthy uncle, Samson Wendall, was dragging himself forward every morning—he left Grosse Pointe every morning at six-thirty, anxious to begin the day, impatient with sleep and with the very conditions of sleep, the bed he owned, the bedroom in which he and his wife slept, and maybe his wife as well—with his hacking cough and his bleary, suspicious eyes, this uncle was not yet dying and had he a choice in the matter he would never die. Jules understood that: he wished never to die, himself.

  He lay very still. Though he had not slept most of the night before he was not ready to sleep now. His mind raced. He had the idea she would not come, and it would have greatly relieved him to know this; but she herself was so uncertain that perhaps she would show up, after all. He tried not to think of her, but still her face formed and reformed itself in his mind. Her beauty was a reward for him, for him alone. He had been faithful to her and now he was to be rewarded.

  Out in the corridor there was arguing, a man and a woman. Jules imagined them married, middle-aged. Their argument was not exciting, did not excite them truly. He tried to listen to their words but could make out nothing.

  He felt lines forming in his face. Concentration. He was ready for a sudden release of energy, a flowing into him, a softness. A process would fulfill itself through him, through his body. He felt as if he were floating in a strange darkness, in silence; the people in the corridor had gone; down on Washington Boulevard traffic was remote and tedious, unimagined. He pressed his hands against his eyes and wanted to cry out that he was lost…was this the way you died, giving everything up, shamed out of living? He felt his will draining out of him. It was draining away like the leak in the bathroom, an error too trivial to correct, the sign of sleazy merchandise. Time is passing, he thought. He did not move.