them

  “I—”

  “Please? I won’t hurt you.”

  She seemed very confused. He reached past her and opened the door. “All right?” he said.

  “But it’s—”

  “All right. Just for a few minutes.”

  In the dingy foyer of the house there were two brief rows of mailboxes, exactly the same kind as in his apartment building. This pleased him. Cheap fake-brass mailboxes. They were nicked and dull, with openings in sunburst patterns to show if there was any mail inside. His eye jumped to Wendall and he saw that it was empty. Nothing.

  Upstairs she fumbled for her key as if in a dream and he stood beside her, his brain in a commotion, thinking, What is going to happen now? It was funny and not funny. He might have smiled, but he did not smile—to be on your own like this, always on your own! A strain on the heart! The girl’s shyness and the jumpy aggression of his own body led him on; he felt that he no longer had to think, to plan, everything was decided. The girl opened the door and led him inside. She switched on a light and glanced back at him anxiously, to see whether he thought this room was ugly…

  “So this is where you live,” he said.

  He had meant his tone to be hearty but it sounded faint, tense. He sat down. The small room unfolded itself to him in blotches—a brown sofa, a chair, a cheap, shiny-topped table with a few plates and cups on it. She hadn’t expected visitors. A breakfast table? Was this room a kitchen too? Yes, he saw a small refrigerator in a corner, and a sink…and this sofa obviously turned itself into a bed by strenuous magic…the room’s walls shuddered and lost their shape before his eyes. He smelled perfume or food. He said again, numbly, “So this is where you live.”

  “Yes. I spend my nights here.”

  “And on the weekends?”

  “I spend my weekends here.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Why can’t you believe it?”

  And now it seemed to him that a new man was coming to take his place, taking over. This might have been a scene out of a magazine story or a movie. A movie, yes. He was a detective searching for someone, and she was the girl who somehow stood between him and his goal, possessing crucial information, this frightened, lovely girl in a lemon-colored coat and pink lipstick. Or he was an ordinary man out to revenge himself upon someone, a murderer, and the girl was the murderer’s girl, or perhaps his sister; that sounded better. She was chaste and frightened and could belong to no one. Or perhaps he was only pursuing the girl, himself, on his own, having trailed her remorselessly to this city, checking hotels, apartment buildings, bus stations, working a private fantastic logic, foreseeing everything. He had followed her to this particular house, which was nowhere. Metaphorically it stood for nowhere. Its essence was nowhere, nothing. It had no being. They were meeting now upon an X which was located at no particular spot in the universe, and they seemed in terror to be recognizing each other…

  He reached clumsily for her hands and upset a coffee cup on the table.

  “No, please, don’t get up,” she said quickly.

  He sat back, alarmed.

  In her coat, buttoned up in her coat, she sat down and stared at him. He forced himself to lean back against the sofa, to relax. He tried to make his face relax. But he felt the skin of his face prickling, gathering itself up into tiny terrifying dots. The girl’s eyes on his face did this. His head and body felt very heavy and yet his mind raced along feverishly. He understood he was committing adultery and that he was daring everything, risking everything his life had accumulated. He was risking himself. He was moving toward an ultimate act, like murder, which could never be negated. It was an act to be done without any particular reference to his wife, whom he couldn’t quite remember. It was an act to be done in this girl’s arms, a stranger’s arms, and if he did not stop he would be inextricably bound up with her, his life with hers, a stranger’s life. His mouth had gone dry. He stared at the girl’s pale face and down the length of her coat to her slim legs—stockings made her legs shine slightly, appealingly—and to her narrow black shoes. He saw a faint waterline on those shoes. He was moved by this, by her silence and her sorrow and her beauty, which was turned toward him and yet turned away from him, open and shy at the same time, wondering as he was wondering, baffled. She had fixed her stare upon him as if she had hypnotized herself with fear.

  After some minutes he said hoarsely, “Tell me about yourself. Please.”

  She said nothing.

  “You don’t like men?”

  “I…I can’t talk about it, I don’t know how to talk about it.”

  “Please tell me. Talk to me.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “What can I say? I’m not intelligent, I can’t explain myself like you and the people you know. I’m afraid of life, of how confused it is, I’m afraid…of Detroit but also of leaving Detroit because I don’t know anything else. My Uncle Brock was dying in the hospital, we all thought. He looked bad. He lost fifty pounds maybe, and looked very bad, and we thought he was dying, but something happened and he walked out—one day he got out of bed and got some clothes and left the hospital, by himself; he walked out…and…and nobody knows where he went, he just walked out. The nurses and the doctor and everybody were surprised, he just…just walked out when he should have been dying. I guess he got fed up with the hospital. But I can’t do that. I don’t know how. How could I leave Detroit? My Uncle Brock was dying but he changed his mind and walked out of the hospital, just walked out! How did he do that? I want to know how he did that, how it happened that he woke up and said to himself that he would leave, that he’d get his clothes and walk down to the elevator and escape, just like that, and not even tell anyone where he was going. Even my mother, he didn’t tell her, he didn’t tell anybody. He’s gone. But how can you do that? What I wanted all my life was to be one person, a success of a person, something firm and fixed,” Maureen said slowly. “Not mixed up with dreams. Not just junk. My mother is like that—she seems wide awake, she’s always going somewhere and she’s always ready for a laugh, but really her life is all asleep. My Aunt Connie’s life too. All their friends, men and women both, they’re all asleep but I can’t explain it. My father and my stepfather too, all asleep, men who are asleep. I want to be Maureen Wendall but I want it to mean something. I want to be awake. But at the worst times I know that what seems to me to be myself, a certain person, isn’t any person at all but a confusion of things…what I can remember, what I’m seeing, what I’m thinking. I can’t control it. Everything is seething and boiling and I’m afraid of it.”

  He stared at her, amazed as if physically struck. She spoke slowly and yet her eyes were heavy with an almost sepulchral passion, a drugged, occult look. He had never heard anyone speak like this in his life. He wanted to reject her words, reject that heavy, drowning, intense look, but he only stared at her, unable to speak. This was the insanity he had feared in her but also the insanity he had been drawn to; and yet it was not insanity, not really. He understood her words as they passed through him, easily.

  “I don’t want you to think that I’m crazy but I can’t help it,” she said calmly, watching him. “I want to tell you. Sometimes I sit by that window there and look at the sun. I watch it go down. It seems to take a long time but every day it happens, it gets over and done with, that’s that. It can’t come back again. I have a lot of time to watch the sun go down. I have time to read and I keep reading, books from the library, things you mention in class. I’m looking for something in them so I keep reading. A person who lives alone has a lot of time. It has to be filled. So I look out the window. I keep waiting to see something there, in the way the light changes, I want to see some…some law.”

  “What?”

  “A law. Something that will come back again and again, that I can understand.”

  He nodded quickly, helplessly.

  “Now maybe you
should leave,” she said. She passed her hand before her face, as if his stare alarmed her.

  “Leave? Should I? Should I go home now?” he said.

  “Shouldn’t you go home?”

  He got to his feet. It seemed to him that he was passing by a scene of terrible mystery without quite seeing the mystery, without being able to touch it.

  He came to her and embraced her. Breathing heavily, helplessly, he gripped her shoulders and bent over her. She seemed so small to him, a child. Excited, agitated, he pulled her to her feet.

  “No, please don’t…no,” she cried.

  “Don’t make me leave,” he said.

  “Unless you love me, don’t…I can’t stand it…”

  He let go of her.

  “You should leave,” she said. “Please. Unless you love me, you should go home. Please don’t hurt me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He stumbled backward, reaching for the knob of the door. Where was the door? His senses rushed backward and forward, trying to direct him. He could not remember how this had happened, where he was, how he had come to feel so violently propelled toward this girl. The sensation in him was turbulent and heavy at once, dragging him toward her. He did not move. “Should I really leave? Do you want me to leave?”

  She put her hands to her face.

  “I don’t want to leave you here alone,” he said.

  She said nothing.

  “Why should I leave you?” he said wildly. “Don’t make me leave!”

  Maureen turned from him. He could see that she was frightened, exactly like a girl in a detective story, like a girl in the most common of dreams. But she said shrilly, “You’re going to hurt me! If you don’t love me you’ll hurt me! How can I stand it? I’ve been alone too much! I’ve been afraid too much, and now you, you make me afraid, you’re like the rest of them, how can I trust you, what if you hurt me, what if I can’t make myself get up to work in the morning because I feel so broken down, a wreck, what if you do that to me—what then? What will I have left? I haven’t been near a man for ten years! That’s ten years! It all happened in another life, I can’t even remember! If you come near me you’ll begin it all again and I—I’m not strong enough, I can’t take it. When you suffer the way I did you don’t learn anything from it, it doesn’t teach you anything or make you a better person, it just breaks you down—why do you want to hurt me?”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

  “You want to hurt me!”

  “I want to love you…”

  She did not turn to him. He came to her in silence; he put his arms around her and clutched at her. So now what is going to happen? he thought. He was terribly afraid. But he could not stop, and the girl did not stop him, and his fear did no good, the high ringing beat of her heart did no good, warning him off, drawing him to her.

  4

  In late May, Maureen went to see her mother. Loretta was sitting with a friend; the television set was on. The friend, Bridget, had a bright, curious smile for Maureen.

  “Well, if it isn’t the stranger,” Loretta said. “What are you doing? What’s new?”

  Maureen sat on the edge of her mother’s chair and looked mechanically at the television screen. “A few things,” she said.

  “You’re looking good, Maureen,” said Bridget.

  “Thank you.”

  On the television screen was a jumpy picture of a crowd of people blocked off occasionally by a line of police. The police were holding the people back.

  “What’s that?” Maureen said.

  “Oh, some sons-of-bitches making trouble,” said Loretta, “picketing against the war.”

  “Twenty years ago they’d all been put in jail,” said Bridget.

  “They’d of been hung,” said Loretta angrily.

  “Is that what it is?” Maureen said, looking at the screen. “I thought I saw a priest there.”

  “Honey, what’s wrong with you? You walk in here and sit down and don’t explain nothing—it’s been how many weeks since I saw you, three or four? You’re looking very nice. Is everything okay with you? How’s your job?”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s your opinion on the war, Reeny?” Bridget said.

  “People like this shouldn’t make trouble. Marching around like that, it makes things confused,” Maureen said slowly.

  “That’s exactly right, they shouldn’t make trouble. We got enough trouble,” Bridget said.

  “I don’t like to see things confused,” Maureen said. She felt sluggish, yet a grave certitude gave her energy; she knew that she was right.

  “Look at that kid,” Loretta said, laughing. “Is that a boy? With all that hair? If that was my kid I’d sit him down and get the scissors after him. Jesus!”

  “They certainly are funny-looking,” Bridget said.

  The news switched to a man sitting at a desk.

  “Oh, the hell with that, turn it off. I saw this all before at noon,” Loretta said.

  Maureen leaned over and turned off the set.

  “So what is your own personal news, kid? You’re not in trouble?”

  “No,” Maureen said, making a face.

  “Then what?”

  “Maybe I just came over for a talk,” she said. “Why not? You don’t need to look at me so strange.”

  “Sure, talk to me. Say something.”

  “How’s Randolph?”

  “Sprained his ankle.”

  “When was this?”

  “Couple of weeks ago. Goddam thing won’t heal. He keeps running around on it. And Bridget here, she got a real bad deal, her husband’s back out and hanging around the neighborhood.”

  “Oh,” Maureen said. She looked politely at her mother’s friend, a woman of about fifty, heavy-set and pleasant. “How did that turn out?”

  “Lousy. They put him on some special program, Jesus Christ,” Bridget said, rolling her eyes, “acting like he’s fixed up fine and not nuts. They said he could come back on probation or something, whatever they call it, and I told off the supervisor and said that he was crazy and couldn’t be trusted and if he started drinking there’d be hell to pay. I told her, ‘Am I supposed to hide out from him the rest of my life?’ She said they found a job for him. So he’s out, hanging around. I can’t figure when he works or if he got fired already or quit. He told somebody he was going to cut my throat. That’s how it is at my house. And my mother-in-law, she’s been over too. Must be eighty years old and sharp as hell. You got to put your purse in a safe place when she drops in.”

  “No kidding, is she still coming around? How is she?” Loretta said.

  “I guess okay. She keeps going.”

  “Howard’s mother, she was a great old girl. Wasn’t she, Reeny? Big and strong and really knew her mind. She wouldn’t take no backtalk from anybody.”

  “Yeah, but this one don’t talk, herself. She just sort of sits there and looks at you. So that’s how it is at my place, Reeny. What about you, how’s your job?”

  “I’m quitting.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to get married.”

  Everyone was silent. Then Loretta shrieked, “What! My God, Reeny! Married! Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  “But who is it?”

  “The man who teaches me at night school.”

  “Jesus, a college teacher? Are you kidding?”

  Maureen tore her eyes away from the blank television screen. She looked down at her mother’s grimy bare feet and Bridget’s large, comfortable feet in Indian moccasins. “Why do you keep saying that? Is it such a surprise that anyone would want to marry me?”

  “You’re really getting married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Honey, you’re a beautiful girl, it’s no surprise. But I…I thought you didn’t hang around with anybody. You never told me one word!”

&
nbsp; “This is the first one, the first man.”

  “What is he like?”

  “He’s very nice, he’s intelligent, he loves me very much and wants to marry me.”

  “Is he Catholic?”

  “Yes, Catholic.”

  Loretta laughed with surprise. She threw her arms around Maureen. “God, I never expected this! Jesus! Never told me one word and here you are going out with a teacher, a college teacher! I always sort of thought you didn’t want to get married, you had your own reasons or something—”

  “I thought so too,” said Bridget happily.

  “But I’m real happy, it’s real good news, only why such a secret? Why didn’t you bring him around here or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bring him over for supper on Sunday then! Okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “On Sunday I’ll fix up something real nice, you bring him over. Just the three of us. We can get acquainted. My God, what a surprise!”

  “What nationality is he?” said Bridget.

  “Nothing. American.”

  “Sure he ain’t a Polack?” Loretta said, nudging Maureen.

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s wrong with him then?” Loretta said. “What’s the matter?”

  “He’s married.”

  Loretta got to her feet. Still smiling, still surprised, she stared down at Maureen and could not seem to understand. “Married?”

  Maureen nodded.

  Loretta stared. Then suddenly she slapped Maureen’s face.

  “Ma!” cried Maureen.

  “A married man—you and a married man!”

  “Honey, let her alone,” said Bridget, jumping up. “Why do you want to make trouble? Let her alone—”

  “She’s a whore! A little whore!”

  “You shouldn’t say that, how do you know what’s what?”

  “Are you a whore or not, Reeny?” Loretta said. Maureen sat with her hand to her cheek, trying not to cry. Loretta spoke with a curious irony, heavy and sour and yet a little affectionate.