An absurd, antique word came to mind. Jilted, he thought. I've been jilted.
The whimpering sounds kept coming. He tried to lock his throat, and it did no good. He lowered his head and gripped the convector grille that ran below the window at waist height. Gripped it until his fingers hurt, until the metal creaked and protested.
How long had it been since he had cried? He had cried the night Tad was born, but that had been relief. He had cried when his dad died after fighting grimly for his life for three days after a massive heart attack struck him, and those tears, shed at seventeen, had been like these, burning, not wanting to come; it was more like bleeding than crying. But at seventeen it was easier to cry, easier to bleed. When you were seventeen you still expected to have to do your share of both.
He stopped whimpering. He thought it was done. And then a low cry came out of him, a harsh, wavering sound, and he thought: Was that me? God, was it me that made that sound?
The tears began to slide down his cheeks. There was another harsh sound, then another. He gripped the convector grille and cried.
Forty minutes later he was sitting in Deering Oaks Park. He had called home and told Donna he would be late. She started to ask why, and why he sounded so strange. He told her he would be home before dark. He told her to go ahead and feed Tad. Then he hung up before she could say anything else.
Now he was sitting in the park.
The tears had burned off most of the fear. What was left was an ugly slag of anger. That was the next level in this geological column of knowledge. But anger wasn't the right word. He was enraged. He was infuriated. It was as if he had been stung by something. A part of him had recognized that it would be dangerous for him to go home now . . . dangerous for all three of them.
It would be so pleasurable to hide the wreckage by making more; it would (let's face it) be so mindlessly pleasurable to punch her cheating face in.
He was sitting beside the duckpond. On the other side, a spirited Frisbee game was going on. He noticed that all four of the girls playing--and two of the boys--were on roller skates. Roller skates were big this summer. He saw a young girl in a tube top pushing a cart of pretzels, peanuts, and canned soft drinks. Her face was soft and fresh and innocent. One of the guys playing Frisbee flipped her the disk; she caught it deftly and flipped it back. In the sixties, Vic thought, she would have been in a commune, diligently picking bugs off tomato plants. Now she was probably a member in good standing of the Small Business Administration.
He and Roger used to come down here to eat their lunches sometimes. That had been in the first year. Then Roger noticed that, although the pond looked lovely, there was a faint but definite odor of putridity hanging around it . . . and the small house on the rock in the center of the pond was whitewashed not with paint but with gullshit. A few weeks later, Vic had noted a decaying rat floating amid the condoms and gum wrappers at the edge of the pond. He didn't think they had been back since then.
The Frisbee, a bright red, floated across the sky.
The image that had provoked his anger kept recurring. He couldn't keep it away. It was as crude as his anonymous correspondent's choice of words had been, but he couldn't ditch it. He saw them screwing in his and Donna's bedroom. Screwing in their bed. What he saw in this mind-movie was every bit as explicit as one of those grainy X-rated pictures you could see at the State Theater on Congress Street. She was groaning, sheened lightly with perspiration, beautiful. Every muscle pulled taut. Her eyes had that hungry look they got when the sex was good, their color darker. He knew the expression, he knew the posture, he knew the sounds. He had thought--thought--he was the only one who did. Not even her mother and father would know about that.
Then he would think of the man's penis--his cock--going up inside her. In the saddle; that phrase came and clanged in his mind idiotically, refusing to die away. He saw them screwing to a Gene Autry soundtrack: I'm back in the saddle again, out where a friend is a friend. . . .
It made him feel creepy. It made him feel outraged. It made him feel infuriated.
The Frisbee soared and came down. Vic followed its course.
He had suspected something, yes. But suspecting was not like knowing; he knew that now, if nothing else. He could write an essay on the difference between suspecting and knowing. What made it doubly cruel was the fact that he had really begun to believe that the suspicions were groundless. And even if they weren't, what you didn't know couldn't hurt you. Wasn't that right? If a man is crossing a darkened room with a deep, open hole in the middle of it, and if he passes within inches of it, he doesn't need to know he almost fell in. There is no need for fear. Not if the lights are off.
Well, he hadn't fallen in. He had been pushed. The question was, What was he going to do about it? The angry part of him, hurt, bruised, and bellowing, was not in the slightest inclined to be "adult," to acknowledge that there were slips on one or both sides in a great many marriages. Fuck the Penthouse Forum, or Variations, or whatever they're calling it these days, that's my wife we're talking about, she was screwing someone
(out where a friend is a friend)
when my back was turned, when Tad was out of the house--
The images began to unreel again, crumpled sheets, straining bodies, soft sounds. Ugly phrases, terrible terms kept crowding up like a bunch of freaks looking at an accident: nooky, hair pie, put the boots to her, shot my load, I-don't-fuck-for-fortune-and-I-don't-fuck-for-fame-but-the-way-I-fuck-ya-mamma-is-a-goddam-shame, my turtle in your mud, bang for the gang, stoop for the troops--
Inside my wife! he thought, agonized, hands clenching. Inside my wife!
But the angry, hurt part acknowledged--grudgingly--that he couldn't go home and beat the hell out of Donna. He could, however, take Tad and go. Never mind the explanations. Let her try and stop him, if she had cheek enough to do it. He didn't think she would. Take Tad, go to a motel, get a lawyer. Cut the cord cleanly, and don't look back.
But if he just grabbed Tad and took him to a motel, wouldn't the boy be frightened? Wouldn't he want an explanation ? He was only four, but that was old enough to know when something was badly, frighteningly wrong. Then there was the matter of the trip--Boston, New York, Cleveland. Vic didn't give a goddam about the trip, not now; old man Sharp and his kid could take a flying jump at the moon for all he cared. But he wasn't in it alone. He had a partner. The partner had a wife and two kids. Even now, hurting as badly as he was, Vic recognized his responsibility to at least go through the motions of trying to save the account--which was tantamount to trying to save Ad Worx itself.
And although he didn't want to ask it, there was another question: Exactly why did he want to take Tad and go, without even hearing her side of the story? Because her sleeping around was wrecking Tad's morals? He didn't think so. It was because his mind had immediately seized upon the fact that the way to hurt her most surely and most deeply (as deeply as he hurt right now) was through Tad. But did he want to turn his son into the emotional equivalent of a crowbar, or a sledgehammer? He thought not.
Other questions.
The note. Think about the note for a minute. Not just what it said, not just those six lines of battery-acid filth; think about the fact of the note. Someone had just killed the goose that had been--pardon the pun--laying the golden eggs. Why had Donna's lover sent that note?
Because the goose was no longer laying, of course. And the shadow man who had sent the note was mad as hell.
Had Donna dumped the guy?
He tried to see it any other way and couldn't. Stripped of its sudden, shocking force, wasn't I ENJOYED FUCKING THE SHIT OUT OF HER the classic dog-in-the-manger ploy? If you can't have it any more, piss on it so no one else will want it either. Illogical, but ah so satisfying. The new, easier atmosphere at home fit into that reading, as well. The almost palpable sense of relief Donna radiated. She had turned the shadow man out, and the shadow man had hit back at her husband with the anonymous note.
Last question: Did it m
ake any difference?
He took the note out of his jacket pocket again and turned it over and over in his hands, not unfolding it. He watched the red Frisbee float across the sky and wondered what the hell he was going to do.
"What the Christ is that?" Joe Camber asked.
Each word came out spaced, almost inflectionless. He stood in the doorway, looking at his wife. Charity was setting his place. She and Brett had already eaten. Joe had come in with a truckful of odds and ends, had begun to drive into the garage, and had seen what was waiting for him.
"It's a chainfall," she said. She had sent Brett over to play with his buddy Dave Bergeron for the evening. She didn't want him around if this went badly. "Brett said you wanted one. A Jorgen chainfall, he said."
Joe crossed the room. He was a thin man with a scrawny-strong physique, a big blade nose, and a quiet, agile way of walking. Now his green felt hat was tipped back on his head to show his receding hairline. There was a smudge of grease on his forehead. There was beer on his breath. His brown eyes were small and hard. He was a man who didn't like surprises.
"You talk to me, Charity," he said.
"Sit down. Your supper will get cold."
His arm shot out like a piston. Hard fingers bit into her arm. "What the fuck are you up to? Talk to me, I said."
"Don't curse at me, Joe Camber." He was hurting her badly, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing it in her face or in her eyes. He was like a beast in many ways, and although this had excited her when she was young, it excited her no longer. She had recognized over the course of their years together that she could sometimes gain the upper hand just by seeming brave. Not always, but sometimes.
"You tell me what the fuck you been up to, Charity!"
"Sit down and eat," she said quietly, "and I will."
He sat down and she brought his plate. There was a sirloin steak on it.
"Since when can we afford to eat like the Rockefellers?" he asked. "You got some pretty tall explaining to do, I'd say."
She brought his coffee and a split baked potato. "Can't you use the chainfall?"
"Never said I couldn't use it. But I damn well can't afford it." He began to eat, his eyes never leaving her. He wouldn't hit her now, she knew. This was her chance, while he was still relatively sober. If he was going to hit her, it would be after he came back from Gary Pervier's, sloshing with vodka and filled with wounded male pride.
Charity sat down across from him and said, "I won the lottery."
His jaws halted and then began moving again. He forked steak into his mouth. "Sure," he said. "And tomorrow ole Cujo out there's gonna shit a mess of gold buttons." He pointed his fork at the dog, who was pacing restlessly up and down the porch. Brett didn't like to take him over to the Bergerons' because they had rabbits in a hutch and they drove Cujo wild.
Charity reached into her apron pocket, took out her copy of the prize claim form that the agent had filled out, and handed it across the table to Joe.
Camber flattened the paper out with one blunt-fingered hand and stared it up and down. His eyes centered on the figure. "Five--" He began, and then shut his mouth with a snap.
Charity watched him, saying nothing. He didn't smile. He didn't come around the table and kiss her. For a man with his turn of mind, she thought bitterly, good fortune only meant that something was lying in wait.
He looked up at last. "You won five thousand dollars?"
"Less taxes, ayuh."
"How long you been playing the lottery?"
"I buy a fifty-center every week . . . and you don't dare dun me about it, either, Joe Camber, with all the beer you buy."
"Watch your mouth, Charity," he said. His eyes were unblinking, brilliant blue. "Just watch your mouth, or it might swell up on you all at once." He began to eat his steak again, and behind the set mask of her face, she relaxed a little. She had thrust the chair in the tiger's face for the first time, and it hadn't bitten her. At least not yet. "This money. When do we get it?"
"The check will come in two weeks or a little less. I bought the chainfall out of the money that's in our savings account. That claim form is just as good as gold. That's what the agent said."
"You went out and bought that thing?"
"I asked 'Brett what he thought you'd want most. It's a present."
"Thanks." He went on eating.
"I got you a present," she said. "Now you give me one, Joe. Okay?"
He went on eating and he went on looking at her. He didn't say anything. His eyes were totally expressionless. He was eating with his hat on, still pushed back on his head.
She spoke to him slowly, deliberately, knowing it would be a mistake to rush. "I want to go away for a week. With Brett. To see Holly and Jim down in Connecticut."
"No," he said, and went on eating.
"We could go on the bus. We'd stay with them. It would be cheap. There would be plenty of money left over. That found money. It wouldn't cost a third of what that chainfall cost. I called the bus station and asked them about the round-trip fare."
"No. I need Brett here to help me."
She clutched her hands together in a hard, twisting fury under the table, but made her face remain calm and smooth. "You get along without him in the school year."
"I said no, Charity," he said, and she saw with galling, bitter certainty that he was enjoying this. He saw how much she wanted this. How she had planned for it. He was enjoying her pain.
She got up and went to the sink, not because she had anything to do there, but because she needed time to get herself under control. The evening star peeped in at her, high and remote. She ran water. The porcelain was a discolored yellowish color. Like Joe, their water was hard.
Maybe disappointed, feeling that she had given up too easily, Camber elaborated. "The boy's got to learn some responsibility. Won't hurt him to help me this summer instead of running off to Davy Bergeron's every day and night."
She turned off the water. "I sent him over there."
"You did? Why?"
"Because I thought it might go like this," she said, turning back to him. "But I told him you'd say yes, what with the money and the chainfall."
"If you knew better, you sinned against the boy," Joe said.
"Next time I guess you'll think before you throw your tongue in gear." He smiled at her through a mouthful of food and reached for the bread.
"You could come with us, if you wanted."
"Sure. I'll just tell Richie Simms to forget getting in his first cutting this summer. Besides, why do I want to go down and see them two? From what I've seen of them and what you tell of them, I got to think they're a couple of first-class snots. Only reason you like them is because you'd like to be a snot just like them." His voice was gradually rising. He began to spray food. When he got like this he frightened her and she gave in. Most times. She would not do that tonight. "Mostly you'd like the boy to be a snot like them. That's what I think. You'd like to turn him against me, I guess. Am I wrong?"
"Why don't you ever call him by his name?"
"You want to just shut the craphouse door now, Charity," he said, looking at her hard. A flush had crept up his cheeks and across his forehead. "Mind me, now."
"No," she said. "That's not the end."
He dropped his fork, astounded. "What? What did you say?"
She walked toward him, allowing herself the luxury of total anger for the first time in her marriage. But it was all inside, burning and sloshing like acid. She could feel it eating. She daren't shout. To shout would be the end for sure. She kept her voice low.
"Yes, you'd think that about my sister and her husband.
Sure you would. Look at you, sitting there and eating with your dirty hands and your hat still on. You don't want him down there seeing how other people live. Just the same way I don't want him seeing how you and your friends live when you're off to yourselves. That's why I wouldn't let him go on that hunting trip with you last November."
She paused and h
e only sat there, a half-eaten slice of Wonder Bread in one hand, steak juice on his chin. She thought that the only thing keeping him from springing at her was his total amazement that she should be saying these things at all.
"So I'll trade with you," she said. "I've got you that chainfall and I'm willing to hand over the rest of the money to you--lots wouldn't--but if you're going to be so ungrateful, I'll go you one more. You let him go down with me to Connecticut, and I'll let him go up to Moosehead with you come deerhunting season." She felt cold and prickly all over, as if she had just offered to strike a bargain with the devil.
"I ought to strap you," he said wonderingly. He spoke to her as if she were a child who had misunderstood some very simple case of cause and effect. "I'll take him hunting with me if I want, when I want. Don't you know that? He's my son. God's sake. If I want, when I want." He smiled a little, pleased with the sound it made. "Now--you got that?"
She locked her eyes with his. "No," she said. "You won't"
He got up in a hurry then. His chair fell over.
"I'll put a stop to it," she said. She wanted to step back from him, but that would end it too. One false move, one sign of giving, and he would be on her.
He was unbuckling his belt "I'm going to strap you, Charity," he said regretfully.
"I'll put a stop to it any way I can. I'll go up to the school and report him truant. Go to Sheriff Bannerman and report him kidnapped. But most of all . . . I'll see to it that Brett doesn't want to go."
He pulled his belt from the loops of his pants and held it with the buckle end penduluming back and forth by the floor.
"The only way you'll get him up there with the rest of those drunks and animals before he's fifteen is if I let him go," she said. "You sling your belt on me if you want, Joe Camber. Nothing is going to change that."
"Is that so?"
"I'm standing here and telling you it is."
But suddenly he didn't seem to be in the room with her any more. His eyes had gone far away, musing. She had seen him do this other times. Something had just crossed his mind, a new fact to be laboriously added into the equation. She prayed that whatever it was would be on her side of the equals sign. She had never gone so much against him before, and she was scared.