How could he do that to her? How could he not care, when she was speaking to him for the first time, opening her heart in a way that she had not done all the years of their married life? She had been through the most terrible experience, and the minute it was over, he had no more interest in it or in what she had been through. All that mattered to him was his own peace and comfort.
In a cold rigid fury she lay beside him, trying not to hear the deep regular breathing of the man who had beaten her down with his persistence and his unbending will, and now no longer cared enough about her even to stay awake five minutes. She was weak and exhausted and caught by the children she had borne him, but he was fine. He was still young and didn’t care whether she lived or died, so long as he got his sleep.
She moved slowly and carefully, out from under the cover, being careful even in her anger not to waken him.… Not that she was afraid of him any longer, but she had to be alone, to think, to decide what she would do when she got her strength back. Because she wouldn’t stay in the house with him a day longer than she had to. She would take the children and Rachel and find some place where they could live. It probably wouldn’t be comfortable and beautiful like this house. They’d probably have to live in some little flat downtown, over a store, but in the summer-time she could rent a cottage at the Chautauqua grounds so that the children would have a place to play outdoors, and they would manage somehow. They would be independent, and free at last to make of their lives something decent and brave, and when the children got old enough to look after themselves, she could go to Chicago and find a job there. Rachel had managed, and what Rachel could do, she could.
How long Martha King sat in the rocking chair by the front window in the guest-room, with her robe drawn around her, planning, she had no idea. She looked out at the street and saw the street lamp as the life she had been meant to lead and the circle of light cast by it as the place she must get to. Drunk with certainty, with finality, with decision, when the grandfather’s clock in the downstairs hall struck one, she went into the room where the baby’s crib was. The nurse was lying on her back snoring and did not waken when Martha King picked up the baby and carried it into the guest-room where she sat holding it, the burden that had so little weight, that was no burden at all.
The baby did not waken, though it stirred occasionally and she felt the hands pushing for a second against her side. She examined the baby’s face by the light of the street lamp: so small and helpless, so much in need of protection against the cruelty of the world. She would bring him up not to be nice, not to be polite, not to make the best of things, but in full knowledge of what life is, to make his own way, fight for what he wanted, and above all else to feel. To be angry when he was angry, and when he was happy, to bring the house down with his joy. All the things that Austin had failed to be. This child would have a chance. She would make it possible. It would be so.
She put the child back in the crib, and because it was cold, and she was not well and there was, after all, no place else to go, she got back into bed and lay there, with her eyes wide open, looking at the reflection of the street light on the ceiling.
Austin stirred, and put his arm across her, and she took hold of it, by the wrist, and removed it, but when she moved away from him, towards the outer edge of the bed, he followed again in his sleep, and curled around her in a way that made her want to shout at him, and beat his face with her fists. She pushed the arm away, roughly this time, but he still did not waken. The arm had a life of its own. All the rest of him, his body and his soul, were asleep. But the arm was awake, and came across her, and the hand settled on her heart, and she let it stay there for a moment, thinking how hard and heavy it was compared to the child she had been holding, how importunate, how demanding; how it was no part of her and never would be, insisting on a satisfaction, even in sleep, that she could not give. She started to push it away once more but her own arms were bound to the bed. Only her mind was awake, able to act, to hate. And then suddenly the delicate gold chain of awareness, no stronger than its weakest link, gave way. Circled by the body next to her, enclosed in warmth, held by the arm that knew (even though the man it belonged to did not), Martha King was asleep.
William Maxwell, Time Will Darken It Time Will Darken It
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