Hank wiped her tears away with his fingers and then tried to kiss her. He was gentle about it and she let him, sensing that he was trying to make up for having hit her. She saw how agitated he was and raised her face to him. They kissed and were tender for a few minutes, sitting on the edge of the couch, but then the tenderness got lost in their separate confusions. They kept kissing but it changed. Wanting to be close so badly, they missed it, passed it somewhere, and began to move toward sex, hoping it would make them close. Neither felt sure about it but they moved toward it, anyway, hoping it would change something. It was awkward, since neither was sure. In time they got to the bed, in time got their clothes off, but they were sluggish at every stage and beneath it depressed and almost desperate. Patsy was waiting, hoping that the feeling that had always been there would be there again, so strong and clear that it would solve everything, make her know what to do, make her want to hold him. But they were trembling and hot and scared, not in touch with each other. Patsy lost it all, thought of Jim, grew sick with herself in the midst of it. She got up immediately, crying, suddenly sick with fear that Jim would suddenly decide to come looking for her. Hank got up and tried to calm her, but futilely.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Quit crying.”
“Oh, don’t be sorry,” she said, gathering up her clothes. “You did me a favor. You made it as bleak here as it is at home. I’m sure it will all be a lot easier now. You go back to your desert and I’ll go back to my family. This is just how we deserve to end.”
“I haven’t left yet,” he said.
“I’ll be glad when you do,” she said. “Had you rather we went on like this?”
He sat on the bed and twisted a sock around his hand. “Maybe I can get a job in a hillbilly band,” he said, trying to be light. “Follow in my father’s footsteps.”
He was trying to joke, but there was a plaintive tone in his voice that angered Patsy beyond control. Lost in fury, she turned, dropped her clothes, went to the closet, yanked the old guitar out of its case and swung it at the wall. It didn’t break. She hit the closet door with it, crying, then brought it down against the bedpost as hard as she could. The bottom cracked; she swung again and it splintered. Hank had been too surprised to act, but he recovered, stepped in and wrestled with her. Her face was twisted. She wouldn’t turn loose of the guitar. “No, you won’t, you won’t get to . . .” she said. He finally got the ruined guitar out of her hands and tried to hold her against him. She strained back and he had to settle for making her sit on the edge of the bed. Her body was shaking and heaving and she was still furious, but she became so weak that he was afraid she would be sick. She let him hold her, and gradually she calmed down.
“You can’t leave me and go sit around feeling sorry for yourself,” she said coldly, by way of explanation.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“I don’t wish to argue. We’ll see what you do. I’m all right now. Please let me dress.”
They both dressed and she left with no more said. She softened just slightly, enough that they could manage a little lightness. He refused to say goodbye and she allowed it to stand that she would see him at least once more. But after she was out, all the spleen and hurt and anger came back and seethed in her for hours. Everything was ugly, she felt. Jim, it turned out, was at the library; he did not get back to see that she had done her duty for almost three hours. It made her the more angry and resentful. When he did come he noticed that her mouth was swollen and made a point of not commenting on it, which made her even more resentful. But in time she calmed a little, of herself.
He avoided the topic until they were at the dinner table and then asked her what Hank had said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’ll leave.”
“He must have said something.”
“He’s not a talkative man. I said a number of things. I also got socked, as you can see.’
“Undeservedly?” he asked.
Patsy felt chilled and looked at him silently for a long minute. “It would be easier if you were on my side,” she said.
“I am.”
She looked down at the small peas she didn’t feel like eating. “You’re awfully serene,” she said. “You don’t know me. You couldn’t be on my side.”
“Come on. I know you well.”
“No,” she said. “Why didn’t you beat him up and see that he quits socking me and dragging me into his bed?”
“Because I think that’s melodramatic,” Jim said. “You did it, you ought to be the one to finish it. That’s only civilized.”
“I am melodramatic,” she said. “And if you knew me you’d know I’m not civilized.”
“I guess you aren’t,” Jim said and politely finished his meal.
4
THE NEXT MORNING, as soon as Jim was gone, she called Hank to apologize for smashing the guitar. She had awakened thinking about him, and instead of feeling bitter and furious, as she had the day before, she felt softened and lonely for him. The ugliness and anger of the day before seemed unreal.
“I wish I could come over again,” she said. “I wish I could come right now.”
“Come on.”
“I oughtn’t to.” But she looked at her watch to see how long it was before Juanita was due.
“If he comes back and finds me gone he’ll know where I am,” she said. “I’d just as soon not have a three-way scene.”
“I don’t think he’ll come here,” Hank said.
Patsy reflected, and was inclined to agree. Jim had left the house in high spirits. He seemed to feel that the matter was settled, and was letting bygones be bygones. “I could be telling you goodbye, I guess,” she said. “You’re going, aren’t you?”
“I guess,” he said. “Jim and I are having a hard time avoiding one another now, and it’s only been two days.”
“I’ll come over,” she said, glancing at Davey. He was trying to wad a sheet of the morning newspaper into his mouth. “All he can do is kill me. Maybe we can work in a few days of goodbyes.”
The day before she had taken the world into his room, but she did not repeat the mistake. She simply left the world for two hours—let it wait. What they had might not be a great love—undoubtedly wasn’t—but it was something real, and she wanted to enjoy what little there was left of it. She cried when she saw the smashed guitar, but once she had cried she felt much better. They discussed the matter of his leaving very calmly. Once they were agreed to the step, Patsy came to feel that the loss of all future gave them rights to a day or two, a meeting or two. Once it was known that it was only a day or two, she managed, by a twist of her mind, to forget that it was so and to enjoy three morning visits as if they were mornings of normal time in a normal life. They were very quiet visits, only talk and bed. It seemed possible not to make a big thing of parting, and very easy to make a good thing of the mornings. Their sex had not been wrecked, as she had feared; it came back, as strong as ever. On the next to last visit Patsy could not help but be merry. She felt very good in body and sat on the bed later than she should have, clutching her knees and chatting about books. A good feeling lingered all through the day.
But the next morning, which was the last morning, she knew why it had been possible to be gay and peaceful and even merry. It had been because she was good at twisting her mind. On the last morning she couldn’t hold the twist. Part of his belongings were in the Oldsmobile, and the sight of the loaded car stunned her, as it had the first time he went away. He was going away and it was real. She couldn’t stop it. She would be alone. It seemed once more like a terrible desertion, a betrayal of what had been. Even if it wasn’t love, it was important. She didn’t want to lose him. He was hers, in some way; and, in some way, she was his. Despite herself she broke into hopeless reproaches.
“You could live on the other side of town,” she said miserably. “You could go to the University of Houston. They have an English department. You may not be able to live right here on Albans R
oad and see me every day, but you don’t need to go a thousand miles away, either.” Though part of her knew it was terrible to reproach him, or to expect him to stay in hiding just for her sake, another part of her thought it was quite natural and something he should have thought of for himself. She lay on the couch during the whole visit, feeling tight and distant from him, as if through sheer perversity he was inflicting a terrible hurt on her. He should be able to do something besides go away, desert her, leave her alone. Hank kept repeating over and over again, monotonously, she felt, that it was no good for her to divide herself between himself and Jim. It made her sullen, and all the more resentful. Jim seemed irrelevant to her. She had hardly taken notice of him since the discovery. It was hard for her to fix her eyes on him, literally hard. She kept looking past him, away from him.
“Why do you keep bringing him up?” she said coldly. “He’s not involved.”
“Of course he is. He is as long as you’re living with him.”
“Not really,” she said. “Not him as a person.”
“If it’s not him as a person then you oughtn’t to stay.”
“Oh, I know it,” she said restlessly. Her unfairness to Jim was so obvious and so terrible that she thought it was merely cruel of Hank to bring it up. Jim wasn’t at issue. At issue was his going away.
“If I don’t leave you’ll go on being divided until you collapse,” Hank said.
“Oh, shit!” she said. “I’m not divided! Why have you suddenly come up with this division theory? It’s just your excuse. I haven’t been divided since the day you kissed me the first time. Please quit talking about it.”
“You’re fooling yourself,” he insisted, and they were silent, stuck, not knowing what to do or how to proceed.
“But you won’t stay?” she asked.
“No. I won’t settle for two hours a week.”
“Because you’re selfish. Will no hours be better, do you think?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find out.”
Patsy had not cried for four days. She had determined to give it up. It annoyed Jim so much that she had finally decided his annoyance was justified. It was her way of remaining childish, she decided. She was going to have to grow up, as he kept reminding her, and she might as well begin by learning to control her tears. She had not cried since smashing Hank’s guitar. At home she and Jim conversed in polite sarcasms and the tone she maintained through her days was a tone of adult sarcasm. The three nice mornings with Hank had seduced her out of it, into a pleasanter mood and a pleasanter tone, but she closed and became sarcastic again once she left him, and in that mood she had no need for tears.
While she lay on the couch arguing about his going away, she kept tight. The skin around her eyes felt tight, and breathing was hard, but she was not conscious of a need to cry. Only when the argument played out and they were lying side by side on the couch, confronted with a hopeless disagreement which they both knew could not be resolved, did Patsy loosen.
She felt petulant and sullen and for a moment almost glad that he was going. She felt herself closing to him, and it was just as well; once she closed that part of herself that only he entered, life would be simpler. But she found herself looking at his hands. He was propped up on his elbows, and his hands were on the end of the couch, near her face. She had always liked them; his fingers were long and strong. They had touched her in a way that no other hands had, and it hurt her to think they were going to stop touching her. And yet, they were helpless. They could always touch her, never keep her. She put out her own hand and stroked the back of his, up to his wrists. She traced one of her fingers down the back of his hand and touched the little creases where the fingers joined. She stroked the back of his hands lightly and he turned them and opened his fingers to join them with hers. But she wanted to touch hands, not hold hands. She put her palm against one of his, curled her fingers in his palm and let him close his hand over hers, then opened her hand again and touched the insides of his fingers. In touching his hands the worth of what she was losing struck her fully and she could not hold herself tight.
“Oh, damn,” she said, “damn, damn,” and began weeping. Her body was very still. The tears seemed to empty from her eyes alone. She didn’t move at all as she cried. A half-hour later they both felt it might as well be then and they went to the door. Patsy was almost wordless, her face wet and stunned with pain as she looked up at him. “Take care of yourself,” she said, and Hank came as far as the car with her. He said he would get off about three.
She stumbled blindly up the alley and home and shut herself in the bathroom to try and cry herself out, out of sight of Juanita. Time gnawed at her. It was only one o’clock. He would be in the city for two more hours. It seemed terrible to waste two whole hours; she remembered again the night they had spent together, how long the separate minutes had seemed. Two hours might be like months. And yet they had parted. She couldn’t go back. They had parted with good feeling too; if she went back she would probably spoil it. She didn’t know, and she stayed in the john, crying. She tried to stop crying by reading this book and that from the john bookcase, but her tears hid the pages and even when they didn’t she scarcely saw the words.
In the end she compromised. At two-thirty she put Davey in his stroller and tried to dry her eyes as she wheeled him along to Albans Road. Hank’s car was still there. She wouldn’t talk to him again, but she would see him as he left, perhaps even wave. The car seemed packed full. She turned the stroller up the street, away from his apartment, and wheeled Davey up and down the block while she waited. There was a wind and the fallen leaves were swirling in the street. Davey was not in sympathy with repetitious trips up and down the same block of sidewalk. He stood up in the stroller, tried to reach leaves, tried to twist around, and managed to pull his cap off. Patsy shushed him and talked to him automatically, watching for Hank. When he came out finally she didn’t know what to do, whether to let him see her or not. But the sidewalk where she was was crossed with sunlight and shadow from the high waving trees, and Hank did not see her. He got in the car and drove around the corner to the filling station a block away. Patsy wheeled Davey to the corner and stood watching him. He was out of the car, wearing the same suede coat he had been wearing the first time she saw him. The hood of the car was raised and he was chatting with the filling station man about oil or the motor or something, the wind blowing his hair. He never looked her way. By the corner near the same station was where she had been sure he would kiss her the first time, though he hadn’t. She would have liked to walk by while the car was being gassed and say goodbye in a nice voice, or wave, or have Davey wave, but she knew she couldn’t manage it and squatted down by the stroller on her heels, waiting while he paid for the gas and got back in the car. Davey grabbed her hair just then, a habit she had not been able to break him of, and when she looked up again the Oldsmobile was pulling out of the filling station drive. In a second it turned onto Sunset and was gone.
Davey still had hold of her hair. Patsy leaned over and rested her forehead a moment against the cool bar of the stroller. Then she saw someone looking strangely at her from a passing car and she straightened up and went on to the park with Davey, walking deliberately. She swung Davey for ten minutes, then carried him over to the smaller of the slides and came down it with him in her lap. He loved to slide. After that she sat in the grass and Davey crawled. A friendly dog that knew them came over and licked Davey in the face and she called the dog to her. It was a small female border collie who belonged to a rather sloppy young couple from Rice. The collie was evidently not loved and was insecure; her coat, which might have been beautiful, was dull. Her name was Felicity. She was desperate for friends and often bowled Davey over in his crawls. Patsy rubbed her head and scratched her nose. Various mothers were about with their varied offspring. Some boys were playing basketball on a nearby court and Davey sat watching them, a very tiny boy, not even a year old, nothing more harmful in his mouth than a few stray blades of autumn
grass.
The wind kept blowing. She managed not to make a spectacle of herself. She didn’t cry in front of the mothers. She didn’t feel that anything was ended. She would have liked to be riding with him. She never had, except the one night when he had taken her to Yum-Yum’s Lounge. The wind blew in her face and she let herself imagine riding with him. Since she had not done it she felt she could indulge in imagining it. She didn’t imagine getting there, only the driving. She had scarcely so much as driven into the country since she and Jim had returned from their rodeo trip. How would it be to go back into that same spare country, only with Hank? She didn’t know, but she could picture his hands on the wheel and the shaggy hair at the back of his neck, pushing over the collar of his suede coat. Davey got tired of watching and began to crawl on, toward the basketball game, evidently feeling it was something he would like to get in on, and Patsy sighed and got up and inserted him back in his stroller. He kicked indignantly. On the way out of the park a young Rice mother stopped her. Her husband taught anthropology, they had been there less than a year and were lonely, and Patsy accepted an invitation for dinner on Saturday evening. Perhaps it was time she tried to do more with the social round, she reflected, walking home.
Hank drove all night toward the plains. The wind grew stronger as he rose from the coast. Sometimes it rocked the cars on the highway. He went through the little silent towns that spotted the darkness. When he got into rolling country he could often see their lights twenty miles away, then lose them, then see them again, and lights of the towns, at a distance in the darkness, distinct as stars, were always more beautiful than the empty towns themselves. Before dawn he topped the cap rock and had breakfast at a truck stop in the town of Shallowater. He liked to drive and could do it without thinking; he did not feel too bad. The waitress, a talkative old lady, took a fancy to him. “All the way from Houston?” she said. “Good lord a’ mercy. You’re as crazy as my boy. He’d take off and drive anywhere. Must be a girl out here somewhere, for you to drive all that way at night. Blonde or brunette?” And she smiled at him in a motherly way.
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