There were times in his youth when his imaginations of destruction were so powerful that the deed itself seemed as bad as done. So he did it. It was as if the force of the idea were strong enough that his collaboration in it was trivial. These impulses—they were not temptations—had quieted over the years. But the realization startled him when he recognized the fantasy he had allowed himself was actually identical with the desolation intended for this swath of city. He was a man of no influence, and he took comfort from the fact. But what if the particulars of his life were only flotsam, so to speak, drowned necktie, drowned wing tips, and he was sunk in that dark flood of unstoppable harm, somehow adding to its appalling weight, lost in it, even while its great shoulder pressed into the age-brittled side of that old sanctuary, that tabernacle raised to the glory of God Almighty, for heaven’s sake? Some thoughts scared him more than others. He might have awakened to the explanation for many things, arrived abruptly at that insight into his own character and motives his father had urged on him, as if any good could come from it.
He had made an outcast of himself, yet he now knew he was not only a part of society, he was its essence, its epitome. If you could just explain your reasoning here—why you destroy and destroy, why you steal. He felt suddenly worse than ominous, the first buzzard to arrive at the scene of heartbreak. What a lovely home you have, Miss Miles! Jesus is looking especially well this evening. Then, crash! Your gentle self in jail, all love anyone ever felt for you an agony, all hope ever placed in you dissipated like smoke. I am the Prince of Darkness. I believe I may have mentioned that. For me, jail is a second home. Something I think I have not mentioned.
He went by the church, and there was Hutchins, sitting on the front steps, reading a newspaper. When he saw Jack, he laughed and flourished a cigarette. “At least I’m not hypocritical about it,” he said. “Good to see you, Mr. Boughton Ames.”
“Yes. I wanted to give you this. It’s nothing. A thank-you note. Really nothing.”
“It’s kind of you to go to the trouble.”
“No trouble at all.” This was not the plan. There was no way to explain that he had somehow promised himself he would lay a hand on that hulking building. He’d have had to step into shrubbery. God forbid he should mention any of the thoughts that made him crave this momentary assurance. He would have walked away, but Hutchins said, “I’ve given some thought to the things we talked about. I know you will do as well as you can in the circumstances, by your lights, which is all I can ask, all you can do. I know the gravity of the situation is clear to you.”
“Yes, very clear! Thank you.” He walked away before the man could say more. Once, when he was a boy, he had asked his father if the devil could feel regret. His father said, “Well, you know, the devil might be no more than a figure of speech.” Satan is Hebrew for adversary, and so on. So Jack didn’t ask the next question, whether the devil had nightmares. The abysmal has no place in polite conversation.
By your lights, said the preacher to the man wailing in outer darkness. If Della were less splendid, less burdened with others’ hopes, there might be less shame in his sidling up to her, pestiferous or combustible, or something of the kind, disguised as a social reject so that he could be the perfect agent of society’s malice. These Baptists, dropping their dimes into his hat, sharing their supper, dreaming no harm, probably. And he would make a miserable return on their kindness. He had dabbled in shame as a youth, and he had learned from the experiment that shame had qualities in common with very lofty things, infinity, eternity. Like them it could not be divided or multiplied. Time-bound creature that he still was, he could not say for certain that there was no end to shame. He had suspected for a long time that it had at least that much to do with hell—also probably figurative, his father had assured him, tears in his eyes as there often were when he had to curtail another part of the great explanatory system his theology once was, to spare himself the implications it might have for his son. Jack had dabbled in shame, and it still coursed through him, malarial, waking him up to sweat and pace until, unsoothed, unrationalized, unshriven, it secreted itself again in his bones, and at the base of his skull, and was latent except for the occasional leering strangeness of his dreams. An ordinary man would not grieve forever over the sins of his youth, he was fairly sure. And an ordinary man would not dread this great, blind impulse of destruction prophesied at officious length in any newspaper. Then there was Della. Abstractly considered, a man who could threaten her as Jack did, if he felt no more guilt about it than he could live with, would be an utter scoundrel. This meant the dark storms of bewilderment would deepen and Jack would have no refuge except, of course, in Della’s sweet calm. He took comfort so quickly at the thought of her that he felt a shudder of calm pass through his body, a thing he had never even heard of. He had to surrender his refuge in order to avoid the most desperate need of it. An hour or two tomorrow evening and then he would tell her goodbye and he would mean it. Try to mean it.
* * *
He knocked. The sister opened the door.
“John Boughton,” he said.
And she said, “I know.”
Della came into the room, quietly. He could not remember if he had been told the sister’s name. He seemed to have interrupted something, no doubt a conversation so intense that a moment passed before they adjusted to the fact that anything else could matter.
He had left work early to make himself presentable. A barbershop shave, matching socks, a carefully brushed jacket that had begun to show the wear of brushing. His clothes were too old to be relied upon. A pants pocket had failed at work a week before, and a handful of coins had spilled down his leg. It was funny, he couldn’t blame the ladies for laughing. He had gone to the five-and-dime for a packet of needles and three spools of thread, and he had mended, darned, reinforced with all the discretion he could manage, knowing these shifts might be seen as poignant, that the repair might be more conspicuous than the fray. In fact, standing there in Della’s parlor, the object of weighty silence and pure, blank scrutiny, he felt every mend as if it were a scar on his person. Cicatrix. Strange words came to him at strange times.
He said, “I’m sorry if I’m late.” Then, “Sorry if I’m early.” He made a gesture with his hat, which reminded him it was still in his hand. No one had taken it, which, he realized, was the omission of a conventional sign of welcome. Don’t interpret.
The sister said, “You’re fine,” in that tone of familiarity that is neither wholly dismissive nor, in a word, respectful. Not that he looked for any sign of respect, but he’d have been happy to find one.
Della came across the room, took his hat, took his arm, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. Reprieve. It brought tears to his eyes.
“Oh, Lord!” the sister said. “I’m not staying around for this. I’ve got a letter to mail. I think I saw a mailbox about ten blocks from here. About halfway to Illinois. You two need some time to talk things over. You’d better do that, Della.” She didn’t slam the door behind her when she left, she only closed it very firmly.
Jack said, “That was sort of decent of her.”
“She meant well.”
They sat on the couch. He decided it would be best not to put his arm around her. She pulled the book out of his coat pocket. “Robert Frost.”
“In case there was a lull in the conversation.”
She nodded. “I think we can expect a few of those.” She said, “Thank you for being here. I needed to see you.”
This was something he could have said to her any hour of any day, if she meant that a sort of need or craving was always awake in her that the sight of him could nearly quiet. Hunger increased by what it fed upon. Words to that effect. But she might only mean that she had something to sort out with him, a knot or kink in reality to be dealt with. It could never mean both at once, which was interesting. Of course, he and Della were entirely beset by problems, as many obstacles as the combined efforts of Missouri and Tennessee could contrive
for them, if she chose to take that view of things. He could not imagine a sober conversation about their relationship that would not end with him out on the stoop, adjusting his hat. But if she said such a conversation was necessary, then it was.
Clearly he was not there to meet the sister. He still didn’t know her name. His mind was reducing the simplest things to riddles, an evasive tactic that set in when it did him the least possible good. He actually thought of kissing the lobe of Della’s ear before the last opportunity had passed. So deep were his fears. She took his hand in both her hands, closed her eyes, and said nothing. This might mean that she was feeling something like that peace she had mentioned once, or else that she was finding a way to say, as kindly as possible, something very difficult to say. He knew that things were not where he had left them, even where they were when she sent her summons.
After a few minutes, the sister came back. She said, twice, before she had opened the door much more than a crack, “It’s me. I’m just here for a minute. I forgot the letter I was going to mail. I’ll just come in for a minute. Have you told him? You have to do that, Della.”
“I’ll tell him. First I just want to enjoy the fact that he’s sitting here beside me.”
The sister said, to Jack, “The principal of her school came here, right to her house, to tell her that there was talk, that there was some question about whether she was setting a good moral example. He just left an hour ago. You could have come while he was still here!”
Della said, “He told me he didn’t believe the rumors. He was just letting me know that I should be careful of appearances.”
“And I suppose that’s what you’re doing right now,” the sister said. “Being careful!”
Della stood up, went to the window that looked out onto the street, parted the curtain, and raised the shade. She said, “I’m tired to death of worrying about appearances.” Jack went into the kitchen, undercutting her bold gesture by ducking out, a little humiliated, even though he was doing it for her sake. The back door was at the end of the hall, if he should need it. The sister was saying, “You are not thinking clearly! You’re throwing your life away! Della, I’m closing this blind! And it’s going to stay closed! It’ll be the landlady bothering you next,” and then, raising her voice a little, “You can come out of the kitchen now, Jack.” Her tone was mildly derisive, of course.
“Thanks—”
“Julia.”
“Thank you, Julia.”
She said to Della, “Even he knows I’m right!” He had sided against Della. He had always assumed that sooner or later society might put a word in, some stark prohibition too codified and predictable to note the particulars of their situation, their austere and lovely marriage, except as an offense, a provocation. Surely Della knew this as well as he did. She could be careless because she was the one with something to lose. And he would have to be cautious, his least impressive, most wearisome quality in any case, let alone now that his loyalty was being tested, because every risk he took was a threat to her. She might come to his room, where the principal would not know to look for her and the desk clerk would smirk and mutter something about the cops, but where at least no one would be looking to them for a moral example. The long walks there and back at very odd hours—her problem, a threat to her. He thought of the two of them whispering under the covers on that narrow bed, laughing as quietly as they could, talking about Wyoming and the end of the world, he with his arms around her dear body. This would not be perfectly wonderful, it would be very imperfectly wonderful. What anyone at all might say or think would hover around them, a very real threat. To her.
He said, “I shouldn’t be here. I should leave.”
“Now or an hour from now. It won’t really make any difference. I’d like it if you’d stay a little while.” She said, “My sister can sit here with us, so she’ll have some impressions to share with the people in Memphis. They might as well start getting used to us, the two of us.”
Julia said, “I’m not here to carry tales back to Memphis. I’m here to tell you that you’re causing a whole lot of unhappiness to your family. And I’m telling you, myself, what I think about that. I think it’s a pure disgrace. When I heard about what was going on here, I couldn’t believe it. I thought I knew you better than that.” She glanced at Jack. “I don’t mean to be rude. But you keep him sitting there. So he’s just going to hear what I have to say.”
“I’ve gone over this in my mind a thousand times. You know I would have done that, Julia. I am sorry that I’ve disappointed you.”
“Not just me.”
“I know.”
“All of us.”
“I know.”
“We deserve better.”
“I’m not so sure about deserving. I mean, there are some things you just can’t owe to other people.”
“Some things! You’re ruining everything! You’ve got your boss worrying about your morals, for heaven’s sake!”
“He suspects me of sleeping with my husband. Which I have done.”
“Oh, don’t talk to me like that!”
“You know it, anyway. So does my boss. We are one flesh. The cops have nothing to say about that. Whom God has joined, let no man put asunder. Scripture. The only time I feel immoral is when I’m lying about it.”
“What do you even know about this—Jack?” A dreadful question. “How many women is he one flesh with? You’ve never even asked him, have you? I bet you wouldn’t dare. Just look at him!”
The naked man in his clothes was suddenly, starkly exposed. Slick was no longer a refuge. He was an indictment, a false but telling testimony against himself, an attempt to look hard because he was not, wise in the ways of the streets because he was not, dissolute because this could not be helped, anyway. There was no John Ames Boughton to step out of this disguise, this carapace. There was hardly even a Jack Boughton. He offered that name to people sometimes as if it opened him to some kind of familiarity, but he was familiar with no one, not even Della, he thought, who did not look at him though she held firmly to his hand.
“Don’t you leave!” she said to him softly, forbidding what anyone on earth would have wanted to do in the circumstances.
He found enough voice to say, “I won’t,” and wiped his brow with his free hand and wiped his hand on his pant leg, and thought he had felt wretched before but never, never like this. If Della had turned against him, taking as true the worst her sister was implying, he would have felt the betrayal as a kindness, on balance. It would be a cruel change, terrible to remember, impossible to forget, but so welcome in that moment that he could almost feel the calm of the evening air and accept the finality of the door closed behind him.
“You want him to be the father of your children?”
Della’s hand in his tightened a little. “Yes,” she said, “I do.”
What a question. What an answer.
“You’ve lost your mind. There’s no use talking with you.”
Della said, “I’m pretty sure I told you that two days ago. Just after you got off the train.”
Julia said, “I’m going outside for a minute. If I don’t cool down, I’m going to start saying things I’ll regret.”
“You’ve done that already, Julia. So you might as well tell me the rest.”
But by then Julia was crying. She sat down again and covered her face with her hands. Jack had Reverend Hutchins’s handkerchief in his pocket, despite his fairly explicit intentions, and he stood and offered it to her. It was so immaculate and ample it was like a credential of some kind, to certify him as someone prepared to show compassion or gallantry whenever occasion arose. Julia took it and buried her face in it, and she said, “Thank you.”
When he sat down beside Della again, she smiled at him and took his hand in both of hers, as if every good thing she might think of him had been confirmed. There was no end to deception. He had meant well enough, presumably. But he had stolen not only the handkerchief but the act it allowed him, that intim
ate courtesy to another soul despite anger or injury or estrangement. “You’re welcome,” he said, in a tone of tactful solicitude that reminded him of his father—this while the mention of his fathering Della’s children brought back to him the thought of the worst he had not told her, the worst he had done. Julia was saying, “They shouldn’t have asked me to do this. They thought I could talk to you because we used to be close. But that just makes it harder.”
“We can still be close.”
“I can’t see how. You don’t realize how upset they are with you, Della. Papa won’t speak your name. He won’t hear it. If I take your side, he’ll never forgive me. I really believe that.”
“Well, maybe with time—”
“Don’t tell yourself that, Della. If you think time is going to end this, then you don’t understand the situation!” She searched her sister’s face. Della was calm under her scrutiny. “Well, I’m done. I’ve said what I have to say.” Julia stood up and went to the hallway and the back door, blotting tears with that handkerchief he himself had wept into at the words “intensely lonely” and “life has not gone well.” His mind was at work on this concatenation. Concatenation. There he was, destroying Della’s world just by being who he was, where he was. Look at him! Guilt in his bearing, fraudulence in his attempts to seem like a fairly ordinary man. All this apparent to anyone, as he knew without any Julia, any Hutchins, to tell him. Still, Della held his hand.
* * *
That was something. What a relief to be out on the street. Della clearly did feel sure that she loved him. When her sister was out of the room, she turned to him, smiling, face shining, proud of her loyalty, at having withstood the onslaught. It was rare, even in his experience, to hear exactly what someone thinks of you. No point brooding over it. Still, that triumphant look of Della’s meant she thought she knew the worst and was loyal all the same. The actual worst would be still another test. Obviously she had found this one hard enough to let her think the final trial of her loyalty had been made. He might as well let her think that. “Just look at him!” She did not look at him. If she had, she’d have seen him paralyzed with unease, like a criminal watching a search of his dresser drawers, his dirty clothes, waiting to see which of his paltry effects could at least seem to testify against him. His scar had begun to itch. Would it be the knots in his shoelace that gave him away? The thinning of his hair? Or was it that the disreputable pointlessness of his life had put its mark on him. Sometimes, when he had nothing better to do, he lit a cigarette, slouched against a wall, and watched people. He had found that passersby were less offended by cheek than by simple curiosity, so he adopted a wry and knowing air, smiled a little. From these studies he had concluded that the hardest faces were set in the moment of worst surprise—So that’s how it is! These hard faces were a pitiless exposure of old damage. Innocence isn’t lost, he thought, it is obviously, terribly, injured. And it abides as a gauge of the injury. He had no claim to being a veteran of these wars. No one had done him any real harm, except himself. He knew there was an old home always waiting for him. His fine, loyal family was the most presentable thing about him. Still, Look at him! the sister had said. That was a shrewd blow. No need for her to say more.
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