Alone at Night

by Vin Packer

  Once inside, almost the moment Slater turned on the lights, Carrie began to undress. She did it matter-of-factly, the cigarette dangling from her lips, chattering away about a rotation bolt on a roller as she folded her slip and hung up her dress, and then, naked, she turned to Slater, who had begun to undress as well.

  She said, “I don’t think I’ll be much good at this sort of thing.”

  She sat on the bed waiting for him. Her body was white and beautiful, slender and tall and small-breasted, and at the same time that Slater felt desire mounting in him he felt some loss, as though a sun were bright but not warm, as though the intriguing mystery of Carrie was simply not there: she really was what she was, no more; nor pretended to be more: it had all been in his eyes.

  Still, she had received him easily, not gratefully, nor excitedly, but naturally, and afterwards she had lit a cigarette and begun talking of other things again.

  He had said, “Did you feel something when we made love, Carrie?”

  “Of course,” she had smiled, one of her rare smiles, the polite one.

  “Do you love me?” he had asked, feeling slightly foolish and surprised to hear himself ask her that.

  “Yes.”

  Then he had said, “Was it the first time for you, Carrie? I couldn’t tell.”

  “No.”

  “I’d never thought of that before, that you’d been to bed with a man before I met you.”

  “I think most girls have these days.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “He was a blind date in college. I was quite drunk. I don’t think I even knew his last name.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Slater, you’re like a schoolboy… But no, no one else.”

  “You’re a strange girl, Carrie.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You seem to just take everything in your stride.”

  She had answered, “I try to.”

  So it went, so it went… and ultimately Slater took things in his stride as well, accepted her ways and their life, at times even thanked God it was devoid of petty quarrels and disorder. He was free to do most anything he wanted to, and he indulged himself in his freedom, and felt none of the contrition other men in his circumstances suffered, and if there were something missing between Carrie and himself, there was something there too which was missing in other couples: a certain calm, call it, a pattern which gave harmony and the peace of resignation to things as they are, and things seemed all right.

  Until Jen.

  Meeting Jen was like discovering a sixth sense in himself—a whole new faculty for feeling life. Before Jen, he had never even come close. He had never had a glimpse of the myriad shades of gaiety and solemnity which love could arouse, and he could look at her and touch her, and tell her about it, and she did that with him too. Both of them did, right from the start. His marriage then seemed like a long, complaisant prison sentence, with Jen as an unexpected reprieve. Every motion he went through with Carrie, he contrasted to his time with Jen, and he knew for certain that his marriage was unbearable any longer.

  Carrie’s death did not leave him remorseful. He was at first shocked at his own ease in the situation, and there were high euphoric sensations of having controlled his own destiny, without a pang of guilt, and it was easy too, to feel mere disinterest in Donald Cloward, almost as though by disposing of him, he had disposed of his own falsehoods to himself, and broken away from them. He became philosophic and insensitive to inner predictable impulses to be guilt-tinged and morbid, and he took life with Jen as though it were a prize for his sovereignty over such impulses.

  He was rarely unhappy. When he was, he could not explain it to himself. It would come over him all of a sudden… maybe while he was out drinking beer at a lake place with Jen on a weekend, seeing himself in the mirror behind the bar, watching momentarily with fascination while his arm raised and lowered, the beer tipped into his mouth and there… was that good? He would feel depression start, prelude to a glimmering of crazy chaos: the plant going to pot; he would soon be 40; every weekend morning, a hangover; on and on—chaos without meaning, and Carrie’s face then in the feeble rays of illusion, always smiling when she never had alive, smiling and smoking, and waiting for him to get his… Maybe that way it came over him, and sometimes in other ways.

  Once he had taken his secretary, Miss Rae, for a ride before he dropped her off at her home. It was autumn, and it was just an impulse. He long ago told himself he never had a kindly impulse; it was simply bare impulse, no explanation, but then they were driving to Hunter’s Woods, and she was saying “O look at those leaves, and colors!”… He got out with her; he always kept a pistol in the glove compartment of his car. He liked to shoot from time to time, at cardboard targets he put to trees; sometimes at rats by the pier at the lake. An exercise, or a sport, from time to time. He shot at a tree, a tin can, a fence, and Miss Rae giggled and tittered beside him, and when he looked at her once, he saw her face flushed with happiness, and then she told him something her brother had said last week when he was visiting her. A bird had fallen into the pond in her back yard. O, she loved birds, don’t misunderstand, and she was not laughing at the bird, but at what her brother said then. And she had been forced to stop in the midst of her story, while tears of mad laughter rolled down her cheeks. “My brother said, my broth—” and he had waited while more laughter frustrated her, thrilled her, then finally, “My brother said: ‘Bird overboard!’” Then she had shaken with more fits of laughter, and the depression had begun rolling his way again, he could feel it coming at him. He drove her home. She got out of the car and said, “This has honestly been the most delightful afternoon I’ve ever spent, Mr. Burr!”

  And on the way home, he had felt like taking the pistol from his glove compartment and shooting it through his brain.

  He could not explain it. It was just there, and not very often, but intense when it was, like an incubus riding him in his sleep.

  That morning he was close to it, but it was explainable that morning. Cloward’s return had marred his sovereignty, intruded on it, and Carrie had come to his dreams to taunt him, worse for the fact he could not remember the dream. He watched Jen sleeping beside him, remembering last night’s quarrel. He felt alone, and just as afraid as he always felt on the fringes of the depression. Someday it would come and not go. Then he would lose to it, and the inner doubts would grow and be big enough to throw off his control.

  He wanted Jen then; desire spilled through him, as though he were clutching at all he could count on that had flesh and blood and heart. Quietly he moved over and pulled the covers back gently, touching the silk of her gown near her thighs, lifting the gown, putting his lips there. When she stirred, she touched his hair, murmured “darling,” and finally, raised him up by the shoulders to her mouth, so that their mouths were pressed together in the last long finale.

  He had gotten away; he felt himself come back, steady, steady.

  “What a beautiful way to wake up, Slater.”

  His voice was even, the same. Good! “Yes,” he said, “are you cold?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Do you want a cigarette?”

  “I think I’d like some more sleep.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I think I’ll have one… in the den.”

  “You can have one here, darling. I don’t care.”

  “No, I’m too awake.” He got up and straightened his pajamas, reached for his robe and slippers.

  As he started out of the room, she said, “Slater?”

  “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  II.

  Chayka took a cup of coffee back to the cell in the overnight lock-up. He turned the key in the door and walked across to the cot.

  “Buzzy?”

  Cloward rolled over and stared up at him. “Where am I?”

  “Don’t get excited. You’re in jail.”

  “Oh, Gee-zus! Gee-zus!�
� Cloward sat bolt upright, rubbing his eyes, fixing his clothes.

  Chayka set the coffee down on the stool beside the cot. “There aren’t any charges,” said Chayka. “It’s all right, believe me.”

  “I vaguely remember… I was walking along Pine Avenue, wasn’t I? You’re a policeman, Ted?”

  “Umm hmm. Surprise of the century, hmm? Yeah. I picked you up with Ernie Leogrande. Remember Ernie?”

  “Sort of. Not well… I was at the Leydeckers, was that it?”

  “The old man phoned in a complaint. He didn’t want to press charges, or anything like that.”

  “What’d I do, anyway? I talked with Laura for a couple of seconds. I wasn’t even in the house!”

  “Well, he doesn’t want you on his property. He says she doesn’t want you there either.”

  “A lot he knows.”

  “Look,” Chayka sat down beside him on the cot, “you’re not planning to stay in Cayuta. Last night you said you were cutting out, going to work in New York. If that’s right, I’d just stay away from the Leydeckers, if I were you. Stay away from them, and don’t talk about them, Buzzy. Open old wounds, is all… People have forgotten all about that.”

  “I know,” Cloward sighed.

  “I fixed things for you at home, too. I didn’t think you’d want your old man in on this… so I called up Selma. I told her you were going to ride around with me.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said when were you going to get any sleep… I said you weren’t sleepy. Being home was exciting, and you were wide awake.”

  “Thanks, Ted.”

  “I always liked you, Buzzy. You were trying to straighten up and fly right, way back when I was still drinking beer out at the pier and working down to Pat’s Garage… I remember you socked me once, when I got fresh with Laura. ’Member that?”

  “Yes. Thanks, Ted. I can’t use any trouble.”

  “I began seeing the light a little while after you got sent up. I straightened myself out, with the help of Chris McKenzie, and—here I am.”

  “I saw McKenzie yesterday. At Walsh’s Place.”

  “I know. That’s another thing, Buzz… talking about what happened that night. I mean, at a place like Jitz’s… It stirs things up, you know?”

  “I know… How’d you hear about it?”

  “My cousin. Al Secora. You know what Al’s like. He’s a flap-jaw, a sorehead.”

  “Well, I wasn’t pouring out my troubles to him. I was talking with Mr. Burr, and he was butting in.”

  “Yeah, that’s like him… but it’s still no good to talk about all of it.”

  “I know. I got high.”

  “You on parole?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not even supposed to drink, are you?”

  “No.”

  “You see, Buzzy, you just ask for trouble.”

  “You’re right… I just had something to say to Mr. Burr. Something that’s been bothering me for a long time. I just wanted to tell him about it.”

  “I heard a little about it. My advice is to forget it.”

  “Then… I was pretty drunk, I guess… I wanted to know about Laura. Ted, do you know anything about her? My sister says she’s a recluse.”

  “Nobody ever sees Laura.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with her?”

  Chayka shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine. I think she’s a little balmy, you know? She always was a little balmy, Buzz.”

  “I can’t understand it, though. She was going to college, I thought.”

  “For awhile, after you were sent up, she used to be around. I used to see her. Saw her once at the movies… But a few months later, you didn’t see her around at all. I heard she was going to go to college, and for awhile we all thought she had… Then the rumors started she was up at the house on Highland Hill all the time. Just not coming out. I don’t know.”

  “Ted,” Cloward said, putting the coffee mug back on the stool, “I don’t want to bother Mr. Leydecker. I have my own thoughts about him, but I don’t want to get involved with him… I’d just like to see Laura once.”

  “Don’t do it, Buzzy. He can make plenty of trouble for you. Plenty! You’re on parole! If you go near there again, he’ll get his back up. He made it clear he doesn’t want you on his property.”

  Cloward sighed. “She wanted me to meet her tonight. Nine-thirty.”

  “I’m telling you, Buzzy, you could ruin everything for yourself.”

  “I don’t know what to do… I just don’t know.”

  “Call her up and tell her you can’t make it, if you want, but don’t go there.”

  “I know you’re right. Mr. Burr wouldn’t have anything to do with me any more, if he knew this.” Buzzy took a sip of the coffee. “He’s going to help me. I think I’m going to work for him.”

  “Yeah, you were talking about it last night in the car.”

  “Maybe I’m not worth his help. I don’t know. Maybe I ought to stay out of Cayuta for good.”

  “Let me call Laura, Buzz. I’ll tell her you can’t come. Be better if I do it, in case Leydecker answers. If he answers, I’ll just say you gave your word to me you wouldn’t go near there again, and he could tell her… Simple. Doesn’t implicate her or you—and if you are coming back to live here, I wouldn’t have Leydecker for an enemy.”

  “Any more than he is now, you mean… I guess that’s best.”

  “You haven’t got it in for Leydecker, have you?”

  “No. No, I guess not. I know I don’t. I just want to forget it.”

  “That’s best. It really is.”

  “Okay.”

  “Stay out of bars around here too, and keep your mouth shut, Buzz. Play it safe, until Mr. Burr gets it all fixed.”

  “Yes. Can I just walk out of here?”

  “Now? Sure! I’m off duty, and I can run you home.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  Chayka said, “It’s not any trouble. I’m going up to see Chris McKenzie, and I go right past The Burr Building.”

  III.

  The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green

  Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.

  Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown

  Lilac and brown hair;

  Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,

  Fading, fading…

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know, Laura.”

  “Why did we come here?”

  “To put my shirt by the lavender joe-pye weed.”

  “Why did you read that to me? What does it mean?”

  He smiled and pulled her down, touched her blouse smiling, looked into her eyes: “Blown hair is sweet… over the mouth blown.”

  “Do you love me, Buzzy?”

  He began to smile more, to laugh.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  He was laughing very hard, laughing with his hands cupping his mouth, mean laughing, the joke on her. He managed to say again, “Blown hair is sweet… over the mouth,” but he was convulsed and could not finish.

  “You know!”

  “Yes. Yes, of course!”

  She got up and ran, tripping over the shelf fungus with the D.C., L.L. carved on its face, and down through Hunter’s Woods, naked and crying, with the crowds in between the trees, pointing, laughing the way he did.

  She awakened to find Mrs. Basso’s huge arms around her shoulders, her face crushed against Mrs. Basso’s immense bosom.

  “There, there, there.”

  She pulled away, and saw the book of Eliot poems on top of the pillow on her bed, where she had fallen asleep early this morning reading “Ash Wednesday.”

  “Fading, fading, strength beyond hope and despair, climbing the third stair…”

  “It’s all right now,” Mrs. Basso said. “Oh, Laura, honey, it’s all, all right.”

  “All right, is it?” and she began t
o scream.

  seventeen

  Chris McKenzie slammed down the phone angrily. “That’s all the thanks I get!” he said.

  Lena was getting another glass of water at the sink, swallowing down more aspirin. She said, “Chris, the trouble is you boil everything down to drinking. You could have told Jen the gossip without the sermon about drinking thrown in. Everything doesn’t boil down to drink!”

  “Everything that has you running back and forth for water and aspirin this morning boils down to it, Lena.”

  “So I got a hangover… Hang out the flag!… Tell me what Chayka said about him and Nancy.”

  She sat down at the kitchen table and poured more coffee. She had heard everything Chayka had said about Secora’s accusations against Slater, but that was a lot of blue mud. What she wanted to know was more about the problems Ted Chayka had with Nancy. Chris had given her the eye when Chayka started in on that. She had gone on into the living room, as she knew he wanted her to, and turned on the television. Still, she had been able to catch some of it, enough to be very titillated.

  Chris said, “If I were to tell you that there was some truth to part of what Chayka was saying, what would you say then?”