Michael Malone

by Dingley Falls

  And yet she could not give herself to this man or be shared by him or accept his sacrifice. She could not will herself to let go of that consciousness of isolation that pulled her away. Now, had Mrs. Haig been a woman who sought the solace of a professional analyst, she might have been told by one that the problem lay in the poor quality of John's erotic techniques; another might have said that it should not surprise her that a woman of her sensibility could not give herself to so unconscious a man, a man so little aware of who she was that he had never realized that she had never given herself to him, and that his very happiness condemned him. She might have been told, had she chanced upon a different analyst, that her husband could never give himself to so uneasy, so forbidding, so ungiving a woman, that her unwomanliness unmanned him and that the fault lay with her father (whoever he was) or her nuns or some other secret yet undelved for. Or she might have been told it was a question of physical chemistry or of finding the Platonic other half that perfectly matched her incompleteness, that she had never been in love with John Haig and was now half in love with Winslow Abernathy, or that love was a myth and her career at the post office unfulfilling, or she might have been told a hundred other theories, all neatly fitted to the seams of her life. But Mrs. Haig had never brought her soul to any of those men of science who in her lifetime had grown rich in the fast-growth industry of female madness; nor had she consulted oracles in cards or looked for the fault in her stars or gone to the books that helped Ida Sniffell to help herself. Mrs. Haig had had only one counselor. He had told her years ago that she and John had been joined forever by God, and that she had no choice but to choose love.

  While saying so, Father Crisp of Our Lady of Mercy in Madder had admitted to himself a conflict in dogma. Conjugal intercourse had a single purpose, procreation. Was Mrs. Haig not right then to take no pleasure in the act, since its sole pleasure, fertility denied, was therefore lust, a sin? Should he instruct her to honor her husband's desires, when those desires had been (through, however, no active fault of their own) altered from sanctity to sinfulness by the fact of the couple's sterility, or perhaps by their knowledge of that fact, or perhaps by their acceptance of that fact? For might not the desire nevertheless be holy, if in committing the act each wished to be creating life, whatever God chanced to do with those wishes?

  There were miracles. Had not life leaped in the ancient womb of Sarah? And perhaps, besides, she judged herself too harshly, for her husband by his confession seemed to feel no emotional deprivation.

  Should God ask for her husband more union than the husband asked for himself? Such speculations troubled Father Crisp, who was a warmhearted man continually balancing off the rights of his parishioners with the rights of God. Uncertain what to say through the velvet-curtained grille, the aged celibate had said only, "Marriage is a holy sacrament. You have made vows to God and to the church and to your husband. They must be honored. You must struggle with your heart and do your duty with good grace. You must pray for contentment. I know it seems hard."

  Judith Sorrow Haig had struggled with her heart all her life. It did seem hard.

  Darkness pulled around her like a shawl, she walked to the picture window and drew back the curtains. Haze hid the stars. The moon was luminous and full. Behind her, suddenly, the phone began to ring again. The loudness pierced her, though she had been waiting for it, and her legs almost gave way. Her hand tight on the curtain, she waited, listening as if the huge, splattering sound came from the man himself. She assumed a man. The phone kept ringing.

  Finally it stopped. She didn't move. Then it began again. What if it was John at the station? He would come home to find out what was wrong if she didn't answer. What if it were, for whatever reason, Winslow Abernathy? She jerked the curtain shut, ran, and holding her breath, lifted the receiver.

  "On the Blessed Virgin, Judith, I figured you was dead. If I pulled you off the john, you'll have to excuse me, but listen, honey, did somebody call you a little while ago, maybe fifteen minutes?"

  "Sarah! How did you know?" Judith sat down in the plaid armchair and turned on the lamp beside it.

  "Now don't fly off the handle at me, but I told him the whole thing."

  "What? Whom are you talking about?"

  "Who, what? Maynard Henry. Didn't you just say he'd called?"

  "No. I'm sorry, I don't understand."

  "Well, he was supposed to. Never mind, I guess he's coming straight out there."

  Judith squeezed the coil of phone. "Why should he be? Because of John? John's at the station. What is it you've told him?"

  "Nothing. He's looking for Chinkie, and all I said was she was probably with you."

  "Sarah! She's not with me. Why should you say such a thing?!"

  "Well, what do I know? Anyhow, I figured she was. She was out there before, wasn't she, bothering you into getting all gaga about finding her a lawyer and who knows what else?"

  "She's staying at Miss Lattice's on Cromwell Hill Road. Please tell him that right away. There's no need for him to come out here!"

  "Honey, just calm down, I know what you're thinking. Hawk and Maynard ain't exactly what you could call madly in love."

  "Tell him she's at Miss Lattice's, he could call there."

  "Chinkie's getting pretty fancy-schmantsy, that's all I can say. I guess by next week she'll be living over on Elizabeth Circle and hiring Orchid to clean for her. Anyhow, the point is, seriously now, Maynard is trying to find her, and like I say, you did know where she was and that's why I told him you. So, if he shows up, because he may have already left and I don't know if he's got his truck or what, you send him back to town, and I'll tell him if I see him first. But I'm here waiting for Joe at Fred's. If you ask me, the less said to Hawk the better he'll like it, because what he don't know won't hurt him. The only reason I'm calling is I just figured with your nerves, if Maynard should try to spring something on you, with you out there alone in the middle of nowhere, we'd probably have to scrape you off the ceiling and send the pieces to the nuthouse. Anyhow, seriously, I know Maynard's got a lot of strikes against him, but I think people should remember, and this will mean a lot to you, Judith, he lost his parents young and Arn had to raise him, and just between you and I, I sometimes got the intuition that Arn didn't like him a bit, or vicey versa. But it's like I used to say to Joe, 'Maynard's problem is his bark's always been worse than his bite.' Now, Judith, honey, is this true what Wanda says, they're planning to shut up our post office like we all dropped dead?"

  Fear of the unmet intruder blanketed Judith's anger against Sarah MacDermott for instigating the intrusion. Her first thought was to call John to come home, but she could not bear, especially after the act that had been committed just before he left, the shame of confessing the extent of her involvement in arranging the release of the very man she now wanted protection from. Besides, even if Henry did come, she shouldn't need protection; she would simply tell him where Chin was and he would leave.

  Judith dressed herself in what she had planned to wear the next day. Then she opened doors. She turned on lights. She turned on the television. A situation comedy about treating wounded soldiers in the Korean War laughed mechanically into the room. An unreal audience guffawed as doctors ogled nurses. The sound of their voices was no more human to her than the sound of the air-conditioner.

  Both were simply hums between her and the noise that might, all at once, shatter the silence. She sat back down and, knitting again, tried to keep from listening to the night. To the north there were sporadic rumbling tremors she took to be thunder. Traffic on Route 3 seemed to her to be heavier than usual, but she remembered that it was the weekend and that it was summer and that therefore people would be coming to the lake to spend all their leisure quickly. She thought she recognized a loud motor like Sammy Smalter's car, but the sound disappeared. Other cars hummed by softly. Finally she finished the scarf of old scraps; having tied a last knot, she spread it on her lap, folding and smoothing each multicolored square.
/>   As she moved, she could feel the discomfort left by John's lovemaking. It was not the pain that distressed her. It was that the pain made her conscious of the literal breech in her defenses which kept her accessible. As a young woman she had imagined sewing it closed, despite the pain of the needle, so that she could feel safe from the men who, nudging each other for support, grinned out at her, whistling, from cars or sidewalks. She had imagined walking encased in a steel cage. She had imagined wearing the iron belt of chastity in which medieval lords had locked their wives, or the black habit of chastity in which the Sisters of Mercy dressed. But the Sisters had told her she must wait until she finished high school to make that choice, and by then she had felt unable to refuse John Haig's proposal. She had protected herself from male pursuit by being taken by one male, who, divesting her of freedom, at least locked out the others, at least as long as he stood by the cell, and sometimes even his ring on her finger worked alone as a talisman, held up like a cross at a vampire, or a cloud obscuring the moon from a werewolf 's eyes.

  Barnum snapped off the motor as soon as his headlight beam exposed the location of her house, then he pushed the bike along the highway's edge. Mountain laurel grew in unchecked profusion down the side of the Haigs' gravel driveway. Having made sure, as he inched around, that there were no cars parked anywhere, he dropped the motorcycle into the back of the bushes. Hurrying off the gravel and onto grass, he trotted, crouching over to hide against the house's shadows. The curtains of a big picture window were poorly closed, so that, from where he squatted in John Haig's methodical rows of flowers, he could see into the room. Maynard Henry did not seem to be there, for, framed in the narrow opening, she sat alone in a soft, pale blue garment, her hair pale gold under the lamplight. Motionless. He watched her begin to stroke something in her lap. He watched until his legs, stretched in a squat, began to tremble, until he was certain no one else was in the house.

  Judith made herself breathe very carefully while the doorbell rasped at her. A shock rushed up, tightening around her heart, when, as she came down the hall, she saw that the chain was not on the latch. She tried to make her hand reach out, but was too embarrassed to be heard locking the door. She spoke behind it. "Yes?" There was no reply. She forced her voice louder. "Yes, please?"

  "Mrs. Haig?" It was a male voice.

  "Yes. Mr. Henry?"

  "Look, could I see you a second, Mrs. Haig?"

  The instant Judith turned the knob she felt the pressure waiting and the quick twist. The door pushed hard against her. Then someone was squeezing through it into the hall. He edged past her and shoved shut the door. He turned, and it was the man who came to watch her in the post office.

  Neither moved from where they were when the few seconds of struggle (if indeed it had been a struggle—Judith felt it would be dangerous both to behave as though there had been one, and to behave as though there had not) stopped as abruptly as it began.

  Each stared at the other's eyes, trying to read there what was going to happen.

  Then, suddenly smiling, he ignored the reality of her fear and spoke in a rush. "Hey there. Lime Barnum, you remember. Guess I startled you. Looks like I scared you out of your mind, huh? Sorry about that. I'm sure you're wondering what somebody's doing, dropping in on you this time of night. See, I heard about what was going on, there's this guy Henry who just got released on bail. I happened to hear word he might be coming out here to give you trouble. I thought somebody ought to get on the stick about it. I guess he didn't show, huh? Or maybe the two of you've already gotten in touch?

  That Oriental girl of his, I guess she's not staying here? Now I said to myself, Lime, somebody ought to keep an eye on Mrs. Haig. Guess you and I never got around to any official handshake, but we go back a long time, huh? I mean, fat chance I'd miss noticing somebody like you in this size town. Hawk's up at the station, huh?"

  As Barnum spoke, smiling, his eyes raced to explore the house, while his head shook in slight spasms, buzzed by his thoughts. While he shoved through the door his sense of his power to frighten her both angered and thrilled him. At each step he took toward her, she moved backwards down the hall. She kept looking at his mouth and wouldn't raise her eyes back to his. Her hands were out in front of her, as if the urge swelling out from him impelled her backwards. No, it was as if the opening between her legs was compelling him toward her, pulling him down the corridor, trying to suck him inside a center that he imagined opening larger and darker like the pupil of the eye in the mirror.

  He turned his eyes away from her panic and began to poke his head into the different rooms, checking windows, testing the back door. He looked in the entrance to the family room, then grabbed her arm and pulled her in there. He stood with her in front of the laughing television. "M*A*S*H," said Barnum flatly. And for a few seconds he began automatically to watch it as if fallen suddenly into a trance. Then he led her across the hall into the living room, talking again. "I said, Hawk's up at the station, huh? Maybe he already took care of this guy. But if we had any kind of decent system in this country, guys like Henry wouldn't come waltzing out of jail ten minutes after they went in. Hey, nice." He nodded with solemn appreciation. The furniture was more impressive than he had made it in his fantasies. He began to walk around, picking up objects, sliding his hand along the cool, slick ceramic of the cone fireplace, pushing his fingers into the stiff, soft brown velveteen of all the sofa chairs and ottomans that fit together in what the ads called a living module.

  "Nice. Never had a chance to see your place before. Yeah, it looks nice. Doesn't look this big from the outside. I've ridden by here lots of times, stopped by just to take a look at your place, you know that?"

  Barnum reached down between his legs and tugged at his pants.

  He noticed her eyes followed his hand down. So she knew she had gotten him hard, and maybe she would make it happen. Even now he could not tell what he intended to do. In his thoughts was the chance that she might just say, "Let me get you a cup of coffee, why don't I, and I'll give Hawk a call, he'll want to thank you for the warning," and that he might accept the coffee and they might discuss the Maynard Henry problem until her husband arrived. Or maybe she might ask him to wait and handle Henry himself.

  Barnum tried to imagine that she might suddenly come over and rub against him, overwhelmed by the sexual deprivation of her marriage. In his books, women attacked repairmen, delivery boys, the sons of their neighbors. But he knew Mrs. Haig wouldn't. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn't let herself. "You know that?" he repeated, stepping in front of her. "Yeah, I've come by here lots; you'd be here, like they say, all by your lonesome. Guess maybe old Hawk doesn't give you enough of what a woman needs, being gone so much, does he, huh?"

  Suddenly she covered her face with her hands. He could see her thin wedding band. Her hands were bigger than his wife's had been, and their shape and tint were different from hers, too. It shocked him that hands on women could be so dissimilar. His own wedding ring was still back in the top drawer of his dresser in a box with his cufflinks and tie clasps. The ring was hateful to him, but, still, gold was money. Her hair was gold.

  "Hey, what's the matter? Look at me," he told her. "Come on, you could be nice to me. How about that, come on."

  But she wouldn't speak. Barnum pulled her hands away and saw the pupils contract, darkness receding from the blue. Excitement and fear spiraled up in him, each tumbling over the other to leap out of reach of his control. She shuddered when he moved his hands up to her hair. He stuck his fingers through her hair and jerked out the gold pins. Her eyes closed, but she didn't move. He was thinking that he had to keep hold, it still wasn't too late, that he'd be nuts to go ahead, that her husband would kill him. But he could just leave Dingley Falls, couldn't he? He could go tonight, just pack and pull out, hell with it all. What did he have keeping him here anyhow, in this little dump that nobody ever heard of where the snooty bastards wouldn't give him the time of day? But it wasn't like the other times now. It wouldn't
be like quitting a job, grabbing a few bags, and getting on a bus. He'd lose it all, the store and house and all his things it had taken so long, working so hard with no help, for him to acquire. Like when that bitch took him for all he was worth. That bitch of a wife. This one was frightened, just like that bitch had been, finally; after his fist crushed into her nose, when her eyes had become for a second all pupil just before she screamed. Still, she'd stopped saying no, he couldn't, hadn't she? But if he did it to this one, that would be it, he'd lose everything.

  Whenever he pulled a pin free, she shuddered, convulsing, as if he stuck needles into her nerves. Probably she wouldn't tell anyhow.

  She'd keep it quiet for her own sake. Besides, who'd believe her? It wasn't like he was some black teenager she could pin the rap on. He was a damn business leader in this town. Who the shit was she to say no? And maybe she really did want it, deep down. They all did, as long as they didn't have to admit it. Get those clothes off her and she was just like all the rest. Could be she didn't know what a good man was like; could be Haig couldn't get it up enough for her. He could show her what a man could do. But what if it got found out? Maybe he could blame Henry. MacDermott's wife had told Henry to come out here. He could tell this one he'd kill her if she ever said it was him and not Henry. He had an hour at least before Henry could get there. At least.