The Stories of Richard Bausch

by Richard Bausch

“Well?”

  “Maybe it’s escaped you, man. Your wife and your daughter aren’t speaking.”

  “Nevertheless, I’m inviting you.”

  Delbert shrugged. “I guess it’s up to Fay. But I’ve got my doubts.”

  “You know what we talked about before?” Kaufman said.

  The other only stared. “You’re keeping to it, right?”

  Now he turned and moved off.

  Kaufman called after him. “Just remember what I said, son.”

  “Yeah,” Delbert said without looking back. “I got it. Right.”

  “Don’t forget Thanksgiving.”

  He faced around, walking backward. “That’s between her and your old lady, man. That’s got nothing to do with me.”

  The day before Thanksgiving, at Kaufman’s insistence, Caroline made the call. She dialed the number and waited, standing in the entrance of the kitchen, wearing her apron and with her hair up in curlers, looking stern and irritable. “Please, Caroline,” he said.

  She held the handset toward him. “A machine.”

  It was Fay’s voice. “Leave your name and number and we’ll get back. Bye.”

  “They’re in Richmond, with his mother.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Kaufman said.

  “It’s in the first part of the message.” She put the handset down and started to dial the number again. “Listen to the message. They’re in Richmond.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You don’t need to call the number again.”

  His wife fairly shouted at him, lower lip trembling, “Whatever her married troubles are, she can apparently stand them!”

  Christmas came and went. The Kaufmans didn’t bother putting a tree up. He’d got Caroline a nightgown and a book; she gave him a pair of slippers and a flannel shirt. They sat side by side on the sofa in the living room in the dusky light from the picture window and opened the gifts, and then she began to cry. He put his arms around her, and they remained there in the quiet, while the window darkened and the intermittent sparkle of Christmas lights from neighboring houses began to show in it. “How can she let Christmas go by?” Caroline said. “How can she hate me so much?”

  “Maybe she’s wondering the same about you.”

  “Stop it, Frank. She knows she’s welcome.”

  He went to bed alone and lay awake, hearing the chatter of the TV, and another sound—the low murmur of her crying.

  The week leading up to New Year’s was terrible. She seemed to sink down into herself even further. He couldn’t find the words, the gestures, the refraining from gestures that could break through to her. Sunday at church, they saw Mrs. Mertock, who said she had seen Fay at the grocery that morning, only hadn’t spoken to her. “She was on the other side of the counter from me, wearing sunglasses. Sunglasses, on the grayest, dreariest drizzly day. She looked almost—well, guilty about something.”

  “Oh, God,” Kaufman said. “My God.”

  “I could be wrong,” Mrs. Mertock hurried to add.

  “Why can’t she come home?” Caroline said. “How can she let it go on?”

  On New Year’s Eve, they went to bed early, without even a kiss, and in the morning he found her sitting in the living room, staring.

  “What’re you thinking?” he asked.

  “Oh, Frank, can’t you leave me alone?”

  He put on his coat and went out into the cold, closing the door behind him with a sense of having shut her away from him. But then he was standing there looking at the winter sky, thinking of Delbert Chase throwing Fay around the little rooms of that garage.

  There wasn’t any wind. The stillness seemed almost supernatural. He walked up the block, past the quiet houses. There was a tavern at this end of the street, but it was closed. He stood in the entrance, looking out at the Christmas tinsel on all the lampposts, the houses with their festive windows. Pride, dignity, respect—the words made no sense anymore. They had no application in his world.

  The next morning, he headed to the office with a shivery sense of purpose, tinged with an odd heady feeling, an edge of something like fear. It had snowed during the night—a light, wind-swept inch; it swirled along the roofs of the houses. The Ford was in its place as he went by, looking iced, like a confection. He had told Caroline that he didn’t know if he would be coming home for lunch, and when he got to work he called to tell her he wouldn’t be. He said he had to show a couple of houses in New Baltimore, but this was a lie; he was showing them that morning, and was finished with both before eleven o’clock.

  The slow hour before noon was purgatory.

  But at last he was in his car, heading back along the wind-driven, snow-powdered street. Color seemed to have leached out of the world—a dull gray sky, gray light on snow, the darkening clouds in the distances, the black surface of the road showing in tire trails through the whiteness. Delany Street looked deserted; there were only two tire tracks. He stopped the car, turned off the ignition, and waited a moment, trying to gather his courage. He breathed, blew into his still chilly palms, then got out and, as though afraid someone or something might seek to stop him, walked quickly up the little stairwell along the side of the building, and knocked on the door there. He knocked twice, feeling all the turns and twists of his digestive system. The air stung his face. He saw his own reflection in the bright window with its little white curtain. Aware that the cold would make his ruddy skin turn purple, he felt briefly like a man ringing for a date. It couldn’t possibly matter to Fay how he looked; yet he was worried about it, and he tried to shield himself from the air, pulling his coat collar high.

  As the door opened, he heard something like the crunch of glass at his feet. He looked down, saw her foot in a white slipper, and tiny pieces of something glittering. It was glass. He brought his eyes up the line of the door, and here was Fay, peering around the edge of it. Fay, with a badly swollen left eye—it was almost closed—a cut at the corner of her mouth, and a welt on her cheek.

  He felt something go off deep in his chest. “Fay?” he said. “Oh, Fay.”

  “Leave me alone.” The door started to close.

  He put out his hand and stopped it. It took some pressure to keep it from clicking shut in his face. “Princess,” he said, “this is the end of it. I’m taking you with me.”

  “Leave me,” she said. “Can’t you, please?”

  “Wait. Princess—listen to me.”

  “Oh, Christ, can you stop calling me that?” She let go of the door and walked away from it. He followed her inside.

  “Good Christ,” he said, looking at the room. The television, which was on wheels, was faced into the corner at an odd angle as though it had been struck by something and knocked out of its normal place; an end table had been turned upside down, one of the legs broken off; clothes and books were scattered everywhere. Kaufman saw a small cereal box lying in the middle of the floor, along with a bed pillow with part of the feathers torn out. “My good Christ,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”

  She sat gingerly on the sofa, her arms wrapped around herself. He was aware of music being played, coming from the small bedroom. A harmonica over an electric guitar.

  “You’re coming with me,” he said. “Right now.”

  “Just go, will you? Delbert’ll be back soon. He’ll clean everything up and be sorry again. This is none of your business.”

  “You can’t stay here, Fay. I didn’t raise you for this.”

  She gave him a look, as though he had said something painfully funny. “I’m afraid you caught us on one of our bad days.” Her tone was that of someone ironically quoting someone else. “We seem to be having them more and more often lately.”

  “Fay. Baby. Please-”

  “Look,” she said, “when he comes back, he’s going to be all sweet and sorry, unless he finds you here. If he finds you here, it’ll make him mad again. Please. Please, Daddy.”

  “You can’t—you’re not serious,” he said. “Don’t you understand me? I’m taking you out
of here. Now. I’m taking you home with me, and if that son of a bitch comes near you I’ll kill him. Do you hear me, Fay? I will. I’ll kill him.”

  She stood. “I’m not coming with you, okay? I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do. Because I’ll tell you what’ll happen, Daddy. He’ll come to the house and—you can’t stop him. What makes you think you could? Look, just leave.”

  “Baby,” he said, “haven’t I always looked out for you?”

  They stood there, facing each other.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, not looking at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

  He couldn’t speak for a moment. His throat caught. “Fay—”

  “Go home,” she said.

  He took a step toward her. “Princess, your mother never—”

  “Just go,” she said. “I don’t want you here. This is not a good day to just pop in and see how little Fay’s doing.”

  He put his hand out.

  “If you touch me, I swear I’ll scream.”

  “I’ll help you—” he began. He took her arm.

  “Oh, Christ!” she shouted, wincing, turning from him. “Just get out. Get out! Can’t you see I don’t want you? You have to go now before Delbert comes back. You’ll ruin everything!”

  He tried again. “Honey—” He saw himself forcing her, had the image of what it would be to grapple with her, here where she had already been so badly manhandled. “Fay,” he began, “please—you’ve got to help us help you—”

  “I’m not listening.” She put her hands over her ears. He saw a scraped place on one knuckle.

  “We’ll help,” he managed. “Please. I won’t let him hurt you anymore, baby, please—”

  Her back was turned, but he thought she nodded. “Go,” she said. “Now.”

  “Call us?” he said helplessly.

  “Oh, right,” she said in that ironic tone. “We’ll all go have a picnic.”

  “She didn’t want to let me in,” he told his wife. “You should’ve seen the place. You should’ve seen—that—that poor girl.” A sob broke out of him like a cough. “The son of a bitch must’ve used her to break the place up.”

  Caroline said, “Can’t the police do anything?”

  “She’s afraid to say anything anymore, can’t you understand that?”

  They were in the kitchen, sitting across from each other, with the empty chair against the wall on the other side of the room.

  “She wouldn’t come with me, and she wouldn’t let me do anything.”

  For a few moments, they said nothing. The only sound was the wind rushing at the windows. There would be more snow.

  “We can’t just sit by,” he said. There was a heaviness, low in his chest.

  She didn’t answer. He could not say for certain, looking at her, that she had heard him.

  Later, they lay in the dark, wakeful, listening to the night sounds the house made—a big storm rolling in off the mountains.

  “I’m going to call her in the morning,” his wife said.

  “He’s there in the mornings. Remember?”

  Caroline turned to him and put her arms around him. The windows shook with the force of the wind. “There’s nothing keeping her from coming to us, really, is there?”

  “I just can’t think of anything—” he began.

  “Come on,” she said. “Stop now.”

  She turned from him, settling into her side of the bed, and he listened for the breathing that would tell him she was asleep.

  In the morning, in a heavy snow, he drove to the police station again. The sergeant said they would be glad to send a squad car over to ask Fay if she would press charges, but even in that case, Kaufman should understand that the young man would probably be free on bail in a matter of hours. Fay would have to take steps, move out of the house and take out a peace bond: then Delbert Chase could be arrested for any contact with her at all, including telephone contact. “If he comes to within a hundred yards of her, we’ll slap him in jail so fast it’ll make his head swim.”

  “You don’t understand,” Kaufman said. “She’s too scared and confused to move.”

  “Even with your help?” the officer asked.

  Kaufman thanked him for his time, and made his way home through the snow. His wife was waiting at the front door as he came up the walk, gripping the brim of his hat against the wind.

  “Nothing,” he told her, kicking his boots on the threshold of the door, holding the frame, looking down. She was waiting for him to say more, and he couldn’t bring himself to utter a word.

  “I tried to call her,” she said. “Hung up at the sound of my voice.” She sobbed, and he went to her, held her in his arms there in the cold from the open door.

  The snow lasted through that night and then turned to freezing rain. Nobody could get out. It rained all day and into the following night, the drops crystallizing as they fell to earth, ice thickening on every surface, layer by layer. Power lines were down all over the county. The news was of fires caused by kerosene room heaters, and water pipes bursting from the cold. The Kaufmans heard sirens and thought of their daughter. After the rain, the skies cleared, and at night a bright moon shone over a crust of snow and sheer ice, as though the world were encased in milky glass. Kaufman paid two college boys to work at clearing his sidewalk and driveway, and went out to help them for a time. Mostly he and his wife stayed inside, brooding about Fay, alone in the ice with Delbert Chase. A lethargy seemed to have settled over them both. On Friday, the worst day of the cold snap, they never even got out of their pajamas.

  In the evening, as they were eating some soup he had prepared for them, the phone rang. They both froze and looked at each other. It only rang once. A moment passed.

  And it rang again. He leapt to his feet to get it. “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  “Hello?” he said, listening, and it seemed to him that he could hear the faintest music; someone on the other end of the line was in a room away from another room where music was being played. He thought he recognized the music: thought he heard the harmonica. “Hello? Fay?”

  And there was the small click on the other end.

  Behind him, Caroline said, “Is it—?”

  “Wrong number,” he told her.

  She put her hands to her face, then took them away and looked at him.

  “I guess it was the wrong number.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t believe yourself.”

  He heard the snowplow go through for the second time at some point just before midnight. The scraping woke Caroline, who murmured something about the dark, and seemed to go back to sleep. In the next moment she sighed, and he knew she was awake. “I’m fifty-four years old,” he said. “I’ve had a good life. Do you understand me?”

  She waited a long moment. “I suppose so.”

  “I always said I’d never let anyone do that to her.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t think of anything else. If she won’t come home. If she herself won’t do anything about it. I literally can’t think of anything else.”

  In the dark, she brought herself up on one elbow, kissed him, then lay down again, and pulled the blankets to just under her chin.

  “What if you called her again?” he asked.

  She sighed. “What makes you think she’d talk to me now?”

  He waited a few moments, then got out of the bed and made his way quietly down to the basement. It was a few degrees colder here. It smelled of plaster, and faintly of cleanser. When he put the light on over the desk, he could see the condensation of his breath. In the back of the left-hand drawer of the desk with all his paperwork scattered on it was a small .22-caliber pistol he had bought for Caroline several summers ago, when he had done some traveling for the company. Caroline never even allowed it upstairs, and he’d been intending, for years really—the truth of this dawned on him now—to get rid of it. Carefully, he took it from the drawer, pushed the work on the desktop aside, and laid it down bef
ore him. For a long time he simply stared at it, and then he dismantled and cleaned it, using the kit he had bought to go with it. When he had put it back together, he stared at its lines, this instrument that he had carried into the house to forge some sort of hedge against calamity, those summers ago.

  The metal shone under the light, smooth and functional, perfectly wrought, precisely shaped for its purpose, completely itself. Reaching into the little box of ammo in the drawer, he brought out the first cartridge, held the pistol in one hand, the cartridge in the other. His fingers felt abruptly cold at the ends, tipped with ice, though his hands were steady. It took only a minute to load it. He checked the safety, then stood and turned.

  Caroline had come halfway down the stairs.

  “I didn’t hear you,” he said.

  She sighed. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  For an interval, they simply waited. He held the pistol in his right hand, barrel pointed at the floor. She kept her eyes on his face. “I’m tired,” he said.

  She turned, there, and started back up. “Maybe you can sleep now.”

  “Yes,” he said, but too low for her to hear.

  If she was awake when he left in the morning, she didn’t give any sign of it. He made himself some toast, and read the morning paper, sitting in the light of the kitchen table. The news was all about the health care crisis and the economy, the trouble in Africa and Eastern Europe. He read through some of it, but couldn’t really concentrate. The toast seemed too dry, and he ended up throwing most of it away.

  Outside, the cold was like a solid element that gave way slowly as he moved through it. He started the car and let it run while he scraped the frost off the windows, and by the time he finished, it had warmed up inside. As he pulled away he looked back at the picture window of the house, thinking he might see her there, but the window showed only an empty reflection of the brightness, like a pool of clear water.

  There were only the faintest brushlike strokes of cirrus across the very top of the sky, and the sun was making long shadows on the street: just the kind of winter morning he had always loved. There wasn’t much traffic. He was on Delany Street in no time at all, and he slowed down, feeling the need to be cautious, as if anyone would be watching for him. When he reached his daughter’s place he parked across the street, trying to decide how to proceed. The pistol was where he had put it last night, and even so, he reached into the coat pocket and closed his hand around it. The only thing to do was wait, so he did that. Perhaps an hour went by, perhaps less, and then Delbert came out of the door and took leaps down the stairs, looking like an excited kid on his way to something fun. He strolled to the Ford, opened the passenger side door, reached in and got a scraper, then kicked the door shut. He was clearing ice from the windows, whistling and singing to himself, as Kaufman approached him. “You about finished with that?”