The Will

by Harvey Swados

  “Some message!”

  “I know, I know.” Ray sighed. “I was curious, so I asked Papa to get me some of her literature. What mumbo jumbo! But that’s the point, that’s the difference between me and the people down below. I don’t want to plunge blindly, like Uncle Max, or because—like that girl—someone else handed me the message and told me to pass it on. I’m preparing myself, but I can’t leave until I’m sure.”

  He had given her an opening with his talk of leaving, but Kitty could not forbear to tease him first. “And whatever happened to your girl friend?”

  “She stopped coming. So I’m free to imagine that she got sick, or moved away, or got married.”

  “But not that she changed her mind?”

  “No, I doubt that. She was too firm.”

  “Now, that I must object to.”

  Kitty was certain that the boy was lying, and that in reality he had had a movie-fan crush on the girl he had been watching, but even so she was annoyed by his dogmatic tone. She said sharply, “No one can tell that much about a person without ever so much as speaking to her. That’s not a simple observation made in lonely humility, it’s presumptuous arrogance.”

  “Forgive me.” Ray lowered his head. “You’re probably right.”

  “Oh, come on. That’s even worse, to mumble something you don’t really believe, just to avoid an argument. I believed you when you said you admire people who stand up for a principle, even a false one. What’s more, I think I understand you, but it’s not simply from watching you, as you watched that girl—or me. Until I met Ralph, I was living like you, in almost complete ignorance. Because I supported myself, and knew various men, I thought that I understood something about people, even myself, when actually I didn’t understand the first goddamned thing. You know when I found that out?”

  Ray shook his head dumbly.

  “When I got married. When I moved in here. When I started sleeping with your brother.”

  Ray made as if to rise but Kitty restrained him. She placed her hands firmly over his, feeling the arteries of his wrists pulsing under her finger tips.

  “Wait. Little Crusoe, you’re missing the touch of another human being. There is no substitute for passion. You wouldn’t think the way you do, you wouldn’t talk the way you do, if you weren’t terrified of the touch of human flesh. You talk about your feeling for that little Jehovah’s Witness, but you have no conception, no conception! Do you know what you’d do if you really loved her? You’d run out of this house after her, you’d lick up her footprints in the mud, anything, just to be able to be close to her, to hold her body against yours!”

  Ray was staring at her in silent fascination, his mouth half open. Kitty continued to hold his hands under hers, but his gaze faltered, following the downward course from her cheekbone to her throat. She was hotly aware of her open blouse and of the way her breasts hung free, like fruit dangled before Ray’s parted lips. His lips, his brilliant eyes, made everything swell within her. An artery in her neck began to pulse. She moved her hands up along his bare forearms, knowing as she did so that her shoulders were drawn even further forward, presenting her pendent bosom to his dazzled gaze.

  Kitty slipped to her knees before him. Her pants were straining at her thighs, but so were Raymond’s, the muscles of his legs bulging even as he sat motionless. She was uncomfortable, even in pain, but so was Raymond, and she determined to press her advantage, to go all the way, to succeed where Ralph had failed.

  She whispered rapidly, almost frantically, her lips running faster with each phrase, “You’ll never learn by yourself what you want to know. What you must know. You’ll never understand your family, you’ll never come to terms with Ralph, until you know what he knows. First you must discover the meaning of passion. To have to possess someone, desperately, over and over and over …”

  She thrust herself forward, releasing her hold on Ray’s arms the better to clutch him round by the hips. Her breasts were flattened against the backs of his hands; she could feel him struggling to free his hands, but her weight would not allow him to withdraw.

  “Little brother, come down out of the attic. You have to take the chance, you have to learn to hurt and be hurt. It’s good, I’ll show you, I’ll help you. We both love Ralph, isn’t that a good enough reason? Isn’t it?”

  “Please,” he whispered.

  Kitty ignored his plea. She turned his hands over, palms up, so that he should feel her more directly through his fingers, then refastened him under the pressure of her upper body.

  “It’s the only hope. The only way out. Join your brother, join me, join all of us that you peep at from your hiding place. Once you do, you’ll never want to come back up here again. You won’t be able to.”

  “I know that.” Ray was groaning; the small sound, so different from those his brother made, only goaded her on.

  “Then come. You’ll see why Ralph feels the way he does. You’ll understand him!” Intoxicated with what she was saying, Kitty raised her voice. “If you do something bad, Ray, you’ll suffer, and you’ll understand what Ralph has been going through. Not just for me. For you, too! Do you believe that? Do you?”

  “I do! I do!”

  Kitty pulled at him so fiercely that he almost toppled from the chair in which he sat as rigid as if he had been nailed to it. She was burning, choking, dying to destroy this innocence which heated itself to the melting point at her heart. If I had a knife, she thought wildly, I’d cut our clothes off; her breasts were so hard and aching against his palms they might have been distended with milk. She swooned at the thought of tumbling on the attic floor, of being tumbled in this lonely virgin’s hide-out with no one to know what they were doing or even that they were here. To initiate him as she had been, to show him what to do, to make him groan not in frustration but in fulfillment … And not just for either of them, but for Ralph, for Ralph!

  “Oh God,” she cried, “you’re harder than your big brother. Be stronger, use your body, own your body, be a man!”

  Suddenly Ray had wrenched himself loose. With a bound he leaped from the chair and backed against the desk, hands clasped behind his back, face aflame, pale bright eyes glowing like jewels.

  “In my own time,” he said. “In my own way.”

  Her arms still clutching the chair where he had sat, Kitty stared up at him unseeingly from her kneeling position, unable to believe anything—what he had done, what she had said …

  “I told you,” he said. “I told Ralph and you, but you didn’t believe me. I’m not a saint, I’m a coward.”

  Except for their labored breathing, the silence was absolute. In the street below a young mother shouted in exasperation, “Stevie, I said stop it!” A moment later, the long-drawn wail of a small child.

  “Everything you say is true,” Ray muttered. “But that doesn’t make it right. I know as well as you that once I start I won’t be able to stop. That’s why I don’t start.” He drew a deep unsteady breath. “When I do, the decision will be mine, not Ralph’s. And it won’t be with his wife—whether he’s aware of it or not.”

  “I assure you that he’s not,” she said through lips that had suddenly shriveled and gone parched. “You must believe that.”

  Ray smiled at her, self-possessed once again. He brought his hands out from behind his back and clasped them loosely before him.

  “It’s all right,” he said in his customary voice. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  “But it does,” she insisted. “You mustn’t think that Ralph … That would make things even worse.”

  “No,” he said. “Really. I believe you.”

  “In that case,” Kitty replied, astonished at her own sudden composure, particularly since she had no reason to accept his assurances, “I’ll take my olives and be on my way.”

  She picked up the jar from the desk and swayed across the attic, feeling Ray’s gaze on her as she made her way to the stairs, which still hung suspended to the floor below. Let him look; sh
e hyped herself with artificial boldness, trying the same self-persuasion she had used more than once, going home alone late at night, with sodden drunks sizing her up on the subway, or making vile remarks at the corner candy store; let him see what he missed, he’ll be sorry.

  But she was the one who was sorry, she knew that without even looking back at her brother-in-law. Now he could feel more superior than ever; he could even take pride in the fact that he was above terrorizing her with the unspoken threat of revealing to her husband, in the guise of charging Ralph with complicity, what had happened this morning.

  Even at this moment, she was the one, not he, who had to negotiate the steep awkward steps, knowing that he was still watching and perhaps even laughing triumphantly to himself. Now she hated her impractical, absurdly provocative clothing, the unbuttoned blouse in which her oversized breasts jiggled like a chippy’s, the skin-tight pants which cut into her crotch as she made her way down, the slippers which before had seemed sexy but now were merely obscenely treacherous, slipping on each step as she fumbled for the next; and her body beneath the clothing, broad, ungainly, made for carrying babies, not for seductively acrobatic leaping up and down ladders.

  “You’re all right?” He half called, half spoke the words.

  Kitty dared not glance back to see if he was peering down at her fleshy awkwardness. She replied, in a rather clipped voice, “Quite, thank you. You can retrieve the ladder, Ray—you’ll be safe now.”

  She descended another flight of stairs, went directly to her bathroom, and removed her clothes quickly. Stepping into the shower, she turned up the hot water as high as possible. But then she found that she could not stand, her legs were weaker than they had been when she had slipped to her knees before her brother-in-law; the trembling became so unbearable that she started to cry.

  She sat on the floor of the shower stall, back pressed against the slimy tile, knees drawn up to her chest, hands locked tight around her legs, the hot spray beating down, plastering her hair onto her forehead, over her welling eyes. Finally, when the drumming water had drowned out the beating of her heart, she allowed herself to go lax and receive the benison of the water, both tears and shame washed away by the stinging cascade.

  After a long time she arose and turned on the cold water, gripping the tap until she cringed. Then she stepped from the shower, reached for a towel, and began to whistle as she rubbed herself dry.

  6: RAY

  MARCH 16

  Ever since the morning Kitty came up I have lived in such dread that I didn’t even dare write about it. Thought she’d feel constrained, awkward, with me. Don’t know how to talk to people, it always comes out wrong. Don’t know how to write to them. Even if I did, how could I have talked to Kitty, or written her? Tried to compose words in my mind, assuring her of my continuing regard. Stupid!

  Saw her yesterday for the first time since her visit. Ides of March. She was bringing me my groceries. I let down the ladder when she pulled on the chain, but didn’t come down to the third floor to take the package from her arms. Held back and kept my face in shadows. A needless precaution. She was brisk! cheery! businesslike! Exactly as she had been before, only more so.

  How will I ever learn to understand people?

  March 18

  Today logged Titusville, Council Bluffs, Fremont (O.), Michigan City. Studied physiological psychology, international trade, astronomy. 45 minutes each. 50 push-ups. Chinned myself 10 extra times. But Ralph is right when he asks, How long can it go on? We’re living on borrowed time, but whom are we borrowing it from? The people I watch are bound to catch on that I’m here. Maybe they know already. Much quieter downstairs lately.

  March 22

  Martin Stark came yesterday. He and Ralph conferred. Invited me down. I declined because of my radio schedule, which was true. Still, I was curious when I heard their muffled voices way below.

  Kitty was right, that day—the one torment for me would be the suspicion that her overture (clumsy word) had been calculated. And not by her. She tried to deny it, I passed it off. But actually it was her very attempt to reassure me that sharpened my suspicions. Sometimes I think my mind must be a cesspool. If I mistrust people (worse, imagine them capable of the lowest perfidy), what must they think of me? And with more reason—look at me.

  It is disgusting to be 20. Impossible to play at being a boy. Don’t want to be grown, too easy an ambition. Even so, if others my age puff on pipes or stuff themselves into phone booths, I take on the worst traits of adults.

  Just the same … It is quieter downstairs, it has been ever since that day, I think. Not just my imagination. But why? Those first weeks, I was torn between relief that Ralph and Kitty could feel so uninhibited by my presence, and fear that some of their sounds were exaggerated, deliberately, to torment and shame me. Which only shows what an egomaniac you can become when you don’t have to accommodate yourself to others. But if those were the honeymoon noises, does it mean that now the honeymoon is over? And if so, why? Is it something that happens to all couples, or does it have a special meaning for Ralph and Kitty? Could it be partly my fault, because of what happened between Kitty and me that day? I know she only wanted to help her husband, it was for love of him. But now, I wonder, does she love him less? Or he her?

  March 27

  Watched Kitty from my observation post today. She often shops across the street, swift, efficient, impersonal, as though she were in a hurry in a strange neighborhood, had an exact list of what she needed, bought it, went home. But today was different. She was leisurely. Saw her buy the first spring flowers (jonquils? have to look them up) from a coppery old Indian lady, then was very surprised to see her chatting with a broad-hipped young housewife I’ve noticed going into the A & P and Woolworth’s. Girl with cheerful but vulgar face, always wearing figured scarf around her hair (always has it in curlers). Couldn’t make out what they were talking about, but they got on well. Smiled and nodded vigorously at each other on parting.

  How I wished the Jehovah’s Witness had been there, next to the Indian woman with the yellow flowers. Another sign of spring. Maybe Kitty was right about my feelings for the Witness. I always delude myself.

  March 29

  Could there be a connection between my ignorance of flowers (see above—not knowing jonquils from daffodils) and my ignorance of people? Have spent 2 years trying to repair my ignorance of basic science and technology. Thought I had no time for other pursuits. But Dr. S. is a man of science, more than Papa was, and he finds time for all sorts of things. Can a person really get knowledge of others from reading novels? Just made-up stories? N.B.: Make up list.

  April 1

  April Fool’s Day. That’s my day. Last night, Walpurgisnacht, my night too. I went downstairs, they were anxious for me to.

  R. looks older. Parentheses engraved around his mouth. My fault? Not like a newly married man. Again my fault? The ground keeps shifting. I state my case, he his, both of us are belligerent, both basically uncertain. I’m sure of that.

  (To be sure only of uncertainty, what a fate! The hell of being 20. Never again, that’s the only consolation. Sometimes I admire those who can do away with themselves. I could never do that!)

  One minute he acts persuasive, as if we were reasonable politicians trying to work out a compromise. You give a little, I give a little, we both make it look good for the folks back home.

  Next minute he stares at me as if I was something he’d never seen before, a new kind of bug maybe, bearing strange diseases, completely unpredictable and unreasonable. A menace to humanity. So he, self-appointed spokesman for humanity, starts threatening me with DDT: he will dust, spray, bomb me out. He will carry his wife away from my contaminating presence. (If he only knew!)

  I try to tell him that I know what he is going through. Which only infuriates him.

  “What do you know?” he yells. “You’ve got it made, you don’t have to lift a finger!” And of course he is right, in a way.

  Then he bec
omes super-reasonable all over again, he tries to tell me he knows what I am going through. Why should I believe him any more than he does me? He knows what hell it is to grow up, he says. If I was left alone by the deaths of Uncle Max and Papa, he had the same experience, he points out, first with Mel’s disappearance and then with Mama’s death.

  “You go to college right here in the attic, I bring your books, Kitty brings your groceries, and still you suffer. Well, I went to the city college, nobody brought me anything, Papa was wrapped in his own misery—you were too young to know—then another war broke out. Do you think I don’t know what hell it is to grow up?”

  No, you don’t, I say, nobody does. When you’re a child you can’t imagine, when you’re an adult you can’t remember. Nature is kind, the wound closes over, the scar is hardly visible, painful only when the weather turns bad.

  This seems to make an impression. Ralph is thoughtful. I can tell he’s reflecting that maybe I’m not completely nuts. I press my advantage. I take up the case of Mel, our bone of contention. Let’s start by recognizing that neither of us actually knows him. If we still don’t know each other, how can we know him, a stranger and a fugitive? Since I was seven, I haven’t laid eyes on Mel, I have no special ax to grind for him that I wouldn’t have for Ralph, if their situations were reversed. Or for any other brother.

  Ralph responds that he isn’t interested in abstractions. If I want to go on about justice and equity it’s because I’m young and haven’t suffered at Mel’s hands. Supposing it was Mel who was responsible for Uncle Max’s and Papa’s disappearance, then how would I feel?

  I tell him he’s operating with abstractions at least as much as I am. Hatred is more emotional, maybe more satisfying, but it’s just as much an abstraction as equity or justice. Or am I wrong? When I say to Ralph that you can’t resolve your life by blaming its miseries and failures on a single human being, I have the feeling that I’m arguing with myself too, trying to persuade myself as much as him.