It was good thinking of home. He thought of it deliberately now—thought of home with passion.… He saw himself sitting in the front-pew of the chancel, on the men’s and boys’ side, wearing his clean-smelling choir-vestments: the long black cassock and the white linen stiffly-starched cotta—he felt the pinch and chafe of the Buster Brown collar as he turned to watch the minister preparing the communion. From across the red-carpeted aisle, on the women’s side, he heard his mother’s voice among all the others, the warm alto voice that reached the farthest corner of the nave as surely as the most piercing soprano. He looked at her where she sat among the other women and girls. She smiled back at him, her perfect teeth gleaming, and gave him the smallest wink. He had heard it said that Mr. Harrison often declared, yes even to his wife, that he only came to church on Sundays to look at Mrs. Birnam in the choir; and he wondered if it were true.… The church was filled with sunlight, it was a wonderful summer Sunday morning. The sun streamed in through the yellowish-green stained-glass windows and bathed the congregation in a soft sub-marine light, as if the whole place were under water. Beyond the communion rail, his little brother Wick knelt at the altar, his hands at his side, not leaning against anything, and Don could see that the hem of his white cotta trembled ever so slightly. Wick was waiting to help Mr. Brittain with the service, and Don was waiting to tell Wick after church (and so too, probably, was their mother) that his sloppy plaid socks showed beneath the skirt of his cassock. Behind the wall in back of the men’s side he could hear the muffled thump and pound of the wooden pump that sustained the breath of the organ.… The minister was ready to serve the choir. His mother rose with the other women and went to the altar rail, where they knelt in a row on the red-carpeted step. All the heads were bowed, now, except hers. She looked straight before her, her elbows on the rail, her hands clasped under her chin. She seemed lost in thought, and so was he, as he gazed at his beautiful mother, lovely with the clear profile, the straight nose, the soft cheeks—the soft, pink, rose-like cheeks.…
The telephone was ringing again. He had no way of knowing how long his little excursion into the past, his deliberate revery, had lasted. It had not been refreshing or helpful; or if it had, the ringing of the ’phone wiped it at once all away, woke his aching nerves, his rioting heart, his fears of what was going to happen to him now. The telephone rang on. Was there possibly one small infinitesimal sip in the bottom of the sticky bottle standing there on the table? If there were, he was unable to reach it; and he knew only too well that the sip or drop, had there been one, would in his present need prove a greater aggravation than none at all.
Now it came to him suddenly that he had not eaten. He had eaten not a single bite of food since before Wick left—how many days ago? He was never able to eat when he was drinking; it was the last thing he ever thought of and the last thing he wanted; and the thought of food now—even knowing that food, if he had it, might help him out of his weakness and so enable him to go out and get drink somewhere—made him retch. Was it possible to go without food so long and still be upright? He knew it was, it had happened many times. He thought of the sandwich he had started to buy a day or so ago (when was it?) and wondered what had prevented him. No food in all that time. But he couldn’t think of it or wonder about it, because now a new thought possessed him: Interminable and agonizing though the long day would be, it was bound to end, sometime, somehow, and darkness would finally fall. What did that not mean? Delirium was a disease of the night, yes; but also—oh, worse!—delirium never came while you were drinking. Only after you had stopped. That was the terrible thought. He had stopped. And there was no way of starting again. Unable to go out and get liquor, trapped here the whole day without it, what would tonight be like? It was a prospect so terrifying that at once he tried to busy himself, occupy his mind, with something to do.
He leaned down and disentangled his trousers and shorts from where they lay in a heap over his shoes. He lifted them up and dropped them a little to one side, off the rug. Some men there are, when the bagpipe sings i’ the nose, cannot contain their urine.… That’s the way it had been when the ’phone rang that first time, the ’phone that had been ringing ever since; that’s the way it nearly always was in the subway when the suddenly screaming bell, like a spurt of white metallic fire, struck at your brain and your loins. He looked at the pants and shorts lying in a heap beside the bookcase, and wondered: was it the first time he had had them off—since when? He dimly remembered changing his clothes once, when was that?—and then wasn’t it only his shirt? In the bathroom sometime? It was useless to try to remember. He recalled nothing, not one thing, of all the events of all the days since he had started drinking, the day Wick left. Each day’s drinking had wiped out the day before, it always did, always—and who could understand the blessing of that? The blessing and sometimes the terror—terror because you lived always in a state of mortal apprehension of some dreadful deed committed for which, though you were called to account, you could never bear witness. And who would ever believe that? I’m responsible, yes, but I’m not responsible; I did it, I; but it was not I; it wasn’t I.…
Only one understood this, only one out of all the people he knew, the few friends he had left. Helen. She and she alone knew that he was literally not himself when drinking, knew that he was not to be held accountable for what he said and did. It was somebody else who did and said these things, not Don. When he turned up at her house drunk and asked her to marry him, she wouldn’t listen; wouldn’t listen to him at all, though that was what she wanted of him more than anything else in the world. She knew better than to listen to him at such a time. (What matter that he never asked her otherwise? She wouldn’t have him that way.) She knew a great deal better than a romantic friend of theirs who had the oh ideal solution, why don’t you live with him, that’s all he needs, take a place together and live with him, he’s lost and lonely, he needs love, he needs you, why don’t you just live with him? Helen wouldn’t listen to that, either. He needed love all right (who didn’t?), but he had to get back to himself first in order to know what love was and to know that he wanted it. She knew better, too, far better and wiser and more honest (with herself as well as with him) than those who advised her: “Marry him and reform him.” Many a woman would jump at the chance, they’d love the idea, they’d marry the guy and reform him. Not Helen. She spotted it at once for what it was: taking advantage of a man when he was down; and certainly she wouldn’t have him under those conditions. If any “reform” was to be done, she knew it would have to be done on his own entirely—not for her, but for himself first. If that should ever come about, then she might listen; but until then—
In drink, he was not Don. Helen knew this even to the extent of knowing that he himself would be just as shocked or upset as she was by some reckless act committed while he was in his cups, when he learned about it later (for certainly he didn’t know about it at the time). Which is why she never reproached him for drinking when he was drinking, why she never uttered a word of complaint or protest, at least not to him. She would string along with him patiently and pretend to believe his lies and his fancies; sit listening to him when, out of whim, he wanted to read to her, even though she understood scarcely a syllable of his confused babble; go with him when he suddenly wanted to take in a movie or play which he was in no condition to comprehend and which, in the middle, he would up and leave; follow him as best she could in all his impulsive caprices and inspirations, patiently waiting the while for him to come back to himself, and to her. She would take him in when he came to her house very drunk, take him in and take care of him (though it was like having as house-guest an elusive and cunning hysteric), feed him and nurse him without blame through several days of hangdog hangover, and then, when he was restored and his ego began to function once more, kick him out. The times he had been kicked out of Helen’s house and told never never to come back again, she was belly-sick of it—her word; a word all the stronger, all the more telling, becau
se it was so unlike her. He often complained that she was so much nicer to him when he was drunk than when he was sober and behaving himself, what was the idea anyway, what was the use of trying to make an effort, what did it get you but a kick in the teeth? And she would reply, with that simplicity of hers that spoke volumes: “When you’re all beaten down with drink, you need me. You’re humble then, and want me. But soon’s you come out of it, you don’t need me any more.”
The telephone was ringing but he was thinking of something else now and almost didn’t hear it. He was thinking of the plays they had suddenly gone to on the spur of the moment and as suddenly got up and left, how he had talked all the way uptown from the Village about what a gifted actress the star was, hadn’t Helen seen her in Sandalwood and Spellbound, or Mariners hadn’t she seen Mariners, or God They Knew What They Wanted, lord what an artist, the greatest woman in the theater of our time; and then at the play, his wandering attention, his increasing restlessness, his feeling that he would suffocate if he didn’t get another drink at once, his suddenly having to get up and leave before the second act and Helen leaving too without a word, oh she’d leave all right, of course she would leave, wasn’t she afraid of his going out and getting started again, didn’t that come before all the artists in the world? And even as his anger rose (the two of them going up the dark aisle), his pity rose too, it was such a rotten shame that Helen couldn’t once, just once, enjoy a play with him.… He was thinking of those times when he felt the necessity of reading to her, when he read to her for her own good, read something she ought to know, something he himself was crazy about and damn it she had to know it and love it too! He would read on and on (the favorite short-story or the passage out of the great novel) and the words wouldn’t come right or at least not come out of his mouth right, he himself heard the unnatural elisions and the consonants slurred and blurred but went right on just the same, just as if he were articulating perfectly; and Helen, though she was a poor dissembler, ignored the stumbling thick speech the same as he and pretended to understand. And when he had finished and exclaimed “Isn’t it wunderbar” and accepted her nod, how he could curse himself then for having mutilated the beautiful passage, for not having been sober enough to take advantage of this opportunity to reveal the passage to Helen, for having ignored his own dreadful speech, for having pretended to accept Helen’s pretense, and for having used the word wunderbar.… He was thinking most and bitterly of those times when he had asked Helen to marry him, call up your father, let’s call him up right now, this very second, tell him we’re going to get married this weekend, or tonight! He felt like a hound, then, when he saw the tears in her eyes as she smiled and shook her head and refused to talk, and he wanted to marry her all the more, wanted to marry her at once, now more than ever (and the thing that hurt him as he said it was that he knew she wouldn’t take him and he didn’t blame her a bit, no not one single bit, though he loved her more than he ever did before, truly loved her now, right now at this moment, and ached for the day when they would somehow, someway, get together). And while she turned away to busy herself with something so that he couldn’t see her eyes, he would go on and on picturing the wedding (to cover her embarrassment as well as his own, yet knowing that he was wounding her more than ever and for Christ’s sake why couldn’t he stop!), the wedding that was to take place as soon as it could be arranged, they’d get his brother as bestman, Wick would be so happy, Wick would be so pleased (God was he marrying Wick!), they’d go to The Little Church Around the Corner, he’d always wanted to be married at the—oh Jesus didn’t he ever know when to stop!
No wonder she would kick him out as soon as he was able to be on his feet again, no wonder she wouldn’t have him around to mock with his silence the theme he couldn’t harp enough on the other night, the imperial theme that was always happy prologue, nothing more.…
But that was all long ago. Years. Two anyway. He never went near her house any more; not when he was drinking. He knew better; thank God he knew enough to avoid people when he was drinking now, especially Helen. He was never going to let her see him like that again, give her a chance to take care of him only to throw him out. The times she had thrown him out! He wished he had a dollar for every time he had been kicked out of Helen’s house! He wished he had a bottle for every one of those times! or a glass! or a jigger!
The telephone began again. It had been silent for a while, but now it rang as if for the only time that morning, as if this were the most important call of all. He shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. He thought of how Central at home (was that another world, another lifetime?) had sometimes given him a ring on Sunday afternoon and said he’d better hurry if he wanted to get Dorothy for a date, Harry Fox was trying to call her now and her line was busy.…
Reveries of home.… Sentimental tears slid out from under his closed lids as he saw himself standing, now, in the new Scout uniform, his first, with a crowd of other children of all ages on the wide front lawn of the vast old red-brick high-school. The Scoutmaster and principal and some of the teachers were handing out stiff cotton flags to each one and arranging the children into groups according to grade, in double-file. It was Decoration Day, a bright hot May morning, full summer already. How proud he was, then, when the Scouts were all taken out of their respective grade-groups and moved up front to head the procession. He did not even envy Harold Jenkins who carried the big flag of the Troop with the gold eagle on top and a white bathrobe-cord swaying around the fluttering folds. It was enough to be in uniform and up front with the rest—let somebody else lead or carry the flag; time enough for that when he was older. Down-street the band began to play. His heart nearly burst. They were to join the old soldiers and the band in front of the park and march from there to the cemetery. The Scoutmaster blew his whistle and they started out.… The stores were all closed, the long shades drawn, sunlight glared hot and white on the store-fronts. People lined the sidewalks, waving flags. Ahead of them, several open cars moved slowly off, carrying the mayor and the ministers and the superintendent of schools in their Sunday clothes. They each held a small flag and waved it to the crowd; they wore big badges on their lapels with forked satin ribbons; the cars were festooned with red-white-and-blue streamers and the wheels were wound with them. Behind marched the old soldiers, some thirty or forty wonderful white-haired old men, straight and proud. Their uniforms were dark blue, almost black; some of them had on funny little tilted caps that looked crushed-in at the front, one or two wore those long pointed hats like fancy-dress admirals, the curving top edged with a kind of white brush. All carried swords. Harold Jenkins’ grandfather was there, and Melvin Ostler’s, and a lot of the kids’.… At the cemetery, under the elm trees and willows sifting sunlight down on the flower-decked graves that were each like individual gardens, they grouped themselves about the uneven ground and the mayor said a speech from the bunting-draped platform and someone read a prayer and taps were sounded: old Mr. Bickerton came forward and raised his dented brightly-polished bugle and blew taps. Everybody took off their hats. He stood there listening, while chills ran down his spine. He looked at Mr. Peech the Scoutmaster standing a little apart with bowed head, and a wave of affection, of love, swept over him. What a wonderful and good man he was, what a fine father he would make! To have a father like that—The sound of the taps died away, and a group of eight old soldiers came forward and fired a salute. The bright morning was shattered by the crash; and a second later, in the stunning silence that followed, the sharp craack came again as the volley was given back by the railroad embankment beyond the graveyard. The faint blue-white smoke curled out of the rifles and rose in the sunshine, drifting among the trees and turning light and dark as it floated through sunbeam and shade. His nostrils tingled pleasantly with the wonderful pungent smell of the gun-power.…
His longing to be home, home at last, home for good, was so great it became despair, then desperation. The telephone rang. Christ he was going nuts with sentimentality! Self-pity l
ike this would drive him to suicide! Or was it someone else he wished to destroy in destroying himself? His interest in this, his knowledge that it might be so, his consciousness of it at all, made him believe it would never come to pass—just as his belief that a drunk is capable of violence short of murder might prevent that violence and certainly that murder. But did this include murder of oneself?
If his mother knew that he sat here now thinking wanting needing death; if Wick knew, or Helen; if Mrs. Wertheim, Sam and Gloria, the Kappa U brothers, the ladies in the front apartment just beyond that wall, M. Mc., the teller at Juan-les-Pins, the foolish psychiatrist, any Mr. Rabinowitz—who would believe it? Every one! Not one had reason to doubt he would ever reach such a pass; not one but knew (if they were wise or knowing at all) that this was his logical end and what was he waiting for? Every one of them had seen or could have seen that he had had the seed of self-destruction in him; and given time— All who had known him surely knew; expected nothing less; waited merely for the word. All were ready with the “Too bad but he’s much better off” or “Only wonder is he didn’t do it sooner.”
All? Dorothy too? Anna? Miss Dawson? No, never Dorothy. Not Anna, really. Certainly not Miss Dawson. Dorothy he had deliberately not been in touch with since he was in his ’teens, Dorothy he had let believe what she would believe always. Anna had pushed him away from her before he got to be the mess he was now, while he still had a chance. Miss Dawson could go on building a rosy life for him (and probably had) beginning and ending with the charming childish promise he showed (oh lord it made you sick to think of it) at eight. Eight for Christ’s sake!
“I honestly think you’re going to amount to something rather wonderful,” Dorothy had said when he left home; and then added, but as if to herself: “even though I’m not sure of my own place in the picture.” And he? What had he answered. To his shame he spoke as if in bashful protest (hearing only the first half of what she had said, not hearing at all the rest of it, the little rueful thought of self): “Dorothy!”—as much as to say “Oh go way with you” or “Flatterer.” To his shame. But everything about Dorothy was to his shame; not because he had allowed her to love him as he had not loved her, so long that she had never been able to love anybody else again, but because he had allowed her to believe in him. Would she believe in him now? Believe that he was finally about to put into effect the one real accomplishment that had been delayed too long? …
The Lost Weekend Page 19
