The Times Are Never So Bad

by Andre Dubus

  She closes her eyes and imagines the frozen lake, evergreens, the silent snow. After school and on weekends boys will clean the ice with snow shovels and play hockey; she will hear only burning logs in the fireplace, will watch them from the living room, darting without sound into and around one another. She will have a Christmas tree, will eat dinner at her parents’, but on Christmas Eve she could have them and Margaret here for dinner before midnight Mass. She will live here—she counts by raising thumb and fingers from a closed fist—eight months. Or seven, so she can be out before Steve comes back. Out where? She shuts her eyes tighter, frowning, but no street, no town appears. In the Merrimack Valley she likes Newburyport but not as much since she started working there, and less since Ray moved there. Amesbury and Merrimac are too small, Lawrence is mills and factories, and too many grocery stores and restaurants with Spanish names, and Haverhill: Jesus, Haverhill: some people knew how to live there, her parents did, Haverhill for her father was the police department and their house in the city limits but in the country as well, with the garden her mother and father planted each spring: tomatoes, beans, squash, radishes, beets; and woods beyond the garden, not forest or anything, but enough to walk in for a while before you came to farmland; and her father ice-fished, and fished streams and lakes in spring, the ocean in summer. Everyone joked about living in Haverhill, or almost everyone: the skyline of McDonald’s arch and old factories and the one new building on the corner of Main Street and the river, an old folks’ home and office building that looked like a gigantic cinder block. But it wasn’t that. The Back Bay of Boston was pretty, and the North End was interesting with all those narrow streets and cluttered apartments of Italians, but Jesus, Boston was dirtier than Haverhill and on a grey winter day no city looked good. It was that nothing happened in Haverhill, and she had never lived outside its limits till now, and to go back in spring was going downhill backward. A place would come. She would spend the fall and winter here, and by then she would know where to go.

  She looks at the walls, the chest with her purse and cassette player on its top, the closed door of the closet; she will keep this room so she’ll have the lake (and it occurs to her that this must have been Steve’s, and he gave it up), and she’ll hang curtains. She will leave his room, or the back room, alone; will store in it whatever she doesn’t want downstairs, that chair with the flowered cover he always sat in, and its hassock, the coffee table with cigarette burns like Timmy’s bar; she will paint the peeling cream walls in the kitchen. For the first time since moving in, she begins to feel that more than this one room is hers; not only hers but her: her sense of this seems to spread downward, like sentient love leaving her body to move about the three rooms downstairs, touching, looking, making plans. Her body is of no use to her but to move weakly to the bathroom, to sleep and drink and, when it will, to eat. Lying here, though, is good; it is like the beach or sleeping late, better than those because she will not do anything else, cannot do anything else, and so is free. Even at the beach you have to—what? Go into the water. Collect your things and drive home. Wash salt from suit, shower, wash hair, dry hair. Cook. Eat. But this, with no chills now, no pain unless she moves, which she won’t, this doesn’t have to end until it ends on its own, and she can lie here and decorate the house, move furniture from one room to another, one floor to another, bring all her clothes from her parents’ house, her dresser and mirror, while outside voices lower as the smell of meat fades until all she smells is smoke. Tomorrow she will smell trees and the lake.

  She hears a car going away, and would like to stand at the window and look at the darkened houses, but imagines them instead, one by one the lights going out behind windows until the house becomes the shape of one, locked for the winter. She is standing at the chest, getting her cigarettes, when she hears the people next door leaving. Do it, she tells herself. She turns out the bedside lamp, crouches at a front window, her arms crossed on its sill, and looks past trees in the front lawn at the dark lake. She looks up at stars. To her right, trees enclose the lake; she cannot see the houses among them. Water laps at the beach and wharf pilings. She can see most of the wharf before it is shielded by the oak; below her, Steve’s boat, covered with tarpaulin, rests on sawhorses. Her legs tire, and she weakens and gets into bed, covers with the sheet and spread, and lights a cigarette, the flame bright and large in the dark. She reaches for the lamp switch, touches it, but withdraws her hand. She smokes and sees the bathroom painted mauve.

  For a long while she lies awake, filling the ashtray, living the lovely fall and winter: in a sweater she will walk in the woods on brown leaves, under yellow and red, and pines and the blue sky of Indian summer. She will find her ice skates in her parents’ basement; she remembers the ponds when she was a child, and wonders how or why she outgrew skating, and blames her fever for making her think this way, but is uncertain whether the fever has made her lucid or foolish. She is considering a snow blower for the driveway, has decided to buy one and learn to use it, when he comes in the crash of breaking glass and a loud voice: he has said something to the door, and now he calls her name. She moves the ashtray from her stomach to the floor, turns on her side to get the gun from under the pillow, then lies on her back.

  ‘Polly?’ He is at the foot of the stairs. ‘It’s me. I’m coming up.’

  He has the voice of a returning drunk, boldly apologetic, and she cocks the hammer and points the gun at the door as he climbs, his boots loud, without rhythm, pausing for balance, then quick steps, a pause, a slow step, evenly down the few strides of hall, and his width above his hips fills the door; he is dark against the grey light above him.

  ‘You in here?’

  ‘I’ve got a gun.’

  ‘No shit? Let me see it.’

  She moves her finger from the trigger, and pushes the safety down with her thumb.

  ‘It’s pointed at you.’

  ‘Yeah? Where’s the light in here?’

  ‘You liked the dark before.’

  ‘I did? That’s true. That little apartment we had?’

  ‘I mean June, with that fucking knife.’

  ‘Oh. No knife tonight. I went to the Harbor Schooner—’

  ‘Shit: what for.’

  ‘So I goes Hey: where’s Polly? Don’t she work here? Sick, they said. To see you, that’s all. So I did some shots of tequila and I’m driving up to New Hampshire, and I say what the fuck? So here I am. You going to tell me where the light is?’

  His shoulders lurch as he steps forward; she fires at the ceiling above him, and he ducks, his hands covering his head.

  ‘Polly.’ He lowers his hands, raises his head. ‘Hey, Polly. Hey: put that away. I just want to talk. That’s all. That was an asshole thing I did, that other time. See—’

  ‘Go away.’

  Her hand trembles, her ears ring, and she sits up in the gunpowder smell, swings her feet to the floor, and places her left hand under her right, holding the gun with both.

  ‘I just want to ask you what’s the difference, that’s all. I mean, how was it out here with Steve? You happy, and everything’

  ‘It was great. And it’s going to be better.’

  ‘Better. Better without Steve?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why’s that? You got somebody moving in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it was good with Steve here. Great with Steve. So what’s the difference, that’s what I think about. Maybe the lake. The house? I mean, what if it was with me? Same thing, right? Sleep up here over the lake. Do some fucking. Wake up. Eat. Swim. Work. How come it was so good with Steve?’

  ‘We weren’t married.’

  ‘Oh. Okay. That’s cool. Why couldn’t it be us then, out here? What did I ever do anyways?’

  ‘Jesus, what is this?’

  ‘No, come on: what did I do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? I must’ve done something.’

  ‘You didn’t do anything.’

  ‘The
n why weren’t you happy, like with Steve? I mean, I thought about it a lot. It wasn’t that asshole DeLuca.’

  ‘You almost killed him.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘You could have.’

  ‘You see him?’

  ‘I brought him flowers, is all.’

  ‘See: it wasn’t him. And I don’t think it was me either. If it was him, you’d be with him, and if it was me, well, you got rid of me, so then you’d be happy.’

  ‘I am happy.’

  ‘I don’t know, Polly.’

  She can see the shape and muted color of his face, but his eyes are shadows, his beard and hair darker; his shoulders and arms move, his hands are at his chest, going down, then he opens his shirt, twists from one side to the other pulling off the sleeves.

  ‘Don’t, Ray.’

  Flesh glimmers above his dark pants, and she pushes the gun toward it.

  ‘Let’s just try it, Polly. Turn on the light, you’ll see.’ He unbuckles his belt, then stops, raises a foot, holds it with both hands, hops backward and hits the doorjamb, pulls off the boot, and drops it. Leaning there, he takes off the other one, unzips his pants, and they fall to his ankles. He steps out of them, stoops, pushing his shorts down. ‘See. No knife. No clothes.’ He looks down. ‘No hard-on. If you’d turn on a light and put away that hogleg—’

  He moves into the light of the door, into the room, and she shakes her head, says No, but it only shapes her lips, does not leave her throat. She closes her eyes and becomes the shots jolting her hands as she pulls and pulls, hears him fall, and still pulls and explodes until the trigger is quiet and she opens her eyes and moves, leaping over him, to the hall and stairs.

  In the middle of the night I sit out here in the skiff and I try to think of something else but I can’t, because over and over I keep hearing him tell me that time: Alex, she’s the best fuck I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t want to think about that. But I look back at the house that was Kingsley’s and I wish I had put on the lights before I got in the boat, but it wasn’t dark yet and I didn’t think I’d drift around half the night and have to look back at it with no lights on so it looks like a tomb, with his weights and fishing gear in there. I’ll have to get them out. It looks like we’re always taking somebody’s things out of that house, and maybe it’s time to sell it to somebody who’s not so unlucky.

  He bled to death, so even then she could have done something. I want to hate her for that. I will, too. After he knew he loved her, he didn’t talk about her like that anymore, but it was still there between us, what he told me, and he knew I remembered, and sometimes when we were out drinking, me and somebody and him and Polly, and then we’d call it a night and go home, he’d grin at me. What I don’t know is how you can be like that with a guy, then shoot him and leave him to bleed to death while you sit outside waiting for your old man and everybody. This morning we put him next to Kingsley and I was hugging Mom from one side and the old man hugging her from the other, and it seemed to me I had two brothers down there for no reason. Kingsley wouldn’t agree, and he wouldn’t like it that I don’t vote anymore, or read the newspapers, or even watch the news. All Ray did was fall in love and not get over it when she got weird the way women do sometimes.

  So I sit out here in the skiff and it’s like they’re both out here with me. I can feel them, and I wish I’d see them come walking across the lake. And I’d say, Why didn’t you guys do something else? Why didn’t you wait to be drafted, or go to Canada? Why didn’t you find another girl? I’d tell them I’m going to sell this—and oh shit it starts now, the crying, the big first one, and I let it come and I shout against it over the water: ‘I’m going to sell this fucking house, you guys. And the one in town, and I’m moving in with Mom and the old man; I’m going to get them to sell theirs too and get the fuck out of here, take them down to Florida and live in a condo. We’ll go fishing. We’ll buy a boat, and fish.’

  Bless Me, Father

  AT EASTER VACATION Jackie discovered that her father was committing adultery, and four days later—after thinking of little else—she wrote him a letter. She was a dark, attractive girl whose brown eyes were large and very bright. She would soon be nineteen, she had almost completed her freshman year at the University of Iowa, and she knew, rather proudly, that her eyes had lost some of their innocence. This had happened in the best possible way: she hadn’t actually done anything new, but she had been exposed to new people, like Fran, her roommate, who was a practicing nonvirgin. Fran’s boy friend was a drama student and sometimes Jackie double-dated with them, and they went to parties where people went outside and smoked marijuana. Jackie had also drunk bourbon and ginger at football games and got herself pinned to Gary Nolan. Being pinned to Gary did not interfere with her staying in the state of grace; every Sunday she went to the Folk Mass at the chapel, and she usually received Communion, approaching the altar rail to the sound of guitars. It had been a good year for growing up: seven months ago she had been so naive that she never would have caught her father, much less written him a letter.

  Before writing the letter, she talked to Fran, then Gary. The night she got back from vacation she told Fran; they talked until two in the morning, filling the room with smoke, pursing their lips, waving their hands. As sophisticated as Fran was, she agreed with Jackie that her father was wrong, that her parents’ marriage was in danger, and that her mother must be delivered from this threat of terrible and gratuitous pain. Again and again they sighed, and said in gloomy, disillusioned, yet enduring voices that something had to be done. The next night she talked to Gary. There was a movie he wanted to see, but she asked him if they couldn’t go drink beer. I have to talk to you, she said.

  They sat facing each other in a booth at the rear, where it was dark, and using fake identification cards they drank beer, and she watched his eyes reflecting the sorrow and distraction in her own. Her story lasted for three beers; then, as she ended by saying she would write her father a letter, her tone changed. Now she was purposeful, competent, striking back. This shift caught Gary off guard, nearly spoiling his evening. He had liked it much better when she had so obviously needed his comfort. So he nodded his head, agreeing that a letter was probably the thing to do, but he looked at her with compassion, letting her know how well he understood her, that she was not as cool as she pretended to be, and that a letter to her father would never ease the pain in her heart. Then he took her out to his car, drove to the stadium and parked in its shadow, and soothed her so much that, on the following Saturday, she went to confession and told the priest she had indulged in heavy petting one time.

  By then, she had written and mailed the letter. It was seven pages long, using both sides of the stationery, and she had read the first draft to Fran, then written another. Five days later she had heard nothing. When she mailed the letter, she had thought there were only two possible results: either her father would break off with the woman and renew his fidelity to her mother, or he would ignore the letter (although she didn’t see how he could possibly do that; the letter was there at his office; her knowledge of him was there; and—this was it—his knowledge of himself was there too: he could not ignore these things). But after a week she was afraid: she saw other alternatives, even more evil than the affair itself. Feeling trapped, he might confront her mother with the truth, push a divorce on her. Or he might bolt: resign his position at the bank and flee with the other woman to California or Mexico, leaving her mother to live her life, shamed and hurt, in Chicago. She thought of the awful boomerangs of life, how the letter—written to save the family—could very well leave her a scandaled half-orphan; as the last unmarried child, she saw herself bravely seeking peace for her mother, taking her on trips away from their lovely house that was now hollow, echoing, ghost-ridden.

  Then, at seven o’clock on a Wednesday morning, exactly one week after she had mailed the letter, her father phoned. He woke her up. By the time she was alert enough to say no, she had already said yes. Th
en she lit a cigarette and got back in bed. From the other bed, Fran asked who was that on the phone.

  ‘My father. He’s driving down to lunch.’

  ‘Oh Lord.’

  When he arrived at the dormitory she was waiting on the front steps, for it was a warm, bright day. He was wearing sunglasses, and he smiled easily as he came up the walk, as though—trouble or not—he was glad to see her. He was a short man who at first seemed fat until you noticed he was simply rounded, his chest and hips separated by a very short waist; he kept himself in good condition, swimming every day in their indoor pool at home, and he could still do more laps than she could. Jackie rose and went down the steps. When he leaned forward to kiss her, she turned her cheek, receiving his lips a couple of inches from hers.

  He followed her to the Lincoln, opened the door for her, and she directed him to the bar and grill where she and Gary had talked, then led him to the same booth, where it was dark even in the afternoon and people couldn’t distinguish your face unless they walked past you. He wanted a drink before lunch, and Jackie ordered iced tea.

  ‘Nothing stronger?’ he said.

  ‘They won’t serve me.’

  She thought now he would wait until his Scotch came.

  ‘You said you saw her at the train station,’ he said.

  She nodded and put her purse on the table and offered him a cigarette; he said no, they were filtered, and she lit one and looked past his shoulder.

  ‘When I was getting off I saw you nod your head to somebody, and I looked that way and saw her getting into a taxi.’

  Then she tried to look into his eyes, but the best she could do was his mouth.

  ‘She’s a blonde,’ she said.

  ‘A lot of blondes nowdays. When I was a kid—before TV, you know—the blondes in movies were always bad. If a woman was blonde and smoked, you knew right away she was bad.’