by Philip Roth
“Oh, no,” Roy said.
“Roy, you tell them.”
“But, Lucy—”
“Roy Bassart, that snowy night—did you or did you not—I can’t believe you will actually lie about this now too! Did you or did you not get out of bed—? Did you or did you not tell me—? Linda, Roy—Linda Sue!”
“But, Lucy; oh my God—we were just talking.”
“Talking!”
He sank onto a step at the top of the landing, his head cradled in his hands. “Yes,” he moaned.
“Just talking! Roy, do you seriously mean—”
“Daddy,” cried Eleanor, “do something!”
But Julian had already started after Lucy, who was advancing toward the stairs.
Swiftly she turned on him. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on me. Not if you know what is good for you, you whoremonger.”
“You get your ass down here,” he said fiercely.
“I am a woman, Mr. Sowerby. You may think I’m a twerp like your daughter, but I am not! You will not treat me like nothing. No one will! I am pregnant, whether it suits you or not. I have a family to protect, whether that pleases you or not. Now, Roy,” she said, turning once again and making for the stairs.
“Oh, no,” said her husband, still with his head in his hands. “I can’t take any more. I really can’t.”
“Oh, but you can, Roy. Because you have made me pregnant again, Roy!”
“Roy,” called Julian as Lucy broke for upstairs, “stop her!”
“Roy,” she cried, “we are getting Edward! We are going!”
He raised his face, which was wet with tears. “But he’s asleep.”
“Roy—move—” Then Julian’s hand fell upon her once again. She kicked backward—the hand grasped and caught her ankle. Meanwhile Roy’s face was moving up—to block her way! Her husband, who should be protecting her! defending her! shielding her! guarding her! instead stood between herself and her child, herself and her home, between herself and the life of a woman!
“Get her!” said Julian. “Roy!”
“No!” cried Lucy, and with no choice left, brought her hand up from behind her, and closing her eyes, swung it with all her might.
And had the vision once again.
INNOCENT
When she opened her eyes, she saw Roy standing over her; he was holding his mouth. She herself was stretched across the stairway.
Then above her on the landing, in his undershorts and shirt, a blanket dragging in one hand, she saw little Edward looking down.
He began to shriek, either at the blood on his mother’s hand or the blood on his father’s face. Eleanor, who had been hovering over Lucy, swept up the stairs, lifted the screaming child and carried him away.
They could not get her to let go of the banister, so she remained across the stairs while Julian stood on the step below her, holding firmly to the back of her coat, and Irene telephoned to Daddy Will.
He came, and moved her down the stairway, and through the hall to the door. Every light was on in the Sowerby house when Willard backed the car out of the driveway and drove her home from The Grove.
Father Damrosch.
Where was a window? Where was a wall? She was under a blanket. She reached out into the dark. I am only a freshman.
She was in a bed. In her own bedroom. She was in Liberty Center.
How long had she been sleeping?
She had let him lead her up the stairs and cover her with a blanket … She had been crying … He had been sitting in the chair beside the bed … And then she must have slept.
But every minute that passed was a minute lost to those who would destroy her. She must act!
Father Damrosch!
But what can he do? Father Damrosch, why can’t you do something? She could see him—black hair that he combed with his fingers, and a great swinging jaw, and that long beautiful stride that even the Protestant girls swooned over when they spotted him in his collar rounding a corner downtown. “Father Damrosch!” calls one of the girls who knows him. “Father Damrosch!” He waves—“Hi”—and disappears, while they all fall moaning into one another’s arms …
And there, bouncing, swaying, soaring from her seat, there is Lucy, off to her first retreat. And Father Damrosch, swaying too, over the enormous wheel of the bus. And the other girls, rising in their seats, then crashing down, and gazing off at the black and flashing woods like condemned prisoners being driven to the place of execution; as though shackled together, they hang together arm in arm. Someone in the back begins the singing—“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag—” but only a voice or two joins in, and then there is just the racket again of the old parish bus. It leaps forward and lands hard, and with winter overhead, aching to move down, and the horizon pushing up a last crust of light, the mood is of a race against disaster. A bird shoots past the window, its underside illumined red; it is swinging away, behind her head, and as she twists in her seat to follow its flight, the words go plunging through her, the words of Saint Teresa: God! Lamb! Astray!
“Whoa!” bellows Father Damrosch, his Army boots pumping down on the brake pedal. “Whoa,” and they swerve, so that legs spring up and skulls go rocking together. “Whoa there, Nelly,” and the girls giggle.
Clinging tightly to the belt of Kitty’s coat, she shuffles in her unclasped galoshes down the dark aisle of the bus. As though falling from a cliff, she drops through the open door onto the convent grounds, expecting to see fires burning.
She waits alone by the side of the bus, holding tight to Daddy Will’s hunting satchel. She hears Kitty calling for her and ducks around to the back. No one can see her there. She bites into the cold dark air—to hear it snap like a hard apple, to take between her teeth a pure hard clear thing, to devour … Oh, she cannot wait for her first Communion! Only, she must not bite down. No, no, it will melt down into the grooves of her mouth, and stream into her body, His body, His blood … and then something will happen.
But suppose it was what secretly she prayed for? “No!” She stands alone behind the bus, her two watering eyes taking in the dark shapes, the looming figures—the priests, the nuns, the girls lining up and marching into the dark; the pickup trucks, the buses, the cars, flashing lights and rumbling away … She hears the tires crackling over the gravel—what would it sound like, bone beneath wheels? Inside, that is all they are, just skeletons; inside, all of them are the same. She has learned the names of every human bone in her biology class—the tibia, the scapula, the femur … Oh, why can’t people be good? Inside, they are only bones and strings and blood, kidneys and brains and glands and teeth and arteries and veins. Why, why can’t they just be good?
“Father Damrosch!”
“Who is it back there?”
“… Lucy.”
He makes his way along the side of the bus. “You all right? Lucy Nelson?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the trouble? You bus-sick, Lucy? You go up there and get your room. Well, what’s the matter?”
Her hand reaches out and finds a motionless tire.
“Father Damrosch …” But can she tell him? She has not even told Kitty. She has not even told Saint Teresa. No one knows the horrible thing she really wants. “Father Damrosch …” She wedges her mitten down between the ridges of the tire, and into the side of her mackinaw hood, mumbles what she can no longer keep a secret—“… to kill my father.”
“Speak up, Lucy, so I can hear you. You want to—”
“No! No! I want Jesus to! In a car crash! In a fall! When he’s drunk and stinks and is drunk!” She is weeping. “Oh, Father Damrosch,” she says, “I think I’m committing a terrible sin. I know I am, but I can’t help it.”
She presses her face against him. She feels him waiting. “Oh, Father, tell me, tell me, is it a sin? He’s so bad. He’s so wicked.”
“Lucy, you know not of what spirit you are.”
“… No? Please, then, please—what spirit am I?”
Then
she is with the sisters. Between the swishing cloaks she moves to the chapel. The candles waver all around—and above, the suffering Lord. O God! Lamb! Astray! O Jesus, who does not kill! Who comforts! Who saves! Who redeemeth us all! O Holy Glorious Gleaming Loving Healing Jesus who does not kill—make my father a father!
By Sunday night she is so run-down from praying that she hardly has the strength to speak. The other girls are jabbering on the side steps of St. Mary’s, waiting to be picked up and taken home; in her pocket she clutches the black veil given her by Sister Angelica of the Passion. “Patience. Faith. Suffering. The little way, remember,” said Sister Angelica. “I know, I will,” said Lucy. “To destroy takes no patience,” said Sister Angelica. “I know,” said Lucy, “I know that.” “Anybody can destroy. A hoodlum can destroy.” “I know, I know.” “To save—” “Yes, yes. Oh, thank you, Sister …”
“Hey, Lucy Nelson.” Her father is waving at her from the car. All around her the other girls are running and shouting—horns are blowing, car doors opening and slamming shut. Everyone seems so proud! so happy! so alive! It is cold and black, clear and glittery, a Sunday night, and they are all stepping into warm cars to be driven to warm houses, to warm baths, to warm milk, to warm beds. “Please!” she prays. And so, with the others, like the others, she rushes to the door her father has pushed open.
Father Damrosch looks like something black burning as he stands directing traffic in the headlights of the cars. “Good night, Lucy.”
“Yes, good night.”
Her father tips his cap to the priest. Father Damrosch waves. “Hi, there. Good evening.”
Lucy pulls shut the door. To Father Damrosch she calls out the window, “Bye,” and out the drive they go.
“Welcome back to civilization,” he says.
Let him be redeemed! Make him good! O Jesus, he is only someone gone astray! That’s all!
“That’s not funny,” she says.
“Well, I just can’t be funny right off the bat, you know.” Silence. “How’d the revival meeting go?”
“Retreat.”
They drive. “You didn’t catch cold, I hope. You sound like you caught cold.”
“They took very good care of us, Father. It’s a convent. It’s very beautiful, and they have plenty of heat, thank you.”
But she does not want to fight. O Jesus, I don’t want to be sarcastic ever again. Help me! “Daddy—Sunday, come with me.”
“Come with you where, Goosie?”
“Please. You must. To Mass.”
He cannot help himself; he smiles.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she cries. “It’s serious.”
“Well, Lucy, I am just an old-fashioned Lutheran—”
“But you don’t go.”
“Well, when I was a boy I did. When I was your age I surely did go.”
“Daddy, you know not of what spirit you are!”
He takes his eyes from the road. “And who said that, Goosie? Your priest friend?”
“Jesus!”
“Well,” he says, shrugging, “nobody knows everything, of course.” But he is smiling again.
“But tomorrow—don’t joke with me! Don’t tease! Tomorrow you’ll be sick again, you know you will.”
“You let me worry about tomorrow.”
“You’ll be drunk again.”
“Hold it now, young lady—”
“But you won’t be saved! You will not be redeemed!”
“Now listen, you, you may be a big religious person over in that church, but to me, you know, you are who you are.”
“You’re a sinner!”
“Now enough!” he says. “You hear me? That is enough,” and he pulls the car into the driveway. “And I’ll tell you something else too. If this is how you come home after going away on your so-called religious weekend, then maybe going away is something we are going to have to think twice about giving permission for, freedom of religion or not.”
“But if you don’t change, I swear to you, I’ll become a nun.”
“You will, will you?”
“Yes!”
“Well, one, I never heard of them having nuns who were only in their first year of high school—”
“When I’m eighteen I can do anything! And legally too!”
“When you are eighteen, my little friend, and if you still want to dress up like Halloween, and have a prune face, and be afraid of regular life, which is what a nun happens to be, in my estimation—”
“But you don’t know! Sister Angelica is not afraid of regular life! None of the sisters are! I’ll become a nun, and there is nothing you can do to stop me!”
He pulls the key from the ignition. “Well, they have sure wasted no time turning you into a real Catholic, I’ll say that for them. You have got all the answers in about a month’s time, don’t you? You have got your own way of believing, and that’s the only way anybody else in the world can believe. And that’s your idea of religious freedom, that you said you were entitled to. Brother,” he said, and opened the door.
“I’ll become a nun. I swear it.”
“Well, if you want to run away from life, you go right ahead.”
She watches as he cuts across the lawn, and up the porch stairs. He pounds the snow from his boots, and enters the house.
“Jesus! Saint Teresa! Somebody!”
One month of winter passes; then another. She tells Father Damrosch everything. “The world is imperfect,” he says. “But why?” “We cannot expect it to be other than it is.” “But—why not?” “Because we are weak, we are corrupt. Because we are sinners. Evil is the nature of mankind.” “Everyone? Every person in mankind?” “Everyone does evil, yes.” “But, Father Damrosch—you don’t.” “I sin. Of course I sin.” What does he do? How can she ask? “But when will it stop being evil?” she asks; “when will the world be not evil?” “When Our Lord comes again.” “But by then …” “What, Lucy?” “Well, I don’t mean to sound selfish, Father … but not just me, but everybody alive now … well, they’ll all be dead. Won’t they?” “This is not our life, Lucy. This is the prelude to our life.” “I know that, Father, it’s not that I don’t believe that …” But she cannot go on. She lives too much in the here and now. Sister Angelica is right. That is her sin.
Sunday after Sunday she stays with Kitty through Mass, twice. And prays: Make him a father! then home to see what has happened. But Sunday after Sunday there is waiting for her only leg of lamb, lima beans, baked potato, mint jelly, Parker House rolls, pie and milk. Nothing changes, nothing ever changes. When, when will it happen? And what will it look like? His Spirit will enter … But who? and how?
Then the Friday night. She is at the dining table with her homework; her mother is in the parlor, reading a magazine and soaking her feet; the door opens. He pulls at the shade and it slips down off its fixture. She jumps to her feet, but her mother sits without moving. And her father is saying such terrible, horrible things! What should she do? She lives too much in the here and the now as it is. This is only the prelude to our life. The nature of mankind is evil. Christ will come again, she thinks, as her father pulls the pan from beneath her mother’s feet and pours the water out onto the rung. The nature of mankind is evil. Christ will come again—but she can’t wait! In the meantime this man is ruining their life! In the meantime they are being destroyed! Oh, Jesus, come! Now! You must! Saint Teresa! Then she rushes to the phone. “I want the police. At my house.” And within minutes they arrive. I want the police, she says, and they come. Wearing pistols, it turns out. She watches while they take him away to a place where he can no longer do them any harm.
As she dialed the Bassarts’, Daddy Will stepped into the kitchen.
“Lucy,” he said. “Honey, it is three-thirty in the morning. Why are you up? What are you doing?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Lucy, you cannot telephone people—”
“I know what I am doing.”
At the other end her father-in-la
w said, “Hello?”
“Lloyd, this is Lucy.”
Willard sat down at the kitchen table. “Lucy,” he pleaded.
“Lloyd, your son Roy has kidnaped Edward and abandoned me. He is hiding out at the Sowerbys’. He has refused to return to Fort Kean. He has put himself into the hands of Julian Sowerby, and something must be done to stop that man immediately. They have constructed a network of lies, and they are planning to go into a courtroom with it. They are planning to go to a judge and tell him that I am an incompetent mother and Roy is a wonderful father—and he is going to try to divorce me, your son, and get custody of my child. They have made all this perfectly clear, and they must be stopped before they take a single step. They have already begun to lie to Edward, that is perfectly clear—and unless someone intervenes over there, and instantly, they are going to brainwash and brainwash that little defenseless three-and-a-half-year-old child until they can get him, a baby, to go before a judge and say he hates his own mother. But you know, Lloyd, even if they don’t—you know full well that if it weren’t for me he would never have been allowed into this world in the first place. Everybody else would have scraped him down a sewer, or put him into an orphanage, or given him away, or left him to roam the world alone, I suppose, without a family, without a name, and now they are going to try to establish in the courtroom that my own child would rather live with his father than with me, and that is absurd and ridiculous, and it can’t be, and it isn’t true, and you must step into this, Lloyd, and immediately. You are Roy’s father—”
Daddy Will’s hand was on her back. “Leave me alone!” she said. “Lloyd?”
He had hung up.
“Please,” she said to her grandfather, “please do not interfere. You are not capable of understanding what is going on. You are an impotent and helpless man. You always were and you still are, and if it weren’t for you, none of this might have begun in the first place. So please, leave this to me!”
She was dialing the Bassarts’ once again as her grandmother came to the kitchen door. “What is that child doing, Willard? It is the middle of the night.”
