100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

by Lorrie Moore

  Then, as Ralph watched the other men play their cards, the dealer said gently, still not looking at him, “Low ball or five card. Table stakes, five dollar limit on raises.”

  Ralph nodded, and when the hand was finished he bought fifteen dollars’ worth of blue chips.

  He watched the cards as they flashed around the table, picked up his as he’d seen the tall, white-haired man do; sliding one card under the corner of another as each card fell face down in front of him. He raised his eyes once and looked at the expressionless faces of the others. He wondered if it’d ever happened to any of them. In half an hour he had won two hands and without counting the small pile of chips in front of him, he thought he must still have fifteen or even twenty dollars.

  Benny brought a tray of drinks, and Ralph paid for his with a chip. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his face, aware how tired he was. But he felt better for some reason. He had come a long way since that evening. But it was only . . . a few hours ago. And had he really come so far? Was anything different, or anything resolved?

  “You in or out?” the fat man asked. “Clyde, what’s the bet, for Christ’s sake?” he said to the dealer.

  “Three dollars.”

  “In,” Ralph said. “I’m in.” He put three chips into the pot. “I have to be going though . . . another hand or so.”

  The dealer looked up and then back at his cards.

  The Italian said: “Stick around. You really want some action we can go to my place when we finish here.”

  “No, that’s all right. Enough action tonight . . . I just have to be going pretty soon.” He shifted in the chair, glanced at their faces, and then fixed upon a small green plaque on the wall behind the table. “You know,” he said, “I just found out tonight. My wife, my wife played around with another guy two years ago. Can you imagine?” He cleared his throat.

  One of the men snickered; the Italian. The fat man said, “You can’t trust ’em, that’s all. Women are no damn good!”

  No one else said anything; the tall, white-haired man laid down his cards and lit his cigar that had gone out. He stared at Ralph as he puffed, then shook out the match and picked up his cards.

  The dealer looked up again, resting his open hands palms-up on the table. “You work here in town?” he said to Ralph. “I haven’t seen you around.”

  “I live here. I, I just haven’t gotten around much.” He felt drained, oddly relaxed.

  “We playing or not?” the fat man said. “Clyde?”

  “Hold your shirt,” the dealer said.

  “For Christ’s sake,” the white-haired man said quietly, holding onto each word, “I’ve never seen such cards.”

  “I’m in three dollars,” the fat man said. “Who’s going to stay?”

  Ralph couldn’t remember his hole card. His neck was stiff, and he fought against the desire to close his eyes. He’d never been so tired. All the joints and bones and muscles in his body seemed to radiate and call to his attention. He looked at his card; a seven of clubs. His next card, face-up, was an ace. He started to drop out. He edged in his chair, picked up his glass but it was empty.

  “Benny!” the dealer said sharply.

  His next card was a king. The betting went up to the five dollar limit. More royalty; the Queen of Diamonds. He looked once more at his hole card to see if he might somehow have been mistaken: the seven of clubs.

  Benny came back with another tray of drinks and said, “They’re closing in ten minutes, Clyde.”

  The next card, the Jack of Spades, fell on top of Ralph’s queen. Ralph stared. The white-haired man turned over his cards. For the first time the dealer gazed straight into Ralph’s eyes, and Ralph felt his toes pull back in his shoes as the man’s eyes pierced through to, what seemed to Ralph, his craven heart.

  “I’ll bet two dollars to see it,” the fat man said.

  A shiver traced up and down Ralph’s spine. He hesitated, and then, in a grand gesture, called, and recklessly raised five dollars, his last chips.

  The tall, white-haired man edged his chair closer to the table.

  The dealer had a pair of eights showing. Still looking at Ralph, he picked ten chips off one of the stacks in front of him. He spread them in two groups of five near the pile at the center of the table.

  “Call.”

  The Italian hesitated, and then swallowed and turned over his cards. He looked at the dealer’s cards, and then he looked at Ralph’s.

  The fat man smacked his cards down and glared at Ralph.

  All of them watched as Ralph turned over his card and lurched up from the table.

  Outside, in the alley, he took out his wallet again, let his fingers number the bills he had left: two dollars, and some change in his pocket. Enough for something to eat. Ham and eggs, perhaps. But he wasn’t hungry. He leaned back against the damp brick wall of the building, trying to think. A car turned into the alley, stopped, and backed out again. He started walking. He went past the front of the Oyster House again, going back the way he’d come. He stayed close to the buildings, out of the way of the loud groups of men and women streaming up and down the sidewalk. He heard a woman in a long coat say to the man she was with, “It isn’t that way at all, Bruce. You don’t understand.”

  He stopped when he came to the liquor store. Inside he moved up to the counter and stared at the long, orderly rows of bottles. He bought a half-pint of rum and some more cigarettes. The palm trees on the label of the bottle, the large drooping fronds with the lagoon in the background, had caught his eye. The clerk, a thin, bald man wearing suspenders, put the rum in a paper sack without a word and rang up the sale. Ralph could feel the man’s eyes on him as he stood in front of the magazine rack, swaying a little and looking at the covers. Once he glanced up in the mirror over his head and caught the man staring at him from behind the counter; his arms were folded over his chest and his bald head gleamed in the reflected light. Finally the man turned off one of the lights in the back of the store and said, “Closing it up, buddy.”

  Outside again, Ralph turned around once and started down another street, toward the pier; he thought he’d like to see the water with the lights reflected on it. He wondered how far he would drop tonight before he began to level off. He opened the sack as he walked, broke the seal on the little bottle, and stopped in a doorway to take a long drink. He could hardly taste it. He crossed some old streetcar tracks and turned onto another, darker street. He could already hear the waves splashing under the pier.

  As he came up to the front of a dark, wooden building, he heard someone move in the doorway. A heavy Negro in a leather jacket stepped out in front of him and said, “Just a minute there, man. Where you think you’re goin’?”

  As Ralph tried to move around him, frightened, the man said, “Christ, man, that’s my feet you’re steppin’ on!”

  Before he could move away the Negro hit him hard in the stomach, and when Ralph groaned and bent over, the man hit him in the nose with his open hand, knocking him back against the wall where he sat down in a rush of pain and dizziness. He had one leg turned under, trying to raise himself up, when the Negro slapped him on the cheek and knocked him sprawling onto the pavement. He was aware of a hand slipping into his pants-pocket over the hip, felt his wallet slide out. He groaned and tried to sit up again as the man neatly stripped his watch over his hand. He kicked the wet sack of broken glass, and then sprinted down the street.

  Ralph got his legs under him again. As if from a great distance he heard someone yell, “There’s a man hurt over here!” and he struggled up to his feet. Then he heard someone running toward him over the pavement, and a car pulled up to the curb, a car door slammed. He wanted to say, It’s all right, please, it’s all right, as a man came up to him and stopped a few feet away, watching. But the words seemed to ball in his throat and something like a gasp escaped his lips. He tried to draw a breath and the air piled up in his throat again, as if there were an obstruction in the passage; and then
the noise broke even louder through his nose and mouth. He leaned his shoulder against the doorway and wept. In the few seconds he stood there, shaking, his mind seemed to empty out, and a vast sense of wonderment flowed through him as he thought again of Marian, why she had betrayed him. Then, as a policeman with a big flashlight walked over to him, he brought himself up with a shudder and became silent.

  3.

  Birds darted overhead in the graying mist. He still couldn’t see them, but he could hear their sharp jueet-jueet. He stopped and looked up, kept his eyes fixed in one place; then he saw them, no larger than his hand, dozens of them, wheeling and darting just under the heavy overcast. He wondered if they were seabirds, birds that only came in off the ocean this time of morning. He’d never seen any birds around Eureka in the winter except now and then a big, lumbering seagull. He remembered once, a long time ago, walking into an old abandoned house—the Marshall place, near Uncle Jack’s in Springfield, Oregon—how the sparrows kept flying in and out of the broken windows, flying around the rafters where they had their nests, and then flying out the windows again, trying to lead him away.

  It was getting light. The overcast seemed to be lifting and was turning light-gray with patches of white clouds showing through here and there. The street was black with the mist that was still falling, and he had to be careful not to step on the snails that trailed across the damp sidewalk.

  A car with its lights on slowed down as it went past, but he didn’t look up. Another car passed. In a minute, another. He looked: four men, two in front, two in the back. One of the men in the back seat, wearing a hat, turned around and looked at him through the back window. Mill workers. The first shift of plywood mill workers going to work at Georgia-Pacific. It was Monday morning. He turned the corner, walked past Blake’s; dark, the Venetian blinds pulled over the windows and two empty beer bottles someone had left standing like sentinels beside the door. It was cold, and he walked slowly, crossing his arms now and then and rubbing his shoulders.

  He’d refused the policeman’s offer of a ride home. He couldn’t think of a more shabby ending to the night than riding home in the early morning in a black and white police car. After the doctor at Redwood Memorial Hospital had examined him, felt around over his neck with his fingers while Ralph had sat with his eyes closed, the doctor had made two X-rays and then put Merthiolate and a small bandage on his cheek. Then the policemen had taken him to the station where for two hours he’d had to look at photographs in large manila folders of Negro men. Finally, he had told the officer, “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid everyone looks pretty much alike right now.” The man had shrugged, closed the folder. “They come and go,” he’d said, staring at Ralph. “Sometimes it’s hard to nail them on the right charge due to lack of proper identification. If we bring in some suspects we’ll have you back here to help identify.” He stared at Ralph a minute longer, then nodded curtly.

  He came up the street to his house. He could see his front porch light on, but the rest of the house was dark. He crossed the lawn and went around to the back. He turned the knob, and the door opened quietly. He stepped onto the porch and shut the door. He waited a moment, then opened the kitchen door.

  The house was quiet. There was the tall stool beside the draining board. There was the table where they’d sat. How long ago? He remembered he’d just gotten up off the couch, where he’d been working, and come into the kitchen and sat down . . . He looked at the clock over the stove: 7:00 A.M. He could see the dining room table with the lace cloth, the heavy glass centerpiece of red flamingos, their wings opened. The draperies behind the table were open. Had she stood at that window watching for him? He moved over to the door and stepped onto the living room carpet. Her coat was thrown over the couch, and in the pale light he could make out a large ashtray full of her cork cigarette ends on one of the cushions. He noticed the phone directory open on the coffee table as he went by. He stopped at the partially open door to their bedroom. For an instant he resisted the impulse to look in on her, and then with his finger he pushed open the door a few inches. She was sleeping, her head off the pillow, turned toward the wall, and her hair black against the sheet. The covers were bunched around her shoulders and had pulled up from the foot of the bed. She was on her side, her secret body slightly bent at the hips, her thighs closed together protectively. He stared for a minute. What, after all, should he do? Pack his things, now, and leave? Go to a hotel room until he can make other arrangements? Sleep on the extra bed in the little storage room upstairs? How should a man act, given the circumstances? The things that had been said last night. There was no undoing that—nor the other. There was no going back, but what course was he to follow now?

  In the kitchen he laid his head down on his arms over the table. How should a man act? How should a man act? It kept repeating itself. Not just now, in this situation, for today and tomorrow, but every day on this earth. He felt suddenly there was an answer, that he somehow held the answer himself and that it was very nearly out if only he could think about it a little longer. Then he heard Robert and Dorothea stirring. He sat up slowly and tried to smile as they came into the kitchen.

  “Daddy, daddy,” they both said, running over to him in their pajamas.

  “Tell us a story, daddy,” Robert said, getting onto his lap.

  “He can’t tell us a story now,” Dorothea said. “It’s too early in the morning, isn’t it, daddy?”

  “What’s that on your face, daddy?” Robert said, pointing at the bandage.

  “Let me see!” Dorothea said. “Let me see, daddy.”

  “Poor daddy,” Robert said.

  “What did you do to your face, daddy?”

  “It’s nothing,” Ralph said. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Here, get down, Robert, I hear your mother.”

  Ralph stepped into the bathroom and locked the door.

  “Is your father here?” he heard Marian ask the children. “Where is he, in the bathroom? Ralph?”

  “Mama, mama!” Dorothea exclaimed. “Daddy has a big, big bandage on his face!”

  “Ralph,” she turned the knob. “Ralph, let me in, please, darling. Ralph? Please let me in, darling, I want to see you. Ralph? Please?”

  “Go away, Marian. Just let me alone a while, all right?”

  “Please, Ralph, open the door for a minute, darling. I just want to see you, Ralph. Ralph? The children said you were hurt. What’s wrong, darling? . . . Ralph?”

  “Will you please be quiet, please?”

  She waited at the door for a minute, turned the knob again, and then he could hear her moving around the kitchen, getting the children breakfast, trying to answer their questions.

  He looked at himself in the mirror, then pulled off the bandage and tried gently with warm water and a cloth to wipe off some of the red stain. In a minute or two he gave it up. He turned away from the mirror and sat down heavily on the edge of the bathtub, began to unlace his shoes. No cowardly Aegisthus waiting for him here, no Clytemnestra. He sat there with a shoe in his hand and looked at the white, streamlined clipper ships making their way across the pale blue of the plastic shower curtain. He unbuttoned his shirt, leaned over the bathtub with a sigh, and dropped in the plug. He opened the hot water handle, and the steam rose.

  As he stood naked a minute on the smooth tile before getting into the water, he gathered in his fingers the slack flesh over his ribs, looked at himself again in the clouded mirror. He started when Marian called his name.

  “Ralph. The children are in their room playing . . . I called Von Williams and said you wouldn’t be in today, and I’m going to stay home.” She waited and then said, “I have a nice breakfast on the stove for you, darling, when you’re through with your bath . . . Ralph?”

  “It’s all right, Marian. I’m not hungry.”

  “Ralph . . . Come out, darling.”

  He stayed in the bathroom until he heard her upstairs over the bathroom in the children’s room. She was telling them: settle down and get dresse
d; didn’t they want to play with Warren and Jeannie?

  He went through the house and into the bedroom where he shut the door. He looked at the bed before he crawled in. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. How should a man act? It had assumed immense importance in his mind, was far more crucial and requiring of an answer than the other thing, the event two years ago . . . He remembered he’d just gotten up off the couch in the living room where he’d been working, and come into the kitchen and sat down . . . The light ornament in the ceiling began to sway. He snapped open his eyes and turned onto his side as Marian came into the room.

  She took off her robe and sat down on the edge of the bed. She put her hand under the covers and began gently stroking the lower part of his back. “Ralph,” she murmured.

  He tensed at her cold fingers, and then, gradually, he relaxed. He imagined he was floating on his back in the heavy, milky water of Juniper Lake, where he’d spent one summer years ago, and someone was calling to him, Come in, Ralph, Come in. But he kept on floating and didn’t answer, and the soft rising waves laved his body.

  He woke again as her hand moved over his hip. Then it traced his groin before flattening itself against his stomach. She was in bed now, pressing the length of her body against his and moving gently back and forth with him. He waited a minute, and then he turned to her and their eyes met.

  Her eyes were filled and seemed to contain layer upon layer of shimmering color and reflection, thicker and more opaque farther in, and almost transparent at the lustrous surface. Then, as he gazed even deeper, he glimpsed in first one pupil and then the other, the cameo-like, perfect reflection of his own strange and familiar face. He continued to stare, marveling at the changes he dimly felt taking place inside him.

  1969

  JOYCE CAROL OATES

  By the River

  from December

  JOYCE CAROL OATES was born in Lockport, New York, in 1938 and was raised on her parents’ farm. She was fourteen when her grandmother gave her her first typewriter. Oates went on a scholarship to Syracuse University, where she majored in English.