“Nobody’s trying to get her away from you.”
“If I catch her ass down that Fluke’s place—”
“Why don’t you listen—”
“I’m listening all right. We’re talking about whether that check of yours is going to bounce.”
“Do you understand about this child?”
“Oh yeah, I know. She’s my responsibility and she’s my legal problem. Don’t worry, Wallace, I got some advice about that too. I told you what I’d do if you keep bugging me now—”
“You won’t understand.”
“It’s you,” Bigoness said maliciously, “won’t understand.”
“Bigoness — you’re at home tonight?”
“I told you, I got business—”
“You stay where you are. Don’t you move!”
He took what was his from the closet. His watch showed that the movie had just begun. No one would ever know; he would set it right; the knowledge of how close he had pushed them all to failure would be his own — as would the knowledge of his final success. That was fair. He carried Rachel into her bedroom and dressed her in a red snowsuit and a pair of white shoes; he dressed her right over her woolen pajamas. He lined a wicker laundry basket that he found in the kitchen with a double thickness of blanket; then he wrapped the child in still another blanket and carried her in the basket down the stairs of the old building.
Up till now he had stopped before the end. Now with the basket beside him on the front seat, he started the car. Someone was to get what he wanted! Someone was to be satisfied! Something was to be completed!
Finish! Go all the way!
He began to tremble. But why? What had he to bring to Bigoness’s attention but the very simplest facts of life? Bigoness would have to see the child to believe it, to stop bargaining over it. A life! A life! What was there left to appeal to, but the man’s human feelings?
He tucked Rachel securely in the basket. Then with the motor rocking beneath him, he picked her up and held her to him. And it was not out of pity or love that he found himself clutching her; the mystery of her circumstances was not what was weighing him down. He clutched her to himself as though she were himself. It was as though the child embraced the man, not the man the child. He ground his teeth, locked his arms: if only he could be as convinced as he was determined; if only he could tell which he was being, prudent, imprudent, brave, sentimental … A bleeding heart, a cold heart, a soft heart, a hard, a cautious … which? Oh if he could only break down and give in and weep. But there was no comfort for him in tears, or in reason. He had passed beyond what he had taken for the normal round of life, beyond what had been kept normal by fortune and by strategy. Tears would only roll off the shell of him. And every reason had its mate. Whichever way he turned, there was a kind of horror.
Seven. Letting Go
1
The waiter boned her fish for her, then left them to themselves. Libby said, “I don’t feel very much like a mother tonight.”
“And what do you feel like instead?”
“A — the girl in The Tempest. What’s her name? I don’t mean to be too precious, but since you’re asking …” she said, preciously.
“Prospero’s daughter—” But he could not give undivided attention to the task of remembering the daughter’s name. His eyes, unable to come to rest on the face opposite his own, kept moving off to a table very near the wooden booth in which they sat. A woman in the party of four dining only a few feet away struck him as familiar; yet neither she nor her companions looked like anyone he might know. She had blond hair and a pointed chin, and a topaz pin clipped to her dark suit. Though she seemed to be engaged by every syllable spoken at her table, she had the air of someone who knows she is being looked at.
But he did not care to have the air of someone who is staring, and he tried to stop. Because of what this evening meant to Libby, because he had promised before they had left the house (promised himself, while Gabe was shown the bottles, the warming pan, the baby powder) that he would do nothing to spoil these few hours, he pretended to think of the name of Shakespeare’s heroine, all the while trying to give a name to the woman at the next table. Eventually she looked over and their eyes met. He swung rapidly back to Libby — catching her eye with equal embarrassment. It was not, however, the same embarrassment that had been settling and resettling over their table since they had entered the restaurant; it was not shared.
“—easier than imagining yourself Hamlet, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Or maybe that’s because I’m a woman.”
“I don’t know,” he said, trying to get the drift of her words.
“I wonder if it’s not a theory at all, but a failure of my own mind. That’s always a possibility.”
“You’re too hard on that mind of yours.”
“Oh, darling Paul, I know what I am. Well — truly—you can probably understand what it’s like to be Desdemona, can’t you, as well as Othello?”
“That question has a slight drunken lilt to it.”
“Are these silly questions?”
“Well, no.”
But his response had apparently not been quick enough, gentle enough, loving enough, reassuring enough; apparently not, for her brow was instantly furrowed. “I think,” he said, gentle, loving, reassuring, “I missed what you started to say at the beginning …”
“Aren’t you listening?” she asked, directly.
“I am.”
“I said it’s easier to identify with Shakespeare’s — Are you really at all interested in this?”
“Yes.” He had no right to disappoint her tonight. “We used to talk about Shakespeare all the time.”
“I know.”
He realized that his remark had done nothing to reassure her about the present. Without exactly feeling shame, he felt disloyal to their earliest days. Then he did not even have to glance over: he knew who the woman with the topaz pin was. He remembered the name of the Shakespearean heroine too, but did not choose to interrupt again whatever it was that Libby wanted to get on to.
“Go ahead — I’m sorry,” he said.
“I didn’t think — I thought I was boring—”
“I was thinking about my mother’s coming. Excuse me. Go on … do.”
Out of respect for his troubles, she looked apologetic; he knew what would make her forgiving. Yes, he had learned how to move her about as he wanted. “It’s not important,” she was saying. “Now that I consider it — turn upon it,” she said, smiling, bubbling up instantly, “the broad beam of my intelligence, I don’t even think it holds water. The fact is you can’t really believe in Ophelia either. I was being morbidly romantic. I was being high.”
“You said you could identify with Ophelia?”
“I said one could. Then”—she flushed—“I said I could. Easier than Hamlet, I meant though, whom I find incredible. Is this heresy?”
“No—”
“Miranda!”
“Oh — yes.”
“Prospero’s daughter.”
“Oh yes, that’s it.”
“Oh brave new world — isn’t that The Tempest too?”
“I think so.”
“Isn’t that funny …” She went back to eating. “Though Miranda is quite incredible too. If it’s fair to Shakespeare to talk about credibility in terms of that play — How are your frog’s legs?”
“Fine. How is the sole?”