We took the old U.S. 1 rather than the highway, moving through shady Connecticut villages until we reached the crowded suburbs of New York. Wally drove in his usual style, casually, with his arm slung out the open window. He was about twenty pounds overweight, and his reddish hair had thinned considerably since the days he and Marty Harmon and I had first worked together at Simpson and Lowe, but there was still a raw and vulgar boyishness about him, a quality that appeared to attract some people as much as it repelled others. The young secretaries often flirted with him openly, while the older ones, married or looking toward marriage, thought him a pathetic clown.
That day, as we drove through the bright, still summery, air, Wally lit one cigarette after another, often bobbing the lighted tips wildly as he spoke. He related tales of his various jobs, his youth, finally his travels, either alone on business trips, or with his wife and family.
“You don’t get out much, do you, Steve?” he asked at one point. “Out of Old Salsbury, I mean.”
“Not much.”
“When was the last time you were in New York?”
“Years ago. I can hardly remember.”
Wally shrugged, letting the subject drop.
I thought of the night before, the excuse I’d made to Marie about Rebecca’s call.
“Listen, Wally,” I said as we headed through the last stretch of road that led into the city, “if Marie ever mentions anything about my getting a call from you late last night, I …”
Wally’s eyes shot over to me. “You need an alibi, Steve? Someone to cover for you?”
“Well, it’s just that last night …”
“She called, right?” Wally said with a slow smile. “She always does, in the end.”
“Who does?”
“The other woman,” Wally said flatly. “She always says she’ll never call you at home, but she always does.”
“This was a little different,” I said quickly.
Wally looked at me pointedly. “It couldn’t have been too different,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have had to lie about it, would you, old buddy?”
He was right, of course. But only partly right. For though Rebecca was not my lover in any technical sense, she had come to represent one: the flight from life’s heaviness, the possibility of escape.
“So is it love?” Wally asked lightly.
I didn’t answer.
Wally’s smile broadened. He didn’t press the question, but settled instead for a different one. “It’s the woman who came to see you in the office that day, am I right?”
I nodded faintly, reluctantly.
“Whew!” Wally said, pretending to wipe a line of sweat from his forehead. “Hot, hot, hot.”
I watched the road, adding nothing, feeling neither shame nor the absence of shame, but only the disquieting sense that I had cheapened the nature of my own feeling for Rebecca by being unable to explain it.
“Does she live in Old Salsbury?” Wally asked.
“A little ways outside it.”
“Do you see her a lot?”
“Not too often.”
Wally shrugged. “Well, just tell her to ease up on the old home phone, you know?” he said. Then he grinned impishly, one worldly man to another. “Either that, or keep me well-informed in case …” He stopped. “What’s your wife’s name?”
“Marie,” I said.
Wally nodded briskly, then finished his sentence. “In case Marie calls me up sometime to find out where the hell you are.”
“She’d never do that,” I assured him. “She’d never try to track me down.”
“Don’t kid yourself, buddy,” Wally said. “If she starts really chewing at it, she’ll track you down all right.”
I shook my head. “No, she wouldn’t,” I told him. “She’d rather die first.”
Suddenly I felt my eyes grow cool and vacant, and there must have been something in my voice, because I felt the car veer to the right, then come to a noisy halt along the bank of the road. I turned toward Wally. He was staring at me worriedly.
“Whoa, now, buddy,” he said.
I glanced at him quickly, defensively, as if some part of a secret plot had been uncovered.
“You look a little weird, Steve,” Wally added. He reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “You don’t want to let things get out of hand, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“With this woman,” Wally said, “the one’s who’s fucking your mind.” He looked at me pointedly, giving me his best advice. “You don’t want to burn the house down, you know?”
“Burn the house down?”
He smiled indulgently. “The first time a woman comes flying into things, it really jerks your tail into a knot, I know,” he said. “But then, when that one’s gone, another one comes along, and after two or three times like that, you realize that it’s all just fun and games, that there’s no need to get all knotted up about it.”
I shook my head. “It’s not like that with me,” I told him. “It’s not just fun and games.”
He laughed at my boyish innocence. “So, I guess you’re one of these men that has to take it seriously, right?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I had no answer.
Wally watched me soberly. “Listen, Steve, you can play around with this woman, have your fun and all that, but when it’s all over, you need to go home and warm your feet at the same old fire.” He waited for me to answer. “I’m talking about your wife, Steve.”
“Marie,” I said, but my voice was little above a whisper.
Wally gave me a penetrating look. “You have to be careful and not get things mixed up, that’s what I’m saying.” He paused a moment, his eyes watching me closely. “When they get mixed up, bad things can happen,” he added darkly. “Remember Marty Harmon?”
I nodded silently.
“He was one of these men that couldn’t keep things straight,” Wally told me firmly, “and look what happened to him.”
Suicide, of course, had “happened” to Marty, but it had never occurred to me that I was in the least like him, or that I might ever reach such a state of physical and spiritual exhaustion. It wasn’t death I wanted, it was a different life.
The realization that swept over me at that instant was as close as I had ever come to a full understanding of how far I had been swept out to sea, of how deep my discontent actually was.
“I can’t go back,” I muttered weakly.
“To wherever you were before this woman, you mean?” Wally asked. “Of course you can.”
I shook my head slowly.
Wally leaned toward me, his eyes intent, troubled. “Listen, I’m trying to give you some advice, Steve,” he said sharply. “I gave Marty the same advice, and he didn’t take it either.” He stopped, looked at me very severely for a moment, then added, “I mean, you don’t want to end up like …” He stopped again. “I mean, when your father …”
I stared at Wally, stunned not so much that he would make a connection between me and my father, as that he would actually say it to my face.
“I don’t even remember who told me about it,” Wally said, his voice softer now, conciliatory, “and, believe me, I don’t mean …”
“That I could murder my family?” I asked harshly.
“No, no, no, no. I would never have said that, Steve,” Wally answered. “It’s just that when you see a man hurting, well, you see a man who might lose control.” He shrugged. “I just keep remembering Marty, you know? He wasn’t a bad guy. He was just a guy that got it all screwed up.”
“I’m not Marty Harmon,” I said firmly. “And I’m not my father either.”
Wally looked at me quietly, resigned that there would be no point in continuing the conversation. “Okay, Steve,” he said at last, “we’ll just drop it, okay?”
“Yeah, let’s do.”
With that, Wally edged the car back onto the road and drove on silently. We never spoke seriously again, nor did he ever mention my father, my family, or even the unknown woman he has no doubt come to blame for their destruction.
Now, when I remember that afternoon, I think of it as the last chance I had to save us all. I knew that Rebecca was leaving, that her study was very nearly done, that very, very soon my life would go “back to normal,” with nights at home with Peter and Marie, days at work, summer visits to that very lake along whose bank Rebecca’s cottage still rested in a grove of trees.