— No, only in good faith. The Code of Civil Practice... if I pleaded a lie... anyhow, Jesus, after all this... I couldn’t... Plead adultery...? No way.
— Yes, Irma said firmly, lovingly. She rose from the bed and came to me.
— Yes, she whispered. — You’ll be able to.
VI
The next evening the plane was late getting into New Orleans. There was a storm line along the Gulf, a series of separate systems, thin monotonous driving rain that fell all over the city and the southern part of the state. The house was cool and humid when I got home, and my head hurt. The house was empty, and that was all right. I had a bowl of soup and turned on something very beautiful. La Stravaganza. As I listened, I thought of that strange medieval custom of putting the mad and the demented on a boat, and keeping it moving from one port to another. A ship full of lunacy and witlessness and rage and subhumanity with no destination in view. Furiosi, the mad were called. What did they call those who came into this world like Irma’s baby, scarce half made up? Those driven beyond the human by the world were given names and a status. But what of those who came damaged from the first? Did even the wisdom of the Church have no name for those who did not scream or curse or style themselves Emperor Frederic II or Gregory come again? What of those with bulbous heads and protruding tongues and those who stared all day at the blazing sun, all night at the cool distant moon? I listened and drank, and opened the door onto the patio so that the music was leavened with the sound of the falling rain.
It was early the next morning when Bert called me at home. He did not bother apologizing. I think he knew that we were both too much in it now. The amenities are for before. Or afterward.
— Listen, you’re back.
— Yes.
— I got Howard straightened up. You want to talk to him?
— What’s he saying?
— Well, he’s cleared up, you see? I got him to shower and drink a pot of coffee. It ain’t what he says is different, but he is himself and he wants to get them papers started. You know? You want to drop by Bo-Peep for a minute?
— No, I said, — but I will. I want to talk to that stupid bastard.
— Ah, Bert said slowly. — Un-huh. Well, fine, counselor. It’s cabin 10. On the street to the right as you come in. Can’t miss it.
I thought somebody ought to take a baseball bat and use it on Howard Bedlow until he came to understand. I was very tight about this thing now, no distance at all. I had thought about other things only once since I had been back. When a little phrase of Vivaldi’s had shimmered like a waterfall, and, still drunk, I had followed that billow down to the Gulf in my mind.
There were fantasies, of course. In one, I took Irma away. We left New Orleans and headed across America toward California, and she was quickly pregnant. The child was whole and healthy and strong, and what had befallen each of us back in Louisiana faded and receded faster and faster, became of smaller and smaller concern until we found ourselves in a place near the Russian River, above the glut and spew of people down below.
Acres apart and miles away, we had a tiny place carved from the natural wood of the hills. We labored under the sun and scarcely talked, and what there was, was ours. She would stand near a forest pool, nude, our child in her arms, and the rest was all forgotten as I watched them there, glistening, with beads of fresh water standing on their skin, the way things ought to be, under the sun.
Then I was driving toward Metairie amidst the dust and squalor of Airline Highway. Filling stations, hamburger joints, cut-rate liquor, tacos, wholesale carpeting, rent-a-car, people driving a little above the speed limit, sealed in air-conditioned cars, others standing at bus stops staring vacantly, some gesticulating in repetitive patterns, trying to be understood. No sign of life anywhere.
The sign above the Bo-Peep Motel pictured a girl in a bonnet with a shepherd’s crook and a vast crinoline skirt. In her lap she held what looked from a distance like a child. Close, you could see that it was intended to be a lamb curled in her arms, eyes closed, hoofs tucked into its fleece, peacefully asleep. Bo-Peep’s face, outlined in neon tubing, had been painted once, but most of the paint had chipped away, and now, during the day, she wore a faded leer of unparalleled perversity, red lips and china-blue eyes flawed by missing chips of color.
Bert sat in a chair outside the door. He was in uniform. His car was parked in front of cabin 10. The door was open, and just inside Howard Bedlow sat in an identical chair, staring out like a prisoner who knows there must be bars even though he cannot see them. He leaned forward, hands hanging down before him, and even from a distance he looked much older than I had remembered him.
Bert walked over as I parked. — How was the trip?
We stared at each other. — A revelation, I said, — He’s sober?
— Oh, yeah. He had a little trouble last night down at the Kit-Kat Klub. Bert pointed down the road to a huddled cinder-block building beside a trailer court.
— They sent for somebody to see to him, and luck had it be me.
Howard looked like an old man up close. His eyes were crusted, squinting up at the weak morning sun, still misted at that hour. His hands hung down between his legs, almost touching the floor, and his forefingers moved involuntarily as if they were tracing a precise and repetitious pattern on the dust of the floor. He looked up at me, licking his lips. He had not shaved in a couple of days, and the light beard had the same tawny reddish color as his hair. He did not seem to recognize me for a moment. Then his expression came together. He looked almost frightened.
— You seen her, huh?
— That’s right.
— What’d she say?
— It’s all right with her.
— What’s all right?
— The divorce. Just the way you want it.
— You mean... like everything I said... all that...?
— She said maybe she owes you that much. For what she did.
— What she did?
— You know...
— What I said, told you?
— Wonder what the hell that is, Bert put in. He walked out into the driveway and stared down the street.
Bedlow shook his head slowly. — She owned up, told you everything?
— There was... a confirmation. Look, I said, — Bert will line you up a lawyer. I’m going to represent Ir... your wife.
— Oh? I was the one come to you...
I took a piece of motel stationery out of my pocket. There was a five-dollar bill held to it with a dark bobby pin. I remembered her hair cascading down, flowing about her face. — You never gave me a retainer. I did not act on your behalf.
I held out the paper and the bill. — This is my retainer. From her. It doesn’t matter. She won’t contest. I’ll talk to your lawyer. It’ll be easy.
— I never asked for nothing to be easy, Bedlow murmured.
— If you want to back off the adultery thing, which is silly, which even if it is true you cannot prove, you can go for rendering life insupportable...
— Life insupportable...? I never asked things be easy...
— Yes you did, I said brutally. — You just didn’t know you did.
I wanted to tell him there was something rotten and weak and collapsed in him. His heart, his guts, his genes. That he had taken a woman better than he had any right to, and that Albert Sidney... but how could I? Who was I to... and then Bert stepped back toward us, his face grim.
— S..., he was saying, — I think they’ve got a fire down to the trailer court. You all reckon we ought to...