Saul turned from the window — it was Saturday morning — and tried to think for a moment of what to do next. Taking a Detroit Tigers cap off the front-hall hat rack, he went outside and with great care put it, from behind and unannounced, on Patsy’s head. “Save you from sunburn,” he said when she turned around and looked at him. “Save you from heat-stroke.”
“I want a motorcycle,” Patsy said. “I’ve been thinking about it. We don’t need another car, but I do want a motorcycle. I always have. Women can ride motorcycles, Saul, don’t deny it. Oh, and another thing.” She dropped one hand into the dirt and balanced herself on it. “This morning I was trying to think of where the Cayuse Indians lived, and I couldn’t remember, and we don’t have an encyclopedia to check. We need that.” She put her hand over her eyes, to shade them. “Saul, why are you looking like that? Are you in a state?”
“No, I’m not in a state.”
“Yes, you are. Damn it, I have to break out sometimes. I’ve just got to. I’ll die here otherwise. A motorcycle would do wonders for both of us, Saul. A small one, not one of those hogs. Do you like my petunias? Should I have some purple over there? Maybe this is too much red and white. What would you think of some dianthus right there?” She pointed with her trowel. “Or maybe some sweet william?”
“Sure, sure.” He didn’t know what either variety looked like. Flowers seemed so irrelevant to everything.
“Where did the Cayuse Indians live, Saul?”
“Oregon, I think.”
“What do you think about a motorcycle? For little trips into town. For those small occasions when I have to get away from you.”
“Sounds okay to me. But they aren’t exactly safe, you know. People get killed on motorcycles.”
“Those people aren’t careful. I’ll be careful. I’ll wear a helmet. I just want to do it. Imagine a girl — me — on one of those machines. Makes you feel good, doesn’t it? A motorcycle girl in Michigan. The car’s silly for small trips. Besides, I want to visit my friends in town.”
It was true: Patsy already had many friends around Five Oaks, friends that Saul didn’t have. She could be vain about it, her ability to adapt to anything — after all, she was married to him. Now she stood up, dropped her trowel, and put her weight on Saul’s shoes and leaned herself into him. The visor of her cap bumped into his forehead. But she embraced him for only a moment. There wouldn’t be any big, long love thing, not just now. “Want to help, Saul? Give me a hand putting the rest of these flowers in?”
“Not right now, Patsy, I don’t think so.”
“What’s the matter? You’re looking peckish.”
“Peckish? I don’t know.”
“You are in a state.”
“I guess I might be.”
“What is it this time? Our recent brush with death? The McPhees? My incredible impatience about getting another job?”
“What about the McPhees?” he asked. She had probably guessed.
“Well, they were so cute, the two of them. So sweet. And so young, too. Plus their baby. And I know you, Saul, and I know what you thought. You thought: What have these two got that I don’t have?”
She had guessed. She usually did. It was unfair. He stepped backward. “Yes,” he said, “you’re right. What do they have? And why don’t I have it? I’m happy with you, but I—”
“Jesus. You can’t be like them because you can’t, Saul. You fret. That’s your hobby. It’s how you stay occupied. You’ve heard about spots? About how a person can’t change them? Well, I like your spots. I like how you’re a professional worrier. And you always know about things like the Cayuse Indians. I’m not like that. And I don’t want to be married to somebody like me. I’d put myself to sleep. But you’re perfect. You’re an early-warning system. You bark and growl at life. You’re my dog. You do see that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
After he had kissed her and returned to the house, he took the matchbook he had pocketed at the McPhees’ up to his study. At his desk, with a pair of scissors, he cut off the flap of the matches, filled in his name and address, and wrote a check for six dollars to the Wisdom Foundation, located at a post office box number in Cincinnati, Ohio. Just to make sure, he enclosed a letter.
Dear Sirs,
Enclosed please find a check for six dollars for your SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE. Also included is my name and address, written on the back of this book of matches. You will also find them typed at the bottom of this letter. Thank you. I look forward, very much, to reading the secrets.
Sincerely,
Saul Bernstein
He examined the letter, wondering if the last sentence might sound too skeptical, too. . something. But he decided to leave it there. He took the letter, carefully stamped — he put commemorative stamps on all his important mail — out to the mailbox and lifted the little red flag.
He thought: I am no longer a serious person. My great-grandfather read the Torah, my grandfather read Spinoza and Heine and books on immunology, and here I am, writing off for this.
On his trips into town, Saul began to take the long route past the McPhees’ house, slowing down when he was close to their yard. Each time that he found himself within a mile of their farm, he felt his stomach knotting up in anxiety and sick curiosity. He recognized himself twisting in the coils of something like envy, yet not envy exactly, but a more biblical emotion, harder to define, like covetousness. Driving past in the evenings, he occasionally saw them outside, Emory mowing or clipping, their baby strapped on his back, Anne up on a ladder doing something to the windows, or out in the garden like Patsy, planting. They could have been anybody, except that, for Saul, they gave off a disturbing aura of unreflective happiness, which meant that they could have been anybody except Saul.
The road was sufficiently far away from their house and from the shed flaking with paint so that they wouldn’t see him. His car was just another car unless you looked closely and saw the dented roof and Saul inside it. But on a particular Friday, in early June, several hours after work, he drove past their property and spied Emory in the front yard, in the gold twilight, pushing his wife, sitting in the swing. Emory, the ex — football player, had on his face a solemnly contented expression. The baby blithered in a stroller close by. His wife was in a white T-shirt and jeans, and Emory himself wore jeans but no shirt. She was probably proud of her breasts and he was probably proud of his shoulders. Anne held on to the ropes of the swing. Her hair flew up as she rose, and Saul, who took this all in in a few seconds, could hear her cries of delight from his car. Taking his surreptitious glances, he almost drove off the road again. Of course they were children, he knew that, but their youth wasn’t the problem as such. No: they gave off a terrible steady-state glow. They had the blank moronic shimmer of angels. They were glistering. It was intolerable.
They lived smack in the middle of reality and never gave it a minute’s thought. They’d never felt like actors. They’d never been sick with knowingness. The long tunnel of their thoughts had never swallowed them. They’d never had sleepless nights, the urgent, wordless, unexplainable wrestling matches with the shadowy bands of soul-thieves. They were just a couple of Midwesterners.