I drove up to the edge of the parking lot where there was a pay phone. I called my folks and tried to sound chatty. Then I said, calmly as I could, “I told Ruthie I’d help her on this history test she’s got next week.”
“Oh?” Mom said. “That’s strange. I didn’t know you helped her with her tests.”
I laughed. “You mean, she’s the smart one so why would she want help from me?”
“Well-” Mom said. And laughed, too.
“Is she around, Mom?”
“No. She called and said she was staying at Gloria Spellman’s tonight. Said they’d both be up studying all night.”
It wasn’t true. I wondered where Ruthie really was tonight. I got scared. “Well, tell her I’ll call her in the morning.”
“I’ll tell her, honey.”
“And say hi to Dad.”
“I will. Love you, honey.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
I drove downtown. The girl-cruise was in full flower. Cars of every description moved slowly along Central Avenue where the theaters and pizza shops and hamburger joints were located-where the girls were located. Up and down, down and up, the cars drove, most of the boys resorting to grins and gawks and graceless waves. That was how the uncool boys handled it, the ones in Dad’s car or driving the 1948 Kaiser or the
Henry or an old dog of a Dodge that was rusting into death even while you watched. The kids fit their cars. In my day, I’d maneuvered a
Studebaker with bad steering problems up and down Central Avenue. I had science fiction magazines and Gold Medal paperbacks stacked in the backseat and the only radio station I could get played Lawrence Welk every third song.
I’d suffered from pimples, wet dreams, athlete’s foot and a secret terror that I’d never really be a man. Women only thought you were cool if you thought you were cool-and I knew I wasn’t cool.
Things didn’t look as if they’d changed much.
Three exquisite young blondes were flirting with some guy in a leather jacket sitting inside a cherry-red street rod. There was only room for two inside. He was probably deciding which of the lucky girls he was going to let inside. He was doing this while all the losers (those carrying on in my tradition) drove their clunk-mobiles up and down the street.
I found another outdoor phone. But realized I didn’t have the change for a long-. tance call.
I looked up and down the street. The nearest place where I could get change was the Rexall that Wes owned. At first I ruled it out but then decided he wouldn’t be there. He’d be home sleeping it off. Or at Mary’s letting her help him sober up.
Jim the handyman was the only customer in the pharmacy when I walked up to the counter. A teenaged girl was working tonight. She handed Jim’s package over and said, “Here you go, Jim. Your animals sure are lucky, the way you take care of them.” She smiled when she said it.
“Animals are just like humans to me,” he said.
“They keep me company since my wife died.”
“You must have quite a few,” the girl smiled.
When Jim saw me, he said, “Hey, hi, McCain. Tell your folks I’ll have that roofing estimate for them by Tuesday.”
I nodded. “You’ll wait ‘til better weather to put it on, won’t you?”
He laughed. “I sure will.”
I asked the girl for change for a five and she gave it to me. Just as I was turning to leave, I heard noise from the back of the store, boxes tumbling down in a crash. Then a drunken man’s voice said, “You think I want you anymore after you’ve treated me this way? You get the hell away from me and you stay away from me. You understand that? You stay away from me.”
The girl and I stared back there for a long moment.
Then Mary Travers appeared, walking quickly out from between the heavy green curtains that concealed the stockroom.
She walked very quickly to the front of the store.
She kept her eyes straight ahead, mortified. She was out the front door in moments.
I went out after her. She was already halfway down the block. I caught up with her, sliding on an icy patch the last few steps. Ever the hot dog, I am. I grabbed her by the sleeve as she kept on walking.
We didn’t say anything. Just looked at each other. And then I fell into step, walking.
The night was cold enough to numb your nose. We walked by the town square. It looked cold and lonely. The bandstand had smashed snowballs frozen to its sides. The guy on the Civil War memorial had a real bad case of snow dandruff on his shoulders.
She said, “I really hurt him.”
“I guess you probably did.”
“And maybe I love him.”
“Maybe you do.”
For the first time since we’d started walking, she looked at me. “I don’t think he ever got drunk before.”
“He isn’t any better at it than I am.”
“No, you’re the worst, McCain.”
“Thanks.”
We walked some more. “Maybe I’m so used to thinking that I’m in love with you-well, maybe I’m not anymore and I don’t even realize it.” She sounded as if she was trying to solve a particularly difficult math problem. “On the other hand, maybe that’s true for you, too.”
“Me?”
“Uh-huh. With Pamela.”
“Oh.”
“That you don’t really love her anymore, you just think you do.”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, hell, McCain, I just never thought it’d be this hard when we were growing up. When you’re a little kid, it looks like adults know everything.”
“Yeah.”
We were on a block of taverns now. Every open door treated us to a different form of music-country-western, rock and roll, pop. You could smell beer and smoke. It was payday money being spent on Friday nights. And spending payday money meant not buying groceries and not buying shoes for the kids and breaking your promise again and again to your wife. You work as a public defender for a year, as I did, you hear about payday money a lot.
“I’m going to marry him, McCain.”
“I just heard him tell you he never wanted to see you again.”
“He’s just drunk and hurt.”
“Yeah, I s’pose.”
“How’s that going to make you feel? If I tell him I’m going to marry him?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Will you try and stop me?”
“No.”
“That’s what I figured you’d say.”
“Then you’re going to do it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I am.”
And then she broke away, running down a dark street, her breath plumes of silver, her near-frail body disappearing in the gathering shadows on the dark side of the streetlight.
“Hey, wait up, Mary.”
“Just go to hell, McCain. Just go straight to hell.”
And then I couldn’t see her anymore, it was almost eerie the way she vanished, I couldn’t see her or hear her, she was just gone.
I found a phone booth and got a long-. tance operator. It got complicated. I didn’t know the number so she first had to call information. By the time we made a connection, my nose was frozen and I really had to piss.
“I’ll be damned,” a smooth whiskey-voiced man said. He was my age, but sounded ten years older and twenty years smarter.
His name was Wyatt Cooper and we’d graduated law school together. He was a Republican, but I liked him anyway.
“You got a few minutes to talk?” We hadn’t spoken in six months but the one thing I liked about Wyatt was you could count on him when you were in a spot.
“Well, I’ve got a friend here. But I suppose she could spare me for a few minutes.”