He was watching her, earnest and wide-eyed, like a child listening to a story. “Are there good things in me, Louise?”
“Too many for me to tell you.”
“That’s funny. I wonder if Ben knows.”
“Ben knows.”
“Is that why he never tells me about them? Because there are too many?”
“Yes.”
“That’s nice, that’s very nice,” he said, nodding. “I like that about the stones, Louise. Ben and I used to turn over a lot of stones when we went hiking in the mountains. We used to find some very interesting things under stones. No birds, naturally, but sow bugs and lizards and Jerusalem crickets... I made a crazy mistake the first time I ever saw a young Jerusalem cricket. It lay there on its back in the ground, flesh-colored and wriggling its — well, they looked like arms and legs. And I thought it was a real human baby and that that was where they came from. When I asked Ben about it he told me the truth, but I didn’t like it. It didn’t seem nearly so pleasant or so natural as the idea of babies growing in the ground like flowers. If I could start all over again, I’d want to start like that, growing up out of the ground like a flower... You’re shivering, Louise. Are you cold?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take you home.”
“That’s a good idea,” she said soberly, as if it had not occurred to her before.
He opened the door for her and she got into the car. The seat covers felt cold and damp like something Charlie had found under a stone.
He walked around the front of the car. The headlights were still on and as he passed them he shielded his entire face with his hands like a man avoiding a pair of eyes too bright and knowing. But as soon as he got behind the wheel of the car and turned on the ignition, he began to relax and she thought, the crisis is over. At least, one part of one crisis is over. That’s all I dare ask right now.
She said, “The engine sounds very smooth, Charlie.”
“It does to me, too, but of course I’m not an expert like Ben. Ben will probably find a dozen things the matter with it.”
“Then we won’t listen to him.”
“I don’t have enough courage not to listen to Ben. In fact, I just don’t have enough courage, period.”
“That’s not true,” she said, thinking, for people with problems, like Charlie, just to go on living from day to day requires more courage than is expected of any ordinary person. “Does the fog bother you, Charlie?”
He gave a brief, bitter laugh. “Which fog, the one out there or the one in here?”
“Out there.”
“I like it. I’d like to lose myself in it forever and that’d be the end of me, and good riddance.”
“It would be the end of me too, Charlie. And I don’t want to end yet. I feel I only began after I met you.”
“Don’t say that. It scares me. It makes me feel responsible for you, for your life. I’m not fit for that. Your life’s too valuable and mine’s not worth a—”
“All lives are valuable.”
“Oh God, I can’t explain to you. You won’t listen.”
“That’s right, I won’t listen.”
“You’re stubborn like Ben.”
“No,” she said, smiling. “I’m stubborn like myself.”
For the next few blocks he didn’t speak. Then, stopping for a red light, he blurted out, “I didn’t mean it to be like this, Louise.”
“Mean what to be like what?”
“Tonight, our date, the car. I was — I was going to come to your house and surprise you with the new car. But I decided I’d better drive around a bit first and get used to the motor so I wouldn’t make any mistakes in front of you. I started out, not thinking of where or why, not thinking of anything. Then I stopped, I just stopped, I don’t even remember if I had a reason. And there I was, in that place I hate. I hate it, Louise, I hate that place.”
“Then you mustn’t go there anymore,” she said calmly. “That makes sense, doesn’t it, Charlie? To avoid what makes you feel miserable?”
“I didn’t go there. I was led, I was driven. Don’t you understand that, Louise?”
“I’m trying.”
She watched the street lights step briskly out of the fog and back into it again like sentries guarding the greatness of the night. She wondered how much she could afford to understand Charlie and whether this was the time to try. Perhaps she might never have a better opportunity than now, with Charlie in a receptive mood, humble, wanting to change himself, and grateful to her for finding him.
She bided her time, saying nothing further until they arrived at her apartment house and Charlie parked the car at the curb. He reached for her hands and held them tightly in his own, against his chest. She almost lost her nerve then, he looked so tired and defenseless. She had to remind herself that it wasn’t enough just to get by, to smooth things over for one day when there were thousands of days ahead of them. I must do it, she thought. I can’t hurt him any more than he’s already hurting himself.
“To me,” she said finally, “Jacaranda Road is like any other. Why do you hate it, Charlie? Why do you call it a bad place?”
“Because it is.”
“The whole street is?”
He let go of her hands as if they’d suddenly become too personal. “I don’t want to dis—”
“Or just one block? Or perhaps one house?”
“Please stop. Please don’t.”
“I have to,” she said. “The bad part, is it the house where the little Oakley girl lives with her mother?”
He kept shaking his head back and forth as though he could shake off the pain like a dog shaking off water. “I don’t — don’t know any Oakley girl.”
“I think you do, Charlie. It would help you, it would help us both, if you’d tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know her,” he repeated. “I’ve seen her, that’s all.”
“You’ve never approached her?”
“No.”
“Or talked to her?”
“No.”
“Then nothing whatever has happened,” she said firmly. “You have no reason to feel so bad, so guilty. Nothing’s happened, Charlie, that’s the important thing. It doesn’t make sense to feel guilty about something that hasn’t even happened.”
“Do you think it’s that simple, Louise?”
“No. But I think it’s where we have to start, dividing things into what’s real and what isn’t. You haven’t harmed anyone. The Oakley girl is safe at home, and I believe that even if I hadn’t found you when I did, she’d still be safe at home.”
He was watching her like a man on trial watching a judge. “You honest to God believe that, Louise?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Tell it to me again. Say it all over again.”
She said it over again and he listened as if he’d been waiting all of his life to hear it. It wasn’t like anything he would have heard from Ben: “Can’t you use your head for a change? You’ve got to avoid situations like that. God knows what might have happened.”
“Nothing happened,” he said. “Nothing happened at all, Louise.”
“I know.”
“Will you — that is, I suppose you’ll be telling Ben about all this business tonight.”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“He wouldn’t understand. Not because he’s dumb or anything, but because I’ve disappointed him so often, he can’t help expecting the worst from me... You won’t tell him where you found me?”