“I’ll bet he went with plenty.”
“Maybe he did, but if he did he told the priest, not her, and if he did it was because he couldn’t help it and he was sorry and repented of it. He didn’t do it out of curiosity, or from barnyard pride, or to tell his wife what a great man he was. If he did it was because my mother was away with us kids for the summer, and he was out with the boys and got drunk. He was a man.”
“You ought to be a writer and write about him.”
“I’d be a better writer than you. And John MacWalsey is a good man. That’s what you’re not. You couldn’t be. No matter what your politics or your religion.”
“I haven’t any religion.”
“Neither have I. But I had one once and I’m going to have one again. And you won’t be there to take it away. Like you’ve taken away everything else.”
“No.”
“No. You can be in bed with some rich woman like Helène Bradley. How did she like you? Did she think you were wonderful?”
Looking at her sad, angry face, pretty with crying, the lips swollen freshly like something after rain, her curly dark hair wild about her face, Richard Gordon gave her up, then, finally:
“And you don’t love me anymore?”
“I hate the word even.”
“All right,” he said, and slapped her hard and suddenly across the face.
She cried now from actual pain, not anger, her face down on the table.
“You didn’t need to do that,” she said.
“Oh, yes, I did,” he said. “You know an awful lot, but you don’t know how much I needed to do that.”
That afternoon she had not seen him as the door opened. She had not seen anything but the white ceiling with its cake-frosting modeling of cupids, doves and scroll work that the light from the open door suddenly made clear.
Richard Gordon had turned his head and seen him, standing heavy and bearded in the doorway.
“Don’t stop,” Helène had said. “Please don’t stop.” Her bright hair was spread over the pillow.
But Richard Gordon had stopped and his head was still turned, staring.
“Don’t mind him. Don’t mind anything. Don’t you see you can’t stop now?” the woman had said in desperate urgency.
The bearded man had closed the door softly. He was smiling.
“What’s the matter, darling?” Helène Bradley had asked, now in the darkness again.
“I must go.”
“Don’t you see you can’t go?”
“That man—”
“That’s only Tommy,” Helène had said. “He knows all about these things. Don’t mind him. Come on, darling. Please do.”
“I can’t.”
“You must,” Helène had said. He could feel her shaking, and her head on his shoulder was trembling. “My God, don’t you know anything? Haven’t you any regard for a woman?”
“I have to go,” said Richard Gordon.
In the darkness he had felt the slap across his face that lighted flashes of light in his eyeballs. Then there was another slap. Across his mouth this time.
“So that’s the kind of man you are,” she had said to him. “I thought you were a man of the world. Get out of here.”
That was this afternoon. That was how it had finished at the Bradleys’.
Now his wife sat with her head forward on her hands that rested on the table and neither of them said anything. Richard Gordon could hear the clock ticking and he felt as hollow as the room was quiet. After a while his wife said without looking at him: “I’m sorry it happened. But you see it’s over, don’t you?”
“Yes, if that’s the way it’s been.”
“It hasn’t been all like that, but for a long time it’s been that way.”
“I’m sorry I slapped you.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. That hasn’t anything to do with it. That was just a way to say good-bye.”
“Don’t.”
“I’ll have to get out,” she said very tiredly. “I’ll have to take the big suitcase, I’m afraid.”
“Do it in the morning,” he said. “You can do everything in the morning.”
“I’d rather do it now, Dick, and it would be easier. But I’m so tired. It’s made me awfully tired and given me a headache.”
“You do whatever you want.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “I wish it wouldn’t have happened. But it’s happened. I’ll try to fix everything up for you. You’ll need somebody to look after you. If I hadn’t of said some of that, or if you hadn’t hit me, maybe we could have fixed it up again.”
“No, it was over before that.”
“I’m so sorry for you, Dick.”
“Don’t you be sorry for me or I’ll slap you again.”
“I guess I’d feel better if you slapped me,” she said. “I am sorry for you. Oh, I am.”
“Go to hell.”
“I’m sorry I said it about you not being good in bed. I don’t know anything about that. I guess you’re wonderful.”
“You’re not such a star,” he said.
She began to cry again.
“That’s worse than slapping,” she said.
“Well, what did you say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I was so angry and you hurt me so.”
“Well, it’s all over, so why be bitter.”
“Oh, I don’t want it to be over. But it is and there’s nothing to do now.”
“You’ll have your rummy professor.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Can’t we just shut up and not talk anymore?”
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll sleep out here.”
“No. You can have the bed. You must. I’m going out for a while.”
“Oh, don’t go out.”
“I’ve got to,” he said.
“Good-bye,” she said, and he saw her face he always loved so much, that crying never spoiled, and her curly black hair, her small firm breasts under the sweater forward against the edge of the table, and he didn’t see the rest of her that he’d loved so much and thought he had pleased, but evidently hadn’t been any good to, that was all below the table, and as he went out the door she was looking at him across the table; and her chin was on her hands; and she was crying.
Chapter Twenty-Two
He did not take the bicycle but walked down the street. The moon was up now and the trees were dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-shuttered, virtue, failure, grits and boiled grunts, under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, inter-breeding and the comforts of religion; the open-doored, lighted Cuban bolito houses, shacks whose only romance was their names; The Red House, Chicha’s, the pressed stone church; its steeples sharp, ugly triangles against the moonlight; the big grounds and the long, black-domed bulk of the convent, handsome in the moonlight; a filling station and a sandwich place, bright-lighted beside a vacant lot where a miniature golf course had been taken out; past the brightly lit main street with the three drug stores, the music store, the five Jew stores, three poolrooms, two barbershops, five beer joints, three ice cream parlors, the five poor and the one good restaurant, two magazine and paper places, four second-hand joints (one of which made keys), a photographer’s, an office building with four dentists’ offices upstairs, the big dime store, a hotel on the corner with taxis opposite; and across, behind the hotel, to the street that led to jungle town, the big unpainted frame house with lights and the girls in the doorway, the mechanical piano going, and a sailor sitting in the street; and then on back, past the back of the brick courthouse with its clock luminous at half-past ten, past the whitewashed jail building shining in the moonlight, to the embowered entrance of the Lilac Time where motor cars filled the alley.