Black Mountain Breakdown (31 page)

Crystal puts on her makeup and then she puts on her slip. “Is anybody I don’t know coming to this?” she asks, and Roger starts naming the names and then breaks off.

“Lawrence Wright is not coming, if that’s what you mean,” he says. Roger does not mention that he knew about Lawrence Wright and Crystal all along, when it began and when it ended; he does not mention that he was instrumental in Wright’s losing his job at the bank—that in fact Lawrence Wright has left town.

“That’s not what I meant.” Crystal lights a cigarette, standing in her slip.

“Look, it’s OK.” Roger puts the newspaper down. “He’s not coming, he’s not invited, OK?”

“Why did you have to say that? I wasn’t asking that, Roger.”

“I know you weren’t. I’m sorry.”

“You’re trying to—you’re trying to—”

“
Crystal.
” Roger stands up and goes over to her. “Come on. I’m not trying to do anything, OK, except maybe save us all some embarrassment. That’s all.”

“Shit.” Crystal puts the cigarette out and turns from him, but he comes closer and puts his arms around her and kisses her.

“Roger—”

“Hush. It doesn’t matter. Hush.”

“Roger.”

“Hush. Here.” Roger snaps off the light by the chair and takes her over to the bed and then takes off his clothes. Crystal watches, feeling that she has known his body so long, so well, that it’s her body, in fact. Hers, too. She starts crying. Roger comes down on top of her, kissing her, and at the end of it she lies with her legs wrapped around him and his face pressed into her hair. The doorbell starts ringing downstairs: once, twice, more. People are coming to their party.

“Baby. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying. I won’t cry. I’m not.”

“I’m sorry,” Roger says.

“No, I’m sorry, I am. I really am. It was stupid, the whole thing, I was stupid. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not stupid,” Roger says. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.” Roger means this. Nothing matters about Crystal except Crystal herself. For almost his whole life, she has been as inevitable for him as business and death and taxes, as the sun coming up across those mountains he grew up in.

“Roger.” Crystal struggles to sit up. “Listen. I love you.”

“
Hey
,” Roger says. “It’s OK.” Crystal lies back on the pillow and Roger kisses her all over, her face, her throat, her breasts, her stomach, the sticky trail of semen on the inside of her thigh, as the level of voices at the party rises, floating up the winding stairs and under their closed door. Crystal smiles, rubbing her hand in his hair.

“It sounds like a good party,” she says, and Roger laughs.

BUT AS THE
campaign picks up, there are too many mornings like this one when Crystal lies curled up against Roger in their king-size bed and waits for light to come, for dawn to seep in finally through her Levolor blinds, for soft edges to appear and then harden all over the room. But she dreads the coming of day. Like this, in darkness, nothing is finite, nothing is ever over, nothing is resolved, everything is possible. Daylight puts an edge on things. Roger’s back moves up and down in sleep. Once he sighs and murmurs something. Crystal leans forward, trying to make it out, but he turns slightly from her, moves his leg, quits talking. Probably it’s something about business or the campaign anyway. Something straightforward, like Roger himself. Crystal sighs. It is true that she loves him, as he had said she would. In fact, she loves him more than she knew was possible, so much that she can’t have that baby or do anything else that might change things, change the way they are. Because things are not exactly as Roger thinks, anyway. Things are more precarious. They have edges now. Crystal props herself up on one elbow, watching Roger sleep. Ever since the
beginning—ever since that day when he came to her mother’s house—she has been conscious of the end.

Crystal watches him sleep as the light grows in the room and the wallpaper changes from black to gray to blue. Sleep has become the greatest mystery of all, since she isn’t sleeping anymore. She can’t even remember sleeping the whole night through. Roger sleeps like a baby. Crystal smiles. But she never sleeps, never really sleeps. Only sometimes her mind wanders and she dreams. Crystal traces a pattern, long and complicated, on Roger’s broad back. Roger sleeps just like a baby. But she sleeps the sleep of the damned. Which is so dramatic she almost laughs out loud. Doomed, maybe. Jerold has been coming into her mind a lot lately with all his talk of doom, the way the hair curled down low on his neck. It was ridiculous, everything he said. Jerold was a madman. But still.

The light comes in full at last, silky and golden, and Crystal watches the pattern flower in her rug. Sometimes she thinks of other things to do. She makes up other selves. For instance she might be a businesswoman, like Agnes, getting up now in this rosy light, checking over a straight column of neat black figures somewhere, going down to her little shop in the early-morning light when there is no traffic at all in some impossibly charming town with the trees planted in holes in all the sidewalks. She might be dressing mannequins in the window of her shop. She might be dressing children. She might be plaiting pigtails, tying strings of saddle oxfords or whatever it is they wear now, frying bacon, wiping tears. She might be cooking bacon in a yellow housedress, buttering six pieces of toast. Or she
could be going over lesson plans with her hair pulled back in a bun. Or she could be lying in bed beside Roger and thinking realistically about the day ahead, which is what she ought to do, since Marion Fitts has that hospital tour scheduled for her. But Crystal remembers yesterday, the Kiwanis luncheon, when her eyes did that funny thing so she could see only one thing at a time—one person, no crowds. It was as though her eyes had become a closeup lens. A zoom lens. It was disconcerting. It made her see more than she wanted to, of everybody. It was like she could see into their souls.

Crystal thinks about, and rejects, the idea of telling Roger how she feels. “Roger,” she would say, “I feel like a person in a play.” But then, of course, he would be too considerate. He would have Marion Fitts cancel the hospital tour. And if she tells him anything at all, then she might tell him everything—about her not sleeping, about the way she is conscious of endings and edges—and then he won’t love her anymore. But she doesn’t
know
that, of course. She doesn’t know he wouldn’t love her anymore. It isn’t worth taking a chance on, though, not after Lawrence Wright, or. Or. Crystal resolves to wear her dark glasses on the hospital tour and see if Leonard can get her some sleeping pills.

She gets up quietly and crosses the flowered carpet to the armchair. She switches on the light, settles herself, and picks up the diary of Emma Turlington Field, which lies in a jumble of books on the round table beside her. Most of these are Roger’s books. Some of them are Crystal’s, but she can’t really read anymore. She can’t keep her mind on the page—
another thing not to tell Roger. Crystal pushes back a piece of her hair and opens the diary:

Crystal smiles and closes the diary. It reminds her of nights back in her old neighborhood, a whole procession of nights all exactly the same, a whole parade of moons rising like a string of Chinese lanterns. She wishes she could remember the song Jubal’s daddy used to pick on his guitar. He used to play it every night and then they knew it was time to go in and sure enough, their mothers would come to the screen doors and call them.

Crystal thinks of calling Agnes to ask her about the song, but it is still too early, so she takes a shower instead, hot hot water to wash away the way she thinks she smells, sour and old, like a washcloth left for too long in the sink. She sprays herself all over with cologne and when she comes out of the bathroom Roger is already up and dressing. He gives her a great big hug that folds around her like a tent, and if she could stay right there she thinks she would be all right. If she didn’t have to
do
anything. Roger gives her a
kiss, too, but she can’t get him to go back to bed with her because he has to show up at an Episcopal prayer breakfast in twenty minutes. “Tonight,” he says, kissing the back of her neck before he leaves.

Later that morning, Crystal calls Agnes after all. She hasn’t talked to her in months, not since last August when she and Roger went over to Black Rock for the opening of the new library. Now Agnes has become a real businesswoman, hardware store and three Laundromats. No sense trying to get Agnes at home, in fact. Might as well try the hardware store.

“Hello. Could I please speak to Agnes McClanahan?” Crystal asks the girl who answers.

“Who’s calling, please?”

Crystal can hear people talking in the background, something clanking.

“Mrs. Roger Lee Combs.” Crystal lights a cigarette; she never smokes in the morning if Roger is home.

After a pause, the girl says, “Can you hold for a moment? Miss McClanahan will be right with you.”

“Sure.” Crystal waits. She hears a car in the driveway— Roger leaving. Then she hears the maid come in the front door.

“Hello,” Agnes finally says.

“Hi, Agnes. This is me, Crystal.” Crystal tries to make her voice right. “I just wondered how you’re getting along.”

“Well, fine, Crystal, just fine. It’s funny you called. Odell was in here not five minutes ago.”

“Are you busy?” Crystal asks. “I mean, can you talk for a minute?”

“Well, actually,” Agnes says in her old nasal, guarded tone, “I was just on my way out the door. I’ve got some salesmen from Roanoke here to see me.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll let you go, then. But wait—this won’t take but a minute. I was wondering if you could remember which song it was that Jubal’s daddy used to play on his guitar every night when it was time to go in. Do you remember?”

“Lord, Crystal. I couldn’t tell you.” Agnes sounds like she wouldn’t want to, even if she knew. She sounds like somebody who has some salesmen waiting right outside the door.

“Well. Well, thanks anyway. Well, I’ll see you the next time I come over. You be sure and vote for Roger, you hear?”

Agnes laughs. “I’ll do it,” she says. “You tell Roger that, too, now.”

“OK.” Then there is a long pause and Crystal can imagine Agnes on the other end of the line, looking at the watch on her freckled arm.

“What is it, Crystal?” Agnes asks suddenly. “Is anything wrong?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Listen, you go ahead, I’ll see you the next time I come over. We might come next weekend, in fact.”

“You sure?”

“No, it’s not anything really. I was just wondering about that song. It was silly. Tell everybody to vote for Roger.”

“Oh, he’s got this town locked up.” Agnes is obviously relieved. “I’ll see you, hear?”

“Great,” says Crystal. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Click. Click. Two very extremely loud clicks. Crystal winces. Then she sits looking at the phone for a long time, winding the cord to make black rings around all her fingers. This makes her hands look very interesting in a perverted way. It would probably sell, in fact, in that shop she doesn’t own: telephone jewelry. Crystal gets up and takes another shower before she dresses.

She puts on a dark-green wool suit and a yellow blouse and she’s brushing her hair when Marion Fitts, one of Roger’s administrative aides, comes to stand in the doorway. Marion Fitts is in charge of Crystal’s schedule; she plots out all the meetings, the tours, the speeches, the appearances, on a hardbound calendar which she keeps in her briefcase all the time and takes everywhere as she accompanies Crystal during the campaign. Marion Fitts does everything. She even plans the seating and the menus for official dinners. Marion Fitts has been with them for three months now, ever since Roger hired her away from the
Richmond News Leader
to work full time on his campaign. Marion Fitts also writes news releases and keeps a gold ballpoint pen on a chain around her neck and has proved herself, as Roger often remarks to Crystal, invaluable. Because this is so obviously true, Crystal likes to keep her waiting, as she is waiting now, in the hall just outside the bedroom.

Marion Fitts clears her throat.

Crystal smiles, then drops the brush into her purse and shuts it with a click.

“OK,” she says to Marion Fitts, leaving the bedroom just as it is—clothes all over the unmade bed, cosmetics
scattered on the dressing table, lights on—because Mary will be in right away.

She follows Marion Fitts out to the car pulled up in the wide curving driveway in front of her house. Leonard Halsey, another aide, sits in the driver’s seat reading a paperback. Leonard’s blond hair curls in ringlets all over his head, and his brown eyes look huge behind his thick glasses. Crystal likes him.

“Pretty as a picture,” he tells her when she gets in. He puts the paperback up on the dashboard and puts the car in gear.

“Thanks.” Crystal gets in beside him, and Marion Fitts gets in back, unfolding several newspapers.

“What are you reading?” Crystal asks Leonard.

“Trash.” He grins at her, his eyes as huge as a cow’s eyes behind the glasses. Crystal’s big house grows smaller and smaller as he drives away down the street, and then it is gone.

“I used to read,” Crystal says.

Leonard looks over at her, and Marion Fitts rattles all her papers in back.

“Actually, I used to be an English teacher,” Crystal says.

“I know it,” Leonard says. “You told me.”

“Oh.” Crystal smiles at him. It’s an old joke between them, her forgetfulness.

“Everybody in this state ought to know that by now,” Marion Fitts says in a loud voice from the back seat. In her news releases she has emphasized Crystal’s interest in public education and mental health. Marion takes some scissors from her briefcase and begins to clip items from the news-papers.