Revolutionary Road (27 page)

  "Hello," she murmured huskily, and kissed him again, filling his mouth with her tongue.

  This time there was the desperation of a drowning man in his upward struggle; when he'd made it, she drew back and looked at him in dismay, her breasts wagging like little startled faces. He couldn't speak for a minute until he'd regained his breath; then instead of looking at her he gazed down at his own hands, which were clasping the heavy sprawl of her thighs across his lap. He released his grip, spread his fingers and lightly tapped the upper thigh, as if it were the edge of a conference table.

  "Look, Maureen," he said. "I think we ought to have a talk."

  What happened after that, even while it was happening, was less like reality than a dream. Only a part of his consciousness was involved; the rest of him was a detached observer of the scene, embarrassed and helpless but relatively confident that he would soon wake up. The way her face clouded over when he began to talk, the way she sprang off his lap and fled for her dressing gown, which she clutched around her throat as tightly as a raincoat in a downpour as she paced the carpet—"Well; in that case there really isn't anything more to say, is there? There really wasn't any point in your coming over today, was there?"—these seemed to exist as rankling memories even before they were events: so did the way he followed her around the room, abjectly twisting one hand in the other as he apologized and apologized.

  "Maureen, look; try to be reasonable about this. If I've ever given you cause to believe that I—that we—that I'm not happily married or anything, well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

  "And what about me? How am I supposed to feel? Have you thought about what kind of position this puts me in?"

  "I'm sorry. I—"

  And this was the final vignette: Maureen hunched in the belching black smoke of the kitchenette while her veal scallopini burned to a crisp.

  "It's not too bad, Maureen. I mean we can still eat it, if you like."

  "No. It's ruined. Everything's ruined. You'd better go now."

  "Oh, look. There's no reason why we have to be—"

  "I said please 
go.
"

  No amount of drink in the Grand Central bars was able to blur those images, and all the way home, hungry and drunk and exhausted on the train, he sat with round, imploring eyes and moving lips, still trying to reason with her.

  His dread of seeing her in the office the next day was so intense that he was in the act of stepping off the elevator before he remembered that she wouldn't be there. She was on vacation. Would she follow Norma to the Cape? No; more likely she would use her two weeks to look for another job; in either case he could be fairly certain he would never see her again. And his relief on realizing this soon turned, perversely, into a worried kind of dismay. If he never saw her again, how would he ever have a chance to—well, to explain things to her? To tell her, in a level, unapologetic voice, all the level, unapologetic things he had to say?

  Anxious thoughts of Maureen (Should he call her up? Should he write her a letter?) still preoccupied him on Saturday, while he labored at his stone path in the dizzying heat or invented little errands that would take him away from home, allowing him to cruise aimlessly down back roads in his station car, mumbling to himself. It wasn't until early Sunday afternoon, when he'd gone out in the station car to get the papers and ended up driving for miles, that the words "Forget it" rose to his lips.

  It was a beautiful day. He was driving over the sunny crest of a long hill, past a thicket of elms whose leaves were just beginning to turn, when he suddenly began to laugh and to pound the old cracked plastic of the steering wheel with his fist. Forget it! What the hell was the point of thinking about it? The whole episode could now be dismissed as something separate and distinct from the main narrative flow of his life—something brief and minor and essentially comic. Norma humping out to the curb with her suitcase, Maureen leaping naked from his lap, himself padding after her through the smoke of the burning meat, wringing his hands—all now seemed as foolish as the distorted figures in an animated cartoon at the moment when the bouncing, tinny music swells up and the big circle begins to close in from all sides, rapidly enclosing the action within a smaller and smaller ring, swallowing it up until it's nothing more than a point of jiggling light that blinks out altogether as the legend "That's All, Folks!" comes sprawling happily out across the screen.

  He stopped the car on the side of the road until his laughter had subsided; then, feeling much better, he made a U-turn and headed for home. Forget it! On the way back to Revolutionary Road he allowed his mind to dwell only on good things: the beauty of the day, the finished job of work on Pollock's desk, the three thousand a year, even the "shakedown conference" that was scheduled for tomorrow morning. It hadn't been such a bad summer after all. Now, rolling home, he could look forward to the refreshment of taking a shower and getting into clean clothes; then he would sip sherry (his lips puckered pleasurably at the thought of it) and drowse over the T
imes
 for the rest of the afternoon. And tonight, if everything went well, would be the perfect time for a rational, common-sense discussion with April about this annoying business of the sofa. Whatever was bothering her could be fixed, could probably have been fixed days ago, if he'd taken the trouble to sit down with her and talk things out.

  "Look," he would begin. "This has been kind of a crazy summer, and I know we've both been under a strain. I know you're feeling sort of lonely and confused just now; I know things look pretty bleak, and believe me I—"

  The house looked very neat and white as it emerged through the green and yellow leaves; it wasn't such a bad house after all. It looked, as John Givings had once said, like a place where people lived—a place where the difficult, intricate process of living could sometimes give rise to incredible harmonies of happiness and sometimes to neartragic disorder, as well as to ludicrous minor interludes ("That's All, Folks!"); a place where it was possible for whole summers to be kind of crazy, where it was possible to feel lonely and confused in many ways and for things to look pretty bleak from time to time, but where everything, in the final analysis, was going to be all right.

  April was working in the kitchen, where the radio was blaring.

  "Wow," he said, laying the heavy Sunday papers on the table. "Is this ever a beautiful day."

  "Yes; it's lovely."

  He took a long, voluptuously warm shower and spent a long time brushing and combing his hair. In the bedroom, he inspected three shirts before deciding on the one he would wear with his tight, clean khakis—an expensive cotton flannel in a dark green-and-black plaid—and he tried several ways of wearing it before he settled on folding its cuffs back twice, turning its collar up in back and leaving it unbuttoned halfway down his chest. Crouching at the mirror of April's dressing table, he used her hand mirror to check the way the collar looked from the side and to test the effect, in profile, of his tightening jaw muscle.

  Back in the kitchen, looking over the papers and loosely snapping his fingers in time to the jazz on the radio, he had to glance at April twice before he realized what was different about her: she was wearing one of her old maternity dresses.

  "That looks nice," he said.

  "Thank you."

"Is there any sherry?"

"I don't think so, no. I think we've used it up."

  "Damn. Guess there isn't any beer either, is there." He considered having whiskey instead, but it was too early in the day.

  "I've made some iced tea, if you'd like that. It's in the icebox."

  "Okay." And he poured himself a glass without really wanting it. "Where are the kids, anyway?"

  "Over at the Campbells'."

  "Oh; too bad. I thought I'd read them the funnies."

  He continued to finger through the papers for a few minutes, while she worked at the sink; then, because there was nothing else to do, he moved up close behind her and took hold of her arm, which caused her to stiffen.

  "Look," he began. "This has been kind of a crazy summer, and I know you're—I know we've both been under a strain. I mean I know you're—"

  "You know I'm not sleeping with you and you want to know why," she said, pulling away from his hand. "Well, I'm sorry, Frank, I don't feel like talking about it."

  He hesitated, and then, to establish a better mood for communication, he kissed the back of her head with reverence. "Okay," he said. "What do you feel like talking about, then?"

  She had finished with the dishes and let the water out of the sink; now she was rinsing the dishrag, and she didn't speak again until she had wrung it out, hung it on its hook, and moved away from the sink to turn and look at him, for the first time. She looked frightened. "Would it be all right if we sort of didn't talk about anything?" she asked. "I mean couldn't we just sort of take each day as it comes, and do the best we can, and not feel we have to talk about everything all the time?"

  He smiled at her like a patient psychiatrist. "I don't think I suggested that we 'talk about everything all the time,' " he said. "I certainly didn't mean to. All I meant to sug—"

  "All right," she said, backing away another step. "It's because I don't love you. How's that?"

  Luckily the bland psychiatrist's smile was still on his face; it saved him from taking her seriously. "That isn't much of an answer," he said kindly. "I wonder what you really feel. I wonder if what you're really doing here isn't sort of trying to evade everything until you're—well, until you're in analysis. Sort of trying to resign from personal responsibility between now and the time you begin your treatment. Do you suppose that might be it?"

  "No." She had turned away from him. "Oh, I don't know; yes. Whatever you like. Put it whichever way makes you the most comfortable."

  "Well," he said, "it's hardly a question of making me comfortable. All I'm saying is that life does have to go on, analysis or not. Hell, 
I
 know you're having a bad time just now; it 
has
 been a tough summer. The point is we've both been under a strain, and we ought to be trying to help each other as much as we can. I mean God knows my own behavior has been pretty weird lately; matter of fact I've been thinking it might be a good idea for me to see the headshrinker myself. Actually—" He turned and stood looking out the window, tightening his jaw. "Actually, one of the reasons I've been hoping we could get together again is because there's something I'd like to tell you about: something kind of—well, kind of neurotic and irrational that happened to me a few weeks ago."

  And almost, if not quite, before he knew what his voice was up to, he was telling her about Maureen Grube. He did it with automatic artfulness, identifying her only as "a girl in New York, a girl I hardly even know," rather than as a typist at the office, careful to stress that there had been no emotional involvement on his part while managing to imply that her need for him had been deep and ungovernable. His voice, soft and strong with an occasional husky falter or hesitation that only enhanced its rhythm, combined the power of confession with the narrative grace of romantic storytelling.

  "And I think the main thing was simply a case of feeling that my—well, that my masculinity'd been threatened somehow by all that abortion business; wanting to prove something; I don't know. Anyway, I broke it off last week; the whole stupid business. It's over now; really over. If I weren't sure of that I guess I could never've brought myself to tell you about it."

  For half a minute, the only sound in the room was the music on the radio.

  "Why did you?" she asked.

  He shook his head, still looking out the window. "Baby, I don't know. I've tried to explain it to you; I'm still trying to explain it to myself. That's what I meant about it's being a neurotic, irrational kind of thing. I—"

  "No," she said. "I don't mean why did you have the girl; I mean why did you tell me about it? What's the point? Is it supposed to make me jealous, or something? Is it supposed to make me fall in love with you, or back into bed with you, or what? I mean what am I supposed to say?"

  He looked at her, feeling his face blush and twitch into an embarrassed simper that he tried, unsuccessfully, to make over into the psychiatric smile. "Why don't you say what you feel?"

  She seemed to think this over for a few seconds, and then she shrugged. "I have. I don't feel anything."

  "In other words you don't care what I do or who I go to bed with or anything. Right?"

  "No; I guess that's right; I don't."

  "But I 
want
 you to care!"

  "I know you do. And I suppose I would, if I loved you; but you see I don't. I don't love you and I never really have, and I never really figured it out until this week, and that's why I'd just as soon not do any talking right now. Do you see?" She picked up a dust cloth and went into the living room, a tired, competent housewife with chores to do.

  "And listen to this," said an urgent voice on the radio. "Now, during the big Fall Clearance, you'll find Robert Hall's 
entire stock
 of men's walk shorts and sport jeans drastically reduced!"

  Standing foursquare and staring down at his untouched glass of iced tea on the table, he felt his head fill with such a dense morass of confusion that only one consecutive line of thought came through: an abrupt remembrance of what Sunday this was, which explained why the kids were over at the Campbells', and which also meant there wasn't much time left for talking.

  "Oh, now listen," he said, wheeling and following her into the living room with decisive, headlong strides. "You just put down that God damn rag a minute and listen. 
Listen
 to me. In the first place, you know God damn well you love me."

"OH, IT'S SUCH A LOVELY LUXURY
 just to ride instead of driving," Mrs. Givings said, holding fast to the handle of the passenger's door. Her husband always drove on these trips to the hospital, and she never failed to remark on how relaxing a change it made for her. When one drove a car all day and every day, she would point out, there was no more marvelous vacation in the world than sitting back and letting someone else take over. But the force of habit was strong: she continued to watch the road as attentively as if she were holding the wheel, and her right foot would reach out and press the rubber floor mat at the approach of every turn or stop signal. Sometimes, catching herself at this, she would force her eyes to observe the passing countryside and will the sinews of her back to loosen and subside into the upholstery. As a final demonstration of self-control she might even uncoil her hand from the door handle and put it in her lap.

"My, isn't this a marvelous day?" she asked. "Oh, and look at the beautiful leaves, just beginning to turn. Is there anything nicer than the beginning of fall? All the wonderful colors and the crispness in the air; it always takes me back to dear look OUT!"

  Her shoe slapped the floor mat and her body arched into a frantic posture of bracing against the impact of collision: a red truck was turning out of a side road, straight ahead.

  "I see it, dear," Howard Givings said, smoothly applying the brakes so that the truck had ample room to pass, and afterwards, easing down on the accelerator again, he said: "You just relax, now, and let me worry about the driving."

  "Oh, I know; I will. I'm sorry. I know I'm being silly." She took several deep breaths and folded her hands on her thigh, where they rested as tentatively as frightened birds. "It's just that I always do get such awful butterflies in my stomach on these visiting days, especially when it's been so long."

  "Patient's name?" asked the painfully thin girl at the visitors' desk.

  "John Givings," Mrs. Givings said with a polite dip of her head, and she watched the girl's chewed pencil proceed down a mimeographed list of names until it stopped at Givings, John.

  "Relationship?"

  "Parents."

  "Sign here please and take this slip. Ward Two A, upstairs and to your right. Have the patient back by five p.m."

  In the outer waiting room of Ward Two A, after they had pressed the bell marked ring for attendant, Mr. and Mrs. Givings shyly joined a group of other visitors who were inspecting an exhibition of patients' artwork. The pictures included a faithfully rendered likeness of Donald Duck, in crayon, and an elaborate purple-and-brown crucifixion scene in which the sun, or moon, was done in the same crimson paint as the drops of blood that fell at precisely measured intervals from the wound in the Savior's ribs.

  In a minute they heard a dim thudding of rubber heels and a jingle of keys behind the locked door; then it opened on a heavy, bespectacled young man in white who said, "May I have your slips, please?" and allowed them to pass, two at a time, into the inner waiting room. This was a large, dimly lighted place containing bright plastic-topped tables and chairs for the visitors of patients not on the privilege list. Most of the tables were occupied, but there was very little sound of conversation. At the table nearest the door a young Negro couple sat holding hands, and it wasn't easy to identify the man as a patient until you noticed that his other hand was holding the chromium leg of the table in a yellow-knuckled grip of desperation, as if it were the rail of a heaving ship. Farther away, an old woman was combing the tangled hair of her son, whose age could have been anything between twenty-five and forty; his head wobbled submissively under her strokes as he ate a peeled banana.

  The attendant, hooking his ring of keys to a clip against his hip pocket, struck off down the corridor of the ward and began sonorously calling out names from the slips he had collected. Looking after him down the mouth of the corridor, which was filled with the sound of many radios tuned to different stations, all you could see was a long expanse of waxed linoleum and the corners of several steel hospital beds.

  After a while the attendant came back, walking neat and white at the head of a small, shabby parade. John Givings brought up the rear, tall and pigeon-toed, buttoning his sweater with one hand and carrying the twill workman's cap in the other.

  "Well," he said, greeting his parents. "They letting the prisoners out in the sunshine today? Big deal." He carefully placed the cap dead-center on his head, and the picture of the public charge was complete. "Let's go."

  No one spoke in the car until they were clear of the hospital grounds, past the ranks of long brick ward buildings, past the administration building and the softball diamond, out around the well-tended circle of grass that enclosed the twin white shafts of the State and American flags, and on up the long blacktop road that led to the highway. Mrs. Givings, riding in the back seat (she usually found it more comfortable there when John was in front), tried to gauge his mood by studying the back of his neck. Then she said: "John?"

  "Mm?"

  "We have some good news. You know the Wheelers, that you liked so much? They've very kindly asked us to drop by again today, by the way, if you'd like to; that's one thing; but the really good news is that they've decided to stay. They're not going to Europe after all. Isn't that lovely?" And with an uneasy smile she watched him slowly turn around to face her over the seat back.

  "What happened?" he said.

  "Well, I'm sure I don't—how do you mean, what happened, dear? I don't suppose anything necessarily 'happened'; I imagine they simply talked it over and changed their minds."

  "You mean you didn't even ask? People're all set to do something as big as that and then they drop the whole idea, and you don't even ask what the deal is? Why?"

  "Well, John, I suppose because I didn't feel it was my 
business
 to ask. One doesn't in
quire
 into these things, dear, unless the other person wishes to volunteer the infor
mation.
" In an effort to still the rising cautionary note in her voice, which was almost certain to antagonize him, she forced the skin of her forehead and mouth to assume the shape of a jolly smile. "Can't we just be pleased that they're staying, without inquiring into the why of it? Oh, look at that lovely old red silo. I've never noticed that one before, have you? That must be the tallest silo for miles around."

  "It's a lovely old silo, Ma," John said. "And it's lovely news about the Wheelers, and you're a lovely person. Isn't she, Pop? Isn't she a lovely person?"

  "All right, John," Howard Givings said. "Let's steady down, now."

  Mrs. Givings, whose fingers were grinding and tearing a book of matches into moist shreds, closed her eyes and tried to fortify herself for what would almost certainly be an awkward afternoon.

  Her anxiety was compounded at the Wheelers' kitchen door. They were home—both cars were there—but the house had a strangely unwelcoming look, as if they weren't expecting visitors. There was no answer to her very light knock on the glass pane of the door, which gave back a vivid reflection of sky and trees, of her own craning face and the faces of Howard and John behind her. She knocked again, and this time she made a visor of one hand and pressed it to the pane, to see inside. The kitchen was empty (she could see what looked like a glass of iced tea on the table) but just then Frank Wheeler came lunging in from the living room, looking awful—looking as if he were about to scream or to weep or to commit violence. She saw at once that he hadn't heard her knock and didn't know she was there: he hadn't come to answer the door but in desperate escape from the living room, possibly from the house itself. And there wasn't time for her to step back before he saw her—caught her crouched and peering into his very eyes—which made him start, stop, and arrange his features into a smile that matched her own.

  "Well," he said, opening the door. "Hi, there. Come on in."

  Then they were moving sociably into the living room, where April was, and April looked awful too: pale and haggard, twisting her fingers at her waist. "Nice to see you all," she was saying faintly. "Won't you sit down? I'm afraid the house is in a terrible mess."

  "Are we awfully early?" Mrs. Givings asked.

  "Early? No, no; we were just—would anyone like a drink? Or some—iced tea, or something?"

  "Oh, nothing at all, thanks. Actually we can only stay a minute; we just dropped by to say hello."

  The party fell into an odd, uncomfortable grouping: the three Givingses seated in a row; the two Wheelers standing backed up against the bookcase, restlessly shifting toward and then apart from each other as they made conversation. Only now, watching them, was Mrs. Givings able to hazard a guess at the cause of their constraint: they must have been quarreling.

  "Listen," John said, and all the other talk stopped dead. "What's the deal, anyway? I mean I hear you people changed your minds. How come?"

  "Well," Frank said, and chuckled in embarrassment. "Well, not exactly. You might say our minds were sort of— forcibly changed for us."

"How come?"

  Frank made a little sidling skip to stand close to his wife, edging behind her. "Well," he said. "I should've thought that was fairly obvious by now." And Mrs. Givings's eyes were drawn, for the first time, to notice what April was wearing. Maternity clothes!

  "Oh, 
April
!" she cried. "Why, this is perfectly marvelous!" She wondered what one was expected to do on such occasions: should she get up and—well, kiss her, or something? But April didn't look like a girl who wanted to be kissed. "Oh, I think this is terribly exciting," Mrs. Givings went on, and "I can't tell you how pleased I am," and "Oh, but I expect you'll be needing a bigger house, now, won't you?" and through it all she hoped against hope that John would keep still. But:

  "Hold it a second, Ma," he said, standing up. "Hold it a second. I don't get this." And he fixed on Frank the stare of a prosecuting attorney. "What's so obvious about it? I mean okay, she's pregnant; so what? Don't people have babies in Europe?"

  "Oh John, really," said Mrs. Givings. "I don't think we need to—"

  "Ma, will you keep out of this? I'm asking the man a question. If he doesn't want to give me the answer, I'm assuming he'll have sense enough to tell me so."

  "Of course," Frank said, smiling down at his shoes. "Suppose we just say that people anywhere aren't very well advised to have babies unless they can afford them. As it happens, the only way we can afford this one is by staying here. It's a question of money, you see."

  "Okay." John nodded in apparent satisfaction, looking from one of the Wheelers to the other. "Okay; that's a good reason." They both looked relieved, but Mrs. Givings went tight all over because she knew, from long experience, that something perfectly awful was coming next.

  "Money's always a good reason," John said. He began to move around the carpet, hands in his pockets. "But it's hardly ever the real reason. What's the real reason? Wife talk you out of it, or what?" And he turned the full force of his dazzling smile on April, who had moved across the room to stab out her cigarette in an ash tray. Her eyes looked briefly up at him and then down again.

  "Huh?" he persisted. "Little woman decide she isn't quite ready to quit playing house? Nah, nah, that's not it. I can tell. She looks too tough. Tough and female and adequate as hell. Okay, then; it must've been you." And he swung around to Frank. "What happened?"

  "John, please," Mrs. Givings said. "You're being very—" But there was no stopping him now.

  "What happened? You get cold feet, or what? You decide you like it here after all? You figure it's more comfy here in the old Hopeless Emptiness after all, or—Wow, that did it! Look at his face! What's the matter, Wheeler? Am I getting warm?"

  "John, you're being impossibly rude. Howard, please—"

  "All right, son," Howard Givings said, getting to his feet. "I think we'd better be—"

  "Boy!" John broke into his braying laugh. "Boy! You know something? I wouldn't be surprised if you knocked her up on purpose, just so you could spend the rest of your life hiding behind that maternity dress."

  "Now, 
look,
" said Frank Wheeler, and to Mrs. Givings's shocked surprise his fists were clenched and he was trembling from head to foot. "I think that's just about 
enough
 outa you. I mean who the hell do you think you are? You come in here and say whatever crazy God damn thing comes into your head, and I think it's about time somebody told you to keep your God damn—"

  "He's not 
well,
 Frank," Mrs. Givings managed to say, and then she bit the inside of her lip in consternation.

  "Oh, not well my ass. I'm sorry, Mrs. Givings, but I don't give a damn if he's well or sick or dead or alive, I just wish he'd keep his God damn opinions in the God damn insane asylum where they belong."

  During the painful silence that followed this, while Mrs. Givings continued to chew her lip, they all stood grouped in the middle of the room: Howard intently folding a light raincoat over his arm; April staring red-faced at the floor; Frank still trembling and audibly breathing, with a terrible mixture of defiance and humiliation in his eyes. John, whose smile was now serene, was the only one of them who seemed at peace.

  "Big man you got here, April," he said, winking at her as he fitted the workman's cap on his head. "Big family man, solid citizen. I feel sorry for you. Still, maybe you deserve each other. Matter of fact, the way you look right now, I'm beginning to feel sorry for him, too. I mean come to think of it, you must give him a pretty bad time, if making babies is the only way he can prove he's got a pair of balls."

  "All right, John," Howard was murmuring. "Let's get on out to the car now."

  "April," Mrs. Givings whispered. "I can't tell you how sorry I—"