The Ax (14 page)

What an image. She must have been thinking about all this for quite a long while, and I haven’t even noticed. She’s been unhappy, and keeping it to herself, trying to be brave and silent and wait it out, and I haven’t noticed. I should have noticed, but I was distracted by this other thing, concentrating on this other thing.

If only I could tell her about all that, tell her what I’m doing, how I’m making sure everything will be all right. But I can’t, I don’t dare. She wouldn’t understand, she couldn’t possibly understand. And if she knew what I was doing, what I’ve already done, what I’m going to do, she’d never be able to look at me in the same way again. I understand that, all at once, right now, sitting here in the living room, looking at her, in our robes, the both of us covered like bums in the park with sections of the
New York Times
. I can never tell her what I’ve done, what I’m doing, to save our marriage, to save our lives, to save us.

I say, “Sweet, I know what you’re feeling, I really do. And you know I’m feeling the same frustration, I’m having to deal with it every second of every—”

“I can’t do it,” she says. “I’m not as strong as you are, Burke, I never was. I can’t deal with this awful situation as well as you can. I can’t just, just
hunker down
and wait.”

“But there’s nothing else to do,” I say. “That’s the bitch of it, sweet, there’s nothing else to do. We
both
have to just hunker down and wait. But believe me. Please. I have a feeling, I just have a feeling, it won’t be that much longer. This summer, sometime this summer, we’ll—”

“Burke, we need counseling!”

How she stares at me, almost in terror. For God’s sake, does she
know
? Is that what she’s trying to say?

No, it can’t be. It isn’t possible. I say, “Marjorie, we don’t need any third party, we can talk things out together, we’ve always been able to do that, even that bad time when I was… You know.”

“When you were going to leave me,” she says.

“No! I was never going to leave you, you know that. I never for a second thought or said or planned that I could ever leave you, not
you
, sweet, my God. We talked all that—”

“You were living with her.”

I sit back. I put one hand over my eyes. With everything that’s going on, to have to deal now with something like this. But it’s important, I know it is, I have to pay attention to this. Marjorie is my other half, I learned that eleven years ago, the time we’re talking about now. Everything I do is as much for her as for me, because I can’t live without her.

Still shielding my eyes with my hand, I say, “We talked that out then, and that was the worst thing that ever happened. We talked it out—”

“It wasn’t the worst.”

I lower my hand and look at her, and I want her to see in my eyes how much I love her. “Oh, but it was,” I say. “This job business is terrible, but it isn’t as bad as that was. And we talked that out.”

“We had help.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

A friend of Marjorie’s from her college days had been her confidante, back then, and the friend was a churchgoer, and she took Marjorie along to meet this Episcopalian priest, Father Susten, and then Marjorie brought me along, and he actually was a help, he gave us somebody to pretend to talk to when we were saying things we couldn’t say directly to one another. Father Susten’s church was down in Bridgeport, he probably isn’t even there any more, he wasn’t a young man eleven years ago.

Besides, that was a marital difficulty, that was my infidelity, the stupid mistake of a man who had to go for just one last hurrah, no matter how much it hurt. Our problem now is a job and an income; what could he say about that? What could he do to help? Give us something out of the alms box?

And what would I have to say to him about
this
problem? Discuss what I’m doing with the resumés? I say, “Marjorie, Father Susten couldn’t—”

“He isn’t there any more. I phoned.”

So she’s very serious about this. But I want to head it off, I don’t want to entangle my mind with
counseling
when I have this hard, tense, frightening work to do. I say, “Marjorie, we can talk it out together, all this stuff about the job.”

“I can’t talk to you,” she says. She looks over at the picture window. She’s calmer now. “That’s the problem, I really can’t talk to you.”

“I know I’ve been inattentive,” I say, “but I
can
pay attention, and I
will
pay attention.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She continues to look at the picture window. Now that she knows I’m listening, she’s become very quiet, draining all the passion out of what she says. “I mean I can’t talk to you about the current situation.”

I simply don’t understand. “Why not?” I ask her. “We both know the situation isn’t—”

“No, we don’t both know,” she says, and turns her head, and looks at me again. “You don’t know the situation at all,” she says, “and that’s why we need counseling.”

I don’t want to know what she’s telling me. It’s too late not to know, but I don’t want to know. I feel myself trembling. I say, “Marjorie, you haven’t … made any …
done
any … you’re worried about … you think you might… ”

She’s looking at me. She’s waiting for me to stop. But when I stop, I’ll have to know. I take a long painful breath, a deep inhale, and when that breath comes out I say, “Who is he?”

She shakes her head. I’ll kill him, I think. I know how, I didn’t used to know how, but now I do, and I know I can do it, and I know it’s easy. It’s easy. With this one, a pleasure.

“Just tell me who he is,” I say. I try to sound very gentle, like someone who doesn’t kill people.

She says, “Burke, I called some state social services offices. There’s counseling we can go to, it isn’t terribly expensive, we can—”

“Who is he, Marjorie?”

How many people could he be? How many places does she go? Not many, not since we sold the Civic. Could it be the dentist, Dr. Carney, that white-coated wimp with his Coke bottle glasses, endlessly washing his hands? Or that fellow at the New Variety, the movie house, what’s his name, balding, harried, slovenly, Fountain, that’s it. Could it be Fountain? Somebody at one of those places.

I’ll follow her, I’ll trail her, I know how to do these things now, she won’t know I’m there, I’ll find him, and then I’ll kill him.

She’s still talking, while my mind races around like a dog that’s lost the scent, and what she’s saying is, “Burke, either we go into counseling together, or I’m going to have to move out.”

That stops the questing dog in his tracks. I give her my full attention. I say, “Marjorie, no, you can’t go— How could you? Where could you live? You don’t have any money!”

“I have
some
,” she says, and I realize I’m the one who doesn’t have any money, not since the unemployment insurance ran out a few months ago. (That was so humiliating, taking the unemployment insurance, going down there, signing the forms, standing on the lines with
those people
. It was shaming and degrading, but it wasn’t as bad as when it stopped.)

And if Marjorie goes away? We can’t afford
one
household, how could we afford two?

She says, “I have my part-time jobs, and I can get another one, part-time, at Hurley’s.”

Hurley’s is a liquor store, in the same mall as Dr. Carney’s office. Could it be
Hurley
she’s shacked up with, stinking of stale cigarettes?

I’m feeling desperate, scared, trapped. I say, “Marjorie, none of this would be happening if I hadn’t lost my job.”

“I
know
that, Burke,” she says, as desperate and trapped as I am. “Don’t you think I know that? That’s what I’m saying, the strain of this, it isn’t
fair
, it isn’t fair for any of us, but it’s getting to us, it’s making you silent and secretive, I have no idea what you do in that office all the time, all those papers you’re constantly going over and marking up with your pencils, all those trips you take—”

“Interviews,” I say, quickly. “Job interviews. I’m
trying
to get work.”

“I know you are, honey,” she says. “I know you’re doing your best, but it’s driving us apart, it’s making me feel I want to
laugh
again sometimes, I want to stop being so miserable, feeling so weighed down all the time.”

“All right,” I say. I have to speed up the operation, I have to finish it all very soon. Her… person… whoever he is, I’ll get to him later. I have to finish the other first. “All right,” I say.

She cocks her head, watching me. “All right?”

“I’ll go along with you, to … counseling,” I say, and even as I say it I feel lighter, happier. It won’t be easy, I know. I’ll have to hide so much from this person, and this is a person you’re supposed to be seeing so you can have somebody to be
open
with. But I can’t be open, not with anybody, not till this is over, and even then never about this. I’ll never be able to tell anyone in the world about this, about this awful period in my life, not a single human being ever. Not Mar- jorie, not a counselor, not a thousand counselors sworn to secrecy.

But still, we’ll be able to talk about some of it, the desperation, the resentment, the feelings of inadequacy, the shame, the feeling that somehow it is all my fault even when I know it isn’t.

“All right,” I say again. “Counseling. I’m sure it’s a good idea anyway.”

“Thank you, Burke,” she says.

I say, “Marjorie… ”

“No,” she says. She’s very firm. “Don’t say anything about it.”

I was going to say to her, don’t see him any more. But I know she’s right, I can’t say that, I don’t have the right to say it. “All right,” I say.

Three hours later I am in my office. This time, I’ll go after the nearest one, to make it simple and easy, and so I can make more than one trip, reconnoiter, be sure I know what I’m going to do and how I’m going to do it, and how I’m going to
keep
it simple and easy.
Then
I’ll do it.

The road atlas. Here he is, in Dyer’s Eddy, a dot of a town right here in Connecticut, not thirty miles from this spot.

Marjorie is reading a novel in the living room. I say to her, “I’m going for a drive, I have to think,” and she nods, not looking up from the book. We’re extremely awkward together.

I don’t carry the Luger, this is just reconnaissance. I carry the resumé.

KANE B. ASCHE

11 Footbridge Road

Dyer’s Eddy, CT 06687

telephone 203 482-5581

fax 203 482-9431

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY: Most recently, (1991-present) Product Manager, Green Valley Paper & Pulp, introduced the new product line of industrial polymer paper applications.

1984-1991, assistant plant supervisor, Green Valley Paper & Pulp, responsible for paperwork for OSHA and other Federal regulators as well as state regulators. Additionally, oversaw second shift, home products line.

1984, oversaw the dissolution of Champion Pulpwood after bankruptcy. Dismantled machinery, negotiated with purchasers, maintained records of dispersal of machinery, money, materiel.

971-1984, various responsibilities with Champion Pulpwood, beginning on factory floor as sludge operator, moving up through various jobs to night shift supervisor, then to assistant to the manager during the period when Champion was being purchased and dismantled by Kai Wen Holding Corp.

EDUCATION HISTORY: High school diploma, 1962. Received bachelor’s degree in business administration from West Texas University Extension while serving as an enlisted man in the United States Army (two tours, 1963-1971). Received master’s degree, Connecticut Tech (night school) 1985. Am pursuing doctorate part-time.

I am still under 50 years of age, eager to share my experience and give a long-term commitment to a solid reliable employer.

Still under 50. The bastard. He doesn’t know it, but he’s going to be under 50 forever.

It’s all back roads between Fairbourne and Dyer’s Eddy. Last week’s rainstorm has finally drifted out to sea, leaving a clean-scrubbed world behind, glistening under pale spring sunshine. There are a number of Sunday drivers out, looking at the fresh greens of spring, the colors of the tulips people plant beside their porches and around their birdfeeders. I’m in no hurry, I drive along in their wake and I think about Kane Bagley Asche.

(In my research, in that stalling period after I knew what I had to do but hadn’t yet steeled my mind to do it, I used our family computer and its modem—we’re online, though we can’t really afford it, and I have to keep warning Billy not to spend too much time there— to access public records on my six resumés. Birth certificates, wedding licenses, property ownership. You can learn a lot about other people, though none of it did me much good. No good at all, really, except that when you know things about other people, and they don’t know you know those things, you feel a sense of power over them. That’s a help, if you ever intend to deal with them in some way. And one extra result of it all was that I now know everybody’s middle name, and that’s pleasurable in a strange way. I know their secret name, the one they don’t usually tell people. That’s probably the same sense of power the police feel, because they always use the middle name, you notice, when they announce a manhunt or an arrest.)