William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (61 page)

doesn’t
doesn’t like you,” Lennie said. “She’s just disappointed and irked with you like everyone else——” “Oh, no,” I said: but
no,
not even Lennie, he didn’t understand. So I would say Lennie, behold, I tell you a misery: “I’m sorry, Lennie, for what I’ve done, today I’m trying to exorcise my milkman and my guilt.” Couldn’t he see? But then I said, “Please, Lennie. I’m drowning.” He took my hand and looked me in the eyes: it was a disappointed look, past irritation but not quite disgust: “Peyton, honest to Christ, please don’t give us that again today. Really, Peyton …” “But I am, Lennie,” I said. “Can you blame him,” he said, “can you really blame him? He’s done everything he could for you. He’s worried himself sick, he’s lost weight, he’s nearly had a breakdown. Every time you’ve come back he’s listened to you, he’s agreed with you. Then you begin all over, with your bad checks, your Tony, or that guy Sanders. You wouldn’t even stick with Strassman. And the terrible part, Peyton, is the fact that in spite of all you’ve done he still loves you. But he just can’t take it——” Lennie would always be the first to understand but now he wasn’t, nor could I tell him all, the
reason:
when I lay down in Darien with Earl Sanders I hated it; on the terrace, lying on that blanket, I could hardly hear the swollen, rustling plumes for the other things that bothered me: I was sorry in this way I’d punished Harry for his defection so small, and then there was the smell of paint on the terrace railing and I thought of summers long ago. Once we went down where they were painting a boat on the beach: I remembered Bunny’s hand, and the way the sand came up between my toes, the paint chemical and hot on the swarming summer air, swimmers beyond and gulls floating in the blinding blue: then he squeezed my hand and I remembered remembering
I will remember this forever.
But at the door something knocked and the Hindu Cyril answered, just then, letting in a rectangle of light. That driver, Stanley Kosicki, stood there; he said, “That’s the dame. She owes me fifty cents.” I had forgotten. “Lennie,” I said, “I forgot. That taxi driver. I owe him fifty cents but I only have thirty. Here. Could you pay him the rest?” Lennie looked at me, the disappointment disgust. “Christ, Peyton. You take a taxi when you don’t have hardly subway money and then you make the guy wait. What’s the matter with you?” “I’m sorry, Lennie,” I said. “I really did forget. Here, please take this thirty and pay him the rest. I’ll pay you back.” “Oh, nuts.” He got up, walked to the door, his shoulder finally obscuring the driver’s scowling, muttering face. So desperately I tried to make my lips work, to say, “I’m sorry,” to the driver; the door closed. I sat there saying nothing, listening, with my bag uptilted, to the ticking, ordered wheels: then across the room I saw Albert Berger’s mouth yawn with noiseless laughter like a shark’s, say: “Coo! And the irony is this: with the revulsion we humans have for the body, the secretions and juices and, as it were, plasms, the weakest still lie down in the moist and odorous conjugal embrace. Coo! And yet——” And yet now more strong than before something in me stole into the clock: we lay there together, Harry and I, in the safety of springs and the order of precisely moving wheels, like sleeping to exist in some land where we were young again, and dream of meadows or such consoling visions that come at the brink of sleep, dogs that barked once in the September woods, ducks across the sky, and the way he carried me up and upward—oh Christ!—when I was the Spirit of Light. “Now please do what I told you,” Lennie said, looking down at me. “Go over and tell Laura to feed you. You look starved. Then go home. I’ll talk to Harry later. Maybe——” I said, “No, I can’t wait. Please tell me where he is. He’s going to come back with me. And the clock.” “What?” he said. I didn’t answer. “What is this about the clock? What are you carrying it around for?” “Nothing. I just bought it,” I said. “Oh,” he said. “Well now, you just——” I got up. “No, Lennie,” I said. “Please listen to me. You’ve
got
to tell me where he is.” “No,” he said. “You’ve
got
to,” I said, “you’ve just
got
to. If you don’t——” He put his hands on my shoulders.
“Shhh-h,
honey, take it easy. If I don’t, what?” I turned away. “I don’t know,” I said, “I’ll——” “What?” he said. “I don’t know,” I said, “kill myself.” He grabbed me by the arm. “Look, baby. I think you
are
in a bad state. Look, my car’s outside, I’ll call Strassman and we’ll get Harry and drive over to Newark——” “No,” I said, “he’s crazy. Strassman. He has a cold.” “A what!” Lennie said. “Nothing,” I said, “I mean—I mean just tell me where Harry is.” I turned and pulled him by the sleeves. “You’ve
got
to, Lennie. You’ve got——” Lennie put his arm around my waist and led me toward the hall, past the people squatting like rocks, through the submarine drowning light; the Wang-Wang Blues petered away and the young men rolled their eyes like agates through seaweed wreaths of smoke. So in the hall then. “All right,” he said, “but if he won’t see you, promise to come here or go to Laura’s. You need somebody to take care of you.” “Thank you, Lennie,” I said, “oh, thank you. Please forgive me, Lennie. Do you think I’m bad?” “No,” he said, “no, honey. You just need straightening out. Why do you——” “Why do I what?” I said quickly. “Nothing,” he said. “Why what?” I said. “Why do you act like you do? Why did you have to run off with that Tony guy that last time? That’s what got Harry. It’d get me, too. Why? Why?” His voice was gentle; though I tried, how could I speak to Lennie, when behind us in the foyer, at his words, prancing harmlessly with speckled, flightless feathers, came across through the polished regency chairs—the brasswork, the spotless mirror—my poor, despised, wingless ones: how could I explain that? Or when I remembered:
Harry doesn’t love me else why would he have hollered at me like that about the checks unpaid and the dirt beneath the bed and lying down in Darien with Earl Sanders, my agonizing vengeance
… That would be difficult to explain, indeed: that I couldn’t
have
Harry holler at me like that, so I must lie down with someone, perishing in my hatred, hearing the echo in the night: “What do you
mean
I don’t love you, Peyton? I love you more than you’ll ever know. I’m just not your father. I’m not supposed to put up with these things.” Thus an echo in my guilt and feathered darkness; how could I explain this to him? “I don’t know why,” I said. “I don’t know.” “Don’t cry,” Lennie said, and he took out a big red handkerchief and wiped at my tears. “Don’t cry, honey. Now look. Harry’s painting. Marshall Freeman lent him his studio this afternoon. Harry’s there. It’s right around the corner, on University Place. Look, I’ll put down the address.” And he took out his wallet and a slip of paper and began to write down the address. “There,” said Lennie. “Now promise me. If he won’t see you, you promise to come back here or call me, or go over and see Laura. I can’t guarantee——” “Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “He’ll see me. Soft and tender is my Harry.” “A new line, huh?” said Lennie. “Yes,” I said. “Thanks, Lennie.” He closed the door behind me; I was sweating again, standing in the hot, still afternoon. I walked east. The houses across the alley were drowned in shadows; even on the rooftops there was no light. Way off in the river, so faint they seemed like car horns, boat whistles moaned: it was high tide, I guessed; they’d be pulling out to sea. At home high tide too, or thereabouts, and between the seawall and the water not more than two feet of sand, where we’d walk carefully along, kicking the driftwood and shells; Ella Swan would come out for the washing in the afternoon August heat, raising her hand to shield her eyes, to look at the ships passing out to sea: thus once Ella and Maudie and I—we proceeded slowly across the grass, listening to the bees in the rosebush, smelling the sea. Thus once. Only I couldn’t remember, but just
know
the mimosas nearby, and that was another time. Thus she brought it up:
when you let her fall when you let her fall.
And the mimosas in the heat fingering the air, pale strands like hands of water:
when you let her fall.
And Strassman said, “Birds?” And I said, “No birds for that,” for birds were for another time, another guilt, when I lay down with all the hostile men. “No birds,” I said. “Then what?” he said. Then I couldn’t remember, couldn’t tell Strassman of this separate despair hidden beneath the smell of mimosas and sea somewhere beyond my reckoning:
you let her fall.
But I didn’t. “Perhaps you didn’t but you are still dangerously abstracted.” Then he was toying with me, that bastard psychoanalyst. I said all hope lies beyond memory, back in the slick dark womb, and he said, “That’s what I mean, your abstraction,” yet couldn’t he see, too? Why was it when I thought of her I thought of blessed Beatrice? That was what I’d like to know, Dr. Irving Strassman; please to remove that Kleenex from your silly nose: was it because once when we were blown like petals through the years of our innocence he said twin heroines have I: one fairer than the evening air, clad in the beauty of a thousand stars, the other blessed Beatrice, O Light Eternal, self-understanding, shining on thy own. Something like that. But mixed-up. And when he said, Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Then I cried. Then Strassman said, “But there’s no connection.” How could I tell him about the mimosas, the light at home coming down and the bees sailing plumply about in the salty air?
You let her fall,
Helen said. Then I walked down alone on the seawall; then Bunny came up and took my hand: we saw darkness fall across the bay and I thought of Grandmother with snuff beneath her lip.
Schlage doch, gewünschte Stunde.
“Are you sick, dear?” I was leaning with my head up against the gate, and the old woman came out—she had a dog on a leash—tapping me on the shoulder. I didn’t answer. “Can I help you, dearie?” I looked up. She had a wide, cheerful face and blue eyes. “Are you sick?” she said. “Yes,” I said, “I have a headache.” “Poor dear,” she said, “hold Buster and I’ll give you a piece of Aspergum.” I took the chain, holding it along with my bag. “It’s like chewing gum but it’s got aspirin in it. Here, now just pop it into your mouth. Why don’t you go home and rest?” I stuck the gum in my mouth and began to chew, tasting peppermint. “I will,” I said. “Thanks very much.” “Not at all,” she said, “you just go home and rest. Here, I’ll let you out of the gate.” The dog sniffed at my heels, I stepped out onto the street. “Now do what I say,” she said, smiling through the fence. “I will,” I said. “Thank you. Good-by.” I spat the gum into the gutter: WIFE HACKS LOVER, WATCHES HIM DIE, the scrap of tabloid said against the grating; a puff of breeze caught it, pushed it along. I crossed the street with the green light, the wind flicking my skirt; but it was a hot breeze, filled with some suffocating vapor and the odor of a bakery, and I sweated more; then the breeze died. I looked at the address Lennie gave me: it said
15
, and I walked south down the block gazing upward at the—
21, 19, 17
—descending numerals. Then I came to
15
and then I thought: suppose the clock again. Suppose the blessed, wonderful, enclosing, warm clock. Suppose he should fail to realize the value and the sacrifice: $39.95, our womb all jeweled and safe. Suppose. Just suppose. But I didn’t want to think about that. I climbed three brick steps, pushed open the door and went in: FREEMAN on the mailbox, first floor rear. I pushed the bell and waited, but I waited even less than a time to think, for the buzzer went off right away, clattering beneath my hand, an imprisoned rattlesnake. I went in and down the hall, past a frieze of tiles, a table littered with mail, a mirror in which I saw myself—shocked, with circles under my eyes, and disordered hair: I passed on breathing, from behind chrysanthemum wallpaper, the stench of other peoples’ lives. My drowning. I paused: please let him say yes. Then I walked on, and then I reached the door. I pressed the bell, heard it sound inside somber chimes—
bing bong bong—
staid and solemn, churchlike, outside my soul. “Who is it?” I didn’t answer, stood with my head against the door and listened to my heart’s fearful pounding, the clock ticking too, against my breast, all ordered and safe. “Who the hell is it?” Then footsteps across the creaking timbers. “Yes?” he said. I didn’t answer, for fear he. Suppose he. Couldn’t he understand the miracle of my invention, the soaring dark soul-closet, lit only by jewels through the endless night? I confess an ecstasy at that: thinking, while he stood separated from me for one second by the thinnest panel of oak, of us untroubled through some aerial flight across time, the ticking like music, only better, sheltered from the sun and from dying, amid the jewels and wheels. “Who is it, dammit. Speak up.” I held my breath, But yes. He threw open the door, stood there silent when he saw me, tense and grim: I saw a vein pulse at his throat. “It’s me,” I said, smiling, “come back to the land of the living.” “You’ve got the wrong house,” he said. “We don’t want any.” Past him in the room an easel and a painting, windows thrown open to the fading light. There was a streak of blue oil across his brow, and the sweat stood up on it in tiny globes, and he said, “Why don’t you go away?” Yet this I had prepared for too; I said, “I brought you a present.” “You mean a bribe?” he said. “No,” I said, “a present. Can’t I come in?” “No,” he said, “I’m working.” He started to close the door, and the fright came up in my throat; I said, “I won’t disturb you. I’ll be very quiet.” “No,” he said, “go back to your Italian friend.” “I’m drowning,” I said, and I took his arm; he pulled away. “Oh, Christ,” he said, “go see Strassman or somebody——” “Harry,” I said, “listen to me, please——” He let me in, turned his back on me and walked to the easel; the door slammed behind, I strolled across the floor, holding my clock. He was painting an old man. In grays, deep blues, an ancient monk or a rabbi lined and weathered, lifting proud, tragic eyes toward heaven; behind him were the ruins of a city, shattered, devastated, crumbled piles of concrete and stone that glowed from some half-hidden, rusty light, like the earth’s last waning dusk. It was a landscape dead and forlorn yet retentive of some glowing, vagrant majesty, and against it the old man’s eyes looked proudly upward, toward God perhaps, or perhaps just the dying sun. “That’s a beautiful picture,” I said. He didn’t answer, took a brush and painted a gray stroke across the ruined city. “I think it’s wonderful,” I said. Still he didn’t answer, painted on, his shoes scraping on the floor. I sat down on a chair and watched him. Outside in the garden the paradise trees stirred almost imperceptibly in the stifling air; sparrows rustled among the leaves, chirping, and the yells of children came from afar, like something out of memory. I said it then: “Come back, darling.” He didn’t answer. “Come back,” I said. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done.” Still he didn’t answer; the ruins came closer, faded beneath his touch, soundlessly. He painted on. I thought of the clock, took it out of my bag. “Look, darling, look at the clock I bought us. You were always complaining that that old clock wouldn’t keep time. Now look.” He didn’t say a word. “Look, darling,” I said, “all jeweled and safe,” then wondered: why safe, why that? He turned, held the brush in mid-air, dripping a bead of blue oil. He looked at the clock. In the silence we could hear its ticking, along with the sparrows, the far-off children. “You got it at Macy’s,” he said, “and it cost $39.95. Right?” “Yes,” I said. “And you paid for it by check,” he said. “Yes,” I said. “And the check bounced higher than a kite,” he said, turning back to the easel. “Thank you very much for the present, which I paid for out of our joint quote bank account unquote. Ex-bank account, that is: there’s nothing left.” “Oh,” I said, “oh,” listening to the words over his shoulder and not knowing how his face looked, except the words: bitter and angry and full of disgust: and in the clock, for one brief moment plummeting earthward, he and I crushed and ruined amid all the fiercely disordered, brutally slashing levers and wheels. Yet “Oh,” I said, “oh.” Then I said “I’m sorry, Harry, really I am. I didn’t know. It was a present for you. I’ll get some money from Bunny.” Safe again, the clock upright, soaring through space, Harry and I: it was a close call, I thought. “Why?” he said, and turned angrily, clutching the brush: “Why, why, why?