Bill Pronzini - The Lighthouse

She said, “You can’t really believe that matters so much to me.”

He continued to look away, not answering.

She reached up, put her hand against his bearded cheek, moved his head until he was looking into her eyes. “Why would you even think that it makes a difference? That I’d leave you?”

“Because… dammit!” He took her wrist, removed her hand. “Because people have been leaving me all my life. Why not you, too?”

Anger flared up; she struggled to control it. After a moment she said, “I’m not just ‘people.’ I’m your wife and I love you. I’d have to have a far better reason than blindness to make me go away from you.”

His face, squeezed tight by tension, relaxed slightly. “I admit,” he said, and stopped and then started again, “I admit I was probably being irrational. But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you, to put it to the test. I was terrified of losing you.”

She’d been aware that in a marriage of many years’ duration, the partners tended to conceptualize their spouses-not necessarily as they were, but as extensions of their own selves. Somehow, though, she had never applied this common psychological phenomenon to her own marriage, and yet that seemed to be exactly what she and Jan had both been doing. Years of comfortable routines and patterns had evidently robbed them of real communication, and each had transferred his own fears and failings to the other. Jan had translated his fear of loved ones leaving him to actual potential desertion on her part. And she, because she sometimes doubted her own worth as an adult woman, had imbued him with a similar lack of worth, doubted him as she doubted herself.

The irony was that these mutual doubts had surfaced with the first major crisis they’d had to face in years. At a time when they should have drawn closer, the doubts had threatened instead to pull them apart.

Now that she understood what had gone wrong, she would be able to verbalize it to Jan. But not now, it wasn’t the time. What he had to have now, to shore up his sagging defenses, was simple reassurance.

She reached up and drew his head back against her shoulder-a trifle less gently than before, because she was angry with both of them. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’ll stay with you no matter what happens. We’ll get through this together, the same way we’ve gotten through everything else. Do you believe that?”

The resistance went out of him; she could feel it. He said, “Yes,” and leaned against her, and she thought: It’s going to be all right.

After a time, holding him, she glanced at the window and saw that darkness had fallen. She said, “Jan, I can’t spend another night in this place and neither can you. You know that too now, don’t you?”

“I know,” he said. He straightened, disentangled himself from her arms. There was a sadness on his face, and she could feel his sense of loss: he had really loved this lighthouse, before all that had happened to spoil it for him. And yet at the same time he seemed relieved at the prospect of purposeful activity. He got to his feet, saying, “Did you keep your motel room in Bandon?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll pack our things and stay there tonight. And if Sinclair says we can leave the area, we’ll start back home tomorrow. ”

“Once we leave, we won’t come back. Are you sure you’re ready to accept that?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he said.

Quickly, now that they were in agreement, they set to work. Alix packed the supplies and equipment in her studio, then started on the kitchen. Upstairs she could hear Jan clearing out his study, then moving about the bedroom packing their clothes. As she worked, she felt energized, buoyed by relief. Tomorrow they would be free of this desolate point of land, of the depressing village and the hostile people who lived there. And the day after that they would be home, in the comfortable, familiar surroundings of Palo Alto And next year, or the year after that, Jan will be blind.

She paused in the act of loading pots and pans into a carton, looked up, and saw her reflection in the darkened pane of the kitchen window. She moved closer, studying her face. There were lines between her brows that she hadn’t noticed before. Her lips pulled downward, bracketed by strained parentheses.

Maybe he won’t lose his sight, she thought. Maybe there’s still hope. He said the doctors don’t know much about his disease; it’s possible they’ll find a cure. But even if they don’t… it’s not the end of the world. It just isn’t.

She already had a good livelihood, and it would be an even better one after she joined Alison in the new firm. If it became necessary, she could support the household. But that probably wouldn’t be necessary; Jan had tenure, and the university would be accommodating about shifting his teaching load as his health problems demanded. Blind professors were not unheard of; many published and lectured at the same pace as their sighted colleagues. Knowing Jan-his determination, his dedication- she wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote other books on lighthouses after he finished Guardians of the Night.

No, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for either of them. If only he’d had more faith in her, he’d long ago have come to the same conclusion.

She heard Jan descend the staircase and set down their suitcases in the living room. When he went back upstairs, she made a trip out to the station wagon and laid her drawing board flat in the rear so things could be piled on top of it. The night had turned cold and the mist had thickened. The wind was icy, the smell of the sea extra sharp.

Jan was standing next to the couch when she came back inside. Several of his shirts had fallen off their hangers and he clutched them by their limp sleeves, a helpless, serio-comic expression on his face. For the first time in days Alix smiled as she went to his aid.

“Damned things,” he said.

“Don’t worry about them-they’ll only get wrinkled in the car. When we get home I’ll take everything to the cleaners.”

They set about untangling the garments. It seemed an impossible task; the hangers kept slipping to the floor, the shirts slithering after them. Finally, Jan went into the kitchen to get a plastic garbage bag. They’d dump the shirts into it, carry them home that way.

He held the bag and she picked up the clothing. But as she started to stuff them into the bag, he tensed and his head cocked in a listening pose. “What was that?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Sounded like somebody moving around outside.”

She listened. “It must have been the wind.”

“Maybe.” Frowning, he let the bag fall and started for the door.

Outside and not far away, there was a sudden echoing report-one she’d heard before, one she recognized as a rifle shot. It froze Jan halfway to the door. Froze her with one hand at her mouth.

And before the echoes of it died away, male voices rose in an excited clamor out there. Close, very close. In the front yard.

“Ryerson!” one of them shouted. “Come out of there, Ryerson, or we’ll come in and get you!”

Adam yelled it again. “Come out of there, Ryerson, or we’ll come in and get you!” Then he threw the Springfield up and squeezed off another round. Put that sucker right into the lighthouse wall, right under the nightlight-saw the splinters fly, saw the hole it made, heard the echoes rolling off into the foggy night like some kind of sweet thunder.

Pretty soon lights went out inside. Place was dark now, except for the nightlight and one window up on the second floor.

He felt like jumping up and down; hell, he was jumping up and down, he couldn’t stand still. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this excited. Goddamn, this was something. Goddamn, they should of come out here a long time ago.