William Saroyan - The Laughing Matter

He was asleep, so she could speak to him, speaking to herself, for she was more asleep than awake herself, her body swollen, numb, and insensitive, her voice a slow, sleeping whisper, sleep itself coming and going in and out of her.

“Evan?” she said. “I don’t know what happened, only I do. I know what happened. I didn’t want it to happen, only I did. I made it happen. I was the one who made it happen. I did it, Evan. It didn’t happen by itself. I did it because I wanted to. I didn’t care who it was, because I didn’t care, because I didn’t need to care, because I don’t like to care, because everybody cares too much, and I don’t care at all.”

The sleeping man was still turned away. The kids were out in the yard or in the vineyard, for she had heard them talking and walking.

She leaned on her elbow, moving nearer to the bed beside her, to the man in the bed beside her.

“Evan?” she said.

The man stirred.

“Are you awake, Evan?”

He turned at last, his face still asleep.

“I’m alone, Evan,” she said. “I’m too alone.”

She watched his eyes open a little and close again.

“I’m going to die, Evan.”

The man opened his eyes, a little at first, then all the way.

He remembered everything suddenly and sat up, as if stricken by madness.

“I’m alone,” the woman said. “I’m sick and alone, Evan. You would pity a sick animal. I’m outside. I can’t live outside. I can’t breathe outside. You’d pity a dying animal.”

She threw herself onto his bed. Her hands clutched him. She pressed her body against his, scrambling to get back to him. Her anguish hurt him. Her animal brilliance in seeking to achieve love and survival on any terms astonished him, and her body, warm from sleep, soft and white, even now made his body want hers, as if spirit had no part in it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry you’re frightened. I’m sorry you’re sick and alone. I do pity you, I do love you, but I can’t be kind any more. You must get up and go to your life.”

“No, Evan. You can’t ask me to go.”

“I’m not asking you.”

“No. I’m Red’s mother. He loves me. I’m Eva’s mother. She needs me.”

“I’m telling you.”

“No. It would kill them. You know it would. It wouldn’t do any of us any good. It would kill me. It might kill you, Evan.”

“You’ve got to get out,” he said. “I don’t care who it kills. Your staying will kill everybody, too. It would be better to be killed decently, at any rate.”

“No,” she said, and now she began to weep. “You were never unkind. Don’t be unkind now when your kindness is most needed. It will do none of us any good for you to be unkind.”

“I can’t live in the same house with you,” he said. “There are some things even a kind man can’t do.”

“No,” she wept. “We’ll get out of this. We’ll start all over again. I’ll be a new person. I’ll live for you. I’ll be a woman you’ve never known. I am that woman. I’ve always been that woman. I know now. It won’t be like this any more, it won’t be the way it was, it won’t be the terrible way I made it for you every day. I won’t live for myself. I’m sick of that. I’ll live for you.”

“I can’t stay in the same house with you,” he said. “The nearness of you sickens me.”

“No,” she said. “We can help one another a little, can’t we? There is kindness in us for one another, isn’t there? We couldn’t be the mother and father of Red and Eva and not have kindness in us for one another.”

“You be kind,” he said.

“I will,” she said. “I will, Evan.”

“Be kind,” he said, “and get out.”

He pushed her away. She fell on her back, turned over, buried her face in the bed, saying no again and again.

“All right,” he said at last. “Get up. Put on your best clothes. Get breakfast. We’ll sit down and eat together.” She stopped sobbing to listen. She lifted her head to look at him. “We’ll walk together to Clovis. We’ll take them to church. Be their mother, and let me be their father. All right. Get up and be their mother.”

She got up, ran into the bathroom, leaving the door open, so that he could hear her.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be their mother. I’ll really be their mother now. We’ll forget everything. How much time do we have?”

“We’ve got time.”

“I’ll be dressed in a minute,” she said. “I’ll have breakfast ready in a minute. We’ll bathe them and dress them, and we’ll go to church, Evan. We’ll be their parents.”

He went to Dade’s room, shaved, showered, and put on his best suit. She was in the kitchen in the dress he’d bought her a year ago at Ransohoffs. She had an apron over the dress that somebody had sent her for Christmas a couple of years ago. She was making bacon, French toast, lamb chops, coffee. He went out of the house to the back yard. He saw Red and Eva coming from far off in the vineyard. When they saw him they cried out and began to run. The woman ran out of the kitchen into the yard to be beside him when they arrived. They picked up the children, and told them they were all going to church.

They sat down to breakfast. The eyes of the children filled with gladness at the ceremony of the table, at the presence of their mother and father, at the ease and charity in each of them for the other, and for their children. They talked pleasantly, and the eyes of the children filled with wonder. Even the eyes of the man and woman filled with it, and almost with tears, too, for they knew, each of them knew, how wrong it was to insist upon a moment of decent peace in themselves for the children to see, since the peace was false. Each of them knew how wrong it was to be forced by disaster into an essay at decency. They worked hard at it, gladly even, and neither of them, in speaking to the children, said anything that was hurtful to the other. They were trying. For whatever might be in it for the children, for themselves, they were trying. It made failure seem almost impossible.

The harmony achieved was real, in spite of the reason for its achievement. They were a family together. They did love one another. There was hope for them. Nothing could touch or hurt them. It was astonishing and painful to know, but it was true. They were still precisely who they were, who they had been, but they were also together, belonged together, and nothing else mattered. It was almost unbelievable that out of disaster a family could become more truly a family, out of disgrace and pain could become more proudly and irresistibly a family.

After breakfast the woman went off to bathe and dress the girl, and the man filled the tub in Dade’s bathroom for the boy. While the boy bathed, Evan Nazarenus sorted out the currency Dade had handed him the night before. There were a good many hundreds and fifties, and with the exception of six or seven tens, the rest were twenties, but there were a great many of them. He didn’t count the money. He stacked it carefully, opened the drawer of Dade’s bureau, saw the three pistols there, placed the biggest pistol on top of the money, stacked in two piles, and pushed the drawer shut. He then opened his wallet and counted the money in it. There was a twenty, a ten, two fives, and three ones.

The boy was soon back in his own room, getting into his best suit, a grey flannel. When they went out into the parlor the woman was there with the girl, waiting. The girl had on a yellow dress with small blue flowers done into it with thread. She was thrilled with the dress, and the whole adventure of going to church.