Russell Banks - Affliction

“So that’s more or less what I told Wade. ‘Jack’s up on Parker Mountain somewhere,’ I told him. That and nothing more exact than that, because I didn’t know anything more exact than that. And I only told him as much as I did because he asked, and I figured he asked only because he was trying to make it look like he had legitimate business with Hettie. When he did not have legitimate business with Hettie. Actually, it figured that the one person in town Wade would want to avoid would be Jack Hewitt. So I didn’t see anything wrong in telling him where Jack was. Anyhow, he said thanks, and the kid paid me for the milk and left without finding any cookies that met her standards. Not that I particularly gave a damn.”

“I hurried — oh, Lord, I was frantic hurrying trying to get out of there before he came back. I was just tossing my clothes and things every which way into suitcases and plastic bags and boxes and stuffing them into my car trunk and the back seat; I felt guilty — leaving like that, without telling him or explaining anything; of course I felt guilty; but I figured I could explain later, and I also thought that maybe once it was done, once I was gone from the house, he wouldn’t mind so much. It was the actual leaving, doing it in his face, that I figured would bother him the most; I was sure it would make him crazy— crazier, actually, because he was already pretty crazy, you know that; that was why I was leaving in the first place. I don’t think he wanted me around, but I was afraid that he would literally come apart if he thought I was abandoning him, and that’s why I was trying to get out of there before he came back with Jill, which I had learned from Nick, who had called me out at the house as soon as Wade left the restaurant. Well, it’s more complicated than that. But you understand. It had to do with Pop too, I have to admit — or, more accurately, it had to do with the combination of Wade and Pop in that house: they were both getting worse, and so far as I could see, it was because of each other. Pop mostly sat in front of the TV set in the living room watching wrestling; once in a while he opened up a new bottle of booze, which he drank from until he got drunk enough to start talking cracked; and about then Wade usually showed up, or for the first time would start to act like Pop was in the room — having ignored the man up till that point: and then the two of them would go at it hammer and tong. That was no place for a woman. Not with Wade chasing people through the woods and cracking up his boss’s truck like that, it wasn’t. His obsession with that stupid hunting accident of Jack’s: it was like he thought it explained everything , but in order to do so, it had to practically be invented all over from the beginning — by him! And the w ildness he was displaying, like the way he pulled his own tooth out with pliers, which practically made me sick when he told me that’s what he had done, although I had already figured it out for myself, thank you, when I found the bloody tooth and pliers on the bathroom sink. Well, you know how he was acting: you were in touch with him then. But you didn’t see it. Except for the day of Ma’s funeral, you were never here to see it and deal with him and Pop up close on a day-to-day basis. I guess I’m saying this because I feel guilty, guilty for leaving him right then, abandoning him, actually, when he had been fired from his job and fired from being the town cop, which was a very important position to him, never mind how he himself described the position; I feel guilty for leaving him alone up there in the house when he was so upset, so beaten down by his life, which he blamed mostly on his father, as you know; I feel guilty because I left him when he was feeling so frustrated by that stupid court case, that custody suit he was trying to bring against Lillian — although I did not at that time know what you told me about that: about how his lawyer had advised him to drop the case, so he still felt dependent on Lillian in order to see his own child — not that I thought he was an especially fit father at that time, believe me.

”So there I was, with most of my stuff packed and my car almost filled to the gills, when Wade drives up with Jill. Too late to hide, I figured, so I just stood there, with the trunk and the car doors wide open, and he drove past, looking out the window at the car full of my stuff, not making any sign of recognition, and drove the truck into the barn and parked it. Then he and Jill came walking back along the driveway from the barn to the front where I was — Jill lagging behind and lugging her little suitcase, looking forlorn — and I thought, Oh, Lord, what that child’s been through; and I forgot all about getting out of there right then and leaving that child alone with those two men, one of them drunk and crazy and the other probably on his way to drunk and crazy — although I did not at that moment think either of them was particularly dangerous, which is why I decided that I should stay at the house for another night and day, or at least as long as Jill was there. So when Wade came up to me and looked over the items I had packed into the car, boxes and suitcases and plastic bags full of my things, and said, ‘Going somewhere, Margie?’ I tried to lie. Not only because I was leaving him right then, but also because I had changed my mind, due to seeing Jill. It was a stupid thing to do, I know: it was obvious what I was up to; but I was suddenly divided in my emotions between wanting to leave and wanting to stay, and I had not anticipated feeling that way, which is really probably the stupid part. But you get caught in these things: you make one small decision, and pretty soon you’re stuck with a bunch of other decisions that you’re not so sure of, and then you act stupid. So I lied to Wade and tried to tell him that I was taking a bunch of things to the church rummage sale and a bunch more to the cleaners and laundromat in Catamount, it being Saturday. And of course it didn’t work; he saw right through me. He said, ‘Don’t lie to me. You’re leaving me, I can see that.’ I tried to change the subject and said for him not to be silly, or something light like that, and said hi to Jill, who smiled — or tried to smile — looking pathetic and miserable in spite of it — or because of it.

“I have no particular talent for deception, and that’s why I’m easily fooled — unless I’m just not very smart, since most people who are smart are good at deceiving people and are hard to fool. Gordon LaRiviere, for example. But Wade — no. He was more like me than like Gordon LaRiviere, say, or Nick Wickham, who is sweet but full of it — which is why I think I was first attracted to Wade, back when he was still married to Lillian: I know you know all about it; Wade told me that he once confessed about it to you, our little extramarital fling (or whatever you want to call it — it didn’t last very long, at any rate, and we both felt plenty guilty for it). But he was a man I never tried to lie to, and I don’t think he ever tried to lie to me; he kept some things to himself, naturally, and I did too, but that was different, wasn’t it? What am I trying to say? I guess I’m trying to say how sad I was that afternoon when Wade drove up with Jill and I tried to lie to him about moving out of the house; it suddenly hit me that what we once had was gone and could never return; I had finally learned how to be afraid of Wade, and the only way I could think of protecting myself was to lie to him. And because I was so bad at it, so inept, I only made things worse; I stirred up the situation and found myself having to protect myself against him even more than before I had lied; and I wasn’t even able to make myself believable enough to protect anyone else from him. Meaning Jill. I realized that it was a lost cause, me and Wade, and that probably I would never again be with a man I did not have to lie to, as I had once been with Wade. And so I started to cry. Standing there beside my car in front of that old farmhouse, with the sun glaring off the snow, and Wade in front of me and his daughter watching — I started to cry. Like a baby. I actually bawled. I can hardly believe it now, but it’s the truth: I started to bawl.