Walker Percy - The Second Coming

“Analysis of what?”

“Of you. Psychoanalysis.”

“I did that. Three years of it.”

“Analysis? No kidding.” Lewis brightened. Lewis thought better of him! Lewis envied him! Lewis wanted to be analyzed! “Then you of all people should know that depression is eminently treatable, right?”

Lewis waited, not quite watching him, as grave and courteous as if he were waiting for a putt.

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. What is more, you know as well as I do that such a reaction is quite common following the death of a spouse.”

A spouse. Marion was a spouse. But did Marion’s death depress him or mystify him?

“Also, if you want to know the truth. Will, I think you retired too soon.”

“May be,” he said absently.

“Early retirement is one of the major causes of depression.”

“Is that right?”

He took a good look at Lewis, at the dark slab-sided face and straight black hair which was too long for a golf pro and too short for a poet. There was a space in him where a space shouldn’t be, where parts were not glued together. What it was was that there is nothing wrong with being a goatherd-poet-golf-pro but there was something wrong with the way Lewis did it. What?

“After all. Will, you got it all. You got everything a man needs. And you’re a good athlete. You could play scratch golf if you put your mind to it.”

“What would you do if you had it all, Lewis?”

“I’d raise beef cattle, listen to Beethoven and Wagner, read and write,” said Lewis without hesitation.

Two fingers strayed along the greasy steel of the Greener barrel.

“You don’t enjoy such things, Will?”

“Sure.”

Lewis touched his arm, a rare thing. Leatherstocking didn’t touch anybody. “Tell you what, Will. They don’t need the father of the bride around here. Let’s me and you cut out, go down to my spread, crack a bottle, and put on the Ninth Symphony.”

“No thanks, Lewis.” Dear Jesus. Sitting with Lewis in his farmhouse, listening to the Ninth Symphony.

“Name one thing better than the Ninth Symphony.”

Kitty’s ass. “I’m not in the mood.” He looked at his watch. What did Kitty have in mind?

“You and I know that golf is not enough.”

“Right.”

“You couldn’t do without them any more than I can, Will.”

“Do without what?”

“The finer things in life.”

“Right.”

“Man does not live by bread alone and we make plenty bread at golf.”

“Right.” Why was it that the thought of the finer things in life, such as the Ninth Symphony, made his heart sink like a stone? For a fact, the Ninth Symphony was one of the finer things. On the other hand, Lewis’s proposal was so demented he had to laugh: he and this solemn poet-golf-pro music lover listening to the Ode to Joy of an afternoon in old Carolina.

“You want to know what I’ve decided over the years, Will?”

“What?”

“I’ve decided the worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his heritage.”

What heritage? Tidewater unbeliever who had read Dante six times for the structure, could draw the circles of hell, the platforms of purgatory, and the rose of heaven? When you came down to it, Lewis took Erich Fromm more seriously than God, Dante, or Virginia. Was this not madness pure and simple, to come from Tidewater Virginia, read about Dante and God, read the terza rima aloud with such admiration that tears came to his eyes — and top it off with Erich Fromm?

“I got to get back to the party.” And then to Kitty’s ass. “I promised Marion to get Leslie married up proper.”

“Yes. What a lovely girl. That reminds me. This may make you laugh but it’s something I promised Marion.”

“What’s that?”

“Before she died Marion asked me to tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

“Funny she wouldn’t tell you. You and Marion didn’t communicate much, did you?”

“No, we didn’t communicate much. We had what you call a communication breakdown.”

Lewis laughed, himself again despite himself. “Marriage is hell, ain’t it? Cindy is a wonderful wife but she hasn’t grown.”

“That’s too bad.” Grown to what? “What was it you were supposed to tell me?”

“Oh, Marion said: just make sure he gets to the wedding and all, that if he wants to pull one of his little fade-outs, she’s not going to be there to cover for you.” Lewis laughed. “She knew you pretty well, Will.”

“Yes.”

“I told her, shit, Will will be there, don’t worry about it.”

“You didn’t say shit to Marion.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Right.”

“You won’t come down later to crack a bottle and listen to some music? I just got the whole Ring.”

“No.” Jesus, no.

“Or shoot doves. Or sit in the cave. Or whatever.”

“The cave? Shoot doves?” A strange thought flew into his head. He looked at Lewis. “Okay. I will.”

After Lewis left, he stood for a moment looking down at the Greener. For the second time in a week, he remembered a movie actor he had only heard of once. No, he didn’t even remember the actor. He remembered his father remember the actor as they were driving in Hollywood in 1950. After the Georgia hunt they had gone West. At the end of the continent they found themselves driving down Sunset Boulevard in his father’s big black 4-hole Dynaflow Buick. His father, who had not spoken for a thousand miles, said: “You see that corner?” “Yes sir.” “Once I was here before.” “Is that right?” “I was here for the Olympics of 1932. On that corner I saw an actor by the name of Ross Alexander. It was before his death.” “Is that so?” “One night he was giving a party at his house. In the middle of the party he got up and said I think I’ll go outside and shoot a duck. No one thought anything of this announcement. He went outside to the garage and shot himself. No one thought much of that either. Similar events were occurring in Rome in 450 before its sack by the Vandals.” “Is that right?”

Will Barrett snapped the leather case of the Greener and put it away in the closet behind the Electrolux.

5

“What a wonderful person your wife was,” said Kitty.

“Yes, she was.”

They were watching his daughter Leslie as she talked with Mr. Arnold from the nursing home. Despite his stroke he could get around with a walker. One fierce eye gazed around the room under a small bald head white as an onion. One side of his face was shut down. Eyelid, cheek, lip fell like a curtain.

“Marion was a saint in this world,” said Kitty.

“Yes.”

“And you were so wonderful with her. I’ve seen you pushing her in the A & P, helping her in and out of the car.”

“Yes.”

“If she hadn’t been so heavy, she would have been a lovely woman.”

“Yes.”

No. Marion was not lovely, even before she got “heavy,” never had been lovely except for her good gray eyes and heavy wide winged eyebrows.

Why had he married her? It was not, was it? because she was Bertie’s sister and Bertie owned the firm and Marion owned forty million dollars?

No, he married her, hadn’t he? because she was touching, with her not too bad polio limp, and even pretty in a gawky Yankeefied way — even now when he thought of her at Northport, he saw her in a blue middy blouse — middy blouse? was such a thing possible, was it in a photograph, or did he imagine it? — and her direct gray-eyed gaze a whole world removed from a Sweetbriar girl or a Carolina coed who had six different ways of looking at you and with all six had seen you coming before you saw her.

No, he married her because he pleased her so much. It is not a small thing to be able to make someone happy so easily.