E. Proulx - The Shipping News

“There’s another one, too, isn’t there? Well, I’m out of here. Don’t look for me until Monday or whatever.”

She was sorry he loved her so desperately, but there it was.

“Look, it’s no good,” she said. “Find yourself a girlfriend-there’s plenty of women around.”

“I only want you,” said Quoyle. Miserably. Pleading. Licking his cuff.

“Only thing that’s going to work here is a divorce,” said Petal. He was pulling her under. She was pushing him over.

“No,” groaned Quoyle. “No divorce.”

“It’s your funeral,” said Petal. Irises silvery in Sunday light. The green cloth of her coat like ivy.

One night he worked a crossword puzzle in bed, heard Petal come in, heard the gutter of voices. Freezer door opened and closed, clink of the vodka bottle, sound of the television and, after a while, squeaking, squeaking, squeaking of the hide-a-bed in the living room and a stranger’s shout. The armor of indifference in which he protected his marriage was frail. Even after he heard the door close behind the man and a car drive away he did not get up but lay on his back, the newspaper rustling with each heave of his chest, tears running down into his ears. How could something done in another room by other people pain him so savagely? Man Dies of Broken Heart. His hand went to the can of peanuts on the floor beside the bed.

In the morning she glared at him, but he said nothing, stumbled around the kitchen with the juice pitcher. He sat at the table, the cup shook in his hand. Corners of his mouth white with peanut salt. Her chair scraped. He smelled her damp hair. Again the tears came. Wallowing in misery, she thought. Look at his eyes.

“Oh for God’s sake grow up,” said Petal. Left her coffee cup on the table. The door slammed.

Quoyle believed in silent suffering, did not see that it goaded. He struggled to deaden his feelings, to behave well. A test of love. The sharper the pain, the greater the proof. If he could endure now, if he could take it, in the end it would be all right. It would certainly be all right.

But the circumstances enclosed him like the six sides of a metal case.

A YEAR came when this life was brought up sharply. Voices over the wire, the crump of folding steel, flame.

It began with his parents. First the father, diagnosed with liver cancer, a blush of wild cells diffusing. A month later a tumor fastened in the mother’s brain like a burr, crowding her thoughts to one side. The father blamed the power station. Two hundred yards from their house sizzling wires, thick as eels, came down from northern towers.

They wheedled barbiturate prescriptions from winking doctors, stockpiled the capsules. When there were enough, the father dictated, the mother typed a suicide farewell, proclamation of individual choice and self-deliverance-sentences copied from the newsletters of The Dignified Exit Society. Named incineration and strewing as choice of disposal.

It was spring. Sodden ground, smell of earth. The wind beat through twigs, gave off a greenish odor like struck flints. Coltsfoot in the ditches; furious dabs of tulips stuttering in gardens. Slanting rain. Clock hands leapt to pellucid evenings. The sky riffled like cards in a chalk-white hand.

Father turned off the water heater. Mother watered the houseplants. They swallowed their variegated capsules with Silent Nite herbal tea.

With his last drowsy energy the father phoned the paper and left a message on Quoyle’s answering machine. “This is your father. Calling you. Dicky don’t have a phone at that place. Well. It’s time for your mother and I to go. We made the decision to go. Statement, instructions about the undertaker and the cremation, everything else, on the dining room table. You’ll have to make your own way. I had to make my own way in a tough world ever since I came to this country. Nobody ever gave me nothing. Other men would of given up and turned into bums, but I didn’t. I sweated and worked, wheeled barrows of sand for the stonemason, went without so you and your brother could have advantages, not that you’ve done much with your chances. Hasn’t been much of a life for me. Get ahold of Dicky and my sister Agnis Hamm, and tell them about this. Agnis’s address is on the dining room table. I don’t know where the rest of them are. They weren’t-” A beep sounded. The message space was filled.

But the brother, a spiritual sublieutenant in the Church of Personal Magnetism, did have a phone and Quoyle had his number. Felt his gut contract when the hated voice came through the receiver. Clogged nasals, adenoidal snorts. The brother said he could not come to rites for outsiders.

“I don’t believe in those asshole superstitions,” he said. “Funerals. At CPM we have a cocktail party. Besides, where did you find a minister to say a word for suicides?”

“Reverend Stain is part of their Dignified Exit meeting group. You ought to come. At least help me clean out the basement. Father left something like four tons of old magazines down there. Look, I had to see our parents being carried out of the house.” Almost sobbed.

“Hey, Lardass, did they leave us anything?”

Quoyle knew what he meant.

“No. Big mortgage on the house. They spent their savings. I think that’s a major reason why they did this. I mean, I know they believed in dignified death, but they’d spent everything. The grocery chain went bankrupt and his pension stopped. If they’d kept on living they’d have had to go out and get jobs, clerking in the 7-Eleven or something. I thought Mother might have a pension too, but she didn’t.”

“Are you kidding? You’ve got to be dumber than I thought. Hey, Barfbag, if there’s anything send my share to me. You got my address.” He hung up.

Quoyle put his hand over his chin.

Nor did Agnis Hamm, his father’s sister, come to the ceremony. Sent Quoyle a note on blue paper, her name and address in raised letters, pressed with a mail-order device.

Can’t make the service. But I’m coming through next month, around the 12 th. Will pick up your father’s ashes, as per instructions, meet you and your family. We’ll talk then. Your loving aunt, Agnis Hamm.

But by the time the aunt arrived, orphaned Quoyle was again recast by circumstance, this time as an abandoned and cuckolded husband, a widower.

“Pet, I need to talk to you,” he’d pled in brimful voice. Knew about her latest, an unemployed real estate agent who pasted his bumpers with mystic signs, believed newspaper horoscopes. She was staying with him, came home for clothes once in a while. Or less. Quoyle mumbled greeting card sentiments. She looked away from him, caught her own reflection in the bedroom mirror.

“Don’t call me ‘Pet.’ Bad enough to have a stupid name like Petal. They should have named me something like ‘Iron’ or ‘Spike.’ ”

“ ‘Iron Bear?’ ” Showed his teeth in a smile. Or rictus.

“Don’t be cute, Quoyle. Don’t try to pretend everything’s funny and wonderful. Just let me alone.” Turned from him, clothes over her arm, hanger hooks like the necks and heads of dried geese. “See, it was a joke. I didn’t want to be married to anybody. And I don’t feel like being a mama to anybody either. It was all a mistake and I mean it.”

One day she was gone, didn’t show up for work at Northern Security. The manager called Quoyle. Ricky Something.

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty concerned. Petal wouldn’t just ‘take off’ as you put it without saying something to me.” From his tone of voice Quoyle knew Petal had slept with him. Given him stupid hopes.