John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

I am alone, he cried, crouching and howling back in the desolated ballroom of his mind, his anguish echoing amid the bedraggled crêpe paper and soggy balloons of the party that was forever ended. So damned awful alone. No kiss for the bruise. No apron to hide in....

“I’ve had enough,” Mary said. “How about you people?”

“Golly, it’s nearly midnight,” Shirley said. “I didn’t realize.”

“Nightcap before I drive you home?” Debbie Ann asked.

“No thanks, honey.”

After they left, Mary went to the edge of the living room and stood looking out at the patio. There was a rigidity in her stance. She stood with her head slightly tilted, as though she were listening to something very faint and far away.

His empathy for the little signs of agony made him feel ham-handed, dull, awkward. “Mary?”

She turned slowly, rubbed the back of her hand against dampness under her eyes, smiled in a crooked way and said, “Stupid, I guess.”

“Is it?”

“It’s... wondering what I’m doing wrong. Not knowing the right way to handle it.”

“Believe me, you’re not doing anything wrong.”

“I’ve tried so many things some of them must be wrong. Scenes. He walks out. Indifference. He doesn’t seem to care. Where did he go, Mike? Oh, I don’t mean now, tonight. He went somewhere, inside himself. I love him. I can’t find him. It’s so damn difficult trying to be an adult. When he... shames me.”

“It’s a kind of sickness, maybe.”

“He’s never told me very much about... what happened to him in New York, before he came down here. It was pretty bad, wasn’t it?”

“Pretty bad.”

“Mike... if I knew all about it... if you could tell me, if it wouldn’t be a kind of disloyalty for you to tell me... it might help me understand. We used to have such... fun.”

He sat down with her, sat close beside her on the couch, and told her. When they heard Debbie Ann drive back in he stopped, but she went to her room without coming in. At one point she took his hand and clung to it tightly, and he did not believe she was consciously aware of doing so. He tried to make it as factual as the ten thousand news stories he had written.

“This,” she said blankly, her eyes very round, “is the very same woman?”

“But you shouldn’t get the idea this is... you know, a fatal fascination. I don’t know how to explain what I feel. It’s like a symbol of something. Of a flaw. Somehow he hates himself. She’s a club he beats himself with. I know him, Mary. He’s a good man. That’s the hell of it. From the time the war ended until that mess in New York it was like he was pulling something inside himself tauter and tauter, straining at something, and then it snapped, and, like a compulsion, he destroyed everything that meant anything to him. Bunny is a fine woman. You’re a fine woman too, Mary. You fell in love with the goodness in the guy. It’s a sickness. And I think there’s a pattern. He’ll try to destroy everything this time, too.”

“I won’t let him, Mike. I won’t let him do that to himself. Why should he — despise himself?”

“I don’t know. He had a little psychiatric treatment last time. Not much. The doctor said he didn’t respond well to the treatment, wouldn’t cooperate. He had the idea it all went back to a thing during the war. He got that out of him with sodium pentothal.”

“What happened?”

“First you got to understand this was a decent kid from a decent home, bright and sensitive and essentially kind. We had to turn a lot of those kids into killers, fast. It didn’t leave any mark on the louts. It never does. But it can be a hell of a thing to do to an imaginative kid. He volunteered himself into the Corps on December eighth when the lines were long. They did their best to brutalize him in boot camp. He’s got ability. He can do a hell of a lot of things well. They pushed him up fast. We were learning how to fight a war, and making mistakes that would sicken you. As a sergeant, a platoon leader, after forty days of nightmare, he got sent a stupid, pointless patrol in command of ten men. Later on, when he’d gotten smarter, he would have gone far enough to be out of sight, dug in, and come back at dawn and faked a report. He made the patrol. It didn’t accomplish anything. He was ambushed and lost six men and managed to get clear with the other four. They were cut off. They had to make a big circle. They crawled. A snake got one in the throat and he died in ten seconds. They got separated from another one somehow in the darkness. He was never seen again. Three left. Once a big Jap patrol walked by, close enough to touch. They didn’t know where the hell they were. Later a sniper got one of them through the head, and the other in the belly. He dragged the wounded one away. A two-hundred-pound man. He finally got back to the lines, fourteen hours overdue, carrying the wounded man on his back. But by then the wounded man had been dead, they estimated, for three or four hours. Once we got drunk in Melbourne. He told me about it, telling it as if it was a long funny story, grinning. He laughed when he was through and then he started to cry. I never heard a man cry like that. I hope never to hear it again. He felt it was his fault, losing them like that. The ambush, the snake, getting lost... all his fault. Ten guys he knew well. Ten guys who believed he could take them out and bring them back. It’s a good bet nobody could have. Maybe something snapped right there. Maybe that’s when they should have taken him out. But they left him in and he made them a good officer and later a good company commander. Before that patrol, maybe it had all been sort of brave and glorious adventure to him. After that it was just dirty, bloody work. And he learned his trade.”

“My God,” she said softly. “Oh, my God.”

“I don’t know, Mary, but I think that’s as close to the reason as anybody is ever going to get.”

“And that woman is just... I’d like to see her.”

“I think it would be better if you didn’t. I think it would just make it harder to understand, seeing her.”

“Could we get him to a doctor?”

“I could try. I could try to do that.”

“You think she’ll leave?”

“I’m sure she will. But I don’t know when. Maybe Thursday when I give her the money.”

“I’ll pay you back for that.”

“No point in that. It’s hard to get used to the idea a thousand bucks isn’t important money. But it isn’t. And... you might get cleaned out, Mary. I guess you know that.”

“I know it. Yes.”

“It scare you?”

“A little, I guess. Yes, it does. But... what is happening to Troy is more important. I don’t... need all this. I didn’t earn it. We could live on what he was making before, as a builder. Debbie Ann has her own money. It would just be the two of us.”

“I want to poke around a little. I want to look into that land deal. There’s something funny about it.”

“Poor Mike. You came down for a rest. We’re all leaning on you. It isn’t fair. Tell me what you think I should do. How should I... react?”

“You won’t like this, Mary.”

“Try me.”

“I think you should get the hell out for a while.”

“Go away when he...”

“You’re one of the things he wants to destroy. Like I said, sort of a symbol of self-destruction. Going away takes some of the pressure off him, the need to hurt you and keep hurting you.”

“I... I guess I understand.”

“You ought to pack and leave in the morning. Tell him you want to go away and think things over. Don’t be emotional about it. Pick a spot and tell me, so I can be in touch with you. It got rough after she took off the last time. It might get just as rough again. I’ll do what I can. The land deal, the doctor, the woman.”