Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

“Suppose I wanted you to leave him, Maggie?”

“Don’t,” she said flatly.

“Why not?”

She hesitated a long time, and then she said, “I want it to stay the way it is.”

And that was her answer. Not the desired answer, perhaps not really an answer at all. Perhaps just another pretense, another mockery, another shallow attempt to preserve the walls which hemmed them in. And faced with it, he thought, That isn’t all, that can’t be all!

“Nothing stays the way it is!” he said fiercely. “Everything changes.”

“We’ll never change,” she said.

“That’s romantic as hell, but it isn’t true. You change or you die, Maggie! Haven’t you changed since this started? Jesus Christ, I can’t even recognize myself any more!”

She laughed lightly and said, “How’d this get so serious all of a sudden?”

“I want it to get serious, Maggie! For once, just for once, let’s take a good look at ourselves. All right? Where the hell are we going, Maggie? What the hell is there for us? Where’s our place in this world? Am I supposed to be a perennial lover? I’m a man, Maggie. Goddamnit, there’s more to life than just... just...”

“Just love?” she said quietly.

“No, but there’s more than just love-making! Otherwise we’re only animals. We’re substituting...”

“Don’t you like to make love to me?”

“Maggie, for Christ’s sake, don’t be dense,” he said fiercely. “I’m trying to tell you it’s no good this way.”

“Do you want to end it?” she asked calmly.

“No!”

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

“I want to begin it. I have to know where you stand and what you expect. I have to be able to pick up the pieces of my life and put them together into a reasonable—”

“I told you what I want,” she said calmly.

“What do you want?”

“I want it to stay the way it is,” she said calmly.

“It can’t stay the way it is!”

“But it has to,” she said calmly. “That’s the only way I can have you, Larry, and I do want you.”

“All of me? Or just the happy swordsman? Do you want the guy who’s frustrated and frightened and confused? Do you want the guy who cries alone at night sometimes? Do you want all of me, Maggie, or just the goddamn stranger who makes love to you once a week?”

“That isn’t kind, Larry,” she said calmly.

“Neither is survival! It’s cruel and realistic, and I’m trying to survive! I have to know where I’m going,” he said. “I have to know, or I’ll love my—”

“I don’t want to know,” she said calmly. “Let it happen. Let whatever’s going to happen happen.” She squeezed his hand. “Isn’t it enough that we’ll be going away together for a few days?”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t enough.”

“It’s enough for me,” she said. “When will the Altar house be finished?”

“The end of the month.”

“This month? August?”

“Yes.”

“Could we go away the last week in August? That would be a nice time, Larry.”

“If the house is finished,” he said. “Look, Maggie, can we just get back to this for a minute? I don’t think you realize how important it is to me, or you wouldn’t brush it off like... like... Do you know Baxter and Baxter? The firm that sent me to Puerto Rico? Well, they’ve asked—”

“I don’t care!” Patrick suddenly roared. “I don’t like you, either.”

“Oh-oh,” Maggie said, and she broke into a run. Emptily, Larry watched her, the blue skirt flapping about the firm calves, the ankles strong and slender, the skirt flattening against rounded thighs. He sighed and slowly walked to where she stood with the children in a bristling knot.

“He’s smaller than you!” Chris yelled.

“So what? He started it!” Patrick said.

“I did not!” David bellowed.

“You did so!”

“Boys,” Maggie said.

“I did not!”

“You did so!”

“Boys, boys,” Maggie said more firmly.

“Now let’s just calm down,” Larry said.

“He hit David,” Chris said, “so I slugged him.”

“Why’d you do that?” Larry asked.

“I just told you. He hit David.”

“Why’d you hit David?” Maggie asked her son.

“He started it.”

“I did not!” David shouted. “You’re a bully.”

“Now stop that, David,” Larry said.

“Well, he is. I’m only three, and he picked on me.”

“You’re almost four,” Patrick said.

“You want me to slug you again?” Chris asked.

“I don’t like that word, Chris,” Larry said.

“Is it a dirty word?” Chris asked.

“No, but I don’t like it.”

Patrick suddenly began crying. Maggie took him into her arms. “They ganged up on me,” he sobbed. “Both of them.”

“Well, they’re brothers, sweetheart,” Maggie said. “That’s what brothers are for.”

“Why don’t you get me a brother?” Patrick sobbed.

“Now stop crying. Come on.”

“They ganged up on me. They surrounded me.”

“Tell Patrick you’re sorry, Chris,” Larry said.

“What for? He hit David.”

“I know, but tell him you’re sorry.”

“But I’m not sorry. You told me if anybody hurt David, I should slug him. So why should I be—?”

“Chris, I said I don’t like that word.”

“Which word?”

“Slug.”

“Okay, but didn’t you say I should protect David? He’s my brother, and Patrick’s a stranger, and you said family is family and strangers...”

“It’s all right, Larry,” Maggie said. “You know how children are.”

Patrick had stopped crying. He looked at Chris surlily now, embarrassed by his earlier tears.

“You want to be friends?” Chris asked, holding out his hand.

“No.”

“Okay, so don’t.”

“He hit me,” David said, seemingly proud that he’d caused the altercation.

“Come on,” Larry said, “shake hands and make up.”

“He don’t want to,” Chris said. He stuck out his hand again. “You want to or not, Patrick?”

Reluctantly, Patrick took the offered hand and gave it a jerky shake. The boys began walking back to the car, vaguely communicative, friendly in a hostile way. Larry and Maggie walked behind them silently.

At last she said, “Family is family, and strangers are strangers.”

“He meant...”

“Yes,” she said, as if finally presenting him with the irrefutable answer to his question.

Mr. Harder was very proud of his grown-up married daughter.

“This is the girl who made me a grandfather,” he told his friends at the cottage, and his eyes glowed with parental pleasure. Mrs. Harder told him to stop fussing over the poor girl, and then took Eve aside.

“You don’t have to be nice or even polite, Eve,” she said. “You came for a rest, and you’ll get one.”

“Thank you, Mama,” Eve said.

Mrs. Harder took her daughter into her arms and said, “If there’s anything you want to tell me...”

“No, Mama.”

“All right. Then change and go down to the beach. Get some sun. There isn’t a woman in the world who doesn’t feel better with an attractive suntan.”

On the beach, her problems seemed to vanish.

Swimming in the surf, lying on the sand afterward in her brief wet swim suit, she shut out the world and indulged in an orgy of the senses. The sun baked her, and the mild ocean wind cooled her naked limbs. There was the smell of salt in the air, the lulling whisper of the ocean in her ears. Occasionally a boat would appear on the far horizon, and she would sit up to look at it, feeling detached and irresponsible, suspended in a timeless coma. She took long walks along the lonely shore, searching the trackless dunes for seashells, stopping in complete freedom to study a sudden cloud formation. Pinecrest Manor seemed a million miles away. Here, on the edge of eternity, she felt at peace with nature and herself. As evening pressed on, as the sun vanished and purple dusk stained the sky, she would pick up her canvas bag, the wind whipping her hair over her shoulders, and alone she would walk back to the cottage feeling as wistfully fulfilled as a sixteen-year-old girl.