John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

They walked down the second-floor hallway the same way they’d come, and the memory of her smile molested his thoughts. He felt more than ever like some public executioner. As if reading his mind, she stopped at the landing and put her hand lightly on the ball of the newel post. “You know about my husband’s health, don’t you, Mr. Hodge?”

He nodded. “He told me, yes. I hope from now on he’ll be better. I sincerely hope.”

Her eyes narrowed just perceptibly, and a hint of the smile returned, ironic this time. “My husband is dying of cancer.”

It shook him to the soles of his shoes and he touched the banister for support. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She looked at him, her eyes gentle now, as though he, not she, were the one to be comforted. As if speaking to herself, she said, “I shouldn’t have told you. It can only make it harder — your job.”

“Sometimes—” Will Jr began.

She touched his arm. “Don’t say it,” she said very gently. “We understand.”

His final examination of the Kleppmanns — together this time — was scheduled for a Thursday morning, two days after his visit to the house. Will Jr reached his office at seven in the morning, when the city was still asleep, the streets empty except for the winos sitting against walls, the pigeons, and the blowing papers. He had work to catch up on, he’d told himself. But it was a lie. He had come to pace and slam his fist into his hand and agonize. Nine o’clock came. The Kleppmanns were late. He ate Tums like candy, but still it was as if he’d drunk gasoline and swallowed a match. Nine-thirty. Still no Kleppmanns. At quarter-to-ten he was so sick at his stomach he believed he would have to go home for the day. June, his secretary, lectured him about seeing a doctor. He stood at the window, looking out at the tops of the buildings, ignoring her. Suddenly, he slammed his fist on the windowledge. “Damn them!” He bellowed it out so loudly that Ray Polsby ran in from his office next door. June sat with her mouth open, her fists at her collarbone.

“What’s the matter?” Polsby said.

Will snatched his coat from the back of the door and stormed out.

The house was stripped clean when he got there. Even the old silver doorknobs were gone. He learned from the neighbors that it was Mayflower that had moved them out, and he immediately phoned the company to get them to stop the truck. The truck was in Utica by now, they said. It would cost him a hundred dollars to bring it back. Will Jr paid. He seized what he could legally seize, auctioned it off, and so collected twenty thousand dollars. It still left a long way to go.

5

I can try to withstand my poisons.

Danny’s and Madeline’s voices came from outside now, and when he pulled back the plastic curtain he found he could see them, in the driveway almost directly below him. They’d finished their breakfast, then, and she’d sent them out to play. He rinsed the shaving cream off his face, put on scented aftershave, patted the skin dry on the towel, and hurried to his room to dress. He was later to work than he’d been in months, and strange to say, it gave him a kind of satisfaction, almost elation. It was like playing hookey, like the times when he and Ben Jr had casually walked away during noon recess and had gone down the long hillside where the town of Alexander lay, and had stripped and gone into the creek. It had been very fine, the warm silty creek with the willows hanging over it. It was in weather just like this that they would go, a steamy morning after an August rain.

Today was — He thought a moment. Monday. He remembered all at once that this afternoon he had a flight to Chicago, chasing an account on the Cobb file. His stomach gave a quarter-turn. He felt in the pocket of his suitcoat — still hanging in the closet where Louise had put it — and found the Tums. Then he got into his shoes, a tortuous business, hooked his suspenders and hunted for cufflinks. He found in the mess two silver ones that matched, and as he was putting them on, gazing absent-mindedly at the odds and ends in the plastic box, he thought again of the little white stones Chief Clumly had asked him about. He looked at his watch. Ten-after-nine. He would call Uncle Ben from the office. He got out his suitcoat and was just in the act of putting it on — taking a deep breath, catching the cuffs of his shirt under his fingertips — when Louise screamed, downstairs. He bounded down, his mouth gaping open, and met Louise running up to meet him. She held out the paper.

“Will,” she said, “look! Someone was murdered in your father’s apartment!”

He thought it some lunatic joke, at first, though he knew at the same time that it was not. He took the paper from her, his mouth still open, heavy eyebrows drawn down, and read. “Mrs. Palazzo!” he said. He said it as if with relief.

Louise said, “Will, this is terrible! Why didn’t he phone us last night?”

He went on reading, walking on down the stairs now, scowling. The back door slammed and the four-year-old, Danny, came tentatively toward him, silently clapping his hands together. “Coogie?” he said.

“Don’t talk baby-talk, Danny,” Louise said. “Go away and play. We’re busy.”

Still silently clapping, unpersuaded, the small boy watched his father moving toward him, oblivious as a tide. “Coogie?” he said. The same instant Will ran into him with the side of his leg and knocked him just enough off balance to make him fall. Danny began crying furiously, and Will looked down at him with undisguised rage. “Damn it all, Danny,” he roared. But Louise broke in sharply, extending and spreading her fingers apart at her sides as if in agony, and Will gave in quickly. “Daddy’s sorry, Danny,” he said. The crying turned to screaming. “Danny, Daddy said he was sorry.”

“Oh, Will!” Louise complained.

He tried to look back at the paper. “Well I don’t see you doing anything about it.”

“That’s all we do around this house. Fight, fight, fight. When I married you—”

“I’m sorry,” Will shouted.

He stormed out to the car, carrying the paper. He backed out of the garage too fast, beside himself with anger, and almost slammed into the side door’s concrete stoop. Madeline came running from the back yard, arms out to him. “Daddy, let me kiss you good-bye!” she wailed. A phase she’d been in for it must be almost a year now. He understood very well how it was for her: he remembered his own acute sorrow, in his childhood, when his mother or father left, and at times he pitied her fiercely. But he was repelled now, too. Because the love he had tried to cling to as a child, the family he’d tried to bind together by the sheer force of his childish hunger, had been done for already, in his case, and was done for already in hers. She must sooner or later be betrayed, heart-broken, however sweet the Judas kiss he gave her. But he opened the door for her and accepted her kiss. “Be good,” he said. She looked at him sadly, as if she knew he’d betrayed her. Abruptly, on an impulse, he slipped his left hand under her armpit and lifted her off the ground and shook her hard, meaning it for love. She caught hold of his arm with both hands, accepting the shaking. He put her down, disgusted with himself, the infernal complexity of things. In the house Danny was still crying, and Louise was yelling at him.

“Good-bye, Maddie,” Will said severely.

“Good-bye,” she said.

Louise appeared at the door, holding Danny’s hand in one hand, Will’s suitcase in the other. “You taking this?” she said.

He got out to take it from her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” she said. “You’re always sorry.”