John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“My, you’re all dolled up,” he said. She was not. Her eyes snapped into focus on his face and she looked alarmed and pleased. Will Jr looked down, flushing. She would do it, he thought. His chest filled with a pleasurable panic. Horrible, he thought. But he couldn’t think of why.

It was just as he was leaving, a little after seven, that Mrs. Kleppmann called. He was alone in the office and answered it himself.

“Mr. Hodge, please,” she said.

“Who is this?” he asked, though the voice was unmistakable.

“Oh, Mr. Hodge,” she said, “it’s you.”

“Who is this?” he asked again.

“I need to see you,” she said. “About my husband. It’s urgent. Is it possible?”

“Where are you?” he said.

“Just listen. I can’t talk long. Have you a pencil?”

He stared a moment longer, mind a blank, then took out his ball-point pen and clicked the head into position. “Ok,” he said, “shoot.” He chewed his lower lip and wrote it down. Afterward, the memory of her walk came over him, and he had a sensation like fear and like joy, a shortness of breath. He reached in his pocket automatically, with his left hand, for the Tums.

5

Will had something on his mind, she saw at once. At first she thought it was the meeting tonight, one of those Civil Rights shows he was always getting himself involved in, but when she mentioned it at the supper table she discovered he’d forgotten that.

“Aren’t you going, then, Willie?” she said. “You don’t have to,” she said. “Plenty of people don’t, you know. If you don’t see any sense in it—”

“Not the point,” he said. A piece of spaghetti dropped from his lip and he tried to catch it with his fork, missed it, and spattered his tie a little. “Damn,” he said.

“Christ’s sakes,” Danny said, smiling.

Will glanced at him, then down again at his plate.

“You’re really in a mood,” Louise said. “You’re really fun. A million laughs.”

“Oh lay off, will you?” He chewed harder, angry and guilty, and she knew she could drop it but decided the hell with it. She was tired. Danny had been rotten all day, and Madeline, ever since she got home from school, had been making hay on it, playing the goody-goody. There had been times Louise had wanted to throw a pot at them both, or drown them in a tub of boiling oil or something. She had held herself in, saying only — in a voice like jagged iron— “Can’t you watch cartoons or something?” Maddie would vanish for a while after that, but then there she would be again, hovering beside her when she worked at the sink, or flitting around at her heels like a shadow just thick enough to trip you, consoling her for her sad, sad life in a tone that weighed on Louise like chains, half honest sympathy no doubt, yes, but also half pleasure in showing herself sympathetic. “If you really want to help, wash the lettuce,” she snapped. And then, close to tears, wanted to laugh. It was like throwing good plates at a ghost. For fifteen minutes, there stood Maddie, ineffectually washing the lettuce, then the carrots and radishes, prattling until Louise felt ready to explode, and tying up the sink, and trying so hard to be good, Louise felt, that it wasn’t fair to be anything but kind. She’d taken an aspirin and a glass of water and had relaxed for a minute in the livingroom, exactly as the TV commercials advised, but that too was a joke. Her minute of rest, supposedly refreshing, was shattered three times by cries from Danny — he’d gotten his finger closed in a drawer he knew he was not supposed to be in, and then he’d spilled milk, trying to pour it without taking it out of the refrigerator, and then — what? — yes, had gotten slapped by Maddie, allegedly for trying to bite her. To which Will, coming home, had contributed only his abstracted look, his deafness, and the stink — after all these years — of a Goddamn stupid pipe. “What in hell are you smoking?” she’d said.

“I take it it doesn’t quite sweep you off your feet,” he said. He didn’t bother looking up from the Evening News.

“It makes me want to kill and things like that. Is that good enough?”

“Look, Mommy Louise, I’m tired,” he said. It was supposed to console her, that “Mommy Louise.” It was what he’d said long ago in college, the first time she gave him a tit. Well it didn’t console her. It was sick.

“‘Mommy Louise, I’m tired,’“ she mimicked. “Nobody else can be tired, of course.” Then to Danny, coming in on the tricycle she’d told Will he shouldn’t let him ride in the house, “Danny, you get that damn thing out of here, Daddy’s tired.”

Danny looked up at her, then at Will.

“Will, you tell him, once.”

“You heard Mommy, Danny. Do what Mommy says.”

“‘Mommy,’“ she mimicked. She wanted to spit.

“Well Jesus,” he said, jerking the paper away from his eyes to stare at her, “you’re in a mood all right! What’s your excuse?” In a minute she’d be crying.

She had taken a deep breath, sucking down rage, then had turned and gone back to the kitchen. A minute later she could hear him talking with Madeline. She was giving him her goody-goody stuff, and he was gulping it down like dog-sick. “You bastard,” she thought. “You bastard.” But she had controlled herself then, had calmed down and had come out of the kitchen smiling, or more or less smiling, talking lightly of the antiquing kit that had come this morning from Sears. She was meaning to fix the chest of drawers and the dresser in the master bedroom. And even when he’d ignored all she said, she’d managed to keep her spirits up, though God knew what the point was. Now, suddenly, with his growl wrecking dinner, turning the food sour in her stomach, she felt herself letting go, relaxing into rage.

“‘Lay off,’ he says. Why should I? So I can leave you alone to never look at your family or play with them or tell them a story or so much as give them a spanking? So you can stay out every night till God knows when with June or Lagoon or whatever her name is and never come to bed with me — as if I was a leper or some fat old whore that the muscle’s all gone out of—”

“For Christ’s sake, Louise, the children!”

“What children? What children?” Now tears, you fucking bitch, she thought. But she was crying just the same.

Poor babies, she thought, sobbing into her hands, that bastard not stirring. They sat white-faced and far away as they always did when explosions came, and she wept, terribly, stupidly, with a feeling like mountains giving way. Danny began sobbing too.

“Sh,” Will said, white, his fingers trembling so the fork shook. “Now stop blubbering, Danny, and eat your nice potatoes.”

The room went blindingly white and she leaped from her chair with a whoop and ran to the livingroom to hurl herself like a cannonball at the couch. She lay clutching her mouth, gasping, and suddenly was rigid, as if something had locked in her mind and everything had stopped. When she could think again he was sitting beside her, rubbing her back, and his eyes were remote, objective. She’d slept a long time, perhaps. She was calmer.

“I love you,” he said with the kindness of a priest.

“‘Love,’“ she said. But she caught his hand and said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m sorry too.” Objective, cold as shit.

Where are you, Will? she thought. Come back. “I don’t know what happened,” she said, and for an instant knew she would sob again, but hung on. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he said again. He put his arms around her. Cold.