John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

The lights were off in the diningroom. He’d sent the children upstairs.

“Can I get you something, Mommy?”

She shook her head.

“Maybe sleep would help.”

She felt a flicker of anger, a last weak flitting of lightning after the storm is over, then felt it die into indifference. If he wanted to get rid of her, put her in bed as though she were merely a cross, unreasonable child, it was fair. She was. And tired, so tired she wasn’t sure she could lift her own hand. She let him help her to lie down again, her head on the cool pillow. She lay still, with her eyes closed, for a long time, and she could feel his hand resting gently on her back. And then another flicker came, not anger this time but something almost remembered. She concentrated, tensing the muscles of her eyelids.

“Will?”

He grunted, patting her.

“What’s that paper, about taxes?”

He patted her again, exactly as before, but she had the impression, too distinct to be wrong, that he’d suddenly moved back from her, physically even, though he hadn’t moved a muscle.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Don’t give it a thought.”

“Are you sure, Willie?”

“Would I lie to you?”

She thought about it. What an odd thing for him to ask. Of course he would. She let herself go calm. Comfortably, barely moving her lips now, she said, “You ought to call your mother, Will. We haven’t written in months.”

“You call her,” he said. “She likes you more than me.”

“I tried.” She collected herself. “She was out all day. Yesterday too, and last night. I tried when you were gone, just to talk to somebody, even her.”

“With Luke?”

She shrugged, just the flick of a muscle or two. She was going to say I tried that, too, but it didn’t seem worth the effort. It was unbelievable how limp and relaxed she felt. We must try and have more scenes, she thought, and laughed mournfully inside her mind. Will was stroking the fleshy insides of her legs, pulling her feet apart a little.

When she awakened next, the whole downstairs was dark as a coal bin, and she was chilly. The record was still turning on the record player and in the sleeping house the whisper of the needle in its barren track was frightening— kh-sst, kh-sst, kh-sst. . Then she remembered where he was. He’d gone to his Civil Rights thing. Us, Will? she thought without hope. Could you march for us?

1

“Ben,” Vanessa Hodge said when he came in for supper, “you’ve got to do something. I still can’t get hold of Millie. No one’s seen her. And I can’t get Will either, he hasn’t been in to the office since Sunday. I can’t even get hold of Luke. Something must’ve happened.”

One look at her face and he knew what it was she thought had happened. Her skin was sweat-streaked and puffy and, around the eyes, dark. He hadn’t seen her look so bad since the boy was killed in the war. A wave of sorrow swept over him. “Now, now,” he said gently. He went to her, put his big arms around her, and, laying his crusted, sunburnt hand around the back of her head, pressed the side of her face lightly to his chest. “I’ll go look ’em up right after chores, Vanessa.” He looked past her, out the kitchen window. It was six o’clock, but you’d have thought it was midafternoon. He could be finished with his chores by eight, if he hurried supper. (There was a smell of boiled potatoes and applesauce and meatloaf, probably the last of old Ellabelle, slaughtered a year ago November. She’d kicked him.) It would be darkening by eight and beginning to cool, a beautiful time for riding the motorcycle. “Maybe I’ll go on the bike,” he said.

“And leave me here?” She drew back her head.

“Now Vanessa,” he said.

“Sometimes I think you’re just not in this world at all,” she said. “I’d be petrified, here all alone.”

“Why, Vanessa, I’ve been plowing till way after midnight the whole time this thing’s been going on. You never said a thing about that.”

“Well that’s different,” she said. She drew away from him, feeling she had something urgent to do, and turned to the sink and put her fist to her chin, trying to think what she was after. The applesauce was there, cooling on the drainboard, and she ran her finger around the edge absent-mindedly, having a taste. “I’m not the only one,” she said, “don’t think I am.” She took another taste. “There isn’t a person for miles around that would go to bed with his doors unlocked these days. They even leave their lights on. He was seen clear over in Perry. Did you know that?” She glanced at him. She’d frightened herself. “He was seen on the same afternoon in Bergen and Brockport. I heard it on TV.”

Hodge carried the pan of potatoes to the sink and drained them, his eyes vague, then dumped them into a green plastic bowl. He set it on a clear space on the table and turned back for dishes and, with a big, lead-colored spoon, dished up the meatloaf. He stepped into the bathroom then and pushed his sleeves up and filled the sink with cold water (there was no hot), washed, still staring at nothing, rinsed his face, and dried himself hard with the grayblue, scratchy towel. All the while, Vanessa went on talking, frightening herself with rumors. What would she say, he wondered, if he were to tell her it was Tag?

“Is David eating with us?” she said, pausing.

“He’ll be in. Putting the milking-machines together and getting out silage.”

She stood with the refrigerator door open, trying to remember that what she needed now was milk, then at last did remember and brought it over to the table in its long green pan. It needed skimming. “Skim the milk,” she said, to fix it in her mind. She went for a spoon and cream cup and tried to think what she’d come to the silverware drawer for. “Skim the milk,” she kept saying to herself, over and over, but she couldn’t think what she was after.

“You have to keep ahold of your mind at a time like this,” Ben said. His sermon voice; nevertheless, it was musical and quieting. “It’s like the bobcat scares. Somebody sees one, or thinks he sees one, and pretty soon everybody’s seeing them. There may be something to it, at the bottom; but you can count on it, it’s nine-tenths imagination. Everything is.”

It made her feel calmer. His solidity alone, the way he would stand, childlike, with his arms crossed and his head tipped on his brick-red bull neck, had a way of making her calmer. He was looking out the window now, wondering what was keeping David, or looking beyond the milkhouse and barn toward the valley and the woods, golden green in the afternoon slant of the sun. She found she was holding an egg in her hand. “Pididdle,” she said, disgusted with herself, and opened the refrig door to put the egg back. She wasn’t usually as bad as this! When the back door opened she jumped; but it was David.

“All ready to tear?” Ben said.

The boy smiled past her, towering above her, his teeth as pure white as his heart. The smell of sweat and silage coming off him choked the room. “Pooh!” Vanessa said, batting the smell away. He slipped past her toward the bathroom, smiling.

When they were seated, Ben said, “Fatherwethanktheevor-thisvood,blesstoouruseandustothyserviceandmmndammndawaythouthaviscoAmen. We forgot the butter.” Vanessa got up. Ben said, going back to what he’d been saying before, “For nothing’s either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

She came back with the butter and sat down again, and they ate. Absent-mindedly, Ben glanced around for the newspaper and found it, after a moment, peeking out from under the throwaways and the torn-open letters from Vanessa’s friends. He drew it toward him, shaking off the other things. “What’s this?” he said.