John Gardner - October Light

Sally hesitated, thinking for the hundredth time of giving in, but before she could decide, Ruth had dismissed her—”Well, do as you like!“—and she heard Ruth go into the bathroom and close the door.

“Goodnight, Mrs. Abbott, I’m glad to have met you,” the Mexican said. She heard him going lightly down the stairs.

When Ruth had gone down too, with hardly another word, closing the kitchen door behind her, Sally sat wincing on the edge of the bed, wringing her hands, feeling guilty and misjudged and full of woe. Over and over she asked herself what had happened, what she’d done. She might have guessed — though she didn’t — that her brother had intentionally offended the priest. (It would have come as no surprise.) But her mind was filled with a chaos of righteous indignation and distress, perfectly reasonable self-defense and unfair but convincing self-deprecation. The priest — smug and soft-spoken though he’d never laid eyes on her — could have no idea how much she and Horace had done for the poor and underprivileged in their day — how, right to the end, when, aflutter with panic, she knew she was losing everything, she’d kept up her contributions to Foreign Missions. He could not know how she’d listened with sympathy and interest to visitors from tragic inner-city churches and deplored the evils or prejudice in Boston. Yet she knew, for all that, that she was in some way guilty, had unknowingly let some cruel insult slip, had offended the man inside the priest and deserved every bit of his hostility.

Her feeling of distress and confusion grew, pressing in like a cold, invisible creature from outside. The walls of her bedroom hummed with the music and talk below — she could make out not one word of it now, with the door pulled shut at the foot of the stairs — and the light pouring out onto the cars in the front yard, making the glass and metal glint and reminding her faintly of cars parked behind the North Bennington Church at Christmastime, or cars parked around the school on the night of a Sage City concert, stirred her misery still more. Laboriously, she pulled her feet up into the bed and lay back against the pillow. She closed her eyes.

Anguish. How terrible that one must feel it all one’s life, from time to time, whatever one might learn, whatever one’s decency! Horace had said once, speaking like a novel, cheerfully, though the thought was grim — they’d had a little quarrel—“We humans are all such poor miserable things. However we may hope, we know perfectly well all we have is each other. Pity how we struggle and fight against our own best interests.” Horace had frequently said things like that. She’d found his opinions distinctly frightening, and sometimes, lying beside him in bed, feeling completely alone in the universe except for Horace, she would suddenly feel so anxious that, without quite meaning to, she would wake him and get him to talk with her a little. If only they’d had children! She could remember all too vividly — and felt it again now — how it had felt, lying on her back, feeling as if she were endlessly falling, sinking toward death, as if she’d somehow become conscious of the earth’s fall through space, her whole body listening to the noise of wind, the creakings of the otherwise silent, falling house. As if to steady herself, pull back against the fall, she would touch her husband’s wool-pajama’d arm, but the falling continued, and she would half-realize, with growing alarm, that she was losing the oldest battle in the world, the battle we wage from the moment we’re born, when we stretch up our arms, kick our legs, and finally raise up our bodies. She would rouse herself from fear, struggling upward toward the ordinary, and pressing her face against his shoulder would wake her husband up; and as Horace would rise to consciousness, she would mysteriously cheer up, her spirits would lift …

Sally blinked and came awake. She pressed up on one elbow, and when it wasn’t enough to drive the feeling away, she pivoted her legs off the side of the bed and felt for the floor. She stared down into the yard again, listening to the hum of the party below. She felt giddy, mysteriously endangered, somehow dead wrong. “They give us no choice,” she said, tears in her eyes, speaking to the ghost.

Distinctly, as if from right beside her, a voice said sharply, “Sally!”

She was startled half out of her wits. She was absolutely certain it was Horace’s voice, though she knew, of course, that it couldn’t be. Was she dreaming? She decided then that it must have been Dickey’s voice, for he was calling now through the closed door, “Aunt Sally?”

“Is that you, Dickey?” she called back.

“Aunt Sally,” he said, “I brought you some cocoa and cinnamon-toast.”

“That’s sweet of you, dear,” she called, feeling suddenly more guilty than ever. She took a step toward the door, hesitated, wadding up her hankie and biting at her lip.

After a moment Dickey called, “I’m sorry I was bad.”

“Why Dickey!” she said, surprised, “you did nothing wrong!” Sympathy carried her to the door, but with her hand on the knob she paused again.

“I told on Grampa,” the child said.

Sally stared, puzzled, at the door. How he could make it all his fault was beyond her, but though she’d had none of her own, she knew the ways of children. “Dickey,” she said gently, “it’s not your fault at all, and if your grampa James—” She broke off, resisting the temptation to put the blame where it belonged and make the boy’s life harder. “Honey, don’t you think you’re to blame for one minute. It’s not your fault at all.”

Dickey asked, still dubious, “Can I give you the cocoa and cinnamon-toast?”

It was a tribble dilemma. She stood racking her brains, torn between sympathy and principle. It was wrong, heaven knew, to make the innocent sufffer; certainly forcing her to capitulate to her brother's mulish will was the furthest thing from little Dickey's mind. She could see him, in her mind's eye, looking at the floor to avoid looking up imploringly, guuilty for no reason, just as his poor uncle Richard had felt, groundlessly guilty all those years — just as she had felt guilty just now with the Mexican priest. How dare she disappoint the child? Nevertheless, the indignity of the thing was a great deal for anyone to ask her to bear. They were all down there partying, making light of the battle — even her dearest and oldest friends — trying to make her give in the James’ tyranny, give in as the weak have always given in, as they would given in (she thought, with sudden bitterness), accepting the age-old slavery of women and childre. No doubt they thought it was purest foolishness, this stand she was taking, and in hter heart she could understand their feeling. “Give in! Don’t make a scence!” It was the universal cry. How often she’d done just that that herself, even with dear Horace. But sooner or later one discovered one had simply had enought, one could give in no longer. They had no idea what it was like, living with a maniac. Someone, sooner or later, had to fight, that or kill themself. her eyes filled with tears. Oh, she knew how to give in, all right. She could go out and they’d all make a scene over her, praise her and fawn on her exactly as if she’d won, as indeed they’d think she had: won a battle with herself, becoming “sensible.” And she could smile shyly, as if admitting she’d been a fool and it was all a funny story, as it would be, someday — a story to her discredit — and she could accept their jokes and compliments, even join in the singing or the cheerful talk, and all would be forgiven. Oh yes! She could see it! James would praise her mulishness, proud of having won, and he might even behave somewhat better for a while, might even grant her, grudgingly, her color TV. But in the end, cut it as you liked, she’d have been beaten, as the weaker sex is always beaten, and she’d cook and clean and keep her opinions to herself, and when James turned cross and clean and keep her opinions to herself, and when James turned cross she’d pretend she didn’t see his stupidity, she’d kow-tow and scrape like an Oriental slave, and if anyone was talked of, laughed at, scorned by the gossips — scorned as they scorned that poor Sherbrooke woman, even now, years later, at least in some of the stories — it would be her, that crazy old woman, not sensible James. The image of her cruel and unjust humiliation was stronger than the image of the child at the door, and she said kindly, gently, “It’s sweet of you, Dickey, but I’m not hungry. You take it back down, that’s a good boy.”