Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

After he stood the ironing board in its alcove on the porch, he sat down again and said, when she came into the room, “Well, what else went on between you and Mitchell Anderson that night? It’s all right to talk about it now.”

Anderson had left Harris less than two years ago to accept a position as Associate Professor of Speech and Drama at a new, four-year college the state was getting underway in southwestern California. He was in his early thirties, like everyone else they knew; a slender, moustached man with a rough, slightly pocked face; he was a casual, eccentric dresser and sometimes, Marian had told Ralph, laughing, he wore a green velvet smoking jacket to school. The girls in his classes were crazy about him, she said. He had thin, dark hair which he combed forward to cover the balding spot on the top of his head. Both he and his wife, Emily, a costume designer, had done a lot of acting and directing in Little Theater in the Bay Area before coming to Eureka. As a person, though, someone he liked to be around, it was something different as far as Ralph was concerned. Thinking about it, he decided he hadn’t liked him from the beginning, and he was glad he was gone.

“What else?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’d rather not talk about it now, Ralph, if you don’t mind. I was thinking about something else.”

“What?”

“Oh… about the children, the dress I want Dorothea to have for next Easter; that sort of thing. Silly, unrelated things. And about the class I’m going to have tomorrow. Walt Whitman. Some of the kids didn’t approve when I told them there was a, a bit of speculation Whitman was — how should I say it? — attracted to certain men.” She laughed. “Really, Ralph, nothing else happened. I’m sorry I ever said anything about it.”

“Okay.”

He got up and went to the bathroom to wash cold water over his face. When he came out he leaned against the wall by the refrigerator and watched her measure out the sugar into the two cups and then stir in the rum. The water was boiling on the stove. The clock on the wall behind the table said 9:45.

“Look, honey, it’s been brought up now,” he said. “It was two or three years ago; there’s no reason at all I can think of we can’t talk about it if we want to, is there?”

“There’s really nothing to talk about, Ralph.”

“I’d like to know,” he said vaguely.

“Know what?”

“Whatever else he did besides kiss you. We’re adults. We haven’t seen the Andersons in… a year at least. We’ll probably never see them again. It happened a long time ago; as I see it, there’s no reason whatever we can’t talk about it.” He was a little surprised at the level, reasoning quality in his voice. He sat down and looked at the tablecloth, and then looked up at her again. “Well?”

“Well,” she said, laughing a little, tilting her head to one side, remembering. “No, Ralph, really; I’m not trying to be coy about it either: I’d just rather not.”

“For Christ’s sake, Marian! Now I mean it,” he said, “if you don’t tell me, it will make me angry.”

She turned off the gas under the water and put her hand out on the stool; then sat down again, hooking her heels over the bottom step. She leaned forward, resting her arms across her knees. She picked at something on her skirt and then looked up.

“You remember Emily’d already gone home with the Beattys, and for some reason Mitchell had stayed on. He looked a little out of sorts that night to begin with. I don’t know, maybe they weren’t getting along… But I don’t know that. But there were you and I, the Franklins, and Mitchell Anderson left. All of us a little drunk, if I remember rightly. I’m not sure how it happened, Ralph, but Mitchell and I just happened to find ourselves alone together in the kitchen for a minute. There was no whiskey left, only two or three bottles of that white wine we had. It must’ve been close to one o’clock because Mitchell said, ‘If we hurry we can make it before the liquor store closes.’ You know how he can be so theatrical when he wants? Softshoe stuff, facial expressions…? Anyway, he was very witty about it all. At least it seemed that way at the time. And very drunk, too, I might add. So was I, for that matter… It was an impulse, Ralph, I swear. I don’t know why I did it, don’t ask me, but when he said, ‘Let’s go’—I agreed. We went out the back, where his car was parked. We went just like we were: we didn’t even get our coats out of the closet. We thought we’d just be gone a few minutes. I guess we thought no one would miss us… I don’t know what we thought… I don’t know why I went, Ralph. It was an impulse, that’s all that I can say. It was a wrong impulse.” She paused. “It was my fault that night, Ralph, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done anything like that, I know that.”

“Christ!” the word leaped out. “But you’ve always been that way, Marian!”

“That isn’t true!”

His mind filled with a swarm of tiny accusations, and he tried to focus on one in particular. He looked down at his hands and noticed they had the same lifeless feeling as they did when he woke up mornings. He picked up the red pencil lying on the table, and then put it down again.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“You’re angry,” she said. “You’re swearing and getting all upset, Ralph. For nothing, nothing, honey!… There’s nothing else.”

“Go on.”

“ What is the matter with us anyway? How did we ever get onto this subject?”

“Go on, Marian.”

“That’s all, Ralph. I’ve told you. We went for a ride… We talked. He kissed me. I still don’t see how we could’ve been gone three hours; whatever it was you said.”

He remembered again the waiting, the unbearable weakness that spread down through his legs when they’d been gone an hour, two hours. It made him lean weakly against the corner of the house after he’d gone outside; for a breath of air he said vaguely, pulling into his coat, but really so that the embarrassed Franklins could themselves leave without any more embarrassment; without having to take leave of the absent host, or the vanished hostess. From the corner of the house, standing behind the rose trellis in the soft, crumbly dirt, he watched the Franklins get into their car and drive away. Anger and frustration clogged inside him, then separated into little units of humiliation that jumped against his stomach. He waited. Gradually the horror drained away as he stood there, until finally nothing was left but a vast, empty realization of betrayal. He went into the house and sat at this same table, and he remembered his shoulder began to twitch and he couldn’t stop it even when he squeezed it with his fingers. An hour later, or two hours — what difference did it make then? — she’d come in.

“Tell me the rest, Marian.” And he knew there was more now. He felt a slight fluttering start up in his stomach, and suddenly he didn’t want to know any more. “No. Do whatever you want. If you don’t want to talk about it, Marian, that’s all right. Do whatever you want to, Marian. Actually, I guess I’d just as soon leave it at that.”

He worked his shoulders against the smooth, solid chairback, then balanced unsteadily on the two back legs. He thought fleetingly that he would have been someplace else tonight, doing something else at this very moment, if he hadn’t married. He glanced around the kitchen. He began to perspire and leaned forward, setting all the legs on the floor. He took one of her cigarettes from the pack on the table. His hands were trembling as he struck the match.

“Ralph. You won’t be angry, will you? Ralph? We’re just talking. You won’t, will you?” She had moved over to a chair at the table.