Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She lit a cigarette. He had suddenly a great desire to see Robert and Dorothea; to get them up out of bed, heavy and turning in their sleep, and hold each of them on a knee, jiggle them until they woke up and began to laugh. He absently began to trace with his finger the outline of one of the tiny black coaches in the beige tablecloth. There were four miniature white prancing horses pulling each of the tiny coaches. The figure driving the horses had his arm up and was wearing a tall hat. Suitcases were strapped down on top of the coach, and what looked like a kerosene lamp hung from the side.

“We went straight to the liquor store, and I waited in the car till he came out. He had a sack in one hand and one of those plastic bags of ice in the other. He weaved a little getting into the car. I hadn’t realized he was so drunk until we started driving again, and I noticed the way he was driving; terribly slow, and all hunched over the wheel with his eyes staring. We were talking about a lot of things that didn’t make sense… I can’t remember… Nietzsche… and Strindberg; he was directing Miss Julie second semester, you know, and something about Norman Mailer stabbing his wife in the breast a long time ago, and how he thought Mailer was going downhill anyway — a lot of crazy things like that. Then, I’ll swear before God it was an accident, Ralph, he didn’t know what he was doing, he made a wrong turn and we somehow wound up out by the golf course, right near Jane Van Eaton’s. In fact, we pulled into her driveway to turn around and when we did Mitchell said to me, ‘We might as well open one of these bottles.’ He did, he opened it, and then he drove a little farther on down the road that goes around the green, you know, and comes out by the park? Actually, not too far from the Franklins’… And then he stopped for a minute in the middle of the road with his lights on, and we each took a drink out of the bottle. Then he said, said he’d hate to think of me being stabbed in the breast. I guess he was still thinking about Mailer’s wife. And then… I can’t say it, Ralph… I know you’d get angry.”

“I won’t get angry, Marian,” he said slowly. His thoughts seemed to move lazily, as if he were in a dream, and he was able to take in only one thing at a time she was telling him. At the same time he noticed a peculiar alertness taking hold of his body.

“Go on. Then what, Marian?”

“You aren’t angry, are you? Ralph?”

“No. But I’m getting interested, though.”

They both had to laugh, and for a minute everything was all right. He leaned across the table to light another cigarette for her, and they smiled at each other; just like any other night. He struck another match, held it a while, and then brought the match, almost to burn his fingers, up under the end of the cigarette that protruded at an angle from his lips. He dropped the burned match into the ashtray and stared at it before looking up.

“Go on.”

“I don’t know… things seemed to happen fast after that. He drove up the road a little and turned off someplace, I don’t know, maybe right onto the green… and started kissing me. Then he said, said he’d like to kiss my breast. I said I didn’t think we should. I said, ‘What about Emily?’ He said I didn’t know her. He got the car going again, and then he stopped again and just sort of slumped over and put his head on my lap. God! It sounds so vulgar now, I know, but it didn’t seem that way at all then. I felt like, like I was losing my innocence somehow, Ralph. For the first time — that night I realized I was really, really doing something wrong, something I wasn’t supposed to do and that might hurt people. I shouldn’t be there, I felt. And I felt… like it was the first time in my life I’d ever intentionally done anything wrong or hurtful and gone on doing it, knowing I shouldn’t be. Do you know what I mean, Ralph? Like some of the characters in Henry James? I felt that way. Like… for the first time… my innocence… something was happening.”

“You can dispense with that shit,” he cut in. “Get off it, Marian! Go on! Then what? Did he caress you? Did he? Did he try to feel you up, Marian? Tell me!”

And then she hurried on, trying to get over the hard spots quickly, and he sat with his hands folded on the table and watched her lips out of which dropped the frightful words. His eyes skipped around the kitchen — stove, cupboards, toaster, radio, coffeepot, window, curtains, refrigerator, breadbox, napkin holder, stove, cupboards, toaster… back to her face. Her dark eyes glistened under the overhead light. He felt a peculiar desire for her flicker through his thighs at what she was leading up to, and at the same time he had to check an urge to stand up yelling, smash his fist into her face.

“‘Shall we have a go at it?’ he said.”

“Shall we have a go at it?” Ralph repeated.

“I’m to blame. If anyone should, should be blamed for it, I’m to blame. He said he’d leave it all up to me, I could… could do… whatever I wanted.” Tears welled out of her eyes, started down her cheeks. She looked down at the table, blinked rapidly.

He shut his eyes. He saw a barren field under a heavy, gray sky; a fog moving in across the far end. He shook his head, tried to admit other possibilities, other conclusions. He tried to bring back that night two years ago, imagine himself coming into the kitchen just as she and Mitchell were at the door, hear himself telling her in a hearty voice, Oh no, no; you’re not going out for liquor with that Mitchell Anderson! He’s drunk, and he isn’t a good driver to boot. You’ve got to go to bed now and get up with little Robert and Dorothea in the morning… Stop! Stop where you are.

He opened his eyes, raised his eyebrows as if he were just waking up. She had a hand up over her face and was crying silently, her shoulders rounded and moving in little jerks.

“Why did you go with him, Marian?” he asked desperately.

She shook her head without looking up.

Then, suddenly, he knew. His mind buckled. Cuckold . For a minute he could only stare helplessly at his hands. Then he wanted to pass it off somehow, say it was all right, it was two years ago, adults, etc. He wanted to forgive: I forgive you . But he could not forgive. He couldn’t forgive her this. His thoughts skittered around the Middle Ages, touched on Arthur and Guinevere, surged on to the outraged husbandry of the eighteenth-century dramatists, came to a sullen halt with Karenin. But what had any of them to do with him? What were they? They were nothing. Nothing. Figments. They did not exist. Their discoveries, their disintegrations, adjustments, did not at all relate to him. No relation. What then? What did it all mean? What is the nature of a book? his mind roared.

“Christ!” he said, springing up from the table. “ Jesus Christ . Christ, no, Marian!”

“No, no,” she said, throwing her head back.

“You let him!”

“No, no, Ralph.”

“You let him! Didn’t you? Didn’t you? Answer me!” he yelled. “Did he come in you? Did you let him come in you? That s-s-swine,” he said, his teeth chattering. “That bastard.”

“Listen, listen to me, Ralph. I swear to you he didn’t, he didn’t come. He didn’t come in me.” She rocked from side to side in the chair, shaking her head.

“You wouldn’t let him! That’s it, isn’t it? Yes, yes, you had your scruples. What’d you do — catch it in your hands? Oh God! God damn you!”

“God!” she said, getting up, holding out her hands. “Are we crazy, Ralph? Have we lost our minds? Ralph? Forgive me, Ralph. Forgive—”

“Don’t touch me! Get away from me, Marian.”