Contrary Pleasure (35 page)

“Yes?”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“I thought I would go in the morning.” It was difficult for her to
articulate clearly. “Did he tell you why he did it?”

Ben sat warily. “No.”

“He’s sick, I think. I know he was drunk. But sick too. To do that. When
I… came to, I phoned you. Nobody answered. I didn’t want to phone his house. I
thought his wife might answer. I think he’s sick. I think he needs help.”

“How did you two meet?”

“Meet? At the mill. I work there. Section nine.”

“I’m sorry. I probably have seen you. But—”

“I know how I look. It’s all right.”

“What… what do you plan to do about it, Miss Doyle?”

“I’ve… been thinking about that. I don’t know. Just try to make sure
somebody helps him. But I don’t… I don’t want to see him again. Hitting me like
that… it did something inside me. Nobody ever hit me like that. It isn’t the
hurting, or even being afraid. It’s something else. I just don’t want to see
him anymore.”

“Has he been giving you money?”

She sat quite still, but he saw her hands lock together. “It hasn’t been
like that, Mr. Delevan.” The words came with great dignity from the ruined
mouth.

“How long has it been going on?”

“Since spring.”

“Did you think you loved him?”

“I think I did. But I don’t. Not now. It broke something. Maybe that was
what it broke. Holding me and hitting me—”

“I think you ought to see a doctor today. Maybe he’ll want to take an
X-ray. You might have a broken cheekbone or a cracked jaw.”

“I don’t think so. My front teeth are loose. But they tighten up, don’t
they? Sometimes, I mean.”

“I think they do. Yes, I think they do.”

“I want to give them a chance. I’m not going to bite on anything. They
never match your teeth right.”

“Miss Doyle, I… the family feels responsible for this. I want to see that
you get proper care. I’m going to insist on that and I want to give you something
for… this discomfort.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“What do you feel about my brother now?”

“Not… anything, I guess. Just empty, sort of.”

“He thought he killed you, Miss Doyle.”

“How awful! And you came here to… He must be going half crazy. I’ve got a
phone. Right over there. If you—”

“He left a note for me, Miss Doyle. He killed himself this morning with a
gun. He shot himself in the head.”

It seemed as though she hadn’t understood him. She just sat and looked at
him. Her hand lifted toward her face and she lowered it again. “He couldn’t
have. He didn’t do that. There was no need.”

She leaned back and closed the single eye. He watched her carefully. He
realized that he liked her and was concerned about her. Once he had found that
she was alive, he had planned to be completely ruthless with her, to bully her
out of any idea of making additional trouble. But there was an obvious decency
about this one.

“Miss Doyle, I think you’re right in saying he was sick. Only a sick
person could do that. And don’t feel that you are in any way to blame for it. I
think it would have happened anyway.”

“It’s… a bad thing. For you and his wife and all of us.”

The choice of words seemed strange. “All of us?” he asked gently.

She opened her eye. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not a part of it. I meant all
of us who sort of loved him.”

“Will you let me do something for you?”

“I… don’t know.”

“Is your family here in the city?”

“No. There’s just a brother. In California. He keeps writing me to go out
there. I think I’d like to go out there.”

“I’ll get you an airline ticket.”

“No. I don’t want to get there quick. I’ve never been out there. I mean
seen the country or anything. And I think I’d like to go by bus. By the time I
get there, I won’t look so awful. And I’ll see more.”

He sensed how, already, she was turning her back on it, resolute,
fatalistic. Strength in her. Not the same sort of strength as in Susan. This
was a more primitive strength. Will of the organism to survive. She had been
hurt deeply, and now she would begin to mend herself. As perhaps Bess might one
day mend herself, though there was less emotional resilience left in Bess than
in this young girl.

“I’m not ashamed, you know,” she said suddenly. “I don’t care what you
think about me. I’m not ashamed at all.”

“I’ll use your phone. I’ve got a friend who has X-ray equipment in his
office. I think he’ll open his office up for me. Then I’ll drive you over and
we can meet him there.”

She touched her skirt. “I guess there’s no need to change my clothes. I
guess I can’t look very good no matter what I wear. He’ll know about teeth,
won’t he?”

“I think he’ll know about teeth.”

“Does… his wife know about me? Did she see the note you told me about?”

“No. Nobody knows now but you and me. And whoever you or Quinn may have
told.”

“Neither of us told anybody. And don’t worry. I won’t tell anybody.
Nobody will hear it from me. It’s funny, I keep thinking I ought to cry. Ever
since I woke up on the floor with the blood all over my face, I’ve felt like I
ought to cry. But I can’t seem to. He was… so sort of lost, your brother was.”

“Lost. I guess that’s right. Have you got a phone book?”

“Right in that drawer. I wish I had a hat with a veil. I’d feel better
going out if I had a hat with a veil.”

He looked up the number. He heard the phone ringing in the doctor’s home.
Sam would be annoyed. But he’d cooperate. As the phone rang, he thought of what
he would do. Cash a check in the morning. A thousand dollars. Advise her to
change it to traveler’s checks. He had the uneasy feeling that it would be
difficult to get her to accept that much. But she would take it. He would make
her take it.

The memorial service for Quinn
Delevan was held at ten o’clock Tuesday morning at the church in Clayton, and
after it was over, the procession, led by the soft-purring, shiny-black Packard
hearse of
Durr
and
Commings
,
went to the old Church Hill Cemetery in Stockton where a hole, dug with almost
excessive neatness, awaited the nine-hundred-dollar casket, where a granite
shaft stood with Delevan carved deeply into it, where the family stood,
dark-clad, patient—the women with a new one among them, the men with one
less—where this substance that had been Quinn Delevan was put deep into the
ground in the company of his ancestors in an ancient tribal ceremony under a
soft gray sky on a fittingly cheerless day.

And these people, these
Delevans
and
Furmons
, drove back to their hushed houses, and were now
two days removed from the day Quinn died, knowing that inevitably two days
would become twenty and two hundred and two thousand. The last of them to
remember it would be Sandy, and perhaps in her very old age, childhood memories
would come back strong and clear as they so often do. Then she would be gone and
there would be only the marks on paper and the marks on stone.

This day filled them with thoughts of their own mortality. For the young
ones it was an early flaw in the strong notion that they would live forever.
For the older ones it made a further adjustment in their sure knowledge of
eventual death.

There were no rules for mourning this sort of death, You could not cry
out in rage and loss at the blown tire, the dangerous corner, the shaky ladder,
the cancer cell. Friends were uneasy as they offered condolences. Telephone
voices were uncertain. People glanced quickly and away. There were not as many
flowers as one would expect. Here the cells of the brain had forced their
rebellion on all the other cells of the body and destroyed them.

It was mutiny. Rebellion. I quit! And so it was shameful. A wild leap
over the railing and the tiny head bobbing and then lost in the wake of the
ponderous ship which held all the rest of them. Go on without me. I’m getting
out of this.

Benjamin Delevan walked around the house restlessly. He snapped small,
dead branches from shrubbery. He went in and tried to read. He looked at his
watch frequently. He felt a vast, directionless impatience. Tuesday afternoon
television was full of insipidities. Wilma was with Bess. Brock was in his
room. Ellen was writing letters.

He was sitting in the living room when he heard Wilma and Bess come into
the kitchen, talking in the low voices everybody seemed to be using, as though
something slept in the world and should not be awakened. When they came into
the living room, he looked quickly at Bess. Her face had the slightly bloated
look of too many tears, but she seemed calm and quiet.

“How’s David doing?” Ben asked.

Bess sighed as she sat down. “He’s taking a nap now. He gets so tired.
But he’s been wonderful. Maybe I’m imagining it, Ben, but it almost seems as
though, all of a sudden, he’s… he’s more responsive to things.”

“That might be true.”

“I don’t want to hope too much. You know.”

“I know what you mean,” he said. “Willy, how about making some coffee.
I’ve got a yen for coffee.”

Wilma smiled at him and headed for the kitchen. “You’ve always got a yen
for coffee. You drink too much of it.”

After she was gone, Bess said, “Ben, I just wish I could keep from having
a crazy thought all the time. About Quinn. All the years we’ve been married,
and I keep thinking he wasn’t really… here all the time. As if I didn’t know
him.”

“I get that same sort of feeling.”

She looked at him sharply, eagerly. “Do you? I keep thinking he’s going
to… fade so quickly. As if I couldn’t hold onto him.”

“What are your plans? I know this is a little soon to even be talking
about it, but I guess you’ve given it some thought.”

“I’ve been thinking, yes. But I don’t know yet how much money there’ll
be.”

He thought of Griffin and of how much money there could be for her. And
knew this day of funeral was also day of decision for him, for all of them.

George came in through the side door into the living room, sat down
heavily. “Smell coffee, don’t I? How you doing, Bess?”

“Okay, I guess. How’s Alice?”

“Better than I would have thought she’d be. Having Robbie and Susan there
has been the best thing in the world. Keeps her mind off it. Robbie said they
were going to move to a hotel or something. Too much work for Alice. I think
that was Susan’s idea. Alice wouldn’t hear of it. She’s coming over in a little
while.”

And she came over, Robbie and Susan with her. Brock and Ellen joined them
all in the living room. So they were all together, and Ben knew that in this
way they were strengthening and reassuring each other. That it was a time to be
together. With general talk that stayed carefully away from the immediacy of
death and loss. Yet even in this small way, there was a borrowing of his own
strength. Inadequate though he might have been, and indecisive though he felt,
it was the leadership itself that they needed. And there was no one else. The
pressure was subtle but it was there. He sensed that they wanted subconsciously
some token of leadership. That they wanted to be told that things were all
right, that things were safe, that the helm hand was strong and sure.

He sat back within himself and looked at them and felt oppressed by the
pressure, the weight of them. And now it was so easy to change it all. Say the
words to them and to Griffin that would make it fly apart. Scatter. Enter then,
from the wings, the sunburned catcher of many fish. A new cast of characters.
Then they would not rest so heavily on him. They would be letters in the
morning mail. Boxes at Christmas.

The words were lined up neatly in his head, waiting to be said. He could
change their lives and achieve his own freedom in just about fifty quiet and
persuasive words. Approval would be automatic. Susan would see that their
portion was used wisely. He could help Bess manage her portion. George would be
delighted.

Why not, then?

Why the reluctance? Am I a sucker for tradition? Is this some special
brand of egomania I have, that I must continue to be king of the hill,
shortening my own life, driving myself in ways they do not even understand? Or
habit, maybe? A blinded mule plodding the endless circle around the
grindstones? My God, it isn’t something you bleed and die for, is it? There’s
no mission involved. No greater good for greater number, no advancement of humanity,
no shining sword involved.

It’s a mill. It is a place where things are made. And a great dowdy beast
of a mill. A shambling, clattering, spavined place, with too many dusty
corners. It goes nowhere. Together, it and I, we make this great noisy effort,
merely to survive.

The romance of business. Some copywriter dreamed that one up. Not
romance. Romance can’t survive a daily threat of ruin.

They handed it to me and lay back and died, laughing like hell. Let’s see
you make
this
run, buster. So I did. And when, by some intricate
miracle, we get a new piece of equipment, I go down and watch it uncrated, and
it is my turn to laugh like hell. And I go to shipping and see the stencils
that say
SKC
, and see the stuff going out and I laugh
some more. And I pare inventory down to the danger line and hold my breath and
wait for the drop and then jump in with both big feet and overload and watch
the price rise and laugh louder.

Here I am in my clatter-bang truck crawling the hills on the potholed
roads, taking the wildcat short cuts, and there they are down there on the
superhighways, all the Griffins in their streamlined glory, running on a
schedule of micrometer accuracy. I drive my old truck and I know each pulse of
the motor, every rattle and squeak. And when it threatens to quit entirely, I
know just how to fix it with spit and string and baling wire and hope.