The Dark Descends (11 page)

"That's for sure. In a way it's sad to think of her giving it away like that." A mournful note had crept into the baritone voice. "I mean to say, you can tell she's an educated woman and all. Did you get a load of all the books?"

"Who the hell was looking at books?"

"You know, I bet anything it's the teeth. You gotta feel sorry for a broad with teeth like that. Jesus, it gave me the creeps just to look at them."

"I didn't notice it cramping your style any. Come on and get that fucking wood lit already, will ya?"

"Hold your horses. I got this hole in my pocket and things fall into the lining, so I gotta—Here they are." A match was struck. "Hey, Jerry, I just thought of something. Why don't we invite her down to the poker game on Thursday?"

"I don't think much of that one. There wouldn't be enough action for her, would there?"

Hoots of laughter, quickly suppressed. Footsteps moved away from Joyce's door, descended to the ground floor at a gallop. The street door opened, slammed shut.

Joyce sat rigid, unable to move, holding the
New York Review of Books
tightly. She was still breathing, she hadn't suddenly been turned from flesh and blood to stone: the slow rippling of the water testified to that. The neglected cigarette fell off the rim into the water, creating an island of grayness. That got her moving. She sprang out of the tub, and the
New York Review of Books
, slipping from her grasp, added the darkening powers of its print to the water. Filth. Filth, filth, filth. Slime. slime, slime. Shuddering, teeth chattering, she snatched a washcloth from the shelf above the tub, wet it at the sink, and soaped it lavishly, She began to rub the soap over her body. Water from the saturated cloth dripped to the floor. She went on rubbing. Rubbing and rubbing and rubbing. She thought of Lady Macbeth. Aptly, for that rubbing. too, had been an exercise in futility, ineffectual against a stain on the soul that was indelible.

Anita told her that her conscience was working over-time, and made no bones about it. "For God's sake. act your age. What's to feel guilty about. I was playing games like that on the roof when I was eleven years-old. It's a phase you go through. Where did you grow-up anyhow? In a convent? Okay, maybe the norm for Hell's Kitchen isn't the norm for kids everywhere, but grown-ups play games like that all over the place all the time and nobody even bats an eyelash. You've lived in the suburbs. You know about the wife-swapping parties and the swimming pool orgies and the rest of the trap. Where's the difference? Anyhow, you didn't force her into anything, so quit worrying. As far as I can see, you've done old Charlotte a favor. If it hadn't been for you, she might have gone to her grave without anything more than dim memories of petting in the back seat when she was sixteen. And who knows if she had that much to remember?"

Wisdom or gutter morality? Either way, it hardly helped to allay the pangs of conscience. How she longed to talk the whole thing over with somebody other than Anita, who made it plain she did not welcome any further airings of regrets because "spilled milk goes sour faster and stinks worse than any other kind."

Joyce gave in to temptation and confided in Hank McDermott, the sports editor of
Yardstick
, over a drink he invited her to have with him after office hours, as he did fairly frequently. He already knew about her difficulties with Charlotte Bancroft and about the bizarre resolution of them, so it didn't require much of an effort to spill the rest to him. In fact, it required so little effort that she wasn't aware she was going to make a confession until the words came pouring forth. Throughout, bless him, he contemplated his glass in silence, giving only an occasional un-surprised nod to show he was with her.

"Naturally I never intended anything like this to happen. You can imagine how I feel—like all kinds of a pig. After all, my little plot wasn't nurtured with the milk of human kindness, and now I've had it brought home to me how fragile a vessel I took aim at."

"You couldn't have known." He raised his head, bald except for a sparse black fringe just below the crown. His sensitive, slightly down-tilted dark eyes were full of sympathy. "She was the enemy. You were fighting back."

Joyce looked away from sympathy. She didn't want sympathy. She didn't deserve sympathy. "That's too easy, somehow. It doesn't really help. I wish I'd chosen any other scheme of retaliation. Preferably something simple, like stacking garbage outside her door. Not something where the consequences stretch out and out with no end in sight. You know, at really bad moments I even start thinking about that Hiroshima pilot, about how his hands are cleaner than mine because he was acting under orders and— Absurd, I know, but still—"

"Damn right it's absurd. Stop trying to puff yourself up into Public Enemy Number One. You'll never make it. You know what your real trouble is? You've never had anything big and ugly to take responsibility for, that's your trouble."

"You're right on target there, Hank. I've spent my entire life placing responsibility on other people. A real parasite, that's what I am. I suppose it shows."

"There are worse things to be, unless you're the kind who devours the host, and you're not." He lifted her chin with his forefinger, forcing her to look at him. "Don't go overboard, babe. At some time or another we all get ideas about how we've manipulated somebody else's life. Delusions of grandeur. People go the way they were meant to go. Take my word for it."

"I can't shake the sense of responsibility so easily. I did do some manipulating, after all."

"Sure. You turned on a light switch, You didn't put the current there, did you?"

"That's what I keep telling myself, but..."

"No buts. Just keep on telling yourself. Over and over and over until you believe it. Chances are you're wasting your pity. Chances are she'll find some guy who appreciates a zealous lay and shack up with him and live happily ever after."

Joyce laughed.

"That's the ticket. Laughing about it makes a hell of a lot more sense than crying. Keep laughing."

"I wish I could be that heartless."

"That makes two of us. But it's not being heartless, it's being realistic. You're not responsible. Keep laughing. Just keep laughing. Promise?"

"I'll try."

...

"Eliot, do you believe it's possible for a sense of guilt—a
genuine
sense of guilt—to disappear? Simply vanish without a trace?"

"Doesn't sound likely to me. It may seem to disappear because the person is refusing to face it, but it would probably show itself in some other form. Nervous tension, maybe. The person might drink too much. Or over-eat. Or under-eat."

"Or walk around in a catatonic state. Or suck her thumb. I know. A while ago, I would have thought some such manifestation inevitable. But recently I heard about somebody who did something reprehensible and saw the awful effect it had on somebody else. Her—this person's conscience gave her a pretty bad time at first, but after a while she didn't even feel a twinge. And there was none of the compulsive behavior you might expect. What do you think of that?"

"I think it couldn't have been anything that bad, just from the sound of the word 'reprehensible.'"

"Oh, it was bad, all right. Outside the law, even."

"Then I'd say the guilt was more affected than real."

"But—"

"Or I'd say that you've been going overboard on consciousness-raising with that Women's Lib group of yours."

"Uh-uh. I stopped going to the sessions weeks and weeks and weeks ago. They were a waste of time."

"That I can believe."

"Male supremacist. Sexist."

"Touché." Eliot's hand clutched his chest.

"Darling, be serious. I want to know—"

"Quit yapping." His hand moved from his chest to hers and cupped her breast, caressing the nipple; moved slowly down over her rib cage and came to rest on her thighs.

"What are you up to now?"

"You called me a name. I have to live up to it."

"Idiot. You said a minute ago you wanted to sleep."

"Well, you weren't giving me much cooperation on that, were you?" He stroked the front of her thighs, and, as they parted, his hand slipped inside, stayed there. Rolling over to cover her, he pressed his mouth against hers. Insistently, but not harshly. Never harshly.

It was slow and leisurely, the way she liked it, the way no other man had ever succeeded in making it for her (not that there had been all that many others). Afterward, while he dozed beside her, she lay on her back, smoking, giving herself up to the luxurious contentment of being at his side, of knowing that soon he would wake and wrap his arms around her again. Make her snug. Keep her safe. For the moment. Only for the moment. He had made that plain when he telephoned to tell her about having the loan of the cottage for the weekend and to ask her if she was willing to suspend the separation. An assignation. Ridiculous, when one took a clear-eyed view of the matter, to be skulking away for an illicit weekend with one's own husband.

But who wanted to be clear-eyed? Ridiculous or not, it was an adventure, it provided such a welcome change. Simply letting herself be transported into the country had done wonders for her—given her a sense of peace, of well-being, almost from the moment she was in the car. How badly she missed seeing greenery. Hardly surprising, after the better part of a lifetime spent where there were blanket lawns and a profusion of trees for the eye to rest on from morning to night.

Except for the three years after college, years of transition, she hadn't been a city dweller for any length of time. Not until now. Perhaps land-oriented people couldn't be transplanted to concrete without feeling a sense of loss, a hunger for the sight of green. Or was that a romantic notion? No matter. It was nothing short of bliss to be lying here like this, looking out at the grassy knoll crowned with a willow tree that was quite the loveliest view the environs afforded, listening to the birds chirp their hearts out. Bliss. Euphoria. Everything connected with Manhattan seemed remote. Nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the world as God made it.

Not that she and Eliot had shown much interest in nature appreciation. They had fallen upon each other like animals almost instantaneously; they would probably go on behaving like animals. Well, why not? Nature and animals went together, didn't they? How marvelous that things between them were as good as they ever had been, that the months apart had produced no awkwardness in their coming together. None at all. She had not realized until now how hungry she was for him. It was gratifying—a real boost to the ego—to discover that he was equally hungry for her. Old-fashioned of her to be getting an ego high from rating with a man (no Women's Liberationist, even the most moderate, would approve), but what the hell, old attitudes died hard. If they really died. Perhaps all that was old-fashioned was admitting one had them.

Joyce rolled over on her side, crushed out her cigarette in the saucer on the floor, and rolled over on her other side to face Eliot, who was curled up into a question mark, the position he liked to assume after making love. Familiar. Everything just the same, except that his dark hair was long and a dense growth of it covered his cheeks and chin, giving him the look of a swarthy D. H. Lawrence. He had worn a beard when she first met him, way back when. Now there were gray hairs in it, testimony to the encroachment of age. He was hardly a candidate for the scrap heap, though. There wasn't a bit of gray in the hail brushed back from the high, knobby expanse of forehead. Or was there? Raising herself on her elbow, she bent over him for an inspection. No. Not even a suspicion of a gray hair. She planted a light kiss on his forehead and put her head down on the pillow again.

But either the kiss or her movement had disturbed his slumber. He was stirring now, uncoiling himself slowly, like a child who fears waking in a dark room. He opened his eyes.

Beautiful eyes, brown and deeply set and slanting upward at the corners to a network of faint creases. Vulnerable eyes. It had been a look into their depths by the first light of dawn that had made her feel sure she loved him.

"Howdy, stranger."

"Not stranger. Pardner. Just like always." He put a hand on the nape of her neck and drew her face against his, cheek to cheek. "I've missed you, baby. I've missed you like the devil."

"Same here." Her lips sought his, but found only hair. "I've missed you, too, darling."

"It seems so crazy, being separated when we care about each other like this. But I just couldn't go on the way I was going. I got to the point where I couldn't look at you without thinking—"

"The ball and chain. I know." Her lips sought his again, successfully this time. He released her neck, and her head went down to rest on his shoulder. "Don't fret about it, darling. We've been all over that. So many times. I understand."

"I know you do. You've been a brick, Joyce. Maybe too much of one for your own good. I can't help thinking sometimes that I got myself out of the jungle by throwing you into it."

"Don't start that again. I've told you over and over again, I'm perfectly capable of standing on my own two feet."

"Yeah, but that lousy job..."

"It's not that bad. I won't pretend I like it, but I've adjusted to it. Anybody can adjust to anything."

"Within limits, baby. When you were having all that trouble with the kook upstairs—"

"That's over now."

"Thank God." His hand cupped her breast, squeezed it gently, released it. "I'm glad it all blew over. I'm glad I didn't have to keep on worrying about you. I was feeling pretty divided for a while, hardly able to concentrate because I was too busy weighing the pros and cons of—"

"Oh, darling, there was no need for that. I never meant to burden you with—"

"Of course you didn't. But when the work's not going well—you know how it is."

She moved her head back to the pillow and studied his face. And didn't like what she saw. Gloom in the caverns of his eyes. Lines of weariness on his forehead. "Why isn't it going well?"

"You don't have to come on like a prophetess of doom. It isn't that bad." He gave her a rueful smile. "The thing is, I did my research so long ago I've been scooped on a lot of material. Also, I've had to adjust my thinking on a number of points."