Where I'm Calling From (44 page)

The time has come and gone for us—us, you and me—to put all our cards on the table. Thee and me.

Lancelot and Guinevere. Abelard and Heloi’se. Troilus and Cressida. Pyramus and Thisbe. JAJ and Nora Barnacle, etc. You know what I’m saying, honey. We’ve been together a long time—thick and thin, illness and health, stomach distress, eye-earnose-and throat trouble, high times and low. Now? Well, I don’t know what I can say now except the truth: I can’t go it another step.

At this point, I threw down the letter and went to the door again, deciding to settle this once and for all. I wanted an accounting, and I wanted it now. I was, I think, in a rage. But at this point, just as I opened the door, I heard a low murmuring from the living room. It was as if somebody were trying to say something over the phone and this somebody were taking pains not to be overheard. Then I heard the receiver being replaced. Just this. Then everything was as before—the radio playing softly, the house otherwise quiet.

But I had heard a voice.

In place of anger, I began to feel panic. I grew afraid as I looked down the corridor. Things were the same as before—the light was on in the living room, the radio played softly. I took a few steps and listened. I hoped I might hear the comforting, rhythmic clicking of her knitting needles, or the sound of a page being turned, but there was nothing of the sort. I took a few steps toward the living room and then-what should I say?—I lost my nerve, or maybe my curiosity. It was at that moment I heard the muted sound of a doorknob being turned, and afterward the unmistakable sound of a door opening and closing quietly.

My impulse was to walk rapidly down the corridor and into the living room and get to the bottom of this thing once and for all. But I didn’t want to act impulsively and possibly discredit myself. I’m not impulsive, so I waited. But there was activity of some sort in the house— something was afoot, I was sure of it—and of course it was my duty, for my own peace of mind, not to mention the possible safety and well being of my wife, to act. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. The moment was there, but I hesitated. Suddenly it was too late for any decisive action. The moment had come and gone, and could not be called back. Just so did Darius hesitate and then fail to act at the Battle of Granicus, and the day was lost, Alexander the Great rolling him up on every side and giving him a real walloping.

I went back to my room and closed the door. But my heart was racing. I sat in my chair and, trembling, picked up the pages of the letter once more.

But now here’s the curious thing. Instead of beginning to read the letter through, from start to finish, or even starting at the point where I’d stopped earlier, I took pages at random and held them under the table lamp, picking out a line here and a line there. This allowed me to juxtapose the charges made against me until the entire indictment (for that’s what it was) took on quite another character—one more acceptable, since it had lost its chronology and, with it, a little of its punch.

So. Well. In this manner, going from page to page, here a line, there a line, I read in snatches the following—which might under different circumstances serve as a kind of abstract:… withdrawing farther into… a small enough thing, but… talcum powder sprayed over the bathroom, including walls and baseboards… a shell… not to mention the insane asylum… until finally… a balanced view… the grave. Your “work”… Please! Give me a break… No one, not even… Not another word on the subject!… The children… but the real issue… not to mention the loneliness… Jesus H. Christ! Really! I mean…

At this point I distinctly heard the front door close. I dropped the pages of the letter onto the desk and hurried to the living room. It didn’t take long to see that my wife wasn’t in the house. (The house is small—two bedrooms, one of which we refer to as my room or, on occasion, as my study.) But let the record show: every light in the house was burning.

A heavy fog lay outside the windows, a fog so dense I could scarcely see the driveway. The porch light was on and a suitcase stood outside on the porch. It was my wife’s suitcase, the one she’d brought packed full of her things when we moved here. What on earth was going on? I opened the door. Suddenly—I don’t know how to say this other than how it was—a horse stepped out of the fog, and then, an instant later, as I watched, dumbfounded, another horse. These horses were grazing in our front yard. I saw my wife alongside one of the horses, and I called her name.

“Come on out here,” she said. “Look at this. Doesn’t this beat anything?”

She was standing beside this big horse, patting its flank. She was dressed in her best clothes and had on heels and was wearing a hat. (I hadn’t seen her in a hat since her mother’s funeral, three years before.) Then she moved forward and put her face against the horse’s mane.

“Where did you come from, you big baby?” she said. “Where did you come from, sweetheart?” Then, as I watched, she began to cry into the horse’s mane.

“There, there,” I said and started down the steps. I went over and patted the horse, and then I touched my wife’s shoulder. She drew back. The horse snorted, raised its head a moment, and then went to cropping the grass once more. “What is it?” I said to my wife. “For God’s sake, what’s happening here, anyway?”

She didn’t answer. The horse moved a few steps but continued pulling and eating the grass. The other horse was munching grass as well. My wife moved with the horse, hanging on to its mane. I put my hand against the horse’s neck and felt a surge of power run up my arm to the shoulder. I shivered. My wife was still crying. I felt helpless, but I was scared, too.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?” I said. “Why are you dressed like this? What’s that suitcase doing on the front porch? Where did these horses come from? For God’s sake, can you tell me what’s happening?”

My wife began to croon to the horse. Croon! Then she stopped and said, “You didn’t read my letter, did you? You might have skimmed it, but you didn’t read it. Admit it!”

“I did read it,” I said. I was lying, yes, but it was a white lie. A partial untruth. But he who is blameless, let him throw out the first stone. “But tell me what is going on anyway,” I said.

My wife turned her head from side to side. She pushed her face into the horse’s dark wet mane. I could hear the horse chomp, chomp, chomp. Then it snorted as it took in air through its nostrils.

She said, “There was this girl, you see. Are you listening? And this girl loved this boy so much. She loved him even more than herself. But the boy—well, he grew up. I don’t know what happened to him.

Something, anyway. He got cruel without meaning to be cruel and he—”

I didn’t catch the rest, because just then a car appeared out of the fog, in the drive, with its headlights on and a flashing blue light on its roof. It was followed, a minute later, by a pickup truck pulling what looked like a horse trailer, though with the fog it was hard to tell. It could have been anything—a big portable oven, say. The car pulled right up onto the lawn and stopped. Then the pickup drove alongside the car and stopped, too. Both vehicles kept their headlights on and their engines running, which contributed to the eerie, bizarre aspect of things. A man wearing a cowboy hat—a rancher, I supposed-stepped down from the pickup. He raised the collar of his sheepskin coat and whistled to the horses.

Then a big man in a raincoat got out of the car. He was a much bigger man than the rancher, and he, too, was wearing a cowboy hat. But his raincoat was open, and I could see a pistol strapped to his waist. He had to be a deputy sheriff. Despite everything that was going on, and the anxiety I felt, I found it worth noting that both men were wearing hats. I ran my hand through my hair, and was sorry I wasn’t wearing a hat of my own.

“I called the sheriff’s department a while ago,” my wife said. “When I first saw the horses.” She waited a minute and then she said something else. “Now you won’t need to give me a ride into town after all. I mentioned that in my letter, the letter you read. I said I’d need a ride into town. I can get a ride—at least, I think I can—with one of these gentlemen. And I’m not changing my mind about anything, either. I’m saying this decision is irrevocable. Look at me!” she said.

I’d been watching them round up the horses. The deputy was holding his flashlight while the rancher walked a horse up a little ramp into the trailer. I turned to look at this woman I didn’t know any longer.

“I’m leaving you,” she said. “That’s what’s happening. I’m heading for town tonight. I’m striking out on my own. It’s all in the letter you read.” Whereas, as I said earlier, my wife never underlined words in her letters, she was now speaking (having dried her tears) as if virtually every other word out of her mouth ought to be emphasized.

“What’s gotten into you?” I heard myself say. It was almost as if I couldn’t help adding pressure to some of my own words. “Why are you doing this?”

She shook her head. The rancher was loading the second horse into the trailer now, whistling sharply, clapping his hands and shouting an occasional “Whoa! Whoa, damn you! Back up now. Back up!”

The deputy came over to us with a clipboard under his arm. He was holding a big flashlight. “Who called?” he said.

“I did,” my wife said.

The deputy looked her over for a minute. He flashed the light onto her high heels and then up to her hat.

“You’re all dressed up,” he said.

“I’m leaving my husband,” she said.

The deputy nodded, as if he understood. (But he didn’t, he couldn’t!) “He’s not going to give you any trouble, is he?” the deputy said, shining his light into my face and moving the light up and down rapidly.

“You’re not, are you?”

“No,” I said. “No trouble. But I resent—”

“Good,” the deputy said. “Enough said, then.”

The rancher closed and latched the door to his trailer. Then he walked toward us through the wet grass, which, I noticed, reached to the tops of his boots.

“I want to thank you folks for calling,” he said. “Much obliged. That’s one heavy fog. If they’d wandered onto the main road, they could have raised hob out there.”

“The lady placed the call,” the deputy said. “Frank, she needs a ride into town. She’s leaving home. I don’t know who the injured party is here, but she’s the one leaving.” He turned then to my wife. “You sure about this, are you?” he said to her.

She nodded. “I’m sure.”

“Okay,” the deputy said. “That’s settled, anyway. Frank, you listening? I can’t drive her to town. I’ve got another stop to make. So can you help her out and take her into town? She probably wants to go to the bus station or else to the hotel. That’s where they usually go. Is that where you want to go to?” the deputy said to my wife. “Frank needs to know.”

“He can drop me off at the bus station,” my wife said. “That’s my suitcase on the porch.”

“What about it, Frank?” the deputy said.

“I guess I can, sure,” Frank said, taking off his hat and putting it back on again. “I’d be glad to, I guess.

But I don’t want to interfere in anything.”

“Not in the least,” my wife said. “I don’t want to be any trouble, but I’m—well, I’m distressed just now.

Yes, I’m distressed. But it’ll be all right once I’m away from here. Away from this awful place. I’ll just check and make doubly sure I haven’t left anything behind. Anything important,” she added. She hesitated and then she said, “This isn’t as sudden as it looks. It’s been coming for a long, long time.

We’ve been married for a good many years. Good times and bad, up times and down. We’ve had them all. But it’s time I was on my own. Yes, it’s time. Do you know what I’m saying, gentlemen?”

Frank took off his hat again and turned it around in his hands as if examining the brim. Then he put it back on his head.

The deputy said, “These things happen. Lord knows none of us is perfect. We weren’t made perfect. The only angels is to be found in Heaven.” My wife moved toward the house, picking her way through the wet, shaggy grass in her high heels. She opened the front door and went inside. I could see her moving behind the lighted windows, and something came to me then. I might never see her again. That’s what crossed my mind, and it staggered me.

The rancher, the deputy, and I stood around waiting, not saying anything. The damp fog drifted between us and the lights from their vehicles. I could hear the horses shifting in the trailer. We were all uncomfortable, I think. But I’m speaking only for myself, of course. I don’t know what they felt. Maybe they saw things like this happen every night—saw people’s lives flying apart. The deputy did, maybe. But Frank, the rancher, he kept his eyes lowered. He put his hands in his front pockets and then took them out again. He kicked at something in the grass. I folded my arms and went on standing there, not knowing what was going to happen next. The deputy kept turning off his flashlight and then turning it on again. Every so often he’d reach out and swat the fog with it. One of the horses whinnied from the trailer, and then the other horse whinnied, too.

“A fellow can’t see anything in this fog,” Frank said.

I knew he was saying it to make conversation.

“It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” the deputy said. Then he looked over at me. He didn’t shine the light in my eyes this time, but he said something. He said, “Why’s she leaving you? You hit her or something?

Give her a smack, did you?”

“I’ve never hit her,” I said. “Not in all the time we’ve been married. There was reason enough a few times, but I didn’t. She hit me once,” I said.

“Now, don’t get started,” the deputy said. “I don’t want to hear any crap tonight. Don’t say anything, and there won’t be anything. No rough stuff. Don’t even think it. There isn’t going to be any trouble here tonight, is there?”

The deputy and Frank were watching me. I could tell Frank was embarrassed. He took out his makings and began to roll a cigarette.

“No,” I said. “No trouble.”

My wife came onto the porch and picked up her suitcase. I had the feeling that not only had she taken a last look around but she’d used the opportunity to freshen herself up, put on new lipstick, etc. The deputy held his flashlight for her as she came down the steps. “Right this way, Ma’am,” he said. “Watch your step, now—it’s slippery.”