— What are you doing!
— But I thought… he dropped it back, — I thought you weren't answering, I…
— Just, just leave it alone!
— But…
— Because it might have been Paul again, when it rings twice and stops and then rings again no, a ticket to anywhere? to some hot place where the only way we know where we are is the disease we get? Just pack up and go when you're the only one who could stop it? who could tell everybody there's nothing there but some bushes? that you don't even care if they…
— Don't you see I, good God. And you really think I can stop a war? I told you, try to prove anything to them the clearer the proof and the harder they'll fight it, they…
— You could try!
— It's not, it's late… but she wasn't even looking at him — I, I'll do what I can. He caught up a sleeve of the raincoat, pulling it on — I can't get into town before dark. I'll call you.
— No wait, wait just…
— I said I'll do what I can! And I'll call you, I'll call you tonight that same two rings, two rings and hang up, will you pack? get a few things together if I can…
— Just hold me she said, and she already had his wrist tight.
— When I call… and he held her, — and if anything goes wrong…
— No, just hold me.
She stood still as her gaze fallen on the empty chairs out there on the terrace till the snap of the front door brought her round with a broken sound that scarcely left her throat, left her searching the kitchen's silence as though for some provocation square into the ambush strewn there on the counter in the rag ends of headlines, SENATOR DEAD IN RED PLANE SHOOTDOWN VIET VET KILLS MUGG TRAGEDY STALKS all starkly relevant in their stark demand to be read again for what they'd already demolished in their confusion, a wingcollared senator waving from the window of a bright red airplane or Doctor what was his name, might still be for he'd been quite young, the vet who'd wormed and dieted those Jack Russell terriers at Longview where she stood now jamming the black headlines together in a crush of newsprint as though to destroy their tyranny once for all, passing the kitchen table there with the heap clutched high against her so not a page, not a paragraph, not a word paralysed in cliche or sprung into odd company through the first enthusiasm of a byline or even, as she'd remarked herself, in the servitude of a caption which made the picture, for that day's paper, news, would fall to the floor, coming on to heave the armload through the opened door and with it her language in the printed word itself.
At the top of the stairs she paused, gripping the rail, before she went in to wet a cloth in the basin and hold it to her forehead coming down the hall that way to the bedroom to cry out — oh no! as though there were someone to hear: scarves, sweaters, smalls, papers, the chest's drawers themselves lay flung out on the bed, the floor, the closet door standing wide and even a shade drawn against the view from below. She came in slowly picking things up, dropping them again with a sense of something missing but apparently none of what it might be, finally settling to gather up the pages as though, righting them in their folder, here in her own hand at least lay some hope of order restored, even that of a past itself in tatters, revised, amended, fabricated in fact from its very outset to reorder its unlikelihoods, what it all might have been if her father and mother had never met, if he'd married a chorus girl instead or if she'd met a man with other lives already behind him, crumbled features dulled and worn as a bill collector on through the crossings out, the meticulous inserts, the wavering lines where her finger had run over cut-rate, curt, in pursuit of cunning and on to collisions of only days before, seeking the spelling of those Jack Russell terriers running down jackleg, jack mackerel to trip on jack off (usu. considered vulgar); seeking, for some reason, loose for its meaning as slack here cited in the sex roles of shorebirds with the author's name misspelled; confusing rift for cleft, and there waylaid by the anal ~ of the human body or here was livid, bypassing ashen, pallid, for the perversion she sought and found licensed by a sensitive novelist as reddish (in a fan of gladiolas blushing ~ under electric letters) for this livid erection where her hand closed tight on its prey swelling the colour of rage when she looked up sharp, straight before her: the television set was gone. It was simply not there; but her stare where it had been was as simply one of a blank insistence that the furnishings of memory prevail as though, if it were so abruptly nonexistent as to never have been there, then neither had the man flung from the train on the trestle, nor everything in shadow while wind roared in the laurel walk, near and deep as the thunder crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed striking the great horse chestnut at the bottom of the garden and splitting half of it away.
The shrill of a car's horn brought her over to snap up the shade. In what light remained out there two waist high boys sat sharing a cigarette under the bare tree on the corner where a battered station wagon lurched to a halt bringing one of them to his feet and then she saw both of them pointing at the front door, her front door, and the car glided stalled past the crumbled brick and stopped. By the time she got down the stairs there was already someone there knocking, peering in, and when it came open — yes, I'm looking for Mister McCandless?
— Oh. I mean he's not here, he left a little while ago, he…
— I was just passing through the woman said, and then, in the door held wide open — no no no, no I needn't come in… but she did, just inside as the lamp came on under the sampler there catching the faded blonde of her hair, the whole spent fragility of her features turned looking over the room, sounding almost as an afterthought — I'm Mrs McCandless.
— Oh I didn't, come in yes I'm afraid it's all a little disorganized if you, I mean is it about the furniture?
— About what furniture.
— No I just meant about all the furniture, if you've come to, oh oh the flowers yes… looking there where the woman was looking, — I'm sorry, they got knocked over I just haven't had time to clean up but they're all right I think, I think it's only the vase that's broken we'll replace it but, I mean do you want to take them?
— Take them? The woman looked at the wilted silk, the spatter of porcelain on the floor. — Take them where.
— No I just meant, with you, I mean if you'd like to sit down? If you'd like some tea?
— Thank you. I would, yes, I'm really quite tired… but she came following on into the kitchen. — I really just stopped to see if he'd heard anything from Jack.
— Oh. I don't know. I mean I don't know Jack, who Jack is.
— Jack? Jack is his son.
— His… she half turned from filling the tea kettle, — but I thought, he said he didn't have children.
— Children, no. That's the way he'd say it of course, he doesn't have children… The woman was over looking into the dining room, at the plants there in the windows, — no other white ones that I know of, at any rate… and she drifted back into the kitchen, past the table there, to stand in the doorway looking into the room. — Quite a mess.
— Yes he, he's just been cleaning up, in there cleaning up.
— That's really all he ever does, isn't it… and, a step into the room, — and it's always once for all isn't it, to get things cleaned up once for all… out or sight, only a voice now from the near darkness in there — all his books, what he'll do with all his books they might as well go too, once for all. He probably hasn't looked into one of them since he stopped teaching, has he.
— I don't, teaching? I didn't know…
— And he's throwing this out too? this old zebra skin?
— Well he, I don't think so I mean he brought it back from Africa, I don't think he'd…