What a strange thing it was, he thought, to be Garrison Geary. To possess as much power as he possessed, and yet feel in his troubled soul such a lack of self-regard that he was only able to make love with a woman who passed for dead. What a peculiar specimen of humanity he was! And yet he could not feel entirely ashamed of this peculiarity. There was a part of him that was perversely proud tonight; proud that he was capable of doing what he'd just done; proud that even in this city, which was a magnet for men and women who lived unusual lives, the fantasy he'd enacted would be thought disgraceful. What might he not do with this perversity of his, he wondered, if he once unleashed it outside the bounds of his sexual life? What changes might he work upon the world if he put his darker energies to better purpose than fucking an icy cunt?
But what, what? If there was some greater purpose to his life, why couldn't he see it? If there was a path that he was intended to follow, why hadn't he stumbled onto it by now? Sometimes he felt like an athlete who'd sweated himself into a frenzy in preparation for a race that nobody had summoned him to run. And with every day he failed to compete his chances of winning that race-when he finally knew what course it would follow-became more remote.
Soon, he thought to himself; I have to know what my purpose is soon, or I'll be too old to do anything about it. I'll die without having really lived, and the moment I'm in the ground I'll be forgotten.
It has to be soon.
The night Rachel had come home she'd told her mother that she wanted as few people as possible to know that she was here, but in a community as small and as well-knit as Dansky no secret so large could be kept for very long. The following morning she'd gone out to put some letters in the postbox for her mother, and had been seen doing so by Mrs. Bedrosian, the widow who lived next door.
"Well, well," Mrs. Bedrosian had said, "Is that you Rachel?"
"Yes. It's me."
That was the full extent of the exchange. But it was all that was needed. Half an hour later the telephone started to ring-people from around town making apparently casual calls to see how Rachel's mother was doing, then lightly dropping into conversation the fact that they'd heard Rachel -was home for the weekend; and-just by the way-had she brought her husband home with her?
Sherrie simply lied. She hadn't been feeling very well, she told everyone, and Rachel had come to spend a few days with her. "And no," she invariably added, "Mitchell isn't with her. So you can stop sniffing after an invitation to meet him, if that's why you're asking."
The lie worked well. After half a dozen such calls word spread that even if there was something worth gossiping about here, Sherrie Pallenberg wasn't going to be providing any fuel.
"Of course that won't stop them talking," Sherrie remarked. "They've got nothing better to do, you see. This damn town."
"I thought you liked it here," Rachel said to her.
They were sitting in the kitchen at lunchtime, eating peach cobbler.
"If your father was still alive, it might be different. But I'm on my own. And what do I have for company? Other widows." She rolled her eyes. "We get together for brunches and bridge, and you know they're all sweet souls, they really are, and I don't want to sound ungrateful, but, Lord, after a while I get so bored talking about drapes and soap operas and how little they see their children."
"Is that one of your complaints?"
"No, no. You've got your own life to live. I don't expect you to be on my doorstep every five minutes checking up on me."
"You might be seeing rather more of me in future," Rachel said.
Her mother shook her head. "It's just a bad patch you and Mitch are going through. You'll come out the other side of it, you'll see."
"I don't think it's as simple as that," Rachel said. "We're not suited to one another."
"Nobody ever is," her mother replied nonchalantly.
"You don't mean that."
"I certainly do. Honey, listen to me. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is ever deep in their hearts perfectly suited to anybody else. You have to make compromises. Great big compromises. I know I did with Hank and I'm sure if Hank were alive he'd say exactly the same thing about me. We decided to make it work. I suppose…" she allowed herself a sad little smile. "… I suppose we realized that we weren't going to do any better than what we had right there and then. I know it doesn't sound very romantic, but it's the way it was. And you know, once I got over that silly feeling that this wasn't Prince Charming-that he was just an ordinary man who farted in bed and couldn't keep his eyes off a pretty waitress-I was quite happy."
"The thing is Mitch doesn't look at waitresses."
"Well… lucky you. So what's the problem?"
Rachel set down her fork and stared at her half-eaten cobbler. "I've got so much to be grateful for," she said, as though she were saying her prayers. "I know that. Lord, when I think of how -much Mitch has given me…"
"Are you talking about things?'
"Yes, of course."
Sherrie waved them away. "Irrelevant. He could have given you half of New York and still be a bad husband."
"I don't think he's a bad husband. I just think he's never going to belong to me the way Daddy belonged to you."
"Because of his family?"
Rachel nodded. "God knows, I don't want to feel like I'm in a competition with them for his attention, but that's how it feels." She sighed. "It's not even as though I could point to something they do that proves it. I just feel excluded."
"From what, honey?"
"You know, I don't really know," Rachel said. "It's just a feeling…" She exhaled; puffing out her cheeks. "Maybe the problem's all in here." She tapped her fingers to her breast. "In me. I don't have any right not to be happy." She looked up at her mother, her eyes brimming. "Do I? I mean, really and truly, what right in all the world do I have to be unhappy? When I think of Mrs. Bedrosian losing her family…"
Judith Bedrosian had lost her husband and three kids in an automobile accident when Rachel was fourteen. Everything the woman lived for-all the meaning in her life-taken away from her in one terrible moment. Yet she'd gone on, hadn't she?
"Everybody's different," Sherrie said. "I don't know how poor Judith made peace with what happened to her, and you know what? Maybe she never has. The way people are on the outside and the way they feel deep down are never the same. Never. I do know she still has very bad times, after all these years. Days on end when I don't see her; and when I do she's obviously been crying for hours. And at Christmas I know she goes to her sister's in Wisconsin, even though she doesn't like the woman, because she can't bear to be alone. The memories are too much. So…" She sighed, as though the weight of Judith's grief was heavy on her too. "Who knows? All you can do is just get on with things the best way you know how. Personally, I'm a great proponent of Valium, in reasonable moderation. But each to their own."
Rachel chuckled. She'd always known her mother to be an entertaining woman, after her odd fashion. But as the years went by Sherrie's sophistication became more apparent. Under the veneer of small town pieties lay a self-made mind, capable of a willfulness and a waywardness Rachel hoped she had inherited.
"So now what?" Sherrie said. "Are you going to ask him for a divorce?"
"No, of course not," Rachel replied.
"Why's that such a surprising idea? If you don't love him-"
"I didn't say that."
"-if you can't live with him then-"
"I didn't say that either. Oh God, I don't know. Margie said I should get a divorce. And a nice big settlement. But I don't want to be on my own."