It seemed to Quinn, as he hung up, a very long time ago, in a different world.
He went into the front room. Martha was standing at the window, looking out at the sea the way she always did when she came to the apartment, as though the sea was a miracle to her after the parched earth of Chicote.
She said, without turning, “So it’s not ended yet.”
“No.”
“Will it go on forever, Joe?”
“Don’t talk like that.” He put his arms around her and pressed his mouth against her neck. “Where are the kids?”
“Staying with the neighbors.”
“They didn’t want to see me?”
“Yes, they did. It was a real sacrifice for them to miss a day with you on the beach.”
“And just what was the sacrifice for?”
“Us,” she said with a faint smile. “Richard got the idea I would like to be alone with you for a change.”
“And would you?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a very perceptive boy, our Richard.”
She turned and gazed earnestly up into his eyes. “Do you really feel that way, that he’s our Richard?”
“Yes. Our Richard, our Sally.”
“You make it sound as though we’ll all live happily ever after—”
“We will.”
“—without any problems.”
“With lots of problems,” he said. “But with lots of solutions, too, if we love and respect each other. And I think we do, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Doubt was evident in her voice, it always was, but each time they met, the doubt was becoming weaker, and he believed that eventually it would disappear entirely.
“There are times,” he added, “when you’ll think of O’Gorman and I won’t measure up.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes. And other times when the children will resent any discipline or advice from me because I’m not their real father. There will be disagreements, money problems—”
“Don’t go on.” She pressed her finger tips against his mouth. “I’ve thought of all those things, Joe.”
“All right then, we both have. We won’t be walking into marriage with our eyes closed. Why do you hesitate?”
“I don’t want to make another mistake.”
“Are you telling me O’Gorman was a mistake?”
“Yes.”
“Because it’s true or because you think I want to hear it?”
“It’s true,” she said, and her shoulders beneath his hand went suddenly tense. “Hindsight’s not as good as foresight but it serves a purpose. The marriage was my idea, really, not Patrick’s. My nesting instinct was so strong that it smothered my rationality. I married Patrick in order to raise a family, he married me because—well, I suppose there were lots of reasons but the main one was that he didn’t have the strength to oppose or displease me. Now that I know he’s dead, I can be more objective, not only about him but about myself. The basic fault of our marriage was too much interdependence on each other. He was dependent on me and I was dependent on his dependence. No wonder he loved birds, he must often have felt like a caged bird himself... What’s the matter, Joe?”
“Nothing.”
“But there is, I can feel it. Please tell me.”
“I can’t. Not right now, anyway.”
“All right,” she said lightly. “Some other time.”
He wished some other time would be a long way off, but he knew it wouldn’t. It was waiting around the corner and he could already see its shadow.
He said, “I just made a pot of coffee. Would you like some?”
“No thanks. If we’re to be in L.A. by four o’clock, we’d better start now in case we run into a traffic tie-up.”
“We?”
“Well, I didn’t drive all the way down here just to see you for ten minutes.”
“Listen, Martha.”
“I’ll be listening but I won’t hear, not if you’re going to try to stand me up.”
“It’s not a question of standing you up. Karma’s phone call took me by complete surprise. I don’t know what’s behind it. Perhaps nothing, perhaps Brother Tongue actually has a message for her from her mother. But in case things aren’t going to be that simple, I’d prefer not to have you around.”
“I’m pretty good in an emergency.”
“Even ones involving yourself?”
“Especially those,” she said with a tinge of bitterness. “I’ve had a lot of experience.”
“Then you’ve made up your mind to come with me.”
“If you don’t object.”
“And if I do?”
“Please don’t. Please.”
“I have to,” he said patiently. “Because I love you, I must steer you away from trouble when I can.”
“I thought we were going to share trouble, going to have lots of problems but lots of solutions, too. Was that all just so much talk, Joe?”
“I’m trying to warn you, Martha, I’m trying to tell you something and you won’t listen.”
“Don’t be afraid for me. It makes me feel like half a woman, the way my fears for Patrick must have made him feel like half a man. If you see me walking in front of a speeding bus, by all means yell a warning or pull me back. But this—this is wispy, unreal. What harm will it do me to go to Karma’s house with you? The girl might need looking after, she’s only a child and in a frightening situation. Don’t shut me up in a closet when I could be of some use.”
“All right,” he said with a noise that was almost a groan, “Step out of the closet, ma’am.”
“Thank you, sir. You’ll never regret this decision.”
“Won’t I.”
“You sound so funny, Joe. What’s really the matter? What’s on your mind?”
“I’m wishing,” he said, “that it was a larger closet so there’d be room for both of us.”
Twenty-Five
He walked along the city streets stopping every now and then to focus his eyes on the sky as if he expected to see some of his companions from the forest, the bold black and white flash of an acorn woodpecker, the blurry blue of a band tail, the rufous flapping of a flicker. But all he saw was an occasional sparrow on a telephone wire or a pigeon on a rooftop.
He had an intermittent fantasy about all the city people turning into birds. On the roads and freeways cars would stop, suddenly and forever, and birds would fly up out of the windows. From factories, office buildings, houses, hotels, apartments, from doorways, chimneys, patios, gardens, sidewalks, the birds would come soaring, gliding, fluttering, swooping, trilling, twittering, whistling, whooping, in a riot of color and movement and sound. One bird was larger, grander, louder than all the rest. It was a golden eagle, himself.
The fantasy grew in his mind like a bubble, and burst. No cars stopped on the freeway. People remained people, wingless, hapless, and the golden eagle was grounded on the sweltering sidewalk, no different from the rest, at the mercy of the tyrant gravity.
For too long he had been out of contact with human beings. Even the old ones frightened him and the young ones he hurried past, expecting them to jeer at his robe and shaved head and bare feet. Then he caught sight of himself in the window of a little neighborhood grocery store and he realized they would have no reasons to jeer at him now. He looked like any ordinary man. During his weeks in the forest his hair had grown in, curly and black with touches of gray. He had had it trimmed in a barber shop and his beard shaved off, and bought the clothes he was wearing in a men’s wear store, gray suit and tie, white shirt, and black leather moccasins which were beginning to pinch his toes. He was no longer Brother Tongue. He was a nameless man walking along a city street, his image unreflected in the blank eyes of strangers, his presence unmarked by any show of interest or curiosity. He was nobody, noticed by nobody.