He had made that comparison, he supposed, in a last-ditch effort to stop himself from committing psychological incest. He looked from Mother to Myra and back again to Mother.
They could have been sisters. The resemblance was that close.
Eddie looked at the two nearly identical pictures and promised himself he would not do this crazy thing. He knew that the boys at work were already making jokes about Jack Sprat and his wife, but they didn't know the half of it. The jokes and snide remarks he could take, but did he really want to be a clown in such a Freudian circus as this? No. He did not. He
would break it off with Myra. He would let her down gently because she was really very sweet and had had even less experience with men than he'd had with women. And then, after she had finally sailed over the horizon of his life, he could maybe take those tennis lessons he'd been thinking of for such a long time
(Eddie often seems very well and happy in his physical-education classes')
or there were the pool memberships they were selling at the UN Plaza Hotel
(Eddie loves to play games)
not to mention that health club which had opened up on Third Avenue across from the garage . . .
(Eddie runs quite fast he runs quite fast when you're not here runs quite fast when there's nobody around to remind him of how delicate he is and I see in his face Mrs Kaspbrak that he knows even now at the age of nine he knows that the biggest favor in the world he could do himself would be to run fast in any direction you're not going let him go Mrs Kaspbrak let him RUN)
But in the end he had married Myra anyway. In the end the old ways and the old habits had simply been too strong. Home was the place where, when you have to go there, they have to chain you up. Oh, he might have beaten his mother's ghost. It would have been hard but he was quite sure he could have done that much, if that had been all which needed doing. It was Myra herself who had ended up tipping the scales away from independence. Myra had condemned him with solicitude, had nailed him with concern, had chained him with sweetness. Myra, like his mother, had reached the final, fatal insight into his character: Eddie was all the more delicate because he sometimes suspected he was not delicate at all; Eddie needed to be protected from his own dim intimations of possible bravery.
On rainy days Myra always took his rubbers out of the plastic bag in the closet a nd put them by the coat– rack next to the door. Beside his plate of unbuttered wheat toast each morning was a dish of what might have been taken at a casual glance for a multi-colored pre-sweetened children's cereal, but which a closer look would have revealed to be a whole spectrum of vitamins (most of which Eddie had in his medicine –bag right now). Myra, like Mother, under-, stood, and there had really been no chance for him. As a young unmarried man he had left his mother three times and returned home to he r three times. Then, four years after his mother had died in the front hall of her Queens apartment, blocking the front door so completely with her bulk that the Medcu guys (called by the people downstairs when they heard the monstrous thud of Mrs Kaspbrak going down for the final count) had had to break in through the locked door between the apartment's kitchen and the service stairwell, he had returned home for a fourth and final time. At least he had believed then it was for the final time — home again, home again, jiggety-jog; home again, home again, with Myra the hog. A hog she was, but she was a sweet hog, and he loved her, and there had really been no chance for him at all. She had drawn him to her with the fatal, hypnotizing snake's eye of understanding. , Home again forever, he had thought then.
But maybe I was wrong, he thought. Maybe this isn't home, nor ever was — maybe home is where I have to go tonight. Home is the place where when you go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark .
He shuddered helplessly, as if he had gone outside without his rubbers and caught a terrible chill.
'Eddie, please! '
She was beginning to weep again. Tears were her final defense, just as they had always been his mother's: the soft weapon which paralyzes, which turns kindness and tenderness into fatal chinks in one's armor.
Not that he'd ever worn much armor anyway — suits of armor did not seem to fit him very well.
Tears had been more than a defense for his mother; they had been a weapon. Myra had rarely used her own tears so cynically . . . but, cynically or not, he realized she was trying to use them that way now . . . and she was succeeding.
He couldn't let her. It would be too easy to think of how lonely it was going to be, sitting in a seat on that train as it barrelled north toward Boston through the darkness, his suitcase overhead and his tote-bag full of nostrums between his feet, the fear sitting on his chest like a rancid Vicks-pack. Too easy to let Myra take him upstairs and make love to him with aspirins and an alcohol-rub. And put him to bed, where they might or might not make a franker sort of love.
But he had promised. Promised.
'Myra, listen to me,' he said, making his voice purposely dry, purposely matter-of-fact.
She looked at him with her wet, naked, terrified eyes.
He thought he would try now to explain — as best he could; he would tell her atibut how Mike Hanlon had called and told him that it had started again, and yes, he thought most of the others were coming.
But what came out of his mouth was much saner stuff.
'Go down to the office first thing in the morning. Talk to Phil. Tell him I had to take off and that you'll drive Pacino — '
'Eddie I just can't! ' she wailed. 'He's a big star! If I get lost he'll shout at me, I know he will, he'll shout, they all do when the driver gets lost . . . and . . . and I'll cry . . . there could be an accident . . . there probably will be an accident . . . . Eddie . . . Eddie you have to stay home . . . . '
'For God's sake! Stop it!'
She recoiled from his voice, hurt; although Eddie gripped his aspirator, he would not use it. She would see that as a weakness, one she could use against him. Dear God, if You are there,please believe me when I say I don't want to hurt Myra. I don't want to cut her, don't even want to bruise her. But I promised, we all promised, we swore in blood, please help me God because I have to do this . . . .
'I hate it when you shout at me, Eddie,' she whispered.
'Myra, I hate it when I have to,' he said, and she winced. There you go, Eddie — you hurther again. Why don't you just punch her around the room a few times? That would probably be kinder. And quicker.
Suddenly — probably it was the thought of punching someone around the room which caused the image to come — he saw the face of Henry Bowers. It was the first time he had thought of Bowers in years, and it did nothing for his peace of mind. Nothing at all.
He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them an d said: 'You won't get lost, and he won't shout at you. Mr Pacino is very nice, very understanding. ' He had never driven Pacino before in his life, but contented himself with knowing that at least the law of averages was on the side of this lie — according to popular myth most celebrities were shitheels, but Eddie had driven enough of them to know it usually wasn't true.
There were, of course, exceptions to the rule — and in most cases the exceptions were real monstrosities. He hoped fervently for Myra's sake that Pacino wasn't one of these.