Henderson pulled up a sigh from way in. “Yeah, I guess I better. I’ve been over it so many times already, I think I could reel it off backward, or in my sleep.”
“To me it’s like a blackboard without anything written on it yet. So don’t skip anything if you can help it.”
“That marriage of mine and Marcella’s was just a prelim, not the main event it should have been at all. A guy don’t usually go around admitting that, even to his friends, but this is the death house and it seems foolish to have reticences here. A little over a year ago, the main bout suddenly came up. And too late for me to take part in. You never met her, don’t know her, so there’s no reason for me to mention her name. They were decent enough to do that for me at the trial, too. All through it they just called her The Girl. I’ll do that here, I’ll call her My Girl to you.”
“Your Girl,” Lombard assented. He had his arms folded, cigarette sticking out from behind his elbow, and was staring down broodingly at the floor, listening hard.
“My Girl, poor girl. It was It, the real thing, the McCoy. If you’re not married, and It comes along — you’re safe. Or if your marriage itself happens to be It, that’s better still, you’re on pure velvet. Or if you’re married, and It never comes along — you’re still safe, even if you’re only half alive and don’t know it. It’s when you’re married, and It shows up only after it’s too late — that you want to look out.”
“That you want to look out,” murmured Lombard with a sort of musing compassion.
“It was a clean little thing. I told My Girl about Marcella the second time I saw her. That was supposed to be the last time we saw each other. The twelfth time we saw each other we were still trying to make it the last time. We tried to steer clear of each other — like steel filings try to steer clear of a magnet.
“Marcella knew about her within thirty days after it had started. I saw to it that she did. I went and told her. It wasn’t a case of any sudden shock, get that. She just smiled about it a little, and she waited. Like someone watching two flies under a tumbler turned upside down.
“I went to her and asked for a divorce. This was at about mid-point. That slow, thoughtful smile came out on her again. She hadn’t seemed to set any particular store by me until then, that I could notice. Just that thing that dropped shoes in the next aisle over from her. She said she’d have to think it over. She thought it over. The weeks went by, the months. She took her time thinking it over, she kept me dangling like that. I’d get that slow, mocking smile every now and then. She was the only one of the three of us having a good time out of it.
“It was pulling me inside out. I’m a grown man, and I wanted My Girl. I wasn’t going to let myself be gypped. I didn’t want any affair, I wanted my wife. And the woman in my house, she wasn’t my wife.”
The hands before his face that he stared down through, they shook a little even at this late day.
“My Girl said to me. There must be some way out. We’re in her hands and she knows it. This sullen silence on your part, that’s the wrong attitude. That brings out an equally sulky opposition on her part. Go to her as a man goes to a friend. Take her out some night, have a heart-to-heart talk with her. When two people once loved one another, as you and she did, there must be something left of it, if it’s only a memory in common. There must be some vestige of good will, of kindly feeling for you, you can reach in her. Make her see it’s the best thing for her own sake, as well as yours and mine.’
“So I bought tickets for a show, and I reserved a table for us at our old place, where we used to go in the days before our marriage. And I went home and said, ‘Let’s go out together again, shall we? Let’s go out tonight like we used to.’
“Came that slow smile again, and she said ‘Why not?’ As I stepped into the shower, she was sitting there at the glass beginning to get ready. All the old ways I knew by heart, the first little touches here and there. I whistled in the shower. I liked her very much in the shower. I realized what the trouble was; I saw I’d always liked her, and I’d mistaken it for love.”
He let the cigarette fall from his hand, flattened it. Then kept looking there. “Why didn’t she refuse at once? Why did she let me whistle in the shower? Watch me in the glass take pains with the part in my hair? Get satisfaction out of the way my handkerchief looked in the breast pocket of my coat? Be happy all over for the first time in six months? Why did she pretend she was going, when she knew from the first she didn’t intend to? Because that was her way. That was her. Because she loved to keep me dangling in suspense. Even about that smaller matter, as well as the larger one.
“I caught on little by little. Her smile, reflected in the glass. The way she wasn’t really getting anywhere with those little touches of hers. I was holding my necktie out in my hands, ready to sling it on. And finally even the little touches had quit, she was sitting there not moving her hands any more, just sitting there doing nothing. Only the smile stayed on, the smile at a man in love. A man in love and at your mercy.
“There are two stories, theirs and mine. And both are identical up to that point; not a hairsbreadth variation between the two. They didn’t bring out a single detail that wasn’t true. Every slightest motion I made, up to there, they had down pat. They did their research work well, perfect. And then, as I stood behind her looking into the same glass with my necktie stretched out between my hands, the two stories split as far apart as the hands of a clock at six. Mine goes all the way over this way, theirs goes all the way over that.
“I’m telling you mine now. I’m telling you the true one.
“She was just waiting for me to ask her. That’s all she was sitting there for like that. The smile, the still hands, demurely folded on the table edge. Finally I did, after I’d watched her for a moment. I said, ‘Aren’t you going?’
“She laughed. Gee, how she laughed. How hard, how long and hearty. I’d never known until then what a terrible weapon laughter can be. I could see my face, over there above hers in the glass, getting white.
“She said, ‘But don’t waste the tickets. Why throw out good money? Take her instead. She can have the show. She can have the dinner. She can have you altogether. But she can’t have you in the only way she wants you.’
“That was her answer. That was always going to be her answer from then on, I knew it then. Forever, for the rest of our lives. And that’s an awful long time.
“Then here’s what happened next. I clenched my teeth and drew my arm back, in a line with the side of her jaw. I don’t remember what happened to the necktie I’d been holding. It must have dropped to the floor. I only know it didn’t go around her neck.
“I never let fly. I couldn’t. I’m not that way. She even tried to get me to. I don’t know why. Or maybe because she knew she was safe, I was incapable of doing it. She’d seen me in the glass, of course, she didn’t have to turn her head. She jeered, ‘Go ahead, hit me. Casey at the bat. That won’t get it for you either. Nothing will get it for you; whether you’re sweet or whether you’re sour, whether you’re gentle or whether you’re rough.’
“Then we both said things we shouldn’t have, like people do. But it was just mouth fireworks, that was all. I never laid a hand on her. I said, ‘You don’t want me; then what the hell are you hanging on to me for?’
“She said, ‘You might come in handy, in case of burglars.’
“I said, ‘You bet that’s all there’ll be to it from now on!’
“She said, ‘I wonder if I’ll be able to tell the difference?’
“I said, ‘That reminds me. You’ve got something coming to you,’ I took two dollars out of my wallet and I threw them on the floor behind her. I said, ‘That’s for being married to you! And I’ll pay the piano player on my way downstairs.’