Carrying the drink, she strolled about the apartment, humming with the music. Now she did not feel so lonely. She set the drink down on the arm of the couch and resumed painting.
The smell of the paint blended with the smell of her drink. Her head began to ache, and she wondered if she wanted to paint after all.
When her drink was gone, she returned to the kitchen for another. The ice cubes were still on the drainboard, and she dumped them into the sink; they were half-melted. Into the glass she poured gin and then water from the tap. Swirling the mixture she seated herself at the kitchen table.
For the first time in her life the idea of suicide entered her mind. Once it was there, she could not get rid of it.
She went about the kitchen, examining the knives in the drawers. Then she gave serious thought to the electricity, the wiring and outlets. What an awful thing, she thought. But the idea continued to revolve; it built itself up. She went back and forth through the apartment, seeking something to break into her mind. Hammer, chisel, drill such as a dentist’s drill cutting through bone . . . splinters of bone flying.
Enough, she thought. But it was not enough. She picked up her brush and tried to paint. The colors dazzled her; she pulled down the shades and painted in the half-light. Now the colors ran together, browns and grays and somber clouds like soot.
She continued painting. The square became dark and at last it was blotted out. All colors, she thought. In her mind the schemes and ideas of suicide grew and became more elaborate, more extravagant, until she had considered everything.
Putting down her brush, she went out of the apartment into the hall. The hall was deserted. She stood by the door and after a long time a middle-aged woman passed by with rubbish for the disposal chute.
“Good afternoon,” Pat said.
The middle-aged woman glanced at the open apartment door and then at the glass in her hand. Without answering her, the middle-aged woman went on.
Enough, she thought. She put her glass down inside the apartment, and then she walked steadily down the hall to the stairs, down to the ground floor, down the front steps to the sidewalk, down the sidewalk, down the hill to the corner, to the liquor store. The polished tile floor sloped, and she walked gingerly to the counter.
“You have any Rhine wine?” she asked. The first thing that came into her mind, something new in her mind.
“Lots of it,” the clerk said. He went to a shelf. While he was looking, she walked back out, onto the sidewalk, up the hill. On the hill she halted, getting her breath. Then she walked back to the apartment.
The phonograph was on, but the records had ceased playing. She lifted them up onto the spindle and started them over.
Where are you? she said to herself.
Nobody answered.
Are you coming back? she said. You’re not, she said, and I know why not. I know where you are. I know who you’re with.
I don’t blame you, she said. You’re right.
She picked up her brush and put the tip of it into the paint. In the darkness of the apartment, she painted; she put more darkness around her. She lifted darkness and carried it about the living room and the bedroom and into the bathroom and the kitchen. She took it everywhere. She brought it to each thing in the apartment, and after that she turned it to herself.
19
Beside him in the car Rachael said, “You don’t have to go through any legal thing. Just stay with me, especially after I have the baby.”
“They’d send me to prison for life,” Jim Briskin said. They were parked before her house, and he looked down the walk to the basement steps; he gazed out at the house, at the stores and people along Fillmore Street.
“Is that why?” Rachael said. “Is that the reason?”
“I can’t marry a seventeen-year-old girl,” he said. “No matter how I feel about her.”
“Just tell me if that’s the reason.”
He gave it serious thought. While he thought, Rachael kept her eyes fixed on him; she studied his face, his body, the way he sat, the clothes he was wearing. She was taking each part of him in. Gathering and collecting him, every bit of him. Tucking him away.
“Yes,” he said finally.
“Let’s leave, then. Let’s go down into Mexico.”
“Why?” he said. “Do they do that down there? Is that something you read in a magazine or saw in a movie?”
Rachael said, “You know more than I do. Find out where we can go where we can do it.”
“Oh, Rachael,” he said.
“What?”
I’ll do it, he wanted to say. He almost said it. He almost told her. “You’re too logical,” he said. “You’re too rational. I can’t.”
“Suppose I talk with Pat.”
“Keep away from Pat. Don’t go near her. She has enough troubles.”
“Do you think I’ll hurt her?”
“Yes.” he said. “If you can. If you can figure out how.”
“I know how,” Rachael said.
“Do you want to?”
Rachael said, “I don’t care about her. I care about you.”
“I’d be lying,” he said, “if I said I don’t care about you. But she’s the one who can’t live by herself. You have an economic problem, but eventually you’ll solve it; you’ll be older and you’ll earn more money. One of these days you’ll have it worked out. Well still be in the middle of our problems. It’s a question of time, nothing else.”
Rachael said, “That’s just a lot of words.”
“You don’t want to hear it. That’s why you say that.”
“I want to hear the truth; I don’t want to hear what you think would be nice. I never knew you before, but now I know you and I’m going to know you for the rest of your life. Isn’t that so?” She pushed the car door open. “Usually I work in the morning; you didn’t even ask me why I’m not working.”
“Why aren’t you?” he said. “What did you do, quit your job? I’m off for a month; Pat’s off indefinitely; I suppose you’re through completely.”
“I switched with a girl,” Rachael said. “I’m working tonight instead of this morning.”
“When do you start?”
“At eight o’clock tonight.”
“Then you have time to sit here.”
“I have all these errands. I have to get started on them; I have a lot to do.” She reached into her coat pocket. “Here’s a note.” She passed him a folded slip of paper. “Take it and don’t read it until you’re driving home. Promise?”
“Notes,” he said.
“I’ll see you.” She started off down the path toward the house. As soon as her back was to him, he unfolded the note and read it. On the paper were no words, no writing, only a drawing she had made. Probably she had gotten the idea from Pat and her painting. It was the drawing of a heart, and he understood from it that Rachael wanted to tell him that she loved him.
Putting the note in his pocket, he got out of the car and followed after her, gaining on her, until he was beside her.
“I’ll go in with you,” he said. “Don’t you want to go home?”
“Not right away.”
Rachael said, “You opened my note.”
“Yes,” he said.
“These are just ordinary errands. I have to shop and get some medicine at the drugstore and take the clothes over to the launderette. And I have to clean and sweep.” She glanced apprehensively up at him. “Do you think you would want to have lunch with me? You didn’t have much breakfast.”
“Okay,” he said.
She walked ahead of him, down the steps to the basement door. “First I have to clean,” she said, opening the door. It was not locked, he saw. “I have to vacuum the floor. We got this old vacuum cleaner. I was going to clean yesterday, but I didn’t want to while you were around.”