“You and I know that golf is not enough.”
“Right.”
“You couldn’t do without them any more than I can, Will.”
“Do without what?”
“The finer things in life.”
“Right.”
“Man does not live by bread alone and we make plenty bread at golf.”
“Right.” Why was it that the thought of the finer things in life, such as the Ninth Symphony, made his heart sink like a stone? For a fact, the Ninth Symphony was one of the finer things. On the other hand, Lewis’s proposal was so demented he had to laugh: he and this solemn poet-golf-pro music lover listening to the Ode to Joy of an afternoon in old Carolina.
“You want to know what I’ve decided over the years, Will?”
“What?”
“I’ve decided the worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his heritage.”
What heritage? Tidewater unbeliever who had read Dante six times for the structure, could draw the circles of hell, the platforms of purgatory, and the rose of heaven? When you came down to it, Lewis took Erich Fromm more seriously than God, Dante, or Virginia. Was this not madness pure and simple, to come from Tidewater Virginia, read about Dante and God, read the terza rima aloud with such admiration that tears came to his eyes — and top it off with Erich Fromm?
“I got to get back to the party.” And then to Kitty’s ass. “I promised Marion to get Leslie married up proper.”
“Yes. What a lovely girl. That reminds me. This may make you laugh but it’s something I promised Marion.”
“What’s that?”
“Before she died Marion asked me to tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“Funny she wouldn’t tell you. You and Marion didn’t communicate much, did you?”
“No, we didn’t communicate much. We had what you call a communication breakdown.”
Lewis laughed, himself again despite himself. “Marriage is hell, ain’t it? Cindy is a wonderful wife but she hasn’t grown.”
“That’s too bad.” Grown to what? “What was it you were supposed to tell me?”
“Oh, Marion said: just make sure he gets to the wedding and all, that if he wants to pull one of his little fade-outs, she’s not going to be there to cover for you.” Lewis laughed. “She knew you pretty well, Will.”
“Yes.”
“I told her, shit, Will will be there, don’t worry about it.”
“You didn’t say shit to Marion.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Right.”
“You won’t come down later to crack a bottle and listen to some music? I just got the whole Ring.”
“No.” Jesus, no.
“Or shoot doves. Or sit in the cave. Or whatever.”
“The cave? Shoot doves?” A strange thought flew into his head. He looked at Lewis. “Okay. I will.”
After Lewis left, he stood for a moment looking down at the Greener. For the second time in a week, he remembered a movie actor he had only heard of once. No, he didn’t even remember the actor. He remembered his father remember the actor as they were driving in Hollywood in 1950. After the Georgia hunt they had gone West. At the end of the continent they found themselves driving down Sunset Boulevard in his father’s big black 4-hole Dynaflow Buick. His father, who had not spoken for a thousand miles, said: “You see that corner?” “Yes sir.” “Once I was here before.” “Is that right?” “I was here for the Olympics of 1932. On that corner I saw an actor by the name of Ross Alexander. It was before his death.” “Is that so?” “One night he was giving a party at his house. In the middle of the party he got up and said I think I’ll go outside and shoot a duck. No one thought anything of this announcement. He went outside to the garage and shot himself. No one thought much of that either. Similar events were occurring in Rome in 450 before its sack by the Vandals.” “Is that right?”
Will Barrett snapped the leather case of the Greener and put it away in the closet behind the Electrolux.
5
“What a wonderful person your wife was,” said Kitty.
“Yes, she was.”
They were watching his daughter Leslie as she talked with Mr. Arnold from the nursing home. Despite his stroke he could get around with a walker. One fierce eye gazed around the room under a small bald head white as an onion. One side of his face was shut down. Eyelid, cheek, lip fell like a curtain.
“Marion was a saint in this world,” said Kitty.
“Yes.”
“And you were so wonderful with her. I’ve seen you pushing her in the A & P, helping her in and out of the car.”
“Yes.”
“If she hadn’t been so heavy, she would have been a lovely woman.”
“Yes.”
No. Marion was not lovely, even before she got “heavy,” never had been lovely except for her good gray eyes and heavy wide winged eyebrows.
Why had he married her? It was not, was it? because she was Bertie’s sister and Bertie owned the firm and Marion owned forty million dollars?
No, he married her, hadn’t he? because she was touching, with her not too bad polio limp, and even pretty in a gawky Yankeefied way — even now when he thought of her at Northport, he saw her in a blue middy blouse — middy blouse? was such a thing possible, was it in a photograph, or did he imagine it? — and her direct gray-eyed gaze a whole world removed from a Sweetbriar girl or a Carolina coed who had six different ways of looking at you and with all six had seen you coming before you saw her.
No, he married her because he pleased her so much. It is not a small thing to be able to make someone happy so easily.
No, he married her for the very outlandishness of it, marrying her in Northport being as far as he could get from where he had come from.
No, he married her because she was such a good cheerful forthright Northern Episcopal Christian and wanted him to be one too and he tried and even imagined he believed it — again for the very outlandishness of it, taking for his own a New York Episcopal view of an Anglican view of a Roman view of a Jewish Happening. Might it not be true for this very reason? Could anybody but God have gotten away with such outlandishness, contriving to have rich Long Island Episcopalians who if they had no use for anything had no use for Jews, worship a Jew?
No, he married her for none of these reasons and for all of them. Marry her for money and the firm? Yes and no. Marry her because he could make her happy? Yes and no. Marry her because she was as far away as he could get from Mississippi? Yes and no. And from you, old mole? Yes. And get Jesus Christ in the bargain? Why not?
Yes, it was all of these but most of all it was the offhandedness and smiling secret coolness with which he did it, getting it all and even going the Gospels one better because the Gospels spoke of the children of this world and the children of light and set one against the other and he was both and had both and why not? Why not marry her?
Wasn’t it possible to believe in God like Pascal’s cold-blooded bettor, because there was everything to gain if you were right and nothing to lose if you were wrong?
For a while it seemed that it was possible.
Then it seemed not to matter.
In all honesty it was easier to believe it in cool Long Island for its very outrageousness where nobody believed anything very seriously than in hot Carolina where everybody was a Christian and found unbelief unbelievable.
After he married Marion, she seemed happier than ever, gave herself to church work, doing so with pleasure, took pleasure in him — and suddenly took pleasure in eating. She married, gave herself to good works, heaved a great sigh of relief, and began to eat. She ate and ate and ate. She grew too heavy for her hip joint already made frail and porous by polio. The ball of her femur drove into the socket of her pelvis, melted, and fused. She took to a wheelchair, ate more than ever, did more good works. She spent herself for the poor and old and wretched of North Carolina. She was one of the good triumphant Yankees who helped out the poor old South. In and out of meetings flew her wheelchair, her arms burly as a laborer’s. Fueled by holy energy, money, and brisk good cheer, she spun past slack-jawed Southerners, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, paid the workers in her mills a living wage, the very lintheads her piratical Yankee father had despoiled and gotten rich on: a mystery. Another mystery: her sanctity and gluttony. She truly gave herself to others, served God and her fellow man with a good and cheerful heart — and ate and ate and ate, her eyes as round and glittering as a lover’s.