She turned without looking at me and headed straight for her bedroom, walking as softly as a cat. I followed her. She went into the bedroom and I stepped just inside the door. The room was at the rear of the house, opposite the kitchen. It was all done in pink, with ruffles, and it smelled of her perfume.
She looked at me. “I feel as if I’ve known you for a long while.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it, Jack.”
It was the first time she’d called me Jack. No one else had ever said it quite that way, in just that tone of voice.
She sat down at the foot of the bed and leaned against the mahogany bedpost, and wrapped her hands around it, staring at the floor.
“Jack,” she said. “I can’t stand it.” She didn’t say anything for a moment, staring at the floor, and neither did I. Then she said, “I’ve got to talk to somebody about it. It’s driving me out of my mind.”
I waited. She kept on staring at the floor. There was a tenseness in the very look of her, and it had been revealed in her tone. Whatever it was, she didn’t really want to talk about it. You could see her struggle against herself. But she knew she would lose.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
Well, I began to really know, then. Before, I’d felt as if I might have read her wrong. Now I was sure about her. It could have been the mailman, the milkman, even Doctor Miraglia. Anybody. Then I thought, No, don’t get it wrong. You happened to be here and you saw it in her, and she knows you saw it. Somebody else might have missed it. Only I might never know exactly what it was that had tipped me.
“I’m scared to death, Jack.” She stared at the wall, looking toward the other side of the house. “He lies there. He’s dying.” She paused. I’d been right. She was pulling something up out of her that had been sealed and locked in dark secret compartments for a long time. Every word seemed to be painful. “It goes on and on,” she said. “It may go on for years and years. The doctor told me that.”
“You’ve got it pretty soft. Why kick?”
She looked at me and for a second hate shot out of her eyes. Her voice was tight and sibilant. “Soft? For three years I’ve done this.” It was tearing her apart to tell it. But the need was overwhelming. “Three long horrible years. You call that having it soft?”
I shrugged.
“You wonder why I do it,” she said. And now the bitterness. “Isn’t it obvious?”
I shrugged again.
“Well, isn’t it?”
I still didn’t speak.
She let go of the bedpost and sat very stiffly. Then she began rocking slightly forward and backward, rubbing her hands tightly against her thighs.
“Why not leave?” I said. “You can get a job.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s leaving me everything when he dies, that’s why. All his money. Everything.” She swallowed tightly. “He thinks I’m the only friend he’s ever had—something. I don’t know. It’s crazy. I can’t leave—I can’t.”
My throat felt dry. “It won’t last forever.”
“Any time is forever. Right now is forever the way I feel.”
She stood up, staring at me.
I said, “It’s a lot of money?”
She pressed both hands against the side of her face and said, “Yes.”
“If he were in a hospital, you’d be free. You wouldn’t have to worry about this. Only you don’t want him in a hospital. Do you.”
“No.”
“Why, Shirley?’
“I just don’t, that’s all.”
“Yes. But, why?”
“I just don’t. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
“No.”
“I’ll take care of him. I promised.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not the reason. Think, Shirley. Why don’t you want Victor Spondell put away in a hospital?”
She tried to speak, but nothing came past her lips. She didn’t want to hear herself say it. Her eyes were dark now, the pupils large and black, staring from the strange pallor of her face.
“I’ll tell you why,” I said. “It’s because Victor might live on and on for a long, long time, and you couldn’t do anything to prevent it. You couldn’t get at him in a hospital. That’s why.”
She lunged at me and slapped my face. She slapped it again, striking savagely. She was crying, sobbing. I grabbed her wrists and tried to hold her. She fought like a wild Indian.
“It’s the truth,” I said. “Face it.”
“No!”
She wrenched one hand loose and raked her nails down the side of my neck. I grabbed the wrist again and held on. She squirmed and writhed and kicked. Her face was wrung with fright. She was crying inside, but there were no tears in her eyes.
“Get out!” she said. “Get away from me. Leave me alone, you dirty bastard. Get out of here and stay away from me.”
I thrust her slowly back toward the bed, fighting with her every inch of the way, and gave her a shove. She landed on her back and lay suddenly still. She looked beautiful to me then, lying there; beautiful and hot and mad.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll get out.”
I turned and walked from the bedroom, across the living room, and out the front door. I closed the screen door gently, then went out to the truck and drove quickly away.
Four
I waited a week. The thought of losing her now had me crazy. I couldn’t think of anything but Shirley Angela. Days and nights crawled and crept. It was the longest week I’d ever spent in my life and she was with me every minute in my mind, like a ripe taunt. But if she thought I would run to her, she was wrong. This time she had to come to me. I didn’t go near her place. I lashed the tarp over the hoops above the truck-bed, and covered the TV sets and the other stuff inside with a couple of quilts. I told Pete Stallsworth to leave everything just as it was, and not to use that truck, because I was waiting for a call. I prayed she would call.
She was right about time being forever.
Now was forever. My whole life had been forever up until I met Shirley Angela. All the things I’d thought meant something, really meant nothing.
There were the years as a kid on the farm in Louisiana, watching my old man grub and get drunk and thrash around, until the old woman started getting drunk, too, so she could stand it, until he finally ran off with a fat whore who sang “Roll me over, lay me down, and do it again,” in a carnival sideshow. And along about then I ran away, maybe emulating my old man, with a girl named Tess who met a slickhaired mulatto in New Orleans and dropped me. Sixteen and mad at everybody. Working at anything I could get, taking anything I could lay my hands on. And then Ginny, making me go back to school, sweet as honey—hit by a truck and killed outright with me watching from the curb, in Memphis. Something happened to me then. I could never figure it. I didn’t give a goddamn what happened. I felt mean and lowdown. I reckoned I would take the world by the tail and kick it smack in the ass. Only it worked the other way around, all through the years of night school, the war, the drinking and the dames, the brief spell of gas station hoisting, and the cornet blowing in the jive joints, right up to the television school, and finally the store, and Grace. All the time maybe looking for Ginny. I don’t know. Maybe thinking I’d found her again in Shirley Angela.
Only knowing I’d found what I really wanted instead.
Because Shirley Angela was for me—she was mine.
Along with something else that was beginning to eat holes in me.
Shirley Angela. Just like that. And all the rest of the love-guff just a mess of words. With me, that’s how it was. You either understand or you don’t.
If you ever had it like this, you understand.
Nothing happened. Over one hundred and sixty-eight hours of complete vacuum, with me riding the hands of the clock. Just holding my breath.