Revolutionary Road (28 page)

  "Right," John said, moving away with his father. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay Ma? Have I said 'Sorry' enough times? I 
am
 sorry, too. Damn; I bet I'm just about the sorriest bastard I know. Course, get right down to it, I don't have a whole hell of a lot to be glad about, do I?"

  And at least, Mrs. Givings thought, if nothing else could be salvaged from this horrible day, at least he was allowing Howard to lead him away quietly. All she had to do now was to follow them, to find some way of getting across this floor and out of this house, and then it would all be over.

  But John wasn't finished yet. "Hey, I'm glad of one thing, though," he said, stopping near the door and turning back, beginning to laugh again, and Mrs. Givings thought she would die as he extended a long yellow-stained index finger and pointed it at the slight mound of April's pregnancy. "You know what I'm glad of? I'm glad I'm not gonna be that kid."

THE FIRST THING
Frank did when the Givingses were out of the house was to pour himself three fingers of bourbon and drink it down.

  "Okay," he said, turning on his wife. "Okay, don't tell me." The ball of whiskey in his stomach made him cough with a convulsive shudder. "Don't tell me; let me guess. I made a Disgusting Spectacle of Myself. Right? Oh, and another thing." He followed her closely through the kitchen and into the living room, glaring in shame and anger and miserable supplication at the smooth back of her head. "Another thing: Everything That Man Said Is True. Right? Isn't that what you're going to say?"

  "Apparently I don't have to. You're saying it for me."

  "Oh, but April, don't you see how wrong that is? Don't you see how terribly, God-awfully wrong it is, if that's what you think?"

  She turned around and faced him. "No. Why is it wrong?"

  "Because the man is insane." He put down his drink on the window sill, to free both hands, and used them to make a gesture of impassioned earnestness, clawing upward and outward from his chest with all ten of his spread fingers and gathering them into quivering fists, which he shook beneath his chin. "The man," he said again, "is insane. Do you know what the definition of insanity is?"

  "No. Do you?"

  "Yes. It's the inability to relate to another human being. It's the inability to love."

  She began to laugh. Her head went back, the two perfect rows of her teeth sprang forth, and her eyes were brilliantly narrowed as peal after peal of her laughter rang in the room. "The in," she said; "the in; the inabil; the inability to—"

  She was hysterical. Watching her as she swayed and staggered from the support of one piece of furniture to another and then to the wall and back again, laughing and laughing, he wondered what he ought to do. In the movies, when women got hysterical like this, men slapped them until they stopped; but the men in the movies were always calm enough themselves to make it clear what the slapping was for. He wasn't. He wasn't, in fact, able to do anything at all but stand there and watch, foolishly opening and shutting his mouth.

  Finally she sank into a chair, still laughing, and he waited for what he guessed would be a transition from laughter to weeping—that was what usually happened in the movies— but instead her subsiding was oddly normal, more like a recovery from a funny joke than from hysteria.

  "Oh," she said. "Oh, Frank, you really are a wonderful talker. If black could be made into white by talking, you'd be the man for the job. So now I'm crazy because I don't love you—right? Is that the point?"

  "No. Wrong. You're not crazy, and you do love me; 
that's
 the point."

  She got to her feet and backed away from him, her eyes flashing. "But I don't," she said. "In fact I loathe the sight of you. In fact if you come any closer, if you touch me or anything I think I'll scream."

  Then he did touch her, saying, "Oh baby, lis—" and she did scream.

  It was plainly a false scream, done while she looked coldly into his eyes, but it was high, shrill, and loud enough to shake the house. When the noise of it was over he said:

  "God damn you. God damn all your snotty, hateful little—Come 
here,
 God damn it—"

  She switched nimbly past him and pulled a straight chair around to block his path; he grabbed it and slung it against the wall and one of its legs broke off.

  "And what're you going to do now?" she taunted him. "Are you going to hit me? To show how much you love me?"

  "No." All at once he felt massively strong. "Oh, no. Don't worry. I couldn't be bothered. You're not worth the trouble it'd 
take
 to hit you. You're not worth the powder it'd take to blow you 
up. Y
ou're an 
emp
ty—" He was aware, as his voice filled out, of a sense of luxurious freedom because the children weren't here. Nobody was here, and nobody was coming; they had this whole reverberating house to themselves. "You're an 
emp
ty
, hol
low fucking 
shell
 of a woman . . ." It was the first opportunity for a wideopen, all-out fight they'd had in months, and he made the most of it, stalking and circling her as he shouted, trembling and gasping for breath. "What the hell are you living in my 
house
 for, if you hate me so much? 
Huh? W
ill you answer me that? What the hell are you carrying my 
child
 for?" Like John Givings, he pointed at her belly. "Why the hell 
didn't
 you get rid of it, when you had the chance? Because listen. Listen: I got news for you." The great pressure that began to be eased inside him now, as he slowly and quietly intoned his next words, made it seem that this was a cleaner breakthrough into truth than any he had ever made before: "I wish to God you'd done it."

  It was the perfect exit line. He lunged past her and out of the room, down the swaying, tilting hall and into the bedroom, where he kicked the door shut behind him, sat bouncingly on the bed and drove his right fist into the palm of his left hand. Wow!

  What a thing to say! But wasn't it true? Didn't he wish she'd done it? "Yes," he whispered aloud. "Yes, I do. I do. I do." He was breathing fast and heavily through his mouth, and his heart was going like a drum; after a while he closed his dry lips and swallowed, so that the only sound in the room was the rasp of air going in and out of his nose. Then this subsided, very gradually, as his blood slowed down, and his eyes began to take in some of the things around him: the window, whose glass and curtains were ablaze with the colors of the setting sun; the bright, scented jars and bottles on April's dressing table; her white nightgown hanging from a hook inside the open closet, and her shoes lined up neatly along the closet floor: three-inch heels, ballet shoes, soiled blue bedroom slippers.

  Everything was quiet now; he was beginning to wish he hadn't shut himself in here. For one thing, he wanted another drink. Then he heard the kitchen door being closed and the screen being clapped behind it, and the old panic rose up: she was leaving him.

  He was up and running soundlessly back through the house, intent on catching her and saying something— anything—before she got the car started; but she wasn't in the car, or anywhere near it. She was nowhere. She had disappeared. He ran all the way around the outside of the house, looking for her, his loose cheeks jogging, and he had started mindlessly to run around it again when he caught sight of her up in the woods. She was climbing unsteadily up the hill, looking very small among the rocks and trees. He sprinted out across the lawn, took the low stone wall in a leap and went stumbling up through the brush, after her, wondering if she really had gone crazy this time. What the hell was she wandering around up there for? Would she, when he caught up with her and took hold of her arm and turned her around, would she have the vacant, smiling stare of lunacy?

  "Don't come any closer," she called.

  "April, listen, I—"

  "Don't come any 
closer.
 Can't I even get away from you in the 
woods
?"

  He stopped, panting, ten yards below her. At least she was all right; her face was clear. But they couldn't fight up here—they were well within sight and earshot of houses down on the road.

  "April, listen, I didn't mean that. Honestly; I didn't mean that about wishing you'd done it."

  "Are you still talking? Isn't there any way to stop your talking?" She was bracing herself against a tree trunk, looking down at him.

  "Please come down. What're you doing up—"

  "Do you want me to scream again, Frank? Because I will, if you say another word. I mean it."

  And if she screamed here on the hillside they would hear her in every house on Revolutionary Road. They would hear her all over the top of the Hill, too, and in the Campbells' house. There was nothing for him to do but to go back alone, down through the woods to the lawn, and then indoors.

  Once he was back in the kitchen he gave all his attention to the grim business of keeping watch on her through the window, standing—or crouching, and finally sitting on a chair—far enough back in the shadows so that she wouldn't be able to see him.

  She didn't seem to be doing anything up there: she continued to stand leaning against the tree, and as twilight closed in it became difficult to make her out. Once there was a yellow flare as she lit a cigarette, and then he watched the tiny red coal of it move in the slow arcs of her smoking; by the time it went out the woods were in total darkness.

  He went on doggedly watching the same place in the trees until the pale shape of her surprised him at much closer range: she was walking home across the lawn. He barely managed to get out of the kitchen before she came in. Then, hiding in the living room, he listened to her pick up the phone and dial a number.

  Her voice was normal and calm. "Hello, Milly? Hi. . . . Oh yes, they left a little while ago. Listen, though, I was wondering if I could ask a favor. The thing is, I'm not feeling very well; I think I may be getting the flu or something, and Frank's tired out. Would you awfully much mind keeping the kids for the night? . . . Oh, that's wonderful, Milly, thanks. . . . No, don't bother, they both had their baths last night. . . . Well, I know they'll enjoy it too. They always have a wonderful time at your place. . . . All right, fine, then. I'll call you in the morning."

  Then she came into the living room and turned on the lights, and the exploding glare caused them both to blink and squint. What he felt, above all, was embarrassment. She looked embarrassed too, until she walked across the room and lay down on the sofa with her face out of sight.

  It was at times something like this, in the past, that he'd gone out and wrenched the car into gear and driven for miles, stopping at one blue- and red-lighted bar after another, spilling his money on wet counters, morosely listening to the long, fuddled conversations of waitresses and construction workers, playing clangorous jukebox records and then driving again, speeding, eating up the night until he could sleep.

  But he wasn't up to that tonight. The trouble was that there had never, in the past, been a time exactly like this. He was physically incapable of going out and starting the car, let alone of driving. His knees had turned to jelly and his head rang, and he was meekly grateful for the protective shell of the house around him; it was all he could do to make his way to the bedroom again and shut himself inside it, though this time, for all his despair, he was sensible enough to take the bottle of whiskey along with him.

  There followed a night of vivid and horrible dreams, while he sprawled sweating on the bed in his clothes. Sometimes, either waking or dreaming that he was awake, he thought he heard April moving around the house; then once, toward morning, he could have sworn he opened his eyes and found her sitting close beside him on the edge of the bed. Was it a dream, or not?

  "Oh, baby," he whispered through cracked and swollen lips. "Oh, my baby, don't go away." He reached for her hand and held it. "Oh, please stay."

  "Sh-sh-sh. It's all right," she said, and squeezed his fingers. "It's all right, Frank. Go to sleep." The sound of her voice and the cool feel of her hand conveyed such a miracle of peace that he didn't care if it was a dream; it was enough to let him sink back into a sleep that was mercifully dreamless.

  Then came the bright yellow pain of his real awakening, alone; and he'd scarcely had time to decide that he couldn't possibly go to work today before he remembered that he had to. It was the day of the shakedown conference. Trembling, he forced himself up and into the bathroom, where he put himself tenderly through the ordeals of a shower and a shave.

  An illogical, unreasoning hope began to quicken his heart as he dressed. What if it hadn't been a dream? What if she really had come and sat there on the bed and spoken to him that way? And when he went into the kitchen it seemed that his hope was confirmed. It was astonishing.

  The table was carefully set with two places for breakfast. The kitchen was filled with sunlight and with the aromas of coffee and bacon. April was at the stove, wearing a fresh maternity dress, and she looked up at him with a shy smile.

  "Good morning," she said.

  He wanted to go down on his knees and put his arms around her thighs; but he held back. Something told him— possibly the very shyness of her smile—that it would be better not to try anything like that; it would be better just to join her in the playing of this game, this strange, elaborate pretense that nothing had happened yesterday. "Good morning," he said, not quite meeting her eyes.

  He sat down and unfolded his napkin. It was incredible. No morning after a fight had ever been as easy as this—but still, he thought as he unsteadily sipped at his orange juice, no fight had ever been as bad as that. Could it be that they'd fought themselves out at last? Maybe this was what happened when there was really and truly nothing more to say, either in acrimony or forgiveness. Life did, after all, have to go on.

  "It certainly is a—nice morning out, isn't it?" he said.

  "Yes; it is. Would you like scrambled eggs, or fried?"

  "Oh, it doesn't really mat—well, yes; scrambled, I guess, if it's just as easy."

  "Fine. I'll have scrambled too."

  And soon they were sitting companionably across from each other at the bright table, whispering little courtesies over the passing of buttered toast. At first he was too bashful to eat. It was like the first time he'd ever taken a girl out to dinner, at seventeen, when the idea of actually loading food into his mouth and chewing it, right there in front of her, had seemed an unpardonably coarse thing to do; and what saved him now was the same thing that had saved him then: the surprising discovery that he was uncontrollably hungry.

  Between swallows he said: "It's sort of nice, having breakfast without the kids for a change."

  "Yes." She wasn't eating her eggs, and he saw that her fingers were shaking a little as she reached for her coffee cup; otherwise she looked completely self-possessed. "I thought you'd probably want a good breakfast today," she said. "I mean it's kind of an important day for you, isn't it? Isn't this the day you have your conference with Pollock?"