Steel (19 page)

It was absurd, really, yet there it was. What if, in entering Franco's, he had, accidentally, entered a universe one jot removed from the one he'd existed in at the office? What if, the thought expanded, people were, without knowing it, continually entering these universes one jot removed? What if he himself had continually entered them and never known until today—when, in an accidental entry, he had gone one step too far?

He closed his eyes and shuddered. Dear Lord, he thought; dear, heavenly Lord, I
have
been working too hard. He felt as if he were standing at the edge of a cliff waiting for someone to push him off. He tried hard not to think about his talk with Nolan. If he thought about it he'd have to fit it into the pattern. He wasn't prepared to do that yet.

After a while, he paid his check and left the restaurant, the food like cold lead in his stomach. He cabbed to Pennsylvania Station and, after a short wait, boarded a North Shore train. All the way to Huntington, he sat in the smoker car staring out at the passing countryside, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. The heavy pressure in his stomach wouldn't go away.

When Huntington was reached, he walked across the station to the cab stand and, deliberately, got into one of them.

“Take me home, will you?” he looked intently at the driver.

“Sure thing, Mr. Marshall,” said the driver, smiling.

Marshall sank back with a wavering sigh and closed his eyes. There was a tingling at his fingertips.

“You're home early,” said the driver. “Feeling poorly?”

Marshall swallowed. “Just a headache,” he said.

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

As he rode home, Marshall kept staring at the town, despite himself, looking for discrepancies, for
differences.
But there were none; everything was just the same. He felt the pressure letting up.

Ruth was in the living room, sewing.

“
Don.
” She stood and hurried to him. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no,” he said, putting down his hat. “Just a headache.”

“Oh.” She led him, sympathetically, to a chair and helped him off with his suitcoat and shoes. “I'll get you something right away,” she said.

“Fine.” When she was gone upstairs, Marshall looked around the familiar room and smiled at it. It was all right now.

Ruth was coming down the stairs when the telephone rang. He started up, then fell back again as she called, “I'll get it, darling.”

“All right,” he said.

He watched her in the hallway as she picked up the receiver and said hello. She listened. “Yes, darling,” she said automatically. “You—”

Then she stopped and, holding out the receiver, stared at it as if it were something monstrous in her hand.

She put it back to her ear. “You … won't be home until late?” she asked in a faint voice.

Marshall sat there gaping at her, the beats of his heart like someone striking at him. Even when she turned to look at him, the receiver lowered in her hand, he couldn't turn away. Please, he thought. Please don't say it.
Please.

“
Who are you?
” she asked.

A VISIT TO SANTA CLAUS

All the way across the dark parking lot, Richard kept whining sulkily.

“All right, that's e-
nough
,” Helen said to him when they reached the car. “We'll see him on Tuesday. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Wanna see 'im
now
,” Richard said, twitching with a sob.

Ken was reaching for the keys, trying not to drop the packages in his arms. “
Oh
,” he said irritably, “I'll take him.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, shifting her bundles and shivering in the cold wind that raced across the car-packed lot.

“I mean I'll take him now,” he said, fumbling for the door lock.

“
Now?
” she asked. “It's too late now. Why didn't you take him while we were in the store? There was plenty of time then.”

“So I'll take him now. What's the difference?”

“I wanna see
Sanna
Claus!” Richard broke in, looking intently at Helen. “Mama, I wanna see Sanna Claus
now!
”

“Not now, Richard,” Helen said, shaking her head. She dumped her bundles on the front seat and straightened her arms with a groan. “That's
e-nough
, I said,” she warned as Richard began whining again. “Mommy's too tired to walk all the way back to the store.”

“You don't have to go,” Ken told her, throwing his packages in beside hers. “I'll take him in myself.” He turned on the light.

“Mama,
please
, Mama?
Please?
”

She made herself a place on the seat and sank down with a weary grunt. He noticed the lock of unkempt brown hair dangling across her forehead, the caking dryness of her lipstick.

“Well, what made you change your mind now?” she asked tiredly. “I only asked you about a hundred times to take him while we were in the store.”

“For God's sake, what's the difference?” he snapped. “Do you want to drive back here on Tuesday just to see Santa Claus?”

“No.”

“Well, then.…” He noticed the wrinkles in her stockings as she pulled her legs around and faced the front of the car. She looked old and sour in the dim light. It gave him an odd sensation in his stomach.

“
Please
, Mama?” Richard was begging as if Helen were all authority, Ken thought, as if
he
, the father, had no say at all. Well, that was probably the way it was.

Helen stared glumly at the windshield, then reached back and turned off the light. Two hours of being exposed to frantic Christmas shoppers, nerve-strained sales people, Richard's constant demands to see Santa Claus, and Ken's irritating refusals to take him had jaded her.

“And what am I supposed to do while you're gone?” she asked.

“It'll only be a few minutes, for God's sake,” Ken answered. He'd been on hooks all night, either remote and uncommunicative or snapping nervously at her and Richard.

“Oh, go a
-head
,” she said, arranging the coat over her legs, “and please hurry.”

“
Sanna
Claus,
Sanna
Claus!” Richard shouted, tugging joyously at his father's topcoat.

“All right!” Ken flared. “Stop pulling at me, for God's sake!”

“Joy to the world. The Lord has come,” Helen said, her sigh one of disgust.

“Yeah, sure,” Ken said bitterly, grabbing at Richard's hand. “Come on.”

Helen pulled the car door shut, and Ken noticed she didn't push down the button to lock it. She might though, after they'd gone.
The keys!
—the thought exploded suddenly, and he drove his hand into his topcoat pocket, his palsied fingers tightening over their cold metal. A dry swallow moved his throat and he sucked in cold air shakily, heartbeats thudding like a fist inside his chest. Take it easy, he told himself, just … take it easy.

He knew enough not to look back. It would be like taking one more look at a funeral. He stared up, deliberately, at the glittering neon wreath on the department store roof. He could barely feel Richard's hand on his. His other hand clutched at the keys in his pocket. He wouldn't look back, he—

“Ken!”

His body clamped in a spasmodic start as her voice rang out thinly in the huge lot. Automatically, he turned and saw her standing by the Ford, looking at them.

“Leave the keys!” she called. “I'll drive around to the front of the store so you don't have to walk all the way back here!”

He stared blankly at her, feeling the sudden cramped tightness of his stomach muscles.

“That's—” He cleared his throat, almost furiously. “It's not that far!” he called back.

He turned away before she could answer, noticing how Richard glanced at him. His heartbeat was like a club swung against the wall of his chest.

“Mama's calling,” Richard said.

“You want to see Santa Claus or not?” Ken demanded sharply.

“Y-es.”

“Then shut up!”

He swallowed again painfully and lengthened his stride. Why did
that
have to happen? A shudder ran down his back. He looked up at the neon wreath again, but he could still see Helen standing by the car in her green corduroy coat, one arm raised a little, her eyes on him. He could still hear her voice—
so you don't have to walk all the way back here!
—sounding thin and plaintive over the buffeting night wind.

He felt that wind chilling his cheeks now as his and Richard's shoes made a crisp, uneven sound on the gravel-strewn asphalt. Seventy yards, maybe it was seventy yards to the store. Was that the sound of their car door slamming shut? She was probably angry. If she pushed down the button, it would be harder to—

The man in the dark, sagging-brimmed hat stood at the end of the aisle. Ken pretended not to see him, but the air seemed rarefied suddenly, as though he were beyond atmosphere, trudging in an icy darkness that was nearly vacuum. It was the constriction around his heart that made him feel that way, the apparent inability of his lungs to hold in breath.

“Does Sanna Claus love me?” Richard asked.

Ken's chest labored with forced breathing. “Yes, yes,” he said, “he—does.” The man just stood there staring up at the sky, both hands deep in the pockets of his old checked overcoat, as if he were waiting for his wife to come out of the department store. But he wasn't. Ken's fingers grew rigid on the keys. His legs felt like heavy wood carrying him closer to the man.

I won't do it, he thought suddenly. He'd walk right by the man, take Richard to see Santa Claus, return to the car, go home, forget about it. He felt incapable and without strength. Helen alone in the Ford, sitting beside their Christmas packages, waiting for her husband and son to return. The thought sent strange electric pricklings through his body. I just won't do it. He heard the words as if someone were speaking them in his mind. I just won't—

His hand was growing cold and numb on the keys as, unconscious of it, he cut off the flow of blood to his fingers.

He
had
to do it; it was the only way. He wasn't going to return to the nerve-knotting frustration that was his present, the dreary expanse that was his future. Interior rages were poisoning him. For his own health it had to be done, for what was left of his life.

They reached the end of the aisle and walked past the man.

Richard cried, “Daddy, you dropped the keys!”

“Come on!” He pulled at Richard's hand, forcing himself not to look back over his shoulder.

“But you did, Daddy!”

“I said—!”

Ken's voice broke off abruptly as Richard pulled away from him and ran to where the ring of keys lay on the asphalt. He stared with helpless eyes at the man who hadn't budged from his place. The man appeared to shrug, but Ken couldn't see what his expression was beneath the wide hat brim.

Richard came running back with the keys. “Here, Daddy.”

Ken slid them into his topcoat pocket with shaking fingers, a sick dismay twisting his insides. It won't work, he thought, feeling both an agony of disappointment and an agony of wrenching guilt.

“Say thank you,” Richard said, taking his father's hand again.

Ken stood motionless in indecision, still holding on to the keys in his pocket. Empathic muscle tension pulled him toward the man, but he knew he couldn't go to him. Richard would see.

“Let's go, Daddy,” Richard urged.

Ken turned away quickly, his face a painted mask as he started for the store. He felt dizzy, without feeling. It's over! he thought in bitter fury,
over!

“Say thank you, Daddy.”

“Will you—!” The sound of his voice startled him and he trapped the hysterical surge of words behind pressed, trembling lips. Richard was silent. He glanced cautiously at his taut-faced father.

They were halfway to the store entrance when the man in the checked overcoat brushed past Ken.

“'Scuse it,” muttered the man, and apparently by accident his arm brushed roughly against the pocket where the keys were, indicating that he wanted and was ready to receive them.

Then the man was past them, walking in jerky strides toward the store. Ken watched him go, feeling as if his head were being compressed between two hands, the palms contoured to his skull. It's not over, he thought. He didn't even know whether he was glad it wasn't. He saw the man stop and turn before one of the glass doors that flanked the revolving door. Now, he told himself, it has to be now. He took out the keys again.

“I wanna go that way, Daddy!” Richard was tugging him toward the revolving door which spun shoppers into the crowded din or out into the silent chill of night.

“It's too crowded,” he heard himself say, but it was someone else speaking. It's my future, he kept thinking, my future.

“It's not crowded, Daddy!”

He didn't argue. He jerked Richard toward the side door. And as he pulled the door open with the keys in his hand, he felt them grabbed from his fingers.

Then, in a second, he and Richard were in the noisome brightness of the store, and it was done.

Ken didn't look over his shoulder, but he knew the man was walking back into the dark lot now, back toward the aisle where the Ford was parked.

For one horrible instant, he felt as if he were going to make an outcry. A great sickness rushed up through his body, and he almost yelled and dashed back into the night after the man. No, I've changed my mind; I don't want it done! In that instant, everything he hated about Helen and his life with her seemed to vanish, and all he could remember was that she was going to drive the car to the front of the store so he and Richard wouldn't have to walk back across the cold, wind-swept lot.