The Man Without a Face (17 page)

But it was too late for that. The gasps seemed to come up from my knees, shuddering through my body. Justin reached me and put his arms around me and held me while I cried out of some ocean I didn’t know was there. I couldn’t stop. After a while he lifted me up and carried me to the bed and lay down beside me, holding me.

I could feel his heart pounding, and then I realized it was mine. I couldn’t stop shaking; in fact, I started to tremble violently. It was like everything—the water, the sun, the hours, the play, the work, the whole summer—came together. The golden cocoon had broken open and was spilling in a shower of gold.'

Even so, I didn’t know what was happening to me until it had happened.

When I woke up I was alone and in the bed rather than on it, which was the way I had gone to sleep. The sun was streaming in the window. My pants, sweater, and jacket

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were over a chair. I had on my shorts. The first thing I remembered was Moxie. Then I remembered about my father. Then I remembered coming here, and what happened after.

I lay in bed a long time thinking about it, and the more I thought about it, the worse I felt about myself, about Justin. And yet. . . somewhere, for a long time, I had known— not that this would happen, but that something would happen, and then everything would be over.

After another long while Justin came in. I didn’t want to look at him.

He put a glass of orange juice on the table beside the bed. “Good morning.”

I didn’t say anything. He went to the window, stared out for a bit and then turned around, leaning against it, his arms crossed.

“Do you want to talk about it now or later?"

I sat up and drank some juice.

“Are you worried? About yourself?”

Right on. But I still didn’t say anything, I wanted to be left alone. I wanted somehow not to have to think about it or talk about it.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Justin. Let’s just leave it.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea. For you. Your first impulse is to run. So you’ll run from this and then spend unnecessary years worrying about it. There’s nothing about it to worry you. You reacted to a lot of strain—and shock—in a normal fashion. At your age, anything could trigger it.”

“You mean it doesn’t have anything to do with you?”

“It has something to do with me, sure. But nothing of any lasting significance. It could have been anyone—boy or girl. It could have been when you were asleep. You must know that.”

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Yes, I knew that. And I knew all about the male and female in everybody, too. But I was remembering other things. The times, lying on the rock, two of them, that I reached over and touched him. I had touched him. Not the other way around. It scared me so badly I couldn’t think of anything else.

“You’re snowing me. I don’t believe you.’’

“I’m not snowing you. I know what I’m talking about.’’ “I bet you do.”

There is nothing in that morning’s conversation that I am not bitterly ashamed of. But of all the things I said I am most ashamed of that and what I said next.

“What does it make you?”

“I’ve known what I was for a long time.”

And so had I. Without knowing I knew it, I had known. What did that make me? I stared at him. “Then why did you—’’

“Did I what, Charles?”

That was what I couldn’t bear. He hadn’t done anything. I’d done it all. Always I had reached across to him. And the more I thought the more I remembered the times he had stopped me. What had I been going to do? I knew, I could tell, I was hurting him. But I was also frantically doing something else, something I do very well: I was turning it all off.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said again.

I’ll never really know whether or not that was, in its own strange way, a last appeal to him, a plea for help before I blew up the last bridge between us.

But I know now that Justin had reached his limit. He couldn’t help me anymore.

“All right, Charles. Have it your way. I’ll be downstairs if you want me.”

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* * *

Justin had said, The only thing you can’t be free from is the consequences of what you do. I was trying not to think about that while I loitered over showering and dressing. But the evidence of at least one act—giving Moxie the freedom of the house—was staring at me. More evidence materialized around noon with Barry. I had just gone downstairs. Justin was working at his desk. I was trying to think of something to say. At least I’m glad about that. I was trying. Then I heard a car door slam and looked out the window.

“Bany’s here,” I said.

“I’ve been expecting him.”

I hardly had time to absorb that when Barry walked into the room. Justin stood up.

“Hello, Barry.”

“Hello, Justin.”

They shook hands. Justin said, “You’ve come for Charles.” “Yes. We had a predictably hysterical call late last night from Gloria. Apparently she had managed to talk her father into letting her come back a couple of days ahead of time because, she assured us, she knew he wanted to get back to California. My own view is he paid her to leave early. Anyway, I think she was eager to get her version of last night’s debacle in first. She said Charles would be here, having wrenched something out of her boyfriend who had got it out of his kid brother.”

“With counteraccusations, I take it.”

“Of course. Nothing that could trouble a mother’s heart was omitted. I knew it was a mistake to have our phone repaired.”

The two men exchanged looks:

Barry turned to me. “I’m sorry about Moxie.”

ISO

■

I didn’t say anything.

“Think you can pass that exam? There’s a letter from the school telling you to report there two days from now.’’ “He can pass,’’ Justin said.

“Okay, son. Let’s go.’’

I turned to Justin. “Good-by,’’ I said. Then I added, “Thanks.”

Justin was looking tired and strained. But he smiled. “Good-by, Charles. Vaya con Dios."

“What does that mean?” I asked Barry as we got in the

car.

He started the engine. Mickey, sitting on his haunches on the grass, gave a halfhearted “Whuff!”

We started to roll down the path.

Barry said, “It means, ‘Go with God.’ ”

CHAPTER I2

I took the repeat exam at St. Matthew’s and passed, and was back for the beginning of the school term ten days later. Mother and Barry, it turned out, had been married while they were apartment hunting. The period between the exam and the beginning of term was taken up with buying clothes and Mother worrying about moving into the new apartment. I had been braced for a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer from Mother, and for the usual man-to-man garbage that both previous stepfathers had tried on. But no one said anything about anything.

I didn’t think about Justin then or later at school. I was very busy and we were kept hopping. Sometimes, when we hit something in class that he and I had talked about, I could feel him pressing at the edge of my mind. But I quickly

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switched to something else. It was no sweat at all for about two months.

Then one day sometime in November, I was sitting in class, looking out the window at the gray sky and the brown* branches of the trees. Quite suddenly, I stopped seeing them. The sky was bright blue and the gold of the sun was coming around the green leaves across the window and I could hear the sea below. I could smell the charred wood in the fireplace, Mickey’s dogginess sprawled in front, the tangy salt from outside. I heard Justin’s voice and saw his face. . . .

I came to as I heard the teacher yelling at me in exasperation.

That night I dreamed about Justin. It was like the dream I had had before. But Barry was in it this time. He was holding the little snapshot of my father and saying, “But, Chuck, he's The Man Without a Face. Not Justin.” I looked at the picture and it was true. There was no face there. There never had been. I had just thought there was.

When I woke up I knew I had to see Justin. I had to tell him I was sorry for behaving like such a jerk that last morning. I had to make him believe how much I liked him. The word I had always disliked swam to the front of my mind: how much I loved him. I wasn’t afraid of saying it any more, just sick with shame for—again—having run away. And I had to find Justin immediately to tell him all this.

After morning classes, before lunch, I left. There’d be no more roll call till that night. I walked out the gate without anybody seeing me. When I got to the main road I hitched a ride to the nearest town.

Late that afternoon, after several more hitched rides and a long walk, I got to Justin’s house. I began to be afraid

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Justin wouldn’t be there when Mickey didn’t rush out. The house was locked. I went to the bam, which was also locked.

I came back to the house, found a window that wasn’t locked, and got in.

There wasn’t a lot of light left as I went from room to room. I knew now that Justin wasn’t there, hadn’t been there for a long time. It’s hard to say how I knew this. The furniture was the same. His bed still had sheets and blankets on it. But the house had an emptiness that had nothing to do with furniture. It was terribly cold. There were some oil lamps around and I lit those when it got dark because the electricity had been turned off. I found some cans of soup in the kitchen, put some wood in the big range, made a fire, and heated the soup. Then I drank it with some crackers I found in a tin container.

I can’t describe how awful I felt, worse than I had ever felt in my life before, like all the cold in the world was inside me. And I couldn’t blame anybody. I think that was one of the things that was making me feel so sick. The other was the knowledge that was coming to me out of every wall and comer of the room: that the things I had come to say I would now never say—at least not to Justin.

After I had eaten I took down my favorite Terence Blake book to read. When I opened it a piece of paper fell out. I picked it up and unfolded it. It was a letter from Justin.

Dear Charles:

I feel quite sure that sooner or later you will open this book, so I'm putting this note here.

Knowing you, I am reasonably certain that you'll have a delayed reaction about that last morning that will cause you a lot of pain and remorse. Don't let it.

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You gave me something I hadn't ever again expected to have: companionship, friendship, love—yours and mine. I know you don't care for that word. But try to learn not to be afraid of it.

One other request: Try to forgive your father. He did his best. More people do than you realize. A good way to start is by forgiving yourself.

My love to you always.

Justin

P.S. Barry is a good fellow and was a staunch friend to me when I needed one. Try to be his friend, because he's very willing to be yours. By the way, did you know he was an Army pilot during World War II? He doesn't talk much about it, but he might if you asked him.

I slept that night in Justin’s bed, piling on every blanket I could find out of the hall chest. The next day was as cold and gray as I felt. There was wood stacked by the fireplace in the living room and I made a fire. Then I had some breakfast of more soup and crackers plus a can of spaghetti.

That afternoon I walked up the bumpy road to the cliff and looked over the edge to the flat rock below. Despite the two sweaters of Justin’s I had found and put on, I was half frozen; Snow had not yet come, but it would almost any minute. The sea was black. The rock just looked like a rock.

That night I read through the book, had some more soup and a can of mixed vegetables, and opened another box of crackers.

The next morning I was shaken awake by Barry. He looked tired and unshaven and irritated.

“Between you and shotgun Gloria,’’ he said testily as I

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rolled over and sat up, “my legal practice—to say nothing of my marriage—is not getting my undivided attention. I suppose I should be grateful that Meg’s only problem—for the moment —is food.’’

“Justin?” I said, although I was quite sure I already knew the answer.

“He died, son, about a month ago, in Scotland.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to wait until you asked.”

“I behaved like a creep to him.”

“Yes. But he understood.”

There was something I was terribly afraid of. But I was going to ask it now, not a year from now. “Did he . . . How did he die?”

“He had a heart attack. Not entirely unexpected. He’d had some trouble that way.” Barry stood looking down at me. “Do you mind if we finish this conversation downstairs in the kitchen? I started some coffee going. Besides, I don’t have all those blankets.”

“You will be relieved to hear,” he said over the kitchen table, “that Gloria and Percy were married. The first, I can’t help feeling sure, of what will be a series of marriages for her.”

Dimly I realized that Barry was making conversation more or less to help me over this patch. I was trying to get used to his being there, sitting across from me, instead of Justin. I knew I never would, entirely.

“How’s Mother?” I asked finally.

“Fine. She’ll be even finer when she knows you’re back at school. Now that Gloria’s married the two of you may have an easier time.”

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Barry stared into his coffee cup. “I’m taking you back to school, Chuck. God knows, you went through enough to get there.”

The pain in me flared a little. I thought: And so did Justin.

“The point is,” Barry plodded on doggedly, “are you going to stay?” He cleared his throat. “All opinion to the contrary, I’m not completely dim-witted. Evans isn’t either. He said you could come back this time. But not again. I’m not your father. It’s no use pretending I have any authority over you. And you’ve spent most of your life fighting your mother. So realistically, whether you stay or not is up to you. You’re free to do as you want. But you’re going to have to choose.”