Jack (Gilead #4)(26)

“You never talk about your mother.”

“Yes. I don’t.”

That tremor in her hands. He could have said, “I found a little creek where the ice wasn’t solid yet, panes of ice, clear as glass.” He could even say he liked the sound they made under his boots, how they shattered when he threw them down. She knew about his interest in fragile things, and would have liked to hear that for once no harm was done. But she was fragile, so he could not bring himself to comfort her. Half the time he would roll up whatever he could of his supper in a piece of bread and be out the door again. Better the cold. Better the dark. Why was that? He knew how she felt when he left. He felt it himself. Dear Jesus, keep me harmless. He knew what that meant. Keep me alone.





* * *





So, the library. He read Hamlet a number of times and developed certain opinions. It might really be about the love between Claudius and Gertrude, which struck him as very deep, and which might really make all the crimes and sins and so on unimportant, comparatively speaking. That would be extreme, but where else could you even think such a thing except in a book, or a dream? It was a profound friendship, the only one in the play. Hamlet is mistaken when he goes on about reechy kisses. He is the loneliest man in the world, so he can’t see what it is that has pushed him aside, made nothing of him, let alone of custom, religion, morality, and the rest. A letter would be one way to tell Della that he had been thinking about things she thought about, and also that he was fit and well, as per her instructions. It would be a delicate business, making the case to a minister’s daughter that morals might be eclipsed in some cases by other considerations, hypothetically. For the purposes of the play, which might be about the difference between love and loneliness, and how people on either side can’t understand people on the other. He knew if he wrote it he might be tempted to mail it. Then he would have to wonder if the risk of offending her was part of the impulse. She would answer, or not. He would dread opening her letter if she sent one. Things were much better left as they were.

Days passed, weeks passed. He bought a new shirt and a new razor. The woman said, “Hey, Slick, time for a haircut.” She had a point. And he bought shoe polish, at a discount, which meant she waved off the coins he offered her. He had trouble sleeping, because the chill in the air made him remember things. So he walked at night, though not the way he used to when he had nowhere to be in the morning. St. Louis was quite a town. He wondered if Della had ever seen Eads Bridge from down by the water. It looked like the walls of Troy. Gigantic, tawny stones, soaring arches. Of course, the stones themselves would be as ancient as the stones at Troy, and the fossils in both of them older, by the measure of the little lives that had fallen into whatever it was, clay by the color of it. And the eons they had spent evolving so they could end up there. The next time he imagined walking with Della by the bridge he would know many striking and impressive things.

Too much sleeplessness and he would be looking haggard. So no walking around for a while. To distract himself, he made plans and acted on them. The haircut, first of all. There was a roll of brown wrapping paper at the store. He took a piece of it and used it to wrap Della’s book, so he could carry it in his pocket without further risk of foxing. His shoes were polished, and polished again. All this was easy enough. Then Mrs. Beverly said, “Store’s closed tomorrow. Of course,” and handed him an enve lope with five dollars in it. After work he stopped in front of a florist shop to look at the roses in the window. Half price. The clerk said if he didn’t sell them before the holiday he’d have to throw them away. So Jack walked home with an enormous red bouquet, roses in full bloom but still passable. He set them on his dresser, in a bucket, since that was all he could find that was big enough to hold them, and they looked so preposterous in that room, against the faded wallpaper roses, that he set them on the floor in a corner. Then for some reason he thought there would be no harm in getting himself a little bottle of something. He bought a larger bottle than he meant to. Rum. A couple of swallows would help him sleep.

He woke up feeling pretty damaged. He looked around for the bottle to see how much he had actually drunk and found it in a dresser drawer, exactly half empty, the lid tightly screwed on. He knew he became oddly prudent when he was too drunk to remember the reasoning behind his decisions. But he could guess. Half tonight and half tomorrow, and then everything would be resolved. Every possibility extinguished. He would not even glance in his thoughts at the worst of them. It was a relief that he would never know for certain what he’d have had to regret.

So when he woke up again and it was evening, he didn’t put on his new shirt and he didn’t shave. If he just showed up at her door looking like he always did, not as though he thought she might ask him in, but with the book to give her and some sort of apology to offer, then he’d have kept a promise. She might not have remembered everything she’d said, but of course she’d be glad to have her book. Some of the roses were dropping petals. Some were all right. It would be a sort of joke to offer them to her, a part of the apology. But, dear Jesus, he couldn’t even decide to leave his room. A swallow of rum, just enough to dull him to what he was doing, and then he made the better roses into a bunch and put on his tie and jacket and hat and went out into the night, without the roses, but he came back for them. Yes, he had the book.

The first time he walked past, he saw lights on, so she was probably at home. He was almost disappointed. Just leaving the book and the roses on the step might be the perfect thing, in the circumstances. A nice gesture, and she wouldn’t have him to deal with. Of course, he could do that in any case. The second time he passed her door, she, or someone, had turned on the porch light. This made him wish he had shaved. It made his scar itch. He walked far past her street, almost as if he had decided to give up on the whole thing. Then he went back again, thinking it might be late enough that if he did knock no one would answer. Then he could leave the book, possibly the roses. But then he dropped them into the bushes by her stoop. He would look ridiculous, standing there with a bouquet like a suitor, as if he thought he could ingratiate himself, showing up at her door in the middle of the night. Late as he knew it must be, disreputable as he knew he must look, displeased as he assumed she would be, he did finally knock on her door, because he just wanted to see her face.