Jack (Gilead #4)(83)
Dear Della, I have left St. Louis. I can’t stop thinking of you, so I have to go away, too far away to find myself sitting on your stoop again, longing to hear your voice one more time. I know I am not worth the loss you will be to your students if you can’t go on teaching. It is really very simple. I’m ashamed to think of the harm I already have done. I actually in a sense pray that there is still time for things to be all right, for the scandal to end when I am no longer here to be the cause of it. Please understand and believe that I am doing this in deep love and respect. Jack.
It really was simple, adequately dealt with in a few words. He did not mention their marriage, since she should feel completely free to make other choices. He was careful not to make the letter emotional, because then it would be at odds with his purpose in writing it, with the finality of his intentions. He knew that if he got himself a bottle of something to get through the day and the night, his resolve would dissipate or in any case lose itself in the bogs of dissipation. Better to do all this sober. He would turn up at work just to hand back those keys, a responsible ending to the old life. Then he would go off to the dead men’s shoppe to see if some gentleman had departed without his valise. He would leave a note for Teddy at the old rooming house, telling him he was no longer in St. Louis and thanks for everything. He had no intention of sending him a new address when he had one. He was cutting a lifeline. Teddy would interpret. Teddy would grieve. He might not think, That son of a bitch, but he would know he had the right to think it.
Here he was, trying to change his life for an excellent reason and oppressed by that old feeling that he was enmeshed in a web of potential damage that became actual in one way or another if he so much as breathed. All right then, he would keep his eye on the object, protecting Della and her sacred work. Whatever else burned or shattered as he did this one thing he would simply ignore. Little had ever mattered more to him than the loyalty of his brother Teddy, for example, which he had tested severely and had never shaken. Here he was depriving that good man of the possibility of doing further kindness to him, which, loyalty being what it is, was cruel. But he had nothing to tell his brother about where he would be, and he had to spare him the bother and the expense of future trips to St. Louis. If he ever got on his feet, he might begin to pay Teddy back. He imagined re-entering Teddy’s life with a costly gift, a gold watch, say. And Teddy would accept it in that bemused and tentative way he had always accepted gifts he thought were probably stolen.
But painful as it was, this was a minor problem. He had written the letter to Della. Now how was he to get it to her? He did not know her family’s address. It would be best if she were with her sister or her mother when she read it. She hadn’t planned to stay in Memphis long. She could be on her way back already. Then she might come to his rooming house from the station, as she did that other time, and learn he was gone from the desk clerk. That lout as witness to her surprise and hurt. The thought was intolerable. He would have to stay in St. Louis until she came back and give her the letter himself, and wait with her while she read it.
The letter was a problem. If he spoke to her, he could choose his words very carefully, so that he could live with the sorrow he would see in her proud, gentle face. This was clearly his only choice. He tore the letter into very small pieces.
It was still Sunday, a very long day. He thought she might not have left Memphis on the Sabbath when, if things were going well at all, there would be a big dinner, maybe with guests and relatives. So he went out for a walk. To her house, as it happened. Just in case she might have come home and he could speak to her while that sermon was still ringing in his mind. He knew that if he saw her his resolve might dissolve—nerves—but at worst he would see her. Then, as he approached her house, he saw a notice of some kind in the window. It said FOR RENT. There were no lights on. He knocked and there was no answer. He had to sit down on the stoop to get his breath. People passed as he sat there. It was early for him to be haunting their street. What the hell. He stepped off the stoop into the bushes and cupped his hands against the window glass so he could look into the room. No piano. Crates in the middle of the floor. His emotions, unnameable as they were, would be seen and interpreted by any number of passersby. He had to pull himself together and leave with whatever dignity he could manage.
There had to be a letter from her. The desk clerk might or might not mention that mail had come for any of them, as it did so rarely that they never bothered to ask. As soon as Jack was out of the neighborhood where anything would be made of it, he actually ran back to the rooming house, burst through the door, and demanded the letter.
The desk clerk took note of his agitation. “What letter? I mean, which letter?”
“Hand it over.”
“The one that says, Get out of my life, or the one that says, We can still be friends. They both came the same day, so I couldn’t tell which order you should read them in.”
“Hand them over.”
The clerk opened a drawer and took out a stack of envelopes and slips of paper. He removed one letter and gave it to him. It was sealed. He said, “You’ve got to learn to take a joke, Boughton.”
“You said there were two.”
He shrugged. “Kidding.”
“When did this come?”
“The other day.”
He went up to his room to look at it. The postmark said Memphis. She must have mailed it as soon as she arrived there. Still, she had hardly been gone long enough to have given in to the pleas of her family. She might have written the letter before she left, or on the train. So whatever it said had been decided by her even while they were together that night. There was no return address, which seemed ominous. Why was it so hard for him to catch his breath? At worst, she was writing to tell him more or less what he had decided to tell her, which would be a blow, but also a relief. At best, it was some sort of love note, which would be a disaster, since he could tell by the event it was to hold the letter in his hand that his resolve would not survive the sight of one fond word from her.