100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

1967 RAYMOND CARVER. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? from December

RAYMOND CARVER (1938–1988) was born in Oregon and grew up in Yakima, Washington. His father worked in a sawmill and his mother as a waitress and a retail clerk. In his early twenties Carver attended a creative writing course taught by John Gardner, who became an important force in Carver’s work. Carver later studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

His first story to appear in The Best American Short Stories was “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” But it was not until 1982 that another story, “Cathedral,” was selected.

Carver’s style has been described as minimalist. His reaction was, “There’s something about ‘minimalist’ that smacks of smallness of vision and execution that I don’t like.” This impression has been put into discussion and correction since the publication of Beginners, the original version of the book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, which had caused him to be categorized as a minimalist.

Carver is the author of five collections of stories and was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. He also wrote six books of poems published posthumously in All of Us, his collected poems. In 1983 he received the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, and he was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1988. He also received two NEA grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an honorary doctor of letters degree from the University of Hartford. After a ten-year relationship, he and the writer Tess Gallagher celebrated their marriage in July 1988. Raymond Carver died at fifty from lung cancer on August 2, 1988.

★

WHEN HE WAS 18 and left home for the first time, in the fall, Ralph Wyman had been advised by his father, principal of Jefferson Elementary School in Weaverville and trumpet-player in the Elks’ Club Auxiliary Band, that life today was a serious matter; something that required strength and direction in a young person just setting out. A difficult journey, everyone knew that, but nevertheless a comprehensible one, he believed.

But in college Ralph’s goals were still hazy and undefined. He first thought he wanted to be a doctor, or a lawyer, and he took pre-medical courses and courses in history of jurisprudence and business-law before he decided he had neither the emotional detachment necessary for medicine, nor the ability for sustained reading and memorization in the Corpus Iuris Civilis, as well as the more modern texts on property and inheritance. Though he continued to take classes here and there in the sciences and in the Department of Business, he also took some lower-division classes in history and philosophy and English. He continually felt he was on the brink of some kind of momentous discovery about himself. But it never came. It was during this time, his lowest ebb, as he jokingly referred back to it later, that he believed he almost became an alcoholic; he was in a fraternity and he used to get drunk every night. He drank so much, in fact, that he even acquired something of a reputation; guys called him Jackson, after the bartender at The Keg, and he sat every day in the cafeteria with a deck of cards playing poker solitaire, or bridge, if someone happened along. His grades were down and he was thinking of dropping out of school entirely and joining the air force.

Then, in his third year, he came under the influence of a particularly fascinating and persuasive literature teacher. Dr. Maxwell was his name; Ralph would never forget him. He was a handsome, graceful man in his early forties, with exquisite manners and with just the trace of a slight southern drawl to his voice. He had been educated at Vanderbilt, had studied in Europe, and later had had something to do with one or two literary magazines in New York. Almost overnight, it seemed to him, Ralph decided on teaching as a career. He stopped drinking so much and began to bear down on his studies. Within a year he was elected to Omega Psi, the national journalism fraternity; he became a member of the English Club; was invited to come with his cello, which he hadn’t played in three years, and join in a student chamber music group just forming; and he ran successfully for Secretary of the Senior Class. He also started going out with Marian Ross that year; a pale, slender girl he had become acquainted with in a Chaucer class.

She wore her hair long and liked high-necked sweaters in the winter; and summer and winter she always went around with a leather purse on a long strap swinging from her shoulder. Her eyes were large and seemed to take in everything at a glance; if she got excited over something, they flashed and widened even more. He liked going out with her in the evenings. They went to The Keg, and a few other nightspots where everyone else went, but they never let their going together, or their subsequent engagement that next summer, interfere with their studies. They were serious students, and both sets of parents eventually gave their approval of the match. They did their student-teaching at the same high school in Chico the next spring, and went through graduation exercises together in June. They married in St. James Episcopal Church two weeks later. Both of them held hands the night before their wedding and pledged solemnly to preserve forever the excitement and the mystery of marriage.

For their honeymoon they drove to Guadalajara; and while they both enjoyed visiting the old decayed churches and the poorly lighted museums, and the several afternoons they spent shopping and exploring in the marketplace (which swarmed with flies), Ralph secretly felt a little appalled and at the same time let down by the squalor and promiscuity of the people; he was only too glad to get back to more civilized California. Even so, Marian had seemed to enjoy it, and he would always remember one scene in particular. It was late afternoon, almost evening, and Marian was leaning motionless on her arms over the iron-worked balustrade of their rented, second-floor casa as he came up the dusty road below. Her hair was long and hung down in front over her shoulders, and she was looking away from him, staring at something toward the horizon. She wore a white blouse with a bright red scarf at the throat, and he could see her breasts pushing against her front. He had a bottle of dark, unlabeled wine under his arm, and the whole incident reminded him of something from a play, or a movie. Thinking back on it later, it was always a little vaguely disturbing for some reason.

Before they had left for their six-week honeymoon, they had accepted teaching positions at a high school in Eureka, in the northern part of the state near the ocean. They waited a year to make certain that the school and the weather, and the people themselves were exactly what they wanted to settle down to, and then made a substantial down-payment on a house in the Fire Hill district. He felt, without really thinking about it, that they understood each other perfectly; as well, anyway, as any two people could understand one another. More, he understood himself; his capacities, his limitations. He knew where he was going and how to get there.

In eight years they had two children, Dorothea and Robert, who were now five and four years old. A few months after Robert, Marian had accepted at mid-term a part-time position as a French and English teacher at Harris Junior College, at the edge of town. The position had become full-time and permanent that next fall, and Ralph had stayed on, happily, at the high school. In the time they had been married, they had had only one serious disturbance, and that was long ago: two years ago that winter to be exact. It was something they had never talked about since it happened, but, try as he might, Ralph couldn’t help thinking about it sometimes. On occasion, and then when he was least prepared, the whole ghastly scene leaped into his mind. Looked at rationally and in its proper, historical perspective, it seemed impossible and monstrous; an event of such personal magnitude for Ralph that he still couldn’t entirely accept it as something that had once happened to Marian and himself: he had taken it into his head one night at a party that Marian had betrayed him with Mitchell Anderson, a friend. In a fit of uncontrollable rage, he had struck Marian with his fist, knocking her sideways against the kitchen table and onto the floor.

It was a Sunday night in November. The children were in bed. Ralph was sleepy, and he still had a dozen themes from his twelfth-grade class in accelerated English to correct before tomorrow morning. He sat on the edge of the couch, leaning forward with his red pencil over a space he’d cleared on the coffee table. He had the papers separated into two stacks, and one of the papers folded open in front of him. He caught himself blinking his eyes, and again felt irritated with the Franklins. Harold and Sarah Franklin. They’d stopped over early in the afternoon for cocktails and stayed on into the evening. Otherwise, Ralph would have finished hours ago, as he’d planned. He’d been sleepy, too, he remembered, the whole time they were here. He’d sat in the big leather chair by the fireplace and once he recalled letting his head sink back against the warm leather of the chair and starting to close his eyes when Franklin had cleared his throat loudly. Too loudly. He didn’t feel comfortable with Franklin anymore. Harold Franklin was a big, forthright man with bushy eyebrows who caught you and held you with his eyes when he spoke. He looked like he never combed his hair, his suits were always baggy, and Ralph thought his ties hideous, but he was one of the few men on the staff at Harris Junior College who had his Ph.D. At 35 he was head of the combined History and Social Science Department. Two years ago he and Sarah had been witness to a large part of Ralph’s humiliation. That occasion had never later been brought up by any of them, of course, and in a few weeks, the next time they’d seen one another, it was as though nothing had happened. Still, since then, Ralph couldn’t help feeling a little uneasy when he was around them.

He could hear the radio playing softly in the kitchen, where Marian was ironing. He stared a while longer at the paper in front of him, then gathered up all of the papers, turned off the lamp, and walked out to the kitchen.

“Finished, love?” Marian said with a smile. She was sitting on a tall stool, ironing one of Robert’s shirts. She sat the iron up on its end as if she’d been waiting for him.

“Damn it, no,” he said with an exaggerated grimace, tossing the papers on the table. “What the hell the Franklins come by here for anyway?”

She laughed; bright, pleasant. It made him feel better. She held up her face to be kissed, and he gave her a little peck on the cheek. He pulled out a chair from the table and sat down, leaned back on the legs and looked at her. She smiled again, and then lowered her eyes.

“I’m already half-asleep,” he said.

“Coffee,” she said, reaching over and laying the back of her hand against the electric percolator.

He nodded.

She took a long drag from the cigarette she’d had burning in the ashtray, smoked it a minute while she stared at the floor, and then put it back in the ashtray. She looked up at him, and a smile started at the corners of her mouth. She was tall and limber, with a good bust, narrow hips, and wide, gleaming eyes.

“Ralph, do you remember that party?” she asked, still looking at him.

He shifted in the chair and said, “Which party? You mean that one two or three years ago?”

She nodded.

He waited a minute and asked, when she didn’t say anything else, “What about it? Now that you brought it up, honey, what about it?” Then: “He kissed you after all, that night, didn’t he?… Did he try to kiss you, or didn’t he?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said. “I was just thinking about it and I asked you; that’s all.”

“Well, he did, didn’t he? Come on, Marian, we’re just talking, aren’t we?”

“I’m afraid it’d make you angry, Ralph.”

“It won’t make me angry, Marian. It was a long time ago, wasn’t it? I won’t be angry… Well?”

“Well, yes,” she said slowly, “he did kiss me a few times.” She smiled tentatively, gauging his reaction.

His first impulse was to return her smile, and then he felt himself blushing and said defensively, “You told me before he didn’t. You said he only put his arm around you while he was driving.”

He stared at her. It all came back to him again; the way she looked coming in the back door that night; eyes bright, trying to tell him… something, he didn’t hear. He hit her in the mouth, at the last instant pulling to avoid her nose, knocked her against the table where she sat down hard on the floor. “What did you do that for?” she’d asked dreamily, her eyes still bright, and her mouth dripping blood. “Where were you all night?” he’d yelled, teetering over her, his legs watery and trembling. He’d drawn back his fist again but already sorry for the first blow, the blood he’d caused. “I wasn’t gone all night,” she’d said, turning her head back and forth heavily. “I didn’t do anything. Why did you hit me?”

Ralph passed his open hand over his forehead, shut his eyes for a minute. “I guess I lost my head that night, all right. We were both in the wrong. You for leaving the party with Mitchell Anderson, and I for losing my head. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “Even so,” she grinned, “you didn’t have to knock hell out of me.”

“I don’t know — maybe I should’ve done more.” He looked at her, and then they both had to laugh.

“How did we ever get onto this?” she asked.

“You brought it up,” he said.

She shook her head. “The Franklins being here made me think of it, I guess.” She pulled in her upper lip and stared at the floor. In a minute she straightened her shoulders and looked up. “If you’ll move this ironing board for me, love, I’ll make us a hot drink. A buttered rum: now how does that sound?”

“Good.”

She went into the living room and turned on the lamp, bent to pick up a magazine by the endtable. He watched her hips under the plaid woolen skirt. She moved in front of the window by the large dining room table and stood looking out at the street light. She smoothed her palm down over her right hip, then began tucking in her blouse with the fingers of her right hand. He wondered what she was thinking. A car went by outside, and she continued to stand in front of the window.

After he stood the ironing board in its alcove on the porch, he sat down again and said, when she came into the room, “Well, what else went on between you and Mitchell Anderson that night? It’s all right to talk about it now.”

Anderson had left Harris less than two years ago to accept a position as Associate Professor of Speech and Drama at a new, four-year college the state was getting underway in southwestern California. He was in his early thirties, like everyone else they knew; a slender, moustached man with a rough, slightly pocked face; he was a casual, eccentric dresser and sometimes, Marian had told Ralph, laughing, he wore a green velvet smoking jacket to school. The girls in his classes were crazy about him, she said. He had thin, dark hair which he combed forward to cover the balding spot on the top of his head. Both he and his wife, Emily, a costume designer, had done a lot of acting and directing in Little Theater in the Bay Area before coming to Eureka. As a person, though, someone he liked to be around, it was something different as far as Ralph was concerned. Thinking about it, he decided he hadn’t liked him from the beginning, and he was glad he was gone.

“What else?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’d rather not talk about it now, Ralph, if you don’t mind. I was thinking about something else.”

“What?”

“Oh… about the children, the dress I want Dorothea to have for next Easter; that sort of thing. Silly, unrelated things. And about the class I’m going to have tomorrow. Walt Whitman. Some of the kids didn’t approve when I told them there was a, a bit of speculation Whitman was — how should I say it? — attracted to certain men.” She laughed. “Really, Ralph, nothing else happened. I’m sorry I ever said anything about it.”

“Okay.”

He got up and went to the bathroom to wash cold water over his face. When he came out he leaned against the wall by the refrigerator and watched her measure out the sugar into the two cups and then stir in the rum. The water was boiling on the stove. The clock on the wall behind the table said 9:45.

“Look, honey, it’s been brought up now,” he said. “It was two or three years ago; there’s no reason at all I can think of we can’t talk about it if we want to, is there?”

“There’s really nothing to talk about, Ralph.”

“I’d like to know,” he said vaguely.

“Know what?”

“Whatever else he did besides kiss you. We’re adults. We haven’t seen the Andersons in… a year at least. We’ll probably never see them again. It happened a long time ago; as I see it, there’s no reason whatever we can’t talk about it.” He was a little surprised at the level, reasoning quality in his voice. He sat down and looked at the tablecloth, and then looked up at her again. “Well?”

“Well,” she said, laughing a little, tilting her head to one side, remembering. “No, Ralph, really; I’m not trying to be coy about it either: I’d just rather not.”

“For Christ’s sake, Marian! Now I mean it,” he said, “if you don’t tell me, it will make me angry.”

She turned off the gas under the water and put her hand out on the stool; then sat down again, hooking her heels over the bottom step. She leaned forward, resting her arms across her knees. She picked at something on her skirt and then looked up.

“You remember Emily’d already gone home with the Beattys, and for some reason Mitchell had stayed on. He looked a little out of sorts that night to begin with. I don’t know, maybe they weren’t getting along… But I don’t know that. But there were you and I, the Franklins, and Mitchell Anderson left. All of us a little drunk, if I remember rightly. I’m not sure how it happened, Ralph, but Mitchell and I just happened to find ourselves alone together in the kitchen for a minute. There was no whiskey left, only two or three bottles of that white wine we had. It must’ve been close to one o’clock because Mitchell said, ‘If we hurry we can make it before the liquor store closes.’ You know how he can be so theatrical when he wants? Softshoe stuff, facial expressions…? Anyway, he was very witty about it all. At least it seemed that way at the time. And very drunk, too, I might add. So was I, for that matter… It was an impulse, Ralph, I swear. I don’t know why I did it, don’t ask me, but when he said, ‘Let’s go’—I agreed. We went out the back, where his car was parked. We went just like we were: we didn’t even get our coats out of the closet. We thought we’d just be gone a few minutes. I guess we thought no one would miss us… I don’t know what we thought… I don’t know why I went, Ralph. It was an impulse, that’s all that I can say. It was a wrong impulse.” She paused. “It was my fault that night, Ralph, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done anything like that, I know that.”

“Christ!” the word leaped out. “But you’ve always been that way, Marian!”

“That isn’t true!”

His mind filled with a swarm of tiny accusations, and he tried to focus on one in particular. He looked down at his hands and noticed they had the same lifeless feeling as they did when he woke up mornings. He picked up the red pencil lying on the table, and then put it down again.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“You’re angry,” she said. “You’re swearing and getting all upset, Ralph. For nothing, nothing, honey!… There’s nothing else.”

“Go on.”

“What is the matter with us anyway? How did we ever get onto this subject?”

“Go on, Marian.”

“That’s all, Ralph. I’ve told you. We went for a ride… We talked. He kissed me. I still don’t see how we could’ve been gone three hours; whatever it was you said.”

He remembered again the waiting, the unbearable weakness that spread down through his legs when they’d been gone an hour, two hours. It made him lean weakly against the corner of the house after he’d gone outside; for a breath of air he said vaguely, pulling into his coat, but really so that the embarrassed Franklins could themselves leave without any more embarrassment; without having to take leave of the absent host, or the vanished hostess. From the corner of the house, standing behind the rose trellis in the soft, crumbly dirt, he watched the Franklins get into their car and drive away. Anger and frustration clogged inside him, then separated into little units of humiliation that jumped against his stomach. He waited. Gradually the horror drained away as he stood there, until finally nothing was left but a vast, empty realization of betrayal. He went into the house and sat at this same table, and he remembered his shoulder began to twitch and he couldn’t stop it even when he squeezed it with his fingers. An hour later, or two hours — what difference did it make then? — she’d come in.

“Tell me the rest, Marian.” And he knew there was more now. He felt a slight fluttering start up in his stomach, and suddenly he didn’t want to know any more. “No. Do whatever you want. If you don’t want to talk about it, Marian, that’s all right. Do whatever you want to, Marian. Actually, I guess I’d just as soon leave it at that.”

He worked his shoulders against the smooth, solid chairback, then balanced unsteadily on the two back legs. He thought fleetingly that he would have been someplace else tonight, doing something else at this very moment, if he hadn’t married. He glanced around the kitchen. He began to perspire and leaned forward, setting all the legs on the floor. He took one of her cigarettes from the pack on the table. His hands were trembling as he struck the match.

“Ralph. You won’t be angry, will you? Ralph? We’re just talking. You won’t, will you?” She had moved over to a chair at the table.

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She lit a cigarette. He had suddenly a great desire to see Robert and Dorothea; to get them up out of bed, heavy and turning in their sleep, and hold each of them on a knee, jiggle them until they woke up and began to laugh. He absently began to trace with his finger the outline of one of the tiny black coaches in the beige tablecloth. There were four miniature white prancing horses pulling each of the tiny coaches. The figure driving the horses had his arm up and was wearing a tall hat. Suitcases were strapped down on top of the coach, and what looked like a kerosene lamp hung from the side.

“We went straight to the liquor store, and I waited in the car till he came out. He had a sack in one hand and one of those plastic bags of ice in the other. He weaved a little getting into the car. I hadn’t realized he was so drunk until we started driving again, and I noticed the way he was driving; terribly slow, and all hunched over the wheel with his eyes staring. We were talking about a lot of things that didn’t make sense… I can’t remember… Nietzsche… and Strindberg; he was directing Miss Julie second semester, you know, and something about Norman Mailer stabbing his wife in the breast a long time ago, and how he thought Mailer was going downhill anyway — a lot of crazy things like that. Then, I’ll swear before God it was an accident, Ralph, he didn’t know what he was doing, he made a wrong turn and we somehow wound up out by the golf course, right near Jane Van Eaton’s. In fact, we pulled into her driveway to turn around and when we did Mitchell said to me, ‘We might as well open one of these bottles.’ He did, he opened it, and then he drove a little farther on down the road that goes around the green, you know, and comes out by the park? Actually, not too far from the Franklins’… And then he stopped for a minute in the middle of the road with his lights on, and we each took a drink out of the bottle. Then he said, said he’d hate to think of me being stabbed in the breast. I guess he was still thinking about Mailer’s wife. And then… I can’t say it, Ralph… I know you’d get angry.”

“I won’t get angry, Marian,” he said slowly. His thoughts seemed to move lazily, as if he were in a dream, and he was able to take in only one thing at a time she was telling him. At the same time he noticed a peculiar alertness taking hold of his body.

“Go on. Then what, Marian?”

“You aren’t angry, are you? Ralph?”

“No. But I’m getting interested, though.”

They both had to laugh, and for a minute everything was all right. He leaned across the table to light another cigarette for her, and they smiled at each other; just like any other night. He struck another match, held it a while, and then brought the match, almost to burn his fingers, up under the end of the cigarette that protruded at an angle from his lips. He dropped the burned match into the ashtray and stared at it before looking up.

“Go on.”

“I don’t know… things seemed to happen fast after that. He drove up the road a little and turned off someplace, I don’t know, maybe right onto the green… and started kissing me. Then he said, said he’d like to kiss my breast. I said I didn’t think we should. I said, ‘What about Emily?’ He said I didn’t know her. He got the car going again, and then he stopped again and just sort of slumped over and put his head on my lap. God! It sounds so vulgar now, I know, but it didn’t seem that way at all then. I felt like, like I was losing my innocence somehow, Ralph. For the first time — that night I realized I was really, really doing something wrong, something I wasn’t supposed to do and that might hurt people. I shouldn’t be there, I felt. And I felt… like it was the first time in my life I’d ever intentionally done anything wrong or hurtful and gone on doing it, knowing I shouldn’t be. Do you know what I mean, Ralph? Like some of the characters in Henry James? I felt that way. Like… for the first time… my innocence… something was happening.”

“You can dispense with that shit,” he cut in. “Get off it, Marian! Go on! Then what? Did he caress you? Did he? Did he try to feel you up, Marian? Tell me!”

And then she hurried on, trying to get over the hard spots quickly, and he sat with his hands folded on the table and watched her lips out of which dropped the frightful words. His eyes skipped around the kitchen — stove, cupboards, toaster, radio, coffeepot, window, curtains, refrigerator, breadbox, napkin holder, stove, cupboards, toaster… back to her face. Her dark eyes glistened under the overhead light. He felt a peculiar desire for her flicker through his thighs at what she was leading up to, and at the same time he had to check an urge to stand up yelling, smash his fist into her face.

“‘Shall we have a go at it?’ he said.”

“Shall we have a go at it?” Ralph repeated.

“I’m to blame. If anyone should, should be blamed for it, I’m to blame. He said he’d leave it all up to me, I could… could do… whatever I wanted.” Tears welled out of her eyes, started down her cheeks. She looked down at the table, blinked rapidly.

He shut his eyes. He saw a barren field under a heavy, gray sky; a fog moving in across the far end. He shook his head, tried to admit other possibilities, other conclusions. He tried to bring back that night two years ago, imagine himself coming into the kitchen just as she and Mitchell were at the door, hear himself telling her in a hearty voice, Oh no, no; you’re not going out for liquor with that Mitchell Anderson! He’s drunk, and he isn’t a good driver to boot. You’ve got to go to bed now and get up with little Robert and Dorothea in the morning… Stop! Stop where you are.

He opened his eyes, raised his eyebrows as if he were just waking up. She had a hand up over her face and was crying silently, her shoulders rounded and moving in little jerks.

“Why did you go with him, Marian?” he asked desperately.

She shook her head without looking up.

Then, suddenly, he knew. His mind buckled. Cuckold. For a minute he could only stare helplessly at his hands. Then he wanted to pass it off somehow, say it was all right, it was two years ago, adults, etc. He wanted to forgive: I forgive you. But he could not forgive. He couldn’t forgive her this. His thoughts skittered around the Middle Ages, touched on Arthur and Guinevere, surged on to the outraged husbandry of the eighteenth-century dramatists, came to a sullen halt with Karenin. But what had any of them to do with him? What were they? They were nothing. Nothing. Figments. They did not exist. Their discoveries, their disintegrations, adjustments, did not at all relate to him. No relation. What then? What did it all mean? What is the nature of a book? his mind roared.

“Christ!” he said, springing up from the table. “Jesus Christ. Christ, no, Marian!”

“No, no,” she said, throwing her head back.

“You let him!”

“No, no, Ralph.”

“You let him! Didn’t you? Didn’t you? Answer me!” he yelled. “Did he come in you? Did you let him come in you? That s-s-swine,” he said, his teeth chattering. “That bastard.”

“Listen, listen to me, Ralph. I swear to you he didn’t, he didn’t come. He didn’t come in me.” She rocked from side to side in the chair, shaking her head.

“You wouldn’t let him! That’s it, isn’t it? Yes, yes, you had your scruples. What’d you do — catch it in your hands? Oh God! God damn you!”

“God!” she said, getting up, holding out her hands. “Are we crazy, Ralph? Have we lost our minds? Ralph? Forgive me, Ralph. Forgive—”

“Don’t touch me! Get away from me, Marian.”

“In God’s name, Ralph! Ralph! Please, Ralph. For the children’s sake, Ralph. Don’t go, Ralph. Please don’t go, Ralph!” Her eyes were white and large, and she began to pant in her fright. She tried to head him off, but he took her by the shoulder and pushed her out of the way.

“Forgive me, Ralph! Please. Ralph!”

He slammed the kitchen door, started across the porch. Behind him, she jerked open the door, clattered over the dustpan as she rushed onto the porch. She took his arm at the porch door, but he shook her loose. “Ralph!” But he jumped down the steps onto the walk.

When he was across the driveway and walking rapidly down the sidewalk, he could hear her at the door yelling for him. Her voice seemed to be coming through a kind of murk. He looked back: she was still calling, limned against the doorway. My God, he thought, what a sideshow it was. Fat men and bearded ladies.

2.

He had to stop and lean against a car for a few minutes before going on. But two well-dressed couples were coming down the sidewalk toward him, and the man on the outside, near the curb, was telling a story in a loud voice. The others were already laughing. Ralph pushed off from the car and crossed the street. In a few minutes he came to Blake’s, where he stopped some afternoons for a beer with Dick Koenig before picking up the children from nursery school.

It was dark inside. The air was warm and heavy with the odor of beer and seemed to catch at the top of his throat and make it hard for him to swallow. Candles flickered dimly in long-necked wine bottles at some of the tables along the left wall when he closed the door. He glimpsed shadowy figures of men and women talking with their heads close together. One of the couples, near the door, stopped talking and looked up at him. A box-like fixture in the ceiling revolved overhead, throwing out pale red and green lights. Two men sat at the end of the bar, and a dark cutout of a man leaned over the jukebox in the corner, his hands splayed out on each side of the glass.

The man is going to play something. Ralph stands in the center of the floor, watches him. He sways, rubs his wrist against his forehead, and starts out.

“Ralph! — Mr. Wyman, sir!”

He stopped, looked around. David Parks was calling to him from behind the bar. Ralph walked over, leaned heavily against the bar before sliding onto a stool.

“Should I draw one, Mr. Wyman?” He had the glass in his hand, smiling.

He worked evenings and weekends for Charley Blake. He was 26, married, had two children, babies. He attended Harris Junior College on a football scholarship, and worked besides. He had three mouths to feed now, along with his own. Four mouths altogether. Not like it used to be. David Parks. He had a white bar towel slung over his shoulder.

Ralph nodded, watched him fill the glass.

He held the glass at an angle under the tap, slowly straightened it as the glass filled, closed the tap, and cut off the head with a smooth, professional air. He wiped the towel across the gleaming surface of the bar and set the glass in front of Ralph, still smiling.

“How’s it going, Mr. Wyman? Didn’t hear you come in.” He put his foot up on a shelf under the bar. “Who’s going to win the game next week, Mr. Wyman?”

Ralph shook his head, brought the beer to his lips. His shoulders ached with fatigue from being held rigid the last hour.

David Parks coughed faintly. “I’ll buy you one, Mr. Wyman. This one’s on me.” He put his leg down, nodded assurance, and reached under his apron into his pocket.

“Here. I have it right here.” Ralph pulled out some change, examined it in his hand from the light cast by a bare bulb on a stand next to the cash register. A quarter, nickel, two dimes, pennies. He laid down the quarter and stood up, pushing the change back into his pocket. The man was still in front of the jukebox, leaning his weight on one leg. The phone rang.

Ralph opened the door.

“Mr. Wyman! Mr. Wyman, for you, sir.”

Outside he turned around, trying to decide what to do. He wanted to be alone, but at the same time he thought he’d feel better if other people were around. Not here though. His heart was fluttering, as if he’d been running. The door opened behind him and a man and woman came out. Ralph stepped out of the way and they got into a car parked at the curb. He recognized the woman as the receptionist at the children’s dentist. He started off walking.

He walked to the end of the block, crossed the street, and walked another block before he decided to head downtown. It was eight or ten blocks and he walked hurriedly, his hands balled into his pockets, his shoes smacking the pavement. He kept blinking his eyes and thought it incredible he could still feel tired and fogged after all that had happened. He shook his head. He would have liked to sit someplace for a while and think about it, but he knew he could not sit, could not yet think about it. He remembered a man he saw once sitting on a curb in Arcata: an old man with a growth of beard and a brown wool cap who just sat there with his arms between his legs. But a minute later it snapped into his mind, and for the first time he tried to get a clear look at it; himself, Marian, the children — his world. But it was impossible. He wondered if anyone could ever stand back far enough from life to see it whole, all in one piece. He thought of an enormous French tapestry they’d seen two or three years ago that took up one wall of a room in the De Young Museum. He tried to imagine how all this would seem twenty years from now, but there was nothing. He couldn’t picture the children any older, and when he tried to think about Marian and himself, there was only a blank space. Then, for a minute, he felt profoundly indifferent, somehow above it, as if it did not concern him. He thought of Marian without any emotion at all. He remembered her as he had seen her a little while ago; face crumpled, tears running off her nose. Then Marian on the floor, holding onto the chair, blood on her teeth: “Why did you hit me?”… Marian reaching under her dress to unfasten her garter belt… She raises her dress slowly as she leans back in the seat.

He stopped and thought he was going to be sick. He moved off onto the edge of a lawn. He cleared his throat several times and kept swallowing, looked up as a car of yelling teenagers went by and gave him a long blast on their musical horn. Yes, there was a vast amount of evil loose in the world, he thought, and it only awaited an opportunity, the propitious moment to manifest itself… But that was an academic notion. A kind of retreat. He spat ahead of him on the walk and put his heel on it. He mustn’t let himself find solace in that kind of thinking. Not now. Not anymore, if he could help it. If he was going to think about it — and he knew he must, sooner or later tonight — he must begin simply, from the essentials: with the fact that his wife had let herself be fucked, yes, fucked, by another man. And this, this he knew was evil: he felt it in his bones.

He came to Second Street, the part of town people called Two Street. It started here at Shelton, under the street light where the old rooming houses ended, and ran for four or five blocks on down to the pier, where fishing boats tied up. He’d been down here once, two years ago, to a second-hand store to look through the dusty shelves of old books. There was a liquor store across the street, and he could see a man standing outside in front of the glass door, looking at a newspaper.

Ralph crossed under the street light, read the headlines on the newspaper the man had been looking at, and went inside. A bell over the door tinkled. He hadn’t noticed a bell that tinkled over a door since he was a child. He bought some cigarettes and went out again.

He walked down the street, looking in the windows. All the places were closed for the night, or vacated. Some of the windows had signs taped inside: a dance, a Shrine Circus that had come and gone last summer, an election — Vote For Fred C. Walters, Councilman. One of the windows he looked through had sinks and pipe-joints scattered around on a table. Everything dark. He came to a Vic Tanney Gym where he could see light coming under the curtains pulled across a big window. He could hear water splashing in the pool inside, and the hollow echo of voices calling across the water.

There was more light now, coming from the bars and cafés on both sides of the street. More people, groups of three or four but now and then a man by himself, or a woman in slacks walking rapidly. He stopped in front of the window of one place and watched some Negroes shooting pool. Gray cigarette smoke drifted around the lights over the table. One of the Negroes, who was chalking his cue, had his hat on and a cigarette in his mouth. He said something to another Negro, looked intently at the balls, and slowly leaned over the table.

He walked on, stopped in front of Jim’s Oyster House. He had never been here before, had never been to any of these places before. Over the door the name was in yellow light bulbs: JIM’S OYSTER HOUSE. Above the lights, fixed to an iron grill, a huge neon-lighted clam shell with a man’s legs sticking out. The torso was hidden in the shell and the legs flashed red, on and off. Ralph lit another cigarette from the one he had, and pushed open the door.

It was crowded. A lot of people were bunched on the floor, their arms wrapped around each other or hanging loosely on someone’s shoulders. The men in the band were just getting up from their chairs for an intermission. He had to excuse himself several times trying to get to the bar, and once a drunken woman took hold of his coat. There were no stools and he had to stand at the end of the bar between a coast guardsman and a shrunken-faced man in denims. Neither of them spoke. The coast guardsman had his white cap off and his elbows propped out in front of him, a hand on each side of his face. He stared at his glass without looking up. The other man shook his head and then pointed with his narrow chin two or three times at the coast guardsman. Ralph put his arm up and signaled the bartender. Once, Ralph thought he heard the shrunken-faced man say something, but he didn’t answer.

In the mirror he could see the men in the band get up from the table where they’d been sitting. Ralph picked up his glass, turned around, and leaned back against the bar. He closed his eyes and opened them. Someone unplugged the jukebox, and the music ground to a stop. The musicians wore white shirts and dark slacks with little string ties around their necks. There was a fireplace with blue gas flames behind a stack of metal logs, and the band platform was to the side, a few feet away. One of the men plucked the strings of his electric guitar, said something to the others with a grin, and leaned back in his chair. They began to play.

The music was country, or western, and not as bad as Ralph had imagined. He raised his glass and drained it. Down the bar he could hear a woman say angrily, “Well there’s going to be trouble, that’s all I’ve got to say about it!” The musicians came to the end of the number and swung into another. One of the men, the bass player, came to the microphone and began to sing, but Ralph couldn’t understand the words.

When the band took another intermission, he looked around for the toilet. He could make out some doors opening and closing at the far end of the bar, and headed in that direction, staggering a little. Over one of the doors was a rack of antlers. He saw a man go in, and he saw another man catch the door and come out. Inside, waiting in line behind three or four others, he found himself staring at the penciled picture of a huge pair of female thighs and pubic area on the wall over the pocket-comb machine. Underneath the drawing was scrawled, Eat ME, and a little lower down someone had added Betty M. Eats It — RA 52275. The man ahead of him moved up, and Ralph took two steps forward, his eyes still fastened on the drawing. Finally, he moved up over the bowl and urinated so hard it was like a bolt going down through his legs. He sighed luxuriously when he was through, leaned forward and let his head rest against the wall. His life was changed from tonight on. Were there many other men, he wondered drunkenly, who could look at one singular event in their lives and perceive the workings of the catastrophe that hereinafter sets their lives on a different course? Are there many who can perceive the necessary changes and adjustments that must necessarily and inevitably follow? Probably so, he decided after a minute’s reflection. He stood there a while longer, and then he looked down: he’d urinated on his fingers.

He moved over to the wash basin, ran water over his hands without using the dirty bar of soap. As he was unrolling the towel, he suddenly leaned over and put his face up close to the pitted mirror, looked into his eyes. A face: that was all. Hardly even familiar. There seemed nothing fixed or permanent about it. His nose just hung there, occupying a space, spotted with several tiny blackheads he hadn’t noticed before. His skin was slightly chapped on the inside of one cheek. His lips… like any other lips. Only his eyes under the narrow eyebrows seemed out of the ordinary, like shiny glass objects. They moved as he moved, followed him around the mirror, looked out at him steadily when he looked straight in. He put his finger up to the mirror and touched the glass, moved away as a man tried to get past him to the sink.

As he was going out the door he noticed another door he hadn’t seen at the end of a short, narrow corridor. He went over to it and looked through the glass plate in the door at four card-players around a green felt table. It seemed still and restful inside. He couldn’t hear anything, and the silent movements of the men appeared languorous and heavy with meaning. He leaned against the glass, watching. One of the men at the table, the man dealing, looked up at him and stared until he moved away. He weaved back to the bar and thought how the scene reminded him of Cézanne’s Card-Players. But did it really?

There was a flourish of guitars and people began whistling and clapping. A plump, middle-aged woman in a white evening dress was being helped onto the platform. She kept trying to pull back and was shaking her head and laughing. Finally she took the mike and made a little curtsy. The people whistled and stamped their feet. He thought of the scene in the card room. No, they didn’t remind him of the Cézanne; that was certain. He suddenly had an enormous desire to watch them play, be in the same room with them. He could watch, even if he didn’t play. He’d seen some empty chairs along the wall. He leaned against the bar, took out his wallet, keeping his hands up over the sides as he looked to see how much he had. He had eighteen dollars — just in case he was asked to play a hand or two. Without thinking anymore about it, he worked his way to the back. Behind him, the woman began to sing in a low, drowsy voice. Ralph stepped into the corridor, and then pushed open the door to the card room.

The man who’d looked up at him was still dealing.

“Decided to join us?” he said, sweeping Ralph with his eyes and looking down at the table again. Two of the others raised their eyes for an instant then looked back at the cards flashing around the table. As they picked up their cards, the man sitting with his back to Ralph, a short, fat man who breathed heavily through his nose, turned around in his chair and glared at him, and Ralph moved back a step.

“Benny, bring another chair!” the dealer called to an old man sweeping under a table that had the chairs turned up on the top.

“That’s all right,” Ralph said. “I’ll just watch a few hands.”

“Suit yourself.”

He sat down in a chair against the wall, a few feet away from the table. No one spoke. The only sounds were the clat-clat of the chips as the men dropped them into the center of the table, and the shuffle and sharp flicking of the cards. The dealer was a large man, thirty or so; he wore a white shirt, open at the collar, and with the sleeves turned back once exposing the forearms covered with black, curling hair. But his small hands were white and delicate-looking, and there was a gold band on his ring finger. Around the table a tall, white-haired man with a cigar, the fat man, and a small dark man with a gray suit and a tie. An Italian, Ralph thought. He smoked one cigarette after another, and when he swallowed, the tie over his Adam’s apple moved up and down. The old man, Benny, was wiping with a cloth around the cash register near the door. It was warm and quiet. Now and then Ralph could hear a horn blare out in the street. He drew a long breath and closed his eyes, opened them when he heard steps.

“Want anything to drink?” Benny asked, carrying a chair to the table.

Ralph said he’d have something; bourbon and water. He gave him a dollar and pulled out of his coat. Benny took the coat and hung it up by the door as he went out. Two of the men moved their chairs and Ralph sat down across from the dealer.

“How’s it going?” he said to Ralph, not looking up.

For a minute Ralph wasn’t sure whether it was directed at him. “All right,” he said.

Then, as Ralph watched the other men play their cards, the dealer said gently, still not looking at him, “Low ball or five card. Table stakes, five dollar limit on raises.”

Ralph nodded, and when the hand was finished he bought fifteen dollars’ worth of blue chips.

He watched the cards as they flashed around the table, picked up his as he’d seen the tall, white-haired man do; sliding one card under the corner of another as each card fell face down in front of him. He raised his eyes once and looked at the expressionless faces of the others. He wondered if it’d ever happened to any of them. In half an hour he had won two hands and without counting the small pile of chips in front of him, he thought he must still have fifteen or even twenty dollars.

Benny brought a tray of drinks, and Ralph paid for his with a chip. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his face, aware how tired he was. But he felt better for some reason. He had come a long way since that evening. But it was only… a few hours ago. And had he really come so far? Was anything different, or anything resolved?

“You in or out?” the fat man asked. “Clyde, what’s the bet, for Christ’s sake?” he said to the dealer.

“Three dollars.”

“In,” Ralph said. “I’m in.” He put three chips into the pot. “I have to be going though… another hand or so.”

The dealer looked up and then back at his cards.

The Italian said: “Stick around. You really want some action we can go to my place when we finish here.”

“No, that’s all right. Enough action tonight… I just have to be going pretty soon.” He shifted in the chair, glanced at their faces, and then fixed upon a small green plaque on the wall behind the table. “You know,” he said, “I just found out tonight. My wife, my wife played around with another guy two years ago. Can you imagine?” He cleared his throat.

One of the men snickered; the Italian. The fat man said, “You can’t trust ’em, that’s all. Women are no damn good!”

No one else said anything; the tall, white-haired man laid down his cards and lit his cigar that had gone out. He stared at Ralph as he puffed, then shook out the match and picked up his cards.

The dealer looked up again, resting his open hands palms-up on the table. “You work here in town?” he said to Ralph. “I haven’t seen you around.”

“I live here. I, I just haven’t gotten around much.” He felt drained, oddly relaxed.

“We playing or not?” the fat man said. “Clyde?”

“Hold your shirt,” the dealer said.

“For Christ’s sake,” the white-haired man said quietly, holding onto each word, “I’ve never seen such cards.”

“I’m in three dollars,” the fat man said. “Who’s going to stay?”

Ralph couldn’t remember his hole card. His neck was stiff, and he fought against the desire to close his eyes. He’d never been so tired. All the joints and bones and muscles in his body seemed to radiate and call to his attention. He looked at his card; a seven of clubs. His next card, face-up, was an ace. He started to drop out. He edged in his chair, picked up his glass but it was empty.

“Benny!” the dealer said sharply.

His next card was a king. The betting went up to the five dollar limit. More royalty; the Queen of Diamonds. He looked once more at his hole card to see if he might somehow have been mistaken: the seven of clubs.

Benny came back with another tray of drinks and said, “They’re closing in ten minutes, Clyde.”

The next card, the Jack of Spades, fell on top of Ralph’s queen. Ralph stared. The white-haired man turned over his cards. For the first time the dealer gazed straight into Ralph’s eyes, and Ralph felt his toes pull back in his shoes as the man’s eyes pierced through to, what seemed to Ralph, his craven heart.

“I’ll bet two dollars to see it,” the fat man said.

A shiver traced up and down Ralph’s spine. He hesitated, and then, in a grand gesture, called, and recklessly raised five dollars, his last chips.

The tall, white-haired man edged his chair closer to the table.

The dealer had a pair of eights showing. Still looking at Ralph, he picked ten chips off one of the stacks in front of him. He spread them in two groups of five near the pile at the center of the table.

“Call.”

The Italian hesitated, and then swallowed and turned over his cards. He looked at the dealer’s cards, and then he looked at Ralph’s.

The fat man smacked his cards down and glared at Ralph.

All of them watched as Ralph turned over his card and lurched up from the table.

Outside, in the alley, he took out his wallet again, let his fingers number the bills he had left: two dollars, and some change in his pocket. Enough for something to eat. Ham and eggs, perhaps. But he wasn’t hungry. He leaned back against the damp brick wall of the building, trying to think. A car turned into the alley, stopped, and backed out again. He started walking. He went past the front of the Oyster House again, going back the way he’d come. He stayed close to the buildings, out of the way of the loud groups of men and women streaming up and down the sidewalk. He heard a woman in a long coat say to the man she was with, “It isn’t that way at all, Bruce. You don’t understand.”

He stopped when he came to the liquor store. Inside he moved up to the counter and stared at the long, orderly rows of bottles. He bought a half-pint of rum and some more cigarettes. The palm trees on the label of the bottle, the large drooping fronds with the lagoon in the background, had caught his eye. The clerk, a thin, bald man wearing suspenders, put the rum in a paper sack without a word and rang up the sale. Ralph could feel the man’s eyes on him as he stood in front of the magazine rack, swaying a little and looking at the covers. Once he glanced up in the mirror over his head and caught the man staring at him from behind the counter; his arms were folded over his chest and his bald head gleamed in the reflected light. Finally the man turned off one of the lights in the back of the store and said, “Closing it up, buddy.”

Outside again, Ralph turned around once and started down another street, toward the pier; he thought he’d like to see the water with the lights reflected on it. He wondered how far he would drop tonight before he began to level off. He opened the sack as he walked, broke the seal on the little bottle, and stopped in a doorway to take a long drink. He could hardly taste it. He crossed some old streetcar tracks and turned onto another, darker street. He could already hear the waves splashing under the pier.

As he came up to the front of a dark, wooden building, he heard someone move in the doorway. A heavy Negro in a leather jacket stepped out in front of him and said, “Just a minute there, man. Where you think you’re goin’?”

As Ralph tried to move around him, frightened, the man said, “Christ, man, that’s my feet you’re steppin’ on!”

Before he could move away the Negro hit him hard in the stomach, and when Ralph groaned and bent over, the man hit him in the nose with his open hand, knocking him back against the wall where he sat down in a rush of pain and dizziness. He had one leg turned under, trying to raise himself up, when the Negro slapped him on the cheek and knocked him sprawling onto the pavement. He was aware of a hand slipping into his pants-pocket over the hip, felt his wallet slide out. He groaned and tried to sit up again as the man neatly stripped his watch over his hand. He kicked the wet sack of broken glass, and then sprinted down the street.

Ralph got his legs under him again. As if from a great distance he heard someone yell, “There’s a man hurt over here!” and he struggled up to his feet. Then he heard someone running toward him over the pavement, and a car pulled up to the curb, a car door slammed. He wanted to say, It’s all right, please, it’s all right, as a man came up to him and stopped a few feet away, watching. But the words seemed to ball in his throat and something like a gasp escaped his lips. He tried to draw a breath and the air piled up in his throat again, as if there were an obstruction in the passage; and then the noise broke even louder through his nose and mouth. He leaned his shoulder against the doorway and wept. In the few seconds he stood there, shaking, his mind seemed to empty out, and a vast sense of wonderment flowed through him as he thought again of Marian, why she had betrayed him. Then, as a policeman with a big flashlight walked over to him, he brought himself up with a shudder and became silent.

3.

Birds darted overhead in the graying mist. He still couldn’t see them, but he could hear their sharp jueet-jueet. He stopped and looked up, kept his eyes fixed in one place; then he saw them, no larger than his hand, dozens of them, wheeling and darting just under the heavy overcast. He wondered if they were seabirds, birds that only came in off the ocean this time of morning. He’d never seen any birds around Eureka in the winter except now and then a big, lumbering seagull. He remembered once, a long time ago, walking into an old abandoned house — the Marshall place, near Uncle Jack’s in Springfield, Oregon — how the sparrows kept flying in and out of the broken windows, flying around the rafters where they had their nests, and then flying out the windows again, trying to lead him away.

It was getting light. The overcast seemed to be lifting and was turning light-gray with patches of white clouds showing through here and there. The street was black with the mist that was still falling, and he had to be careful not to step on the snails that trailed across the damp sidewalk.

A car with its lights on slowed down as it went past, but he didn’t look up. Another car passed. In a minute, another. He looked: four men, two in front, two in the back. One of the men in the back seat, wearing a hat, turned around and looked at him through the back window. Mill workers. The first shift of plywood mill workers going to work at Georgia-Pacific. It was Monday morning. He turned the corner, walked past Blake’s; dark, the Venetian blinds pulled over the windows and two empty beer bottles someone had left standing like sentinels beside the door. It was cold, and he walked slowly, crossing his arms now and then and rubbing his shoulders.

He’d refused the policeman’s offer of a ride home. He couldn’t think of a more shabby ending to the night than riding home in the early morning in a black and white police car. After the doctor at Redwood Memorial Hospital had examined him, felt around over his neck with his fingers while Ralph had sat with his eyes closed, the doctor had made two X-rays and then put Merthiolate and a small bandage on his cheek. Then the policemen had taken him to the station where for two hours he’d had to look at photographs in large manila folders of Negro men. Finally, he had told the officer, “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid everyone looks pretty much alike right now.” The man had shrugged, closed the folder. “They come and go,” he’d said, staring at Ralph. “Sometimes it’s hard to nail them on the right charge due to lack of proper identification. If we bring in some suspects we’ll have you back here to help identify.” He stared at Ralph a minute longer, then nodded curtly.

He came up the street to his house. He could see his front porch light on, but the rest of the house was dark. He crossed the lawn and went around to the back. He turned the knob, and the door opened quietly. He stepped onto the porch and shut the door. He waited a moment, then opened the kitchen door.

The house was quiet. There was the tall stool beside the draining board. There was the table where they’d sat. How long ago? He remembered he’d just gotten up off the couch, where he’d been working, and come into the kitchen and sat down… He looked at the clock over the stove: 7:00 A.M. He could see the dining room table with the lace cloth, the heavy glass centerpiece of red flamingos, their wings opened. The draperies behind the table were open. Had she stood at that window watching for him? He moved over to the door and stepped onto the living room carpet. Her coat was thrown over the couch, and in the pale light he could make out a large ashtray full of her cork cigarette ends on one of the cushions. He noticed the phone directory open on the coffee table as he went by. He stopped at the partially open door to their bedroom. For an instant he resisted the impulse to look in on her, and then with his finger he pushed open the door a few inches. She was sleeping, her head off the pillow, turned toward the wall, and her hair black against the sheet. The covers were bunched around her shoulders and had pulled up from the foot of the bed. She was on her side, her secret body slightly bent at the hips, her thighs closed together protectively. He stared for a minute. What, after all, should he do? Pack his things, now, and leave? Go to a hotel room until he can make other arrangements? Sleep on the extra bed in the little storage room upstairs? How should a man act, given the circumstances? The things that had been said last night. There was no undoing that — nor the other. There was no going back, but what course was he to follow now?

In the kitchen he laid his head down on his arms over the table. How should a man act? How should a man act? It kept repeating itself. Not just now, in this situation, for today and tomorrow, but every day on this earth. He felt suddenly there was an answer, that he somehow held the answer himself and that it was very nearly out if only he could think about it a little longer. Then he heard Robert and Dorothea stirring. He sat up slowly and tried to smile as they came into the kitchen.

“Daddy, daddy,” they both said, running over to him in their pajamas.

“Tell us a story, daddy,” Robert said, getting onto his lap.

“He can’t tell us a story now,” Dorothea said. “It’s too early in the morning, isn’t it, daddy?”

“What’s that on your face, daddy?” Robert said, pointing at the bandage.

“Let me see!” Dorothea said. “Let me see, daddy.”

“Poor daddy,” Robert said.

“What did you do to your face, daddy?”

“It’s nothing,” Ralph said. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Here, get down, Robert, I hear your mother.”

Ralph stepped into the bathroom and locked the door.

“Is your father here?” he heard Marian ask the children. “Where is he, in the bathroom? Ralph?”

“Mama, mama!” Dorothea exclaimed. “Daddy has a big, big bandage on his face!”

“Ralph,” she turned the knob. “Ralph, let me in, please, darling. Ralph? Please let me in, darling, I want to see you. Ralph? Please?”

“Go away, Marian. Just let me alone a while, all right?”

“Please, Ralph, open the door for a minute, darling. I just want to see you, Ralph. Ralph? The children said you were hurt. What’s wrong, darling?… Ralph?”

“Will you please be quiet, please?”

She waited at the door for a minute, turned the knob again, and then he could hear her moving around the kitchen, getting the children breakfast, trying to answer their questions.

He looked at himself in the mirror, then pulled off the bandage and tried gently with warm water and a cloth to wipe off some of the red stain. In a minute or two he gave it up. He turned away from the mirror and sat down heavily on the edge of the bathtub, began to unlace his shoes. No cowardly Aegisthus waiting for him here, no Clytemnestra. He sat there with a shoe in his hand and looked at the white, streamlined clipper ships making their way across the pale blue of the plastic shower curtain. He unbuttoned his shirt, leaned over the bathtub with a sigh, and dropped in the plug. He opened the hot water handle, and the steam rose.

As he stood naked a minute on the smooth tile before getting into the water, he gathered in his fingers the slack flesh over his ribs, looked at himself again in the clouded mirror. He started when Marian called his name.

“Ralph. The children are in their room playing… I called Von Williams and said you wouldn’t be in today, and I’m going to stay home.” She waited and then said, “I have a nice breakfast on the stove for you, darling, when you’re through with your bath… Ralph?”

“It’s all right, Marian. I’m not hungry.”

“Ralph… Come out, darling.”

He stayed in the bathroom until he heard her upstairs over the bathroom in the children’s room. She was telling them: settle down and get dressed; didn’t they want to play with Warren and Jeannie?

He went through the house and into the bedroom where he shut the door. He looked at the bed before he crawled in. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. How should a man act? It had assumed immense importance in his mind, was far more crucial and requiring of an answer than the other thing, the event two years ago… He remembered he’d just gotten up off the couch in the living room where he’d been working, and come into the kitchen and sat down… The light ornament in the ceiling began to sway. He snapped open his eyes and turned onto his side as Marian came into the room.

She took off her robe and sat down on the edge of the bed. She put her hand under the covers and began gently stroking the lower part of his back. “Ralph,” she murmured.

He tensed at her cold fingers, and then, gradually, he relaxed. He imagined he was floating on his back in the heavy, milky water of Juniper Lake, where he’d spent one summer years ago, and someone was calling to him, Come in, Ralph, Come in. But he kept on floating and didn’t answer, and the soft rising waves laved his body.

He woke again as her hand moved over his hip. Then it traced his groin before flattening itself against his stomach. She was in bed now, pressing the length of her body against his and moving gently back and forth with him. He waited a minute, and then he turned to her and their eyes met.

Her eyes were filled and seemed to contain layer upon layer of shimmering color and reflection, thicker and more opaque farther in, and almost transparent at the lustrous surface. Then, as he gazed even deeper, he glimpsed in first one pupil and then the other, the cameo-like, perfect reflection of his own strange and familiar face. He continued to stare, marveling at the changes he dimly felt taking place inside him.