Aberration of Starlight

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One night he dreams of Bridget. Rather, he dreams of himself and Bridget together as if he is a third person watching them. They are in the country, here in New Jersey, for that matter, in any event the softly tinted landscape is familiar. She is sitting on a split-log fence, one that no longer exists, but that he recognizes as one that used to fence off the field of timothy wherein Stellkamp now pastures his two old and blind horses. Bridget is in a new gingham dress of white with pale-yellow stripes and a stiff white collar, and is half turned toward him standing next to her, smiling down at his hands, which are clasped on her knee. Her small feet are shod in black kid boots with tiny mother-of-pearl buttons and between the top of her right boot and the white cotton petticoats thickly swirling from beneath her dress can be seen — he sees — an inch or so of dully gleaming black silk stocking. He is also smiling in a curiously secretive way, smiling, or so it seems, into himself. He appears to be tremendously pleased, natty in a light-grey tropical worsted suit, a boater with a red-and-blue-striped band, a dark-blue four-in-hand, and gleaming white French-toed shoes. Behind them the fields are luminous green. Bridget slowly reaches toward him, still smiling, and touches lightly his clasped hands, then presses upon them to increase their weight upon her knee. He watches himself turn his head toward her and then up so that he is looking into her face, and he is not at all surprised to find that he is looking into the face of Jean Whiting, Bud Halloran’s secretary of some ten years back. Jean smiles at him, her lips full, swollen, shining with lip rouge as her eyes shine with lust. She leans back on the top rail of the fence with both hands and opens her thighs and he looks to discover that she is naked from the waist down, her pink sex wet and open to him. Still smiling, he reaches for it, his fingers trembling, and as he wakes he hears her low laughter transformed to the laughter of Helen Copan on the moonlit road below, saying good night to her lifeguard.

He starts to reach under the bed in the dark for his bottle of Wilson’s but then thinks better of it and lies back, still. The dream has upset him. He considers the wife who appeared in it, her gentle smile, so perfect that he almost believes that she always smiled that way. And his own contented and secret smile? That young man, he? The elegant angle of his boater. The crispness of his summer suit. He seemed so absolutely at ease with that young and adoring wife. Why did she turn into Jean Whiting?

Tears of self-pity come to his eyes as he realizes that he was indeed that young once, that Bridget had once, many times, many times, smiled at him that way — a girlish smile of acquiescence, surrender. Her surrender might have been, what? More complete? More abandoned. But it was as it was, and sweet, nonetheless. His face burns as he strikes against a fantasy that he has not entertained for years, and it seems to him that his wheezy breathing will awaken his grandson asleep across the room. When it first came to him he cannot remember, but it had been after the death of their second daughter, in the dark center of the sexual death that their lives had entered. The baby’s death was his responsibility. Bridget’s pregnancy had been his responsibility. His dirty needs, as she had phrased it, had sent the infant to her grave. May God forgive him.

Perhaps it had been after that night on which Bridget had allowed him, after so long, his desires. There had been an outing on the Fourth of July to the Rockaways and she had drunk two highballs and then, in the evening, three or four glasses of beer. Her mouth had opened. Her lips were wet and juicy and they had sweated together in the hot dark bedroom of the rented bungalow in Sheepshead Bay. She had licked and sucked his tongue to muffle her moans. He thought that their lives were changing, but that holiday expression of love had been an aberration, and they fell back immediately into their bitter celibacy. That may have been the time that his obsessive and recurring daydream began. It was so clear in his mind that he thought that had she looked into his eyes she would have there discovered it in impeccable clarity, a very picture of his shameful thoughts.

He is sitting in the leather Morris chair reading the paper after supper. Bridget has finished the dishes, and although Skip is asleep, she has not come to join him in their customary silence before he says, as he says each night, “About time to go for a pint.” He suddenly looks up, and sees her at the door of their bedroom, smiling at him in unutterable lasciviousness. Her hair is loose, falling over her shoulders and back, her dark coppery hair, and her face is almost grotesquely bright with rouge and powder. Her lips are fuller, her mouth wider. She is wearing a white linen chemise, the low front bordered with pale-pink embroidered roses. Below this garment, she is naked, her belly slightly rounded with the weight she has put on since their marriage, her sex hidden in luxuriant hair slightly darker than the masses on her head. Her strong straight legs are set slightly apart and her white silk stockings catch the soft glow of the bedroom lamp. They are rolled to just above her knees and there caught tightly by pink satin garters. On her feet are the white patent-leather shoes bought for their dead daughter’s christening and not worn since. She walks toward him, still smiling, her hips swaying, her face flushed with lust and her eyes softly virginal. Taking the newspaper out of his hands and dropping it on the floor, she bends over him, her knees drawing modestly together, her teeth wetly brilliant, and kisses him, their mouths awkwardly open. Her breasts fall out of her chemise and she laughs, her mouth still on his, and begins to stroke his hidden sex, laughing lower, and then she says filthy, forbidden things into his mouth, filthy, incredible things, which he begs her to repeat as he caresses her heavy breasts. She frees his aching phallus from his trousers and straddles him, one hand guiding him into her, the other cupping one of her breasts and pushing its stiff nipple into his slavering mouth. As he begins to suck at her furiously, she starts to pump up and down on him, sinking deeper and deeper onto his throbbing erection.

Skip was so goddamn het up about going into Hackettstown with that excuse for a man, Dave Warren, that John knew — wasn’t she his flesh and blood? — that she was going to make a horse’s ass of herself buying something or other to show off to Thebus. It better not be anything that makes her look like a cheap piece of trash, or by God he’d really put his foot down! He put on a long, sad face as he saw Billy come out on the porch and look across at him on the church steps, and then felt ashamed of himself, Christ, mixing the boy up in it, he must be getting dizzy. But the boy pretended not to notice him and went back inside, huh, she’s got him dead set against me, the mean old grandfather, sure. When the boy is a little older he’ll look back and be able to see himself what a shabby piece of goods this Thebus is. God forbid that he even remembers him!

When he’d told Marie that he was very upset about her going to that den of iniquity, the WigWam, she’d looked at him but said nothing, but he knew, oh how he knew that goddamn stubborn look that she’d got from her mother. The WigWam! He could have made his fortune a hundred times over, for the love of God, had he bet that if the son of a bitch asked her out anywhere, that’s where he’d ask her. And she not even really divorced, not in the eyes of God. The last time John had gone to the WigWam was when? Ten years ago? And even then it was a nest of drunken floozies and five-hundred-dollar millionaires sniffing around their skirts like a pack of mongrels. My God, it was enough to turn your stomach. You can bet your bottom dollar that’s where that little bastard would take her. And she, like the simp she was when that slimy article turned on his five-and-ten charm, by Jesus Christ, she thought he was doing her a favor, she thought it was a compliment. No fool like an old fool. Oh, the dump was the perfect place for him to give her the old soft soap, to the tune of cheap rotgut booze and that nigger music that the young chippies jumped around to, dancing they called it! With their behinds wiggling around for anybody to see! When he’d gone a little further and said that he really didn’t want her to go, what do you even know about this man except that he’s divorced, and very pretty that is, isn’t it? the blind leading the blind, she set her face against him and said that she’d accepted the invitation and that as far as she was concerned what really got his back up was that he was scared to death of what the other boarders would think about it and she was sick and tired and fed up worrying about what a few relics that she didn’t give two cents for — and neither did he if he’d admit it — would say about anything. And then she said she wanted to wash her hair and that was that. It was easy to see that her head had been turned when she talked to her own father that way. A spectacle, no two ways about it, that’s what she was making of herself.

She was a good-looking woman, anybody with half an eye could see that, and he knew what a little bugger of a man like Thebus wanted with her — not that Marie would ever disgrace herself by letting him do — letting him get away with any smutty filth he’d cooked up. Married and a mother or not, she was as innocent as a girl, it troubled him even now to think of her and that greaseball she married doing God knows what… Well, that’s all over and done with and he’d seen many a man stop and turn around to look at her on the street and she’d walk along with her head up high as if they didn’t exist. But this one! He got around her with his Billy this and Billy that and his sad tales of his own boy — all peaches and cream and snots and tears, sure, now that he’d deserted him to chase sluts. Well, when she came back from town he’d tell her a thing or two about her precious gentleman admirer, and God bless Helga Schmidt for letting him know about it. Now there was a woman, straight as a die. Oh yes indeed, Helga Schmidt had the goods on the son of a bitch, and any man who runs after the janes the way he did was not about to change his spots just because he’d met a clean pure woman like Marie. By God, he wouldn’t put it past him to talk about marrying her, as if Marie would ever fly in the face of God, but he wouldn’t put it past him to say anything if he thought it might allow him to take liberties.

The sun had finally flooded the whole expanse of the church steps and he’d gone across the road to the porch where he bumped into Ralph Sapurty, just what the doctor didn’t order, and had to grin and bear it listening to his horse’s-ass chatter about God-knows-what. Just yes the poor unfortunate gawm to death and give him a nice big castor-oil smile every now and again. Then he saw Dave Warren’s car turn at the bend down the road and in a minute pull up and he watched Marie get out, loaded down with bundles to beat the band, like it was Christmas. She went past him like a ton of bricks, barely giving him the time of day, oh and how cute she was about it, saying that she didn’t want to interrupt him and Sapurty, as if she had no idea in God’s green world that the man gave him conniptions! Well, he talked with Ralph, if that’s the word for it, for a few more minutes for the sake of appearances, and then excused himself and said that he had to go upstairs and do something that nobody else could do for him, that’s the sort of remark that Ralph thought was more fun than Weber and Fields, the poor stupid man. When he reached Marie’s room he heard voices and for a minute thought that Thebus was in there with her, by God, he’d — but then he realized that it was just Billy, and you can rest assured that she’d brought him something from Hackettstown, oh the boy was spoiled rotten without a father to put his foot down, did she expect him to be father and grandfather and breadwinner all rolled in one? It had been enough of a burden even when Bridget had been alive. She wasn’t one to let things slide, when the boy needed to be taught a lesson she wasn’t the kind to shirk from it. Well, he wasn’t that kind and now, well, the handwriting was on the wall as far as all the good it had done him. He should have cracked him across the face once in while. Now they thought, the both of them, that they could walk all over him. Oh, it was grand for them. He pushed the door open hard and walked into Marie’s room.

They both looked at him as if he was something the cat dragged in and Marie was right on the verge of harping about knocking on a person’s door but he must have had a look on his face, there’s life in the old dog yet, and she shut her trap, thank God for small favors. The first thing was to get the boy to hell out of there, he was entirely too acclimated to hearing every word that passed between them, turning into a little old man he was with a wise little face on him. Aha, and there it was, by God, wouldn’t you have known it, a pair of shoes, nothing to them but a few scraps of leather, if you can call it that, and a high heel to show off her legs, the man has got her crazy as a bedbug, daffy! He held the door open and told Billy to go out and play, he had something to speak to his mother about, and she was about to open her mouth again but let it pass and the boy went out with some kind of a goddamn toy, another dollar thrown out the window, they thought he was made of money. Then he closed the door and started in on the shoes, what a pretty penny they must have cost, and for what? Could she even answer the question with a closetful of shoes not six feet away from her gathering dust? And a good time it was too to bring out what Helga had told him about young Lochinvar, that Romeo running after any skirt who looked in his direction, he never liked the cut of his jib from the first day he saw him running down off the porch all dressed in white like some horse’s ass of a sissy with a pipe stuck in his mouth like a collar ad, all for show it was, couldn’t she, for Christ sake, see what a fool he was making of her? Helga’s cousin saw him with some painted slut on his arm lovey-dovey as you please, coming out of a rattrap of a hotel, a fleabag that you’d get the itch just to pass by. This was the knight in shining armor with his hair all slicked down with brilliantine like a regular gigolo? This was the man that was taking his daughter dancing, or God knows what he had in mind? John put nothing past such an article!

He wasn’t prepared for her anger and spunk in talking back to him, and what did Bridget being sick all that time have to do with her letting this man be her escort, he’d like to know that, and could she tell him that? With a pair of high-heeled shoes meant for a girl of eighteen, not a mother who’d been married in the church at a high nuptial mass and in the eyes of God was still married. She sailed right by that and tore into Helga, that backbiting dutchie she called her, can’t you see what’s as plain as the nose on your face? That sauerkraut-eater has, oh don’t deny it, she has grand plans for you, oh my, grand. Why, you talk about what people, pardon me, the antiques here, think about Tom and me, Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Don’t you think they can all see that woman setting her cap for you? And she’d say anything to play up to you, anything she thinks you want to hear, by God, she’ll say it, in spades. He didn’t mean to — maybe he didn’t actually say it — but he forbade her to go out with that sly article and her face got as white as her shoes. She said she’d do as she damn well pleased! With a bleached blonde of a tramp he was seen, a whore! he said, and blushed. That’s the kind of a man who’s taking you dancing! Worse than that greaseball of a husband of yours, and bejesus he doesn’t even have a bit of an ass on him! By God, it’s one of the wonders of the world that the man can manage to sit down. She was holding the door open for him and wiping tears from her eyes. Oh Poppa, she said, what a spiteful thing to say, what a spiteful, mean thing to say to your own daughter.

He lay on his bed, smoking one Camel after another, thank God in heaven he wasn’t the sort of a man with a filthy pipe stuck in his gob all day and his teeth black as the ace of spades. Ah Christ, she wouldn’t have dared do this if Bridget were alive, that one would have marched right up to the little cock of the walk and told him where to get off and make no mistake about it. But with him … it was his softness that let her wipe her feet all over him, telling him that she’d been the maid of all work long enough and now she wanted to have some life, and what about him, didn’t he have a right to some life? Hadn’t it been John do this and John do that and John do the other thing and what do you need with an extra quarter for years and years and years? Was he denying her her goddamn life? It was that oily little mongrel he wanted her to hold at arm’s length, didn’t she know what he wanted from her? And there she was buying a pair of chippy shoes with a heel on them that was an invitation to any man with a pair of eyes in his head, and you can bet your last red cent that they wouldn’t be lost on the likes of Mr. Thebus, oh no. And she’s even beginning to lose all respect for anything decent, the nerve of her talking that way about Helga Schmidt! She was a good respectable woman, lonely like he was lonely, it wasn’t as if they were gallivanting around in cars going to roadhouses and God knows where else.

When he woke from a short doze he heard voices from the lawn and got up to stand behind the curtain and look down. As he thought, it was Thebus and Billy, thick as thieves. You had to give the man credit for his gall. It was as clear as day that the boy — look at him now running around with that cheap tin toy in his hand — bored him to death. Ah, but what a perfect foot in the door he was, you could see that the man had the brain of your true salesman, he’d probably sell goldbricks to some starving widow if the truth were known. John had always hated salesmen, something good for the kikes to do but no job for a man. But who said that this article was a man anyway? Oho, and there he was, crossing the lawn to go and get himself all dolled up like Astor’s pet horse, ah, not yet. John craned his neck to watch Tom and saw him walk across the road to his car and begin to wipe it down with a rag. That’s right, you little mutt, make everything all spic and span for the goddamn fool of a woman who’s probably admiring her feet and watching the clock. God help us all. She’s so ga-ga she may not even be seen at the supper table, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if nobody saw hide nor hair of her until the great moment. The old man pursed his lips in contempt.

But Marie did come down to supper, as cool as a cucumber if you please, and bejesus, she didn’t take her eyes off that little bastard’s face from the minute she sat down. She’d lost all sense of modesty and shame, even that little chippy at the next table wasn’t so bold with the way she made eyes at that big gawm of a lifeguard she was making a horse’s ass out of. And his nibs looked back at her as bold as brass himself, but what else could you expect of a man who had no breeding whatsoever? John was so upset and annoyed that he didn’t really follow the conversation, but Thebus was doing his best, that was easy to tell, to annoy everybody with ears to hear his ranting and raving about what the Germans were doing to get us into another war, the man was nothing more than a Mongolian idiot! Anybody with half an eye could see that what Helga said, and the Stellkamps too, was as plain as the nose on your face — it was the Jews who started everything, and by God, if there was another war who would profit from it but the Jews? Maybe Thebus was really Thebowitz just like Roosevelt was Rosenfeld. He even looked a little like a goddamn mocky with his little shyster lawyer moustache. Helga caught his eye and smiled at him, oh, she knew what kind of shenanigans were going on, this little mongrel was trying to get him into an argument so that he’d wind up looking like he was defending Helga, the poor son of a bitch thinks I was born yesterday! Ha! He’ll have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me with his little tricks. But the gall of his daughter! She was grinning away at her great hero so that you’d think her face would crack, and no attempt to hide it either. Oh, John was soft all right, too goddamn soft, and that was the trouble. If Bridget were alive, God rest her soul, she’d put a stop to this in a minute, even if she had to drag Marie away from the table by the ear like she’d done a thousand times when she was a little girl. Finally the patch on a man’s ass stopped running off at the mouth and contented himself with mooning at Marie with his greaseball Valentino face on him, by God it was enough to turn your stomach to see it. As soon as John finished his tea he excused himself and went up to his room. He couldn’t stand another minute of this vaudeville as God was his judge.

Oh, there they were on the porch, the great hero dressed to the nines, with that great ugly lump of a pipe in his face like some nance of a professor, well, maybe John would go down and maybe he wouldn’t, but he’d be damned, whatever else he did, if he’d give them a goodbye, he wouldn’t, for that matter, give them the sweat off an ice pitcher. Then he heard the screen door open and there she was, by God, dressed up like a little slip of a girl all in white with her new tart shoes and silk stockings on her. Ah, I’ve got to go down there and show my face, I’ll not have it said that the damn fool’s own father sneaked around like a rat in the dark while she paraded around like Cleopatra. When John got out on the porch they were about to start down the steps and Marie turned to look at him but he stood there without moving a muscle with his hands in his back pockets, she’ll get no satisfaction from me! It looked to him like she was so embarrassed that she was blushing, well, she’s got something to blush about, if truth be told, it was a wonder she hadn’t gone around the past two weeks with her face as red as a beet. He watched them go down the path to the gate and then cross the road to the car, two damn fools all dolled up to go and spend their time in a dump that you wouldn’t even let a dog die in. Thebus helped her into the car and closed the door, then got in the other side, Marie was looking out her window as the car started, and then she waved, and all the other goddamn fools on the porch waved too, well it would be a cold day in hell before John took his hands out of his pockets to wave to her after she had flown in his face and as much as told him straight up and down that he could take his opinion and put it in his pipe and smoke it. Well, we’ll see, we’ll just see how far she can go with this damn fool idea before I cut the legs out from under her. She was still waving as the car moved out of sight. John went upstairs to clean his false teeth and change into his spectators. He thought of that ten-cent Casanova holding Marie in his arms and brushed at his plate furiously. She’ll soon find out the class of bozo he is!

When he finally came downstairs only Helga was on the porch, sitting in a rocker and looking aimlessly across the road. Thank God that dizzy Grace Sapurty wasn’t monopolizing her — she was probably locked in her room combing her wig, God bless the mark. He sat down in the rocker next to hers and lit a cigarette. The woman was a pleasure to talk to, a real lady and she had better manners, you can mark my word, than half the so-called Americans he’d ever bumped into in his travels. Hardly realizing it, they began to talk of Marie and that oily gigolo and he told her that he’d warned Marie about him and let her know about him chasing chippies, but she was blind and deaf to anything he had to say to her, and suddenly he sobbed and tried to cover it up with a cough, but Helga knew. What a wise and kind woman. Without saying a word to him about it she suggested that they take a little walk so he could, she said, get these things from off the chest? He agreed and went in to get a sweater and a flashlight, and also, it would be a good idea, his bottle of citronella. As he rose, Billy came out, looking like a lost soul with his mother and his idol both gone, and he told him that he and Mrs. Schmidt were going for a walk and that he wanted no foolishness from him, he was to take a bath and be in bed by nine-thirty at the latest. Helga was standing on the path when he came out again, her sweater draped over her shoulders, and as soon as she saw him she mentioned what beautiful stars were out tonight, it looked just like the old country when she was a little girl. He opened the gate and they started down the road.

She understood everything. How lonely he was, how he felt unwanted and unneeded, the fifth wheel, how he was the butt of everything now, he didn’t mind telling her, Marie had fixed it so that his own grandson sided with her on everything, Marie and that poolroom Romeo who’d pulled the wool over her eyes. Anything, ja, but anything that Helga could do to help, she’d be only too glad, he understood of course? She had tried to talk to the young woman, she’d known her so many years, but Marie had such a chip on her shoulder this summer that it was like talking to the wall if you so much as mentioned that Mr. Thebus was maybe not all he was cracked up to be. They were passing under a clump of trees whose branches leaned out over the road and Helga took his arm in her hand so that it was pressed up against her side and bosom and he had a sudden image of her straight, strong legs, her stockings in tight rolls that pinched into the ample flesh just above her knees, and he felt himself turning red, thank God for the dark. It wasn’t his imagination, Helga was holding his arm tight against her body and he let her. He felt oddly and shamefully excited — how many years had it been since he had, with Bridget, Christ Almighty, how many years? Yet here was the proof, next to him, that he wasn’t cold in his grave yet, this wonderful, decent lady, this lady he had admired for years, a widow now, alone as he was alone. Why not? Let Marie go and shift for herself if she was so goddamn independent. Maybe. Maybe is all. Helga was saying how much she understood his pain, oh ja, how children can hurt and hurt even when they are grown big, they haven’t got a thought in their heads. And as far as she was concerned, this good, good woman, she was praying on her hands and knees for the last week for Marie, ja, for God to give her the strength she would need against this, how is the word they say? this bum? He is just the sort of a man that in Germany now Hitler is punishing, the trash running after good women.

They had turned around and started back, no need for the citronella this evening, and he and Helga as natural as you please and without any self-consciousness, put their arms around each other as they walked, nice and slow through the cool darkness and the sound of crickets — there must have been thousands of them! Her heavy solid hip and thigh brushed his leg as they walked, poor man, the worried look on his face made her worry, and she would get down on her hands and knees again this night and pray for him too and for that poor fatherless boy. They discreetly removed their arms from each other’s waists as they neared the house, Christ, no sense in giving that old woman Ralph Sapurty and his old woman of a wife anything to gossip about, and as they got closer Helga said that it was none of her business and as he knew after all these years she was not a busybody with a long nose prying into private things, but she thought he should really put his foot down, a man like him, with an important job and in the prime of life, he shouldn’t be aggravated by a grown-up daughter, but it was only a suggestion. But it was time to let Marie know who was the boss and tell her to stop giving him a headache. Ja? Excuse my butting in. And John agreed and agreed again, what a wonderful lady! And as they turned in at the gate he took her hand for just a second and squeezed it and Helga turned to him and smiled, her gold tooth shining.

Billy was asleep when he entered their room and he undressed and put on his pajamas in the dark, then reached under the bed and got his bottle of Wilson’s, took a long drink and then another, might as well be a little pie-eyed as the way I am. He lay down and thought of Helga. It was terribly disturbing to feel this excited, Jesus Christ, he was an old man, probably, if truth were known, in his dotage! But he couldn’t deny that he’d wanted to put his hands over her breasts out there in the dark, well, hell, he had a good job and enough money salted away for the two of them, why should he worry about this goddamn ungrateful snip of a daughter, mooning around all day long to make you sick. She’d see how it was without her fall guy of a father to support her and her spoiled-rotten son, see how fast Casanova would run when he saw the handwriting on the wall, ha. John dozed on and off, then took his watch to the window and saw that it was — what? ten after one in the morning! My God! The tramp! She knows goddamn good and well I expected her home by twelve, defying me! We’ll see, we’ll goddamn well see about it! He tried not to think of his feelings on the road with Helga because if that’s how he—then what was going on with that little skirt-crazy bastard with Marie? Oh God in heaven, they were at it like two dogs in the alley in that car of his somewhere — he wouldn’t put it past him to put something in her drink, oh hell, yes, he’d heard of it, hadn’t his brother told him about girls, sweet and clean girls that had been given things in a cup of tea for Christ sake, and done things you couldn’t even imagine? Was he to be made a complete horse’s ass of?

He slipped out of the room and climbed the stairs to Marie’s room, why? Hell, how in the name of God did he know why? He closed the door and shone his flashlight around, a slip on the bed, a pair of stockings in a tangle next to it, and there was, what the hell was it? Ah, yes. John put the flashlight down and opened the other bag that Marie had brought back from town — my God! A bathing suit, bejesus, that would show enough of her to get her arrested for indecent exposure. Oh my God, it had all gone far enough, too goddamn far. And this is what the little floozie thinks she’s going to wear in public, with her behind sticking out of it like some slut in the Police Gazette, to go bathing with her little dirty-minded Romeo? By God, they’d have to carry him out in his coffin first! He put the bathing suit back in its bag, thinking of Marie in a car, her clothes all up and that mutt bastard — he heard a car then and quickly left the room, went down the stairs, and back into his room. There they were, and it one-thirty in the morning! The nerve, the nerve of them! He opened the window screen and leaned out, shining his flash across the road, oh, he was yelling, you’re goddamn tootin he was yelling, and he didn’t give a damn what they thought of it or what anybody the hell else thought of it either. He heard Billy call him and he turned toward him and told him to shut up, then shone the light down at the car again. A goddamn old fool, that’s what they took him for? Well, we’ll see who’s the fool! He saw Marie get out and start quickly toward the porch, not looking up at the window. And there were some people up in the house, what in the hell did John care? They want an eyeful, they’ll get one! Let’s see how this little mongrel feels tomorrow showing his face to decent people. Marie thought she’d go out and do God knows what and then waltz in almost at dawn without so much as a by-your-leave? She had another think coming! He heard her pass the door and continue up to her room, crying she was, well let her. And tomorrow she could put that bimbo bathing suit in a drawer and forget about it. He was putting his foot down tomorrow, and if she didn’t like it, well, she could lump it. If she didn’t like what he had to say she could go back to the steam table, live on the street for all he cared. He’d get along, he was no cripple! He’d had enough of goddamn women to last him forever anyway. He saw a match flicker in the front seat of Tom’s car, ha, there you are! The great lover and gent is so worried sick that he’s having himself a lovely little smoke, just as if nothing had happened. Well, he’ll have to see somebody else’s behind in a slut bathing suit! Not an ounce of respect. And no respect from her and that boy either. After I’ve worked my fingers to the bone for both of them, and for her bitch of a mother too, God forgive me. He latched the screen and stood staring out at the soft white mass of the old church.