Affliction

23

“WADE COME IN HERE LOOKING STRANGE, sort of like he always does — you know, with that kind of distracted nervous face he wears all the time, only worse this time, like he was a little drunk, maybe. Which was not unusual, even though it was only a little after lunchtime. The place was still pretty busy, it being the next to last day of deer season and all these Massachusetts assholes who hadn’t got their deer yet up for one last crack at shooting a goddamned cow or a paperboy on a bike and hoping it was a deer — that happened, you know: couple years ago, some individual shot a kid on a bike delivering papers over near Catamount. Astounding.

“Anyhow, Wade was looking peculiar, you might say, like he hadn’t gotten any sleep for a few nights, big humongous circles under his eyes; only he was all dressed up, like he was going to a funeral, coat and tie and all; and he had his kid with him, this nice little kid, I seen her lots of times, what’s-her-name, Jillie: he goes, ‘Jillie, you want a cheese grilled sandwich? You want a cheese grilled sandwich?’ he says. He always says it that way, ‘cheese grilled sandwich,’ and normally I just leave the guy alone — what the hell, everybody talks funny sometimes. Only this time I have to correct him, I guess as a kind of joke. ‘It’s grilled cheese sandwich, you dub,’ I tell him, because I was pissed he made such a big deal out of my sign a few weeks before just when I was putting the damned thing up. The sonofabitch cost me a hundred and fifty bucks and it come out wrong and Wade seen it and pointed it out to me in what you might say was an aggressive way.

“So I go, ‘It’s grilled cheese sandwich, you dub,’ friendly, sort of, but like I said, pissed a little — probably mostly because we were busy as hell right then and Margie, as you know, had taken the day off at my suggestion for very good reasons, which you can use my story to illustrate the wisdom of my recommendation, because the sonofabitch reaches across the counter and grabs me by the shirtfront. He’s sitting there on a stool, you know, right where you are, or a few stools down — I don’t recall that exactly; and his kid is sitting next to him, looking bored like kids do — until this happens, of course, which is when all hell breaks loose. Wade looks up at me with his face suddenly gone red, and he just grabs my shirt, like this.”

And here Nick Wickham reached across the counter and grasped my shirtfront and yanked, hard. Slowly, he let go and went on. I sat back, my legs suddenly watery.

“Everybody in the place goes silent. What the hell, this is unusual, right? This is really un-usual. And the little kid — I mean, she’s just a kid, you know, a goddamned urchin, and she’s naturally terrified. Her face goes all white, and she starts to cry, so Wade lets go of me — and listen, I was plenty scared myself, not to mention ticked off. I figure, the place is full of guys, so Wade can’t do too much damage, but just the same, I’m a goddamned marshmallow; I don’t need that kind of stuff, especially not in my restaurant. Guys come in drunk and start trouble, I sweet-talk them right out the door: let them settle it in the parking lot. Wade, though, there was no sweet-talking that guy that day. It’s like he had this glaze over his eyes, like he couldn’t see out right, and you couldn’t see in at all; when the kid starts to cry, he looks over at her, surprised and puzzled, like he’s this gorilla, some kind of King Kong who hears a strange musical sound off to his side just as he’s about to bite off the head of some guy; he lets go of me, acts like he was only hanging up his coat or something instead of physically attacking a fellow human being. Very strange. Very strange and weird. Of course I knew already about LaRiviere firing him, and I knew about Jack replacing him as town cop and all — everybody knew about it by then — but just the same, it was very strange, the way he was acting.

“He makes like he’s comforting his kid: wipes her nose with a napkin, that sort of thing — like a regular loving father and nothing’s happened; and she says she wants to go home. He got up, stiff — like she slapped him and he’s holding back his impulse to slap her back because she’s a kid — and he goes, ‘Okay, let’s go home, then.’ Now this worries me more than a little, because I happen to know that Margie’s out there at the house this very minute packing up and moving the hell out, like I told her to do. I mean, I know the individuals we’re talking about here are your father and your brother, but — no offense — I was plenty worried about Margie living up there on the hill with those two acting the way they were. You can understand that. You would have done the same thing, probably: told her to move the hell out, I mean.

“So I say to him, ‘Wade, I got a message for you.’ He goes, ‘A message.’ Like it’s in a foreign language. I say, ‘Jack Hewitt, he’s looking for you. Wants you to clear your stuff out of his office down to the town hall.’ I do this real careful, standing back there, way the hell over by the coffee machine, so he can’t reach me. Like I say, I’m a real marshmallow, and this guy is a hand grenade with the goddamned pin pulled; but I figure Jack can handle him all right, and most importantly, I don’t want Wade to catch Margie moving out on him. She’s a hell of a sweet woman, as you no doubt know by now. Heart as big as a house. So I tell Wade about Jack wanting him to clear his stuff out — which happened to be true. Jack was in that morning early. He had his license back, and there was only one more day for him to get his deer, so he was heading out; and Jack, he says to me, ‘If you see Wade, tell him to get his shit out of my office,’ was how he put it. I put it to Wade somewhat more politely, let us say. Although I did make the mistake of calling it ‘his’ office. Jack’s.

“Wade picked right up on that. My mistake. I didn’t realize — or I might not have said it — but at that particular time he had not yet been informed about Jack being the new town cop: which of course was Gordon LaRiviere’s doing, him and Chub Merritt, the selectmen. Wade says to me, ‘His office. You mean my old office?’ And what can I say? I tell him what he surely does not want to hear. He looks at me for a second like his stack is going to blow, and then he grabs his kid’s hand and heads out the door — and I’m thinking, ‘Oh boy, more trouble.’ I didn’t have any idea how much more, of course. But that was the last time I saw Wade Whitehouse. Ever. And I can’t say I’ve missed him. No offense, him being your brother and all, but I expect you don’t particularly miss the individual, either.”

It was a question more than a statement, and I did not intend to answer it. Actually, I did not know how to answer it, without lying to the man. I switched off the tape recorder and reached for my check, which Nick had placed next to my coffee cup.

“Actually, yes, I did see him that day. Not to talk to. But I saw him from my driveway, as he passed by the house. I was filling the bird feeders in my front yard, and I looked up as he drove by, because of all the noise that old truck of his father’s made. He had my grandniece in the truck with him — Jill — so naturally I noticed. And I always thought well of Wade, in spite of everything. He suffered. He had a terrible time growing up. And I never thought that Lillian was particularly good for him, although I loved Lillian and still do. She’s my niece, after all. But that Saturday, when Wade and Jill drove past, there was nothing unusual — really, nothing worth commenting on.”

“Well, sure, I was scared of him. Of course I was scared of him. Who wouldn’t be? But it was like a long time ago, and I don’t remember a lot. I remember Daddy took me out of the restaurant there, and we went down to his office. Big deal. Well, I know, it was a big deal — that’s where he got the gun; he took his guns from his office. It used to be his office, I mean — which made him really mad. I didn’t say anything anymore — once we left the restaurant, I mean. I guess I was too scared.

“He seemed sort of okay; I mean, I guess he was acting the way he usually did. Except when he got so mad at the guy in the restaurant that I thought there would be a fight. I mean, usually when I came up to stay with him, he was sort of nervous and wicked grouchy one minute and really nice the next, and that’s how he was acting that day when we drove up in that really old truck. It was his father’s truck. Sorry, I guess you know that. Then at the restaurant he lost his temper, and I really got scared. But then he calmed down a little, I guess because I started crying and all, and probably because everyone was looking at us; and then the restaurant guy told him about having to clean out his office or something like that; and then he lost his temper again; but this time he didn’t do anything to the restaurant guy. He just grabbed me by the arm and we left, and then we went to his office. And that’s it. Nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened?” I asked. I looked across the room to her mother, and she frowned at me. We were sitting in her living room, Jill and I next to one another on the sofa, Lillian on an easy chair and Bob Horner standing behind her. After numerous pleas and lengthy negotiations, they had agreed to let me talk to Jill, but there were rules, Lillian told me. “The child has been through enough. Her doctor says that it’s important for her to talk about these things, about her father, but only at her own rate, in her own way.” I was free to ask her what she remembered of that day, but when she no longer wished to talk about it, I was to back off.

“Well, nothing important happened. I mean, he just put some stuff from his desk into a box and took his guns down from the thing on the wall — the gunrack; and we left. In fact, he was pretty calmed down by then. He wasn’t smiling or anything: he was probably pretty bummed out by getting fired and all; but he was calm. Not like back in the restaurant. And later.”

“Later?” I said. “You mean, at the house, with Margie?”

Jill looked over at her mother and said, “I really don’t feel like talking about this stuff, Mom.” She was almost twelve at this time, tall for her age, but thin and awkward-looking. She sat calmly, almost placidly, wearing jeans and a bulky white cable-knit sweater, with her hands clasped together in her lap. It was clear that she would soon be a very attractive young woman, attractive in the same way her mother must have been and in fact still was — swift-moving, graceful, in control.

Horner cleared his throat pointedly, and when I looked at him, he shook his head a fraction of an inch. I stood up. “Well, Jill, I surely do thank you for being willing to see me and talk to me as much as you have. I know that it is not easy …, ” I said, and I heard Horner clear his throat again. I put out my hand, and Jill took it in hers and shook it lightly. I did not know what else to say, so I said nothing. I believe that I wanted to hug her, to hold the girl tightly, like an uncle, but I knew that I could not do that. Wade had made it impossible for me to be his daughter’s uncle. So I turned and nodded to her mother and stepfather. ‘I’ll let myself out,” I said, and walked to the door alone.

“I seen the cocksucker just once that day, when he come into the garage looking to pick up his car; only, Chub told me not to give it to him without him paying the bill first — which was close to three hundred bucks. He was pissed, tossed a shit fit right there in the garage, so I just muckled onto a fucking Stillson wrench and showed the sucker to him. I put the sonofabitch right up in his face like that, and he backed the fuck off. I don’t take that shit from nobody. Nobody. He give me a bunch of shit about how we used to be asshole buddies and all — which has not got a fucking grain of truth in it. Wade Whitehouse never liked me, and I never liked him, the cock-sucker. Piss on him. Ever since I was a fucking kid, he’s had it in for me, always trying to put my ass in a sling — which he could do a little bit easier when he was the fucking town cop; but now that he was just another John Q. Citizen, I was ready for the fucker. He caught me a few years ago, when he first got appointed town cop; he grabbed me swiping pumpkins one Halloween from Alma Pittman’s; I was maybe sixteen, seventeen, and he hit on me hard and told everybody I was a fucking Peeping Tom — that kind of creepy shit, which was ridiculous, fucking ridiculous. I can get laid anytime I fucking want to— which is not something Wade Whitehouse could ever say for himself — so why the hell would I go around peeping into some old broad’s window for? You ask me, he was the one doing the peeping, and that’s probably how he caught me swiping her pumpkins — which is just something kids around here do, you understand. On Halloween, I mean. What the hell, you grew up here: you understand. Anyhow, when he seen the fucking Stillson waving in his face, he backed off a ways and lit out down the road, toward Golden’s, as I recall, where I saw him pull in — he was driving his old man’s truck, I remember, and he had his kid with him. She stayed in the truck the whole time. That was the only time I dealt with the fucker that day. I should’ve split his fucking skull when I had the chance. I don’t give a shit he is your brother — you know I’m right. I don’t even give a shit you got it on tape: I didn’t do anything illegal.”

“Wade pulled up in front of the store in that shitbox of his father’s, and I thought, Well, well, well, here comes today’s problem. I thought it because he headed straight up the stairs to Hettie’s apartment. Sent his kid, the little girl, into the store ahead of him with a dollar bill in her hand.

“She poked around in the cooler, looking for a bottle of tonic. Said she wanted one of those all-natural drinks — and who the hell carries that kind of shit up here? So she got a carton of milk and was standing there by the cookies, studying the goddamned labels. Checking out the ingredients, like a Goody Two-shoes. And though I feel sorry for the kid — what the hell, who wouldn’t? — she still struck me as a whole lot like her mother. Who, if you ask me, is not the most likable person I’ve ever met.

“Meanwhile, Wade must’ve found out that Hettie wasn’t home. Which he could have found out by asking me, of course. But he wouldn’t do that. Although he sure was not making any particular secret out of his checking for her at her apartment upstairs. What with his daughter right there and me knowing who comes and goes up those stairs. Something I’d sometimes just as soon not know, frankly. This being one of those times.

“Then, like he was covering for himself, he came down the stairs and into the store and asked me did I know if Jack Hewitt had got his deer yet. And I said no, Jack Hewitt did not get his deer yet. Which I happened to know was true, since I have to tag every deer shot in this township, my store being the only official tagging station, and Jack would’ve had to bring his deer in for tagging. So, ‘No,’ I said, ‘Jack did not get his deer yet.’

“Then Wade asked me did I happen to know where Jack Hewitt was hunting. Like I was supposed to believe he had stopped off at Hettie’s to find out where Jack was. Sure, you believe that and I’ll tell you another one, I thought to myself.

“So I told him. Not that I knew exactly. But Jack had stopped by early and picked up a box of shells, and we had exchanged a few words. Mostly about his being the new town cop and getting his license back and all. Which frankly I thought was good for the town, knowing what I knew then about Wade Whitehouse and what I know now. Anyhow, Jack had mentioned he was going up to Parker Mountain, where he had spotted a huge buck that we both knew had not been shot yet. Since the biggest buck that had come in so far was only a hundred-and-fifty-pound ten-pointer. Not your monster buck.

“So that’s more or less what I told Wade. ‘Jack’s up on Parker Mountain somewhere,’ I told him. That and nothing more exact than that, because I didn’t know anything more exact than that. And I only told him as much as I did because he asked, and I figured he asked only because he was trying to make it look like he had legitimate business with Hettie. When he did not have legitimate business with Hettie. Actually, it figured that the one person in town Wade would want to avoid would be Jack Hewitt. So I didn’t see anything wrong in telling him where Jack was. Anyhow, he said thanks, and the kid paid me for the milk and left without finding any cookies that met her standards. Not that I particularly gave a damn.”

“I hurried — oh, Lord, I was frantic hurrying trying to get out of there before he came back. I was just tossing my clothes and things every which way into suitcases and plastic bags and boxes and stuffing them into my car trunk and the back seat; I felt guilty — leaving like that, without telling him or explaining anything; of course I felt guilty; but I figured I could explain later, and I also thought that maybe once it was done, once I was gone from the house, he wouldn’t mind so much. It was the actual leaving, doing it in his face, that I figured would bother him the most; I was sure it would make him crazy— crazier, actually, because he was already pretty crazy, you know that; that was why I was leaving in the first place. I don’t think he wanted me around, but I was afraid that he would literally come apart if he thought I was abandoning him, and that’s why I was trying to get out of there before he came back with Jill, which I had learned from Nick, who had called me out at the house as soon as Wade left the restaurant. Well, it’s more complicated than that. But you understand. It had to do with Pop too, I have to admit — or, more accurately, it had to do with the combination of Wade and Pop in that house: they were both getting worse, and so far as I could see, it was because of each other. Pop mostly sat in front of the TV set in the living room watching wrestling; once in a while he opened up a new bottle of booze, which he drank from until he got drunk enough to start talking cracked; and about then Wade usually showed up, or for the first time would start to act like Pop was in the room — having ignored the man up till that point: and then the two of them would go at it hammer and tong. That was no place for a woman. Not with Wade chasing people through the woods and cracking up his boss’s truck like that, it wasn’t. His obsession with that stupid hunting accident of Jack’s: it was like he thought it explained everything, but in order to do so, it had to practically be invented all over from the beginning — by him! And the wildness he was displaying, like the way he pulled his own tooth out with pliers, which practically made me sick when he told me that’s what he had done, although I had already figured it out for myself, thank you, when I found the bloody tooth and pliers on the bathroom sink. Well, you know how he was acting: you were in touch with him then. But you didn’t see it. Except for the day of Ma’s funeral, you were never here to see it and deal with him and Pop up close on a day-to-day basis. I guess I’m saying this because I feel guilty, guilty for leaving him right then, abandoning him, actually, when he had been fired from his job and fired from being the town cop, which was a very important position to him, never mind how he himself described the position; I feel guilty for leaving him alone up there in the house when he was so upset, so beaten down by his life, which he blamed mostly on his father, as you know; I feel guilty because I left him when he was feeling so frustrated by that stupid court case, that custody suit he was trying to bring against Lillian — although I did not at that time know what you told me about that: about how his lawyer had advised him to drop the case, so he still felt dependent on Lillian in order to see his own child — not that I thought he was an especially fit father at that time, believe me.

^”So there I was, with most of my stuff packed and my car almost filled to the gills, when Wade drives up with Jill. Too late to hide, I figured, so I just stood there, with the trunk and the car doors wide open, and he drove past, looking out the window at the car full of my stuff, not making any sign of recognition, and drove the truck into the barn and parked it. Then he and Jill came walking back along the driveway from the barn to the front where I was — Jill lagging behind and lugging her little suitcase, looking forlorn — and I thought, Oh, Lord, what that child’s been through; and I forgot all about getting out of there right then and leaving that child alone with those two men, one of them drunk and crazy and the other probably on his way to drunk and crazy — although I did not at that moment think either of them was particularly dangerous, which is why I decided that I should stay at the house for another night and day, or at least as long as Jill was there. So when Wade came up to me and looked over the items I had packed into the car, boxes and suitcases and plastic bags full of my things, and said, ‘Going somewhere, Margie?’ I tried to lie. Not only because I was leaving him right then, but also because I had changed my mind, due to seeing Jill. It was a stupid thing to do, I know: it was obvious what I was up to; but I was suddenly divided in my emotions between wanting to leave and wanting to stay, and I had not anticipated feeling that way, which is really probably the stupid part. But you get caught in these things: you make one small decision, and pretty soon you’re stuck with a bunch of other decisions that you’re not so sure of, and then you act stupid. So I lied to Wade and tried to tell him that I was taking a bunch of things to the church rummage sale and a bunch more to the cleaners and laundromat in Catamount, it being Saturday. And of course it didn’t work; he saw right through me. He said, ‘Don’t lie to me. You’re leaving me, I can see that.’ I tried to change the subject and said for him not to be silly, or something light like that, and said hi to Jill, who smiled — or tried to smile — looking pathetic and miserable in spite of it — or because of it.

“I have no particular talent for deception, and that’s why I’m easily fooled — unless I’m just not very smart, since most people who are smart are good at deceiving people and are hard to fool. Gordon LaRiviere, for example. But Wade — no. He was more like me than like Gordon LaRiviere, say, or Nick Wickham, who is sweet but full of it — which is why I think I was first attracted to Wade, back when he was still married to Lillian: I know you know all about it; Wade told me that he once confessed about it to you, our little extramarital fling (or whatever you want to call it — it didn’t last very long, at any rate, and we both felt plenty guilty for it). But he was a man I never tried to lie to, and I don’t think he ever tried to lie to me; he kept some things to himself, naturally, and I did too, but that was different, wasn’t it? What am I trying to say? I guess I’m trying to say how sad I was that afternoon when Wade drove up with Jill and I tried to lie to him about moving out of the house; it suddenly hit me that what we once had was gone and could never return; I had finally learned how to be afraid of Wade, and the only way I could think of protecting myself was to lie to him. And because I was so bad at it, so inept, I only made things worse; I stirred up the situation and found myself having to protect myself against him even more than before I had lied; and I wasn’t even able to make myself believable enough to protect anyone else from him. Meaning Jill. I realized that it was a lost cause, me and Wade, and that probably I would never again be with a man I did not have to lie to, as I had once been with Wade. And so I started to cry. Standing there beside my car in front of that old farmhouse, with the sun glaring off the snow, and Wade in front of me and his daughter watching — I started to cry. Like a baby. I actually bawled. I can hardly believe it now, but it’s the truth: I started to bawl.

“Things got somewhat confused then — or I should say my memory of things gets somewhat confused: I know Wade tried to stop me from crying by putting his arms around me; he reached forward and drew me to him and patted my back; it was a gentle gesture meant to comfort me, although I remember the expression on his face as he came toward me — like a terrible sadness had come over him, a sadness greater even than my own: so that he must have been trying to join me in sadness but was unable to cry himself because he was a man, which resulted in his placing his arms around me and patting my back, as if I were a child. And that made me feel even lonelier than before he had tried to hold me. And so I pushed him away. I told him to leave me alone—I said it like that, with terrific emphasis, like he was doing something unpleasant to me: ‘Leave me alone!’ Then Jill must have gotten frightened, because she started to hit Wade on the back and arms, yelling at him to leave me alone: ‘Leave her alone! Leave her alone!’ I was weeping and shoving him away, and Jill was screaming at him and hitting him with her fists, and he moved like a bear then, covering his face with his arms and backing away in the snow. Jill kept after him; she was hysterical; she had him stumbling backwards into the snow. I went after them, and as I reached out to hold Jill off, Wade swung his arms wide and hit her, and she went flying backwards into me. Her nose was bleeding; he had caught her across the mouth and nose; she stood behind me and wailed. We did not say a word, Wade and I. I slowly backed away, facing him, but with my arms held behind me touching Jill, guiding her toward the car. He looked at me stunned, like someone had hit him on the head with a rock. I’ve never seen anyone with that painful and bewildered a look on his face: his mouth hung open, his eyes were wild, his arms draped down at his sides. I watched him like he was a beast about to attack us, and I half turned and managed to move my avocado plant off the front seat to the floor and got Jill inside the car and closed the door — with the lock down: I remember that, locking the door as I closed it. Then I edged my way around the back of the car and slammed the trunk lid down and got in on the driver’s side. And still, no one said a word. I locked my door. I started the car and backed it out of the driveway, and Jill and I drove away, without once looking back. No, that’s not right. When I had the car on the road and aimed toward town, I looked over at the house: Wade stood there in the same spot in the snow beside the driveway, staring down at the snow, probably at the spots of blood from Jill’s nose, although I don’t really know that, but he stood staring down at the snow like he could not believe what he saw there, his fingers in his mouth, like a little boy, and up on the porch, I saw that Pop had come out — maybe he had been there all along and had seen everything — and he stood there looking at Wade with a smile on his face, like a devil. It was horrible to see that, and I wish I hadn’t looked, and I hope that Jill did not see that. When I glanced over at her, she had her eyes closed, and she said in a calm voice that surprised me, ‘I want to go home. Will you take me home?’ I said yes, I would, and I did. And I guess you know the rest.”