Tony and Susan

ONE

Susan Morrow returns to the book after a hard day’s work. Cleaning up, the vacuum cleaner, wrapping paper, gadgets and toys upstairs. An hour paying the bills and another on the phone talking to Maureen about everything except what’s on her mind.

Dorothy and Henry are skating with the Fowlers. The snow is falling, the roads could be dangerous coming back. Rosie watches television in the bedroom, keep the sound down, dear. Jeffrey on the couch: off, mutt, you know better than that. The nostalgia of pizza burns the corners of her lips.

Susan Morrow opens the box, pours the manuscript upside down on the coffee table looking for the red placemark. She puts the finished sheets face down in the box, the unread ones in a pile on the coffee table. The new pile is smaller than the used pile. Susan foresees the moment when there won’t be enough space for what should happen. She anticipates the disappointment of the end, waiting for her, already typed into that pile.

She sits with her lap pages, trying to remember. Tony Hastings lost his family to thugs in the night. Looking at the last page last night, she finds him smashing Ray Marcus’s tooth in the trailer. She remembers her righteous wrath. Before that, Tony and Bobby Andes picked up Ray in a baseball uniform and before that Tony identified Lou Bates after failing to identify Turk.

That all this was written by Edward makes her feel ashamed. She picks up the pages, prepares to go on.

Nocturnal Animals 20

There will be a trial for Ray Marcus and Lou Bates in Grant Center as soon as we get the case together. You’ll have to come back for that. Mr. Gorman, the district attorney, will be in charge. That’ll be another two months at least.

Firm at the magistrate’s hearing, answering Mr. Gorman’s questions, looking straight at Ray, who looked straight at him. Bruised face. Mister, you’re gonna be sued. No you’re not, holding firm with lawyers and juries, the American flag in the corner and the press.

He heard himself singing through the wind blasting the open windows as he drove home. Released. June on the highway, the bright young fields, rich dug earth, horses and cows plowed into the roots of what we eat with a thick shitty smell.

Sing sing sing, Christopher Columbus. I did it. His knuckles still hurt, he hadn’t noticed it at the time. There was a raw gash where the skin must have ripped on the snag end of a tooth. He enjoyed the pain for its reminding value.

Going home to a party, driving faster than ever before under the big June afternoon sky with its cool warmth bringing wind and fair weather clouds, zipping ahead of trucks and Cadillacs and Volkswagens. Without taking anything away from his love, it was time for Tony Hastings to resume his life, he sang. Having fixed what was troubling it. Touched the untouchable, knocked him cold. Released the unreleasable, smashed the bottle to let the boat out, exquisite Tony. Speedy Tony, clever about speed traps, no cops caught him today. Made it to the house with plenty of time. Naked in the shower, noticing himself, filling with hope. Two parties, in fact, the faculty party at the Furmans and the graduate student party, with a personal note from Louise Germane, “Hope you can come.” The parties were in conflict.

He put a bandaid on Ray’s last bite. Dressed for the Furman party, regretting the need to choose. The choice reduced his swelling hope, whatever that was, which he didn’t know. A desire to say something important to someone. What, to whom? He tried to adjust his expectation to the Furmans’ party. Francesca Hooton? He glanced about the house quickly before he left, smoothed the bedspread, put a clean second towel in the bathroom, then chided himself for a fool.

Malks, Arthurs, Washingtons, Garfields. Francesca Hooton was standing by the porch door, a glass in her hand, with her husband. He had forgotten she had a husband. All the guests stood around with glasses in their hands, on the screened back porch and outside on the lawn and garden in the nine o’clock June twilight. Exotic evening, light that won’t die, lights in house windows shining still, fireflies, that sort of thing. Everything reminded him of Laura. The lights and fireflies reminded him of her. Standing around with drinks.

He wished he had gone to the other party. He tried to remember what the important thing was he had wanted to tell Francesca before he discovered she had a husband. The only thing he could think of was the news they had caught Ray and he personally had slugged him. It seemed full of meaning, which all dribbled out like an untied balloon when he came out on the screened porch and saw these good friends whom he knew so well, and realized what talking would be like.

In the garden Eleanor Arthur talked about something, and as she talked she drifted slowly to the other end toward the edge of the dark ravine. He felt obliged to follow her drift. She was talking about teaching math as against teaching English, which was her job. She tried to make an argument about it. He had no wish to oppose her on this or any subject, but she was annoyed that he would not quarrel. So she tried to make an argument on why he wouldn’t take a stand on things. When he wouldn’t argue that either, she tried to make an argument, though full of sympathy, that he was still crippled by his bereavement, and when he wouldn’t oppose her on that either, though he had been telling himself all day it was no longer true, she talked about church groups, the Nature society, and sympathetic friends who were only waiting for him to ask. With his hands clasped behind his back and his head lowered thoughtfully, like a cow, or a bull, he tried grazing his way back to the door but still she remained planted like a stake to which he was tethered, until he got the idea of getting her another drink. He came back with Francesca, and then something got into him, and he told them about Ray.

“I lost control of myself and knocked him down.”

Eleanor Arthur was delighted. “The murderer? Well bless you, I bet that made him think about what he had done.”

Not likely, he thought. He looked at Francesca, searching for a message across the maze of others. Her eyes were still bright, but he could not guess what they meant. He felt stupid, his powerful experience a shallow party boast. He felt ashamed, while Francesca looked at him with Laura’s eyes.

He decided to go to the student party. He waited for the buffet, so as not to be impolite, then said goodnight to Francesca Hooton and Gerald and Eleanor Arthur and Bill and Roxanne Furman, and he stepped out into the balmy June evening a few minutes before midnight and hurried to his car under the fresh leafed maple tree, wondering if there was still time.

To the third floor apartment of an old house, a narrow street, he had to park three blocks away. He could hear the music as he approached. Suddenly anxious again, another foolish thing, what interest could he have in these young people with their loud music, what was there to prefer here? The answer was Louise Germane. Of whom he knew nothing. Did Louise Germane have a boyfriend? Lover? Nothing. Only the flattering things she used to say to him and the personal note she had added to the mimeographed party invitation.

He climbed up the narrow steps into a jungle of noise. The door at the top was open, the room loud and crowded. His colleague Gabe Dalton leaned against the doorjamb with his pipe, his beard, a plastic cup of beer in his hand, lecturing to a group of three, avid and respectful. Inside, members of his seminar: “Hey Mr. Hastings. Beer in the kitchen.”

Glad of Gabe Dalton, to make him feel less out of place. He was speaking with great pipe-wielding beard-fortified authority about first one thing and then another. Snowing the kids. He touched Tony on the arm, not to interrupt the monologue, with a lot of unspoken meaning, such as, Good to see you coming out of your cave, pal. Tony looked around, disappointed. He went into the kitchen and found Louise Germane.

She was leaning against the refrigerator, talking to Oscar Gametti and Myra Slue. She saw him and waved. How colorful she was, tall, a blue and red T-shirt, a blue scarf holding back her wheat hair. “Get you some beer.”

The beer barrel in the corner, she pumped it up and handed him a cup. The kitchen was quieter than the rest of the party. She was glad he had come, as if she believed it. Oscar Gametti asked him a question, and he began to talk. The students stood around politely and just like Gabe Dalton he talked, with growing ease from the position of his greater age and knowledge, about national politics and mathematics and the Department of Mathematics. He thought how respectful they were, looking up to him with admiration.

He noticed what small bumps Louise Germane’s breasts made in her T-shirt. He wanted to talk to her in a different way, to say something different. She listened with interest, eagerly, he thought, her eyes seemed to glow at him. He wished he could detach her from the others. He wondered how. He wondered how she had come, how she planned to leave, whether he might, for example, take her home. If he could offer to, in a natural way without shocking her or attracting the attention of others.

He began telling his story, the whole thing starting in the night on the Interstate. He guessed they all knew it already, but he had never told it to students before. He heard himself doing it, he could hardly believe it, and he felt ashamed telling it, but he could not help it. He told it as plain as he could, with diffidence, but he left out no important facts. He told it like something everybody should know, like a lesson about the world. Their expressions became serious, they shook their heads and looked dismayed. He watched Louise Germane’s large awestruck eyes, looking as if she wanted to kiss him.

After the narrative, Myra Slue said, “It’s time for me to go home.”

Tony said, “Me too, probably. Soon.” Then, not too loudly, “Can I give anybody a lift?” Myra Slue did not hear, the others were turned and talking elsewhere. He looked directly at Louise Germane. Repeat, to her: “Can I give you a lift?” The kinship eyes and face that wanted to kiss veiled its pleased surprise. “Why, thank you,” she said, hesitating and adding, “I came with Nora Jensen.”

He allowed his disappointment to show. She said, “I’ll go ask her.” Like an afterthought, “I’ll meet you downstairs.” Like an intrigue, a scheme to conceal. His heart jumped. As she went off to find Nora, he noticed her suppressed little grin. His dignity reeled a little. He said goodnight to Gabe Dalton still holding forth at the door, and went downstairs by himself, where he waited for Louise Germane, wondering if she really would, while his heart leaped raggedly.