Tony and Susan

THREE

Susan Morrow sets down the page. Quiet returns, here where she lives, with the sound of the refrigerator, the Monopoly-playing children murmuring and laughing in the next room. Here, in this wooded enclave of winding residential streets, all is calm, all is still. It’s safer here. She arches, stretches, this impulse to the kitchen for more coffee. Resist. Have a green wrapper mint instead, on the table under Martha’s tail.

Once she too drove all night, Susan and Arnold and the children to Cape Cod. Arnold is smarter than Tony Hastings, could he have avoided Tony’s fix? He’s a distinguished man, he could give those men bypass surgery for fixing his tires, would that protect him? He’s also a grinning boy with dusty hair who makes questionable jokes and waits for your response. Tonight Arnold is in a hotel, she almost forgot from worrying about imaginary Tony, in a tropical bamboo lounge underground in the dark, having drinks with the medical folk. Don’t watch.

Martha the cat studies her, quietly puzzled. Every night Susan sits like this, stalking the flat white page in the glare as if she saw something which Martha sees is plainly not there. Martha understands stalking, but what can she stalk in her own lap, and how can she stalk with face so relaxed? Martha stalks for hours too, with only her tail twitching, but when she stalks there’s always something, a mouse or bird or the illusion of one.

Nocturnal Animals 3

The man with the triangular face whose name was Ray, the mouth too small for his chin, the half bald head with the pompadour, stood with hands in his pockets and watched the others work. He tapped his feet on the ground like a dance. I mustn’t forget this is the man who forced me off the road, Tony Hastings said to himself, not forgetting. The man kept murmuring, “Fuck you,” like a song. Tapping his feet and murmuring “Fuck you,” looking at Tony’s wife and daughter standing by the back door of the car close together, as if saying it to them, and then at Tony, looking at Tony while he murmured it, as if to him. In a kind of tune just loud enough to be heard, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

“What are you looking at?” the man said.

“What were you trying to do, there on the road?” Tony said.

A truck was coming, it went by, loud. If the man answered Tony did not hear it. A car or truck would go by every three or four minutes, maybe more. As long as cars go by we’re safe, Tony thought, wondering what danger he was safe from.

“Hot shot,” the man said.

“What?”

“Law-abiding driver.”

“What?”

“That all you can say, ‘what’?”

“Look here—”

“I’m looking.”

He could not speak, caught, not having prepared a speech for his emotions.

“What were you trying to do, there on the road?” the man said after a while.

“We’re just trying to get where we’re going.”

“Where a you going?”

Tony held back.

“Where a you going?”

“We’re trying to get to Maine. We’re just trying to get to Maine.”

“What’s in Maine?”

Tony did not want to answer.

“What’s in Maine?”

He felt like a boy resisting bullies.

The man stepped toward him. “I said what’s in Maine?”

The man came close enough for Tony to smell the onions with something sweet and liquory, his face level with Tony’s, and though he was thin, Tony knew the man could destroy him. He took a step backward but the man closed the gap. It’s the age difference, Tony said to himself, not adding that he had not been in a fight since he was a boy and never won one then. I live in a different world, he almost said to himself.

He didn’t want to say he had a summer place in Maine.

The man leaned forward, forcing Tony to lean back. He’d better not touch me, he said to himself. The man took hold of Tony’s sweater and pushed a little. “What did you say was in Maine?” he said.

Let go of me, Tony ought to have said. “Let go of me,” he said. He heard his voice frail like a small kid being tortured.

Her voice rang out loud in the night: “Let my Daddy alone!”

“Fuck you baby,” the man said. He let go of Tony’s sweater, laughed, and strolled over to the women. Terrified, trembling, trying to heat his cowardly blood to the required temperature, Tony followed. “What’s in Maine? Your Daddy won’t tell me, so you tell me, okay? What you going to in Maine?”

“What’s it to you?” she said.

“Come on baby, we’re nice guys. We’re fixin your tire. You can tell me, what’s in Maine?”

“Our summer place,” she said. “Okay? Satisfied?”

“Your Daddy thinks he’s better than me. What do you think of that?”

“Well he is,” she said.

“Your Daddy is scared of me. He’s scared I can beat the shit out of him.”

“You’re a lousy little no good,” she said. “You’re a punk, you scum.” Her voice was high and frantic, like a scream.

The man took an angry step toward her. When Laura stepped between he pushed her aside. He put his hands on the girl’s shoulders up against the car and instantly Laura was on him again, hitting him, clawing, pulling at him from behind, until he flung about and pushed so she fell. “Bitch!” he murmured. Somehow Tony must have gotten in there too, with a leap of strength before the man’s arm swung around like a crowbar and knocked him back. His nose felt hit like a crowbar, it stung. The man faced the three of them and snarled: “Watch it, you sons a bitches, you got no call to talk to me like that.”

The men by the tire had stopped their work to watch.

When Tony Hastings saw his wife Laura fall, when he heard her little cry of shock and pain in the private voice he knew so well and saw her in her traveling slacks and dark sweater sitting on the ground and watched her laboriously turn to pull herself to her feet, he thought, bad, a bad thing is happening, like news of the breakout of war. As if in his whole lucky life he had never before known a really bad thing. He remembered thinking, when his cowardly blood exploded in his head, jumping on the man and being flung back by the man’s arm like a crowbar: this is no childhood bully. Real people are being knocked down.

The man looked a grievance at him. “Christ sake, we’re fixin your fuckin tire,” he said. He walked over to the others. They were almost finished, tightening the bolts. “And when we’re done we see the cops about this here accident you caused.”

“We’ll have to find a telephone,” Tony said.

“Yeah? You see any telephones around here?”

“What’s the nearest town ahead?”

The others put on the hubcap. They rolled the bad tire back to the trunk of Tony’s car and stowed it in with the jack.

“What do you want a town for?”

“To report to the police.”

“Right,” the man said. “So how you gonna do that?”

“We’ll drive to the police station.”

“Leave the scene of the accident?”

“What do you want to do, wait until another police car comes by?” He remembered, you already sent one away.

“Daddy,” Helen said, “there’s phones along the road. Emergency phones, I saw them.”

Yes, he remembered.

“They’s out of order,” the man said.

“All they good for is breakdowns and repairs,” the man with the glasses said. The man with the beard was grinning.

“We have to go to Bailey, it’s the only way,” Ray said. “You can’t get cops on them road phones anyway.”

“All right,” Tony said, decisively. “We’ll go to Bailey and report it there.”

“So how do you propose to get there?” the man said.

“In our cars.”

“Yeah? Which car?”

“Both cars.”

“Naw, mister. Don’t try no fuckin business with me.”

“What’s the matter?”

“How do I know you ain’t going to scoot outa here, leave me holding the bucket?”

“You think we would not go to the police?”

“How do I know you wouldn’t?”

“Don’t worry. I mean to report this.”

“You don’t even know where Bailey is.”

“You lead the way, we’ll follow.”

“Hah!” The man laughed. Then he seemed to think a while, looking out into the night woods as if something had occurred to him. He thought some more and seemed for a moment to have forgotten them all, dreaming away about something of his own. He’s crazy, Tony thought, the words sounding like news. Then the man returned. “What’s to keep you from fading away and taking one of them crossways to the other side?”

“You seem pretty good at keeping close to other cars,” Tony said. The man laughed again. “Okay, we’ll go first and you follow. We couldn’t get away from you very well that way.” They were all grinning now as if these were jokes, and even Tony grinned a little.

“Fuck you,” the man said. “You go in my car.”

“What?”

“You go with us.”

“No way.”

“Lou can drive your car. He’s a law abiding citizen. He’ll take good care of it.”

Helen groaned. “No.”

“We can’t do that,” Tony said.

“Why not?”

“I’m not going to leave my car in your hands, for one thing.”

The man pretended to be surprised. “You’re not? What, you think we’re gonna steal it?” Then he said, “Okay. You go in your car, the girl comes with us.”

A cry of alarm from Helen. She went to the car, but the man blocked her way.

“No you don’t,” Tony said.

“Sure you will,” the man said. “You’ll come with us, won’t you honey?” He put his hand on her plaid shirt over her breast, and they struggled a little.

“Tony,” Laura said. She was looking at him, and the man was looking at them both. Then she shouted: “Leave her alone!”

“Stop it,” Tony said, fighting the quaver in his voice.

“She likes it,” the man said.

“I do not!” she said.

“Sure you do honey, you just don’t know.”

“Tony,” Laura said again, quietly. He tightened his muscles, clenched fists, and stepped toward the man, but the man with the beard held him by the arm. He tried to pull loose. The man named Ray noticed and turned to Tony, releasing the girl. She broke away and ran down the road.

“Helen!” Tony called.

“Who’s boss in your family?” Ray said.

None of your business was in his head but he said nothing. He was looking at his daughter running along the shoulder of the highway. “Helen, Helen.” The man named Ray was grinning at him with his oversized teeth in his undersized mouth. About fifty yards away she sat down on a rock just off the edge of the shoulder. He could see she was crying. There was a moment of silence.

With a nod of his head Ray signaled to the others and they went over to his car and had a conference. Tony was aware of the night, of the coolness and the mountain clarity of the stars. Behind him the ground descended into black woods, he could not see into them at all. The opposite lanes were out of sight up the slope on the other side, concealed by trees. When cars went by there they cast a white light in the trees like a ghost in the branches. The men in their conference were gesturing, excited, laughing, and Helen down the road was sitting on the rock with her head in her hands.

A car came along. As it approached Helen went to the roadside and waved at it frantically. It increased its speed and went by.

Then Laura spoke to Tony. “Come on,” she said, “we can pick her up down there.” She got into their car. But when Tony went around to the driver’s side, he saw Helen coming back, and the three men standing between her and the car.

She had a stick in her hand.

Another car was approaching. She had come almost up to the three men’s car and when the lights came closer she ran into the highway waving both arms and the stick over her head. The car slowed down. It was a pickup truck, and it stopped just short of her. The driver leaned over to the right side and looked out. “What are you trying to be killed?” he said.

He was an old man in a baseball cap. They all went up to him except Laura, who was in the car. “These guys—” Helen said.

“It’s okay,” Ray said. “She’s a little shook up.”

“It’s not okay, ask my Daddy.”

“Eh?” the old man said.

“We need help,” Tony said.

“What say?”

“Flat tire,” Ray said. “We fixed it for them.” He was nodding and smiling, his teeth like a rodent. “Everything’s under control.”

“Eh?” the old man said. “She trying to get herself killed?”

Ray shouted at him. “It’s okay! Everything’s under control!”

Tony stepped forward. “Excuse me—” he said. He heard Helen crying: “Help us, please.” The old man looked at Ray, who was laughing and waving the tire iron.

“What say?” He cupped his ear.

“No problem,” Ray said in a loud voice.

“No no,” Tony tried to shout. Someone was dragging him back by the arm. The old man looked at the group of them. His face was bewildered and unhappy, but perhaps it was always that way. He looked at Ray’s tire iron, hesitating. “No problem then,” he said suddenly. His voice was testy, and he disappeared from the window, put the pickup truck in gear, and drove off.

Behind him, Tony heard Helen cry out, “For Christ sake, mister!”

“What’s the matter, baby?” Ray said. “You don’t want to mess with a deaf old man like him.”

There was a rush of motion, the men startled, Helen making a dash around them to the car, into the back seat, slamming the door. Another moment of silence, Ray holding Tony by the elbow, not hard, Laura and Helen waiting for him in the car.

“Okay,” Ray said at last. “We go in both cars.”

The relief at last of the nightmare ending, tired of their game, which had gone as far as it could, they must have realized nothing more was possible. He knew they would not go to the police, but he didn’t care, glad only to be free of them.

Except that Ray had him by the elbow. He moved toward the car and felt the grip tighten, hold him back.

“Not you,” Ray said.

“What?”

The real fear now, shock of the first nuclear warning in the war.

“We split up,” Ray said. “You go in my car.”

“No way.”

He saw the action at his car, the man with glasses running to the driver’s door, opening it just before Laura on the passenger side realizing too late what was happening could reach over to lock it, the man holding it open, bracing it where he stood with his foot in the car, while Ray was saying, “You ain’t got no choice.”

“I’m not going to leave my family.”

“I said, mister, you ain’t got no choice.”

So now the coercion was overt. With Ray’s two partners, one with his foot in the door of Tony’s car, looking at Ray waiting for some decision or order what to do. The man thought a while. He released Tony and said, “You go with Lou.”

When Ray went over to Tony’s car, Tony tried to follow, but the man with the beard touched him. “Better not,” he said. He had something in his hand, Tony could not tell what. Tony shook him off and went after Ray. He saw the man with his foot in the door reach inside to unlock the back, which Helen sitting there tried to prevent. He saw a struggle with Helen trying to bite the hand of the man with glasses, who got the door open and got in. He ran after Ray thinking I’ll hit him in the back, I’ll knock him down and get in the car, but something heavy sliced across his shins, he plunged forward and fell with hands and knees scraping the pavement, his chin hit, and he looked up and saw Ray getting into the driver’s seat.

With a violent roar the car started up, then a shriek of the tires as it pulled onto the highway and sped away. He saw the horrified faces of his wife and daughter looking at him as the car rushed by, and he heard the rushed diminuendo of the car’s speed as it went down the road, the little red lights shrinking and getting closer together until they were gone.

For a few moments then there was only the silence of the woods and some distant roar of a truck almost indistinguishable from silence, while Tony looked down the invisible road where all he loved had disappeared, trying to find some way to deny what the words in his mind said had happened.

The man with the beard, whose name was Lou, was looking down at him. He held the tire iron in his hand. “Come on,” he said. “You’d better get in the car.”