A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [65]
This seems so unforced that I feel he must see it the way I do. And so restrained, as well, when I might have torn at him – Give me my children.
His flesh, his skin, his bones, his blood – all are still connected with mine, but now suddenly not. Not a muscular withdrawal. Something different, something unsuspected.
His face turns away from mine. He puts his mouth momentarily on my shoulder. Then, still not looking at me, he brushes a hand across my forehead.
“Darling,” he says, “I’m not God. I can’t solve anything.”
Unaccountably, we are apart, maybe against both our wills. He untangles himself and begins searching, highly practical, for his cigarettes. We light two and then find we cannot bear to be together naked any longer, and so we put on our clothes, which mysteriously protect us against one another.
“What are you thinking, Rachel?”
“Thinking? Oh –”
“Look up there,” he says, as though battling for distance. “Along the ridge. I never realized you could see the cemetery so well from here, did you?”
“Yes. I don’t like it much, though.”
“I don’t, either. I dislike graves on principle. I don’t know why I went there last week.”
“Nick, why don’t you ever say what you mean?”
“Don’t make a major production of it, eh?” he says, defensively. “I’ve said more than enough, about everything. Look – did I ever show you this?”
He pulls out his wallet and extracts a photograph. It has been in there for some while, and the edges of the paper are softened with handling. It is a picture of a boy about six years old, not set against any background, just a boy standing there. A boy whose face and eyes speak entirely of Nick.
Why is it that it should never have occurred to me, that he was married and had children?
“Yours?”
My voice is steady. When it actually comes to it, I can manage at least this much. Your son? What a nice photograph.
“Yes,” he says, taking the picture away from me. “Mine.”
Anyone in her right mind would have known this a long time ago. He is thirty-six. If a man intends to marry, he will usually have done it by then. The pain is unspecified, as though I hurt everywhere. Any seventeen-year-old would at least have wondered, before, and asked him.
“Nick – I have to go home now.”
As always, he accepts this with no question or argument.
“Okay, darling. If you say so.”
The peach-coloured nightlight is not on in Mother’s bedroom. She seems to be asleep. It’s so unusual that I’m worried, and listen at her door, and then I hear her breathing, a whispered snore, and know she’s all right. I can hardly believe that I’m to be spared her interested questions, her care. And yet, paradoxically, I wish she were awake. She often likes a cup of tea, late at night, if she’s had trouble sleeping. I don’t mind making it for her.
In my bedroom, I undress in darkness. I lie down quietly, and place my hands on my thighs, and now I don’t remember and won’t remember anything except how it was tonight. All I will ever remember is that he arched over me like the sun. I won’t remember anything else. Nothing.
It does not make any difference, his being married. It isn’t as though I ever thought it would come to anything. The idea hardly crossed my mind. Everything is just the same as it was. I still would have done the same, even if I’d known. I’m not so stupid as to imagine these chance encounters ever lead to anything permanent.
Except that all of my life seems a chance encounter, and everything that happens to me is permanent. That isn’t a clever way to be.
How much the boy looks like him. I wonder if she is glad about that, whoever she is. If she has any brains at all, she ought to give thanks every day of her – but I don’t suppose she does. She’s like my sister, no doubt, complaining every minute how tired she is, how worn out, until you feel you would like to take a woman like that and throttle her with extreme slowness, your thumbs on her neck veins, and her eyes very gradually blurring –
Oh my God. I didn’t mean it. Honestly.
I ought to be thinking of practicalities. I will have to do