Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [29]
In any university town there are hundreds of men like Harrelson, out late at night buying pizzas, sitting at bars sipping their beers quietly, or roaming the streets in their old clunkers. They are all afraid of going home, afraid of looking again at the sheets of clean typewriter paper and the notebooks bare of written thought. They are afraid of facing again their sullen wives and lovers, their tattered and noisy children, if they have any. Against the odds, they refuse to succeed, and the wives and lovers know this and understand it as a rebuke to themselves and family life.
“You won’t grow up” is Meredith’s succinct way of putting it. She has put it to him this way many times, most recently two months ago, in December, the last time they talked. They were sitting in her apartment, its cleanliness a stark contrast to Harrelson’s squalor. Meredith is an accountant, a serious worker with a serious income. They have known each other since high school, when their romance took shape. This romance is now, according to Meredith, on its frail last legs. The fireplace in Meredith’s apartment supplied potent warmth against the December cold, and she had put out the brandy, a V.S.O.P. Despite the appearances, however, the evening was tense, the screws of pressure twisted by Meredith’s contempt for her four-year fiancé. “Look at you,” Meredith said. “Look at what you’ve done with your life. You could have been brilliant. I feel so sorry for you. I don’t want to marry a man I feel sorry for.”
“I agree with you,” Harrelson said. “Pity is a bad foundation for any marriage.”
“Honey,” she said, “I don’t want to break off with you, because I do love you, but I’ve got other things going for me, and I can’t hold them off forever. You know I’ve been going out with other men.”
Harrelson nodded. He was silently praying that she wouldn’t continue in this vein.
“And many of them,” Meredith continued, “are very nice: very bright, successful, and, uh, you know, handsome. I can’t wait forever.”
Harrelson thought she had said everything possible to wound him. So he said, “I’ve made real progress this month. Really, I have. I’m only about fifty pages away from finishing.” He smiled. “Fifty pages away from the degree and a good job.”
“You’re thirty years old,” she said. “You’re getting too old to hire.”
“Oh, no!” This exclamation from Harrelson was more an outcry than a denial.
Meredith leaned forward. Her eyes were glittering. “Honey,” she said, “it’s just that I don’t want to be married to a nerd.”
This was more than even Harrelson could take. He put down his brandy, got into his coat, and left. Because he was Harrelson and because he lived according to a consistent style, he did not shout at her or make an accusation in return. He thought his guardian angels were on vacation and had failed to muzzle Meredith. They allowed her to say what shouldn’t have been said. What no one else knows is that although he attends no church, Harrelson is in an almost constant state of prayer. He has familiars in the spirit world.
The inside of his car smells of burned electrical wire and popcorn. As he exhales smoke from the hitchhiker’s leftover cigarette, a fog appears and frosts visibly on the inside windshield in a pattern of continuous webbing. The car pulls out of its parking spot, its engine making tappet noises that rise to a whine as the back wheels spin on the ice. Fishtailing, the car skids down the street. Harrelson has no snow tires; in fact, the tires are bald. He plans his route in an effort to avoid hills and valleys. Within a minute he has forgotten the route he has planned.
Despite the snow and the streetlights, the street is darker than it should be: a stygian street. Harrelson remembers that one of his headlights has blown out. His hands, gloveless, are aching, numb. And he feels ready to doze off, despite