Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [127]
“No, I just don’t believe in them. When I was very young, not much older than you, I had a vasectomy performed on myself; I had myself neutered, so that, I suppose, I could enjoy what pleasures there were without having to be anxious about getting tied up in a lawsuit, or worse, getting married.” He smiled. “I’ve been married three times since then, and possibly, just possibly, the cause produced the effect. Anyway, I don’t like the idea of murdering the possible. Of course, I can afford such ethics, now.”
But Jack was not particularly interested in Bronson’s problems. “Tell her to come home to me,” he said. He wanted to say, “I need her,” but didn’t.
“Well, she’s asked me to give you a message. Please understand the wording is hers, not mine, and that I won’t kick her out. I don’t think you’d want me to. She’s going through something awful; I think she’s afraid she’s going to lose the only thing that keeps her free, or at least makes her think she’s free; I think she’s afraid that having a child will make her old. I know it won’t, I know what it will do for her, it will complete her; but she can’t see that at all...“
He trailed off, and sat looking out the window.
“Well? What’s the message?”
Bronson sighed. Without turning his head, he said, “She asked me to tell you, `Inform that son of a bitch I’ll have the kid where he can’t find me, and then stick it in an orphanage.”’
Bronson knew the message was vicious, but nonetheless he was still shaken by what happened to Jack’s face. Bronson had been around a lot, but he had never seen anything like this, not even in 1929. Jack’s face turned the color of pale mud. His mouth froze, and his eyes seemed to have turned to lead; cold, dead, lifeless metal. He looked to Bronson as if he had actually died, right at that moment, at the very sound of the words. Bronson felt something like terror constricting his bowels, and he took a quick drink to cover his fear.
Jack did not see Bronson’s reaction; he saw nothing. Twenty years of his life had just vanished and he was standing naked on a cold wooden floor in an endless corridor of shabby beds with cheap metal frames and he was alone and there was no one there to make him unafraid of what had wakened him in terror. He could not call out because if he had called out someone would have come and slapped him for making a fuss, and the other boys would have laughed at him for his fright, for his nightmare, and for not being able to hold it in. And yet deep inside him was the terror, the old terror, the dead, nameless, empty, silent screaming terror that had wakened him with dead horror of emptiness and he died right at that moment, and twenty years later he died of it again and sat there like a stone for minutes; minutes, not hearing the noise of the crowd in Vesuvio’s, not seeing the concerned, afraid, gentle face of Myron Bronson peering at him; until, by tremendous effort, he made himself come out of it, buried the memory, and said:
“Tell her if she does that I’ll kill her.” He got up and left the bar.
She came back to him late that night and found him lying like a stone in their bed, and she kissed his body and whispered her love in his ear and made him come back to life, telling him that she had not meant it, could not have meant it, wanted to hurt him the worst way she could and had known that would do it, and how she hated herself for having done it, and how she wanted the child now, loved it already and wanted it badly, his child, her child, and would love the child forever as she would love Jack forever; and at last he came to life, the first sign of it tears flowing down his cheeks, and then heavy racking sobs out of his chest as they clung to each other, both sobbing now, wordlessly, until it passed and they slept.
Twenty-Two
They had an argument about where the baby was to be born. Sally had been reading some books on the subject of natural childbirth and related matters, had been calling and visiting friends who had had babies, and decided that one thing most of the women really