Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [141]
There were other, perhaps more rational, alternatives. He could have remarried. He came to see that marriage was not an institution, not even an idea, but a rational social process whose function was to raise children properly. He could have more children, and raise them into rational adults. It would be a risk, but it would be worth it. There could be love and dignity in that kind of life. But it was not so easy. He had no work, no profession, no obsession, and it would occur to Jack that a man without a craft might turn too much of his energies onto his family, and burden his children with too much love and too much care. It would be a crippling thing to do, as crippling as the orphanage had been. So marriage would remain an alternative, rather than becoming an ambition.
Gradually, through his books, his records, his long walks alone, the mere passage of time, he would begin to come to terms with his life as it was. He became an observer. He began to taste his food and to smell the air. He saw things and felt them. The earth became real, and at times he was capable of sensing the pleasure of existence. Other times were not so good. There were evenings when he would drink too much and get to feeling sorry for himself, and at such times he was easy to provoke. Among the regulars of North Beach he became known as a likable but unpredictable character, and it amused him to see the wariness in their eyes.
His life was temporary. He continued to park cars for a living, and he stayed in hotels and ate in restaurants, but for the time being, that was enough. Not that he planned to spend the rest of his life this way. He did not plan anything.
When Sally got back from visiting her parents things were different. Often Jack came home from work to find the old Chinese baby-sitter there and Sally gone. She would come in late, often in the morning, and Jack would refuse to ask her where she had been. Often he heard the roar of a sports car outside just before he heard her key in the lock. When she came in she would be drunk as often as not, and sometimes very affectionate. But Jack would pretend to be asleep.
It could not go on like that. One morning when she came in particularly drunk, Jack heard her singing, and heard Billy cry out. He opened his eyes and turned on the overhead light. Sally had the baby in her arms and was dancing at the foot of the bed. The baby was crying angrily. Jack got up and took Billy away from her and put him back in his crib. Sally stood in the middle of the small room, rocking slightly, her face blank. Her lipstick was smeared and she looked just as she had the first time he had seen her. He wondered if his millionaire friend Myron Bronson had brought her home.
“Come out in the kitchen,” he told her. She followed him, humming to herself.
He made a pot of coffee, and when they had both drunk a cup, he said to her, “This has got to stop. I won’t ask you where you been or what you been doing, but this has got to stop. You can’t take care of Billy and stay out all night, too. Forget about me. Think about him.”
“You think I don’t?” She grinned bleakly. “I think about him all the time.”
“Then stay the hell home and take care of him.”
“Just like that. Why should I?”
Jack gritted his teeth. “Because you’re his mother!”
“You think I don’t know it? What the fuck do you know about it? Have you ever had to sit in a place like this and know you couldn’t do a goddam thing cause you had this infant around your neck? That’s what it’s like, you know. The baby is hanging around your neck and you can’t kill it and you can’t leave it, and it gets so goddam boring sometimes I want to die and you don’t know fuck-all about it. There. It’s got nothing to do with you at all, you just don’t know.”
“Self-pity,” Jack said to her. “I thought you were bigger than that. But all lushes are alike, aren’t they.”
“You’re right.