Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [142]
This admission made Jack feel superior, and he said, “Okay, have some more coffee. Listen, we have to hold this thing together, whether we like it or not.” But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true. He was being stubborn now, not rational. It was, he knew later, the greatest punishment he could torture her with: holding on.
It was amazing how long it lasted, even after that. There would be long periods when Sally would stay home and “take care of the baby” (now walking all over the house, a tiny, sturdy, blue-eyed blond replica of Jack), stay home and knit, make good dinners, and seem to be perfectly contented. Jack cooperated; he asked for and got an extra night off a week, thinking that the sacrifice in money was worth the gain in time; and they went out to bars, to parties among Sally’s old friends, some of whom were glad to meet Jack and liked to talk to him about prison life; and days they went for drives more often, to the beach or the mountains, Sally and Jack in the front and little Billy in the back in his little car-seat. It was an excellent abstract of a rich, full life.
But then there were times when Jack would come home and there would be the Chinese baby-sitter, and, secretly pleased but refusing to admit it, he would heave a sigh, pay off the sitter, and wait for Sally. He no longer pretended to be asleep, because when she got home they would want to have their argument. Jack looked forward to the arguments because he always won. After all, he had the baby on his side, and all Sally had was the advantage of ending up the contrite sinner.
The arguments would take different turns. Sometimes Sally would say that it was Jack’s fault because he didn’t have a better job. But he could top that. Smugly he would tell her that rotten vicious ex-convicts like himself were not in demand as bank presidents. Once she retorted that he did not even try to find a job where he would work days, and he countered that by finding one, working in a downtown parking lot. It was a real triumph for him (a triumph of spite, but still a triumph); he worked all day and Sally stayed home with Billy all day. At night Jack insisted that they go out together. If he did not insist, she would. At the end of the month Jack discovered what he had really known all the time—they had no money to pay the bills.
He got scared. “We can’t go out for a month!” he told her. “We don’t even have enough money to buy food!”
“You’re going to keep me locked in here for a month?” was her shocked, victorious reply.
“Well, goddam it, we just don’t have any money!” There was no answer to that!
“Borrow some from Myron,” she said, and before he could counter with his “ethics” she added, “This time we really need the money. It’s not as if we wouldn’t pay it back.”
Jack accepted defeat and finally called Myron Bronson. Both Jack and Sally were horrified to discover that Bronson was in Las Vegas and wouldn’t be back for a week.
In the end, Jack got an advance of his wages, and they ate, but that was about all. They didn’t go out.
That lasted two weeks. On the night Jack came home with his paycheck, Sally was not there. The baby was asleep in his crib, but there was no Chinese baby-sitter. When he realized that Sally had actually abandoned the child, the last bit of love in him died; and so what followed did not have any real effect at all. His anger was real, but there was no passion behind it.
It was two in the morning when she called. Her voice sounded strange and distant, as if she were turned away from the mouthpiece.
“What’s the matter?” he said angrily. “Where are you? Why did you leave the baby alone?”
“I’m...in a phone booth,” she said. She giggled.
“Why did you leave Billy alone?”
“I’m not...alone,” Sally giggled. “We’re in here together.”
“Who? Who?”
“Me...and this big, black nigger.” Jack heard a distant muttering, and Sally’s voice saying, “Why not call you that? That’s what you are. That’s what I wanted. A big...black... nigger.”
“What