Mr. Bridge_ A Novel - Evan S. Connell [80]
He placed one hand on the rail to steady himself and started down. At the bottom of the steps he raised the gun and looked around the corner into the living room. The drapes had been drawn apart. Moonlight spilled through the east window and he could see a man lying on top of Ruth. She opened her mouth and kicked her legs like a frog. The man lifted his head. He groaned again. She pushed at his face, and as mechanically as figures in an old film they rolled away from each other. She got to her feet briskly and pulled down on her skirt. She brushed the hair out of her eyes and stepped into her shoes. One of the sofa cushions was lying on the floor. She picked it up and dropped it on the sofa. At that moment the clock began to chime. Mr. Bridge wondered if he was asleep; he blinked and looked around, because he thought he remembered the sound of the front door closing. The man had disappeared.
Ruth was calmly buttoning her blouse, which was undone halfway to the waist. He gazed at her in disbelief. She ignored him and went on buttoning her blouse. He remembered that he had brought the gun; he looked at it and saw that it was in his hand, and the weight of it convinced him that he was awake.
“What were you planning to do?” she asked.
He put the gun in the pocket of his bathrobe and sat down in the nearest chair. It seemed to him that he had been a fool. He was a fool to suppose that he could prevent things like this from happening.
Ruth went on in the same sardonic voice: “He begged me to go to a hotel, but I wouldn’t. So here we are. Here we are, you and I.” She crossed her arms and looked down on him with an expression of indifference or contempt. “Promise me one thing. Don’t let Mother know. It would probably kill her.”
Mr. Bridge realized that he was attempting to cry, but he had not cried since he was a child. He began to cough.
“Things are different now,” she said, and she approached and brushed his ear with the tip of her little finger, but her face was hard. Her eyes were not asking forgiveness.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Some things never change. Love and respect and human decency—these never change. Your mother and I have these things.”
“Good for you.”
“No,” he said firmly. “Without these none of us could go on living.”
Ruth shrugged. She did not seem to be listening. He looked up at her helplessly.
“What about this man? Are you planning to be married?”
“Oh God,” she murmured with a gesture of impatience. “I never saw that ass before tonight. Times have changed since you were young.” Then she added, “And besides, you’ve probably forgotten how it used to be.”
He shook his head again. “I have not forgotten what it means to desire a woman. I am still able to feel great desire for your mother.”
“I don’t want to talk any more,” she said. “I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed.” She ran out of the room and up the steps.
85 Sweet Shit
For three days Mrs. Bridge had been in bed with a cold. Now she was well enough to receive visitors, though she remained upstairs. Most of her friends came by bringing a book or flowers or some fresh fruit, and among these visitors was Mildred Cox, who had moved into the neighborhood only a few weeks earlier and whom Mrs. Bridge did not know very well.
When Mrs. Cox departed, Carolyn, who saw her to the door, returned to the living room and remarked in a voice nearly indistinguishable from her mother’s: “Well, wasn’t that sweet!”
Then Ruth said, “I am so sick of that word. She’s sweet. It was sweet. Now wasn’t that sweet? Everything is sweet. Shit!”
Carolyn looked immediately at their father.
He was in his chair beside the fireplace. On his lap lay a vacation brochure from the Manitoba tourist bureau and he had been thinking about a fishing trip next summer. This agreeable prospect, together with the flames crackling around the logs and the autumn wind humming beneath the eaves of the house, had lulled him so that at first he did not hear what Ruth said. At last he lifted his head to look at her. From the emphasis she