Rabbit, Run - John Updike [133]
The buzzer answers and he quickly snaps open the inner door and starts up the steps. Ruth comes to the banister and looks down and says, “Go away.”
“Huh? How’d you know it was me?”
“Go back to your wife.”
“I can’t. I just left her.”
She laughs; he has climbed to the step next to the top one, and their faces are on a level. “You’re always leaving her,” she says.
“No, this time it’s different. It’s really bad.”
“You’re bad all around. You’re bad with me, too.”
“Why?” He has come up the last step and stands there a yard away from her, excited and helpless. He thought when he saw her, instinct would tell him what to do but in a way it’s all new, though it’s only been a few weeks. She is changed, graver in her motions and thicker in the waist. The blue of her eyes is darker.
She looks at him with a contempt that is totally new. “Why?” she repeats in an incredulous hard voice.
“Let me guess,” he says. “You’re pregnant.”
Surprise softens the hardness a moment.
“That’s great,” he says, and takes advantage of her softness to push her ahead of him into the room. Her arms and sweater give like little cushions when he pushes. “Great,” he repeats, closing the door. He tries to embrace her and she fights him successfully and backs away behind a chair. She had meant that fight; his neck is scraped.
“Go away,” she says. “Go away.”
“Don’t you need me?”
“Need you,” she cries, and he squints in pain at the straining note of hysteria; he feels she has imagined this encounter so often she is determined to say everything, which will be too much. He sits down in an easy chair. His legs ache. She says, “I needed you that night you walked out. Remember how much I needed you? Remember what you made me do?”
“She was in the hospital,” he says. “I had to go.”
“God, you’re cute. God, you’re so holy. You had to go. You had to stay, too, didn’t you? You know, I was stupid enough to think you’d at least call.”
“I wanted to but I was trying to start clean. I didn’t know you were pregnant.”
“You didn’t, why not? Anybody else would have. I was sick enough.”
“When, with me?”
“God, yes. Why don’t you look outside your own pretty skin once in a while?”
“Well why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why should I? What would that have done? You’re no help. You’re nothing. You know why I didn’t? You’ll laugh, but I didn’t because I thought you’d leave me if you knew. You wouldn’t ever let me do anything to prevent it but I figured once it happened you’d leave me. You left me anyway so there you are. Why don’t you get out? Please get out. I begged you to get out the first time. The damn first time I begged you. Why are you here?”
“I want to be here. It’s right. Look. I’m happy you’re pregnant.”
“It’s too late to be happy.”
“Why? Why is it too late?” He’s frightened, remembering how she wasn’t here when he came before. She’s here now, she had been away then. Women went away to have it done, he knew.
“How can you sit there?” she asks him. “I can’t understand it, how you can sit there; you just killed your baby and there you sit.”
“Who told you that?”
“Your ministerial friend. Your fellow saint. He called about a half-hour ago.”
“God. He’s still trying.”
“I said you weren’t here. I said you’d never be here.”
“I didn’t kill the poor kid. Janice did. I got mad at her one night and came looking for you and she got drunk and drowned the poor kid in the bathtub. Don’t make me talk about it. Where were you, anyway?”
She looks at him with dull wonder and says softly, “Boy, you really have the touch of death, don’t you?”
“Hey; have you done something?”
“Hold still. Just sit there. I see you very clear all of a sudden. You’re Mr. Death himself. You’re not just nothing, you’re worse than nothing. You’re not a rat, you don’t stink, you’re not enough to stink.”
“Look, I didn’t do anything. I was coming to see you when it happened.”
“No, you don’t do anything. You just wander around