The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [55]
She scrambled up again. ‘Watch me do a handspring. Watch me do a--’
‘Honey, be a little quieter,’ Lucile said. She sat down beside Biff on the plush sofa. ‘Don’t she remind you a little of him--something about her eyes and face?’
‘Hell, no. I can’t see the slightest resemblance between Baby and Leroy Wilson.’
Lucile looked too thin and worn out for her age. Maybe it was the black dress and because she had been crying. ‘After all, we got to admit he’s Baby’s father,’ she said.
‘Can’t you ever forget about that man?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I always been a fool about two things. And that’s Leroy and Baby.’
Bill’s new growth of beard was blue against the pale skin of his face and his voice sounded tired. ‘Don’t you ever just think a thing through and find out what’s happened and what ought to come from that? Don’t you ever use logic--if these are the given facts this ought to be the result?’
‘Not about him, I guess.’
Biff spoke in a weary manner and his eyes were almost closed.
‘You married this certain party when you were seventeen, and afterward there was just one racket between you after another.
You divorced him. Then two years later you married him a second time. And now he’s gone off again and you don’t know where he is. It seems like those facts would show you one thing--you two are not suited to each other. And that’s aside from the more personal side--the sort of man this certain party happens to be anyway.’
‘God knows I been realizing all along he’s a heel. I just hope he won’t ever knock on that door again.’
‘Look, Baby,’ Biff said quickly. He laced his fingers and held up his hands. ‘This is the church and this is the steeple. Open the door and here are God’s people.’
Lucile shook her head. ‘You don’t have to bother about Baby. I tell her everything. She knows about the whole mess from A to Z.’
‘Then if he comes back you’ll let him stay here and sponge on you just as long as he pleases--like it was before?’
‘Yeah. I guess I would. Every time the doorbell or the phone rings, every time anybody steps up on the porch, something in the back of my mind thinks about that man.’ Biff spread out the palms of his hands. ‘There you are.’ The clock struck two.
The room was very close and hot. Baby turned another handspring and made a split again on the waxed floor. Then Biff took her up into his lap. Her little legs dangled against his shin. She unbuttoned his vest and burrowed her face into him.
‘Listen,’ Lucile said. ‘If I ask you a question will you promise to answer me the truth?’
‘Sure.’
‘No matter what it is?’
Biff touched Baby’s soft gold hair and laid his hand gently on the side of her little head. ‘Of course.’
‘It was about seven years ago. Soon after we was married the first time. And he came in one night from your place with big knots all over his head and told me you caught him by the neck and banged his head against the side of the wall. He made up some tale about why you did it, but I want to know the real reason.’
Biff turned the wedding ring on his finger. I just never did like Leroy, and we had a fight In those days I was different from now.’
‘No. There was some definite thing you did that for. We been knowing each other a pretty long time, and I understand by now that you got a real reason for every single thing you ever do. Your mind runs by reasons instead of just wants. Now, you promised you’d tell me what it was, and I want to know.’
‘It wouldn’t mean anything now.’
‘I tell you I got to know.’
‘All right,’ Biff said. ‘He came in that night and started drinking, and when he was drunk he shot off his mouth about you. He said he would come home about once a month and beat hell out of you and you would take it. But then afterward you would step outside in the hall and laugh aloud a few times so that the neighbors in the