Chapter 10 3

Only once in September did we have what might be called a conversation. It was very near the end of the month, when, happening to see me alone in my office, he came in to talk for a few minutes. As always, he looked fresh, bright, clean, and sharp.

"Mr. MacMahon's complaining that his horses are getting too fat," he said. "How come you quit your riding lessons?"

I blushed. "I thought the course was finished, I guess."

"You want to pick them up again? It's right much trouble for him to take time to exercise them as much as they need."

"No, I guess not. I've kind of lost interest, and I don't think Rennie would enjoy it very much."

"Don't you? Why shouldn't she?"

I should say there was no malice evident in his voice, but I couldn't help thinking I was being embarrassed purposely.

"You know why not, Joe. Why do you even suggest it?" I was suddenly indignant on Rennie's behalf. "I feel uncomfortable as hell criticizing you, but I don't see why you're so determined to make her feel worse than she does already."

He jabbed his spectacles back on his nose.

"Don't worry about Rennie."

"You mean it's a little late for me to start being thoughtful. I agree. But unless you're out to punish her I don't know why you make her come up to my room and all."

"I'm not out to punish anybody, Jake; you know that. I'm just out to try to understand her."

"Well, don't you understand that she's pretty much shot these days? I'm surprised she's held up this long."

"She's pretty strong," Joe smiled. "You probably don't realize that in a way Rennie and I have been happier in the last few weeks than we've been for a long tune."

"How come?"

"For one thing, since this started I've shelved the dissertation for a while, so we've had more time together than usual. We've talked to each other about ourselves more than we ever did before, necessarily, and all that."

I was appalled. "You can't say she's been happy."

"Not in the way you probably mean, I guess. We certainly haven't beencarefree; but you can be pretty much happy without being carefree. The point is we've been dealing with each other pretty intensely and objectively -- exploring each other as deep as we can. That part of it's been fine. And we've been outdoors a lot, because we didn't want to ruin our health over it. We've probably felt a lot closer to each other than ever, whether we've solved anything or not."

"Do you think you have?"

"Well, we've certainlylearned some things. For one thing we've found all kinds of ties that we weren't aware of before, so that we probably wouldn't break up even if the thing doesn't straighten itself out. I doubt if I respect her as much as before -- how could I? At least not for the same things. But she's been awfully good in this. Pretty damned strong most of the time, and I appreciate that. What do you think of my friend Rennie these days?"

"Me?" I hadn't been especially thinking about what I thought of her, at least since her revelation of two nights earlier. Now I had to think about it quickly. "Oh, I don't know," I stalled.

"You must have had a strange picture of us both before. I'd like to know what you think of her now. Are you disgusted with her for not knowing how she feels?"

I leaned back in my chair and regarded the red pencil with which I'd been correcting grammar exercises.

"As a matter of fact," I said, "I might be in love with her."

"Is that right?" he asked quickly, bright with interest.

"I wouldn't be surprised. It was right a couple of days ago, anyhow. I don't feel it very strongly now, but I don't feel that I'm not, either."

"That's great!" Joe laughed: what he meant, I believe, wasThat's interesting. "Is that what you felt when you went to bed with her the first time? You could have said so."

"No. I didn't feel that way then."

"Does Rennie know about this?"

"No."

"How does she feel about you?"

"Not long ago she despised me. A week or so ago she said she didn't give a damn."

"Does she love you?" he asked, smiling.

Now I've said all along that Joe was without guile, but it's almost impossible really to believe that a man is without guile. It is perhaps a great injustice that I couldn't entirely trust that open smile and clear forehead of Joe's, but I confess I did not.

"I'm pretty sure she despises me," I said.

Joe sighed. He was sitting in the swivel chair next to mine, and now he put his feet on the desk in front of him and clasped his hands behind his head.

"Did you ever consider that maybe I'm to blame for all of this? A lot of things could be explained neatly if you just said that for some perverse reason or other I engineered the whole affair. Just a possibility, along with the rest. What do you think?"

"Perversity? I don't know, Joe. If I see anything perverse it's your sending Rennie up to my place now."

He laughed. "I guess you could call all my encouragements of you two perverse now that we know what happened, but if any of it was really perverse it was unconsciously so. But you can't really believe it's perversity that makes me insist on her going up to your place. That business really is a matter of testing her. She's got to decide once and for all what she really feels about you and me and herself, and you know as well as I do that if it weren't for those trips to your place she'd repress that first business as fast as she could."

"Don't you think you're just keeping the wounds open?"

"I guess so. In fact, that's exactly what I'm doing. But in this case we've got to keep the wound open until we know just what kind of wound it is and how deep it goes."

"It seems to me that the important thing about wounds is healing them, no matter how."

"You're getting carried away with the analogy," Joe smiled. "This isn't a physical wound. If you ignore it, it might seem to go away, but in a relationship between two people wounds like this aren't healed by ignoring them -- they keep coming back again if you do that." He dropped the subject. "So you love Rennie?"

"I don't know. I've felt that way once or twice."

"Would you marry her if she weren't married to me?"

"I don't know. Honestly." '

"How would you take it if it turned out that the best answer to this thing was some kind of a permanent sexual relationship between you and her? I mean a triangle without conflicts or secrecy or jealousy."

"I don't think that's an answer. I'm the kind of guy who could probably live with that sort of thing, but I don't believe either Rennie or you could." As a matter of fact, I was interested to notice that at the very mention of marriage and permanent sexual attachments I began to grow tired of the idea of Rennie. Happy human perversity! There was little of the husband in me.

"I don't either. What's the answer, Jake? You tell me."

I shook my head.

"Shall I shoot you both?" he grinned. "I already own a Colt forty-five and about a dozen bullets. When Rennie and I first got going on this thing, the time I was out of school for three days or so, I dug the old Colt out of the basement and loaded it and put it on the shelf in the living-room closet, in case either of us wanted to use it on ourselves or anybody else."

By God, that statement thrilled me! Perhaps it was Joe Morgan, after all, that I loved. He stood up and clapped me amiably on the shoulder.

"No answers, huh?"

I shook my head. "Damned if I know what to say, Joe."

"Well," he said, stretching and walking out the door, "it's still there in the closet. Maybe we'll use it yet."

The Colt .45 used as a sidearm by the United States military is a big, heavy, murderous-looking pistol. Its recoil raises the shooter's arm, and the fat lead slug that it fires strikes with an impact great enough to knock a man off his feet. The image of this weapon completely dominated my imagination for the next three or four days after Joe had mentioned it: I thought of it, as Joe and Rennie must have thought of it, waiting huge in their living-room closet all through the days and nights during which they had dissected and examined every minute detail of the adultery -- waiting for somebody to reach a conclusion. Little wonder that Rennie's nights were sleepless! So were mine, once that machine had been introduced so casually into the problem. Even in my room it made itself terrifically present as the concrete embodiment of an alternative: the fact of its existence put the game in a different ball park, as it were; flavored all my reflections on the subject with an immediacy which I'm sure the Morgans had felt from the first, but which my isolation, if nothing else, had kept me from feeling.

I dreamed about that pistol, and daydreamed about it. In my imagination I kept seeing it as in a photographic close-up, lying hard and flat in the darkness on the closet shelf, while through the door came the indistinct voices of Joe and Rennie talking through days and nights. Talking, talking, talking. I heard only the tones of their voices -- Rennie's calm, desperate, and hysterical by turns; Joe's alway's quiet and reasonable, hour after hour, until its quiet reasonableness became nightmarish and insane. I'm sure nothing has ever filled my head like the image of that gun. It took on aspects as various as the aspects of Laoco?n's smile, but infinitely more compelling and, of course, final. It was its finality that gave the idea of the Colt its persistence. It was with me all the time.

So it was like the crystallization of a nightmare when, shortly afterwards, I was confronted with the weapon itself in my room, which it had already tenanted in spirit, and that's why I paled and went weak, for I have no abstract fear of pistols. Rennie came in at eight o'clock, after telephoning an hour earlier to say she wanted to see me, and to my surprise Joe came with her, and with Joe came the Colt, in a paper bag. Rennie, I thought, had been crying -- her cheeks were white and her eyes swollen -- but Joe seemed cheerful enough. The first thing he did after acknowledging my greeting was take the pistol out of the bag and lay it carefully on a little ash-tray stand, which he placed in the center of the room.

"There she is, Jacob," he laughed. "Everything we have is yours."

I admired the gun without touching it, laughed shortly along with Joe at the poor humor of his gesture, and, as I said before, paled. It was a formidable piece of machinery, as large in fact as it had been in my imagination and no less final-looking. Joe watched my face.

"How about a beer?" I asked. The more I resolved not to show my alarm -- alarm was the last thing I wanted to suggest was called for -- the more plainly I could see it in my voice and manner.

"All right. Rennie? Want one?"

"No thanks," Rennie said, in a voice something like mine.

She sat in the overstuffed chair by the front window, and Joe on the edge of my monstrous bed, so that when I opened the beer bottles and took the only remaining seat, my rocking chair, we formed most embarrassingly a perfect equilateral triangle, with the gun in the center. Joe observed this at the same instant I did, and though I can't vouch for his grin, my own was not jovial.

"Well, what's up?" I asked him.

Joe pushed his spectacles back on his nose and crossed his legs.

"Rennie's pregnant," he said calmly.

When a man has been sleeping with a woman, no matter under what circumstances, this news always comes like the kick of a horse. The pistol loomed more conspicuous than ever, and it took me several seconds to collect my wits enough to realize that I had nothing to be concerned about.

"No kidding! Congratulations!"

Joe kept smiling, not cordially, and Rennie fixed her eyes on the rug. Nobody spoke for a while.

"What's wrong?" I asked, not knowing for certain what to be afraid of.

"Well, we're not sure who to congratulate, I guess," Joe said.

"Why not?" My face burned. "You're not afraidI'm the father, are you?"

"I'm not particularly afraid of anything," Joe said. "But you might be the father."

"You don't have to worry about that, Joe; believe me." I looked a little wonderingly at Rennie, who I thought should have known better than to complicate things unnecessarily.

"You mean because you used contraceptives every time. I know that. I even know how many times you had to use them and what brand you use, Jacob."

"What the hell's the trouble, then?" I demanded, getting a little irritated.

"The trouble is that I used them every time too -- and the same brand, as a matter of fact."

I was stunned. There was the pistol.

"So," Joe went on, "if, as my friend Rennie tells me, this triangle was never a rectangle, and if her obstetrician isn't lying when he says rubbers are about eighty per cent efficient, the congratulations should be pretty much mutual. In fact, other things being equal, there's about one chance in four that you actually are the father."

Neither Joe's voice nor his forehead indicated how he felt about this possibility. I wasn't terribly anxious to find out.

"How sure are you that you're pregnant?" I asked Rennie. To my chagrin my voice was unsteady.

"I'm -- I'm pretty late," Rennie said, clearing her throat two or three times. "And I've been vomiting a lot for the last two days."

"Well, you know, you thought you were pregnant once before."

She shook her head. "That was wishful thinking."

She had to wait a second before she said anything else. "I wanted to be pregnant that time."

"There's not much doubt," Joe said. "No use to hope along those lines. The obstetricians never commit themselves for a month or so, just to be safe, but Rennie knows her symptoms."

I sighed uncertainly; Joe still gave no hint of his feelings. "Boy, that complicates things, doesn't it?"

"Well, does it or not? How would you say it complicates things?"

"I guess that depends on how you all feel."

"Why is that? Look, Horner, you ought to decide what your point of view is going to be. Rennie's the same distance from me as she is from you, and we're all the same distance from the Colt."

"We should have allowed for the possibility, I guess," I suggested carefully.

"Aren't you actually saying thatI should have allowed for the possibility when I sent Rennie up here? I allowed for all possibilities. That doesn't necessarily mean I like the idea of her being pregnant with your kid. I don't like that possibility a single God-damned bit, if you want to know, and I didn't really look for it to happen. But I did allow for the possibility right from the time I first heard you'd laid her. If you all didn't, you're stupid."

"It's a possibility I'd never allow for at the time," I smiled ruefully. "A bachelor would lead a lonely life if he did."

"Which heaven forbid," Joe added dryly.

I shrugged. I wasn't sure to what extent I was justified in being annoyed by his manner: the thing was too complicated. There was silence for a while. Joe chewed his thumbnail idly, Rennie still stared at the rug, and I tried with unimpressive success to keep the gun out of my eyes and thoughts.

"What do you suggest, Joe?"

"Don't say that, now," he protested. "It's not all my baby. What doyou suggest?"

"Well, I can't say anything until I know whether you want to keep the kid or put it up for adoption or what. You know damned well I'd pay for the obstetrician and the hospital and all, and the kid's support, if you decide to keep it, or help all I can with an adoption. If I could raise the kid myself I'd do it."

"But you can't vomit for Rennie or split up the labor pains with her."

"No, I can't do that."

"You're oversimplifying even when you sayIf I decide to keep the kid. That makes it my responsibility. You say you're willing to take on the expense, but that doesn't mean a damned thing and you know it. Making it a practical problem, like a money problem, is too easy. I'd be a lot happier if you'd take on your share of responsibility. You don't have to take any shit off of me. That's too easy too."

"How do I go about taking on responsibility?" I asked. "I'm willing."

"Then for Christ's sake take a position and stick to it so we'll know who the hell we're dealing with! Don't throw everything in my lap. What the hell doyou think I should do? Tell Rennie what you want her to do and what you want me to do, and we'll tell you the same thing. Then we can work on the problem, for God's sake! Don't be so damned wishy-washy!"

"I don't have opinions, Joe," I said flatly. Of course the trouble was that I had, as usual, too many opinions. I was on everybody's side.

Joe jumped off the bed, snatched up the pistol, and aimed it right at my face.

"If I told you I was going to pull this God-damned trigger, would you have any opinions about that?"

I was sick.

"Go ahead and pull it, you son of a bitch," I said weakly.

"Horseshit: you'd never have to face up to anything then," he said coldly, and put the pistol back on the smoking stand. Rennie had watched the scene with tears in her eyes, but she wasn't weeping for either of us.

"What doyou want to do?" Joe said roughly to her, and when she whipped her head I saw his eyes water also, although his expression didn't change. There was no alliance against me: we were indeed every man for himself, and any who wept, wept for his own sorrows.

"I don't care about anything," Rennie said. "Do whatever you want to."

"I'll be damned!" Joe shouted, with tears on his cheeks. "I'm not going to do your thinking or his either. Think for yourself, or I don't want anything to do with you! I mean it!"

"I don't want the baby," Rennie said to him.

"You want to put it up for adoption?"

She shook her head. "That wouldn't work. Once you've carried them and all you can't let go of them. If I carried it for nine months I'd love it, and I don't want to love it. I don't want to carry it for nine months."

"All right, then; there's the pistol. Shoot yourself."

Rennie looked at him sadly. "I will if you want me to, Joe."

"Goddamn what I want!" Joe exploded.

"Did you mean you want an abortion, Rennie?" I asked.

"I want to get rid of this baby," Rennie nodded. "I don't want to carry this baby."

"Where in the hell are you going to find an abortionist around here?" Joe asked disgustedly. "This isn't New York."

"I don't know," Rennie said. "But I'm not going to carry this baby. I don't want it."

"Are you going to go to Dr. Walsh again like last time and let him insult you?" Joe demanded. "He'd throw you out! I don't believe there's an abortionist in this county."

"I don't know," Rennie said. "I'm either going to get an abortion or shoot myself, Joe. I've decided."

"Well, that sounds brave, Rennie, but think clearly about it: you don't know any abortionists around here, do you?"

"No."

"And you don't know any in Baltimore or Washington or anywhere else. And you don't know anybody who's ever had an abortion, do you?"

"No."

"Well, you say you're going to get an abortion or shoot yourself. Suppose you started tomorrow: what are you going to do to find an abortionist?"

"I don't know!" Rennie cried.

"Damn it, if there was ever a time when we've got to think straight, this is it, but you're not thinking straight. You're setting up hypothetical alternatives that aren't actually open to you."

Rennie gave a little cry and rushed to the smoking stand, but because I had seen as clearly as Joe that that was what she was being driven to I was ready when she made her move. I dived headlong from my rocker for the gun. I fell short (physical co-ordination was not my forte), but my fingers closed on the edge of the stand and I pulled stand, gun, and all down on top of me. Rennie, in her rush, struck my head with her shoe, a stunning blow, and fell to her knees. She scrabbled wildly for the pistol, which had landed on my left shoulder blade and slid down beside my armpit. By rolling over on it I kept it from her long enough for me to get my own hands on it, and then fended her off until I was able to get to my feet again. She made no attempt to take it from me, but went back to her chair and buried her face in her hands. Very much shaken and nervous, I left the smoking stand where it lay and kept the gun.

"You people are insane!" I said.

Joe hadn't moved, although he too was obviously shaken.

"Explain why, Horner," he demanded, with considerable emotion.

"The hell I will," I said. "Do you want her to blow her damned head off?"

"I want her to think for herself," Joe said. "Since you stopped her, you must have some other opinion. Or is it that you just don't want your room messed up? Would you rather we go home and do our shooting?"

"For Christ's sake, Joe, do you love your wife or not?"

"You're begging the question. Doyou love her? Is that why you stopped her?"

"I don't love anybody right now. I think you're both insane."

"Stop saying things you can't explain. Would you rather force her to have a baby she doesn't want?"

"I don't give a damn what you all do, but I'm going to hold on to this pistol."

"You're talking nonsense," Joe said angrily. "You refuse to think. You're still talking aboutus all, and you know that's a distortion. You say you don't give a damn what Rennie does, but you take away her ability to choose. You're acting like a damn Hollywood movie, doing all you can to confuse everything."

"What the hell do you want?" I hollered.

"I want you to forget about everything except what's to the point and what's beside the point!" Joe said fiercely. "People act when they're ready whether they've thought clearly or not, and if there's one thing I'd kill you for, Horner, it's for screwing up the issues so that we have to act before we've thought, or taking something as important as this out of the realm of choice. Don't think I'm just talking, buddy: I'd kill you for it."

"What's beside the point, then?"

"Your oversimplifying is beside the point, for one thing: asking meas the husbandwhat my position is; referring to Rennie and me together as if this were a conspiracy against you; blocking her actions; talking about perversity and insanity."

"Damn it, Joe, if I hadn't jumped she'd bedead right now! Do you realize that? Would you be satisfied with that?"

"We're not playing games,Jake! Forget all the movies you ever saw and all the novels you ever read. Forget everything except this problem. Everything else obscures and confuses it. Stop looking at me like I'm a monster!" he shouted, losing his temper. "If you ever knew a guy who's thought straight about these things it's me, God damn it! If you're interested, I'll tell you that you and I would probably be dead by this time too, if Rennie had shot herself; but I wouldn't have stopped her. Nobody else you ever met ever loved a female human being, Horner: they just love pictures in their heads. If I didn't love Rennie do you think I could have sat here when she went for the gun? In the name of Christ, Horner,open your God-damned eyes! Just this one time open your God-damned eyes and try to understand somebody!"

"Do you want me to put this pistol back on the table?"

"Stop asking me what I want!"

I was hopelessly lost.

"Here," I said, handing Joe the Colt. "If you're so set on acting by your ideas, you put it back."

Joe took the gun and unhesitatingly offered it to Rennie.

"Here you are, Rennie," he said gently, gripping the back of her chair for support. "Do you want it?"

Rennie shook her head without looking at him.

"Maybe she'd like to have you do it for her," I said, as acidly as possible, but I was so moved I was dizzy.

Joe glanced at me icily. "Do you want me to shoot you, Rennie?" he asked sarcastically. She shook her head again. Joe picked up the smoking stand, replaced the pistol on it, and went to his seat on the bed.

"So, Jake, you've decided we'll have the baby. Do you have any more opinions?"

I couldn't speak. Like Rennie, I shook my head. It is a demoralizing thing to deal with a man who will see, face up to, and unhesitatingly act upon the extremest limits of his ideas.

"Apparently you don't," Joe said contemptuously. He rose and began putting on his topcoat. "Do you want to come home now?" he asked Rennie.

Rennie rose and put on her coat. At the last minute Joe slipped the Colt into his overcoat pocket. He was extremely upset. They headed for the door, evidently not intending to say good night.

"Look, Joe," I called out just before they left. "If Renniecould find an abortionist, what would you say?"

"What do you mean-what would I say? What difference would it make what I said?"

"I mean how would you feel about the idea of her going through with an abortion?"

"I don't like it," Joe said flatly. "If it was a really competent abortion done in a good hospital by a good obstetrician it wouldn't matter, but it couldn't possibly be that. Rennie's in perfect health, and the only abortion she could get even in the city would be a half-ass job by some half-ass doctor who could mess her up for the rest of her life." He turned to go.

"I'll see if I can find somebody to do it," I said, "and if I can find somebody decent I'll pay for it."

"Horseshit," Joe said, and they left.