The Mortgaged Heart Read online

  "He's a—" started Marshall.

  "Seeing you—and how tired I was—he even offered to pull out the couch and get you to bed."

  "A cute procedure—" he mouthed.

  "I made him run along." She remembered for a moment his face as she shut the door between them, the sound of his footsteps going down stairs, and the feeling—half of pity for loneliness, half of warmth—that she always felt when she listened to the sounds of others going out into the night away from them.

  "To listen to him—one would think his reading were rigidly narrowed to—to G. K. Chesterton and George Moore," he said, giving a drunken lilt to the words. "Who won at chess—me or him?"

  "You," she said. "But you did your best work before you got so drunk."

  "Drunk—" he murmured, moving his long body laxly, changing the position of his head. "God! your knees are bony. Bo-ony."

  "But I thought sure you'd give him the game when you made that idiotic move with your queen's pawn." She thought of their fingers hovering over the carved precision of their pieces, brows frowned, the glow of the light on the bottle beside them.

  His eyes were closed again and his hand had crumpled down on his chest. "Lousy simile—" he mumbled. "Granted about the mountain. Joyce climbed laboriously—O-O-OK—but when he reached the top— top reached—"

  "You can't stand this drinking, darling—" Her hands moved over the soft angle of his chin and rested there.

  "He wouldn't say the world was fla-at. All along that's what they said. Besides the villagers could walk around—around with their jackasses and see that for themselves. With their asses."

  "Hush," she said. "You've talked about that long enough. You get on one subject and go on and on ad infinitum. And don't land anywhere."

  "A crater—" he breathed huskily. "And at least after the immensity of his climb he could have expected—some lovely leaps of Hell fire— some—"

  Her hand clenched on his chin and shook it. "Shut up," she said. "I heard you when you improvised on that so brilliantly before Phillip left. You were obscene. And I'd almost forgotten."

  A smile crept out across his face and his blue fringed eyes looked up at her. "Obscene—? Why should you put yourself in place of those symbols—sym—"

  "If it were with anyone but Phillip that you talk like that I'd—I'd leave you."

  "Immense va-cuity," he said, closing his eyes again. "Dead Hollowness. Hollowness, I say. With maybe in the ashes at the bottom a—"

  "Shut up."

  "A squirming, fatbellied cretin."

  It came to her that she must have drunk more than she realized, for the objects in the room seemed to take on a strange look of suffering. The butts of the cigarettes looked overmouthed and limp. The rug, almost brand new, seemed trampled and choked in design by the ashes. Even the last of the whiskey lay pale and quiet in the bottle. "Does it relieve you any?" she asked with slow calm. "I hope that times like this—"

  She felt his body stiffen and, like an aggravating child, he interrupted her words with a sudden burst of unmelodic humming.

  She eased her thighs from beneath his head and stood up. The room seemed to have grown smaller, messier, ranker with smoke and spilled whiskey. Bright lines of white weaved before her eyes. "Get up," she said dully. "I've got to pull out this darn couch and make it up."

  He folded his hands on his stomach and lay solid, unstirring.

  "You are detestable," she said, opening the door of the closet and taking down the sheets and blankets that lay folded on the shelves.

  When she stood above him once more, waiting for him to rise, she felt a moment of pain for the drained pallor of his face. For the shades of darkness that had crept down halfway to his cheekbones, for the pulse that always fluttered in his neck when he was drunk or fatigued.

  "Oh Marshall, it's bestial for us to get all shot like this. Even if you don't have to work tomorrow—there are years—fifty of them maybe—ahead." But the words had a false ring and she could only think of tomorrow.

  He struggled to sit up on the edge of the couch and when he had reached that position his head dropped down to rest in his hands. "Yes, Pollyanna," he mumbled. "Yes, my dear croaking Pol—Pol. Twenty is a lovely lovely age Blessed God."

  His fingers that weaved through his hair and closed into weak fists filled her with a sudden, sharp love. Roughly she snatched at the corners of the blanket and drew them around his shoulders. "Up now. We can't fool around like this all night."

  "Hollowness—" he said wearily, without closing his sagging jaw.

  "Has it made you sick?"

  Holding the blanket close he pulled himself to his feet and lumbered toward the card table. "Can't a person even think without being called obscene or sick or drunk. No. No understanding of thought. Of deep deep thought in blackness. Of rich morasses. Morrasses. With their asses."

  The sheet billowed down through the air and the round swirls collapsed into wrinkles. Quickly she tucked in the corners and smoothed the blankets on top. When she turned around she saw that he sat hunched over the chessmen—ponderously trying to balance a pawn on a turreted castle. The red checked blanket hung from his shoulders and trailed behind the chair.

  She thought of something clever. "You look," she said, "like a brooding king in a bad-house." She sat on the couch that had become a bed and laughed.

  With an angry gesture he embrangled his hands in the chessmen so that several pieces clattered to the floor. "That's right," he said. "Laugh your silly head off. That's the way it's always been done."

  The laughs shook her body as though every fiber of her muscles had lost its resistance. When she had finished the room was very still.

  After a moment he pushed the blanket away from him so that it crumpled in a heap behind the chair. "He's blind," he said softly. "Almost blind."

  "Watch out, there's probably a draught—Who's blind?"

  "Joyce," he said.

  She felt weak after her laughter and the room stood out before her with painful smallness and clarity. "That's the trouble with you, Marshall," she said. "When you get like this you go on and on so that you wear a person out."

  He looked at her sullenly. "I must say you're pretty when you're drunk," he said.

  "I don't get drunk—couldn't if I wanted to," she said, feeling a pain beginning to bear down behind her eyes. "How 'bout that night when we—"

  "I've told you," she said stiffly between her teeth, "I wasn't drunk. I was ill. And you would make me go out and—"

  "It's all the same," he interrupted. "You were a thing of beauty hanging on to that table. It's all the same. A sick woman—a drunk woman—ugh."

  Nervelessly she watched his eyelids droop down until they had hidden all the goodness in his eyes.

  "And a pregnant woman," he said. "Yeah. It'll be some sweet hour like this when you come to simper your sweet sneakret into my ear. Another cute little Marshall. Ain't we fine—look what we can do. Oh, God, what dteariness."

  "I loathe you," she said, watching her hands (that were surely not a part of her?) begin to tremble. "This drunk brawling in the middle of the night—"

  As he smiled his mouth seemed to her to take on the same pink, slitted look that his eyes had. "You love it," he whispered soberly. "What would you do if once a week I didn't get soused. So that—glutinously—you can paw over me. And Marshall darling this and Marshall that. So you can run your greedy little fingers all over my face—Oh yes. You love me best when I suffer. You—you—"

  As he lurched across the room she thought she saw that his shoulders were shaking.

  "Here Mama," he taunted. "Why don't you offer to come help me point." As he slammed the door to the bathroom some vacant coathangers that had been hung on the doorknob clashed at each other with tinny sibilance.

  "I'm leaving you—" she called hollowly when the noise from the coathangers had died down. But the words had no meaning to her. Limp, she sat on the bed and looked at the wilted lettuce leaf across the room. The lampshade had
been knocked atilt so that it clung dangerously to the bulb—so that it made a hurtful passage of brightness across the grey disordered room.

  "Leaving you," she repeated to herself—still thinking about the late-at-night squalor around them.

  She remembered the sound of Phillip's footsteps as he had descended. Nightlike and hollow. She thought of the dark outside and the cold naked trees of early spring. She wanted to picture herself leaving the apartment at that hour. With Phillip maybe. But as she tried to see his face, his small calm little body, the outlines were vague and there was no expression there. She could only recall the way his hands had poked at the sugar-grained bottom of a glass with the dishcloth—as they had done when he helped her with the dishes that night. And as she thought of following the empty sounds of the footsteps they grew softer, softer—until there was only black silence left.

  With a shiver she got up from the couch and moved toward the whiskey bottle on the table. The parts of her body felt like tiresome appendages; only the pain behind her eyes seemed her own. She hesitated, holding the neck of the bottle. That—or one of the Alka-Seltzers in the top bureau drawer. But the thought of the pale tablet writhing to the top of the glass, consumed by its own effervescence—seemed sharply depressing. Besides, there was just enough for one more drink. Hastily she poured, noting again how the glittering convexity of the bottle always cheated her.

  It made a sharp little path of warmness down into her stomach but the rest of her body remained chill. "Oh damn," she whispered—thinking of picking up that lettuce leaf in the morning, of the cold outside, listening for any sound from Marshall in the bathroom. "Oh damn. I can never get drunk like that."

  And as she stared at the empty bottle she had one of those grotesque little imaginings that were apt to come to her at that hour. She saw herself and Marshall—in the whiskey bottle. Revolting in their smallness and perfection. Skeetering angrily up and down the cold blank glass like minute monkeys. For a moment with noses flattened and stares of longing. And then after their frenzies she saw them lying in the bottom—white and exhausted—looking like fleshy specimens in a laboratory. With nothing said between them.

  She was sick with the sound of the bottle as it crashed through the orange peels and paper wads in the waste basket and clanked against the tin at the bottom.

  "Ah—" said Marshall, opening the door and carefully placing his foot across the threshold. "Ah—the purest enjoyment left to man. At the last sweet point—pissing."

  She leaned against the frame of the closet door—pressing her cheek against the cold angle of the wood. "See if you can get undressed."

  "Ah—" he repeated, sitting down on the couch that she had made. His hands left his trouser flaps and began to fumble with his belt. "All but the belt—Can't sleep with a belt buckle. Like your knees. Bo-ony."

  She thought that he would lose his balance trying to jerk out the belt all at once—(once before, she remembered, that had happened). Instead he slid the leather out slowly, strap by strap, and when he was through he placed it neatly under the bed. Then he looked up at her. The lines around his mouth were drawn down—making grey threads in the pallor of his face. His eyes looked widely up at her and for a moment she thought that he would cry. "Listen—" he said slowly, clearly.

  She heard only the labored sound of his swallowing.

  "Listen—" he repeated. And his white face sank into his hands.

  Slowly, with a rhythm not of drunkenness, his body swayed from side to side. His blue sweatered shoulders were shaking. "Lord God," he said quietly. "How I—suffer."

  She found the strength to drag herself from the doorway, to straighten the lampshade, and switch off the light. In the darkness an arc of blue rocked before her eyes—to the movement of his swaying body. And from the bed came the sound of his shoes being dropped to the floor, the creaking of the springs as he rolled over toward the wall.

  She lay down in the darkness and pulled up the blankets—suddenly heavy and chill feeling to her fingers. As she covered his shoulders she noticed that the springs still sputtered beneath them, and that his body was quivering. "Marshall—" she whispered. "Are you cold?"

  "Those chills. One of those damn chills."

  Vaguely she thought of the missing top to the hot water bottle and the empty coffee sack in the kitchen. "Damn—" she repeated vacantly.

  His knees urged close to hers in the darkness and she felt his body contract to a shivering little ball. Tiredly she reached out for his head and drew it to her. Her fingers soothed the little hollow at the top of his neck, crept up the stiff shaved part to the soft hair at the top, moved on to his temples where again she could feel the beating there.

  "Listen—" he repeated, turning his head upward so that she could sense his breath on her throat.

  "Yes Marshall."

  His hands flexed into fists that beat tensely behind her shoulders. Then he lay so still that for a moment she felt a strange fear.

  "It's this—" he said in a voice drained of all tone. "My love for you, darling. At times it seems that—in some instant like this—it will destroy me."

  Then she felt his hands relax to cling weakly to her back, felt the chill that had been brooding in him all the evening make his body jerk with great shudders. "Yes," she breathed, pressing his hard skull to the hollow between her breasts. "Yes—" she said as soon as words and the creaking of the springs and the rank smell of smoke in the darkness had drawn back from the place where, for the moment, all things had receded.

  ***

  Sylvia Chatfield Bates' comment, attached to "Instant of the Hour After":

  I like this the least of anything you have done, so you see I do not always praise you! The good points first: If I had never seen anything you had done I should have to comment on the great vividness, the acute visibility of your writing. The dramatization of every little detail is excellent, and fresh. And the characters come through the objective scenes beautifully. The "feature" of the story, is the delightful little "element of artistic piquancy," the two persons in the bottle. That is memorable and good.

  Now for the other side. Again I must insist that a story should have a reason for being. Must rise, make a point, that is inside the tale itself, and at the same time outside in the world. Why should we be given all these rather disagreeable details, only at the end to hear his love is so great it will destroy him? Before that line I was waiting for something interesting, mature, vital to come out of it all, and I merely had this highly personal statement which I might think was caused by his drunkenness anyway. Can't you keep what you have, but suggest or show how they are caught, and by what; how they are being destroyed, and by what? It's a serious question. Are they really being destroyed by passion? You have used words without realizing their full meaning, and that makes for sentimentality, though this you would call anything but sentimental. It is possible to be sentimental about sophistication!

  I think the thing to do is heighten the significance of the figures in the bottle. Write to that, and let the overtones and theme grow stronger until you have the effect of a climax, although this is really a conte of mood. Perhaps the reason you have not been successful is that the conflict is not definite enough in your mind and not brought out.

  This is well worth doing over. And by the way, certain parts are not printable in a magazine, Joyce or no Joyce.

  S.C.B.

  [Redbook, October 1971]

  LIKE THAT

  EVEN IF SIS is five years older than me and eighteen we used always to be closer and have more fun together than most sisters. It was about the same with us and our brother Dan, too. In the summer we'd all go swimming together. At nights in the wintertime maybe we'd sit around the fire in the living room and play three-handed bridge or Michigan, with everybody putting up a nickel or a dime to the winner. The three of us could have more fun by ourselves than any family I know. That's the way it always was before this.

  Not that Sis was playing down to me, either. She's smart as
she can be and has read more books than anybody I ever knew—even school teachers. But in High School she never did like to priss up flirty and ride around in cars with girls Is and pick up the boys and park at the drug store and all that sort of thing. When she wasn't reading she'd just like to play around with me and Dan. She wasn't too grown up to fuss over a chocolate bar in the refrigerator or to stay awake most of Christmas Eve night either, say, with excitement. In some ways it was like I was heaps older than her. Even when Tuck started coming around last summer I'd sometimes have to tell her she shouldn't wear ankle socks because they might go down town or she ought to pluck out her eyebrows above her nose like the other girls do.

  In one more year, next June, Tuck'll be graduated from college. He's a lanky boy with an eager look to his face. At college he's so smart he has a free scholarship. He started coming to see Sis the last summer before this one, riding in his family's car when he could get it, wearing crispy white linen suits. He came a lot last year but this summer he came even more often—before he left he was coming around for Sis every night. Tuck's O.K.

  It began getting different between Sis and me a while back, I guess, although I didn't notice it at the time. It was only after a certain night this summer that I had the idea that things maybe were bound to end like they are now.

  It was late when I woke up that night. When I opened my eyes I thought for a minute it must be about dawn and I was scared when I saw Sis wasn't on her side of the bed. But it was only the moonlight that shone cool looking and white outside the window and made the oak leaves hanging down over the front yard pitch black and separate seeming. It was around the first of September, but I didn't feel hot looking at the moonlight. I pulled the sheet over me and let my eyes roam around the black shapes of the furniture in our room.