The Bachman Books

'You split the money right down the middle, didn't you?'

'Yes I did. If you want to check, you can call Mr. Fenner. '

'No. Oh, I didn't mean that.' And he could almost see her making pushingaway gestures with her hands. 'What I meant was . . . you separating the money like that . . . does it mean . . . '

She trailed off artfully and he thought: Ow, you bitch, you got me. Bull's eye.

'Yes, I guess it does,' he said. 'Divorce.'

'Have you thought about it?' she asked earnestly, phonily. 'Have you really-'

'I've thought about it a lot.'

'So have I. It seems like the only thing left to do. But I don't hold anything against you, Bart. I'm not mad at you.'

My God, she's been reading all those paperback novels. Next she'll tell me she's going back to school. He was surprised at his bitterness. He thought he had gotten past that part.

'What will you do?'

'I'm going back to school,' she said, and now there was no phoniness in her voice, now it was excited, shining. 'I dug out my old transcript, it was still up in Mamma's attic with all my old clothes, and do you know I only need twenty-four credits to graduate? Bart, that's hardly more than a year!'

He saw Mary crawling through her mother's attic and the image blended with one of himself sitting bewildered in a pile of Charlie's clothes. He shut it out.

'Bart? Are you still there?'

'Yes. I'm glad being single again is going to fulfill you so nicely.'

'Bart,' she said reproachfully.

But there was no need to snap at her now, to tease her or make her feel bad.

Things had gone beyond that. Mr. Piazzi's dog, having bitten, moves on. That struck him funny and he giggled.

'Bart, are you crying?' She sounded tender. Phony, but tender.

'No,' he said bravely.

'Bart, is there anything I can do? If there is, I want to. '

'No. I think I'm going to be fine. And I'm glad you're going back to school. Listen, this divorce-who gets it? You or me?'

'I think it would look better if I did,' she said timidly.

'Okay. Fine.'

There was a pause between them and suddenly she blurted into it, as if the words had escaped without her knowledge or approval: 'Have you slept with anyone since I left?'

He thought the question over, and ways of answering: the truth, a lie, an evasion that might keep her awake tonight.

'No,' he said carefully, and added: 'Have you?'

'Of course not, ' she said, managing to sound shocked and pleased at the same time. 'I wouldn't.'

'You will eventually.'

'Bart, let's not talk about sex.'

'All right, ' he said placidly enough, although it was she who had brought the subject up. He kept searching for something nice to say to her, something that she would remember. He couldn't think of a thing, and furthermore didn't know why he would want her to remember him at all, at least at this stage of things. They had had good years before. He was sure they must have been good because he couldn't remember much of what had happened in them, except maybe the crazy TV bet.

He heard himself say: 'Do you remember when we took Charlie to nursery school the first time?'

'Yes. He cried and you wanted to take him back with us. You didn't want to let him go, Bart. '

'And you did.'

She was saying something disclaiming in a slightly wounded tone, but he was remembering the scene. The lady who kept the nursery school was Mrs. Ricker. She had a certificate from the state, and she gave all the children a nice hot lunch before sending them home at one o'clock. School was kept downstairs in a madeover basement and as they led Charlie down between them, he felt like a traitor; like a farmer petting a cow and saying Soo, Bess on the way to the slaughterhouse. He had been a beautiful boy, his Charlie. Blond hair that had darkened later, blue, watchful eyes, hands that had been clever even as a toddler. And he had stood between them at the bottom of the stairs, stock-still, watching the other children who were whooping and running and coloring and cutting colored paper with bluntnosed scissors, so many of them, and Charlie had never looked so vulnerable as he did in that instant, just watching the other children. There was no joy or fear in his eyes, only the watchfulness, a kind of outsiderness, and he had never felt so much his son's father as then, never so close to the actual run of his thoughts. And Mrs. Ricker came over, smiling like a barracuda and she said: We'll have such fun, Chuck, making him want to cry out: That's not his name! And when she put out her hand Charlie did not take it but only watched it so she stole his hand and began to pull him a little toward the others, and he went willingly two steps and then stopped, looked back at them, and Mrs. Young said very quietly: Go right along, he'll be fine. And Mary finally had to poke him and say Come ON, Bart because he was frozen looking at his son, his son's eyes saying, Are you going to let them do this to me, George? and his own eyes saying back, Yes, I guess 1 am, Freddy and he and Mary started up the stairs, showing Charlie