“I can do this,” he said. “You don’t have to.”
So she handed him the sponge and went inside and brought back a razor and shaving cream. “Excuse me,” she said, and lifted his chin. She squirted the foam into her hand and lathered his jaw.
He studied her face. “You’re furious.”
“That’s right.”
“I can’t say I blame you.”
“Don’t talk.”
He looked away. There was grief in his expression, a kind of bewilderment. Could he be surprised? Or was it only the shock of finding himself back in the world, with all his defenses ruined and his one friend lost to him?
She said, “Do that thing with your lip.” So he pulled his lip taut over his teeth and she shaved it. “Now your chin.” And he did the same. She lifted his chin and shaved his throat. Then she wiped away the foam with the sponge and inspected him.
“Good enough,” she said. It was a relief to see him looking more like himself. She smoothed his hair away from his brow. The gentleness of the gesture seemed to come as a relief to him. So she kissed his cheek.
He said, “I’d never have done that if I’d been sober. I don’t even remember — anything about it.” He looked at his hands, as if to confirm to himself that it had happened.
“It’s over now.”
He smiled at her as if to say, No, it isn’t, and it won’t be. “I’m sorry you saw me like that,” he said.
“I’m glad it wasn’t worse.”
He nodded. “Now you know me — some other aspects of my character.”
She said, “Let’s not talk.”
“All right.”
“I still haven’t brought clothes for you. You’ve made me nervous about going into your room. Do I have your permission?”
He laughed. “Yes, you have my permission.”
SO HE WENT INTO THE BARN AND DRESSED HIMSELF AND came out in his father’s dark pants and beautiful old shirt, the sleeves rolled for lack of cuff links. It bothered her that she had forgotten to bring him socks. They walked together up the path to the porch, he behind her, the two of them no doubt looking very unlike two ordinary people who had not passed through fearful and wearying hours together. If anyone saw them, which God forbid. She could hear Jack’s breathing and his footsteps in the grass, neither of which she could take for granted anymore, if she ever had.
They heard voices from the road. He stopped. It was as if he turned to face some last, unimaginable trial. But she said, “It’s nothing to do with us,” and he nodded and followed her again, up the step, into the porch.
“Is that Jack with you?” their father called, and she said, “Yes, Papa,” and Jack smiled at her and shook his head. He was sober enough to know that speech was not a thing he could risk. They went up the stairs, and she drew his blinds and brought a glass of water to set on the night table. She found a ball of socks in the dresser and put it beside the water. He rolled onto his stomach and hugged the pillows to his face. He was relieved to lie down on his own bed, as if he had been too long away from home and had come back again to a kind of rest that meant, That’s all over now, or Now at least I know it will be over sometime.
She washed her face, brushed her hair, and changed her dress and went downstairs to tend to her father. She said, “He’s getting some rest.”
The old man was rigidly wakeful. She knew he had been sitting there, interpreting noises, interpreting her haste and her strained assurances, then Jack’s slow steps on the stairs behind her. He would have interpreted her reddened eyes, too, if he had looked at her. “He’s all right,” he said.
“Yes, he’s all right.”
He closed his eyes. He was as still as if he had expended all the life that remained to him composing himself to accept this cross. His jaw slackened a little, and she thought for a terrible moment that he might have died, but then his hands adjusted themselves on the quilt and she knew it was only sleep.
TIRED AS SHE WAS, SHE COULD NOT POSSIBLY SLEEP. SHE felt lonely, lonely. She found a wire coat hanger in the front closet and straightened it, and went out to the barn. She pulled Jack’s shirt out of the exhaust pipe. He had managed to jam in the tails of it only. The body and the sleeves were lying on the ground, a greasy clay of perpetual dank and animal waste and vehicle seepage, old life and old use whose traces outlasted the memory of them. She caught one sock and then the other with the hanger. So, the proof of what he had intended was removed, and that was a comfort to her, as if she could now stop believing it entirely herself. She put the socks in the fireplace on a pyre of kindling. They made a smoldering fire. Then she filled the sink with water and scrubbed at the shirt, careful of the embroidery. It might be best to let it soak for a while. She went up the stairs as quietly as she could, and into Jack’s room. She found two pints of whiskey in the bottom drawer, as he had said. He stirred and raised his head
