Endless Love

“A bunch of letters. The letters from Jade. The ones you showed to the judge.” My voice was suddenly unstable, feathery, and overheated—not a voice that could command attention. “And I think there were some letters I sent to her. I’d like to have them, all of them.” I took a deep, notched breath and added, “They’re mine,” because they were, they were completely and irrevocably mine, and it tore at my tenderest parts to have to ask for them.

Rose and Arthur explained as simply and calmly as they could that the letters were gone and I, to prevent making a fool of myself, tried to look as if I believed them and, at the same time, to prevent myself from losing all hope, told myself they were clearly lying.

Later that evening we sat in the kitchen over a light supper. Rose and Arthur yawned frequently from exhaustion and tension. No one was hungry and with the topic of the letters having been instantly elevated to a taboo, there was nothing anyone cared to talk about.

Rose was the first to leave the table. Then I went into the living room and turned on the TV. Arthur followed and sat at a respectful distance from me on the sofa.

“Did you talk to What’s His Face about a job?” Arthur asked.

I nodded. A White Sox game was on, tied 6 to 6 in the fifteenth inning.

“You know there’s no rush,” said Arthur. “You don’t have to get a job. I hope you know that.”

“I’ve got to get a job. That’s what they told me. It has to look like I’m getting adjusted.”

“You’ll adjust. It doesn’t have to happen right away. I told you what it was like for me when I came home from the Army.”

I nodded, but Arthur went on.

“I was of course glad to be back. The war was over and I was alive. I had people I wanted to see and places to go. The whole country was celebrating. But I couldn’t do it. Everyone thought your mother and I were having a little second honeymoon but the truth was I couldn’t leave the house. It was the damndest thing. I was just stuck here as if I was paralyzed.”

“I know, I know,” I said. And then, looking away from the TV but not quite at my father, I said, “But there’s a big difference between coming home from World War II and coming home from a fucking insane asylum where you’ve been sent because you burned your girlfriend’s house down. No one wants to see me.”

Arthur shook his head. “Stop it. With an attitude like that you can’t expect very much.”

“That’s fine. I don’t expect anything.”

“Don’t you understand? Everyone is willing to grant that what’s behind you is behind you. Look at all the people here today. I know you don’t care very much about them but that’s not the point. They were all happy to see you again. It was almost like you’ve never been gone.”

“Right. I noticed.”

“Now it’s your turn, David. It’s time for you to realize to yourself that what’s in the past is in the past.”

“I don’t think I know what the past is. I don’t think there’s any such thing.”

“You want to know what the past is?” said Arthur. “It’s what’s already happened. It’s what can’t be brought back.”

“The future can’t be brought back, either. Neither can the present.”

“I’ll show you what the past is,” said Arthur. He clapped his hands together once, waited a moment, and then clapped them again—the sound was hollow, forlorn. “The first clap was the past,” he said with a subdued yet triumphant smile. If we had shared the sort of life that Arthur had wanted for us it would have contained hundreds of conversations just like this one.

“Then what was the second clap?” I said. “That’s the past too, isn’t it? And right now, while I’m saying this, isn’t this the past too, now?”

Rose came in holding that week’s National Guardian. She wore a light blue robe and her summer slippers; she was smoking her nightly Newport. “I’m going to bed now,” she announced. It was something she used to say to hurt Arthur, to make him feel he was being avoided and to emphasize the point that they wouldn’t be making love. There had been a time when Rose had felt she could protect her position in the marriage, and protect her privacy, by simply (and it was simple) withholding her love. But now that her love was no longer sought there was no advantage to be gained in rationing it. It was clear that the power she once had was not real power—it had been bestowed upon her, assigned. It had all depended on Arthur’s wanting her, depended on his vulnerability to every nuance of rejection. He had, she realized now, chosen her weapon for her. He had given her a sword that only he could sharpen.

Arthur checked his watch. “OK,” he said. “Good night.” Then, to me, “I think we’d better turn down the TV so we won’t keep your mother up.”

I sat forward quickly and turned off the set. “I’m going to wash the dishes.”

“There’s a million dishes,” said Arthur. “Save them for the morning.”

“I don’t see anything wrong in doing them now,” said Rose. “It’s about time people started pitching in around here.”

“I agree.”

“It doesn’t have to be done now,” said Arthur.

“What do you care?” said Rose. “You don’t lift a finger around here. You’re like a rabbi sitting around for people to wait on you.”

Arthur forced a burst of air through his lips, to signify a superior laugh that supposedly just happened to escape, and then shook his head to signify patience wearing thin.

I went into the kitchen. At the party, plastic forks and paper plates had been used, but still nearly every dish in the house was soiled. Ordinarily, they would have put them into the dishwasher, but even after the rain the night was too hot and they couldn’t run the air conditioner and the dishwasher at the same time. I felt relieved to be alone and felt somehow clever for not having retreated to my room.

I turned on the water, hot and loud, and stared at the window over the sink. (The window looked out on an airshaft, which my mother found depressing, so she had pasted on the window a picture of Leningrad, clipped from Life magazine.) I squirted some emerald soap onto a big tawny sponge, then picked up a flowered cake dish, washed it clean, and ran it beneath the hot water. As the water touched my hands I felt my eyes go molten and then I bowed my head and cried. Before, when I had wept, I thought of Jade, and wondered where she was and if I would ever see her again, or I thought about all the time that had been lost, or I thought about how absurd and awkward I felt, how out of place and helpless, or I just remembered past happiness— happiness that had been mine and no longer was. But now, standing before the sink in a cloud of steam, I thought only of those letters, picturing the ink upon the page, recalling the endearments. Those letters were all that I had that wasn’t invisible. They were the only tangible proof that once my heart had wings. I had known another world. It is impossible to give it a name. There are words like enchantment, words like bliss, but they didn’t say it, they were stupid words. No words really said it. There was nothing to say about it except that I had known it, it had been mine, and it still was. It was the one real thing, more real than the world. I was crying steadily now, aware that I wasn’t really alone, trying not to make too much noise. I felt myself sinking, literally falling to pieces. I tried to direct my thoughts toward anger with Arthur and Rose for separating me from those letters, for destroying them in a panic, or hiding them, or for whatever they had done, but the anger, even the hatred seemed thin, insignificant. I tried to turn my thoughts toward my own helplessness, my inability to get on with life, to begin again. But the truth was that I had no will and no intention to begin life again. All I wanted was what I’d already had. That exultation, that love. It was my one real home; I was a visitor everywhere else. It had happened too soon, that was for certain. It would have been better, or at least easier, if Jade and I had discovered each other and learned what our being together meant when we were older, if it happened after years of tries and disappointments, rather than that vast, bewildering leap from childhood to enlightenment. It was difficult to accept, and it was frightening too, that the most important thing that was ever going to happen to me, the thing that was my life, happened when I was not quite seventeen years old. I wondered where she was. I thought about those letters, in a trashcan, in a dump, or in a fire. My hands were paralyzed beneath the hot-water tap and they were turning red.

“Do you need some help with those?”

It was Arthur. I didn’t dare face him; I tried to stop crying and I shook with the effort.

“I’ll grab a towel. You wash and I’ll dry,” Arthur said. He was standing next to me now. His shirt was open and the long dark hairs on his chest glistened with sweat. He glanced at me briefly—then dried the one dish in the