John D. MacDonald

Pickup

Cath looked out the wide front window, saw the street distorted by the large wet flakes that melted against the glass — and something in the wet asphalt’s shining, something about the yellow of the early street lights, the soggy fall of snow, called up the feeling of emptiness, of strangeness that had haunted her for over a month.

The street seemed to brood, the small houses cheerless under the brittle blackness of the elms, and she weighed and tested her own emotion, thinking back to her lab classes in college. Quantitative and qualitative analysis. What is this feeling of darkness that I get? How important is it? What should I do about it?

It was only in the winter, after the leaves were gone that she could see one corner of the tan stone school.

She glanced at her watch. Almost four. In a few minutes small Catherine, walking with little-girl directness, walking with the graceful promise of what she would one day become, would turn the corner, mittened hand holding onto Jerry’s snow suit, yanking him back whenever he tried to straggle off the sidewalk.

Something about the sight of them as they turned the corner always pinched her heart. It was still an unreality that they could be her children — hers and Carl’s — born of a sweetness that in itself would have been enough — almost enough. The clean freshness of a child’s soft skin, the strange pathos of grubby knuckles, of questions confidently asked.

At five Carl would come. Thinking of him brought back the new dark feeling of aloneness, and she knew that it was tied up with him somehow, but there was no way for her to find out. The new feeling was something restless within her that receded as she tried to grasp it, to find its component parts, its chemical analysis.

She walked back through the silent house to the kitchen, wondering if the long hours she spent alone had anything to do with the odd change in her. There had been no time to think, to feel, when the children had been underfoot all day.

With them gone, Catherine in first grade, Jerry in kindergarten, the house looked different. She saw frayed edges where before she had seen newness and adequacy. She felt the smallness of the house; the constriction and tension building within her was like a spring, which, if released, would flatten the walls, send the roof sailing off, open the square rooms to the gray sky above.

The children arrived while she was in the kitchen; the door banged open and Catherine’s abused, “Motherrr! Jerry’s out in the yard in a puddle, and he won’t come in,” was heard.

The feeling was gone then, because there had to be crackers and a glass of milk for the children, clean dry clothes for Jerry; there were chops to be broiled, the table to set. Jerry locked himself in the bathroom and had to be begged to unlock the door, “before Daddy comes home.”

Carl came in from the garage, and Cath saw the weariness in his face break when he saw her. As he kissed her, he ran his cold hand up the nape of her neck and laughed at her when she shivered.

Small Catherine hung onto his leg until he bought her off with the funny papers, and soon it was time for dinner.

While Cath washed the dinner dishes, Carl helped Jerry build a block bridge along the living-room rug, and young Catherine criticized the whole operation, claiming that all men really have little knowledge about bridges or anything else.

By the time Cath was through, Carl had taken Jerry upstairs, protesting as usual about the unfairness of his sister being permitted to stay up longer, by virtue of her year and a half advantage.

At last Catherine too was tucked in, the light clicked off, and Cath walked slowly down the stairs, returning Carl’s smile as he glanced up from the paper.

There were clothes to be mended, but she was content for a time merely to sit and look at Carl’s strong square hands holding the paper. Suddenly the dark feeling of despair, of aloneness, came again, welling up through her.

Carl threw the paper aside and stood up. “Honey, this tired old man of yours has to drag himself back to the treadmill. We’ve got to submit our bid on the Canal Street job tomorrow, and Jordan wants me to check over the cost figures.”

“Oh, Carl! That’s too bad. Couldn’t you have brought the work home?”

“I’d have had to hire a truck to bring the files I need. I’ll be back by twelve.”

She walked with him to the kitchen and, as he shrugged into his topcoat, she automatically noticed that the cuffs were frayed. His shoulders were slumped with weariness, and she wanted to hold him tightly, somehow to rest and restore him.

He turned at the door and looked at her, small wrinkles of concern between his eyebrows. “Are you okay, Cath?”

“Why, of course!”

“You’ve acted... well, sort of unworldly lately.” He grinned. “You’ve been drifting around like Lady Macbeth.”

She felt that her smile was more of a grimace. “I’m dandy, Butch.”

“I guess the old differential creeps up on me, honey. That twelve years I’ve got on you. Anxious old buzzard worrying about his young and lovely wife.”

She scowled with mock ferocity. “The differential is just exactly right, you oaf. A woman of twenty-seven is the same mental age as a man of thirty-nine.”

He grinned. “I did sort of take you out of circulation in the full flush of youth.” She clenched a fist and lifted it. He scuttled for the door. “Okay, I’ll be good! I’ll be good! Don’t whup me!”

After he was gone she walked back into the living room, wondering if Carl had somehow put his finger on what was troubling her, on the cause of her restlessness. There had been dancing and music and brightness, and in the middle of it all Carl had come along, with his steady eyes and gentle hands, and before long the world had become a place full of grocery bills and washing and cleaning and formulas and bitter fights with the man from the diaper service. Maybe that was it. Maybe the sense of loneliness came from the thought of time going by, each second a knife that neatly sliced off a small chunk of the only life given her.

The doorbell rang and when she answered it, Hilda Gardner, leggy and flustered, came in, pulling off her hat. “Gee, I’m sorry I’m late, Mrs. Hazard. Our clock was slow, and I didn’t know it.”

It was on the tip of Cath’s tongue to say, “But, Hilda! It was tomorrow night that we arranged!” But a small feeling of adventure, of excitement began to glow in her and, instead, she said calmly, “That’s quite all right, Hilda. Mr. Hazard has gone on ahead. The children are in bed, and I haven’t even had a chance to change yet. By the way, Hilda, can you come tomorrow night too — at eight?”

“Why, I guess so.”

Cath left Hilda on the couch doing homework and went up to her bedroom. She put on a dull green gabardine suit that brought out her pale blondness. She decided against a hat, took her old polo coat from the front hall closet, said good-by to Hilda and went out.

The feathery snow was still falling, and the touch of it on her face was gentle. There was something inside her that was akin to the night, and she tried to force out of her mind the small feeling of guilt. Carl wouldn’t have to know. She’d be back long before midnight. Just a long walk on the quiet wet streets, an escape from the small house, a chance to be alone, to sort out the reasons for the thin sorrow and regret that she carried inside her — regret that seemed like a flat, plaintive chord, endlessly repeated.

Her heels clicked firmly on the wet sidewalk, and she swung along with her shoulders back, conscious of the youngness of her body, the smooth articulation of joint and tendon. It was, oddly, as though she had walked out of prison gates, from behind high stone walls, and soon a siren would jab the night and searchlights would cut through the overcast.

She walked five blocks down Henderson Street, turned right on the boulevard, past the silent automobile showrooms, the dead white glare of gas stations, down toward the heart of the city. As she neared an all-night newsstand, a man pushed out of the shadows and fell in step with her.

He mumbled something about buying her a drink. Without looking at him, Cath lengthened her stride and said clearly, “No, thank you.” He turned away, and she was glad when she came into the theater section, the better part of the city.

She turned into the lobby of the Hotel Glenton and went through a little act of looking anxiously around the lobby as though expecting to meet someone, ending with a shrug of disappointment as she sat down in one of the deep chairs.

She sat and looked at her fingers and saw that her nail polish was chipped. She inspected her knuckles and saw that the skin had grown coarse. She found a small callus on one thumb and wondered which of the continual household duties was responsible.

She looked at her hands and pretended that it was very subtle make-up, and that she had been cast in a part where the director was very anxious to have her grow old in a realistic manner, and they had done a careful job on her hands, gently roughening the clear soft skin. In adoption they had put two almost invisible parallel wrinkles across her throat, a few threads of white at her temples...

The game she played heightened her sense of unreality, heightened the feeling that she had been playing a part for several years, and that the real Cath, the Cath who danced and collected records and had her own battered convertible, was somehow buried cleverly underneath; at the proper moment, everything would be as it once had been. The children and Carl and the house were all parts of the stage design; she fitted them cleverly into the play, conscious always that this part was a challenge to her ability as an actress...

She realized that, without her having been conscious of it, tears had started to her eyes; she wondered why she was weeping. She snatched a handkerchief from her purse, blotted the tears, stood up and walked out into the night.

On the street, with people walking by her, she had a different feeling. It was as though she were a spy in the heart of the city, and she had to walk among them and pretend that she was one of them, though all the time she was completely different — of a different race, a different time, a different purpose. Should she fail to conform in every single particular, they would turn on her and point at her, and there would be a moment of tense silence before they took her away to some place she could not even imagine.

She stopped, looked into a store window where, in front of huge posters advertising Bermuda, were the plainest possible sport clothes, their mere simplicity attesting their supreme good taste.

She knew that she should tell the director that she was sick of this part, that it had gone on much too long and that tomorrow she would fill wardrobe trunks with expensive clothes and fly down to Bermuda to dream in the sun until all memory of the long part was gone.

It took a long time to walk slowly to the end of the brightly lighted area, and she turned and walked slowly back, stopping once more in the lobby of the hotel, glancing at her watch without seeing it, frowning as though she were furious at being kept waiting.

Once when she glanced at it, she noticed the time, and the small watch told her that it was nearly midnight. She stood up, thinking that there should be a long flight of stairs and that on one step she should leave a glass slipper...

The click of her heels was clear and definite as she walked back up the boulevard, turning left on Henderson.

A car cruised up beside her, edging along with her. She walked more quickly, lifting her chin a bit. The car horn beeped softly with a familiar note. She turned sharply, saw familiar outlines.

She hurried toward it with explanations on her lips that weren’t uttered because Carl said, “You going my way, lady?”

She affected coyness. “And what way would you be going?”

“Oh, I thought I might go out on the turnpike and buy a beer or two. Come along. I’m harmless.”

She slipped into the car, pulled the door shut behind her and looked at Carl. She saw his face in the dim light of a street light, set and calm, with mild good humor showing in his mouth. She had the odd feeling that he was indeed a stranger.

“My name is Carl,” he said.

“I’m Cath. What do you do, Carl?”

“Oh, I’m a pretty dull sort. Work in a construction outfit. Wife and kids. Own about half my own house. Wish I had a new car, and a few new suits. Average stuff. What do you do, Cath?”

“Housewife. Cook and clean and dust. A nice husband, two children, a small house. Just average. Nothing exciting.”

He laughed. “That gives us something in common. Just a couple of members of what they call the backbone of America. We can weep into our beer.”

He turned into the gravel drive of a roadhouse, parked in an empty space... They walked in, and he said, “A table in the bar? Or do you want to dance?”

“In the bar is fine.”

The two beers were set in front of them. Carl looked at her, and she felt sudden fear as she saw that his look was, in actuality, the calm appraisal of a stranger. She weighed him as a stranger and saw that his eyes were nice. It was a face that anyone would like — but there was a deep weariness in it.

“It’s a shame a good-looking gal like you has to be saddled with a house and kids,” he said abruptly.

“Is it?” she said coldly. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

“I bet you get restless with that husband of yours. I bet you feel trapped and that life is passing you by.”

“I do not!” she said hotly.

He grinned lazily. “Oh, come now! It can’t be very exciting.”

“How about yourself?” she demanded. “You’re trapped just as much as I am. Don’t you get restless?”

He took a sip of beer, set the glass down carefully. Then he frowned. “That’s a tough question, lady. Really tough. You see, I’m older than you are, and if you don’t like what I say, you can tell me it’s so much resignation, that I’ve given up fighting. I had a tough time when I was your age. I felt trapped and restless and... well, sort of alone in the world.”

“You did?” she said eagerly.

“Sure. I guess I never really got over it. I just realized what it is. You see, you’re always alone. Everybody you know is really a stranger. Even that husband of yours. Time passes; you don’t accomplish anything big. You just live. And always in your heart, you’re alone.”

She felt a lingering sadness. Gently, she said, “But what do you do? What can you do? How do you get over it?”

“I get over it with little things. You see, I love my wife, which is pretty much of an old-fashioned virtue, I guess. She’s a good kid, and I get a big bang out of the first look I get at her in the morning and when I come home at night. I have two kids, as I told you, and sometimes little things they do, or the way the hair looks on the napes of their skinny necks... even the buds on a rose bush that I bought for a buck... little things... I’ll never kill the world dead. I’m just going to be a guy who likes little things.”

Their eyes met for a long second, and she was the first to look away. She finished her beer, and he said, “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

They didn’t talk on the way back, and oddly, he let her out in front of the house. He went around the car, opened the door, and helped her out. He said, “Lady, I’m just a stranger to you. Maybe the next time you get all knotted up, I’ll be around to help.”

She went up the front steps, unlocked the door and went in. While she was paying Hilda, she heard Carl drive into the garage. After taking her coat off, she stood in the living room, until she heard him come into the kitchen.

She went to him, slowly at first, running the last few steps; then her arms were around his neck, her cheek hard against the rough fabric of his topcoat; his hands were firm on her shoulders.

“Where’ve you been, honey?” he asked.

It was hard to tell him. “I’ve been away for a little while, but now I’m home.”

He held her face cupped in his steady hands, and with the air of a man performing a ritual, he kissed her wet eyes. First one, and then the other.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Pickup