The Sunlight Dialogues Read Free

could remember when all this was new, the lawns plain and bare, the trees along the sidewalks all small and straight and as self-conscious-looking as the new, white houses, now gray or dark green or fading yellow. He could remember when the evergreens were six feet tall, full of colored lights at Christmas, and the snow on the lawns reflected the light, pale blue and yellow and pink. He’d driven a Wonder Bakery truck in those days—Good Bread for Six Reasons—and before that he’d been the Watkins man—panaceas and potions—for the Indian Reservation.) But no words came, only the light of a cat’s eyes beside the curb. At LaCrosse he slowed almost to a stop and turned. The houses were older, even taller here, like old-time castles. They stood in the cool, cavernous gaps between oak trees a century old. He went up the gravel driveway to where his garage sat half-hidden under burnt-out lilacs and surrounded by high weeds. In the glow of the headlights, the weeds looked chalky white and vaguely reminded him of something. It was as if he expected something terrible to come out from their scratchy, bone-dry-looking obscurity—a leopard, say, or a lion, or the mastiff bitch that belonged to the Caldwells next door. But nothing came, and only the deepest, most barbaric and philosophical part of Chief Clumly’s mind had for a moment slipped into expectancy. He put the car away, locked the garage, and walked around to the front of the house for the paper. It took him awhile to find it. The trees blocked the light from the streetlamp, and as usual there were no lights on in the house. He’d told her and told her about that. He found the paper by the side of the porch steps, almost under them, where you’d swear the little devil could never have put it except on purpose. Then, very slowly, weary all at once, he went in, unfolding the paper as he went. “Funny business,” he said again thoughtfully, as he locked the front door behind him. He could hear her in the kitchen. The house smelled of stew with cabbage in it.
    “Is that you, Fred?” she whined.
    He held his nose lightly with his left hand and thought, as he’d occasionally thought before, how weird it would be if it were not him but some stranger, some lunatic escaped from the hospital up in Buffalo. The man would stand smiling, not answering, his glistening eyes bugging out like a toad’s, surprised at the sound of a voice in the unlighted house, and after a moment she would appear in the near-darkness at the diningroom door, her high, chinless head alert and listening, white as death.
    “Fred?” she called again, “is that you, Fred?”
    “Just me,” Clumly said, calm. He snapped on the lights.
    He sat picking at his food, across from her, saying nothing while he ate, as usual. If there were hairs in the stew, he did not notice. Years ago—so long ago he could hardly remember it—he’d said something to her once about a hair in some food, and it had set off a terrible scene. She’d cried and cried, and she’d locked herself in the bathroom and said she was going to kill herself. “I’ll cut my throat with a razorblade,” she said. “Where are the razorblades?” And he’d stood bent over outside the bathroom door calling to her through the keyhole, begging her not to; he’d even sobbed, but purposely, hoping to persuade her, not really from grief. She had complained that he didn’t love her, she was a burden to the world; and even as he reasoned and pleaded with her Clumly had realized, calmly, sensibly, that all she said was, well, sad but true. But in the same rush of clear-headed detachment he had recognized, like Jacob of old when he found he’d got Leah, whose arms were like sticks and whose mouth was as flat as a salamander’s, that he’d have to be a monster to tell her the truth. What would the poor woman do, no beauty any more, without a skill or a talent in the world? He’d made a mistake in marrying her, one he might never have