“I don’t believe she’s gone,” he said without turning. “Did you know that?”
Maria nodded—then said, “Yes.”
“How did you know?”
She watched him. “Because you’re her father.”
He nodded to the images in the glass.
“Without evidence,” he said, “without definitive proof, a father would never give up believing, would he.”
“No.”
“Long after everyone else has given up and gone home and gotten on with their lives, he would keep on believing because, without evidence, you could never kill his belief.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
He nodded again and said nothing for a long time. She watched his back, his shoulders.
“But it’s not belief,” he said. “It’s not belief. Whatever belief is, whatever it once was, it’s been destroyed by something else. It’s been kicked all to hell by something else.”
She watched him. She held the glass of wine in both hands.
“Belief never stood a chance against disbelief,” he said.
After a moment she said, “Disbelief?”
“Disbelief in the world,” he said. “The way it is. The way it works. Its god.”
She waited for him to go on.
He said: “I stay because I disbelieve. I disbelieve. I don’t hope. I don’t pray. I disbelieve. I disbelieve and I reject and I renounce, and there’s nothing more to say about me.”
He turned and his face was perfectly composed, his look detached and calm. Then he saw her and she saw the change in his eyes, in his face, as if he’d stepped out of one kind of light into another.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You’re a good person. A good woman.”
She stared at him, and then she looked about the utility room—at this and that, at nothing. She wiped at her cheek and sniffed, and then smiled. “All I wanted was to cook you a decent meal, for God’s sake, and you lay this on me.”
He held her eyes. He could think of no reply.
He took a step toward her, but just then the dog labored to its feet and clicked off across the kitchen floor, and they heard the front door slam and a moment later Carmen appeared in the kitchen, the dog at her heels, and she came to the threshold of the utility room and stood taking in the strange scene: her mother wet-eyed, holding a glass of wine, and Grant Courtland in his canvas jacket behind her, holding the broom.
46
The young man in his bed did not hear the click of the lamp, or feel the light on his eyes under their lids, but went on sleeping as before, openmouthed and dreaming of God knew what. He slept on his side, facing lampward, hair spilled across his eyes, curled upon himself with one loose fist exposed above the hem of the blanket near his chin. The air smelled of ash and sour breath and the rank humid interiors of leather boots. And he would’ve gone on sleeping but for a noise in the room, a true noise heard and felt, like a blow to the headboard, which jerked him blinking into the light—“What?”—raising his head and squinting at the lamp, squinting into the room.
A figure sat there in the weak light, having pulled the little chair bedside to sit upright and formally, as a doctor would, or a priest.
“What the hell you doing, Pops?” he said thickly, and the figure leaned forward, elbows to knees, hands clasped, and the face clarified and Billy beheld him groggily. Beyond him the door stood open.
The alarm clock showed 3:35.
Billy uncurled and stretched himself, yawning. He smacked his lips and said, “How long you been sitting there?”
Grant looked at him closely. The greasy, fallen hair, the hooded eyes, that mouth.
“Not long.”
“That’s good to hear.” Billy drew himself up and rested his head against the headboard, the pillow mounded under his neck. This new position, the angle of his neck, gave him the look of a man who was helpless to make himself more comfortable.
He regarded his visitor and said, “What’s on your mind, Grant?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“You couldn’t sleep.”
“I was lying over there, trying to sleep, but I couldn’t. So I got up and came over here. I thought maybe I could talk it out of me.”
Billy looked at him. He sniffed the air for alcohol and smelled none.
Grant sat studying his own fingers.
“You couldn’t find anybody else to talk it out with?” Billy said. “That old man across the hall don’t even sleep. You could talk to him till the cows come home.”
“It doesn’t concern him.”
“It doesn’t.”
“No.”
“It concerns me?”
“Yes.”
Billy grinned and wagged a finger and said, “I bet it concerns that boy of yours too. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“So why don’t you talk to him?”
“I did talk to him, earlier. But they sedated him at the hospital and he’s sleeping.”
“They sedated him at the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Why’d they do that?”
“That’s what they do for a broken wrist.”
“He broke his wrist?”
Grant stared at him. Billy stared back from his strange position. “And you think I had something to do with it,” Billy said.
“I do.”
“Because that’s what he told you.”
“No. He told me the horse threw him.”
“Yeah, they do that.”
“The girl had a different story.”
“What girl was that?”
Grant reached up and scratched his jaw. Billy watched his hand until it came down again.
“You know what girl,” Grant said. He could hear the younger man’s breathing and Billy could hear his.
“And now here you are,” Billy said. “Come into a man’s room while he’s still in bed. Well, do what you gotta do, Grant. But before you begin I think you ought to know something that maybe nobody else has mentioned.”
“What’s that.”
“It was a fair fight. A fair fight. And if your boy got his wrist broke it was only because he didn’t know when to quit. He’s no fighter, sorry to say, but he’s got no fear either.”
“A fair fight,” said Grant. “What does a shit like you know about a fair fight?”
Billy’s eyes had been glazed, then faintly lit as he warmed to the conversation. Now they turned hard and bright.
“I’m sorry junior can’t handle himself better in a scrap,” Billy said. “But I’m done talking to you.” He reached and clicked out the light and then rolled away and slugged the pillow. “Shut that door on your way out.”
Grant sat as before, like a man at vigil, his eyes adjusting to the dark. A moon had come into the west-facing window, white as the eye of a blind man. Light enough to see by. There was the tock tock of the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs.
“How are you fixed with God, Billy?” he said, but Billy did not stir—until finally he exhaled with a sound of exhaustion and said, “Worse than a woman,” and he rolled again to face Grant. Faint moonlight in his eyes. “What do you want from me? An apology?”
“Want you to answer my question.”
Billy stared at him. He shook his head and propped himself again on the headboard and grabbed his cigarettes and lighter from where they lay by the lamp. He struck the flint wheel and his face lit up garishly with the flame, then darkened again.
“How am I fixed with God? Was that the question?” The eye of the cigarette flared and dimmed. The exhaled smoke rolled overhead in a blue squall.