The Maples stories - By John Updike Page 0,53

headlights. The center of town, not quite deserted, was eerie at this hour. A young cop in uniform kept company with a gang of T-shirted kids on the steps of the bank. Across from the railroad station, several bars kept open. Customers, mostly young, passed in and out of the warm night, savoring summer’s novelty. Vo ices shouted from cars as they passed; an immense conversation seemed in progress. Richard parked and in his weariness put his head on the passenger seat, out of the commotion and wheeling lights. It was as when, in the movies, an assassin grimly carries his mission through the jostle of a carnival – except the movies cannot show the precipitous, palpable slope you cling to within. You cannot climb back down; you can only fall. The synthetic fabric of the car seat, warmed by his cheek, confided to him an ancient, distant scent of vanilla.

A train whistle caused him to lift his head. It was on time; he had hoped it would be late. The slender drawgates descended. The bell of approach tingled happily. The great metal body, horizontally fluted, rocked to a stop, and sleepy teen-agers disembarked, his son among them. Dickie did not show surprise that his father was meeting him at this terrible hour. He sauntered to the car with two friends, both taller than he. He said ‘Hi’ to his father and took the passenger’s seat with an exhausted promptness that expressed gratitude. The friends got in the back, and Richard was grateful; a few more minutes’ postponement would be won by driving them home.

He asked, ‘How was the concert?’

‘Groovy,’ one boy said from the back seat.

‘It bit,’ the other said.

‘It was O.K.,’ Dickie said, moderate by nature, so reasonable that in his childhood the unreason of the world had given him headaches, stomach aches, nausea. When the second friend had been dropped off at his dark house, the boy blurted, ‘Dad, my eyes are killing me with hay fever! I’m out there cutting that mothering grass all day!’

‘Do we still have those drops?’

‘They didn’t do any good last summer.’

‘They might this.’ Richard swung a U-turn on the empty street. The drive home took a few minutes. The mountain was here, in his throat. ‘Richard,’ he said, and felt the boy, slumped and rubbing his eyes, go tense at his tone, ‘I didn’t come to meet you just to make your life easier. I came because your mother and I have some news for you, and you’re a hard man to get a hold of these days. It’s sad news.’

‘That’s O.K.’ The reassurance came out soft, but quick, as if released from the tip of a spring.

Richard had feared that his tears would return and choke him, but the boy’s manliness set an example, and his voice issued forth steady and dry. ‘It’s sad news, but it needn’t be tragic news, at least for you. It should have no practical effect on your life, though it’s bound to have an emotional effect. You’ll work at your job, and go back to school in September. Your mother and I are really proud of what you’re making of your life; we don’t want that to change at all.’

‘Yeah,’ the boy said lightly, on the intake of his breath, holding himself up. They turned the corner; the church they erratically attended loomed like a gutted fort. The home of the woman Richard hoped to marry stood across the green. Her bedroom light burned.

‘Your mother and I,’ he said, ‘have decided to separate. For the summer. Nothing legal, no divorce yet. We want to see how it feels. For some years now, we haven’t been doing enough for each other, making each other as happy as we should be. Have you sensed that?’

‘No,’ the boy said. It was an honest, unemotional answer: true or false in a quiz.

Glad for the factual basis, Richard pursued, even garrulously, the details. His apartment across town, his utter accessibility, the split vacation arrangements, the advantages to the children, the added mobility and variety of the summer. Dickie listened, absorbing. ‘Do the others know?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did they take it?’

‘The girls pretty calmly. John flipped out; he shouted and ate a cigarette and made a salad out of his napkin and told us how much he hated school.’

His brother chuckled. ‘He did?’

‘Yeah. The school issue was more upsetting for him than Mom and me. He seemed to feel better for having exploded.’

‘He did?’ The repetition was the first sign that he