Marry Me by John Updike

Author:John Updike [Updike, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: URN|ISBN|978-0-14-191990-4
Publisher: Penguin Adult
Published: 2007-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

4

The Reacting of Richard

‘Hello?’

It was Richard’s voice.

Jerry had been about to go out the door. It was after nine, time for him to return to the cottage for the third night. The telephone had unexpectedly rung; unthinking, he had picked it up. Now he held Richard’s deep, hollow, pompous, terrible voice in his hand.

He answered, ‘Hello.’

‘Jerry,’ Richard said, ‘I think the four of us had better have a little talk.’

‘Why?’

‘I think you know why.’

‘I do?’ The voice was at his ear, there was nowhere to put it, no way to reverse this stream, or shut it off, this stream that seemed to be carrying away, one by one, the slippery elements of his sinking insides. He had lost control.

Richard said, ‘Is that really how you want to play the game, Jerry?’

‘What game?’

‘Oh, come on – let’s be grown-ups. Sally tells me you and she have been lovers for six months.’

Jerry hesitated, and in the vortex of silence kept wondering, around and around, if it was correct to call a female a ‘lover’.

‘Well?’ Richard asked. ‘Is she lying?’

It was a knight fork. When they had all first moved to town, he and Richard had played chess, until Jerry evaded the invitations. He evaded them not because they were not well-matched players – for they were, oddly – but because he displeased himself with his craven fear of losing. There was for Jerry no satisfaction in losing at chess, no pleasant aftermath of exercise, not even the camaraderie of poker – just a nicotine staleness, a heavy late hour, and the certainty of having been outsmarted. In a knight fork, one piece must be lost.

Ruth, pale with exhaustion, was making agitated signals by the fireplace and silently mouthing, Who is it?

Jerry sighed, relieved that there was nothing to do but let it go, let it go. ‘No,’ he told Richard. ‘She’s not lying.’

Now Ruth knew who it must be. Her shape in the side of his vision went still, like a freeze-frame.

‘Good,’ Richard said. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’

Jerry laughed. ‘Where?’

‘Exactly,’ Richard said, with the same comical satisfaction, scoring points in a game Jerry could not see. ‘Where indeed. Wherever you want to take us, Jerry boy. Sally and I are very curious as to where that is.’

‘It depends,’ Jerry said, stalling. He felt betrayed. Sally had led him to think that somehow Richard didn’t matter. He mattered immensely, his knowing made an immense difference. She had lied.

‘Could you both come over here?’ Richard was asking. It was as if they had returned to the old days, before the Conants had conditioned themselves to refuse, when Richard or Sally would suddenly call and invite them to a Friday night movie, or a Sunday drink.

Jerry reverted to those days, replying, ‘It’s too late to get a sitter.’ Then he remembered, what he desperately wanted to forget, the situation. He asked, ‘Would you two like to come over here? You have Josie.’

‘This is Josie’s night off. Don’t you know our schedule?’

‘Not terribly well, really. What

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