Rock Island Line David Rhodes (ereader iphone .txt) 📖

“Don’t you see that’s what I’m trying to be? But natural in the best way. If the only person I made love to was my wife—and afterwe were married—then she would become a symbol for my own sexuality. I’d never desire another woman because I couldn’t imagine it with anyone else. And it’d be the same way for her too.”

“Phooey. One can always imagine.”

“But fantasizing isn’t as bad as contemplating it.”

“Oh, July, you make me so that I could just scream. You complicate everything so.”

“It isn’t me,” he shouted suddenly. “It’s your parents.”

A silence fell. It was a truth they didn’t enjoy talking about or even admitting. Mal didn’t want to get married. Losing her parents’ approval (and affection, it appeared) was not something she was willing to do; at least not right away. She’d never had to deny him point-blank, but that was because he’d had the good sense not to ask directly; if he had, she would have thought he was testing her—seeing what she would do for him.

“Besides,” he said after a while, standing up from the bed and going over to the window, “my father never slept with anyone but my mother, and I think it’s right to be like that.”

It was the second time he’d talked about his parents to her and his voice quaked with emotion, fearful that he was taking too great a liberty with his innermost secrets. Mal realized what tender ground he was on, and spoke very cautiously.

“It might be that you had no way of knowing. It wouldn’t be likely you’d find out about anything like that.”

“I would’ve known.”

“Maybe it happened before—”

“I would’ve known,” he said, with such abruptness that the whole subject sank and the silence instilled itself again.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” he said finally.

“Let’s not talk about it now.”

“I think I’d like to go for a walk. Do you want to come?”

“No. I’ll just stay here, if it’s all right. I’d like to do some sketching.”

“Sure, fine. I’ll bring back a pizza.”

“And something to drink?”

“And something to drink.”

“Do you love me?”

“Well, yes.” He smiled and was gone.

Mal was alone. She sat on the bed and listened to the house noises. They were comforting—much more so than the sounds in her own apartment, which always forced her to consider the causes behind them. These noises were nothing more than sounds. They had nothing to do with her. She didn’t live here. To her they were sounds from outer space. No one could expect them to be more to her. The responsibility for them belonged somewhere else. She listened, and escaped from the grip of her unresolved passions. Then she got her pad and began to sketch.

Forty-five minutes later she felt a slight chill from the window and, not wishing to stop the breeze and close herself off, she got up and went to July’s bureau in search of a sweater. She found the red one in the second drawer from the top, but having a preference for the yellow, she went down one more. Here she not only found the sweater, but, neatly shoved up against a back corner, the chubbiest Bible she’d ever seen, with frayed edges and all the gold lettering chipped away. She took it out and opened it. Immediately a picture sprang up: two people and a child. The man looked a little haggard; his wife was beautiful but dressed old-fashionedly. The boy, she believed, might have been July.

Mal put on the sweater and carried the book to the bed. A hundred pages farther on was another picture. She plucked it out, held it up close and studied it. At that moment the door opened and July came in, carrying a flat box and two cans of Coke. He looked at her and his face turned gray.

“Get away from that,” he said, with an anger that cut her to the bone. She quickly set it on the table.

“What’s the matter?”

“That’s mine.”

“Well, I assumed it was.”

He put the pizza and Cokes down and took up the book, clutching it with both hands. But once he had it safely within his grasp he didn’t know what to do with it; and he didn’t know what to say. “That’s mine,” he repeated.

“I didn’t know they were personal. Really, I’m sorry. I’ve got things like that too. I just thought it was an old book. I keep mine stuck away inside my jewelry box, underneath the lining. I wouldn’t show them to anybody for anything.”

July sank down into the chair. For the first time in his life he realized that he might not be the only one who had things that were more than special to him, that were neither in the past nor the present, but the future—things that were always just one step beyond, whose importance could never be judged because they were never finally realized . . . things that he was ashamed of because he felt so deeply about them. The idea that Mal had such things too made the realness of her snap a frame closer. Again, he realized, I’ve made a fool of myself.

“Do you think that you’d ever show them to me?” he asked.

“Maybe sometime.”

He crossed to the window and closed it. “Sometime I’ll show you these.” And he put them back in the drawer. They ate the pizza with great pleasure, July getting all the crusts. Mal took a bus home. Her car was no longer operating.

It was the very day following this that July made the greatest decision of his life. Wednesdays at work were very slow because of being right in the middle of the week. He anticipated this one with the usual quiet dread. Arriving at the post office, he hung up his coat, punched in and waited for the bell to ring. Then he began sorting. By ten o’clock he was so excited that he could hardly make out the most legible handwriting (and he prided himself on being able to