Read an Excerpt
chapter 1
Two hours before the accident occurred, Devlin Jamison drove over the crest of a hill on the pitted two-lane asphalt and saw, far below him, the multiple lanes of the east-west highway, the yellow octagon of the stop sign. The shocks bucked and the pale blue Cadillac convertible swayed as he went down the rough hill and came to a stop at the sign.
When the lanes were clear he turned right, heading west, accelerating smoothly. As he gained speed he began to notice an annoying thumping sound in the front end. The car had been completely checked in a reliable garage before he had started the trip. He wondered if he had knocked it out of line on the rough country road. The sound was noticeable at forty, vibrated the steering wheel at fifty and began to smooth out at sixty. At sixty-five he could no longer detect it. He checked the gauges, shifted his position slightly, drove on with the needle steady at sixty-five, handling the car with unconscious skill.
Ten minutes later a sign warned of traffic signals ahead. As he slowed down the thumping sound once again intruded itself. Beyond the light was a row of service stations, gravel blue-gray in the hot spring sunlight, buildings blazing white, pumps standing in holiday colors on concrete islands.
Jamison moved into the right lane, saw the yellow truck moving up behind him, signaled his turn and hurried it somewhat, coasting up to one of the stations. An attendant came out from the grease rack, wiping his hands on a ball of waste.
Jamison got out of his car, stretching long legs. “Is there any way you can check the alignment?”
“No, sir. We can’t do it.”
“The damn thing is thumping.”
“There isn’t anybody close by. About twelve miles west of here, on the left, is a place called Barney’s Service. They’ve got the equipment.”
Jamison thanked him and got back in the car and drove on. Once he was up to speed he could no longer hear the thump. It could have been the rough road or maybe Gina had hit it against a curb the way she.…
He tightened his hands on the wheel as the grief and loss threatened to overwhelm him again. He cursed the trickery of grief. It would back off from you a little way, crouched and waiting, tail tip twitching restlessly. It would wait. It would wait until you were so far off guard that you started to think of Gina in the old way, fondly, amused at the eccentricities of her driving, aware of your love for her. It would wait for that moment and then pounce and shake you and say in your ear, “There is no more Gina. She’s gone.”
She’s gone, and this trip is no good. This trip is a uselessness. He felt awkward, taking this trip, as though playing a part. He was taking the trip because the others wanted him to, felt it would do him good, insisted on it. Now he was going through the motions because it seemed important to them.
He knew how it would be on this morning back in the bright offices of Stock, Jamison and Valient. Probably Joe Valient would wander into Stanley Stock’s office and say, “Well, I guess Dev got off this morning.”
Stanley would be, as he was about everything, pontifical. “This will do him a great deal of good, Joseph.”
And they would nod at each other in the big bright office, sane, reasonable and untouched. Jamison realized how useless it was to resent them. They were doing what they thought was best for him. To be accurate, there was a leavening of self-interest in their plan for him.
Stanley Stock had admitted it. He had said, a week ago, “Dev, the three of us have made a good team: I have the contacts, the head for business. Joe Valient has all the steam in the world. Of the three of us you are the only creative architect. Without you we could get along. But with you, Devlin, with your sketches and imagination, we can keep on landing the juicy contracts.”
Devlin remembered smiling apologetically and saying, “The wheels just don’t seem to go around any more, Stanley.”
“I’ll be blunt with you, Dev. This whole thing has been a dreadful shock to you. You’re brooding about it. You’re not doing yourself or the firm any good. Joe and I have talked it over. We think you ought to pack up and go away for a while. Put your golf clubs in the car. It’s May. Take off. Come back in the fall. We won’t expect to hear from you. Lord knows we’ve got enough to keep busy on this summer. You owe it to yourself to get away, Dev. Get away from here and from the house where you lived with Gina and all the local memories. It won’t hurt as much when you get back.”
“Sure. Time heals all wounds,” Jamison had said bitterly and when his eyes had begun to fill he had gone over to the windows, his back to Stanley Stock.
After a few moments Stanley said, “Will you do it?”
He had sighed then. “I guess I might as well. I’m not much damn good around here.”
It had taken a week to get things in shape. He had dismissed the housekeeper, Mrs. Hartung, and told her he would phone her in the fall. He had arranged for a man to look after the grounds. This morning he had walked through the silent brooding rooms, looking at the things she had bought and the things she had loved. Her personal things were gone. The day after Gina’s death Nancy Valient had come in and packed up her clothing, cosmetics, costume jewelry without telling him. They were gone and he had never asked where. Nancy, full of understanding warmth and pity, had tried to take away all the too-personal things. But that cannot ever be done to a house where two people have lived in a good love.
He remembered some of the things Nancy had overlooked. The round scrawl of a half-finished grocery list on the kitchen bulletin board. A piece of green yarn she had used to tie her hair, which had gotten, somehow, into the drawer with his socks. The worst, the very worst, had been the present for his birthday. She had died the week before. He had found it in the hiding place where she always put presents. The card was with it, a comic card taunting him about his advanced age of thirty-four. He could not unwrap the gift. He took it with newspapers out to the burning barrel behind the garages and turned away as it started to burn. He smelled the stink of burning leather and knew that it had been something of leather, of very fine leather because she liked things that were very good. It had very probably been too expensive. Then he wished he had not burned it, that he had saved it as a last present from her.
Ever since her death he had found himself doing things that were almost grotesquely sentimental, or strangely cold—and regretting them immediately. It was as though he had lost the ability to act in a rational way. He had spent a whole evening remembering their worst quarrels, fixing them in time and place, remembering what had been said, remembering his own absurdities. Words cannot be taken back.
He had wondered how it would be, now, if it had been a poor marriage. Would he feel the relief of freedom? Would there be a hypocritical sadness? But it had been the best marriage. “DevandGina”—spoken as one word by their friends, because it could be sensed that they were one word, one entity. She had been joy, and she had been daring, and both those qualities—given to him by her—had shown in his work.
He could not stop his own irrational behavior, nor could he lift from his mind the heavy awareness of guilt. He knew his guilt was irrational, but it was with him. It made him wish there were something he could dedicate himself to, some great appointed task which would expiate guilt.
