On Sunday night Claire and Quinn had a nearly silent dinner, after which she lay down for a nap while he read the Times Book Review. He was having trouble concentrating.
It was a lazy June evening, warm but not too warm, the kind of evening when they used to stroll the campus at Williams, hand in hand, married but very much in love. How their love had annoyed people! Well, not real people; just the old farts who had been around Tweed Heaven for the last two hundred years or so. The ones who hated him and his fiction writing. And hated Claire's popularity. He had heard them: "Mr. and Mrs. Indignant"—and they laughed—"with his one pitiful story in The New Yorker." They'd laugh in a different way when he published his novel. He looked at the Times Book Review, limp in his hands. Nobody gave a damn about novels, that was the simple truth. He'd never be anything. He had no job. No future. And she was pregnant.
Almost as if he had summoned her, Claire appeared at the door, suitcase in hand.
"I'm going now," she said.
She never left for the trip to Hanover until nearly dawn, and here it was only about eight o'clock. What was this, some new way of fighting? The suitcase, the dead voice, the beaten expression. She looked like a bag lady.
"All right," he said.
She stood there in the doorway for a minute, silent, waiting for something more, and then she said, "I'll see you next week."
"All right."
The door closed behind her and still Quinn sat there, the Times Book Review crumpled in his lap. Finally he got up and went to the window. He pressed his face to the screen to get a good look, and after what seemed a very long time, he saw Claire appear on the sidewalk below. "To hell with her," he said. "I'm fed up."
Quinn watched as she crossed the street and got into her little Ford. She was going; she was actually leaving. But she only sat there behind the wheel, her head bent slightly. Was she crying? While he stood up here at the window, watching?
All at once something in his chest crumpled, and Quinn thought, my God, she's leaving, I drove her out, and she's the only thing I love.
He ran to the door and down the staircase, taking the steps three at a time. On the second landing, he fell against the door and gave his elbow a terrible crack. From inside he heard Birdie shout, "Who is it?," but he kept right on going. By the time he reached the street, Claire was gone.
He was sitting at his desk now, writing her a letter. He had been thoughtless, stupid, impossible, he said. How could she stand him? She was the only thing on earth he loved. She was his whole life to him.
He went on for some time in this way until he had filled an entire sheet. He turned the second sheet into the typewriter and then paused to read over what he had written. A lot of emotion, a lot of run-on sentences, but that was all right; he meant every word, and the long breathless lines only emphasized the urgency, the honesty, with which he wrote.
Seized by this feeling of honesty, he began the second page with a confession. He had told her a lie. It was the first time he had lied to her. It would be the last, the only, time. And then he told her about seeing Sarah Slade steal the handbag, about following her home to Louisburg Square.
Quinn leaned over the typewriter and read what he had written thus far. Was this the best thing to do? Really?
He plunged on. Angelo had propositioned him, and of course he had fled, embarrassed, humiliated. Obviously Angelo had misread his interest in Sarah. And then, during this past week, he had gone back a couple times to Louisburg Square…
Quinn typed a line of x's through this sentence and started again.
He had gone back to Louisburg Square, once, just out of curiosity, and…
Quinn typed another line of x's through this.
He had thought of going back to…
Quinn yanked the paper from the typewriter and inserted another sheet. He wished he hadn't lied to her in the first place—that certainly was true—but no good could come of confessing it now; he would simply resolve never to lie again.
Back to the letter. He sent her all his love, he said. He wanted whatever she wanted, and if she wanted the baby, then he wanted it too. Truly. Honestly. He loved only her, always and forever.
Quinn proofread the letter, put in a comma, changed another comma to a semicolon, and slipped it into an envelope. She would get it by Tuesday, he figured. Wednesday at the latest.
He felt much better now, as if they had already made up. But at once he thought of the baby, the dread baby, and wondered how in hell he was going to cope.
He poured himself a drink and tried to go back to his Times Book Review. He still couldn't concentrate. He decided to mail his letter to Claire and then take a walk. Down to the river perhaps, but not to Beacon Hill, not anywhere near it.
An hour later Quinn stood outside the house in Louisburg Square. The windows were dark. He sighed, relieved. There was nobody home, and so he had nothing to fear, nothing to confess.
