Conduct in Question

Chapter 32

At home, Harry showered and shaved, trying to preserve a shred of optimism against the sinking in his gut. Surely they could get counseling and work it out.

Half an hour later, he sat on the patio in the sun and smoked a cigarette. The house needed a new roof. Maybe a patch on the driveway would do.

It was almost five o’clock. A breeze was up, and it was getting chilly. Harry went inside and called Laura’s office, only to get her voice mail.

He glanced at the hall table and wondered why he had not seen the envelope before. Sinking onto a dining-room chair, he slit open the envelope, noticing the shadows creeping throughout the room. Although he already knew the message, he read carefully.

Dear Harry,

While I was going to meet with you tonight, I thought it better to write instead. We have not, for years, been going in the same direction. It’s as if we can never speak, one person to another. We are so different, and we always have been. Harry, I have found someone I truly love. Likely, it will come as no surprise that it is Peter Stover, at the museum. I have decided to move out and live with him. Consequently, I will come to the house tomorrow and take my clothes and a few personal items. (Please don’t make this difficult.) After that, I think we should communicate only through our lawyers. I wish there were some way to make this easier for you, but I know only time will do that. You’re a kind and reasonable man, Harry, so I hope I can count on that.

Laura

Tears stung at Harry’s eyes. Blindly, he shouldered his way out of the house and into his car. Never had he been so cold on a spring day. His fury piloted him in unknown directions. Somewhere on the highway east of the city, he admitted his part. Somehow they had simply drifted apart. Or was that true? No contented wife could be seduced against her will. Surely he could have prevented it. A floodgate had opened, and his mind was filled with useless waves of recrimination. There had been no huge argument, only skirmishes, followed by long silences. Over what?

When he pulled off the highway, he realized his direction. He was going somewhere isolated from the world, where he could think. The Scarborough Bluffs wound round the eastern edge of the city. He had been there many times as a child. From the beach, the city skyline was barely visible. No one would see him on the deserted stretch on a weekday afternoon.

He parked the car. Behind him were the high, sandy cliffs, set one against the other. The broad gray lake spread out to the horizon. Anyone watching from above would be surprised to see a solitary man in a business suit marching past bulrushes as tall as men, and onto the beach.

He trudged through the soft, sinking sand westward, toward the city. The constant wind swept down from the hills, cutting through his jacket. He longed for the cold to anesthetize him.

Up ahead, a dog ran in circles around a pile of rock and driftwood. Gulls dipped over the water and called out in eerily human-sounding voices. Harry stared out onto the rolling waves of the huge lake. Bereft, he wished he did not know the truth.

The cliffs ahead rose sharply straight up from the water. The afternoon sun shimmered on the smooth and sheer rock face. On the horizon, his city lay reduced to a tiny black smudge, as if it had floated away from him forever. With Laura gone, the city he once loved existed only in a jumble of memory.

Suddenly, Harry began to run. His leather shoes squished on the damp sand as he neared the pile of rock and wood ahead. Wincing at the pain in his side, he stopped not ten yards from his destination.

The driftwood, piled high, looked like a prehistoric monster. Harry kicked away some garbage and bent to examine the wood. Seizing a long piece of driftwood, he held it up in the unceasing wind. The knot in the wood stared skyward like an ancient, wizened eye.

The heft of the wood aroused an unexpected sense of power in him, then murderous frustration swept through him. In sudden fury, he swung the driftwood upward and felt his body stretch to its limits. With all his strength and power, he smashed the blind, gnarled eye on the rocks. The reverberation stunned him. The splintered wood shot along the beach. Elated, he shook with his own long-buried fury and smashed another piece of wood, and then another. He sank to his knees on the deserted beach, isolated by rock, wind, and water. At last, he was spent.