The Shining

Jack had arrived from the university forty-five minutes later, the Buick weighted down with seven friends and a keg of beer. After a ceremonial toast (Wendy also had a glass, although she ordinarily had no taste for beer), Jack had signed the acceptance letter, put it in the return envelope, and went down the block to drop it in the letter box. When he came back he stood gravely in the door and said, “Veni, vidi, vici.” There were cheers and applause. When the keg was empty at eleven that night, Jack and the only two others who were still ambulatory went on to hit a few bars.

She had gotten him aside in the downstairs hallway. The other two were already out in the car, drunkenly singing the New Hampshire fight song. Jack was down on one knee, owlishly fumbling with the lacings of his moccasins.

“Jack,” she said, “you shouldn't. You can't even tie your shoes, let alone drive.”

He stood up and put his hands calmly on her shoulders. “Tonight I could fly to the moon if I wanted to.”

“No,” she said. “Not for all the Esquire stories in the world.”

“I'll be home early.”

But he hadn't been home until four in the morning, stumbling and mumbling his way up the stairs, waking Da

“Congratulations,” she said, rocking Da

“It's just a bruise.” He sounded sulky, wanting to be repentant: a little boy. For an instant she hated him.

“Maybe,” she said tightly. “Maybe not.” She heard so much of her mother talking to her departed father in her own voice that she was sickened and afraid.

“Like mother like daughter,” Jack muttered.

“Go to bed!” she cried, her fear coming out sounding like anger. “Go to bed, you're drunk!”

“Don't tell me what to do.”

“Jack… please, we shouldn't… it…” There were no words.

“Don't tell me what to do,” he repeated sullenly, and then went into the bedroom. She was left alone in the rocking chair with Da

Now she turned restlessly on the bed, already dozing. Her mind, freed of any linear order by encroaching sleep, floated past the first year at Stovington, past the steadily worsening times that had reached low ebb when her husband had broken Da

Da

(Who giveth this woman? Her father standing in his best suit which was none too good-he was a traveling salesman for a line of ca

Even after the accident-if you could call it an accident-she had not been able to bring it all the way out, to admit that her marriage was a lopsided defeat. She had waited, dumbly hoping that a miracle would occur and Jack would see what was happening, not only to him but to her. But there had been no slowdown. A drink before going off to the Academy. Two or three beers with lunch at the Stovington House. Three or four martinis before di

My father, Da

(Who giveth this woman? I do. Dead of a heart attack six months later.)

The night before that morning she had lain awake almost until he came in, thinking, coming to her decision.

The divorce was necessary, she told herself. Her mother and father didn't belong in the decision. Neither did her feelings of guilt over their marriage nor her feelings of inadequacy over her own. It was necessary for her son's sake, and for herself, if she was to salvage anything at all from her early adulthood. The handwriting on the wall was brutal but clear. Her husband was a lush. He had a bad temper, one he could no longer keep wholly under control now that he was drinking so heavily and his writing was going so badly. Accidentally or not accidentally, he had broken Da

So thinking, she had fallen off into her own thin and unrestful sleep, haunted by the faces of her own mother and father. You're nothing but a home-wrecker, her mother said. Who giveth this, woman? the minister said. I do, her father said. But in the bright and su

“I want to talk to you about something that might be best for Da

And then he had said an odd thing. She had expected to discover his anger, to provoke the bitterness, the recriminations. She had expected a mad dash for the liquor cabinet. But not this soft, almost toneless reply that was so unlike him. It was almost as though the Jack she had lived with for six years had never come back last night-as if he had been replaced by some unearthly doppelganger that she would never know or be quite sure of.