From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [34]
“That makes it all all right, I suppose,” she said. “That takes all the scars away, and we can just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I didnt say that,” Holmes cried. “I know what its done to you. But how was I to know? I didnt know it myself until too late. What more is there for me to say, except I’m sorry?” Looking back at her in the mirror he tried to be indignant, but had to drop his eyes. The uniform on the floor shamed him with the existence of the wet spots of his body water on its cloth.
“Please, Dana,” Karen said shrilly, franticness in her voice. “You know how much I hate to talk about it. I’m trying to forget it.”
“All right,” Holmes said. “You brought it up. I dont like to think about it either, but neither one of us will ever be allowed to forget it. I’ve lived with it for eight years now.” He stood up wearily, walking to the closet for another uniform, temporarily defeated. All the anticipation of this afternoon’s adventure was gone now, hardly seeming worth the trouble.
“So have I lived with it,” Karen called after him. “You got off easy. At least it didnt scar you any.”
Furtively, on the side away from him, privately, she slipped her hand down to her belly, feeling with her fingers the thick ridge of the scar. There lies the evil, she thought hysterically, the grape torn open and the seed plucked out and left withering on the vine. All the foulness of all the soppy secret dampness, the sliding slippery airless dark came back on her now and overwhelmed her as the gaseous bubble burst in her mind, scenting it with the memory of foulness that she must escape.
In the closet Holmes made up his mind to go riding anyway, whether he wanted to or not, because to hell with it and he’d take a bottle. Under the unpleasantness he dreaded he grinned back at himself.
When he stepped out in fresh underwear the change in him was already apparent. The dejection and the guilt were gone and in their place was sureness. He had assumed the hangdog air of a synthetic plaintiveness that was his defense that always wrested victory from the acceptance of defeat.
Karen recognized the attitude. In the mirror she could see him in his underwear, massive, hairy, legs bowed grotesquely by so many hours on a horse—at Bliss he had been the captain of the polo team—and the thick black hair on his chest padding out the T shirt like excelsior a cushion. His face, heavy bearded, had that gross blue sensuality of a fecund priest, and the same proud-suffering air. He had only shaved below his collarline, and the black curls reached up to the shaved neck like living flames sucked up a flue. Her stomach flopped in her sickeningly, like a big fish slimy on the hook, at the sight of him who was her husband. She moved along the seat before the dressing table until she could no longer see his reflection.
“I saw Colonel Delbert this morning,” Holmes said. “He asked me if we were coming to General Hendrick’s party.” His big jaw set, watching her levelly, he moved over to where his image was before her in the mirror again, casually, as he was putting on the breeches.
Karen watched him do it, knowing what he was doing now, yet still unable to keep her nerves from jangling like a plucked guitar string.
“We’ll have to go,” he said. “Theres no way out of it. Also, his wife is having another tea; I got you out of that.”
“You can get me out of the other, too,” Karen said, but her tone had lost its commanding air and was half-hearted. “If you want to go, go by yourself.”
“I cant keep on going by myself forever,” Holmes said plaintively.
“You can if you tell them I’m sick, which will be the truth. Let them think I’m an invalid, I’m near enough to make it ethical.”
“Simmons has been shipped down from football,” he said. “That leaves a majority open. The Old Man told me about it, then asked if you werent coming to the party.”
“The last time I went to a party where he was, you remember, I came home with my gown torn nearly off.”
“He was a little tight,” Holmes said. “He didnt really mean anything by it.”
“I hope not,” Karen said thinly