Hamilton Stark by Russell Banks Page B

it. Really. I have. Part of it was my fault, I’m sure. I mean, I didn’t understand him very well, so it was hard for me to give him what he really wanted and needed—thoughI’m not sure any woman would have been able to give him what he wanted and needed. He was lonely, terribly lonely, I could tell that much. I could understand that. A stranger in a strange land, like they say. No friends, except the few rough pals he made at work. No family, and unable to be in touch with his family in New Hampshire because of what he was sure he had done to his father. And Florida was just not the place for him—he said he was a man of cold winds and ice and snow. I remember him telling me that, very serious, as if he was telling me he was Catholic or Methodist or Episcopalian. He hated the heat, the sun, the white light of noon, said it made him shrivel up inside, said it made him feel closed off from the world. He was always complaining about the palm trees. “They’re not trees. Why d’yer call them trees? They’re giant weeds, that’s what.
Weeds,
” he called them. And he disliked the people who lived here, called them “crackers,” even when they were from places like New York or Ohio. “Life in Florida,” he would grumble, “is like living in a motel full of crackers.” So actually, I wasn’t surprised when he left Florida. I expected it. What did surprise me, though, was that he did it alone, that he didn’t take the two of us along with him, his wife and his baby.
    We hadn’t been getting along for quite a few months when he left—not since I first told him I was pregnant, as a matter of fact, and you were three months old when he left, so that means we hadn’t been getting along for about a year. But I had blamed that pretty much on myself, on the pregnancy and all and the way I was right after you were born, the way I was all wrapped up with being a mother. Like I said, he was lonely, and after I got pregnant it was hard for me to help him not be lonely.
    Oh, what am I doing this for? What’s the matter with me? I sat down here to tell you the truth, and I’m not doing it, I’mlying, sliding over things, leaving important things out. I’m not telling the truth at all. It’s just that I don’t want you to be hurt by him any more than you already have been. But I can’t keep on lying to you.
    Life with your father was horrible for me right from the start. First there was that affair with Polly Prudhomme. Then there was the drinking. And after that there was all the violence, the fighting, the times he actually hit me. Then came the silence. He went silent on me. Shut everything down and just sat in his chair, reading sometimes, or looking out the window, or leaning back, his hands behind his head, and looking at the cracks in the ceiling. When you were born, he would come into the room where I was sleeping with you, and he would stand over your little bassinet and stare silently at you, no expression on his face at all. It was the strangest, scariest thing I had ever seen. It was as if he had died or something. I started going a little crazy from it. You can imagine the pressure it created, that silence, his expressionless face. I’d sob, “Do you love me?” and he’d say, “Sure,” just that, as if he was answering a question about a new hat I’d bought. “How do you like this one, hon?” “Fine,” he’d say. Except that I’d be sobbing, “What do you
feel
about me? What do you feel about the
baby?
” And he’d look up from the newspaper and say, “Fine.” No expression at all on his face, no depth in his voice. Well, I know I went a little crazy from it. I’d sometimes find myself in the middle of the night lying on the bathroom floor, my face pressed against the cold tiles of the floor, sobbing hysterically, “Why don’t you
leave
me! Get out! Get out!” And he’d be at the door, leaning casually against the frame of it, looking down at me with a strange curiosity in his