Stories in an Almost Classical Mode by Harold Brodkey

did; he swore it on his soul.
    Sukie blinked, then said submissively, “All right.”
    After that they made love.
    When Robin came back, Marcus went to the door, wrapped in a blanket, and said, “Give us five minutes and we’ll get dressed.”
    Robin said, “No, let me in. I won’t peek,” and he came in and sat on the foot of the bed. He leaned across Sukie’s ankles and talked rapidly—chattered about what an ugly town Boston was, how dreary winter was. Sukie and Marcus lay as quietly as corpses. Robin turned his head away while Sukie got dressed. (He’d said like a gym instructor, “It’s time we got going.”) Marcus remained in bed, propped against the headboard, the blanket up to his shoulders. Robin’s weight hurt his ankles. Stiff-necked with excitement, Robin said, “I’ll bring her back whenever I can.”
    Marcus returned to school and told himself that people were all alike. Sukie would soon change for him, as he had changed for Nanna’s sake. She would become a warm, responsive, trustworthy girl. He would help her and be strong. At the same time, he longed to escape from her. But he wanted her, too. He wrote Sukie twice a day. He was tired and could not sleep. He toppled into periods of nervous exhaustion and lay staring at the wall, drenched with sweat. He’d lockthe door of his room at such times; he wanted no one to see him. Feelings that he could not put a name to, incomprehensible but powerful feelings, like abstract paintings—a blue one, a blue-and-black one, a gray one shot through with viridian—filled his head and chest. The recollection of the texture of the skin on Sukie’s back drove him from the lunch table to walk slack-jawed, both exalted and wretched, in the snow. He began to avoid his mind. (When he grew older, he found he could avoid his mind easily whenever he wanted except when trying to fall asleep; to quiet his mind then, he would drink two shots of brandy and take a Seconal, and wander around his bedroom until he entered a state of near idiocy; only then, when he fell on his bed, would he find unconsciousness within reach.)
    Sukie’s letters burned like dry ice; in them she complained of her classmates, described her feelings—“Everybody looks at me; I think I’m blossoming”—begged him to arrange with Robin to drive down to her school: “I’m going out of my mind. I’m suicidal. I’m so bored, Marco. I must see you. I love you.”
    He’d make arrangements to go with Robin to Boston to stay in Gamma Foster’s house on Saturday night, and then, Robin telling Gamma Foster he and Marcus were going to the movies, they’d drive to Connecticut, both boys sitting hunched forward as if to hurry the car on. Sometimes he felt Sukie’s presence was unpleasant and he would tell himself passionately that she was stubborn, insisted on being unlovable, did not care if she alienated him or not; she was spoiled. He watched her face always. He knew its lineaments. He saw apparitions in it, landscapes, the hues of flowers. When his will faltered, he saw it as something associated with pain, a bandage. Sometimes a mood would warm that porcelain-white face and him, and he would begin again the fall of falling in love. On his way to see her, not knowing what he would find, his heart and nerves went rackatty-clack like a half-empty train rushing through a countryside at night. He’d arrive and his eyes would fly to that face. (“Don’t, Pony. It makes me so nervous when you stare at me.”) If her face was trampled or muddied, he would grow distant and emotionless, like a doctor; he was anxious to help her, not to be bad for her. He tried to be a proper lover, like one in books, and he told her—remembering another moment when he had been unable to speak—that she was the sun and wind and clouds and a rosebush. Sukie brightened and said, “Oh, that’s lovely.” He continued with increasing sincerity, and compared her to the craziness of dreams, to a beach, towarm sand and