The Progress of Love

“I don’t want you and Lynnette riding around with him, if there’s anything like that.”
    “Colin, I wouldn’t,” said Glenna, in a gentle, amazed voice. “Do you think I ever would ride with him in that car or let Lynnette ride with him? I never would.”
    He took the garbage out and she began to sweep the floor. When he came back, she said, “I just thought of something. I thought, Soon I’ll be sweeping the black and white tiles and I won’t even be able to picture what these old boards look like. We won’t be able to remember. We should take some pictures so we can remember what we’ve done.”
    Then she said, “I think Nancy sort of dramatizes sometimes. I mean it about me and Lynnette. But I think she overdramatizes.”
    Glenna had surprised him, in fact, with the way she could picture things. The house, each of its rooms, in its finished state. She had placed the furniture they hadn’t yet bought; she had chosen the colors in accordance with a northern or southern exposure, morning or evening light. Glenna could hold in her mind an orderly succession of rooms, an arrangement that was ordained, harmonious, and, by her, completely understood.
    A problem wouldn’t just thrust itself on Glenna, and throw her into doubts and agonies. Solutions were waiting like a succession of rooms. There was a way she would see of dealing with things without talking or thinking about them. And all her daily patience and sweetness wouldn’t alter that way, or touch it.
    At first, with the lights and the hollering, his only idea was that they had come to blame him. That didn’t interest him. He knew what he had done. He hadn’t run away and cut down here and climbed the bridge in the dark so that they couldn’t punish him. He was not afraid; he wasn’t shivering with the shock. He sat on the narrow girders and felt how cold the iron was, even on a summer night, and he himself was cold, but still calm, with all the jumble of his life, and other people’s lives in this town, rolled back, just like a photograph split and rolled back, so it shows what wasunderneath all along. Nothing. Ross lying on the ground with a pool around his head. Ross silenced, himself a murderer. Still nothing. He wasn’t glad or sorry. Such feelings were too puny and personal; they did not apply. Later on, he found out that most people, and apparently his mother, believed he had climbed up here because he was in a frenzy of remorse and was contemplating throwing himself into the Tiplady River. That never occurred to him. In a way, he had forgotten the river was there. He had forgotten that a bridge was a structure over a river and that his mother was a person who could order him to do things.
    No, he hadn’t forgotten those things so much as grasped how silly they were. How silly it was that he should have a name and it should be Colin, and that people should be shouting it. It was silly, in a way, even to think that he had shot Ross, though he knew he had. What was silly was to think in these chunks of words. Colin. Shot. Ross. To see it as an action, something sharp and separate, an event, a difference .
    He wasn’t thinking of throwing himself into the river or of anything else he might do next, or of how his life would progress from this moment. Such progress seemed not only unnecessary but impossible. His life had split open, and nothing had to be figured out anymore.
    They were telling him Ross wasn’t dead.
    He isn’t dead, Colin.
    You never shot him.
    It was a hoax.
    It was Ross playing a joke.
    Ross’s joke.
    You never shot anybody, Colin. Gun went off but nobody was hurt.
    See, Colin. Here he is.
    Here’s Ross. He ain’t dead.
    “I ain’t dead, Colin!”
    “Did you hear that? Did you hear what he said? He said he ain’t dead!”
    So now you can come on down.
    Now you can come down.
    Colin. Come on down.
    That was when everything started to go back to being itself again. He saw Ross unwounded, unmistakably himself, lit up by car lights. Ross risen up, looking cheerful and slightly apprehensive, but not really apologetic. Ross, who seemed to caper even when he was standing still, and to laugh out loud even when he was working hard at keeping his mouth shut.
    The same.
    Colin felt dizzy, and sick with the force of things coming back to life, the chaos and emotion. It was as painful as fiery blood pushing into frozen parts of your body. Doing as he was told, he started to climb down. Some people clapped and cheered.