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Back The Fall of Valor
Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

What of his wife; what of his growing sons; what of Billie; what of Cliff himself? Each of them would be repelled by such a turn of events, unable to accept the truth. If they knew, they would cast him out; nor could he blame them. At all costs Cliff must never know; his inmost manhood would be offended (John Grandin could not forget that calm adult rebuff when he had deviously introduced the subject of contraceptives). Nor must Ethel know, who would be wounded possibly to the point of leaving him forever, having discovered that the man she loved was no man at all. Now, for the first time, their violent quarrel took on a sinister but crystal-­clear meaning. He knew now what she had been telling him without realizing it; he realized why he had been so destroyed by what should have been (and what would have been, had it been any other couple) a routine spat between husband and wife, an episode in the Jiggs-­and-­Maggie saga. But the quarrel had been no mere episode; it was the logical climax of long strain, the very secret of their inadequate relation-ship—proof enough (before the proof of finding the bottle of sun-­tan oil) that he had been a poor husband for Ethel beyond the inescapable fact, not unlike the habits of other men his age, that he had not been coming to bed with her—and why.

Curiously enough, he did not mind the prospect of seeing Cliff that morning; it was Ethel he dreaded meeting far more. His confidence in himself was gone utterly. He could not tell Ethel. It would be a confirmation of the first-­night quarrel: he was more inadequate as a husband than even she realized. They could not possibly meet this revelation; they were not big enough. To tell her what had happened would be to rip them asunder with a realer split than any they had had before, perhaps the one true break they had ever had, a break impossible to remedy because it was founded on such a fundamental thing as disparate love.

He got up and dressed. Ethel had left the room early. When he came in last night, the light was out and she was asleep. He remembered her sharp anger as he had quitted the steps and left her standing there unanswered, to walk off into the fog. If she was still hostile this morning, it was no time to reveal to her what last night had been revealed to him. In any case he knew he could never reveal it—reveal it, that is, and still be able to keep Ethel and the children, which is all he wanted of life, all he had been planning on, all he loved.

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