Ordinary People

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Judith Guest was born in Detroit, Michigan and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1958.
Ordinary People,
her bestselling first novel, received the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman when it was published in 1976. Her others include
Second Heaven
and
Killing Time in St. Cloud,
a collaboration with novelist Rebecca Hill.

 

She consulted with Robert Redford and scenarist Alvin Sargent on the film
of Ordinary People,
which won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1980. Her screenplay for the movie
Rachel River
was based on the short stories of Carol Bly.

 

Judith Guest lives in Minnesota. Her favorite pastimes are roller-blading and baby-sitting for her grandchildren.

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First published in the United States of America by
Viking Penguin Inc. 1976
First published in Canada by
The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited 1976
Published in Penguin Books 1982

Copyright © Judith Guest, 1976 All rights reserved

FUBUSHER’S NOTE:

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY OF CONCRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Guest, Judith.
Ordinary people.
I. Title.
PS3557.U34507 1982
813’.54 82-9834

eISBN : 978-1-101-04216-8

 

 

Acknowledgment is made to Norma Millay Ellis for the quotation from
“Sonnet CLXXI” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, from
Collected Poems,
Harper & Row. Copyright 1954 by Norma Millay Ellis

 

 

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

for Sharon and Con
and for my husband
all their words,
spoken and unspoken,
being worth remembering.

But what a shining animal is man,
Who knows, when pain subsides, that is not that,
For worse than that must follow—yet can write
Music, can laugh, play tennis, even plan.

—
Edna St. Vincent Millay

To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to possess a guiding principle. A belief of some kind. A bumper sticker, if you will. People in cars on busy freeways call to each other
Boycott Grapes,
comfort each other
Honk if You Love Jesus,
joke with each other
Be Kind to Animals
—
Kiss a Beaver.
They identify, they summarize, they antagonize with statements of faith:
I Have a Dream, Too
—
Law and Order; Jesus Saves at Chicago Fed; Rod McKuen for President.

Lying on his back in bed, he gazes around the walls of his room, musing about what has happened to his collection of statements. They had been discreetly mounted on cardboard, and fastened up with push pins so as not to deface the walls. Gone now. Probably tossed out with the rest of the junk—all those eight-by-ten colorprints of the Cubs, White Sox, and Bears, junior-high mementos. Too bad. It would be comforting to have something to look up to. Instead, the walls are bare. They have been freshly painted. Pale blue. An anxious color. Anxiety is blue; failure, gray. He knows those shades. He told Crawford they would be back to sit on the end of his bed, paralyzing him, shaming him, but Crawford was not impressed.
Lay off. Quit riding yourself. Less pressure more humor go with the stuff that makes you laugh.

Right, of course. Right again. Always right: the thing that is missing here is a Sense of Humor.
Life Is a Goddamn Serious Big Deal
—he should have that printed up to put on his bumper—if he had a bumper, which he doesn’t, not Conrad Jarrett the Anxious Failure dress this guy in blue and gray. A thousand-word book report due Wednesday in English Lit. The book has not been read. A test over the first six chapters in U.S. history. A surprise quiz in trig, long overdue.

He rolls onto his stomach, pulling the pillow tight around his head, blocking out the sharp arrows of sun that pierce through the window. Morning is not a good time for him. Too many details crowd his mind. Brush his teeth first? Wash his face? What pants should he wear? What shirt? The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.
Are You on the Right Road?

Crawford had tried to prepare him for this. “It’s all right, Con, to feel anxious. Allow yourself a couple of bad days, now and then, will you?”

Sure. How bad? Razor-blade bad?
He wanted to ask but he hadn’t, because at that point his suitcase was packed and his father already on the way to pick him up and remarks like that only got you into trouble, pissed people off. Cancel the visa. Passport Revoked: they stamp it in red across your forehead. Uh uh. He’d had enough of that place. In the last months he had been able to spot the permanent residents every time. That unmistakable shuffling shoulders-bent walk. Mostly old men but some younger ones, too, in the dull, dusty-maroon bathrobes, sides flapping loosely, like the drooped wings of dying birds. Never. It was too damn small a world. Except that you always knew where you were. Mornings you talked first, then had O.T.—macramé, painting, woodworking, clay. Afternoons you could take a nap, go for a walk, work out in the gym—a well-equipped, exclusive YMCA—basketball, handball, racquetball, you name it. Evenings there were card games, small get-togethers in the corners of the lounge, Scrabble, backgammon. Leo told him once, “Stop worrying. You’re okay. You can play Scrabble, that means you can concentrate. You’re ready.” He had laughed. “It means you can spell,” he said. “That doesn’t mean shit.” “Well,” Leo said, “it’s nice to be good at something.”

His father calls to him from the other end of the house. He thrashes to a sitting position, connected at once to sanity and order, calling back: “Yeah! I’m up!” and, miraculously, he is up and in the bathroom, taking a leak, washing his hands and face, brushing his teeth. Keep moving, keep busy, everything will fall into place, it always does.

He takes a quick look in the mirror. The news isn’t good. His face, chalk-white, is plagued with a weird, constantly erupting rash.
This is not acne,
they assured him.
What it was,
they were never able to discover. Typical. He tries to be patient as he waits for his hair to grow out. He had hacked it up badly, cutting it himself the week before he left. (“I didn’t think they would let you have scissors,” his grandmother said to him. “They shouldn’t have,” he answered her, oh so casual, thereby relieving the listeners of shock and embarrassment while exhibiting his poise, his Sense of Humor, see folks? Everything’s okay, he’s here, wearing his Levi’s, boots, and jersey shirt, just like everybody else, all cured, nobody panic.

This house. Too big for three people. Straining, he can barely hear the early-morning sounds of his father and mother organizing things, synchronizing schedules at the other end of the hall. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to hear, and they would certainly not be talking about anything. important. They would not be talking, for instance, about him. They are people of good taste. They do not discuss a problem in the presence of the problem. And, besides, there is no problem. There is just Phase Two. Recovery. A moving forward.

From what? Toward what?
He dresses himself (Progress!), looking out of the window, studying the lacy line of Russian olives that separates their property from the next-door neighbors’—what’s their name? Nice couple, but no kids, they’ve lived there for years—dammit, dammit, that’s the kind of stuff that scares you, not being able to remember names. He stares in concentration at the tall hedge of cedars hiding the house from the road. Cahill. Their name is Cahill. Okay, now relax.

But he cannot relax, because today is a Target Date. Tuesday, September 30. One month, to the day, that he has been home.
And what are you doing Jarrett? Asking weird questions like From what? Toward what?
Questions without answers. Undermining. A serious affliction. Worse than acne, worse, even, than an unidentifiable rash. So what the hell kind of cure was that? In the rec hall one night they.showed a movie on insects,
The Something Chronicle. Hellstrom,
that was it. The May fly has a life-span of eighteen hours. It spends that entire time laying eggs for the next generation. May flies, the narrator explained, know the answer. Because they never even have to ask the question. Nice for the May Hies.

There is a prickly sensation at the back of his throat. He turns away from the window, picking up his books from the desk. Then he puts them down again. No. Follow routines. First, the bed; then line up the towels in the bathroom; then pick up books; then eat break-Cast; then go to school. Get the motions right. Motives will follow. That is Faith. Vainly, he has taken to reading bumper stickers again, but they belong to other people. They are not his statements.
I Am a Hockey Nut. Christ Is the
Answer—What
Was the Question?

Vaguely he can recall.a sense of calm, of peace, that he had laid claim to on leaving the hospital. There were one or two guiding principles to get him through the day. Some ambitious plans, also, for putting his life in order. But the details have somehow been lost. If there ever were any.