Killings

“Matt looked at his watch. Ruth would be asleep. He walked with Willis back into the house, pausing at the steps to look at the starlit sky. It was a cool summer night; he thought vaguely of the Red Sox, did not even know if they were home tonight; since it happened he had not been able to think about any of the small pleasures he believed he had earned, as he had earned also what was shattered now forever: the quietly harried and quietly pleasurable days of fatherhood.” 

This moment takes place right before Matt and Willis speak openly to each other about their plans to entrap and kill Richard Strout. The vague air of illicit activity is heightened by Matt’s calculation that Ruth is asleep. Throughout the story, we see both Matt and Willis keeping secrets from their wives, almost as though their murder of Richard is a kind of extramarital affair. 

“[…] at the dinner table on evenings when Frank wasn’t home, was eating with Mary Ann; or, on the other nights—and Frank was with her every night—[Matt] talked with Ruth while they watched television, or lay in bed with the windows open and he smelled the night air and imagined, with both pride and muted sorrow, Frank in Mary Ann’s arms. Ruth didn’t like it because Mary Ann was in the process of divorce, because she had two children, because she was four years older than Frank, and finally—she told this in bed, where she had during all of their marriage told him of her deepest feelings: of love, of passion, of fears about one of the children, of pain Matt had caused him or she had caused him—she was against it because of what she had heard: that the marriage had gone bad early, and for most of it Richard and Mary Ann had both played around.” 

This quote reveals the complexity of emotions that lie within Matt’s heart. He is both proud of his son (perhaps for finding love, or for finding love with a pretty woman), and sorrowful that Mary Ann is not ideal. The narrator also here reveals that Matt and Ruth’s bed, a place of great physical intimacy, is also a place of great emotional and psychological intimacy. In so doing, he invokes a universal sentiment and grounds the two characters in contexts that feel both familiar and poignant. Their relationship is not unlike any other marriage, but that doesn’t mean that it is not genuine or unique. 

“But Matt knew Strout had taken [Mary Ann cheating on him], for he had heard the stories too. He wondered who had told them to Ruth; and he felt vaguely annoyed and isolated: living with her for thirty-one years and still not knowing what she talked about with her friends.” 

In this quote, Matt has pretended to be shocked by Ruth’s retelling of the rumors that Mary Ann and Richard cheated on each other during their marriage, and he has also assured her that the rumors are untrue. This act therefore foregrounds the mundane betrayals and deceptions that are a part of his marriage. The detail about him not knowing what Ruth talks about with her friends underscores Dubus’s assertion that, no matter how close or intimate a person may be with another, there will always be hidden depths or deceptions within the relationship.

“On these summer nights he did not so much argue with her as try to comfort her, but finally there was no difference between the two: she had concrete objections, which he tried to overcome. And in his attempt to do this, he neglected his own objections, which were the same as hers, so that as he spoke to her he felt as disembodied as he sometimes did in the store when he helped a man choose a blouse or dress or piece of costume jewelry for his wife.” 

Intriguingly, this quote turns the notion of intimacy on its head. Ostensibly, Matt’s act of overcoming Ruth’s objection is an act of love and intimacy, as he tries to ease her anxieties. However, this intimacy, which is typically understood as close, vulnerable proximity to another, results in a dissociative and distanced state in Matt’s psyche. The detail that Matt also feels dissociated while at work adds to the story’s slow-burning undercurrent of discontent and repression. 

“Matt was looking up at him; Frank was six feet tall, an inch and a half taller than Matt, who had been proud when Frank at seventeen outgrew him; he had only felt uncomfortable when he had to reprimand or caution him. He touched Frank’s bicep, thought of the young taut passionate body, believed he could sense the desire, and again he felt the pride and sorrow and envy too, not knowing whether he was envious of Frank or Mary Ann.”

This intriguing and somewhat ambiguous quote highlights Frank’s characterization as a young man in his sexual prime. Symbolically, Frank represents everything that Matt has aged beyond. Frank’s jealousy, too, which can be read as borderline incestuous, foregrounds the manner in which his id is constantly seething beneath the surface. The detail that Matt only feels uncomfortable with the fact that Frank has outgrown him when he needs to be a disciplinarian also subtly depicts the pecking order of masculinity. Matt feels uncomfortable in these moments because he cannot fully occupy a masculine, dominant role with his son if his son can physically dominate him. Through this characterization, Dubus also intimately links physical force and/or violence to the definition of masculine authority. 

“There had been other talks, but the only one long enough was their first one: a night driving to Fenway Park, Matt having ordered the tickets so they could talk, and knowing when Frank said yes, he would go, that he knew the talk was coming too. It took them forty minutes to get to Boston, and they talked about Mary Ann until they joined the city traffic along the Charles River, blue in the late sun. Frank told him all the things that Matt would later pretend to believe when he told them to Ruth.” 

The fact that Matt buys the tickets to Fenway Park as a ruse to talk to his son, and that his son knows it is a ruse, speaks to the intricate ways in which these characters circumvent direct communication, although they both know what the other wants. Here, Dubus continues to develop the sense of mundane deception that undergirds almost every relationship within the story. The Charles River is also featured in this quote, as a line that Matt and Frank travel parallel to. Given the symbolic significance of water—as it symbolizes freedom—the Charles River can here be read as a symbol for Frank and Mary Ann’s relationship. Their relationship is a locus of passion and impulse, and the parallel presence of the river mirrors the manner in which Matt and Frank are approaching, although not accessing, the relationship through their conversation. 

“It was in [Mary Ann’s] wide brown eyes that she looked older than Frank; after a few drinks Matt thought what he saw in her eyes was something erotic, testament to the rumors about her; but he knew it wasn’t that, or all that: she had, very young, been through a sort of pain that his children, and he and Ruth, had been spared. In the moments of his recognizing that pain, he wanted to tenderly touch her hair, wanted with some gesture to give her solace and hope. And he would glance at Frank, and hope they would love each other, hope Frank would soothe that pain in her heart, take it from her eyes; and her divorce, her age, and her children did not matter at all.” 

Here, the narrator demonstrates Frank’s intrinsic understanding of Mary Ann, and also his psychologically-intimate engagement with her. She is clearly an object of his desire. Given the way in which he keeps his explicit plans to murder Richard as a secret from Ruth, the details contained in this quote hint at a hidden motivation for the murder beyond simple vengeance for his son. It is possible that Richard feels some guilt for being sexually attracted to Mary Ann, and for his intimate thoughts about Mary Ann. The notion of the taboo quietly vibrates here. 

“It seemed to Matt that from the time Mary Ann called weeping to tell him until now, a Saturday night in September, sitting in the car with Willis, parked beside Strout’s car, waiting for the bar to close, that he had not so much moved through his life as wandered through it, his spirit like a dazed body bumping into furniture and corners. He had always been a fearful father: when his children were young, at the start of each summer he thought of them drowning in a pond or the sea, and he was relieved when he came home in the evenings and they were there; usually that relief was his only acknowledgment of his fear, which he never spoke of, and which he controlled within his heart.” 

In this quote, Matt waits patiently for Strout to exit his workplace, so that he and Willis can execute their plan to murder him. The details about Matt’s dazed state following his son’s murder speak not only to the shock of his loss, but to the manner in which Matt is divorced from his own emotions as a matter of routine. Being confronted with an event that irrevocably and intensely evokes emotions of loss and grief, he feels dissociated and unable to fully deal with his feelings. The quote also directly demonstrates Matt’s long-term practice of burying and silencing his deepest fears. 

“Beyond the marsh they drove through woods, Matt thinking now of the hole he and Willis had dug last Sunday afternoon after telling their wives they were going to Fenway Park. They listened to the game on a transistor radio, but heard none of it as they dug into the soft earth on the knoll they had chosen because elms and maples sheltered it. Already some leaves had fallen. When the hole was deep enough they covered it and piled earth with dead branches, then cleaned their shoes and pants and went to a restaurant farther up in New Hampshire where they ate sandwiches and drank beer and watched the rest of the game on television.” 

This quote highlights the way in which Willis and Matt’s murder of Strout is similar to an illicit extramarital affair. They each provide their wives with the alibi of the game at Fenway Park, and even listen to the game and catch its end in order to maintain that alibi. Intriguingly, Matt does not truly need an alibi, as Ruth knows all along what he is doing. This demonstrates the ways in which his deceptions are not always committed out of necessity. Rather, they are almost habitual. 

“[There] hung a color photograph of Mary Ann smiling at the camera […] smiling as she had on Matt’s lawn this summer while he waited for the charcoal and they all talked and he looked at her brown legs and at Frank touching her arm, her shoulder, her hair; he moved downthe hall with her smile in his mind, wondering: was that when they were both playing around and she was smiling like that at him and they were happy, even sometimes, making it worth it? He recalled her eyes, the pain in them, and he was conscious of the circles of love he was touching with the hand that held the revolver so tightly now as Strout stopped at the door at the end of the hall.” 

In this quote, Matt observes Richard’s home while he forces Richard to pack his suitcase. His sexualized memories of both Frank and Mary Ann speak to his own repressed sexual desiresand demonstrate the fact that his son’s affair stirred and disrupted his peaceful, almost neutered persona. Matt’s acutely emotional and sensitive observations here also display the hidden depths and riches of his internal psychological life. 

“[Strout] backed into the street, Matt looking down the gun barrel but not at the profiled face beyond it.” 

This quote foregrounds Matt’s misgivings about committing the murder. He does not want to see Richard as a full human being, because doing so might prevent him from killing Richard. Dubus, therefore, affirms Matt’s humanity in this quote: Matt is by no means a sociopathic or psychopathic killer. Rather, Matt is acutely aware that he is taking a human life, and also acts to repress his own feelings and guilt about doing so. The quote therefore also showcases the intricate role of repression in Matt’s internal life. 

“The gun kicked in Matt’s hand, and the explosion of the shot surrounded him, isolated him in a nimbus of sound that cut him off from all his time, all his history, isolated him standing absolutely still on the dirt road with the gun in his hand, looking down at Richard Strout squirming on his belly, kicking one leg behind him, pushing himself forward, toward the woods. Then Matt went and shot him once in the back of the head.” 

This quote depicts the instants of Matt’s murder of Richard. This is the only moment in which Matt truly and fully obeys his id. It is fleeting, straightforward, and extremely short: a literal explosion of impulse and primal desire that quickly resolves itself. 

“He told of the first shot, feeling [Ruth’s] hand on him but his heart isolated still, beating on the road still in that explosion like thunder. He told her the rest, but the words had no images for him, he did not see himself doing what the words said he had done; he only saw himself on that road.” 

In this quote, Matt has returned to the bed that he shares with Ruth. He is closing his eyes, which symbolizes the fact that he has returned to a place of psychological and emotional retreat. Too, he feels dissociated in his recounting. This solidifies the notion that he has fully returned to his masked persona after briefly and violently engaging his id, which is here invoked by Matt only seeing himself on the road on which he murdered Richard. Now, that moment of full impulse indulgence is merely a memory that is simultaneously intense and remote.