Then his mother had to leave, because she was late already for the Home.
Arthur stayed and washed the dishes, so that his mother would have a pleasant surprise, a clean kitchen, when she returned around 6 this evening. The telephone rang. Arthur didn’t answer it. It was a half-friendly house, a half-hostile house. Very odd. Arthur whistled “Sunday, Sweet Sunday.” Sweet Sunday, with nothing to do. When would he ever have that, with Maggie?
That afternoon, Arthur learned that he could move into a C.U. dorm, sharing a bedroom-study with one other freshman, for a hundred and fifty dollars a month with breakfast and dinner. Toilets and bathrooms were “down the hall,” the woman informed Arthur, and there was a swivel telephone which served two bedroom-studies. Arthur had seen one of the cramped rooms once, when he had visited a student. It was the cheapest lodging; he knew he would have to take it, but he hesitated. “Can I confirm this tomorrow? There’s more than one room like that free now?”
“Oh, yes, and this semester a lot of students drop out or they’ve been asked to leave and haven’t told us as yet.”
At dinner that evening with Betty, Arthur told her that there was a place for him in a dorm and that his family—specifically his mother and grandmother—had offered to pay his bills. While Betty was out, Arthur had prepared dinner.
“I don’t know why,” Betty said, “you particularly want to live in a dorm, when you could stay here. I know the dorm’s more convenient because it’s on the campus. But since you’ve got a car—Well, it’s up to you, Arthur.”
Of course Betty’s house was preferable! It had space; it was civilized. To live in the house was a little like being with Maggie. “Of course I’d prefer to be here,” he said finally. “I’d also want to pay you something.—That’s normal.”
“We’ll figure something out. Warren’s coming home tomorrow morning. He said—I didn’t even tell Warren you can cook! He thinks it’s a good idea if someone’s in the house with me, since he’s away so much. He suggested thirty dollars a week, all included.”
“Thank you.—Very reasonable,” Arthur said, trying to look as calm about it as Betty appeared to be, but he was thrilled.
“Reasonable, I suppose, but you’re a help around the house, and that’s something.” She smiled quickly at Arthur, the corners of her mouth went up, like Maggie’s. “Try it for a week. You may want to change your mind. But Warren says with housebreakers and so on—when I’m out so much—”
Arthur had a brief fantasy of tackling three armed robbers with his bare knuckles, knocking them senseless to the floor. He would relish that, protecting the house.
Arthur phoned his mother that evening from the living room telephone. Betty was upstairs. He told her about the arrangement with the Brewsters.
“I spoke with Betty around three this afternoon on the phone. She didn’t mention your staying.”
Arthur laughed. “She didn’t tell me you’d phoned. I suppose you phoned?”
His mother had. “Behave yourself, Arthur. And I’m very glad about this. Give Betty my—greetings and thanks, would you? I feel that you’re all right, there at her house.”
Maggie wrote to Arthur twice in January, but not to her mother. Arthur was to pass on her news, if any, she wrote, though every Sunday noon Maggie rang up, keeping a promise she had made to her mother. Maggie wrote that she was not sure she would come home for Easter. This surprised Arthur, since Maggie would have a week off at least, and economy couldn’t be a factor, because the family traveled free on Sigma Airlines.
In February, even with a heavy schedule of work at C.U. and a house project at the Brewsters’, preparing the cellar walls for whitewashing, Arthur found himself counting the weeks before Easter. Surely Maggie would come home. At any rate, it made Arthur happier to believe she would. When he asked Betty what she thought Maggie’s ideas were, Betty said she never knew what was up with Maggie until the last minute. Arthur worried, about her possibly having met someone else she liked, invariably an older fellow in Arthur’s imagination. On the other hand, her letters reassured him.
. . . You ask if I think of you in bed. Sure I do. And by the way what are you doing, free as the wind there? Here we have to check in by midnight, and no fellows allowed in the dorms after 10 p.m. But I’m not exactly complaining about that.
Glad your father’s keeping quiet, and that your mother is so understanding and helping with the checks! Mom says you’re being useful around the house and says Dad’s glad you are there.
The color of my bed? Well, it is beige, sort of like darkish oatmeal. How romantic!
Now I have to memorize a couple of stanzas of Byron, whom I quite like. He is really romantic, sometimes witty.
Yes, I think of you a lot, since you ask. Love always,
Maggie
Arthur kept all her letters in chronological order in a folder. Sometimes Maggie neglected to date them, so he did it.
Betty Brewster was out for dinner at least once a week, and perhaps once a week she had someone or several people to the house for dinner. Arthur helped on the latter occasions by setting the table and doing some cooking, helped serve drinks, then tactfully disappeared, unless Betty expressly asked him to eat with them. He found the Brewsters’ friends more interesting than those of his parents, and Arthur realized that his parents, even his mother, were not inclined to entertain. Arthur thought this was true of most of the town.
One evening in early March, when Betty and Arthur were having their after-dinner coffee at the table, they heard a car door slam in the silence, then a second door.
“Wonder who that is?” said Betty.
Arthur got up. Now he heard steps, and somebody knocked. “Who is it?”
“Robbie.”
“What’s the matter, Robbie?”
“Nothing! Can’t you open the door?”
Behind him, Betty said, “Your brother? He can come in, Arthur.”
Arthur opened the door but not widely, and Robbie marched in, followed by another person, Eddie Howell.
“Evening,” said Eddie Howell, removing a deerstalker cap. His fixed smile was on. “Excuse me, Mrs. Brewster. My name is Eddie Howell. We just wanted to ask how you are, Arthur.”
“Good evening,” said Betty.
“My brother Robbie,” Arthur said, frowning, annoyed by their oozing toward the living room. “You might’ve phoned first, Robbie.”
“Then you would’ve said no about us coming over,” Robbie replied. He was at last removing his coonskin cap. He wore his long hunting jacket and unfastened galoshes.
“You’ve got a lovely house, Mrs. Brewster,” said Eddie.
“And what can I do for you—both?” Arthur noticed that Eddie Howell had his briefcase.
“There’s nothing that you have to do for us, Arthur. Your father’s interested in how you’re doing—what you’re doing.”
Was he? Arthur saw pink dots in front of his eyes.
“Won’t you sit down?” asked Betty. “I’m glad to meet you, Robbie.”
Robbie nodded awkwardly. “Me, too.”
“We don’t want to keep you,” said Eddie Howell, at the same time glancing around as if trying to decide between the other sofa and an armchair as a place to sit.
“Take your coats off?” asked Betty.
“Oh, no, thank you.” Eddie Howell seemed definite about this at least. “No, I can say what I have to say very quickly. It’s that Richard, Arthur’s father, is concerned about how his boy is doing. Whether he’s happy—making progress.”
“Doing all right, thanks.” Arthur stood with folded arms.
Betty sat on the edge of a sofa.
Eddie Howell sat carefully at the end of the other sofa, and Robbie took an armchair, dangling his coonskin cap between his knees.
“Arthur has been through so much�
��last year,” Eddie Howell said, addressing Betty. “It isn’t easy for a young man to endure such experiences. Or a young woman,” he added. “Sets a soul in turmoil.”
But Howell’s phony smile could settle that turmoil, Arthur supposed. Robbie’s face looked blank and neutral, as if he weren’t even listening. He was looking at the big watercolor landscape over the fireplace.
“. . . wants to know if you’ve come to terms with what happened, if you’ve examined your own conscience and—if you can feel—or begin to feel at peace with God and yourself. If, your father asks.”
Arthur glanced at Betty, blinked and said with deliberate calm, “I’m doing all right at C.U. now. And I don’t know—what’s worrying him.”
Eddie Howell was silent.
“That you’re living here,” Robbie put in. “In this very house.”
Arthur took a breath. “I have to do some work tonight. Mrs. Brewster, too.” He addressed Eddie Howell.
“I won’t take long,” said Eddie with his pink-lipped smile. “Your father’s a little upset—understandably, I think—because you’re staying in this house. He says it’s wrong. With all due respect to Mrs. Brewster,” he conceded with a nod to her, “for her kindness and charity.”
“Charity?” Betty asked, smiling. “Arthur’s quite a help in this house, Mr.—”
“Howell.”
“Mr. Howell. I invited Arthur. He didn’t come begging.”
“No, I—” Eddie Howell looked at Arthur. “You feel no guilt, no need to say, ‘I’m sorry’?”
“I’ve said that. Why should I go on repeating it? T-to whom?” Arthur thought of his father, smug with his sense of revenge. His father had thrown him out of the house. “If my father’s trying to bollix C.U. for me—somehow—he—can—”
“Arthur.” Betty was on her feet. “Easy does it.”
Eddie Howell also stood up and tilted his smiling face sideways. “Your father’s not trying to interfere with your schooling, Arthur. We want you back—back to the church and the friendly arms of the people who really care about you. This includes Christ, the greatest forgiver of them all.”
Friendly arms of his father? Eddie Howell’s words seemed to imply that Betty’s arms were not friendly.
“I do think, Mr. Howell,” Betty said, “that Arthur’s doing pretty well now. He works hard; he’s happy at C.U. I’m very glad to have him in the house here. So maybe you could tell Mr. Alderman that?” Gracefully she moved toward the door.
Eddie Howell was not quite finished and stood his ground. “You won’t be truly happy, Arthur, until you realize profoundly what has happened, until you decide to give yourself into the care of God and Christ.” At last he moved. “Good night, Mrs. Brewster and God bless you.”
Arthur did not listen to the mumbled words at the door. He wiped moisture from his forehead. The solid closing of the front door was a pleasure to hear. Betty came back.
“Well—now you see it,” Arthur said.
Betty gave a laugh. “Come on, Arthur. They mean well. They think they mean well.—Let’s forget about that visit. Stop frowning!”
“Okay.”
“I think a half scotch wouldn’t hurt you, Arthur. Neat. Let’s be—um—sinful.” She went to the bar cart in the corner of the room. “They really are boring, aren’t they?” Betty suddenly doubled over with a laugh.
“The line that killed me—my father’s welcoming arms—”
“Cool it, Arthur,” Betty said, smiling at him.
Maggie had inherited her calm from her mother, Arthur thought. “Yes, ma’am.”
23
Some ten days before Easter holidays, Arthur received a letter from Maggie. It said:
Dearest Arthur,
Now I have some news which I know you may take hard. It is also very hard for me to write. It is not just that I met somebody else, but it is more important than that. There is someone, and that is Larry Hargiss. But I also have changed a lot since last September and also last summer. Maybe you have, too?
So I am not coming home for Easter. And I hope really that you can manage to forget me without too much pain. I know what we had was important—for both of us. But we were like children then compared to now, don’t you think? At least it helps to think of it that way. I will always care for you in a very special way, because you are important in my life. But there is a long tough way ahead for you, more years of school, and for me, too, very likely more than three years if we both go on to graduate schools.
My mother I know would still like to have you stay with her. But I will understand if you don’t feel like it. I know you are very serious and this may upset you.
With very much love,
Maggie
Arthur had read it quickly, standing in his room in the Brewster house, and now he felt faint, though he didn’t sit down. So it was Larry Hargiss after all, the medical student of Harvard. The name had stuck unpleasantly in his head since Maggie had uttered it on the ride homeward from the airport at Christmas. Now here it was. Damn the bastard! And Maggie was probably spending Easter vacation with him either at his parents’ house or at some resort. Did Betty know about Larry? Maybe, because Maggie had written “My mother I know would still like . . .” Betty would have waited, of course, for Maggie to break the news. And at Christmas? Maggie hadn’t been pretending to him at Christmas, Arthur was sure. What had happened since Christmas? He stared at her letter with the feeling that it had been written by another person, but the handwriting was hers. Arthur put the letter on the table near his typewriter. It was twenty-two minutes past noon.
He had no classes till 2 p.m., which was why he had come back to the Brewster house for lunch and an hour’s reading (English). He felt he was not going to make it to English class at 2, or to Bio at 3 and French at 4. Certainly he could afford to cut, as his attendance record was close to perfect. And of all things to think about, whether he could afford to cut!
Betty was out, for how long Arthur didn’t know, maybe till 6. Arthur went down to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee.
He would have to move at once from the Brewsters’ into one of the dorms. Impossible to think of living and sleeping here now. Suddenly Maggie’s room with its writing table and books upright at the back of it against the wall, her typewriter with its green felt cover, her dressing table on which stood a few bottles of perfume, eau de cologne, mysterious little boxes—all this, he realized, had been a private display, a little like a portrait of Maggie that he could look at when she was gone. Now the same picture seemed to shut him out, like the unfriendly face of a stranger. One day she might open her room door to Larry Hargiss.
After half a cup of coffee, Arthur went quickly upstairs to the bathroom and threw up into the toilet. Then he washed his face with a cold towel and brushed his teeth.
It’d be a good idea to meet his classes this afternoon, instead of falling apart, he thought. He drove early back to C.U., and wandered around under the trees of the campus, over an arched footbridge, keeping his eyes on the ground, until time for English class. In the middle of the second class, microbio, he sneaked out when Professor Jurgens was writing something on the blackboard.
Arthur walked to the Administration Building. He was told that there was a place in Hamilton Hall which he could share with one other male student.
“Nothing in Creighton?” Arthur asked for no particular reason, except that a bio student whom he rather liked, Stephen Summer, lived in Creighton.
“Creighton’s full, I know that.”
“Then I’d better take the Hamilton. Can I confirm that tomorrow? I didn’t bring my c-c—” He hesitated between cash and checkbook, and it took one or the other to clinch it.
The woman said she would reserve it through tomorrow, and Arthur didn’t leave before he had it written on a piece of paper that he had an option
on room 214 at Hamilton.
Write today off, he told himself. He wanted to see Gus. Meanwhile, he had to pack up his things and explain to Betty. So he drove back to the Brewsters’ house. Betty was still not in, and Arthur took a couple of plastic bags from the broom closet and went upstairs and started his packing. Several minutes later, when he was almost finished, he heard the faint thud of the front door closing, and minutes after that, Betty’s voice calling:
“Arthur? Would you like some tea?”
Arthur went to his door. “Yep! Thanks.—See you.”
“I thought you had classes this afternoon,” Betty said when he came down. She was in the kitchen, and the electric kettle had just started to boil.
“Wasn’t feeling so well today.”
“Not getting flu, are you? It’s around, I heard today.”
“I had a letter from Maggie. It seems she’s met somebody else.”
“Oh?—Who?”
“Somebody called Larry?” Arthur tried to sound casual.
“That medical student.”
“So you knew about it,” Arthur said.
“No, I didn’t, Arthur. She mentioned him a couple of times in her letters. I knew he liked her.—Let’s go in. Can you carry that?”
Arthur carried the tray. He was thinking that Maggie had sounded quite as usual the last time she had telephoned on a Sunday, and he had been able to speak with her for a minute, after Betty.
“Arthur, I am sorry. Maybe it’ll blow over. Who knows?”
Arthur set the tray down on the coffee table. “Maggie doesn’t say something she doesn’t mean.”
Betty poured the tea and cut two pieces of cake. “Maggie may get over this Larry in a month!—But I can imagine what I say doesn’t make you feel any better just now.”
People Who Knock on the Door Page 22
