by James Jones
All that guff about giving him a complex was pure crap. Hell, he knew he had a happy home here with them; and he knew they loved him. But it was too late now, he guessed.
But in spite of that small regret, it seemed to Frank that finally at long last his life had really opened up into being what he had always wanted it to be. By dint of much perseverance, and hard work, and shrewd business planning. He had earned it. And if he had earned it, by God, he had the right to enjoy it, didn’t he? And in fact, if there was anything he could have wished for at all now anymore, it was that his mistress would be just a little more loving to him, like his wife was.
But as for Walter, he was a normal, healthy kid—a little brighter than most. And when he was not actually working, Frank took him everywhere with him that he could, because that was the way a father ought to be with his son. If he had to run down to the grocery in the evening, he would take Walter with him. And he had already given him the run of the store, and shown him the signs he had had changed to read Frank Hirsh & Son. In fact, just about the only place he did not take him was when he went out with his mistress, Edith.
They were going out together a lot less now, as spring progressed toward summer, and that of course was due to Old Janie being sick. And Edith, the rare time when she did go out with him, seemed to be receding further and further away from him. He didn’t like it worth a damn. But there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he could do about it. Hell, he loved Old Janie himself; but sometimes he wished she would either hurry up and die or else get well and get it over with, one way or the other.
He oughtn’t to think something like that, but sometimes, irritably, he did. If Janie should die—which, eventually, she must anyway—he still had hopes of Edith allowing him to buy her a house and set her up in it, like Tony Wernz had done for his mistress and like the old-time oilmen had done for all their mistresses. Edith and John Barclay had never been very close anyway. Frank had already been scouting around a little and had found a nice little house a couple of blocks off North Main the cross street out north toward the railroad.
Only once in the last couple of months had he mentioned it to Edith, and that one time she had not only refused again but had gotten angry. After that, he had not brought it up again; but he still had hopes someday of getting her to see it his way. Her argument, which, of course, was true, was always that it would give away their relationship because she didn’t have enough money to buy a house. But Frank was sure that, given time, he could find some way to make it look legitimate. One other night during those two months was notable, in that he had gotten pretty tight and had had another attack of that gastritis. He had been drinking rather heavily the last few days before, because of seeing so many people. (It was strange, how much business and drinking seem to go together.) And when he had hit the bottle pretty heavy that night with Edith, the gastritis had hit him. It was several hours before Edith could get him straightened out enough to drive home, and they did not get home until after two. Usually, they were home before midnight. At the time, it had rather frightened him, but when he got home, Agnes was sleeping soundly and next day apparently thought nothing of his being out late. And once that fright was over, Frank was rather glad it had happened. It was the first gastritis attack he had had with Edith. And he had never had anybody take such tender care of him, as Edith did. Not even his wife, Agnes.
He only wished that there was some way he could get her to stop being afraid for Old Janie—at least to the point where she would start going out with him again regular. Then everything in his life would be about perfect. But he couldn’t think of anything to do.
However, that problem solved itself before the end of May. One morning, Edith called Al Lowe at the store early, weeping almost inarticulately, and told him that she would not be to work that day because Old Janie had died in the night. It was early when she called and Frank was still at home, and Al called him from the store. Apparently, Janie had died in the night, and no one had known a thing about it. Edith and John had both slept through it, only to discover it the next day when Edith had gone to her room to wake her. Janie had not died easily. Apparently, she had been conscious. And as Janie always would have done, she had fought dying hard. But, whether purposely or not, she had not made much noise. Edith had called the doctor to come out and they were getting the coroner. And that was about the story, Al said. They didn’t know yet what had killed her.
Frank thanked him, and then as an afterthought told him to close up the store altogether until after the funeral as a gesture of respect. When he hung up, Frank was shaken. Maybe at times, when he was feeling irritable, he had wished Old Jane would die and get it over with; but he had not really meant it. He went and told Agnes immediately. From what Al had said on the phone, John Barclay had felt that he ought to go to work at the Sternutol anyway, and Edith was there alone. So he and Agnes drove out there right away, to try and be all the help to her they could.
And it was while they were driving out east to Roosevelt Drive that the idea of how to get Edith her house, now, without Agnes or anyone suspecting it, hit Frank suddenly. He must remember to ask Edith later on whether Janie had any insurance or not. Whether she did or not, they could say she did. And the house for Edith could be bought with Old Janie’s “insurance money.”
But when he finally did see Edith again, after the funeral, he forgot all about asking her. Because he had never seen a person so much changed in so short a time. Edith, who had always been so inwardly confident, clung to him in the motel room like a lost child. She broke down and cried to him about Jane, but it was more than that. She was completely changed, and she seemed to cling to him desperately as if he were the last solid thing left in the whole world. He was, naturally, very pleased. It was very flattering. But what a surprise: to see anyone so changed.
Chapter 65
IT WAS NOT her grandmother’s death, so much, which broke Edith—or rather, it was not entirely her grandmother’s death that broke her. It was what she learned about it afterwards.
After they had found her and she herself had called the doctor, and at his suggestion then called the coroner, Edith had stayed in the room with her until they came. It was a sad, pathetic, futile gesture, but it was there was left to do, so while she would rather have not, she forced herself to stay there with her. She did not examine her closely; she preferred not to, as if in some way she felt it might have embarrassed Janie, to be seen like that. But nevertheless there was one thing Edith could not help noticing—it was plainly apparent through Janie’s thin old nightgown: Janie was wearing her frayed, old sanitary belt, underneath it. Afterwards, after the doctor and the coroner had been there, Edith talked with Doc Cost, and between them they figured out pretty well what had happened.
It had been a horribly bad six months for all of them. There was no question about the fact, by then, that Janie was seriously ill. Even John, in his dumb slow way, had finally realized it. Janie herself knew it, too, Edith was quite sure, although she would never admit it. It made for an unpleasant, strained relationship for all of them around the house; and as a result, there were more fights and arguments than ever. But there were also—and later on Edith was to think back to this hungrily, and remember it hopefully—there was also more tender making-ups and warm scenes of really tender love between them, too.
Edith could think back to the night when she had come home late and caught Janie wandering around the house barefooted—the same night she had first seen ’Bama Dillert’s car parked under the trees on the Fredric drive, and she and Jane had sat up and talked about it—and wondered if it had all been going on then, too. The sickness. They had been so very warm and close, she and Jane, that night. She herself hadn’t known about the illness then, that far back. But for the past six months, they had all known. And Janie had known, too, Edith was quite sure.
And yet there she was, Janie, who ever since Edith could remember had spent almost as much of her cleaning money on doctoring as she had on beer and her
old duffers—there she was, refusing to see any doctor. God! Edith thought, bitter tears coming into her eyes at the thought, there was an irony for you! Jane and her kidneys! Jane and her “gravels”! And then with this horrible thing in her, she wouldn’t be examined. And after Edith had talked with Doc Cost, she knew why. If she had only known at the time, before it was too late! She could have gone and talked to her.
But then, nobody ever knew anything much about Jane really. Did they? Oh, great God! Edith thought wretchedly, Oh, great God! But Jane always knew everything about everybody else, didn’t she? Yes, she sure did.
Almost from the very first time it happened—back a year ago January, it was—Edith was about three-fourths sure that Janie knew she was sleeping with Frank Hirsh; had, in fact, become his “mistress.” She never said anything about it, and maybe after all it was only a certain guilt in her herself, that made her imagine it, but Janie would sit and look at her with those big eyes, and it was as if Jane knew.
They only talked about it once. And then they did not talk about it. They talked around it.
It happened one night late when John had already fallen into his bed and the two of them were sitting up out in the kitchen with a cup of coffee. This was about four months before she died, when Janie had suddenly started to go downhill fast; with startling suddenness. Jane had stopped going out to Smitty’s Bar at this same time; and so Edith had stopped going out as often herself, in order to be home with her, and had stopped having all her “cover-up” dates with Harold Alberson. Although she had not yet started cutting down on going out with Frank himself.
It was not only sad in a helpless way, but actually terrifying, to watch daily the old tremendous vitality seeping out of this body of her grandmother along with the weight she lost. And it changed Janie herself completely. She no longer laughed and swore and bulldozed her way through her life, but instead slipped gradually into a child-eyed, sort of wonder, withdrawing more and more from everything sort of. And looking back, Edith thought she could see, or at least seemed to see, that it was as if Janie’s gnarled, tough old hands were gradually relaxing their throttlehold on life; as if slowly but surely in a sort of preparation, she was withdrawing from life.
They had been sitting talking, and Edith had been—almost angrily—trying once again to get her to go and see a doctor. Withdrawing from life or not, Janie could still be as stubborn as a mountain.
“Honey,” the old woman said, her dark eyes large in the thinning face, and already with the first touches of that unbelievable fragility she would soon acquire, “honey, everybody’s got to live their own life.” And she looked at her, then, in that made Edith think she knew. About Frank.
“I suppose,” Edith said, and dropped her eyes.
“An’ we all do,” Janie said. “Everybody. I don’t understand it. But I know it’s right. You and me, we don’t agree on lots of things. And never have. Well, that’s all right. An we both goes our own ways just the same, don’t we? Well, that’s the way it should be. And don’t you never forget it.”
“Well, that’s easy enough to say,” Edith said. The remarks did seem as though they could have a double meaning. “But when you’re sick—”
“I ain’t sick,” Jane said. “I just been dietin.”
“Oh, God!” Edith cried.
“Hush!” Jane said, with something of her old bawling vigor. “I’m talkin. And I started to say that no matter what you do, if it’s what you got to do, then it’s all right for you to do it. And nothing nobody else ever says makes no damn difference, see? Now, you always remember that, will you?”
This seemed to have even more of a double meaning, or so it seemed to Edith. Was she referring to her being Frank Hirsh’s mistress? or perhaps just to her own unwillingness to go see a doctor. “My God, Janie,” she said. “You say you’re not sick, and then you go talking as if you weren’t even going to be here long,” she said lamely.
“Not at all,” Janie said. “Nonsense! I’ll be around here a hell of a lot longer than anybody thinks. I’m a tough old son of a bitch. A hell of a lot longer than anybody’ll want me around, I reckon.”
“Oh, Janie!” Edith said, near tears. “That’ll never be true as long as I’m here.”
And Janie had smiled at her sweetly. Not at all like that tough, old, gravelly smile she once had had. It was as if, in a way, she knew; and yet at the same time, did not know, did not want to know. And yet again, Edith thought, and was to think again so very many times, maybe she did know and was just trying to make it easier for her?
“What is it?! What’s wrong?!” How many times had she cried those words at her: And all the time, if she had only known, she could easily have fixed it up! And when she had learned it, from her talk with Doc Cost, after both of them together figured it out, it had been too late. But whether Janie had been alluding to her own affair with Frank that time, and other times, she never did find out for sure. Yet Edith suspected that she knew.
Her own feelings about her affair with Frank had undergone a number of subtle changes in the year or so it had been going on. And some changes not so subtle, too. For one thing, she found she had a great deal more sympathy for Agnes than she had ever had before. Not that she ever completely lost the very real hatred of her that sometimes rived her like lightning riving a tree. But she could nevertheless certainly sympathize with her a lot more. And this was because she understood her, Agnes’s, husband better.
He was about as petty, and jealous, and totally self-centered a man as probably existed anywhere. The truth was, he had the mind of a child. Nothing really concerned him except himself and whether he could indulge one of his various pleasures, sexual or otherwise, and if he could he was totally happy; and if he couldn’t, he was totally miserable. She had watched him all through this troubled time with Jane, and had watched him get more and more irritable because she could not go out with him every time he wanted her to. He had no conception at all of what she herself was going through or what Janie was going through. Oh, he talked sympathetically—at times; when he wasn’t too irritated—and he probably did feel some little sort of rudimentary sympathy for them; but only when it did not impinge upon something that he wanted.
Apparently, he was congenitally incapable of ever really loving anybody, and at the same time had this psychological need of having as many women in love with him as he could cluster around him—a need which he was willing, at great sacrifice, to cut down to two: one wife, and one mistress; in order not to have trouble at home. Consequently, this placed herself, she felt, somewhat in the position of being his personal whore. And yet in spite of all of these things about Frank that she had come to see pretty clearly, she still loved him. She didn’t know exactly why. Probably a lot of it was that old thing she had thought out for herself once before during a love affair—and had, however, managed to forget—which was that any woman seemed, once she had given herself and her love to a man, almost totally unable to let go of him, unable to admit that she had been wrong. Women, apparently, were both willing and capable of going through an awful hell of a lot before they would ever admit a love affair could have failed. But more than just that, it was that that very same childish quality about him which made him so totally self-centered which also made him so completely vulnerable. And because he was so vulnerable, he was extremely pitiable. And perhaps pity for him and his childish ways, when he did not make her mad, was what made her still love him. She liked to hold his head and soothe him, which was a kind of superiority, she supposed, in a way. And she knew for sure that should she ever leave him—quit her job, and leave town—that he would be broken up and in a terrible panic over it. He did need her. Or rather, let’s say, he needed her as long as he did not have her.
It wasn’t a very pretty picture, and it was a far cry from the love life she had once imagined herself as having someday; but she did still love him. The poor self-inflated, self-confused dope. And he was really very lovable at times. The truth was, Edith didn’t feel l
ike his mistress, she felt like his mother. Was that how Agnes also felt about him?
She had been aware for some time, Edith had, that Frank was back sleeping with Agnes again, and had been since some time in the summer or fall last year. And with a kind of penetratingly acute acumen which had been growing in her steadily in the last year or so, Edith understood that it was herself whom she—and Frank—and Agnes—had to thank for this development. There was your really classic irony: Almost two years ago, after his wife had broken him loose from Geneve Lowe, he had been petulant and peeved and hurt and panicky. His pride was too injured to allow him to go back and sleep with his wife after she had done that to him; and probably, Edith suspected, they had not been sleeping together for a year before that. But—and here was where she herself came in—as soon as he had started a love affair with her, with Edith, which his wife knew nothing about, he felt he had got one up on her, on Agnes, felt he had restored his dignity as a man, in other words; and because of that he had been willing to begin sleeping with his wife again. So, in actual fact, Frank and Agnes Hirsh owed their “second honeymoon,” their new closeness and warmth, to her: Edith Barclay.
Acidly, Edith laughed out loud, and was suddenly startled to realize that she sounded almost like Jane’s old, harsh, gravelly laugh. And then, immediately, being reminded of Jane, she wanted to weep.
