by Oakley Hall
Arch called from the other room, “Oh, he’ll be along, Gene.”
Marian patted Gene on the shoulder. “This always happens, honey. You’re not really married till this happens.” She thought fiercely what she would do if Arch pulled a stunt like this.
“He’s just out having a drink with the boys,” she continued. “Don’t you worry about it, honey.” She raised her voice. “Fix us a drink, Arch!” Arch came out to make some drinks. Gene was sobbing and Marian made her go into the living room and sit down in the easy chair.
“Oh, I’m afraid,” Gene said, looking up at her. “Something’s happened!”
Arch came back with the drinks and stood uncomfortably beside Marian. She took one of the glasses from him and made Gene swallow some liquor.
“Listen, honey,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you ever cry over a man, you hear! They’re not worth it. You just let Jack get up and fix his own breakfast for about…Arch, you go in the bathroom and get some Kleenex!”
When he had gone she lowered her voice and said, “Honey, don’t you let him get away with this. You give him hell. If you just forgive him and let it go I’ll never speak to you again. Now, you listen to me: you give him hell so he won’t ever forget it…” She stopped as Arch came back with a handful of Kleenex. Gene was looking up at her with wide eyes and tears were running down her cheeks, and Marian knew she had scared her. She tried to smile and patted Gene’s shoulder. “Oh, he’s probably just working late,” she said.
At eleven Marian made Gene go to bed. They turned off the lights in the living room and the kitchen, Arch silently helped her on with her coat and they went out to the car. The night was cool and the fog was beginning to settle over the streets so that the streetlights glowed greenishly.
“I’ll bet she’s sitting up waiting for him,” Marian whispered.
“Well, I’d be sitting up. I’d be waiting for him with a meat cleaver.”
She flounced around in the seat to get comfortable, pulling her coat about her, while Arch tried to fit the key into the ignition. “Or I’d be down at the corner bar finding myself somebody else to sleep with!” she said loudly, as they drove away.
Arch drove slowly through the fog, his forehead creased, leaning forward against the steering wheel. He didn’t say anything.
“I told you,” Marian continued savagely. “That Jack Ward’s out tomcatting, and how long they been married?”
“About five months,” Arch said carefully.
“Five months! Arch, I want you to tell him what I think of him. Married five months and he can’t leave it alone.”
“I thought you liked him. You used to tell…”
“I did! Do you like him? That poor kid. I want you to tell him what I think of him, Arch.”
“All right,” Arch said.
“I told you this would happen. That poor kid doesn’t have the stuff to fight it. He’ll break her heart before he’s through. You tell him now, Arch!”
“All right,” Arch said. She knew he wouldn’t but she was slightly mollified at the thought of Jack knowing what she thought of him.
5
It was only a week or so later, one noon when she was going out to La Jolla to have lunch with Milly Crawford, that she saw Jack and the woman. Marian had taken Arch to work so she could have the car and was stopped in traffic in front of the Orizaba Hotel when she saw them.
They were walking slowly out of the hotel. The woman was tall, although she looked short beside Jack, blonde, and Marian immediately hated her violently. She had only a glimpse of them, then the car behind her honked and she had to drive on. She circled the block as quickly as she could, but they were gone.
Marian didn’t tell Milly about Gene and Jack and the woman, and she left soon after lunch and drove back to the Orizaba Hotel on the chance that she might see the woman again. She sat in the lobby of the hotel for over an hour and had almost decided it was hopeless when there was a quick tapping of high heels and the woman passed her and got into the elevator.
Again it was just a glimpse, but Marian had already planned what she would do. She rushed over to the desk where a man with sleek black hair was writing in a ledger.
“Who was that?” she cried, leaning over the counter toward him. “I’m sure I know her!”
The man looked up and raised an eyebrow and Marian had a moment of panic. “Who?” he said.
“That young lady in the blue flowered dress. She just got her key and went up in the elevator.”
“That was Mrs. Denton. Shall I ring her room?”
“No. No, never mind that. Mrs. Denton? Oh, I remember, she did get married.”
The clerk looked at her coldly.
“Thank you,” Marian said, looking back at him defiantly. “I shall have to look her up.” She hurried outside into the sudden sunlight, feeling a little foolish, but proud of the way she had handled it, and she drove home as quickly as she could.
Arch was already at home and in the shower when she came in. She could hear the water beating on the zinc walls. She hammered on the bathroom door. “Arch! Arch!”
“What?”
“Come out of there.”
The sound of the shower continued and Marian walked up and down before the door impatiently. Arch was whistling in that tuneless way that irritated her so. “Arch!” she cried.
“What?”
“I saw her, Arch!”
The whistling continued, but finally it broke off and he called back, “You saw who?”
“Jack Ward’s—girl!”
The shower was turned off and after a moment Arch came out. He had a towel tied around his waist and his hair was plastered down over his head. Steam followed him out of the bathroom.
“You what?” he said.
Breathlessly Marian told him all she had seen and found out, and he whistled sharply. “The Orizaba—that big white one? Money, unh?”
“She’s married, too. Arch, I’ll bet she’s one of these rich bitches can’t live with their husbands.”
Arch raised his eyebrows and walked into the kitchen, gripping the ends of the towel. He came back with a bottle of beer and sat down on the studio couch. “You sure it was Jack?”
“I was right there, I tell you! I wasn’t ten yards away. Of course it was Jack.”
Arch grunted and sucked on his beer.
“Arch,” Marian said grimly. “We’ve got to tell that poor kid.”
“Who? Gene?”
“We’ve got to tell her.”
“We don’t have to either!” Arch shouted. “It’s none of our damn business. We’re not sticking our noses in where it’s none of our damn business!”
“Shhhh, Arch, you want everybody in the auto court to hear? Arch, it’s not butting in. We’ve got to help that poor kid out. I’ll bet she doesn’t have any idea about this.”
“By God,” Arch said stubbornly. “She’s not going to get it from us.”
“You talk to Jack tomorrow then.”
“By God, I will not! I’m not going to talk to Jack tomorrow or any other time. I’m keeping my damn nose where it belongs.”
“Honey, we’re the only ones that know. I’m going to tell Gene if you won’t talk to Jack.”
“I’m not having anything to do with it.”
“All right, I’m going to tell Gene. I’m going over there and tell Gene tomorrow.”
“The big nose,” Arch said.
“Don’t you talk like that to me!”
“Go ahead and tell her,” Arch said. “I don’t give a damn.”
“I’m going to,” she said firmly. “I’m going over and tell her tomorrow.”
And she had. She had gone over to Gene’s the next day and told her.
Now, as she finished her cigarette and put it out and rose and carried the breakfast dishes to the sink she smiled grimly, remembering it. Gene had had more spunk than she had given her credit for. Gene had told her off, and properly. But she considered that she had done her duty, even if Arch h
ad been mad at her, even if Gene had said, “What right have you?” in a way Marian grudgingly had to admire, and had told her to mind her own business. But somebody had to tell the poor girl.
She couldn’t remember when it was Gene and Jack had come back to San Diego again. Arch had told her, but she had not felt she could go to see Gene after what Gene had said to her, and after a long time she had almost forgotten the Wards. But the evening they read about the murder in the paper, of course it had all come back, and she and Arch had argued in bed until late at night. Arch had said he wasn’t blaming Jack any because he didn’t know all that had happened, and neither did she, and that it looked to him like the kind of thing where somebody blew up sooner or later and Jack seemed to be in the middle. Something about the way he said it had made her mad and she had quoted the commandment that said, Thou Shalt Not Kill, and Arch replied that he didn’t know much about the Bible, but he thought in there somewhere it also said, Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged.
But she did judge Jack, and she condemned him, not so much for murdering his Mrs. Denton, because she had not known her, but for what he had done to Gene.
She was filled with pity for Gene. She wished there was something she could do for her, but she knew Gene would not want to see anyone now. She shook her head sadly and said aloud, “I knew she shouldn’t have married that damned Jack Ward.”
Part IV
GENE
1
Gene looked at the faint lines of her body under the blankets. With drugged interest she looked down at the twin ridges of her legs, the lumps of her feet, the two white hands lying, palms up, outside the covers. The hands had the fragile look of tinted porcelain. She closed her eyes.
She heard the soft closing of the front door that would be Dr. Phillips leaving, going to the hospital. And she would be going to the hospital too, where they would try to make her well. Maybe they could fix her, fix her like an automobile that is sent to the shop, repair the torn, broken parts, clean out the filth and stains. Maybe they could put back in her what was gone.
She felt a presence in the room and with a conscious effort she opened her eyes. Her mother was crouched stiffly in the chair next to the bed and she took Gene’s hand in her own cold bony ones. She stroked it silently.
“Has he gone?” Gene asked.
“Who, darling?”
“Why, the doctor.”
Her mother stroked her hand. “He left this morning, dear.”
Gene frowned. She hurt when she tried to move. “When am I going?”
“Tomorrow morning, dear. Do you want some broth now?”
“Mother, what did he say? Is it going to be all right?”
“Of course it is. He’s the finest doctor in San Diego. Everybody says so.”
“You talked to him a long time.”
“No, darling. That was somebody else. You stop talking now and I’ll get you some broth.”
Gene felt the hands leave hers. She looked up at her mother, who had risen. “Was it Charley Long?” she asked.
“No, dear,” her mother said. “Charley hasn’t been here today,” and Gene closed her eyes again and heard the quiet footsteps pass from the room. She wondered who it could have been. She had thought it was Dr. Phillips leaving, but now she remembered. The doctor had come that morning and had given her something and she had been asleep since. It must have been somebody about Jack.
It must have been somebody about Jack, she thought, and she saw him standing before her, with the barred door between them, gaunt, unshaven, fierce: a stranger with a face she had never seen before, a voice she did not recognize, saying, “Not for you.” When had that been? Yesterday? The day before? Had she dreamed it? No; because after it she had gone home and gone to bed, sick and broken and too weak to get up. It must have been somebody about Jack, she thought, and slowly, painfully, heartbrokenly, she began to cry.
2
The first time she saw Jack he was standing in front of the counter in the Hogan and Griffith office; tall and broad and black haired, with slanting eyes set in a wide face. He smiled at her uncertainly as she moved to the counter with one of the new-employee blanks and a pencil. Typewriters clacked behind her, a slide ratcheted.
He took the fatigue cap from his head and laid it on the counter. Dark hair curled at his neck above the top of the white sweatshirt he wore beneath an unbuttoned Navy dungaree jacket.
“Are you the new operator for Kearny?” she asked.
He nodded and leaned a hip against the counter. She poised her pencil over the blank form.
“Name?”
“Jack Ward.”
“John?”
“No, just Jack Ward. No middle name.”
She wrote it down. “Social Security number?”
He extracted a dog-eared blue-and-white card from his wallet and pushed it over in front of her. She copied the number, finished filling out the form and had him sign it. Then she gave him a yellow badge from the cardboard box under the counter. “Just out of the service?” she asked.
He nodded and grinned, straining his neck to watch his fingers pin the badge to his collar. “Yesterday,” he said.
“You’re in a hurry to get to work.”
“You bet I am.”
Gene laughed and said, “I’ll bet you’re broke. Big party last night?”
He shook his head. “I’ve fooled around too long. I sat on my tail on enough islands to get to thinking I ought to get busy.”
“Oh. Ambitious?”
“I guess,” he said; his eyes narrowed and he looked down at the counter. “Thirty came up and tapped me on the shoulder a while back. You know.” He put the Social Security card back in his wallet without looking up, and Gene saw he was embarrassed. The wallet had an aluminum oblong fastened to it, on which was printed, “Betio, 1943.”
Gene pointed to it. “Marines?”
“Seabees.”
“My father was in the Navy, too.”
He looked at her expressionlessly, replacing the wallet in his hip pocket. “He was a Chief,” Gene said. “He was killed in the Philippines in ’41,” and she immediately wondered why she had bothered to tell him that.
He only nodded. “Well, thanks,” he said. “I’ll see you again.” She watched him go, standing behind the counter and tapping her pencil on its top and feeling a little foolish. He paused outside the door, looked both ways, looked back briefly, and was gone. I’ll see you again, he had said, and somehow she knew he would. She discovered she was smiling after him. She liked to see them come back. It was late in 1945 and a great many of them were returning from the Pacific. Charley Long had been back six weeks now.
As she walked back to her desk she looked up at the clock on the wall above the door to Mr. Griffith’s office. It was almost twelve and Charley would be in soon, to take her out to lunch.
They ate in the streamlined diner around the corner. It was crowded and as they waited for seats Charley put his mouth close to her ear and asked her to marry him. She laughed and shook her head, frowning at him, but he asked her again when they sat down on the leather and chrome stools.
“Charley!” she whispered, laughing. “This is hardly the place.”
The counterman came with a plate of rolls and stood in front of them, wiping his hands on his apron, while Charley gave their orders. “You want coffee now, folks?”
“Yes,” Charley said. The sleeve of his chamois jacket brushed Gene’s arm as he replaced the menu, and he turned his long face toward her. “Why not?” he said.
“You don’t want everybody to hear.”
“Well, I have to keep working or you’ll never make up your mind. You keep forgetting to think it over.”
“I don’t forget,” Gene said. The counterman brought two mugs of coffee and Gene mixed sugar and cream into hers.
“Well, how about it?” Charley said.
“Don’t be so impatient.”
“Impatient! You’re supposed to’ve been thinking it over ever since I went i
n the Navy. Is that impatient?”
“It’s an important thing,” Gene said. “You have to be sure.”
“Yeah, but how long’s it going to take before you get sure?”
“You just have to be careful,” Gene said, and the counterman came back with the two platters. The hollow mounds of mashed potato were overflowing with dark gravy.
“You got to be careful, all right,” the counterman said. He was a balding youth with a red, shining face.
“Yeah, yeah,” Charley said. “Get us some catsup, will you?”
But she had always been careful and maybe that was why she was twenty-six and still unmarried. And maybe, too, it was because of her father. He was dead now, and she had not seen him since her graduation from high school; a small man in a black uniform, with a big head and a deeply lined, unhealthily white face. She had hated him. When he had had sea duty she did not see him often; whenever he came into San Diego she had dreaded it. He kissed her sloppily and smelled of liquor and he seemed always to be drunk. When he was especially drunk he would curse her mother and call her an old straw mattress. After he had gone away Gene would feel as though she had to take baths over and over again to get rid of him. She had hated him, and hating him she had pitied her mother, and pitying her mother she disliked her, and so she had always been lonely. Although she liked people and got along well enough with them, she had gone to movies by herself and read by herself and never minded it, and maybe because she had never minded being lonely she was twenty-six now, and unmarried.
She supposed she would marry Charley Long. She had known him almost from the time she had come to work for Hogan and Griffith, and he had proposed to her when he had gone away in the Navy as a Lieutenant j.g. There was no reason why she should not marry him. He was a good man, she liked him well enough, he had his own surveying company now, and there was nothing about him she did not approve of. She did not know why she kept putting off telling him she would marry him.
3
