by John O'Hara
“It’s a tough job, isn’t it?”
“Oh, is it ever tough? It isn’t really, most of the time, but once in a while we have a sort of wave of indignation or something. Women call up and just raise the devil because names were left out or parties weren’t given the prominence they thought they ought to have. And of course I always get it in the end, they pass the buck to me. Some people named Bromberg, Jews, they almost got me fired last week. They took out their ad and everything, just because I didn’t use a story they sent in about some imported English perambulator they bought for their baby. You should have seen the story! I couldn’t possibly use it or the paper would have been a joke, but did they back me up? They did not. I finally had to run a half a stick about it, but I killed the gushy part, and so the Brombergs put their ad in again and I have to lick everybody’s boots and kowtow to everybody that appears on the society page. Not Mrs. English, but I can’t say as much for some of your friends. Well, thanks very much for the drink and I’m sorry you’re not having the party. It’s very nice to have met you. I often see you driving those beautiful Cadillacs around town. When we first came to Gibbsville I used to wonder who you were…. My goodness, what made me say that?”
“Have another drink before you go. Stay and tell me more.”
“Oh, yes. Oh, my yes. Can’t you just see me? No, I better go while the going’s good. Oh, I don’t mean that the way it sounds, Mr. English, but people talk so much in this town.” Julian had a quick recollection of a story about the Baptist minister’s daughter going without stockings. Unwillingly he looked at her legs, and she apprehended the look. “That’s it,” she said. “You heard it yourself. I’ll never live it down, going without stockings. It’s all right in front of Queen Mary, but not in Gibbsville. Well, thanks again. See you again some time.”
“Don’t go,” he said. Unaccountably he liked her. More than that, he didn’t want her to put on her glasses. She wasn’t bad-looking. She wasn’t pretty. But she wasn’t bad-looking, and she had an interesting figure; not sensationally good, but you could have fun with it. He hated himself, but he had an enormous desire to discover this girl.
“What time is it?” she said.
“It isn’t even ten o’clock. It’s still in the nine class. Nine-thirty-five, nine-thirty-seven, something like that. It’s very early.”
“Well, one more drink, although why you want me to stay I don’t know. I look a wreck. Haven’t even been home from the office.” She gazed around the room, just getting ready to sit down, and then she said: “Mr. English, I’d feel a thousand per cent better if you’d let me wash my hands.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I’ll show you.”
“Just tell me where it is, I’ll find it.”
“I better show you. There’s no light, I don’t think.”
“This is terribly embarrassing, or would be if you weren’t so nice. I always feel more at ease with a married man. Tell you the truth, my back teeth are floating.”
He was shocked and he was glad it was too dark for her to see his face. Either that one drink had had an unusual effect, or little Miss Cartwright—who was not little, but rather reedy—could turn out to be fun. He lit the lights and then came downstairs and made himself a drink. He heard her, and then he saw her coming down the stairs, slowly now; step by step, at ease. Her steps might have meant self-confidence, in which case he did not like it and did not like her. He wanted to seduce this girl, but he wanted to do it because he was able to through experience and superior knowledge. He didn’t want her to have anything to do with it except to acquiesce. Still, she was near-sighted or something. That might explain the way she walked.
“Rye and ginger ale,” he said.
“Right,” she said. She sat down, and now he was sure it was confidence. He almost laughed in her face. She was not a girl who would be included in anyone’s list of attractive damsels, but she had as much confidence at this moment as Norma Shearer or Peggy Joyce or somebody. He knew now that she was not a virgin, no matter what he had thought ever before; and while he made a drink for her he imagined the ridiculous scene with probably a veterinary student with two or three scholastic keys and fraternity pins on his vest—the rush of life in the direction of Miss Cartwright, and the quick rush away. He wondered how old she was, and he asked her as he handed her her drink.
“Old enough to know better,” and then, “I’m twenty-three. Why do you ask that? Just curiosity or what?”
The Big Ten confidence. “What, probably. I don’t know. I just wondered. I couldn’t make an accurate guess myself, so I asked you.”
“That’s refreshing nowadays. Now how old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“That’s what I thought. I thought about twenty-eight, but you go around with so much older people that I thought in a town like this you—oh, I don’t know what I thought. It doesn’t make much difference. This drink is much stronger. I suppose you know that.”
“Yes. I made it exactly as strong as mine. As a matter of fact I had an extra one while you were upstairs. Where’d you go to school?”
“University of Missouri.”
“Oh, did you? I was thinking of going to one of the Western Conference schools one time.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have gone to Missouri, then. Missouri isn’t in the Conference.”
“Oh, I thought it was.”
“No,” she said. “I started at Missouri before we came to Gibbsville. I was thinking of transferring to Columbia, to save the expense of train fare and so on, but I decided to stay out there. I studied journalism.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. Her breasts were small. Practically non-existent while she had her dress on, but they would be neat.
“I’m sorry in a way I didn’t transfer, because I’d like to have spent a year or two in New York. Soon as I get enough money I’m going to try to get a job on a New York paper. The World is the paper I’d like to work on, but it’s awfully hard to get a job there. It’s awfully hard to get a job anywhere nowadays, at least on a paper. I have this friend of mine on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, one of the best men they have, getting an awfully good salary. He went to New York on his vacation and he dropped in just to look around at one of the papers, and do you know what they offered him?”
“What?”
“Forty dollars a week! Good Lord, I’m getting twenty, and I don’t know a thing compared to him, but forty dollars a week. That was as high as they’d go. You can imagine what he told them.” She shook her head and reminisced with her eyes, not looking at Julian. So she felt more at ease with married men.
“How on earth does a man support a family on forty dollars a week? Oh, I know it’s done, but on a paper I should think you’d have to dress pretty well?” Julian asked.
“That’s exactly what this friend of mine said. He has a wife and child. He couldn’t begin to afford to live in New York. His friends are always saying, Why doesn’t he go to New York. Well, that’s the answer.”
It certainly was, Julian reflected. It certainly was the answer. So a man with a wife and child had done it? That meant, most likely, that it had been done with more skill—and regularity—than if it had been done by a college boy. “Drink?” he said.
“Oh, all right,” she said.
He made the drinks and went back to her with a drink in each hand. But instead of handing her hers he put both drinks down together on the small table and sat down beside her. He put his hand under her chin and she turned her face and smiled and then she closed her eyes and her mouth was open before it touched his. She brought up her knee and pushed herself full-length out on the couch, and held his head with her hands over his ears. “Just kiss me,” she said, but she put her hand under his coat and opened his vest and shirt. “No,” she said. “Just kiss me.” She was terribly strong. Suddenly she jerked away from him. “Whew! Come up for air,” she said. He hated her more than anyone ever had hated anyone.
“Drink?” he said.
“No,
I don’t think so. I must go.”
“Don’t go,” he said. He wanted to call her all kinds of bitches.
“Now is the best time,” she said, but she did not get up.
“Well, it’s up to you,” he said.
“Listen, Joo-lian,” she apologized by exaggerating the u in his name, “if I stay here you know what’ll happen.”
“All right,” he said.
“Not all right at all. You’re married to a swell girl. I don’t know her at all, but I know she’s swell, and you don’t give a damn about me. Oh, I don’t want to talk about it. I admit, I have a yen for you, but—but all the same I’m going. Good-by,” she said, and she would not let him help her with her coat. He heard the wurra-wurra of the starter in her car, but he was not thinking of her. He was thinking of the time after time he was going to hear those words in the future. “You’re married to a swell girl. I don’t know her at all (or, “Caroline’s one of my best friends”)…. I have a yen for you, but all the same I’m going.” Miss Cartwright was already deep in the past, the musty part of the past, but now her words came out of the mouths of all the girls he wanted to see. Telephone operators, department store clerks, secretaries, wives of friends, girls in the school crowd, nurses—all the pretty girls in Gibbsville, trying to make him believe they all loved Caroline. In that moment the break with Caroline ceased to look like the beginning of a vacation. Now it looked worse than anything, for he knew that plenty of girls would do anything with a married man so long as he was married, but in Gibbsville for the rest of his life he was Caroline’s husband. There could be a divorce, Caroline could marry again for that matter, but no girl in Gibbsville—worth having—would risk the loss of reputation which would be her punishment for getting herself identified with him. He recalled a slang axiom that never had any meaning in college days: “Don’t buck the system; you’re liable to gum the works.”
He didn’t want to go back and make a more definite break with Caroline. He didn’t want to go back to anything, and he went from that to wondering what he wanted to go to. Thirty years old. “She’s only twenty, and he’s thirty. She’s only twenty-two, and he’s thirty. She’s only eighteen, and he’s thirty and been married once, you know. You wouldn’t call him young. He’s at least thirty. No, let’s not have him. He’s one of the older guys. Wish Julian English would act his age. He’s always cutting in. His own crowd won’t have him. I should think he’d resign from the club. Listen, if you don’t tell him you want him to stop dancing with you, then I will. No thanks, Julian, I’d rather walk. No thanks, Mr. English, I haven’t much farther to go. Listen, English, I want you to get this straight. Julian, I’ve been a friend of your family’s for a good many years. Julian, I wish you wouldn’t call me so much. My father gets furious. You better leave me out at the corner, becuss if my old man. Listen, you, leave my sister alone. Oh, hello, sweetie, you want to wait for Ann she’s busy now be down a little while. No liquor, no meat, no coffee, drink plenty of water, stay off your feet as much as possible, and we’ll have you in good shape in a year’s time, maybe less.” He had a drink. He had another and he got up and took off his coat and vest and tie. He had another and he brought the Scotch over and stood the bottle on the floor, and he got out his favorite records, which were in three albums. He put the albums on the floor. When he got drunk enough he would want to play them, but he wanted to have them near now. He lay down and then got up and brought the seltzer and the ice bucket and stood them beside the Scotch. He examined the Scotch bottle and saw there was not much more than a pint left, so he went to the dining-room and got another and opened it, then put the cork back. He drank while walking and this demonstrated the inadequacy of the glass. He had a smart idea. He took the flowers out of a vase and poured the water out, and made himself the biggest highball he ever had seen. It did not last very long. He got up again and got a plate of hors d’œuvres from the kitchen. They made him thirsty. He lowered his suspenders and felt much better.
“I think, if you don’t mind, I think we shall play a little tune,” he said aloud. He played Paul Whiteman’s record of Stairway to Paradise, and when the record came to the “patter” he was screaming with jazz. The phonograph stopped itself but he was up and changing it to a much later record, Jean Goldkette’s band playing Sunny Disposish. He laid a lot of records out on the floor without looking at their titles. He spun a spoon around, and when it stopped he would play the record to which it pointed. He played only three records in this way, because he was pounding his feet, keeping time, and he broke one of his most favorite, Whiteman’s Lady of the Evening, valuable because it has the fanciest trick ending ever put on a record. He wanted to cry but he could not. He wanted to pick up the pieces. He reached over to pick them up, and lost his balance and sat down on another record, crushing it unmusically. He did not want to see what it was. All he knew was that it was a Brunswick, which meant it was one of the oldest and best. He had a drink out of the glass. He used the vase for resting-drinking, and the glass for moving-drinking. That way he did not disturb the main drink while moving around, and could fill the glass while getting up and sitting down. Unintentionally he lay back. “I am now,” he said, “drunk. Drunk. Dronk. Drongk.” He reached like a blind man for the fresh bottle and with eyes that he knew were sober he watched himself pour himself a drink. “No ice I get drunk kicker. Quicker,” he said that aloud. To himself he said: “I bet I look like something nice now.” He found he had two cigarettes burning, one in the ash tray on the floor, and the other getting stuck in the varnish on the edge of the phonograph. He half planned a lie to explain how the burn got there and then, for the first time, he knew it would not make any difference.
He got to his feet and went to the stairs. “Anybody in this house?” he called.
“Anybody in this house?”
“Any, body, in, this, house!”
He shook his head. “Nope. Nobody in this house. You could wake the dead with that noise,” he said.
He got a package of cigarettes from the table and took the new bottle of Scotch. He wished he had time to look around the room to see if everything was all right, no more cigarettes burning or anything like that, but there wasn’t time. There wasn’t time to put out the lights or pick up anything or straighten the rugs. Not even time to put on a coat, pull up his suspenders or anything. He went out on the porch and down the steps and opened the garage door and closed it behind him. He shivered a little from the bit of cold, and it was cold in the garage, so he hurried. He had to see about the windows. They had to be closed. The ventilator in the roof was closed for the winter.
He climbed in the front seat and started the car. It started with a merry, powerful hum, ready to go. “There, the bastards,” said Julian, and smashed the clock with the bottom of the bottle, to give them an approximate time. It was 10:41.
There was nothing to do now but wait. He smoked a little, hummed for a minute or two, and had three quick drinks and was on his fourth when he lay back and slumped down in the seat. At 10:50, by the clock in the rear seat, he tried to get up. He had not the strength to help himself, and at ten minutes past eleven no one could have helped him, no one in the world.
10
Our story never ends.
You pull the pin out of a hand grenade, and in a few seconds it explodes and men in a small area get killed and wounded. That makes bodies to be buried, hurt men to be treated. It makes widows and fatherless children and bereaved parents. It means pension machinery, and it makes for pacifism in some and for lasting hatred in others. Again, a man out of the danger area sees the carnage the grenade creates, and he shoots himself in the foot. Another man had been standing there just two minutes before the thing went off, and thereafter he believes in God or in a rabbit’s foot. Another man sees human brains for the first time and locks up the picture until one night years later, when he finally comes out with a description of what he saw, and the horror of his description turns his wife away from him….
Herbe
rt Harley said he thought he heard a car about ten o’clock. It sounded like a Ford, starting in front of the English home, but he could have been mistaken. Or, as Deputy Coroner Moskowitz pointed out, it could have been just any car that happened to stop in front of the English home, Dr. Moskowitz wanted to have the thing all neat and no loose ends, and he wished the driver of the car would come forth and reveal himself; but he guessed he never would; that part of town was pretty secluded, you might say, and necking couples often went there. So the car probably was just some necking couple, Dr. Moskowitz said, and anyway it was an open-and-shut case of suicide by carbon monoxide gas poisoning, the first of its kind in the history of the county (and a damn nice, clean way of knocking yourself off, he added off the record). What happened, as he reconstructed it, was: Mr. English had had difficulties with Mrs. English, so he went home and got drunk and while temporarily deranged through alcohol and grief, he, being well acquainted with the effects of carbon monoxide, being in the automobile business, why he committed suicide. There was no doubt about him being insane, at least temporarily, because from the broken Victrola records in the house, and the clock that was smashed in the car, deceased manifestly had been in a drunken rage and therefore not responsible. His widow, Caroline W. English, was apparently the last one to see him alive, and that was about four o’clock in the afternoon. Mrs. English had telephoned the two servants in the house and informed them that a party scheduled for that night was postponed, and they could go home and so they went.
Fortunately deceased had seen fit to vent his rage and smash the clock in the front part of the car, which readily enabled the deputy coroner to fix the time of death at about eleven o’clock P.M., the night of December 26, year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred thirty. Thus it will be seen that seven hours elapsed between the last time Caroline W. English had seen her late husband and the time of his death. This was verified by Mrs. Judge Walker, mother of Caroline W. English, at whose home Mrs. English had been stopping from the time she last saw deceased up to the time she had been informed of his death.
