I Could Go on Singing

by John D. MacDonald

  He held her until the tears were under control.

  “What shall I do?” she asked. “It isn’t fair. It just isn’t fair.”

  “I don’t see that there’s anything you can do, Jenny. You have no legal claim on the boy.”

  “No legal claim,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Now that the boy knows, he might insist on being permitted to see you once in a while.”

  “After David poisons his mind against me? No, I keep wondering if that is true, Brownie.”

  “If what is true?”

  “That I have no legal claim at all. I wonder …”

  “Jenny?”

  “You have been a darling, Brownie. I love you. Now run along and send George in here. Find him and send him in here.”

  Jason heard the rest of it in the dressing room at the theater. George had briefed him on some of it. At Jenny’s insistence he had made two long phone calls to the New York lawyers who had handled the adoption procedures. When Jenny came sweeping into the dressing room, she was holding her head high. She looked vibrant, narrow-eyed and dangerous. Her small jaw had a clamped and stubborn look. Ida was getting her costume ready. Gabe was ready to fix her hair.

  George followed her in, practically wringing his hands. “Yes, darling, there is a case,” he said.

  “I told you, didn’t I?” she said firmly. “Brownie, Ida, I’ve got a son.”

  “Did I say how much of a case?” George said. “What you got, Jenny, is a technicality. I’ve been telling you. The adoption was legitimate. But there’s some kind of second papers or final papers. And you never signed them.”

  “Good for me!” she said pertly.

  “Can’t you slow down a little?” George demanded. “New York was very cold about this. You know? Frankly, it’s a long shot. No guarantees. Nothing easy. A whole long Megillah in court. It would be a hell of a thing to fight.”

  “I’m a fighter, George, and I know what I’m fighting for. Tell them to go ahead and get it rolling.”

  “So you have to have lawyers here too.”

  “So they can pick some lawyers here. Tell them to get going.”

  George sighed heavily. “Gabe, Ida, Jase. Go take a coffee break or something.”

  “Better be a fast one,” Ida said.

  “Brownie stays,” Jenny said. The other two left.

  She was at the dressing table, sitting on the bench. George went up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Leave out the lawyers one minute, Jenny. For advice take a little from me. Right now you are at the top of a career you’ve been building for twenty years. For half that time I’ve been with you, helping. Right?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “So I know a little about the subject? And now that you’ve got the career neat and tight in your hot little hands I can’t stand by and watch you toss it over the wall.… But more than that I can’t stand by and see you destroy yourself.”

  “How?”

  “So you fight the case. You may win. It’s possible. I don’t know. But do you know what it would mean? You’d have to stay right here in England and fight this thing out. You couldn’t be in Rome one week and Miami the next. You’d have to be here in the courts. And that can be pretty rough. On you and the kid. The boy has a father, a home, a school, a way of life he knows. So you want to jump into the middle of that and make all kinds of waves.”

  “Yes. That’s what I want.”

  “So you get him and what do you do with him. Trail all over the world dragging a tutor along? Hotel suites, rented cars, other people’s houses. They’re pretty tough in England about schooling. The court would have to decide that kind of life would be okay for him. They might say you’d have to leave him in school and see him now and then at vacation. Is that what you want? Don’t you see?”

  “Go on,” she said and got up and went into the screened dressing area.

  “And what would happen to you? How would you be able to work with this pull all the time? Do you know how to raise a boy? I’d say he’s been raised fine so far. It’s not all kisses and presents and supper after the show. It’s a full-time job, and dear, forgive me, but I don’t think you know how to do it. This is your job, right here, and you do it better than anyone else in the world. You know it. Don’t force this. Let it rest. Don’t give the whole world a fat chance to crucify you for something that happened a long time ago. You bring it out in the open, in the courts, and they’ll make it stinking dirty rotten for everybody. You want the lawyers on the other side trying to prove you’re not fit to have him? Let it rest, darling. The kid is happy; he belongs. Leave him there. Any other way may destroy you. And destroy your son too.”

  There was a long silence. Jenny came back out into the dressing room wearing her costume. She smiled at George. “You’re terribly sweet, George, and I know you’re trying to help, but when you’re lucky enough to find something that really matters, the way I have, you have to hang onto it. I love him, George. And do you know the strangest thing? I think he loves me.”

  Ida knocked at the door and opened it. “We better come in and get you set.”

  “Come on, then,” George said hollowly.

  “George?”

  “Yes, Jenny.”

  “Just for luck, buy Matthew a ticket.”

  “To Paris?”

  “No. For the whole tour.”

  “For the whole tour,” George said emptily. He nodded. He walked out of the dressing room. Ida and Gabe were working on Jenny.

  “George is right,” Jason said.

  “Is he? What things have the most meaning, Brownie?”

  “The things you want the most, I guess.”

  “Exactly.”

  Jenny looked at Ida. “Please, Ida. Be happy for me. Don’t be angry. Don’t think I’m crazy. And don’t feel sorry for me. Be happy and wish me luck.”

  Ida looked at her for a long moment. “Okay, Jenny B. Luck.”

  The overture had started. Jenny listened, kissed Ida lightly on the cheek, and then headed slowly for her place in the wings.

  eleven

  Jason Brown awoke Tuesday to a feeling of gray and sour depression. He could not remember his dreams, knew only that he had dreamed, had somewhere run and somewhere wept, but knew not why. He felt a half-step removed from reality, exiled in a cold place, charged with insoluble problems. He yearned for home sunshine, the cluttered workroom, Bonny’s flower face. Here was only the cold wet springtime, and Jenny Bowman plunging into a destruction no one could halt. Here was Lois, denying the abundant gifts of her warmth, rejecting herself and trying to think it wisdom. Here, in a strange city, where his memories of Jocelyn and Joyce were bittersweet, he would now be privileged to watch the end of something else. He got up feeling seamed and dusty. He remembered Wegler’s little aphorism. If something can go wrong, it will. Yes indeed, Sid. It always has.

  He was just leaving the room when the phone rang.

  “Jason?”

  “I was just thinking about you, Lois.”

  “I’m sorry I was such sour company last night.”

  “Nobody was exactly loaded with glee.”

  “Jason, the boy is on his way to see you. Matthew is on his way to your hotel.”

  “Matthew? But why?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t think he talked to anyone else here. I’m quite certain of it. He asked how he could find you. He asked me not to say he had phoned me. He was very polite. Maybe he was upset. It’s difficult to tell.”

  “I … I’ll let you know later on what it’s all about.”

  “All this must be very hard on him.”

  “Thank you for warning me, Lois. Has George phoned New York?”

  “Jenny thinks he has. He’s stalling. I don’t know what good it will do. Her mind is made up.”

  Matthew arrived ten minutes later. He called on the house phone. Jason said he was just on his way down to breakfast and he would be glad to have the boy join him.

  Th
e boy was waiting at the elevators. He seemed very grave and contained. They went to the dining room. He said he’d had breakfast, but he would like a sweet bun and coffee, please.

  “I don’t want to bother you with my problems, Mr. Brown.”

  “I don’t know if I can help you, Matthew. But if I can, I will.”

  “The reason I came to you, sir, Jenny and I talked one day about the people close to her. She is very fond of everyone, of course. They are nice people. But she said something about you which I remembered. She said you … know how to help people. She said you know what people should really do.”

  “I’m never that certain of anything, Matthew.”

  “This is something where I … must talk to someone who isn’t really a part of it all. You do … know about me?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I thought you might, sir.”

  “I learned about it seven years ago.”

  “Am I imposing on you?”

  “No. Jenny is my friend. Don’t be apologetic about this.”

  “It’s just that it’s rather difficult to talk about it, I suspect. Such a personal thing. It’s easier to talk to someone I don’t know awfully well, but it’s still difficult. Everything seems … so changed for me. I see things quite differently now. I thought I was adopted, you know. My mother … I mean Janet … she was marvelously good to me, considering. And finding that my father is really my father after all. It’s a bit of a shock after adjusting to it being the other way. I’ve been staring at myself in mirrors. I do look like him. And a bit like her. Once you know, it seems obvious.”

  It was, Jason realized, an extraordinary maturity for a boy of thirteen. But he had been away at school for five years, and exposed to one of the world’s most comprehensive educational systems.

  “I had it out with father last night,” the boy said, and his voice broke slightly.

  “It isn’t easy for him either, Matthew.”

  “I realize that. He phoned Aunty Beth and explained I’m staying with him for a bit and he’ll be sending me along later. He worked for a time and then came to my room. I was taping some of his discs. It’s really a tremendous machine, far better than what he would have gotten me. Too good, really. I expect that bothers him somewhat. It was fearfully expensive. He asked me if he might sit down and speak with me. Father is terribly correct, you know.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “And he is a shy man, I think. He sat down and he told me that it was a very bad age for this to have happened. Were I younger, he could give commands. And if I were older, I could be given the chance to make up my own mind about … things. He said that in fairness to me, he would have to talk to me as a man. And he did. It was very difficult for him. But he explained about being in New York for specialist study and treating Jenny and falling in love with her, even though he and Janet were married. But Janet was here, of course. He told her everything, and she agreed they should adopt me. But there was one part of all of it he could not explain to me.”

  “And you think I can?”

  “I do hope you can, sir. I … I am fond of Jenny. She is such a warm person. Perhaps father can see just one side of it.” His mouth twisted for a moment. “I do not see how a person like Jenny could have … given me away. Someone … has to help me understand that. You see, sir, Janet was very good to me. But she didn’t love me. Not really. Father says that was his fault, for putting her in such an impossible situation. She would say she loved me, but she didn’t. But he does, you know. Father says the … that life is a difficult thing and people too often end up hurting each other. Jenny has sad eyes. I thought … you might explain a bit of it, if you wouldn’t mind too much.”

  The boy, behind all his poise and reserve, was pleading, Jason knew. There was rawness of new wounds there, a tremor in the careful young voice.

  Jason said slowly, “I think you are clever, Matthew. I think that if I try to patronize you, you’ll sense it. I think I can tell you how it was, for Jenny. It may sound ugly to you and it may be difficult to understand. I had to explain all this just the other day. To Miss Marney. She knew about it, but even after two and a half years with Jenny, she couldn’t quite understand it.”

  “Does she now?”

  “I think so. I hope so.”

  He told the boy about it, explaining Jenny’s vulnerability and the pressures upon her, and how it must have been for her. At one point he hesitated, and then told of the other pressure on her, to have the pregnancy terminated, and how she refused. When he had finished, the boy was silent and thoughtful for several minutes.

  “Thank you, Mr. Brown. Father sees it his way—as if she were too busy and ambitious to bother with a child. And I expect Jenny would see it her way—as a sort of conspiracy against her. But the truth is somewhat in between.”

  “It seems to be one of the characteristics of truth, Matthew. It is always somewhere in between.”

  The boy sighed. “Father explained why he brought her to see me. She was very determined. He wanted to prevent it. He wanted to keep me from being hurt in any way. He thought she might find me on her own, so it seemed best to bring her to the school, so that he could control the situation. But it turned out he couldn’t. And I suppose that was partially my fault.”

  “What is the situation now?”

  Matthew frowned. “Father and I have a good relationship, I think. He works very hard. I trust him and respect him. I believe we … are proud of each other. The point at issue is Paris. He said that as long as he had spoken to me as man to man, we should make the decision on the same basis.” The boy smiled in a rueful way. “It would be easier if he were to give me direct orders, I expect. And then he … broke down a bit. He pleaded with me not to go with Jenny to Paris. He said he was afraid he would lose me. I asked him what was wrong with a week in Paris. He said that at first Jenny wanted to see me for an hour, but it became a day and then three days and then a week. He said she would not stop until she had taken me away from … everything I am used to. He sounded as if he hates her. It was distressing.”

  “I don’t think he hates her. He may be angry at her, but I don’t think it’s hate. Jenny is not the sort of human being you can hate. She’s reckless, but she doesn’t have any real malice in her.”

  “He asked me to think about it very very carefully before deciding. I sat in my room, with the music, for quite a long time, until it was very late. And then I went to him and told him that if he did not want me to go, I wouldn’t go. He asked if I should want him to tell Jenny. I said I would do it. I said I did want to see her again to thank her for everything, and I would tell her.”

  It took Jason several moments to interpret the way the boy was looking at him. He told himself his emotional reflexes were slowing down. He said, slowly and carefully, “I know Jenny very well. I think I know the sort of man your father is. And now I know you better than I did, Matthew. I think this is the very best of all possible solutions, to have you decide of your own free will to stay here. And it is the one thing Jenny would not and cannot fight.”

  “But it will hurt her.”

  “Yes, of course,” Jason said. “But it is the kind of hurt she can understand. And … if need be, I can help her understand it.”

  “One thinks about … the glamor of another kind of life.”

  “There’s one thing you may not understand.”

  “Sir?”

  “If it became known that Jenny Bowman is your mother—and the more you are with her the more likely it is some gossip columnist will uncover it—there would be a scandal that would hurt your father’s career and very probably smash Jenny’s.”

  Suddenly the boy looked much younger. “My word! Father said nothing about that.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to use that kind of influence.”

  “But doesn’t Jenny understand that risk, sir?”

  “She is not a calculating woman. She is guided by her heart. I told you before, she is a reckless woman and she has found
the son she lost and she loves him and that is all that concerns her.”

  “But I should not let her hurt herself or hurt father.”

  “At the same time, Matthew, she should know that your decision was not made on that basis. She wouldn’t listen to that kind of reasoning.”

  “I know.”

  “That kind of scandal might make life a little uncomfortable for you too.”

  The boy shrugged. “That wouldn’t matter.”

  “It might.”

  “A little, perhaps. I mean one doesn’t wish to be conspicuous. But they would be losing things they have worked for years to obtain.”

  Jason took a deep breath and said, “Jenny might bring suit to regain custody of you on a technicality, a little flaw in the adoption procedures.”