Narrow Rooms

by James Purdy

  “I didn’t know you believed in God, Doc,” Vance said in a choked voice, for his grief was getting the better of him again.

  “Well, I believe in the soul I guess, the soul somehow that is one and is in everybody. I am not a thinker, Vance.”

  He kept fingering a piece of paper. Actually it was a letter he had been poring over and debating whether or not to show to Vance.

  “You have been worrying about Sidney not having a job,” the Doctor began, and Vance did not know whether to shout for joy or to curse the old man for his seeming indifference to his having told of the fall of his idol.

  “Isn’t that a fact, Vance . . . You wanted for Sidney to have a job.”

  “It is,” Vance replied.

  “Look here, my boy,” the old man’s voice rose. “You have got to brace up now. The worst is over. He’s back.”

  “Is he?” And then he broke down in a way that touched the old man more deeply than when Vance had come to pass the first night he had ever spent without his brother, when Sidney was already in jail and life bore down on him heavily.

  “Vance, listen to me. You still have your hero. Do you understand? He told you, Vance. He confided. Don’t you see he returns your love more than he could return it to another man? Don’t you?”

  “I want to,” he said between his choking and sobbing.

  “Now brace up.” He went into the adjoining room. He poured something and brought it out.

  “I don’t want it, Doc. I can take it without that.”

  “Drink it. It’s nothing anyhow. Drink it, and then listen to this letter which comes from Mrs. Vaisey about her son.”

  He drank and listened.

  “You know the Vaisey boy, Gareth?” the Doc began.

  “I do of course.”

  “You remember he was in a train wreck?”

  “And he was mixed up with the renderer if my own memory serves me.”

  The Doctor exchanged a look of real wonder and annoyance with his “charge.”

  “Gareth was the only one who survived the wreck when the fast train hit the truck and trailer he was driving. His father and Gareth’s two brothers died. . . . But later on, whether due to this wreck or his having been thrown from a horse and kicked in the bargain, well, he developed one might say a number of symptoms. He is a virtual invalid and seldom goes out. Gareth is now about twenty . . . His mother needs a caretaker. . . .” He tapped the letter against Vance’s cheek.

  “No, Doc, no,” Vance cried. “Sidney can’t do that kind of work.”

  “Why in thunder can’t he?” the Doc exploded. “He can and he must.”

  “An orderly? A male nurse? Never.”

  “Then what is he to do?”

  Vance’s deep silence was the first step toward assent.

  When they parted a few minutes later, the Doctor put his arm around Vance and held him to him for a long time. They had never been so close as then, Vance knew, and he had never needed closeness that bad before.

  “I learned yesterday of a job that is open, Sid.” Vance managed to broach the subject the next morning as he was clearing the breakfast dishes (it was five o’clock in the morning, and outside the fog from the mountains had, if anything, grown more pronounced than at nightfall). “It’s thought, I guess, to be a real opportunity for whoever is interested.”

  “A job I could fill?” Sidney wondered, his feelings still raw from the distance that would always he supposed exist between him and Vance.

  “Yes, who else?” Vance’s voice took on a real edge. “There’s a position vacant at the Vaisey household . . . Taking care of the young man there who was in that un­usual train wreck some time back. . . . You remember him, of course.”

  Sidney blushed beet-­red under his prison pallor, and looked down at his toast and eggs.

  But Vance himself was so uneasy over bringing up the offer of the “opportunity” for his brother that he did not observe the confusion which the mention of the Vaisey boy’s name brought to the job-­seeker.

  “I thought, matter of fact,” Sidney tried to recover his composure, “that maybe Gareth might have . . . died also by now, and that perhaps you had neglected to tell me . . .”

  “I guess I should have kept you abreast of his condition,” Vance unbent a little, “since you used to inquire about him so often when I came to see you, I recall . . .”

  “I guess I hated to keep asking you about him when the subject . . . well, seemed to displease you when I brought it up.”

  “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression, Sid . . . I should have offered you the news about him more willingly, I reckon. . . . Anyhow, the job there is going begging!” He finished this with a kind of exhausted fury and impatience.

  “But, Vance,” Sid rose from his breakfast, and with good humor and encouragement in his voice, “you ain’t told me what the job is to be . . .”

  Turning away from Sid slightly, Vance responded: “The offer comes as a matter of fact from Dr. Ulric, and I was sort of cool to it myself at first . . . But I thought . . .”

  “But just tell me what’s expected, Vance.”

  “This . . . Gareth . . . ,” Vance tried to control his own reluctance, if not ill humor, “is as you may know a sort of invalid, and needs somebody to take care of him. . . . The other caretakers never stayed more than a few weeks. . . . And Sid, to tell you the truth, I was afraid you might feel it was beneath you. . . .”

  Sidney sat down in his chair again, and touched his coffee cup. “Beneath me?” he repeated, seeking for any sarcasm which might lie under this remark; but Vance was incapable, he decided, of sarcasm.

  “An invalid now, huh?” Sidney’s eyes got that dreamy look they so often had. “In times past all Gareth ever liked to do was ride horses. . . . I remember his Dad told me once that young as he was he was capable of breaking in a horse, and as a matter of fact later I found out he had done so—broke several horses, in fact. . . . His dream was to be in a rodeo, or who knows, a circus . . .”

  “But it was by breaking in a horse, I believe, Sid, that he got injured. At least riding this new horse, which threw him and kicked him also . . . You see Gareth was not injured in the train wreck. Only some little scratches, whilst his Dad and his two younger brothers were killed.”

  “You know Gareth was part of the gang of boys that clustered round the renderer,” Sidney mused.

  “Maybe we best drop the idea then, Sid. After all there’s plenty of time.”

  “No, Vance, there ain’t, as a matter of fact. There’s not much time at all where I’m concerned. I’ll take the job if she will give it to me.”

  “Oh I don’t think there’s any question she’ll offer it to you. She’s desperate . . . Excuse me, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. . . .”

  “I’ll go.”

  “But, Sid, do you really want to. I can’t stand the thought of you emptying chamber pots and paring the toenails of some non-­compos-­mentis boy . . .”

  “But I know Gareth . . .”

  This time Vance blushed for he wanted to but did not dare ask more.

  “You see, Vance, I can’t just sit around here and live off you. . . . I tell you I’ll take it.” He stood up, and he smiled, and going over to Vance he punched him with his fist in the belly, and smiled broadly.

  Mrs. Vaisey had offered to send her chauffeur over to fetch Sidney, but he insisted on walking the six or seven miles.

  He was a bit winded by the time he had arrived, nonetheless. His opportunity for exercise in prison had been minimal, and all he had had for keeping in shape were a dilapidated punching bag and some weights. As a result of being confined or (who knows?) because of—as the prison psychiatrist put it—the weight of memory, his heart troubled him to some extent.

  Sidney had spruced himself up considerably for the ordeal of meeting Gareth’s mother. He had put on one of Vance’s Christmas-­present dress shirts, a knit tie of neutral color, his dark hair was combed wet, and at the last Vance had insisted
on manicuring his nails—Sidney always had had a tendency to keep his nails poorly, with black dirt under them, and the thumb nails more apt than not to be broken. His blue eyes shining in contrast to his extremely dark complexion gave him today a calm handsomeness and purity which was inconsistent with the epithet ex-­convict.

  Mrs. Vaisey did not keep him waiting long for, contrary to rumor, she was not grand at all; and the story that she was rich merely because she lived in a mammoth mansion was inaccurate. The threat of foreclosure hung over her, and since Gareth’s accident, she came to realize that although she had constantly scolded him in years past with his immaturity, when the time came he was no longer himself, she realized then it had been he who had kept at the account books and prevented her from being outright ruined and bankrupt.

  Gareth’s mother spoke to Sidney without embarrassment or self-­consciousness and there was no hint or mention on her part as to where he had been for over four years, and Sidney also felt that perhaps, since she seemed so scatterbrained and forgetful, that she might not really know he had been in prison. So he insisted on telling her at the very beginning of their conference.

  “Dr. Ulric has told me all I need know about you,” Mrs. Vaisey had affirmed, thus closing any further discussion of this matter.

  She was a much younger woman than he had expected, certainly under forty. Her blonde hair looked untouched by gray, at least in this soft light of the old house; her complexion was a rich creamy color, and the only jarring aspect to her appearance was her hands, which showed the effect of hard work so that one would have thought despite her having hired help she did her own dishes and scrubbed her own floors.

  He could tell she was satisfied with him, and she said as much, but though she spoke of Gareth constantly and told of their visits to New York and Chicago to see famous specialists, and complained of the cost, she was, he felt, about to dismiss him for today without having let him look in on his “charge.”

  “Can I see Gareth now, Mrs. Vaisey?” Sidney finally came to the point.

  She looked a bit displeased at this, or rather, hurt. He on the other hand feared that perhaps he was to be hired because of Gareth and yet—who knows?—not be able to set eyes on him.

  At last she nodded, and rang a bell. The girl who had admitted him at the front door came in, and Mrs. Vaisey spoke to her in a voice almost too low to be heard by Sidney. “Is Gareth dressed yet? . . . He’s had something to eat already? I see. . . . Will you just step in then and tell him I’ll be up directly with this young man.”

  “You won’t have something to drink while we’re waiting?” she inquired of Sidney. He shook his head.

  Sidney somehow had the feeling that they were in a train station, waiting for someone to arrive. But he knew in fact she was stalling for time.

  “Life is very hard, Mr. De Lakes . . . But I don’t need to tell you.” This was her only indication that she had recognized and thought over thoroughly that he had been “in trouble,” the phrase people in this village use to cover prison, and being pregnant without a husband.

  “I would like more than anything in the world to take the position,” he said in a loud voice.

  She looked up as surprised as if he had spoken in Greek.

  “I was quite prepared to take you before you got here,” she replied. “Dr. Ulric has never recommended anyone before.”

  Just then the young girl appeared again and nodded to her employer. Mrs. Vaisey rose, and asked him to allow her to go on ahead.

  He had not been quite prepared for so long a flight of stairs. And whereas she did not appear to notice them, he had to pause occasionally. “I suffer from a stitch in the side when climbing or walking fast,” he explained his pokiness.

  “Perhaps Dr. Ulric should see you about it,” she commented when she saw the stairs had winded him. “He was no help of course with Gareth, but then the specialists weren’t either.”

  “Mr. De Lakes, I must ask one thing of you . . .” She turned back to face him. “Please don’t let him see any extreme emotion on your face . . . If you could sort of look poker-­faced even . . . It’s hard for him to see outsiders. . . . So we’ll go very quietly now and look in on him, for I want you to be his . . .” (he felt, as she stumbled for the word, she had been about to say keeper) “companion. I do want you for the post, sir, and I hope you realize this.”

  She knocked on the door then, and cried out in a voice which had almost a note of awe in it, “It’s Mother, Gareth . . . May we come in . . . I’m with the young man who has come to see you. . . .”

  Sidney felt a thrill of terror too now, a remembrance of the emotion he had used to feel when Vance visited him in prison.

  “Come!” a rather deep but almost childish voice responded.

  Mrs. Vaisey opened the big milk-­colored door then, and they stood a moment looking into the large dimly lit interior.

  A young man about twenty sat in a tall custom-­made chair, his hands folded over his lap. For anything there was of expression in them, his eyes might have been made of glass. But his mouth moved convulsively as he took in Vance’s brother.

  “This is Sidney De Lakes, Gareth, who will be staying with us now. That is if you should wish him to, dearest . . .”

  She almost pushed Sidney in the direction of her son.

  “Gareth, good morning,” he spoke throatily and took the boy’s hand and lifted it, heavy as sand, from his lap and held it in his for a moment. The hand then fell back.

  “I already know your son, ma’am, you see. From a while back,” Sidney managed to explain, but the look of confusion or astonishment on the mother’s face struck down whatever more he might have been going to say.

  “And I hope we will be good friends again, Gareth,” the job-­seeker got out, but as he said this facing Mrs. Vaisey she gently moved Sidney’s face with her hands back in the direction of her son.

  “It had slipped my mind that you two boys used to know one another!” Irene exclaimed as she watched the two young men stare now into one another’s faces. Confusion and wonder caused her voice to waver. “I for one,” she went on in a soft, almost prayerful voice, “am very happy Mr. De Lakes has agreed to be with us, Gareth, and I can tell by your expression you are also. . . . So,” she went on still more nervously as she studied their rapt scrutiny of one another, “we will bid you good morning now, Gareth, dear, until the proper arrangements can be worked out.”

  “Does the renderer know you’re out, Sidney?” the young invalid inquired unexpectedly in clear, loud and almost menacing tones.

  Sidney faltered only a moment. “I reckon, Garey, everybody knows I am by now.”

  “Everybody don’t matter, Sid, and you know it. It’s him that matters . . .”

  “We will not tire you further now, dear,” Mrs. Vaisey spoke with her usual cool authority, and bent down and kissed him.

  “Mother,” Sidney’s “charge” now spoke in a kind of panic, “the renderer didn’t send him to us, did he?”

  “Categorically not. Mr. De Lakes came of his own free will, dear . . . Because he knew you, as I have been reminded, and you see, he wished to be with you again . . .” Her voice trailed off and she turned toward the door.

  When they were downstairs again, both Mrs. Vaisey and Sidney made no reference to the rather unexpected topic of conversation Gareth had engaged them in, though both of them were, strangely, upset by it.

  “Will you tell me my duties, Mrs. Vaisey,” Sidney sought to know in the face of her perturbation.

  “The simplest,” she attempted to rally now, and smiled. “The main thing is merely that you be near him. I had no idea that you had been friends!” She stopped and a frown passed briefly over her face. “But that’s all to the good. . . . I don’t suppose likewise I should be surprised you both know the renderer. (I wish he would not use that expression with reference to him!)

  “Your only duties,” she went on now in a manner more like the composed and slightly regal one with which she had first
greeted him, “well, just to sit with him, by the hour if necessary and speak about anything you think would interest him, or, better, anything which would interest you. . . . And try to change the subject when he mentions anybody or anything which agitates him . . .”

  “Mrs. Vaisey,” he began in a voice that had almost a hint of a wail, “you do understand that I have been in prison.”

  “I do, I do,” she replied. “But if you think that I believe you are . . . like any . . . prisoner” (she winced after having chosen this word), “you are mistaken. I am a great reader of character. I liked you the moment you came in, and you have in me a friend. Dr. Ulric is made of ice water and steel, Mr. De Lakes. . . . But you will find in me a friend who stands firm in time of trial. . . .”

  He could think of nothing to say to this, and then they heard her car in the driveway, and the chauffeur honked the horn in rapid resounding summons that recalled a bugle.

  She indicated he must take the limousine and was not to walk home under any circumstances.

  “I’ll expect you then tomorrow for sure!” She took his hand through the open window of the car. “And, oh please,” she went on while giving the driver a sign he was to shut off the motor while she spoke. “It would make things easier if we called one another by our Christian names.”

  “Our Christian names, yes, ma’am,” he spoke huskily and extricated his hand from hers.

  “Again what a stroke of fortune you already have been friends with Gareth! That was quite unexpected . . .”

  “It’s good all around . . .”

  She smiled and touched his sleeve with her hand.

  “It will be something at last to look forward to for him and me.” She gave her final goodbye and nodded to the driver to start the motor.

  She stood in the middle of the road waving to him as the car drove away in thick clouds of white, ascending dust.

  Sidney could tell at once of course that Vance did not like the arrangement at all. At the same time he bombarded his brother with a hundred questions about the “post,” as he called it, and the great sprawling house where his duties were to hold him, and about Mrs. Vaisey herself.