“It isn’t that I wouldn’t like you to meet Charles. But he has been ill . . .”
“Don’t apologize. I hardly think Charles would like to meet me,” he said pointedly. “Anyway, I probably wouldn’t fit in. You have quite a place, I suppose.” He hesitated, as if he didn’t want to hear about any more things she had but couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Have you?”
“It’s quite nice.”
“He probably built it for you when you were married, as in the Ladies’ Home Journal.” She didn’t answer and he went on, with a laugh: “It’s a damn funny thing, but in Italy whenever I wanted something to read like Time or the New Republic or the New Yorker, all I could ever find was the Ladies’ Home Journal. I became quite fond of it. I used to read the recipes. We all did. We had a kind of journalese talk. ‘If you’ve never tried fried green olives minced with chocolate ice cream, you’re really missing something.’ It got to be practically a code.”
He paused. She said quietly, “He built the house for me.”
“Sure. He would. Indirect lighting? Automatic heat, glass bricks, built-in bar?”
“There’s no need to . . .”
“Sun deck? Terrace? Maybe even a fountain?” He saw by her eyes that he’d struck it right. “By heaven, a fountain! I’ll be damned. Now wait, let me guess about the fountain. It’s one of these naked water-baby affairs, and the little darling is spewing the water out of its mouth. Am I right?”
“It’s not a neuter baby, it’s the infant Hermes.”
“Jesus,” he said softly. “You haven’t changed much after all, have you, Martha?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, except that it’s in very bad taste.”
She turned with an air of finality, but he put his hand on her arm to hold her back. One of the parcels fell on the sidewalk but neither of them noticed.
“No, wait, Martha. I’m sorry. You haven’t told me how the family is. How’s the kid sister?”
“Laura’s fine.”
“And your mother?”
“Fine.”
“And the old man?”
“He’s dead. He died a short time after you left.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. He was a good man, full of laughs.”
She began to walk and he followed her. His walk was oddly graceful.
“It’s a funny thing,” he said, “to come back like this, and you find some of your friends have died, and some are married and have kids, and some of them have moved away and some of them aren’t your friends anymore. I don’t know exactly what I expected. Five years is a long time, it was to me, anyway, but I still had the crazy notion that somebody would be keeping a place for me. You know? I expected to blow into town and phone a lot of people and have them say maybe: ‘Well, by God, it’s Steve Ferris. Come on out and we’ll have a party!’ Instead of that I had a hard time even identifying myself. There’d be a whispered conversation at the other end of the phone. ‘Darling, do we know anyone called Ferris?’ Or ‘Well, we were going to the movies, Steve, old boy. Maybe next week?’”
He smiled to show her that it didn’t hurt him. “Some of them had kids they couldn’t leave or wives who didn’t want to go out or have anyone in. A lot of them were dead, or just vanished. If I’d left a hole in anyone’s life, the gap had closed long ago. It’s a strange feeling.”
She walked faster but he didn’t appear to notice. He kept gliding along beside her, without effort.
“A damn strange feeling,” he repeated. “It’s as if they’d made up their minds that I wasn’t coming back and when I did it was a shock. It was so unexpected it was against nature, practically. That’s how you feel, isn’t it, Martha?”
“Of course not. I’ve never thought about you one way or another.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Then you’re very vain.”
“I guess I am,” he said slowly. “I guess that’s my whole trouble.”
They turned at the next corner and their shoulders touched for an instant. She drew away sharply.
Across the street a few yards down she could see Forbes. He was standing on the curb, running a cloth over one of the car windows. Two little boys stood beside him and watched, their heads tilted in awe.
She wondered whether Forbes had already seen her.
Abruptly she swung around and faced Steve. “Well, Steve, it’s been pleasant meeting you again.” In spite of the parcels she managed to hold out her hand in a friendly way.
“Has it?” He ignored the hand. His eyes were fixed on the car. “Some tub. Paid for? Yes, of course, it would be. How fast can it go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He shook his head in bewilderment. What kind of crazy world had he come back to, that you could have a car like that and not see how fast it would go?
“I really must run along, Steve.”
“Certainly. I understand.”
“I hope, I sincerely hope, that the book turns out well. And if it doesn’t, I’m sure Charles will be able to do something for you.”
“Charles can’t do a damn thing for me except crawl down a drain.”
“Well, don’t be childish. Where are you staying?”
“The Neal Hotel. We’ve got fountains there, too, only we call them showers and they’re to wash in.”
He didn’t say goodbye, just turned on his heel and walked away as fast as he could.
Once he was out of sight around the corner he slowed down. He was feeling shaky and there was a sharp pain in his chest. He didn’t know whether it was from the piece of flak they hadn’t been able to remove, or from seeing Martha again.
He stopped at the first bar he came to. He sat down at a table and ordered an ale. The place was very dark but as soon as his eyes had adjusted he began to look around for someone he knew. He knew there wouldn’t be anyone, but he sat with tense expectancy, ready to jump up and greet someone and buy him a drink and talk over old times.
“Well, if it isn’t Steve Ferris! How’s the boy, Steve?”
“Great. Just great.”
“When’d you get back?”
“A week ago.”
“Why in hell didn’t you give me a ring? Seen any of the old crowd?”
“Sure. I just ran into Martha on the street.”
“Martha? Oh, we never see Martha anymore, not since she got married. The wife bumped into her one day and hardly recognized her. She had on funny-looking clothes and a new ritzy way of talking. The wife nearly died laughing . . .”
He ordered another ale and thought, well, that’s all right, I’m practically dead laughing myself. Charles and I. Charles has been very ill. What the hell.
The waiter came back and put a bowl of pretzels on the table.
“Thought you’d like some pretzels,” he said.
“Chawls, my boy, how very thoughtful of you.”
“We got some potato chips, too.”
“Why, Chawls, it’s a veritable profusion of fine foods.”
The waiter hovered over the table. He smelled of stale sweat and peppermint. “If you’re feeling lonesome-like maybe I can do something about it. If you’re not, well, there’s no harm in asking.”
“I am above the coarser things of life.”
“Well, I am myself, if you come right down to it,” the waiter said somberly. “I’ve got my principles, same as the next man.”
“Sure.” Steve smiled. “You could pick up a nice piece of change by selling Grandpa to a glue factory. Bet you never thought of that, Chawls.”
“My name’s not Charles.”
“Could be,” Steve said. “I personally know a man called Charles who sold his grandpa to a glue factory and he’s never regretted it for an instant.”
“What the hell,” the waiter said, and went away loo
king troubled.
Steve watched him for a while, not because he liked his face, but because he knew the waiter a little now and the other people were all strangers.
A man and a girl came in from the street and sat down side by side at the bar. The man had his hand possessively on the girl’s hip. The two of them kept looking and looking at each other, as if they were trying to drown themselves in each other’s eyes.
The pain in Steve’s chest sharpened. He got up. He saw the waiter come hurrying toward him and he reached for his wallet.
The waiter said with a frown, “I don’t know what gave you the idea my name was Charles.”
“How much?”
“Fifty cents. Matter of factly, my name’s Harry, not Charles.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Steve said and flung the money on the table.
He passed the bar without a glance at the man and girl, and went up the steps into the street.
4
She drove home with the packages clutched tight against her body as if in self-defense.
She was certain that Forbes had seen her talking to Steve. There was no need for secrecy, merely talking to a man was no crime, no matter who the man was. Yet she was reluctant to have Charles find out about the meeting, and find out, especially, from Forbes, who disliked her. Forbes had such a guileless method of tale-bearing. He managed to give Charles an exact account of her movements without ever seeming to: “Yes, Mr. Pearson, it’s a beautiful day. A lot of people out. The Avenue was very congested, I couldn’t get a parking place anywhere near Ryrie’s . . .”
She could, of course, tell Charles herself. Just a simple harmless sentence: “I just met an old friend of mine on the street, Steve Ferris. I’ve probably mentioned him before.”
No, that wouldn’t do. Charles would remember distinctly that she hadn’t mentioned him before and he would demand to know why. Charles’s memory was very inconvenient.
In the long run, she felt, it would be safer to tell her mother, and then if Charles found out she could claim that she wasn’t being secretive, she merely thought he wouldn’t be interested. Let him pounce on that if he wanted to, let him lie awake every single night thinking about it, but he’d never be able to prove a thing except that, beginning in high school and continuing until the time he entered the Air Force, Steve had been her boyfriend. That was all that anyone knew, and even Charles, with his fiendish ability to ferret out secrets, would never know anything more.
As soon as she reached home, she went up to her mother’s room.
The shades were drawn and Mrs. Shaw was asleep on the lounge beside the bay window. Martha stood in the doorway for a moment listening to the sound of her mother’s breathing. She was not exactly snoring, but at the end of every breath she gave a little grunt as if of satisfaction.
“Mother.”
“Eh?”
“Sleeping?”
“Eh? Oh, it’s you, Martha.” She made a half-hearted attempt to raise herself, then sank back with a groan. “I dozed off. Exhausting weather. I can’t seem to breathe.”
Martha crossed the room and pulled the shades back with a jerk. “Try taking off those hideous corsets.”
“I’m sure they have nothing to do with it. I’ve always worn corsets.” She blinked and sat up, holding her hands over her eyes. “I wonder if it could be my lungs.”
“Steve Ferris is back.” The air smelled of chocolate. She opened a window. “I saw him on the street.”
“Well.” Mrs. Shaw’s round blue eyes glanced around the room as if they wildly expected to see printed somewhere on the wall the correct and tactful reply. “Well. Isn’t that nice? Did he—how did he look?”
“Same as ever.”
“Well.”
“He asked about you.”
“That was nice. I always wanted to see him in his uniform. You remember we never did.”
“I remember. He’s not in uniform anymore. He’s been discharged. He was wounded.”
“What a shame! I was very fond of Steve. So was Harry. He didn’t know about Harry, I guess?”
“No. I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that Father was a good man, that he was full of laughs.”
“That’s right, he was, wasn’t he?” You hear that, Harry? People haven’t forgotten you. “Martha.”
Martha was staring stonily out of the window.
“What?”
“I hope—I hope you . . .”
You are my child and I love you and I hope you are happy. What she felt was very simple but she couldn’t say such things to Martha. She was beyond the reach of words. “Martha, my dear . . .” Her confusion and helplessness brought tears to her eyes.
Slowly Martha turned her head. Her mother looked a little grotesque in her grief. Her spine was stiff because of the corsets, her legs were spread apart in front of her, and from the bottom of the pink lace negligee her feet stuck straight as boards into the air.
She said wearily, “Why are you crying?”
“Oh, I don’t know—everything . . .”
“I hope it’s not on my account. Don’t get the romantic idea that seeing Steve again has upset me. As a matter of fact, I’m rather glad I ran into him. If I had any illusions left about him, they’re gone.” She laughed. “I’d forgotten he was no taller than I am.”
“Charles is very tall.”
“He still bites his fingernails. And he talks—well, he doesn’t talk like a gentleman. It was painful listening to him.” Outside she could see the round cherubic buttocks of the infant Hermes. “He has bad taste. You should have seen the suit he was wearing. It didn’t fit and it was the wrong color, a sort of cinnamon brown. He thinks he’s going to write a book. He’s as cocky as ever. Let’s drop the subject.”
She went over to the mirror and took off her hat and smoothed the hair back from her temples. Her eyes were a little bloodshot and they ached as if invisible thumbs were pressing on her eyeballs.
Mrs. Shaw watched her in silence. Thinking back into the past had forced her to realize how alien and detached Martha had become. The change had been so gradual and
the physical aspects of it so slight in themselves that they had escaped notice at the time—the disposal of a piece of jewelry, the sudden switch to black clothes, the gift of all her makeup and perfume to Laura, the resurrection of the glasses she’d worn in high school. All very small things and done subtly over a period of years, yet here they were, added up and totaling a different Martha.
A nun, Mrs. Shaw thought with a shock. She’s like a nun, dedicated to something, no one knew what. She had taken her life and placed it on some nameless altar as a sacrifice and an atonement for some nameless sin.
“Why are you staring at me?” Martha asked. Even her voice had altered. It was cold and even, as if for years now nobody had said anything to interest her and nobody ever would again. “Is anything wrong?”
“No. Oh, no.”
“Were you in to see Charles?”
“We talked for a while. After I left he got up for some reason. It was too much for him; he fainted in the hall. Lily happened to be there and she and Brown got him back to bed. There’s nothing to worry about, he’s all right now.”
“Did they phone Dr. MacNeil?”
“Yes. He may drop in tonight to see him.”
Martha put one hand casually in her pocket and her fingers curled around the key to her room. “Where in the hall?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was Lily doing?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Shaw said in bewilderment. “My door was shut. I didn’t hear anything. What does it matter?”
“I just wondered how far he’d gone. I wouldn’t want him to strain his heart.” She had never seen a picture of a heart but she could imagine Charles’s
heart quite plainly. It was pink and moist, a wet, spongy breathing tumor with the blood flowing in and out, thereby keeping Charles alive. “He must take better care of himself.”
“You’ve been wonderful to him, Martha. So devoted, I’m sure he appreciates it.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Martha said dryly. She picked up the parcels that she’d dropped on the bed. “I’ll go in and see him.”
“What’s in the boxes?”
“One of them is yours. For Mother’s Day.”
“Can I open it now?”
“If you want to.” She had lost all interest in the gifts. The diamond clip had joined its predecessors and taken its place between the shoddy brass candlesticks and the French original that didn’t fit.
Charles was sitting up in bed in a confusion of pillows. The room was darkened but she could see his eyes turned toward the doorway, hard and bright and dry, as if they’d been watching for her for a long time.
“Well, Charles,” she said cheerfully. “I hear you overdid things a bit. Are you feeling better?” She entered the room swiftly, thrusting the boxed tie toward him as an appeasement: here is a tie for you, so you can’t possibly say anything unpleasant to me. She put the box in his lap. “Here, I brought you something.”
He looked at her sardonically. “Thank you very much.”
“It’s nothing.”
“On the contrary, it’s a tie, unless the contours of the box deceive me.” He removed the paper. “As I thought. A tie. How very generous of you, Martha. I hope you didn’t pay more than a dollar for it?”
She had paid eighty-nine cents, but she had taken the precaution of having the clerk remove the price tag.
“I’d hate to think you were squandering money on me,” Charles said. “Let there be light, pull back the curtains, Martha. I want to examine this offering from the Greeks.”
Pale and angry, she crossed the room and opened the curtains. Charles was impossible. There wasn’t an ounce of gratitude in him. She had spent all of ten minutes selecting
that tie.
“This is, Martha, a very important occasion. I can’t recall offhand that you’ve ever bought me anything before.” He rubbed the tie between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the texture. “Very nice indeed.” He turned it over and looked at the label. It bore the name of a nationally known firm who made one-dollar ties. “You’re incredible,” he said quietly.
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