by Packer, Vin
That’s something else Janie should learn, Charlie thought — Writing a letter to announce she was having an affair! She got that from Joan.
Then the rather incongruous thought flashed through his mind: but where the hell would I be if she were doing it without my knowing it? I wouldn’t even be able to advise her. It wouldn’t occur to me Jane would let some young buck — not Jane. Jayne?
• • •
When Charlie got back to his office, he told Bonnie to put in a call for Mrs. Gibson. He reread Janie’s letter twice. Then, dutifully but in a haphazard sort of way, he shuffled through the papers on his desk, and out from under them, pulled the Vile dummy.
Splashed across the front of the mock cover were the words:
OTTO AVERY KEEPS IT GAY!
Charlie didn’t get it right away. His only reaction was, “Don’t tell me that bastard makes interesting, copy.”
Then he turned to the fourth page and read the blurb on the story: FROM COAST TO COAST OUR FAVORITE COMMENTATOR HAS BEEN MAKING NEWS THAT HE DOESN’T DARE REPORT, BECAUSE IT SOUNDS TOO MUCH LIKE A FAIRY STORY.
Very slowly now, Charlie Gibson began to read the copy.
The woman in the phone booth at the Algonquin Hotel was very drunk. Two bellboys lingered along the outside.
“It’s a wonder she can dial the number,” one said.
“She can’t,” the other said. “She’s tried three times…. There, she’s got it now.”
“It’s a wonder she can remember the number. It’s a wonder she can stand up!”
“She can’t,” his companion said. “She’s leaning against the wall.”
“I’ll bet she gets the wrong number.”
“No, she’s talking.”
“It could still be the wrong number. I know a dame used to get herself loaded and go call up the Weather and just sound off like crazy, giving the Weather hell. And all the time the Weather would be playing over and over, ‘Cloudy skies forecast for Monday; strong winds,’ and this babe would be in there hollering, ‘You’re a son of a bitch, do you hear! You’re a son of a bitch!’ Over and over. It was the craziest thing I ever knew.”
“Listen,” the other one said. “She’s talking.”
“Bet she’s calling Weather.”
“Listen!”
• • •
From inside the booth the voice whined:
“Come over here and talk to me …
“No, I am not drunk. You believe that rumor? Hah-h! Et tu, Brutus? Eh? …
“I wouldn’t ask you to if it weren’t important! …
“Can’t wait until five! …
“If you don’t come to me, I’ll come to you …
“What do you mean you wouldn’t do that. I’m talking about what I’d do. And I’ll come to you if you don’t come to me …
“No, right now! …
“No! …
“I have not been drinking, and I will not get in a cab and go home and hear from you later! …
“No! …
“Yes, I do need to see you! I need to! I need to! …
“Yes …
“Yes, right away …
“Yes, thank you, yes …
“G’by! …
• • •
When the woman came out of the phone booth, the pair of bellboys ducked to one side.
She said, “Listening huh?”
“No, ma’am,” one said.
The other said, “What do you think of this weather we’ve been having?” And he nudged his companion sharply in the ribs with his elbow.
The woman looked at them for a moment, weaving slightly.
Then she said, “Boys, I want you to know something.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Boys,” she said, “you are looking at a barren woman!”
• • •
“Where are you going?” Bonnie asked as Charlie Gibson rushed past her. “Wait a second. I’ve got Mrs. Gibson on one wire, and Mr. Cadence on the other.”
“Tell Mrs. Gibson I’ll call her back,” he said, “and tell Bruce-tell him to go to hell!”
“When will you be back?” she called at Charlie. “He’ll want to know about the dummy. What’ll I tell him?”
“Tell him what I told you to!” Charlie snapped. Then he disappeared around the corner.
His secretary stared blankly at the empty space he had just occupied. Then, shaking herself to efficiency, she pressed the button down on Cadence’s call.
“He just stepped out for a moment, Mr. Cadence,” she said. “He said he’ll call you back…. Well, of course he knew who was calling,” and, flustered, added quickly, “Well, no, maybe he didn’t. I mean, I’m not sure, Mr. Cadence. It’s all very confusing here today. I mean, it’s Mr. Gibson’s birthday.”
Then, she finished: “I don’t suppose it has anything to do with it, sir,” and heard the click in her ear.
MARCH 6, 1917
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ON THE morning of Charlie Gibson’s thirteenth birthday, he had set fire to the draperies in the living room of the Gibson home on South Street in Auburn, New York.
It was done deliberately, about an hour after breakfast.
At breakfast, Charlie’s father had appeared with two huge birthday-wrapped packages, and Charlie had sat in delightful suspense beside his younger brother, Gus, ten, who was already taller than Charlie, and who could knock Charlie down when he wanted to. And he wanted to a lot of times.
Charlie’s father had said in his gruff tone: “Someone in this house has a birthday today. Now who would that be?” and stood at the head of the table holding the gifts.
“It’s me,” Charlie had answered.
“It’s I,” his father had corrected him. “All right then, come and claim your gift.”
Charlie pushed his chair back and went to his father, reaching out for the packages. His father handed him only one.
“The other is for Gussie,” he told Charlie. “It’s not his birthday.”
“Well, we got him something anyway,” Charlie’s father said. “He’ll want to celebrate your birthday too.”
“I never got anything on his!”
“Listen to me, yong man,” the senior Gibson said, “you’re very nearly in danger of not getting anything on your own! … Now pass this package to your brother.”
Charlie’s gift was the huge model sailboat which he had always wanted; and Gussie’s was a fire engine.
The fire Charlie set was wholly successful; it blazed.
The newly-qualified fireman in the Gibson family was occupied, at the time, with mole-hunting in a vacant lot several blocks away, and Charlie’s father was off in the library reading the newspaper and grunting over the results of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Charlie’s mother smelled the smoke from the kitchen, and appeared in the living room just in time to witness the flames’ final swallowing of the blueberry-print fabric, and to scream, “Fire! Matthew! Oh, my God!”
Matthew Gibson’s reaction was one of tired resignation at the fact he had uncannily fathered a frightful misfit. Thank heaven for Gussie, anyway. And he had walloped with his belt, fined him one dollar, to be paid from his allowance of ten cents a month, and taken his sailboat back to Sears Roebuck.
Amelia Gibson had hunted six months for that blueberry print, and she was less resigned. She marched her son into the kitchen, struck a match, and forced his hand under the flames.
“You hurt those draperies just like this hurts,” she said bitterly.
“Draperies aren’t alive,” he told her in a reasonable tone. Then he began to feel the heat. She kept his hand there, and Charlie ultimately broke one of the resolutions for his thirteenth year he had scribbled in the flyleaf of his Bible: “Beginning this year I will never cry in my life again.”
Charlie spent the afternoon of his thirteenth birthday in his room, his hand wrapped in gauze and Unguentine, reading Kipling’s poem If, over and over:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you …
His father worried himself with business problems down at the Gibson Mayonnaise factory.
And Gussie Gibson took the wheels off his engine and put them back on again.
Only Amelia Gibson and Charlie seemed to brood over the incident, and at nine o’clock that evening, as Charlie was putting on his pajamas, his mother appeared in his room.
“How’s your hand, Charlie?” she wanted to know.
Charlie shrugged.
“It was a bad burn,” she said. “I want you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Come here,” she said.
Charlie went over to where she was sitting on his bed. He watched, puzzled, as she took a match out from the pocket of her dress.
“Light it,” she said.
“Why?”
“Do as I say,” she said.
Charlie lit the match and his mother held her hand out to it. Instantly, Charlie pulled the match away.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll do it over. I have more matches. We’ll do it until it’s right.”
“Why?” Charlie protested.
His mother ordered, “Strike the match, Charlie. Do as I tell you!”
A dozen burnt matches later Amelia Gibson’s hand was as severely burned as her son’s, and she left the room in stony silence.
Charlie put the light out and lay in the dark wondering why she just couldn’t have said that she was sorry.
MARCH 6, 1957
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SHE WAS waiting for him in the bar.
“Hi, papa-doodle,” she said. “Pull up a toadstool.”
“What’s the trouble?” he said, sitting down. To the bartender he said, “Double Scotch, neat.”
“No trouble. I’m celebrating, papa-doodle. Can’t a gal celebrate?”
“I’ve only got time for one, Marge. This is a hell of a frantic day!”
“All upset over Janie, huh, papa-doodle?”
“Not just that. That Vile dummy too. I just read it.”
“Juicy?”
“Very! … But what’s your trouble?”
“I don’t got no troubles, papa-doodle. I’m celebrating. Told you I was celebrating.”
“I’m not in the celebrating mood, I’m afraid.”
Charlie took a good swallow of the Scotch the bartender set before him.
“Who’d they smear, papa-doodle?”
“The lead article’s on a fellow I went to college with. Otto Avery.”
“You never told me you went to college with old: ‘This is the news and my views on the news’” she said, imitating Avery’s clipped baritone.
“The article says he’s queer.”
“Is her?”
“Hard to believe. There certainly isn’t anything feminine about him.”
“Don’t be naive, papa-doodle. Some of the best stallions I ever pulled out my hide-a-bed for were fruits. Didn’t look it, but were … Get me another rye, huh?”
“How many have you had?”
“I’m not a counter, papa-poodle. Why count? Will it make you rich?”
“A rye,” Charlie said. He swallowed the rest of his shot. “I might as well have another too. A single, neat, this time.”
“He’s cute, isn’t he, papa-doodle? The bartender?”
“Adorable.”
“When Vile does an exposé of Margie, I got the perfect title. Call it ‘The Bartended.’ Huh?”
“It’s all documented,” Charlie said, “and I suppose even Keene wouldn’t risk a possible lawsuit, but — ” He took a swig of the new drink.
“But what?”
“I wonder where Keene dug up the facts? Wonder who wrote it?”
“Ask him, papa-doodle.”
“Keene? The hell with it! The whole thing’s in lousy taste! I don’t know why Bruce can’t see that.”
“He’s bewitched, maybe. Maybe Bruce and he are queer. Huh?” She chortled.
Charlie frowned and rubbed his forehead. “I wish I could think back and remember things clearly. What Avery was actually like.”
“It’s hard to think back clearly. I can’t even remember what we were like. Were we ever us, papa-doodle?”
“In one part the writer said Avery bribed some boy in our frat house to have relations with him. It rings a bell and it doesn’t. Gosh, it’s funny how your memory slips away.”
“All our yesterdays, huh, papa-doodle?”
“I just remember Avery was a bastard. I’d gone to prep school with him for a year or so too. I don’t remember much about him then, except I never liked him. In college we dated the same girl. Avery got her pregnant, so the rumor went, but he wouldn’t marry her. Some other guy did.” Charlie snapped his fingers. “That was Mitzie Thompson — the girl I mentioned at lunch today, remember?”
“All I remember about lunch, papa-doodle,” she said, “is that you were afraid to can me.”
Charlie swallowed his drink and looked at her. “I wasn’t afraid to, Marge. I was reluctant to.”
“But I saved you from the fire, didn’t I, papa-doodle.”
“You don’t have the other job, eh? I didn’t think so.”
“It was a beautiful gesture though, wasn’t it?”
“It was, Marge, up until I walked in here.”
“I’m not going to spoil it. You see me crying in my beer or anything?”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
“Not me, papa-doodle. I’m a Spartan.”
“What do you think you’ll do?”
“Take an extended vacation, papa-doodle. Florida, California, who knows?”
“Then your finances are in good shape?”
“Everything’s shipshape, Captain.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Marge. It was a rotten break.”
“Thanks to Mr. Keene, tracer of lost persons.”
“With enough rope, Keene’s going to hang himself. And he’ll hang Cadence too. This Vile thing is going to drag us right down. Bruce’ll see soon enough.”
“Why don’t you go up and tell him like you used to, papa-doodle?”
“Why the hell should I? Keene’s his troubleshooter.”
“I can remember how good you used to be in the hay after you went up and told Bruce off. ‘Member?”
“Un-uh,” Charlie said.
“Was I good in the hay, Charlie?”
“Sure, Marge. You were swell in the hay.”
“You ever remember it, Charlie?”
“Sure I remember it.”
“I mean, do you ever think of it and wish for it back?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. He swallowed his Scotch. “What the hell, I’m going to have another!” He signaled to the bartender. “Well, do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Ever think of it and wish for it back?”
“What’s the point in discussing it, Marge?”
“I just want to know, is all, papa-doodle.”
“I don’t reminisce much any more.” She said, “You didn’t go to bat for me, did you, Charlie?”
“It was all decided. I got the memo this morning.”
“Lots of times things were decided that you undecided for Bruce, papa-doodle.”
“He wouldn’t have listened to me, Marge. Keene is the new fair-haired boy around Cadence.”
“You didn’t even try, did you?”
“No,” Charlie said. “I didn’t.”
“Did you agree with the decision? Was that it, papa-doodle?”
“No, Marge, I didn’t agree with the decision. I think it was a lousy decision, like all of Keene’s are.”
“You used to speak up in the old days. No matter what.”
“I’m getting old,” Charlie said. “Today’s my birthday.”
“Is it the sixth of March, no kidding?”
“It’s the sixth of March,” Charlie said. “I’m fifty.”
“Buy you a drink, papa-doodl
e?”
“I ought to go back.”
“C’mon and have another, hmm?”
“How many have you had? I can never tell whether you’ve had too many.”
“You never could, Charlie. There are a lot of things you never could tell about me … Hey, bartender!”
It was after that drink, and another, and going on four o’clock when Charlie glanced at his watch and thought: Jesus Christ, I’ve got to get back! and she said suddenly:
“Charlie, I’m a barren woman.”
“I have to go,” he said. “Really!”
“Do you know what it’s like to be wheeled into a room a woman, and a coupla hours later to be wheeled out a nothing?”
“You’re drunk,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about any more.”
“Oh, yes, I do, papa-doodle. I’m talking about my hysterectomy. My operation, papa-doodle. They pilfered my ovaries back last Christmas, d’you know that?”
“You said it was a check-up.”
“Well, it wasn’t. They wheeled me in a woman and they wheeled me out a nothin’, papa-doodle. I’m fini!”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Well, she’s only an old bag that stopped having the curse back in the year one, so what the hell. But you’re wrong, papa-doodle. Did you know that? I was a medical miracle; still flowing at fifty-nine!”
“Fifty-nine?”
“Don’t look it, do I, papa-doodle?”
“No,” he said. “Look, Marge, I — ”
“Now, you just sit still, papa-doodle. I hadda sit through a whole lunch and listen about Janie losing her virginity, and you can just as well sit over a drink and hear about Margie losin’ her ovaries. It’s a little more important than what Janie lost — got to lose that ‘ventually anyway. But, Charlie — ” Her voice caught for the first time. Charlie stared at her. “You’re a woman till they bury you if you got your God-damned ovaries,” she went on. “But once they’re gone, you’re dead. You’re on the ash-heap. Fini! … Charlie, listen, I’m coming apart, Charlie. All the sawdust is coming out.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Marge? About all of this?”
