“Mr. Shurtliff.”
They sounded each other’s names in unison, and laughed, and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, face-to-face, in a first near look, holding to the clasp of their handshake. She was remarkably solid, like a mature tree or a hill: a fact of Nature that doesn’t change except so slowly as to be almost unnoticeable. She had that effect on him, of completeness and continuance.
They were seated. Their food was ordered. Having agreed that their meeting warranted celebration, the waiter promptly brought their chosen drinks: a glass of very dry sherry for her, bourbon on the rocks for him. She raised her glass and, her head cocked a bit to the side, looking him through, she smiled and said: “Now we can talk.” She meant of course not ponderously, not in a solving way about huge subjects, and not for vain ends, but of things, in the spirit of their letters, this and that, as spring kindredly to mind. A multitude of leaping topics:
—People. (Of how, in her words, “difficult times sort out individual human virtues and vices and become a proving-ground of character.”)
—The world’s varied and vast geography, and its antiquities: for him, the solemn pyramids, which (he told her) haunted and impressed him in memory more than they had when he’d stood in their stony presence; and, for her, the Rosetta Stone, seen in London some six years ago, its effect on her a remaining one of “pure awe.”
—The chance medley (which he briefly touched on) of the torpedoing, and her comprising nod and one sentence story-response about her father’s Army surgeon brother killed in 1917 by a sniper’s bullet as he walked with an orderly down the main street of a small French village “secured” the previous day by the AEF troops: how, in different guises, Chance changes our lives.
—Ralph: the comic canine of his homecoming, and her following inspired account of Passepartout, the “dizzy, one-eared dachshund” of her childhood, her laughter as she described the dog so vigorous that one of the tortoise-shell pins that held the flummoxy knot of her hair slid loose and dangled over her fillet of sole, and he leaned across the table and fully abstracted it and held it for a second before handing it to her, and was touched by her charming blush and expressed disparagement of what she called “my unruly mane.”
—President Roosevelt’s health: “He looks so frail in the newspaper pictures, so weary,” she said. “Do you think so too, Mr. Shurtliff? That he’s physically exhausted? It does make one wonder if he ought to seek election again next year, though changing leaders midstream of the war”—the hazards of the thought left unexplored. “In the 1940 election,” she went on, “I voted for Wendell Wilkie. I liked so much his ideas about the world combining itself in purpose for its collective good.”
—(How? from speculations about political figures, did they get onto the subject of movies?) “I do adore Chaplin,” she said, “but I’m not a committed movie-goer. The last movie I went to I walked out on at the point where Freddie Bartholomew turned into Tyrone Power.”
—Bill Maudlin’s wartime cartoons; and, laughing, about Kilroy: Kilroy was here, “here” being Everywhere; Kilroy, Everyone.
—A moment, over dessert, devoted to telling her of Julia’s and Caroline’s beauty and brightness and of his and Maud’s parental happiness: only a moment, but during it his awareness of her fierce attention to every word and the tremble of her lips, but her strict silence that precluded elaboration.
—Books.
The speed of their communication reminded him of being a boy on a snowy winter day hurling downhill on his Flexible Flyer—so much so that when she glanced at her watch and exclaimed, “My soul, it’s after three! I’m long overdue at my office,” it was like the sorry end of the sled’s sped course—though—“Tell me quickly,” she said: “I must know what you’ll be doing when your leave is up”—and he quickly told her as much as he knew. “I’ll write,” he said.
“And I’ll write to you,” she said, rising from her chair but still looking at him: “because I want to.” She refused his offer to accompany her back to her office. “You understand,” she said. “I know you understand.”
And so, outside the restaurant, they embraced, and parting, said their usual words: “Thank you, Miss Sly.”
“Thank you, Mr. Shurtliff. Until we meet again.” Then, in her summer dress, she walked away.
He had long since given up trying to define exactly what she represented to him, or what, together, they represented to each other. All that he knew for sure, and did not question, was his absolute sense of connection with her: that she was a meant figure in his life. It was in that way, mystically thinking, and with emotion, that he watched her go.
He called Maud. He said “Darling—” when she answered the telephone. She immediately asked if he would be home in time for dinner. He took a light approach: “Your wish is my command. I’ll be there if you want me to be.”
“It hadn’t occurred to me you’d think otherwise,” she answered in a voice more present than at any time since their quarrel.
(She would have made a good litigator, he thought.) “I’m seeing George Colgate at the Union Club at four. If I’m home by seven?”
“Fine,” she said. “Give George my best.”
Ah…the January thaw, and the melting despite the fact that she must have suspected he’d seen Miss Sly. Or hadn’t she? “Maud—”
“There’s news about Geoff, Morgan—a letter from Mr. Barrows telling how we can write to him.” He heard the background squeal of a child. “I have to hang up, Morgan. We’re about to give Ralph a bath. He rolled in something. He smells awful.” She was almost laughing.
“Wonderful about Geoff,” he roared. “Sorry about Ralph. Seven, at the latest.”
“Don’t drive too fast.”
Then the click of disconnection.
Love, he mused, standing in the phone booth. Love: plaything of the gods. How can anyone rationally think that the deities of myth aren’t still at work in our lives, spending the energy of their whims upon us, conspiring, casting us alternately into Darkness, into Light? Ah, their mischief…Miss Sly. Maud. Geoff. (Don’t forget the dog.)
His leave was in its final days.
As often as he could he went to see Mrs. Leigh. He never stayed long. He would sit beside her and try to amuse her; try to raise her out of her silence. But you can’t fly a kite on a still day.
Spurred by Judge Malcolm, he composed a “memorandum of projection” about the future of their law firm’s practice.
He wrote letters: to Geoff, sent through the Red Cross to a numbered STALAG; to Lucy in London; to two of his cousins serving in the military, one at Camp Lee, in Virginia, the other in the Pacific (APO San Francisco); to Rupert Wilkins, hazarding the long letter to the address he’d been given back in Durban.
He spent one afternoon in Cleveland with Frederick Selby, lawyer to the Shurtliff clan and trustee of its residual wealth (gained from iron-ore and salt mines and railroads), the fortune amassed in the previous century by his paternal great-grandfather. Mr. Selby had bidden Morgan to the conference. The reason for the conference? A “layered” trust, established years ago by that canny, enterprising ancestor, “the principal of which,” Mr. Selby told Morgan, “is due to kick in for distribution at the end of this year.” The gold-rimmed, round lenses of Mr. Selby’s glasses somewhat enlarged his eyes. “You and your paternal cousins are the beneficiaries, and as there are ten of you, you’ll receive a tenth of the principal.”
Morgan, listening, thought of his cousins. The ones who were domiciled in Ohio (four in Cleveland, two in Cincinnati) were the ones he knew best. (Three, in the Ohio set, he regarded as close friends.) The two who lived in Pittsburgh, and the one who lived in New York, he knew with that kind of interested but distant affection which pertains between admired blood relatives of the “visitor, or to-be-visited, status.” (That was his father’s phrase.) All the cousins were male; all, in age, within a twelve-year range of one another; all, save one, married. Two were intellectuals (a classicist professor at
Columbia University) (an Episcopal prelate); two, like himself, were lawyers, and, like himself, now away at war; one was a stockbroker; another, (the oldest) a banker, brother to the next oldest who was a would-be senator; another (referred to in the family as “our confirmed bachelor”), was an architect. In the lot, there was one disgrace, a perpetually bad-news rotter (bane to his wife, a casual philanderer, an untidy liar, always in debt). Such was the way the cousinly clan was distributed.
Morgan of course had always known of the trust’s existence, known that one day he would be one of its inheritors, but his orchardist father had always played down the Shurtliff money. (“You’ll come into it in due course, Morgan, but by the time you do, you’ll be mature enough to know it’s by an accident of birth. Meanwhile, boy, your primary obligation is to prove yourself to yourself in ways as admirable as possible.”) That was the creed Ansel Shurtliff had reared Morgan on.
“It’s a very substantial sum,” Mr. Selby said. “You’ll be a well-to-do man.” (He named a figure, impressive by any standard.) “Between now and the end of the year, you must make a new will. Start thinking about it.” Mr. Selby smiled his thin smile. “Your father was in last week. He brought me up to date on your doings. I understand you’ve got a while ashore.”
“At least four months, maybe more,” Morgan affirmed. “I’ve got to digest all this.” Then he gave voice to the old cliché: “‘A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client’…. I’d like you to go on representing my interests.”
“It will please me to,” Mr. Selby said. “Let me know your thoughts about your will, and I’ll hammer them into a first draft for your perusal. Do it as soon as you can. Feel free to call me here at the office or at home, evenings or weekends. Anytime at all that suits you.”
They shook hands and Morgan departed.
The afternoon had been a dazzler.
They were to spend the last week-end of his leave at his father’s home.
On Friday afternoon, he packed the Chevy’s trunk with what he thought was an insane amount of gear, and they set off, Maud beside him in front, Tessa and the twins and Ralph on the back seat. At a fast clip, the trip could be made in a couple of hours; with this cargo, though, he was more concerned with safety than with speed.
Maud conducted a lesson from Hardy’s Alphabet Book: “A for Apple” (the twins repeated after her), “B for Broom, C for Cat,” through to “Z for Zebra.” They sang songs. Stopped at a railroad crossing by a clanging bell and a criss-crossed set of blinking red lights, they counted the slow-passing freight cars. “C for Caboose,” Morgan said as he restarted the Chevy’s engine. He read aloud a first sign nailed on a fence post: “The Queen of Hearts,” (and a bit farther on, the second sign), “Now loves the Knave,” (the third sign in sight) “Because the King,” (the fourth and final sign) “Ran out of Burma Shave.” They passed through the dusky hollow of a long covered bridge. Maud remarked that Ralph was behaving awfully well. Tessa said, “I told you he would.” The country-side was lovely. The twins fell asleep.
All in all, a sweet, uneventful journey.
The visit was crowned by the presence of his aunt and uncle, Letitia and Lewis Grant. (“A family house-party,” Ansel Shurtliff said: “Like old times.”)
He did with the twins many of the things his father must have done with him when he was their age: canoed on the pond; lifted them up onto a strong low branch into the leafy realm of one of Ansel Shurtliff’s oldest apple trees, then perched himself on an adjacent branch and heard Julia say, “We’re birds” rocked them in his old swing; played with them at croquet (their grasp of the game meager, but the time spent at it lively, especially when Ralph joined in, mouthing a ball and rollicking off with it).
With Maud, on Saturday afternoon, he walked down to the pond. They sat at the water’s edge, holding hands, not talking, thinking the same thing: that in two days’ time they must say good-bye…. Right before their eyes, then, exquisitely compelling, they saw a nuptial pair of dragonflies. By a series of minute maneuverings, the male adjusted himself over the female’s body and embraced her. She shivered, and they commenced their great exertions. The reed bent beneath them and moved with them. Believers say that God is conscious of each mating as it occurs, whether between humans or creatures…. This frail one took an oddly long while to complete, and the end was unceremonious, marked by the male’s departure and immediate disappearance into a near-by forest of bulrushes, the female left behind on the reed, her diaphanous wings opened out at her sides, motionless, like a pair of forsaken arms. “Oh, Morgan,” Maud cried.
“Drinking time,” on Saturday evening—the twins in their nightgowns, but allowed to spend a few more minutes with the grown-ups, Letitia taking off her jewelry, slipping the strand of her pearls around Julia’s neck, pinning a sparkling brooch on Caroline’s nightgown. “Now rings,” she was saying: “Hold up your hands.” Bedecked, the little girls walked with a somber importance around the large room.
“Music,” Ansel Shurtliff said. “We must have some music.” From the record cabinet he removed an old album and, laughing, struck a pose beside the Victrola.
“You look satanic, Ansel,” Letitia told him.
“Prepare yourselves” was his response.
He put three records on the Victrola’s “holding arm.” Then, wickedly, he flicked the switch that set the turntable spinning, and they waited. Waited, as the first record made its slow descent onto the turntable and the bamboo needle its ponderous approach of audible connection. Then, at peak decibel: “AH! SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE AT LAST I’VE FOUND YOU.” Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald: his rancid baritone, her piercing, life-threatening soprano—“AH! AT LAST I KNOW THE MEANING OF IT ALL—”
“Morgan!” Letitia keened: “Call the police! Your father needs restraining.”
But Morgan, howling, had already seized Maud and was dancing with her, or trying to, stopping, freezing in place whenever the singers settled on a high note and milked it to breath’s end.
The twins’ eyes were enormous.
“Blue Moon” fell next onto the turntable—during whose peroxide sentiments, there was a stampede to the liquor tray…. To “Rose Marie,” Morgan took Caroline and Julia in his arms and dandied them around the room, gliding and turning, their knees knobbed into his ribs, their arms in a stranglehold around his neck, his ears ringing with their ecstatic squeals and with the applause and cheers from the onlookers…. Maybe he was a bit drunk. Maybe not. Maybe it was the shining beauty of Maud’s face, watching, as he danced with their children, that made him feel, in reflection of it, golden.
On Sunday morning he went with Maud and his father and Letitia and Lewis to the eleven o’clock service at St. James Episcopal Church. Here he had been baptized and later confirmed. Here, as a choir-boy, he had sung many times the hymn the congregation was singing now. Here too, in a guise of spotlessness, he had sat in the choir-loft trembling in fear of eternal damnation as a visiting prelate preached on the Seven Deadly Sins: only the day before he had perpetrated his first and final theft: a Mars Bar lifted from the candy counter of the local drugstore. And here had taken place his mother’s funeral; (she was buried in the nigh cemetery). Sit, for the Lesson. Stand, for the second hymn. Sit, for the sermon. “Let us pray.” Kneel. Stand, for the third hymn: “Eternal Father, strong to save.” Sit, as the collection was taken. Stand, for the reading of the 126th Psalm:
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
then were we like those who dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
Then they said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are glad indeed.
Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the watercourses of the Negev.
Those who sowed with tears,
will reap with songs of joy.
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.
Remain standing, head bent floorward, for the benediction. Amen.
The service over, they made their way down the aisle, out of the church, into the fresh air. In his uniform (worn at his father’s request) he felt conspicuous amidst the conventionally suited men and hatted women who were standing about in comfortable clusters, familiar to each other, talking, exchanging Sabbath pleasantries. Most were strangers; some though were his father’s friends, and with them he fell into easy conversation.
A group walked toward him—two middle-aged couples, a young woman, and a white-haired man with a tired face. They took up a position near him, and when he finished chatting with the Dillards, one of their number (clearly their elected spokesman) stepped forward. “My name’s Bill Ritter,” he said, “and this is my wife, Emily.” He was a short, plump man with willing, slightly popped Pekingese eyes. Morgan shook their extended hands. “We have two sons in the Army,” Mr. Ritter said. The husband of the second couple said: “Our boy’s in the Navy too—a machinist-mate on a PT boat.” Then the young woman: “My husband’s a bomber navigator.” They shuffled their positions, making more space for the white-haired man: “My grandson,” he began, then lowered his head and fell mute. Morgan took in the black mourning band sewn on the left sleeve of his light summer suit. “Your grandson, sir?” he asked. The man looked up: “My only grandson,” he corrected: “He was a captain in the Marines.” “I’m truly sorry,” Morgan said. They all stood a moment, searching. Then, from the willing Mr. Ritter: “We just wanted to say hello to you.” Morgan looked from one face to the other: “Thank you,” he said: “I’ll always remember that you did.” The white-haired man was the first to turn away. After a gentle saying of good-byes, the others followed in his wake.
Matters of Chance Page 18
