by Irwin Shaw
“Daddy, if you’re going to sound like a father in a Victorian novel, there’s no sense in my standing here and telling you anything.”
“No, there isn’t.” He stood up. “I’m going out and I’m taking a walk.”
“Here’s your handkerchief back,” Caroline said. “I’ve finished with crying.”
He had to get out of the house. He did not want to see his daughter, her eyes swollen, her mouth a hard line, her fury frozen, staring at the milky blind tube of the television set. The darting reflections of the fire on the Christmas tree ornaments annoyed him and the piny smell in the warm room cloyed in his nostrils. He threw on his coat and wrapped the shabby old woolen muffler that Leslie had been trying to get him to throw away for years around his neck. He went out of the house. It was dark now and the light streaming from the windows made swirling pools in the fog that drifted steadily in from the ocean. The rumble of the ocean was muted by mist and sounded like a dirge. He walked away from the beach, down the long straight road, bordered with cedars, that ran through Hazen’s property toward the distant road. The women had gone to walk on the beach and he did not want to meet them or anybody at the moment. There were questions to be put and answers to be made and he had to try to arrange them clearly and without emotion in his mind before voicing them.
When he had gone fifty yards he turned and looked back. The lights of the house had disappeared. The cedars made a sighing sound in the varying, wet wind. He was alone, floating somewhere between the sea and nothingness, surrounded by a dripping, dark, unpeopled wilderness.
9
HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW long he’d walked because his watch was useless in the dark, when he decided to turn and head back. He had come to no decisions, had just known he wanted to escape the house. Now, alone in the gray vaporous world, the steady movement of his limbs through the soft, engulfing mist had soothed him, hypnotized him into a state where nothing else mattered but the next step, nothing claimed his attention but the changing ghostly shadow of one tree for another as he passed. But as he started to retrace his way in the darkness, he realized he was lost. He had gone aimlessly down lanes, skirted dunes, seen blurred shapes looming to one side or another that he knew must be houses deserted for the winter. He had heard no voices nor seen a bird.
Even in bright sunlight he wouldn’t have been familiar with the countryside. When he had gone for walks it had been along the beach. On the trips into town they had been in a car with someone else driving and he had not learned the geography of the neighborhood. He wasn’t disturbed himself because he was lost but knew that Leslie must be back in the house by now and worried about where he had gone. He quickened his pace, arrived at a dead end with a shuttered house sitting across the driveway and forest all around it.
He took crossroads at random, couldn’t figure out whether he was moving north, south, east or west. Now he was beginning to tire and his face was wet with sweat and mist. He tore off his muffler and stuffed it into a pocket. He had never felt more like a city man. Accustomed to the logical, neat, marked rectangles of the gridwork of Manhattan, he had atrophied the American talent for the wilderness. He walked on the sandy roads, full of holes, on macadam, gravel. He realized that he hadn’t seen a light since he had left Hazen’s house. Twice cars had passed him, one from behind him, lights looming in the fog. The last time the lights had appeared suddenly, from around a curve, and had come right at him and he had saved himself only by throwing himself headlong onto the side of the road. He had pushed himself up, trembling, after the car had disappeared, the red gleam of its taillights suddenly extinguished, as though a curtain had dropped behind them. He had fallen into an icy puddle and he could feel the water freezing on his trousers at the knees and around his ankles.
Finally, convinced that he was going in circles, he stood still. For a moment he heard nothing but his own labored breathing. Then, far away, there was a low rumble. The ocean. Cautiously, moving slowly, stopping every few steps to listen, he walked in the direction of the sea’s steady music. Slowly it grew louder. At last he reached the beach. He sat down for a few moments to rest. There were no lights anywhere and he had to gamble on going either to his left or right. He cursed his lifelong lack of a reliable sense of direction, stood up and struck out to his left, walking along the waterline, where the hiss of waves sliding in and ebbing out guided him. His feet froze as he plodded painfully in the wet sand that sucked at his soaked shoes at every step.
He was just about to turn around and go in the other direction, had decided to give it one hundred more paces then go the other way, when he saw a glimmer of light through the fog high up to his left. He knew there was a path leading over the dunes to the house from the beach, but he couldn’t find it. Now he could feel that his whole body was drenched with sweat and there was an enormous pulse pounding in one temple. He clambered up the side of a giant dune, pulling at the coarse grass to help himself climb, crawling over obstacles on his hands and knees. But the light grew brighter and brighter, dancing in the shifting mist, as though from a ship bobbing on waves. Finally, staggering, he made it to the terrace steps and went up. Through the French doors, now hazed over, he could see shadowy shapes moving within. He tried to open one of the doors, but it was locked. He pounded on the door, shouted. His voice rasped hoarsely in his throat. The shapes behind the glass panes wavered from side to side, but did not approach. They’re playing a foolish children’s game with me, he thought insanely, pretending not to hear. He shouted again, the effort making him feel that he was tearing blood vessels and tendons inside his throat.
The door was thrown open.
Leslie was standing there. “Oh, my God,” she cried.
“Do I look that bad?” Strand said. He tried to smile. Then he began to sneeze. Again and again and again, mixed with a coughing fit, with his eyes streaming, as he bent over, racked by the coughs. Leslie pulled him into the room and slammed the door behind him. Eleanor came running over and pulled at the buttons of his coat to get them open. “He’s soaking wet,” she said.
“I got…I…lost,” Strand said, between sneezes and coughs. “What time is it?”
“After ten,” Leslie said. “We were just about to call the police.”
“I think the doctor would be a better idea.” Eleanor had managed to get the coat off him. Strand saw that it was matted with mud and ice and clumps of grass.
“I’m all ri—” The next sneeze kept him from finishing the word. “I just took a lit—”
“Let’s get him to bed,” Leslie said.
With the two women supporting him by the elbows, needlessly, Strand thought, they went upstairs. Eleanor got a big warm towel from the bathroom and Leslie undressed him, clucking distractedly each time he sneezed. Strand noticed, with interest, that his feet were dead white and were numb and that he had cut his knee and a frozen rivulet of blood ran down his shin from the wound.
When he was naked and Leslie had rubbed him roughly with the towel, he felt the circulation starting to reach his feet, which began to sting. Leslie wrapped him in the towel and put him under the bedcovers like a puppy after a bath. Then the shivering began and he wondered, somehow without concern, if he was in the first throes of pneumonia.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Leslie, who was standing at the side of the bed looking worriedly down at him. “I didn’t realize the fog…” Suddenly he was overpoweringly weary and he closed his eyes. “I think I have to sleep a little now,” he murmured. He opened his eyes and smiled wanly up at Leslie. “I hope somebody got me a compass for Christmas,” he said and fell into a deep sleep.
He slept all through the night, only dimly conscious at moments of the warmth of Leslie’s body next to his. The sleep was so delicious that after eating breakfast in bed he slept most of the next day and night, content to dream, not to think or speak. When he woke up early on the second morning after Christmas, with Leslie breathing softly in her sleep beside him, he got silently out of bed, feeling fresh and rested and
hungry. He dressed quickly and went downstairs and had the Ketleys serve him a huge breakfast, which he ate alone in front of the window facing the ocean, which glittered in long blue swells under a wintry sun.
Frightening as the wandering in the dark fog over lost roads had been and even though he could have been killed by the car that had sped around the curve at him, he was glad that it had happened as it had. It had given him a precious breathing spell, had erased the anguish of the confrontation with Caroline, had eased his sense of shame and betrayal. In the clean early morning light, problems were diminished and soluble. What the family had done to him or what Caroline had suggested it had done he now accepted on Caroline’s terms. They had acted, however wrongly, out of love for him and in his heart he embraced them all. It would never be the same again, he swore to himself. His eyes would now be open and they would all be the better for it.
When Caroline came down for breakfast and saw him a wary look came over her face. But he stood and hugged her and kissed her forehead. “Oh, Daddy,” she murmured into his shoulder, “I’m so glad you’re okay. I was so scared. And it was my fault…”
“Nothing is your fault, baby,” he said. “Now sit down and eat your breakfast with me.”
He noted with disapproval that Caroline told Mr. Ketley that she only wanted some black coffee. “Is that all you have usually for breakfast?” Strand asked.
“I’m not hungry today,” Caroline said. “Daddy, there’s something peculiar going on and I don’t know what it is and Mummy won’t tell me. Do you know that Linda and Eleanor left yesterday?”
“No.” He put his cup down slowly. “Where did they go?”
“Linda went to New York.”
“She said something about that. She’s worried about Mr. Hazen.” He took a deep breath. “Do you know where Eleanor went?”
“I’m not sure. She and Mummy had a big argument and they sent me out of the house. Eleanor was getting into the car with Linda when I came back and Mummy looked as though she’d been crying and I heard her say to Eleanor, ‘At least you ought to say good-bye to your father,’ and Eleanor said, ‘I’ve thought it all out and I’ve had enough arguing and I don’t want to have him try to talk me out of it. Just tell him I love him and I’m doing what I have to do.’ Then they drove off. I think she’s going back to Georgia. Is there something wrong about that?”
Strand sighed. “Very wrong,” he said.
“I’m not a baby,” Caroline said. “Don’t you think it’s about time I was told what’s happening with this family?”
He looked at his daughter consideringly. “You’re right,” he said. “It is about time you knew what’s happening with this family. It’s about time we all knew. Eleanor left Georgia because some people who didn’t like what Giuseppe put in the paper bombed their house and threatened to kill Giuseppe and maybe Eleanor, too, if they stayed on.”
“Oh, Christ,” Caroline said. He had never heard her say Christ before. “And Giuseppe wouldn’t leave?”
“The last Eleanor knew he was sitting up at night in the dark with a shotgun in his lap.”
Caroline put her hand to her mouth and began to bite at a nail. She hadn’t done that since they had broken her of the habit when she was seven. “She’s right to go back,” Caroline said. “Her place is with her husband. She shouldn’t ever have left.”
“How will you feel if something happens to your sister?” He tried to keep his voice from sounding harsh.
“I’ll feel terrible,” Caroline said. “But I’ll still think she was right to go back. Daddy…” She reached out and touched his hand. “This is an unlucky house. We ought to get away from it. Right away. Before it’s too late. Look what’s happened here—you nearly got drowned and you nearly died. I got hurt in the car accident with George…”
“Honey,” Strand said, “you’re lying. It wasn’t any accident. He hit you and broke your nose. You were lucky you weren’t raped.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I have my secrets, too. Like everybody else, honey. Actually, you didn’t fool the doctor.”
“I had to tell him. I asked him not to tell you. I was afraid of what you’d do.”
“The doctor told Mr. Hazen. Mr. Hazen beat your handsome young friend to a pulp.”
“He deserved it. He said I was a tease. Only what he said was worse. These days, you go out once with a boy, if you don’t put out, they think they can call you anything they want. Daddy…” She appealed to him. “Nobody teaches you the rules.”
“Well, you know them now.”
“I sure do. Does Mummy know, too?”
“No. But she will. Because I’ll tell her.”
“All right.” She sounded hostile. “But tell me something. When you started going out with her, what did you do?”
Strand laughed. “Fair question, honey,” he said. “I tried.”
“What did she do?”
“She said stop. And I stopped.”
“Times’ve changed,” Caroline said sadly. “Nowadays boys like George with their cars and fancy clubs and rich fathers think they have the droit du seigneur or something. A sandwich, a drink, a movie and then if you don’t open your legs you’re a peasant. If I’d had my tennis racquet with me, Mr. Hazen wouldn’t’ve had to beat him up. At least Professor Swanson begged. Daddy, you don’t know how hard it is to know what to do. I know you didn’t like that boy. Why didn’t you say something?”
“There’re things that one generation learns that another generation never dreams of,” Strand said. “All charts get quickly outdated. Consider yourself lucky. You learned your lesson and it only cost you a broken nose. Be more careful with Romero. His blood is a lot hotter than your friend George’s.”
“Daddy,” Caroline said levelly, “you disappoint me. You’re a racist.”
“On that happy judgment I must leave you.” Strand stood up. “I have to go have a word with your mother,” he said. He left Caroline holding back tears, pouring herself a second cup of black coffee.
Leslie was sitting in a robe at the window seat, staring out at the ocean, when Strand came into the room. He went over and kissed the top of her head gently. She looked up and smiled. “I guess you’re feeling better,” she said.
“Much better,” he said. He sat down beside her and took her hand. “I just had breakfast with Caroline. She told me about Eleanor.”
Leslie nodded. “I did everything I could to stop her. I asked her to talk to you. She wouldn’t.”
“I know. Caroline knew that much. Did Eleanor speak to Giuseppe?”
Leslie shook her head. “She said she didn’t want to argue with him, either. What’re we going to do, Allen?”
“I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to call Giuseppe.” He went over to the telephone next to the bed. There was a small console with buttons on it to call other rooms in the house and outside lines. He pressed an outside-line button and dialed Giuseppe’s number. By now he had memorized it. When Giuseppe said “Hello,” Strand spoke quickly. “Giuseppe,” he said quickly, “this is important. Don’t hang up until you hear what I have to say. Eleanor’s on her way back to Georgia.”
There was silence on the other end for a moment. Then Giuseppe said, “That’s good news.” His voice was toneless, exhausted.
“Has anything happened there?”
“Not yet.”
“Giuseppe,” Strand said, “I want you to tell her that she can’t stay, she’s got to turn around and come right back.”
“You want,” Giuseppe said. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Listen, Giuseppe, she got her job back, she’s due to start on January second, she’s been promoted, she has a big career ahead of her in a job she likes, in a city she loves. You can’t let her throw it all away. Giuseppe, I can’t let you kill my daughter.”
“That’s not how I think of her, Allen,” Giuseppe said. “I think of her as my wife. It’s about time she realized that. And the wife’s place is a
t the husband’s side. It’s an old Italian custom. Maybe you’ve forgotten that I’m Italian.”
“Being Italian doesn’t mean that you have to be a martyr. And for what? A miserable little country newspaper that even Eleanor says a parcel of high school kids could do a better job on than you two.”
“I’m sorry that she thinks we’re so inept,” Giuseppe said. “But that doesn’t change anything. When I married her I didn’t promise I was going to win the Pulitzer prize for journalism. All I did was promise to love and cherish her, forsaking all others until death did us part. I’m happy to see that she remembers she signed the same contract.”
“You’re acting like a maniac,” Strand said. “I’m afraid I have to hang up now, Mr. Strand,” Giuseppe said politely. “I have to clean up the house and get some flowers and some stuff for dinner and a bottle of wine to celebrate the reunion. Thanks for letting me know she’s on her way home.”
“Giuseppe…” Strand said helplessly, but Giuseppe had already hung up.
Leslie was still sitting in the window seat, staring once more out at the ocean, her face emotionless. “Did you know there was a chance she was going back?” she asked.
“Yes. She told me she was going to try to forget him. If she couldn’t, she said, she would go back. She didn’t try hard enough, I guess.”
“Sex,” Leslie said tonelessly. “I suppose she’d call it passion. Love. What damage those big words can do. I did everything I could to try to stop her. I asked her how she could go off like that knowing that every time the telephone rang from now on we’d be terrified it would be a message that she was dead.”
“What did she say to that?”
“That she knew the feeling—she’d had it ever since she left Georgia. That we’d have to learn to live with it. I tried to keep it from Caroline, but I’m sure she guessed. How much does she know?”
“Just about everything. I felt I had to tell her. There’ve been too many secrets up to now.”
