“Father’s a dear underneath. He’s paying my rent for a year while I try my hand at these crazy articles, as he calls them,” she said. “Of course Mother’s a scream in her own right. I think you’ll love her. Mother always says Father’s the most even-tempered man she ever met—always surly.”
I was unco-operative. “Is he discombobulated? Does his epizootic sagatiate?”
“What’s the matter?” She appraised me. “Such a gloomy. Living out there in the country all alone probably. . . . My place is right in this next block.”
Slowing my pace, I cast an eye up at the stars.
“Nickel.”
“Oh, I was just thinking of the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics, or whichever one it is that says matter is running down. Matter is running down and the universe itself will one day become extinct. An everlasting and immitigable nothingness, in the void of black and absolute—”
“Don’t.” She gave my arm a maternal squeeze. “You’re better off not thinking about those things. We can go so far and no further. Don’t torture yourself by delving too deep.”
“I can’t help it.”
I was feeling lousier every minute, because this was among the old routines with which I had wooed my wife, on whose black keys I had also played. It was a vicious circle, this having to use sentimental coin to square myself. Like hocking your wedding silver. But what was I to do?
“This is my door,” she said as I sailed on by, upward gazing. “Well, it’s been a wonderful evening.”
I had once seen a play by J. B. Priestley in which the audience is given alternative endings. One is an unhappy one, the fruit of a chain of revelations about the characters brought on by a trivial question about a cigarette box, early in the first act. The other is a happy, “what if,” ending, such as might result had the question not been asked, but some other, equally trivial, deflection intervened, and set the course otherwise. I had to get that optional ending, and get it tonight.
“Just wonderful. Thanks so much.”
“Some people wonder how people can do themselves in,” I said, looking down at the ground. “I don’t wonder about it. That’s the only thing I do understand.”
“Come on up,” Terry said.
I mounted the dark stairs behind her, swinging my hat in my hand.
Terry’s quarters consisted of a small living room, a Pullman kitchen, a bedroom and a bath. There was a tiny entrance hall with a chair in it on which I put my hat. She switched on a table lamp in the living room and disappeared into the bedroom, taking off her hat. “Fix us a drink,” she said. “You’ll find everything in that chest next to the typewriter. And ice in the refrigerator. Make yourself at home. I’ll have a bourbon and water.”
I mixed two, and carried them to a coffee table in front of a sofa. I sat down on the sofa. I could hear Terry stirring about in the bedroom—a drawer, the jingle of wire hangers, something zipped. Somewhere in the building there was the muffled sound of a door shutting. I glanced nervously at my wrist watch. It was five minutes to eleven. Too late to catch the eleven-twenty home. There remained only the twelve-thirty—the last train to Avalon till the milk runs.
There was a rustle of, I think, Swiss batiste, and Terry appeared in a blue and white dotted dressing gown. She joined me on the sofa. “Sort of making you the host.” She picked up her drink and sipped from it. “Strong.” She lounged, partly away from me, with one shoulder against the back of the sofa. I was aware of the whisper of negligee and of my senses drowning in perfume.
“Too much nose candy?” she said and laughed. “It’s a little stronger than I usually use. Somebody gave it to me.”
I wondered had it been the “moral fatso” of whom she had spoken. Something puzzled me.
“You said your last boy friend was a moral fatso,” I said. “Just what does that mean?”
“Oh, he thinks, like, Mother’s Day has become too commercialized, and the government is getting into things that are none of its beeswax?” She sat closer and slipped an arm through mine again. “I can imagine what marriage to him would have been like. The type who’d be out every other night because he’d be sort of secretary-treasurer of everything? And the rest of the time he’d be downstairs with his woodwork hobby, making the sort of trays you’d have to have standing around on end.”
“And when you went on vacation with him, he’d mail everybody live turtles,” I said, feeling I was getting the hang of this thing. “Kind of a Mortimer.”
“His name is Gerard.”
We laughed together, having Gerard’s number so.
I stole another look at my watch. Still too early to go, without appearing abrupt. I said, “What was the one before that like?”
“Him. He was a genius, but he had two pages missing.”
“He had two pages missing?” I said softly.
“He invented things. He’d invent something you’d attach to an open window so that if you weren’t home it would close automatically when it rained, by the wet shorting out the electrical circuit. Only it turned out that the dew shorted the circuit the same way, so the bedroom windows would keep sliding shut all night?” She smiled up at me. “Jealous?”
“Tell me, Terry, did your father ever see either of these guys?”
“Father!” She sat up, sloshing her drink in the hilarity of remembering something. “I’ll never forget what he said about Albert—that’s the inventor. Well, Albert worked his way through college selling magazine subscriptions, you see, and when I told Father that, to build him up, Father said, ‘And after he graduates from college he’ll still be selling them.’”
I laughed, a soft laugh of private security. The whole thing had resolved itself into a kind of double or nothing, so to speak, and Terry’s apparent willingness to have me stay the night would leave me with the debt paid off and a substantial moral balance in my favor. Cautiously I tested my position. Running the ball of a forefinger along the rim of my glass, I asked, with a tongue grown surprisingly dry, “What time is breakfast around here?”
“Breakfast is any time anybody wants to get up, but it won’t be around here quoth she. Not with a Schrafft’s nice and handy in the next block.” She watched me, sipping. “Have you ever eaten their grilled Johnnycake?”
“Very often indeed,” I said. “I love it.”
I finished my drink and then waited a few minutes more. Then I stood up.
“Look, I think I’d better be getting along.”
But the retrieval of my self-respect was not to be effected without a grave hitch: the loss to Terry McBain of her own.
“Well, will you make up your mind?” she said, her eyes brighter than I had yet seen them. She set her drink down on the table. “Is this a habit of yours—flipping through samples to find something that strikes your—”
“No, it’s not that at all.”
She rose. “I’d like to know exactly who it is you’re trying to make a fool of,” quoth she, tucking together the lapels of her dressing gown in a gesture not without truculence. I seemed to see ranging, generation on generation behind her, the granite New England spirits out of which she had professedly been hewn.
“Myself, I guess. I’ll probably hate myself for this in the morning,” I went on, attempting a humorous subtlety that I was far from feeling, and, to tell the truth, far from comprehending myself.
“Just what the devil does that mean?”
I smiled and looked at the rug, pinching my nose. “It’s just that I think you were right earlier in the evening, back at Mrs. Ainslee’s—where, by the way, I was amused at their having to run out for liquor all the time. Incidentally, I wonder what the legal arrangement is in a case like that—who pays the tax, or what.”
“Where were we?”
“But the thing is, people shouldn’t lose their heads.”
“They shouldn’t blow hot and cold either,” she tersely answered.
“You’re right there. You’ve a perfect right to call it that,” I said fairly. I shook my h
ead. “Sex,” I said, as though the grievance and the weariness were equally mine.
It was, I sensed, my apologetic air rather than my philosophical one that somewhat mollified the girl. Undone of my aplomb, even of my Weltschmerz, of which nothing remained but a hangdog look, she felt a little sorry for me. At least she relented. But the revival of our footing was only temporary. “Well, let’s forget it this time,” she said. “Run along if you want. What I was going to ask was if you’re interested in going to a cocktail party at some friends’ of mine in town here. It’s a week from Sunday.”
Panic clawed me, in the need now to get everything cleared up.
“Look, I don’t know whether you know I’m married or not—”
“Married.”
“Yes, I thought the McBains told you.”
“The McBains don’t know you from Adam—but they may,” she said flintily.
“Oh, Terry.”
“They couldn’t place you when I asked them about you—”
“But I took for granted—I mean all of us at the same party. Of course it was a large party, one of those enormous affairs, sponsored by local groups, that are so typical of Avalon community life, especially, I might add, in the summer, with our miles of beaches. But what I meant to say is, I sort of took it for granted you knew the dope about me. That I only meant I’d come to the barbecue alone—not that I was single. Had I only dreamt—I mean if that angle was important to you.” I gave this up and now did hang my head. “I suppose I’m a rotter.”
“Oh, don’t go giving yourself airs!” Terry turned smartly to the window. “Well—married.” She turned back again, and, her arms folded, regarded me with displeasure, “Can you give me a little better idea what this is all about, including the double talk?”
“Why, yes, I’ll do my best.” I drew a long breath and looked up, like a public speaker preparing an answer to something put to him in the question period. “I’ve seen you twice,” I began. “The first time was accidental, as you know, a case of where one thing led to another, as they often do. I was sorry for it.”
“I’ll bet you were, the time it took you to call me back.”
“I’m coming to that. So we have a sheep-through-the-gap, a husband momentarily fallen from grace. Oh, a thing common enough in itself, but still, leaving an aftermath of regret, for basically we are moral creatures, however emancipated we pride ourselves on being intellectually.” She breathed sharply and rolled her eyes up at the ceiling. “Now we come to why I called you back. You see, I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t a cad. That I was made of better stuff. And besides, I owed it to my wife.”
“What about what you owed me?” she said, tucking shut the negligee with the same bellicose gesture. “When are we coming to that?”
I was like a man who, thinking to pluck up a negligible strand of briar, finds he has hold of a mile of twisting root. I pursued the subject with a kind of tense interest, wondering how I would handle it. Moving a step, I caught sight of myself in a wall mirror. My complexion blended harmoniously with the color scheme of the interior, which was an off-white, very attractive against drapes of oyster and a bottle-green rug.
As I was collecting my thoughts, Terry started toward me with deliberate steps. “Do you know what I think I owe you?”
I shot a glance at a vase on a nearby table. Among my Moot Point délicatesses was a scene in which a spitfire I have up for the week end aims a piece of earthenware at me and I duck. “Darling!” I nimbly return. “I didn’t know you were domestic.” It wouldn’t have worked in here, that much was clear.
“Did you ever see a play by J. B. Priestley with two endings?” I jabbered in a dry voice, backing into the vestibule and toward the door.
“I can think of a lot of things to do to you—” Terry said, still advancing.
“A grim ending and a happy one. I just wanted to run through this incident again up to a certain point, and then sort of switch to the happy ending, like in the play. A very skillfully woven thing it was, the sort of thing the British do so much better than we. Think of my intentions!” I protested. “Get this thing in its proper perspective. I might as well have come up here to put you on a pedestal.”
“—but they’re all too good for you. Like hanging!” she continued, ignoring my rebuttal as she had my parallel.
“Dangerous Corner,” I said, feeling for the doorknob behind my back. “That was the name of the play. It ran for quite a while,” I added, feeling as if I had done so myself—or as if I might.
“I could call a cop to say you’re annoying me. Or the janitor to throw you out.” Terry was talking like that.
I opened the door, snatched my hat off the chair, and scurried for the hallway stairs. I picked my way down them gingerly but rapidly, in a tailwind of invective for “my sort” that grew in volume and intensity as I negotiated the two twisting flights to the street, and drew tenants to their doors as well as sped my departure. A rather muscular and formidable-looking woman in a dark bathrobe glared at me as I shot on down. The words abated as their author apparently sensed spectators to be accumulating on the lower landings, but they echoed in my ears as I scuttled through the one remaining door into the safety of the street, and continued to echo long afterward: the sound, justly respected, of an injured woman.
Fourteen
SO now I felt rotten about Terry McBain. Now it was she I had on my conscience. I felt I owed her something. I could still see the hurt in the fronded eyes, in the anger of that skirmish I couldn’t shed the recollection of. It was with a view to now paying that account, and if possible closing the books on this entire matter before my wife got back (in five days), that I phoned her to offer my good offices with the articles.
It took no thinking out to decide that that was the one clear kindness I could do her. No strings attached, no ulterior motives, nothing in it for me. Just a favor.
I went out to phone her, not wanting to put a call through the office switchboard girl, who had a sharp ear for the rhythms of folk speech. I slipped out for a late lunch, winding up in a Howard Johnson’s that had just been opened in the neighborhood. I wasn’t terribly hungry and my stomach was upset, but I’d have liked something like a broiled chop of some sort. “Could I have a lamb chop?” I asked the waitress, waving off the menu she extended. “I don’t want much to eat and so as little vegetables and so on as I can get.”
“I can give you the children’s portions if you’d like,” she suggested. “In fact, the lamb chop happens to be our Simple Simon Special.”
“I’ll have that and a bottle of ale. Bring me the ale first, please.”
“Well, now, I couldn’t give you the ale on the Simple Simon—I mean if you’re thinking of a substitution for the milk. You have to take the milk, and a little ice cream for dessert, if you want it on the lunch.”
“That’s all right. Just bring me the Simple Simon Special and a bottle of ale,” I said, feeling we had reached the nadir of human relations. I was mistaken. She was back in a trice with no ale and to announce, “We’re all out of lamb chops. Would you like to see the children’s menu?” She held out a small bill of fare which I declined. I leaned back against the wall of the booth I was in and viewed her.
“I understand there are twenty-eight of these places,” I said.
“That is the number of flavors. There are over four hundred restaurants.”
“All as good as this, I trust?”
“I was only trying to help. You don’t have to bite my head off.”
“How else would you suggest getting anything to eat around here?” I took the menu wearily and donned my spectacles to consult it. I was persecuted by a flow of designations such as the Peter Piper Plate, Little Boy Blue and the Humpty Dumpty Lunch. My stomach gave a low growl, like a displeased dog. However the Humpty Dumpty looked O.K., the entree being described as “small chicken salad,” which seemed to be on the snacklike scale I was in the market for.
“I’ll have the Humpty Dumpty,”
I said, handing the card back to her, “and a bottle of ale. Black Horse if you’ve got it.”
“We have,” she said, making off.
I spied a trio of hens watching me from the next table with that “the types you meet in public” expression. As I pocketed my glasses I cowed them with a slow burn, which scattered their regard. The ale came, and then swiftly the Humpty Dumpty, with roll and butter.
Having restored myself on these viands, I went to the telephone booth and called Terry McBain.
“This is me,” I plunged in the instant I heard her voice. “Look, I’m sorry about last night and the whole thing and all, but let’s forget it. Now what about the articles? I’d still like to see them.”
There was a long pause. Then, “You would?”
“Very much. Of course it isn’t my department, I’m in the art end—” I rattled off at high speed, to get that debt of clarification out of the way—“but I can see that they get into the right hands, and maybe give you a little steer on them myself.”
“Of course last night was one of those ridiculous businesses—better forgotten.”
“When can you drop the pieces at my office?”
“Sort of after while? I’ve been touching up the first few chapters, enough to give you an idea what the series will be like. Fifteen in all. I could be there at fivish, if that’s O.K.”
She spent the first five minutes in my office browsing among the mulch piles of sketches and drawings on every desk and table and on some of the chairs.
“Sort of a pool of blood last night.”
“Well . . .” I shrugged.
“So this is the funny-pitcher factory. Fascinating, to see all this stuff in embryo stage.”
I could see she was interested, so I said, “Would you mind if I took one second to get this memo off? Then I’ll be free.”
“Go right ahead. Love to rubber.”
I drew the mouthpiece of a dictaphone toward me and said into it: “Memo to Mr. Blair. On the attached idea-to-be-worked-on, suggest the bus conductor be changed to two barefoot street fanatics in sackcloth and carrying the usual ‘Repent’ placards, watching a colleague down the street whose sign reads, oh, something like, Pationize the Gotham Ecclesiastical Supply House—Hymnals, Collection Plates, Other Religious Accessories. One of the two fanatics saying to the other, ‘I never thought I’d live to see Ebenezer go commercial.’”
The Tunnel of Love Page 14
