Point of No Return

by John P. Marquand

  He said that he was staying at the inn and Mrs. Mason told him to come right over—there was plenty of supper and Jackie was at home. He had hoped that she would ask him but he had known enough not to invite himself. You never dropped in suddenly on anyone in Clyde.

  It was a little like looking through a box of old photographs when he reached Spruce Street, almost but not quite. It was nearly dark but some of the long spring twilight was left in the sky and the easterly breeze was dropping. He would not have been surprised in the least if he had seen himself running through the dark toward Gow Street to tell his Aunt Jane that Miss Sarah Hewitt was coming to tea or if he had seen his father walking up from the mill on River Street or if he had heard his mother calling. Nothing on Spruce Street hurt him as he thought it would, yet he did not want to look at the family’s house. Nevertheless, he had to stop and turn toward it deliberately and when he did so, it was still their house, though plainer than he had thought it would be behind its uncompromising fence. The house looked as shabby as it had when he was growing up, just as it was meant to look. Some other family lived there now, with other boys and girls, perhaps, all with their own problems, but he could feel no resentment toward its present dwellers, whoever they might be, and he could still think of it as Our House. The yard was untidy again and it looked as though children had been playing in it. He reached and touched the white wooden fence, damp and cold from the rain, and then he turned his head away.

  The Masons’ house looked neater, as it always had, because Mr. Mason was good about doing things around the house. There was the porch, with its thin turned columns and its jigsaw decorations, and all that was new was an electric light with a milky globe fixed on the ceiling of the porch. There was the same bell in the center of the front door, a bell with a handle that you turned to make it ring, and it gave out the same sound that it had when he and Jackie used to play with it.

  Jackie Mason opened the door and for a second each of them looked involuntarily but not impertinently to see what had happened to the other. Jackie was wearing a blue double-breasted suit with a fraternal button. His hair was faded but it was still yellow and it still had a natural wave, though it was thinner and receding from his temples. His face was heavier, but his eyes still had their old worried look.

  “Why, Charley,” he said, “I’d have known you anywhere.”

  “Hello, Jackie,” Charles said, and then something told him that Jack Mason no longer liked to be called Jackie. “I’m awfully glad to see you,” and for a moment it all was the way things used to be. They had been best friends once and they still were friends, without having anything in common.

  “Come in,” Jack said, “and give me your hat and coat. The old hooks are still under the stairs. I wish you’d let us know instead of going to the hotel, I mean the inn, but of course I understand exactly why you did it. If you’d stayed with us the Marchbys might not have understood, and it’s quite an inn, isn’t it? I go there Tuesdays to Rotary.”

  “I didn’t know you were in the Rotary,” Charles said, and Jackie looked worried.

  “I can’t say I’m a conscientious Rotarian, but the crowd down at Wright-Sherwin all sort of felt that there should be more Wright-Sherwin representation. Seeing you is going to be a thrill for Mother and Father. They’re right in the parlor, Charley”—but Mr. and Mrs. Mason were no longer in the parlor. They were already crowding into the hall. Mr. Mason was in his shirt sleeves, as he always was before supper.

  “Charley, dear,” Mrs. Mason said, and she kissed him. “You haven’t changed at all … except you look more like Sam. Virgil, I think at least you might put on your coat for Charley.”

  “Charley’s used to it,” Mr. Mason said. “Charley isn’t company. I want to show him what I’m making,” and they all went into the parlor.

  The center table of the parlor was exactly as Charles remembered it, covered with something that Mr. Mason was making. It was now a model stagecoach. The pieces were sawed out but you had to smooth them down and put them together from the diagram.

  “Now look at this damn thing,” Mr. Mason said. “It says the front axle should go here and when you try to fit it there isn’t room. I bet I’m the only person who ever got as far as trying to fit in the axle.”

  “May and Jeffrey are coming over right after supper,” Mrs. Mason said. “It will be just like old times. Sit down, dear, and I’ll see what’s happening in the kitchen. We have Lucy Slavin working for us.”

  “Lucy Slavin?” Charles repeated.

  “You know, dear,” Mrs. Mason said. “She’s Mary Callahan’s niece—and you must go and see Mary tomorrow.”

  Jackie Mason cleared his throat.

  “There are all sorts of people Charley ought to see tomorrow. Would you care for an old-fashioned cocktail, Charley?”

  “Why, Jack,” Mrs. Mason said, “I’m afraid we haven’t anything in the house.”

  Jackie Mason cleared his throat again.

  “It’s locked in the sideboard, Mother,” he said. “There was some left over, you know, from the time when Mr. Lovell and Jessica were here to dinner. There’s quite a lot left over.”

  There was a short, sharp silence and Jackie Mason seemed startled by it. He cleared his throat again and his face looked redder.

  “There’s so much for all of us to catch up with,” Mrs. Mason said, “but we have all night. You must tell us your news, Charley, and I’ll tell you our news, and Jack will tell you his news, that is if it is news.”

  “Life has just been going on,” Jackie said. “I’ll go and fix those old-fashioneds,” and he went out into the kitchen.

  “Nothing’s been the same,” Mrs. Mason said. “I still keep thinking that the Grays are there next door—but Esther keeps writing me the news and I write her the news and she sent us some pictures you sent her, Charley, of Nancy and the children and that lovely home of yours. We’re all so proud the way you’re getting on—the president of a bank—” Charles found himself laughing nervously.

  “Mother exaggerates things,” he said. “She’s showing off to you. I’m not the president of any bank. I’m just one of those boys who are trying to be and an awful lot of us are trying.”

  “We know you will be, dear,” Mrs. Mason said. “Shall I tell about Jackie, Virgil? Or shall I let Jackie tell Charles?”

  “I don’t know what you want to tell him,” Mr. Mason said, “but you might as well if you want to, Margaret.”

  Charles found himself sitting up straighter.

  “Jackie’s the head of the accounting department at Wright-Sherwin,” Mrs. Mason said. “They had a new man from out of town after Mr. Howell died but he didn’t get on with Norman Stanley. Jack gets on beautifully with Norman Stanley.”

  “Well,” Charles said, “that’s wonderful. That’s more than I could have done—get on with Norman Stanley.”

  Then Jackie was back with a tray and three old-fashioned cocktails.

  “Father,” he said, “would you mind moving some of the stagecoach so I can put this down on a corner of the table?”

  “Put it on another table,” Mr. Mason said. “If anything moves here, the whole thing will go.”

  “Jackie,” Mrs. Mason said, “I’ve just been telling Charley your news.”

  “Now, Mother,” Jackie Mason began, “I especially asked you—”

  “Not that news, dear,” Mrs. Mason said. “The other news, that you’re the head of the accounting department at Wright-Sherwin.”

  “Oh,” Jackie Mason said, and he looked relieved. “It isn’t much, Charley, but the company’s bigger than it was when you were there.”

  “I think it’s wonderful, Jackie,” Charles said, but of course it was not wonderful. Jack Mason was made to be the head of an accounting department someday in a small-town factory.

  “You’ll have to come down tomorrow and see the boys,” Jackie said, as he handed him his cocktail. “I hope I haven’t put too much bitters in it.”

  “And there’s
another piece of news,” Mrs. Mason said. “Jackie’s in the Shore Club now.”

  “It isn’t anything,” Jackie said, and he looked worried again. “It isn’t what it used to be, since the war. It’s a good place to take customers now and then. Well, here’s looking at you, Charley.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Mason said, “here’s looking at you. Here’s to the old days, Charley.”

  3

  Second Man in Rome

  When they sat down to supper Charles felt almost as if he were back at home in the family dining room on Spruce Street. Mrs. Mason was not unlike his mother as she sat behind the cocoa cups, and it was the same cracked cocoa they were drinking, clear and bittersweet. It was hard to get now, Mrs. Mason said, and they had done without it during the war, but Mr. Mason had found some in Boston recently. Mr. Mason was going to write a paper about cocoa for the Confessional Club.

  “It’s a funny thing to be writing about with the world the way it is,” Mr. Mason said, “but it might just as well be cocoa as communism.” Surprisingly enough there was quite a lot about cocoa and chocolate in the public library and it would start right with Cortez and the Aztecs. Their ruler, Montezuma, drank cocoa, and he ate small babies, too, that were cooked in a kind of chafing dish.

  “Now, Virgil,” Mrs. Mason said, “you’re not going to put that in about the babies, are you?”

  He could almost hear his father and mother speaking.

  The room had almost the same proportions as the old Gray dining room. There were the same plain chairs, a pressed-glass butter dish, and a breadboard with its loaf of homemade bread. The wooden shutters had been drawn and now they shut out a distracted world. His father, Charles was thinking, would have loved to discuss Aztecs eating babies. He could see his mother’s incredulous but patient look and Dorothea’s expression of horror and his father’s delighted smile, and if Elbridge Sterne had been there of course he would never have heard anything about Montezuma or Aztecs either. It was hard to realize that his father was not there, when Mr. and Mrs. Mason began talking about him.

  “He was always saying he was going to beat the system,” Mr. Mason said.

  “Yes,” Charles said, “I remember.”

  “Well,” Mr. Mason said, “maybe he did beat the system, in his own particular way.”

  “Yes, perhaps he did,” Charles said, and he saw that Jackie looked nervous, “but he never did get me that pony,” and they all laughed just as though his father were not dead. He seemed to be with them in the dining room, pleased that they were speaking of him.

  “Perhaps Charley would rather we talked about something else,” Jackie Mason said.

  “Oh no,” Charles said, “I don’t mind at all.”

  “Of course he doesn’t, Jackie,” Mrs. Mason said, “and, Charley dear, you know what people used to say about John Gray’s running through money—people who didn’t know him as well as we did?”

  “Yes,” Charles said, and he found himself smiling, “but then Father never cared.”

  “Well, no one has ever been able to say that he didn’t leave his wife and daughter comfortable. He didn’t mind about himself but he always thought of other people.”

  “Yes,” Charles said, and he found himself sitting up straighter and speaking more carefully. All the Masons were looking at him and he took a sip of water. “Yes, I know what you mean.”

  “We’re all so proud of him,” Mrs. Mason said, “and then there was that fund for the library.”

  He could not get away from the idea that his father was there with them, and if he were, Charles knew that he would have been very much amused.

  “I don’t believe you’ve ever seen the bookplate for the John Gray Fund,” Jackie Mason said. “The library trustees had one designed especially. By the way, I was made a trustee last year.” He mentioned the news casually and modestly but Charles had not forgotten its value.

  “Jackie’s in everything these days,” Mr. Mason said. “Why, he’s even a director of the Dock Street Bank.”

  Jackie looked worried. He folded his napkin carefully.

  “Charley will get wrong ideas about me,” he said, and he laughed. “What’s a local savings bank to Charley?”

  For a moment it all was a little like one of his daydreams of coming back to Clyde. As he sat there with his herringbone suit still neatly pressed, he must have looked to them much as Arthur Slade had once looked to him, the aura of a city bank still about him, polite and measured, with all his edges smoothed.

  “Charley, dear,” Mrs. Mason said, “tell us where you live and what you do. Tell us about everything.”

  He folded his napkin, forgetting that he was a guest. They were all waiting for him to speak. He was a rich and glittering visitor from a strange and foreign land.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m in the trust department in the bank and that keeps me pretty busy. I don’t ever seem to have much time to see Nancy and the children, but perhaps I will get time if everything turns out right. Nancy’s an awfully nice girl.”

  It seemed very necessary to say that Nancy was a nice girl.

  “We’ve always wondered,” Mrs. Mason said, “why William wasn’t named after his grandfather.”

  “Nancy named him,” Charles answered. “I wanted to name him Sam.” He stopped and for a second it seemed as though Sam were with them too. “But Nancy said let’s make a clean break of it and call him Bill. Well, we live in a place called Sycamore Park …” He found himself speaking more quickly, more easily. He was laying out his whole life on the dining room table, just as though he were dealing from a deck of cards, and it sounded rather well.

  “There’s a good country day school for the children, but I want Bill to go to boarding school next year. And then there’s a good country club; and then there are, well, my business associates. Nancy and I have a lot to keep us busy.”

  “We have a picture of the house,” Mrs. Mason said. “It looks so new and lovely with your car standing in front of it on the driveway.”

  “Of course, there was that gap while I was away.”

  “You mean at the war?” Jackie Mason said.

  All at once his going to the war was an action which he wanted to explain and justify. The Masons were almost the only people who could have understood all his reasoning.

  “I shouldn’t have gone,” he said, “at my age and with a wife and two children. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t help you in a business way. Nancy didn’t like it and I don’t blame her much.” He was not sure himself why he had gone to the war but he was almost sure. “Sam went, and you know I always thought a lot of Sam. And then—well, maybe I was tired of beating the system.” He laughed, but only because he felt it would be a good idea to laugh. “When I got there it was just the bank all over again with a different set of rules.”

  He had dealt the cards of his little game and they were in order on the table.

  “Well,” Mr. Mason began, “I think it was a mighty fine thing,” but he did not finish because the doorbell rang.

  “That’s May and Jeffrey,” Mrs. Mason said. “I guess they thought we’d be finished supper.”

  “Charley,” Jackie Mason said, “would you care for a cigarette? Or would you rather have a cigar? They’re right in the sideboard.”

  “No, thanks,” Charles said. “Just a cigarette.”

  May and Jeffrey Meader came into the dining room and everyone was standing up and the room seemed very crowded, with those who were there and those who were not. The moment he saw May Mason he thought of the summer afternoon when May had been sitting alone in the back room trying to play “The Pink Lady” on the old upright piano and he had brought her that note from Sam; and he knew that May, stoutish, middle-aged and gray-headed, remembered, too.

  “Charley,” she said, “I guess I’ve got to kiss you.” He could tell from the way she spoke that it was an impulsive break from what she had planned to do or say. “You look like Sam.”

  “I’ve thought of you a lot, May,
” he said. It had a brittle, banal sound and he wished he could have thought of something better. “I’m awfully glad if you think I look like Sam.” It was a very public, awkward moment, because everyone was listening.

  Jeffrey Meader was pudgy, with horn-rimmed spectacles, and almost bald. He looked like someone in a small real estate and insurance office, but then this was exactly the way he should have looked.

  “Why, Charley looks like a good prospect,” he said. “Hi, Charley.”

  “Hi, Jeffrey,” Charles said.

  “And here’s Edwina,” May went on, as though she had not heard Jeffrey. “You remember Edwina, don’t you? She was Dorothea’s flower girl.” May’s daughter was standing in the doorway, looking just as May had once looked except that her blond hair was cut in a page boy bob instead of being long and tied up in a knot, and she, too, must have been the prettiest girl in her class at high school.

  “Why, I’d know Edwina anywhere,” he said. “She hasn’t changed at all.”

  “Malvina’s married,” May said. “She’s living in Brockton and as long as we’re just the family I’ll tell you Malvina’s news. What do you think—she’s expecting, Charley.”

  “May means Malvina’s going to have a baby,” Jackie said. “I wish you wouldn’t put it that way, May. It sounds local.”

  “All right, all right,” Jeffrey Meader said. “No matter how it sounds May’s going to be a grandmother any time now and that sounds pretty funny, doesn’t it?”

  “Now you’re here,” May said, “how long are you going to be here, Charley?”

  He was a visitor again, that successful visitor from the city who had left them long ago, and his voice sounded polite and assured when he answered.

  “Only over tomorrow, I’m afraid. I’ll have to be taking the midnight from Boston tomorrow. I’m sorry I can’t stay longer but perhaps some other time—”

  “There are certain people that Charley ought to see before he goes back,” Jackie said, “and there’ll be talk if he doesn’t. I’ll make a list and go over it with Charley.”