Barbara Greer

by Stephen Birmingham

  After he finished they sat quietly for a long time at the edge of the dock, on the little wooden pier. Then Barbara said, ‘You’re very honest. Thank you for being honest.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘Honest!’ he said. ‘Yes, perhaps that’s one thing you can say for me—that I’m honest.’

  ‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I admire honest people!’

  And he stared across the still water of the lake for a long time. Then he said, ‘But there are other things—almost as important.’

  ‘What things?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s a certain manner,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a certain manner, a way of doing things, that I want to learn.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ he said. ‘But there’s something, a manner, that I was never taught and I need to learn it now. It’s something you know already, because you were taught it. You grew up with it and got it that way. I didn’t, that’s all.’

  ‘I think you have lovely manners,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘I’m not talking about manners,’ he said and his voice was cross. ‘I’m talking about—well, about things like this.’ He leaned his head toward her. ‘Smell my hair,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just go ahead, smell my hair …’

  She sniffed his dark head; it smelled warmly of pine and, possibly, lemon. ‘Very nice,’ she said. She smiled at him, puzzled and amused.

  But his face was serious. ‘Cologne,’ he said. ‘I poured it on my head without thinking—by mistake. Do you see what I mean? I used to think that it was—you know, very correct—in very good taste—to pour cologne on my head! So I bought this cologne—bay rum, in a fancy bottle. But just the other day I found out that it isn’t good taste—it’s something only fops do! But this morning I did it again, out of habit. You see—I’ve got so many crazy and wrong ideas to get out of my head. And there are so many things I’ve got to learn.’

  ‘Are things like that really so important to you?’ she asked him.

  ‘Of course they are. They’re important to anyone who doesn’t have them. The word for what I’m talking about is poise.’

  ‘But I think you have a great deal of poise.’

  ‘I don’t, not really. I’m trying to learn it by watching people.’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘People like your mother and father,’ he said. He looked at her. ‘Why am I telling you all this?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m rather glad you are,’ she said.

  ‘Well, it’s important to me—very important now. I want, you see, to be inconspicuous among people like—well, like your family. I want to be unobtrusive, not to be noticed. I don’t want to stand out. That’s what poise is.’

  ‘You’re a funny boy,’ she said. ‘That’s not what I would say poise was. Not at all.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘It’s not the same thing for you. I know that. But to me—well, to me it’s like a Persian cat. Have you ever noticed the way a Persian cat goes from room to room? He goes so quietly no one really sees him come and go, but every move is made with dignity. And grace. That’s the way I want to be …’

  Then he said, ‘You see—at Harvard—I met boys who knew exactly what they wanted to be like—they wanted to be like their fathers. In fact, things were so certain for them that they didn’t even have to worry about what they wanted to be like! They would be like their fathers, that’s all. But I’m different, because I don’t want to be like my father. I’d rather be like yours.’

  They sat silently for a while. A breeze ruffled the lake and the hot sun beat down upon them. Finally Barney said, ‘I suppose Peggy and your mother will be getting home soon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They stood up. Suddenly, almost impulsively, he reached for her hands. ‘You know,’ he said ‘you’re very nice. I like you very much. You’re very nice.’ And then he kissed her. It was a strange kiss, a quick touch of her cheek with his mouth, but it startled her because of its swiftness and strength.

  Immediately he said, ‘I’m sorry I did that. Forgive me.’

  So she laughed lightly and said, ‘Of course.’

  6

  Driving fast under the trees, Woody asked her, ‘What are you thinking about?’

  Though she was not, she said, ‘I’m thinking about what will happen if there’s another war, how awful it will be.’

  ‘Ah …’ he said. ‘Why are you thinking about that on a beautiful summer night?’

  Because the answer to his first question had been a lie, this one was more difficult. She dodged it. ‘I’m thinking about a lot of things,’ she said. She felt him look at her briefly, then fix his eyes on the road again. They sped along, in Woody’s raspberry-coloured car, toward Burketown. The night had grown cold and she hugged her elbows against her sides. The wind whipped around her, over the low windshield. Woody had turned up the turtle collar of his orange sweater and had put on a jaunty, black suêde snap-brim cap. She was very tired. She had not actually wanted to come with him. But after dinner he had started telling her about his apartment. He had redecorated it since she had seen it last, he told her, and it looked its best at night. He begged her to let him show it to her. Her opinion of it, he insisted, was essential, so she had said yes, though it was nearly midnight.

  ‘Cold?’ he asked her.

  ‘No, no,’ she lied again.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What are you really thinking about?’

  She hesitated. ‘Do you suppose they’re happy?’ she asked him.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Peggy and Barney.’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you suppose so?’

  ‘Because it seems to me that if Peggy happened to think that being happy was a necessary part of being married, she’d insist on it. She’s that kind of girl.’

  ‘You’re rather down on Peggy these days, aren’t you, Woody?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you like her?’

  She looked at him and he was smiling slightly. ‘I never cared for militant women,’ he said. ‘Besides, of the Woodcock girls, you were always my favourite.’

  They drove on in silence. She thought of Peggy’s small, brown, intense face—a round, snub face, framed in a circle of short, smooth, dark brown hair. Her eyes were wide and dark and earnest. They had been sitting at opposite ends of Peggy’s big bed one night that summer when Peggy had first told her that she was determined to marry Barney. ‘Of course they disapprove!’ Peggy had said. ‘Of course. I was prepared for it. But I’m twenty-three years old. I’m a free agent. They can disapprove all they want, but they can’t stop me! I’ll listen to all their arguments—let them lecture me on how unwise it is, how oil and water won’t mix! I’ll listen to them—but it won’t make any difference. I’ll go along with them—up to a point. Beyond that point, I draw the line.’ And, with her lacquered fingernail, she drew a swift, sharp line across the surface of the bedspread in demonstration. ‘Barney is a leader,’ she said, ‘a leader! A champion—that kind of leader. Everything he’s done, he’s done for himself. He can do anything he sets out to do. Whatever he begins, he’ll finish—and right at the top! Because that’s the kind of person Barney is. A leader.’

  They were coming into Burketown now and Woody slowed the car.

  Woody’s apartment was on Main Street, over the Burketown First National Bank. Woody loved to make jokes about his address, ‘I’m thinking of cutting a trap door through my floor down to the bank,’ he said once. ‘In fact, I told old Mr. Willard, the treasurer, about it and he was quite startled. Startled is hardly the word. For a minute I thought he was going to give up the ghost then and there, right at his desk. Then he cleared his throat and said, ‘I don’t think we could permit that, Woodcock!’ So I told him that my plan didn’t involve asking permission—that if I did it I’d do it in the dead of night with a trusted accomplice. The poor old soul got even more startled. Then he explai
ned, very carefully, that my plan was ‘not feasible.’ It would set off, he told me, all sorts of burglar alarms. I told him I’d taken all that into consideration—I’d figured out a way to cut the wires. Poor Mr. Willard—he still gives me funny looks whenever I come into the bank.’

  He drew the car up, now, in front of the bank and stopped. ‘Good old Burketown First National,’ he said. ‘It gives me a cosy feeling, going to sleep at night, thinking of all George P. Willard’s money down there, right underneath me.’

  They got out of the car and entered the building by a side door that led up a flight of stairs. She followed him. At the top, he produced a key and unlocked his door. She waited while he groped for the light switch.

  Originally, the apartment had contained four small rooms. When he moved in, Woody had got permission to knock down the partitions and now the apartment consisted of one enormous room. He turned on the lights—two lamps that hung, suspended from the ceiling by thin wires, in plastic bubble shades, and two small spotlights, concealed in two corners of the room, that were arranged so that their beams merged, precisely, upon a Jackson Pollock print that hung against one wall. She immediately saw that, with the exception of the picture and the arrangement of lights, he had, indeed, changed everything. When she had last seen the apartment, its walls had been stark, flat white. Now they were covered in pale, golden burlap. Between the two tall windows at the end of the room hung an assortment of primitive African masks; in the mouth of one of these, Woody had whimsically placed an antique meerschaum pipe, that dangled from the mask’s lips at a rakish angle. Even much of the furniture was new. Gone were the low, delicate modern pieces on slender brass legs. Instead, in the centre of the room, set in a square, was an arrangement of three wide sofas covered in a heavy Harris tweed. In the centre of this square, facing her, its mouth opened wide in a savage snarl, was an immense polar bear rung.

  ‘Well, what do you think of it?’ Woody asked her.

  ‘Fantastic!’ she said.

  He moved around the room, showing her the cabinets that opened with sliding doors, revealing bookcases, the components of his high-fidelity phonograph, and his collection of records. Closets, too, were concealed behind sliding doors and he opened these, showing her where his suits were neatly hung, row upon row, and the racks that held his shoes, the narrow drawers that contained his neatly folded shirts, arranged according to colour.

  ‘You’re a wonderful housekeeper, Woody,’ she said.

  ‘But do you like it?’ he asked, closing the doors and turning to the room again.

  ‘Oh, I do, I do!’

  ‘It’s a new me,’ he said half-seriously. ‘I expect a whole new personality to emerge. I’m through with all that effete, modern stuff. This is to be my explorer personality. See the shrunken head?’ He pointed to the shrivelled head that hung, from a knot of black hair, on a wooden peg.

  ‘Where in the world did you get that?’

  ‘Some taxidermist that sold me the polar bear. He assured me, however, that it was not his own handiwork.’

  She shivered. ‘It’s ghastly,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think so? I think it’s rather charming.’

  ‘Oh, Woody!’ she said. ‘I approve of everything else. But not that head.’

  ‘Let me fix you a nightcap,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘Oh, I really must get back. It’s terribly late.’

  ‘Just a short one.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Very short.’

  He went to the corner of the room where his kitchen was, and removed an ice tray from the wall refrigerator. Barbara sat down in one of the deep, tweed sofas, burying her shoes in the polar bear’s white fur. ‘It’s a little like a movie set,’ she said.

  ‘Is that an insult or a compliment?’ he asked her. He crossed the room carrying two drinks in short glasses. He gave her one and sank down beside her on the sofa.

  ‘No, I like it very much,’ she said. ‘Except for that one detail.’

  ‘The head? Well, do you remember your grandmother went through that spiritualism business and was all mixed up with communicating with the other world?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘years ago.’

  ‘Well, she used to have what she called a control. The guy she got her messages through, or something. And the control was some old Indian—he had a name, too, but I’ve forgotten what it was. Anyway, I’ve got a theory—’ he pointed, ‘that your grandmother’s Indian and my Indian are one and the same guy!’

  She laughed. ‘Of course!’ she said.

  He touched his glass to hers. ‘Cheers!’ he said. ‘And may fair fortune continue to smile upon your lovely face.’ He took a swallow of his drink and then sat back, pushing his shoulders deep into the sofa cushions. He sighed.

  ‘It was a nice evening tonight, didn’t you think?’ Barbara asked.

  He stared straight ahead. ‘Yes,’ he said. And then, suddenly, ‘Do you think he’s a conniver?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Barney.’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘I don’t understand it. I don’t quite know what’s going on. Did you watch them tonight?’

  ‘They seemed perfectly normal to me.’

  ‘Did you hear Peggy after dinner—talking to your father?’

  She said, ‘I saw Peggy talking to Daddy, yes. I didn’t hear what they talked about.’

  He laughed, then frowned quickly and stared into his glass. ‘Stock,’ he said. ‘They were talking about paper company stock. From the way she talked, I got the idea she wants to buy some more.’

  Barbara hesitated. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘of course Peggy and I both own a little stock. And, I suppose, if Peggy wants some more—well, why shouldn’t she buy some more?’

  He turned and looked at her intently. ‘But why?’ he asked. ‘Why does she want more stock? Unless it’s for the reason I mentioned before. And whose idea is it—hers or Barney’s. Do you think he’s put her up to it—because the stock isn’t available to him? Who is running that little ménage, I wonder?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it really doesn’t sound so—mysterious or sinister to me. Perhaps they’re planning on having a baby or something and they’re sort of trying to set things up.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just don’t know. She’s certainly been different since she married him. And he—well, he’s a complete enigma. At the mill everybody loves him. He’s very polite, cooperative—works hard. And yet there’s something about him—I don’t know. It’s as though, when you talk to him, he pulls a little curtain down between you—like a scrim. You can see part of him through the scrim, but not all. Have you noticed that?’

  She glanced quickly at her wrist watch. It was twenty minutes to one. ‘Not really, no,’ she said.

  He was still looking at her. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you knew Barney better than anybody else in the family. With the exception of Peggy. He always liked you. He still does.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Woody,’ she said, ‘I think you’re making mountains of molehills, I really do. I’m sure there’s nothing—’

  ‘But you did, didn’t you? Get to know him quite well, I mean? That summer you were both here—before he and Peggy got married?’

  ‘Well, we talked, of course and—’

  ‘And he does like you. I can tell. Tonight, for instance, I noticed that whenever he had anything to say—even if he was saying it to somebody else—he seemed to be saying it to you.’

  ‘It’s just my fatal charm,’ she said.

  ‘I’m quite serious. I think—I thought tonight—that probably if you hadn’t been married already, he would have wanted to marry you—not Peggy.’

  ‘Really, Woody,’ she said, ‘that’s pretty silly.’ She put down her glass. ‘It’s getting terribly late. I really must get home.’

  He didn’t move. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘we’ve never met any of his family? There’s a brother he talks about somet
imes—but he’s never shown up around here. His father and mother didn’t come to the wedding. They’ve never come down. Don’t you think that’s a little strange?’

  She remembered, once, asking him whether his mother and father would be at the wedding. He had said no, and when she asked him why not, he had answered, simply, ‘Because I’m ashamed of them.’ But now, to Woody, she said. ‘Don’t forget, Woody, that Barney made a very big decision once—to leave the Church. There was undoubtedly family feeling there—there probably still is. I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with a young man who wants to build his own life, break away from his parents. I understand his childhood wasn’t particularly happy—and I frankly admire that quality in Barney. He wants to carve his own niche. I think he’s a very honest, straightforward and sincere person. I don’t think he has any ulterior motives—or guile—or whatever you want to call it. I think he’s—well, just what he seems to be. A nice, normal, sensible person. And as far as Peggy goes—perhaps she is ambitious for him. It’s natural for a wife to be ambitious for her husband.’

  He took a swallow of his drink, then slowly began to smile at her. ‘Then why,’ he said, ‘a few minutes ago, in the car, did you ask me if I thought they were happy?’

  Suddenly she was a little angry. ‘Peggy happens to be my sister,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think it’s strange for me to hope that my sister’s happy!’

  ‘Hope. Yes, hope, you hope so. You’re not sure.’

  ‘Woody, it’s very late and we’re talking in circles. Please take me home. I’m very tired.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Cousin,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t mean to make you mad. It’s just that I think you and I are both worried about them. Perhaps we both ought to admit that we’re worried.’

  She stood up. ‘I’m worried about getting some sleep,’ she said.

  He still sat, looking up at her from the sofa. ‘I’m sorry, Barb. I really am. Let’s not squabble. You and I don’t like it when we squabble.’