Barbara Greer

by Stephen Birmingham

  Looking at the picture, which showed Barbara in tennis shorts, her dark hair pulled back in a scarf, Carson agreed that she was not bad, not bad at all.

  And so, at the dance, when Carson caught sight of Woody across the crowded floor of the Dillon Gymnasium, dancing with his cousin Barbara, he made his way through the moving couples and cut in on them. There were cheerful introductions and, for a moment, Carson and Woody were laughing, best-friend roommates. ‘Watch out for him, Barb!’ Woody said. ‘He’s a notorious masher. That’s why he came stag.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that,’ Barbara Woodcock said, smiling. And a few minutes later when they were alone on the dance floor, she looked at Carson directly and smiled again. Her smile was the carefully developed, practised smile of a pretty girl, wide and lipsticked, and she knew how to make her eyes sparkle, but still it was a wonderful smile and she swept him with it. ‘You’re exactly the way Woody described you in his letters,’ she said. ‘Exactly!’

  Carson laughed. ‘That’s a loyal roommate for you!’ he said ‘How did he describe me?’

  She looked at him very seriously. ‘You’re very good for Woody,’ she said. ‘Did you know that? He hasn’t been too happy at Princeton. But you’ve been one of the saving factors. He admires you so.’

  They danced, and then—too soon for Carson—Ed Hill cut in on them.

  Perhaps two hours later, going down the steps to the men’s room, Carson met Woody, alone, coming up. Woody’s hand gripped the stair rail. ‘Carson!’ Woody said, reaching out with his free hand to stop him. ‘Carson—wait a minute.’ His voice sounded strange and choked and his blue eyes were clouded. Woody held his face close and Carson could smell the faint, sweet odour of whisky.

  ‘What have you done with Barbara, old man?’ Carson asked easily.

  ‘She’s all right. Listen, Carson,’ Woody said. ‘I want to talk to you. Can I talk to you?’

  ‘Sure,’ Carson said. ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Listen,’ Woody said. ‘Listen, I mean it. I’ve got to talk to you. Can we—’ He gestured around him loosely. ‘Can we talk somewhere where it’s not so public?’

  ‘Sure. Where?’ Carson said, and he added, ‘Are you sure Barbara’s okay?’

  ‘She’s fine. Fine. Don’t worry about Barbara. Look,’ he pointed. ‘Let’s go down there—those other stairs.’

  ‘To the basement you mean?’

  ‘No—just over there. Behind the door. Where it’s not so public.’

  Carson followed Woody slowly down the steps to the door that led to the basement stairs. Woody pushed open the heavy door and the two of them stepped inside, on the darkened landing.

  ‘What’s on your mind?’ Carson asked again.

  ‘Don’t worry about Barbara,’ Woody repeated. ‘Don’t ever worry about Barbara, Carson, she’s always fine. Always.’ He giggled. ‘I’m drunk, Carson,’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t you get a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, no,’ Woody said. ‘I want to be drunk, that’s why I’m drunk. Listen, Carson.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Listen—I’m telling you,’ Woody said. There was only a faint light shining from the street light through an upper window; in it, Carson could not see the expression on Woody’s face. ‘Carson—’ Woody began.

  ‘Yes. What’s the matter?’

  ‘She told you.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘She told you. She told me she told you.’

  ‘Who told me what?’

  ‘Barbara. She told you. She told you how much I admire you.’

  ‘Well—’ he began.

  ‘No. Stop interrupting,’ Woody said. ‘Let me finish.’ His hands twitched as if tugged by invisible wires. ‘I know she told you because she said she did. She told you that I thought you were one of the few things—the few admirable things in the Class of 1950. In the Classes of 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1950. In this whole damn, snotty, phony, middle-class white-shoe college! And it’s true, Carson, because all the rest of them, all the rest, are nothing but shits, shits.’

  ‘Okay,’ Carson said pleasantly. ‘Now look, let’s go up and—’

  ‘No, I haven’t finished. Listen. You’re my roommate, Carson. Sometimes I just don’t think. I forget. With the music, I mean. I didn’t want to disturb you. You used to say you enjoyed it!’

  ‘Sure,’ Carson said. ‘Sure, Woody, I did. I did enjoy it. It was very nice.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’ he asked. He was speaking faster now. ‘Do you mean that? Because—that day—that night—that time you said—you know, that time you moved out? It hurt me. It did. It hurt me terribly. It was like—it was as if you had put a knife right through my stomach, through here. Do you know what I mean, do you know how much I wanted—do you understand. Danny, do you?’

  ‘Danny?’ he said. ‘Who’s Danny?’

  ‘I mean Carson. Danny’s someone you remind me of—someone who used to give me swimming lessons. You remind me of him. But what I’m saying is, do you understand?’

  ‘Sure,’ Carson said kindly. ‘Sure I do. So let’s—’

  ‘Listen!’ Woody commanded. ‘Listen! I’m telling you everything. I’ve got to. Everything. The one thing, the important thing. What two people—like the Greeks used to say. Because—because I do admire you, Carson. Worship you because you are fine. You’re fine. And decent. And true, and if you loved the music, if you say you really, truly loved the music, then …’ His voice seemed to vanish, to become a whisper. ‘Then … then … are you listening to me? Do you understand?’

  A warning, then, swift and sudden came like a short cold gasp in his chest and stomach; Carson felt it, wondered why he hadn’t felt it there before. He thought: oh, Christ! A fairy. But immediately innocence, or perhaps loyalty, made him dismiss the thought, ignore it, try to save the moment. ‘I understand,’ he said quickly. ‘Let’s go back to the dance.’

  But Woody had refused to have the moment saved. ‘No,’ he said in a distant, whispery voice. ‘No,’ he said despairingly. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t see, you don’t understand that I love you, Carson. I love you,’ and Woody’s hand groped towards him palely in the dark.

  Carson drew back, hard, against the door, almost falling upon it. He turned and pulled it open, shouldered through it, and let it slam closed behind him. He ran up the stairs.

  He hadn’t been sure, exactly, where he was going. Then he saw Barbara Woodcock standing alone. His first impulse was to avoid her, but she had seen him and started toward him.

  ‘Where in the world is Woody?’ she asked him, her eyes worried.

  He forced himself to smile. ‘Let’s dance,’ he said, and then, as he led her toward the floor, he said, ‘I guess Woody had—you know—I guess he must have had a little too much to drink. I guess he’s gone somewhere to sleep it off.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Do you think we should try to find him?’

  ‘No. Let’s just let him sleep it off. That’s the best thing.’

  They danced. Woody did not appear again that evening.

  They danced and danced. Carson talked a good deal. Whether he was compensating for his experience on the stairs or not, he did not know, but he became quite animated. He told Barbara funny stories about his days at Lawrenceville, all the hare-brained things he and his friends had done, about what characters some of the teachers were. Barbara seemed to enjoy the stories enormously. ‘You’re one of the wittiest people I’ve ever met!’ she said once. She laughed until the tears came to her eyes. Then she told him about her own times at school, and about Burketown, where she and Woody both lived, about her father’s farm where they kept saddle horses and had a lake for boating, and about her little sister, Peggy, and about her mother, father, and grandmother and grandfather, and what seemed like innumerable aunts, uncles and cousins—all of whom lived in this same middle-sized Connecticut city. ‘They ought to call it Woodcockville,’ Carson said once, and she laughed as if he had said the funnie
st thing in the world. ‘Don’t let anybody cut in on us,’ she said. And later, ‘I never had so much fun with anyone in my life!’ And still later, ‘Do you think we ought to see where Woody is?’ ‘Don’t worry,’ he told her.

  Walking her slowly back to her room at the Inn, along the dark, shadowy sidewalks, under the lighted Gothic windows of the dormitories from which flowed music and laughter and, inevitably, the sound of showers running, Carson decided that he was in love with her and walked more slowly, swinging her hand in his. They talked, and their talk was both intense and trivial.

  ‘The trouble is, I’m not smart,’ Barbara said. ‘I’m wasting Daddy’s money going to college. I wanted to go to college, but now I’m afraid I’m wasting his money. I keep wondering if it wouldn’t be better if I got a job somewhere and did something.’

  ‘Of course you’re smart,’ he told her. ‘What do you mean you’re not smart?’

  ‘I’m not, I’m not,’ she insisted soberly. ‘I cram furiously for tests and pass them—just barely—and three days later I’ve forgotten everything I learned. My friend Nancy Rafferty is just the opposite. She’s brilliant, really—gets nothing but A’s. She’s the sort of person who deserves to go to college.’

  ‘Oh, I’m no great brain either,’ Carson said. ‘Don’t get the idea that I’m a great brain.’

  ‘Oh, yes you are,’ she said. ‘I can tell. You’re very intelligent and Woody’s told me what good marks you get.’

  ‘Ah, what difference do marks make? Do marks make any difference?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘they do. They make a great deal of difference. That’s why I know you’re quite smart and I’m not. I daydream too much …’

  ‘Yes, that’s my trouble, too.’

  ‘Daydreaming?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t seem to be like a daydreamer, Carson. Not really. No, you don’t strike me as that type at all.’

  ‘I do, though. Daydream a lot.’

  ‘What do you daydream about?’

  ‘Lots of things. Life, going into the Army, the future. What life means, things like that. The trouble with me is, I’m an idealist.’

  ‘Are you, Carson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Isn’t that funny! Because I’m an idealist, too!’

  Remembering that evening now, so many years later, made him smile. Having confessed that they were both idealists, their relationship for the next few months continued on a quaintly cerebral level. Maintaining it was difficult, but eventually they had decided that hedonists were what they really were.

  He had never mentioned the incident with Woody to anyone. How could he have? Whom could he have told? Born in Maryland, birthplace of gentlemen, Carson had taken the gentleman’s code to live by. Born to a world that called its father ‘sir,’ and clicked its heels perceptibly when spoken to by its elders, trained to look another man square in the eye and give him a firm handshake, instructed to believe that strenuous exercise was the best way to rid the mind of impure thoughts, that a man should start each day with a bath, a clean shirt and two clean handkerchiefs, that the only scent a man should have about him was the scent of soap, that suspenders were more healthful than belts for the male abdomen, that socks should be of dark, solid colours and neckties should never be red, he had also been taught never to intrude upon the sorrows of the less fortunate, nor speak of them to others. Besides, it was not the sort of thing one could tell another person. Even years later, after he and Barbara were married, after they had become accustomed to talking of such things between themselves with freedom and candour, without embarrassment, he never told her. Part of it was because he lived by the gentleman’s code. But part of it, too, was because, somewhere in his head, he had always had a vision of constancy and loyalty, an old-fashioned sort of honour and this picture, when he chose to glance at it, reassured him and bolstered him.

  During their engagement and after they were married, Carson and Barbara saw Woody deWinter from time to time. It was inevitable. After all, he was Barbara’s cousin and lived in the same town as her parents did. He and Woody, whenever they met, spoke to each other pleasantly and politely. But Carson knew. And Woody knew he knew. That was all, and enough. No one else would ever know it, and each man knew this. In fact, their mutual silence may have, after a number of years had passed, given each man a small, tough kernel of respect for the other—a respect that they would otherwise not have shared.

  But, at the time, Carson only felt sorry for Woody.

  Woody went home to Burketown for Christmas vacation that year and, Carson heard later, tried to hang himself with the twisted silk cord of his bathrobe from the high clothes-bar in his bedroom closet. He had been found, half alive, by his mother’s maid, and had been revived. A note—the contents of which were never revealed—was in the roll of his portable typewriter.

  When Carson had heard about this, back at Princeton, he felt very sorry indeed for Woody. Sorrier than he had ever felt for any person. But by that time, of course, they were no longer roommates.

  He sat, now, on the edge of his bed in the London hotel, thinking of home. He did not encourage thoughts of home on his trips, since he found them saddening and considered them unbusinesslike. Yet, without wanting them to, his thoughts wandered fondly across the Atlantic to the house in Locustville, to Dobie’s and Michael’s faces, to Barbara’s face, to the thought of how slim and pretty she looked in some of the dresses he liked the best. Suddenly, for no clear reason, he remembered her on Friday night, walking across the terrace to put the peas on for dinner—her high, slim-hipped walk. He missed her terribly. He was sorry they had quarrelled the night before he left; it was too bad because it had been their first quarrel in quite a long time. Of course, being away from home made the picture of home more poignant and more dear. He smiled, knowing that perfection exists mostly in retrospect and at a distance, that, if he were home now, he’d probably be paddling Dobie for smearing all the bathroom combs with shaving cream or some such four-year-old indiscretion, and he might yell at Barbara, ‘Why can’t you make these kids behave?’ Or something else that would cause them to remind each other to remember the rules.

  But that wasn’t the point, really. The point was that he loved them, and the faraway idyllic dream of them all, living in a never-never land of perfect peace and happiness, only made the truth that much more apparent to him—that he loved them. If he let himself, he could ache with homesickness. But he wasn’t going to let himself. So he stood up, pulled on his trousers, tossed a necktie around his neck and knotted it, in front of the cracked and yellowed mirror, firmly. He washed his face with chilly water and combed his hair. He put on his shoes then, buffing their toes just slightly with the soles of his socks, put on his jacket, took two handkerchiefs from his open suitcase, folded one in his breast pocket—remembering the little lesson, ‘One for blow and one for show’—and squared his cuffs. He surveyed his finished self once more in the mirror and decided that he looked like an American.

  First, he would have some breakfast. Then he would go over to the Dorchester and settle the arrangements for his mail.

  He had been brooding for several days—perhaps it was weeks or months—about where he was going. It was not that there was anything wrong, actually, with where he was. He had progressed, with the company, at a normal rate of speed. He was thirty years old; by the time he was forty, perhaps, he would be a vice-president. Forty sounded old, but so, in fact, did thirty. Time disturbed him. The advance of it, joined with the increasing wonder: where am I going? In a company with the size and structure of Locustville Chemical, one thing was clear: he would never be president. But that was not what bothered him. He did not want, really, to be president of Locustville Chemical. That had not been his ambition when he joined the company.

  He couldn’t remember, really, what his precise ambition had been then. He supposed he had had one, but it must have been one that was vague and ill-defined. To get ahead was probably what it had been.
But now that he had got, so to speak, ahead, it seemed as though he ought to have some more specific goal. And yet he really had none. And the thought of being thirty years old and goal-less was not a pleasant one. Barbara hated Locustville; she had said so often enough. He had tried to cheer her with general promises, telling her that the answer to the future lay in one of those seven cities where the company had sales offices. But he had not told her the truth about how he felt. Somehow, with the rules they tried to live by, a thing like telling her the truth about how he felt was hard to do; it seemed impolite to do. And it was a hard thing, besides, to put into words. But perhaps he should try.

  With a start, he realised that he had been staring blindly at his image in the mirror, as though hypnotised with the view of Carson Vickers Greer. He straightened the knot of his tie, turned away, picked up his room key, and went to the door. He opened the door and stepped out into the narrow hall, closing the door behind him.

  His room was on the third floor. Next to the single, wire-caged elevator shaft, a flight of stairs descended. He knew that in a hotel like this one the lift, as its name implied, was for upward trips, not downward. And yet, with a slight feeling of vindictiveness because he had not been wakened at nine o’clock as he had asked, he decided not to use the stairs, but to make the lift come up and get him. He pushed the call button hard and heard its bell ring out below.

  Yes, he thought, perhaps he ought to talk to Barbara about the future, and himself, and his restlessness. Perhaps when he got home he would.

  He waited.

  But when a young man has come to that point in life where he does not know where he is going, where he is not sure who he is or whom he once wanted to be—when he is no longer sure why he first set out upon the course he has travelled or why he has continued for the distance that he has—at that point, much as he may love his wife, there are things that he cannot tell her. It is not only because there are rules of courtesy and kindness. It is because the admission of his uncertainty and unknowing might become, in a way, an admission of his lack of manhood. And there is only a shred of consolation in thinking that the questions, which he eventually must answer alone, are questions that a woman might not even understand.