by John O'Hara
“Do you have to tell me now?”
“Right now. I won’t go through the day wanting to tell you. I’ll go crazy if I do.”
“Well, in that case.”
“You sound almost as though you knew what it was I want to tell you.”
“I can guess. It’s about a woman.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then I don’t want to hear it now. I know you’ve been unfaithful. You’ve stayed with another woman. I don’t want to hear the rest of it at this hour of the morning.”
“Well, you’ll have to hear it. If you don’t mind, please, I want to tell you now.”
“Why?”
“Emily, for Christ’s sake.”
“All right.”
“I want to tell you the truth about this because it’s a very special thing. Can you look at it this way? Can you, uh, think of me as someone you know that has nothing to do with you, not married to you, but someone you know? Please try to. Well, this man, me, last Saturday night . . . ”
From the time he reached the point where he told about bringing Gloria to this apartment Emily did not try to follow his words. He told the story in chronological order up to that point, and she got a kind of excitement out of listening and wondering how he would reach what was for her the climax of the story; the awful climax, but the climax. She knew what was coming, but she never expected to hear the words: “So I brought her here.” The words were not separate; they were part of a sentence: “. . . got in a taxi and I didn’t have any baggage so I brought her here and we had a few drinks and . . . ” But the last words that she paid attention to were: “So I brought her here.” After that he went on and on. She knew his throat was dry because his voice broke a little but she did not offer to get him a glass of water. Every once in a while he would ask if she was listening and she would nod and he would say she didn’t seem to be, and then continue. She had been sitting on the bed when he began. Once she changed her position so that she sat in a chair beside the head of the bed and she would not have to look at him. “Go on,” she would say. Let him talk himself out. She didn’t care how long he talked. She was back from Reno, back in Boston, it was 1932, the girls were at Winsor School, she was avoiding her father and his well-meaning solicitousness. Mrs. Winchester Liggett. Mrs. Emily W. Liggett.
What did people generally do with furniture? What did they do for immediate cash? Wasn’t it a good thing that it was so near the close of the school year? Wasn’t it a good thing New York meant living in an apartment? How awful if it had been in a house, a real home? Ah, but if it had been anywhere else he wouldn’t have brought that girl here, to an apartment. No, it wasn’t so good that New York meant living in an apartment. That was only a consoling thought and not a matter for congratulation. Let him talk.
“. . . tried to swing at him, the policeman, but . . . ”
Who cared? Now he was describing the fight. Why hadn’t he been killed? He looked so foolish and unrelated to her, with his bandages and bruises. She knew he wasn’t asking for sympathy, but she couldn’t help denying it to him. What he had asked in the beginning and what she thought would be so hard—to think of him as someone she knew who had nothing to do with her, not married to her, but someone she knew—that was what she felt. Telling the end of the story, or the second half of it, or the latter two thirds, or whatever it was that remained after “So I brought her here,” he was like someone who had nothing to do with her, someone not married to her, someone she knew and did not even like, did not even hate. Here was a man whom she could not escape, who was telling a long and pretty dull story about an amour and how he came to be beaten up. Come to think of it, she once knew a man like that, a man who got you in a corner and told you long dull stories about his love life, what a boy he was with the ladies, and how he got into fights. The man’s name was Weston Liggett.
“Oh, no,” she said.
“What?” he said.
The fool thought she was protesting at something he had said, when she only meant to pull herself together. “Oh, no. I mustn’t think hysterically,” was what she meant to say, but the Oh-no part had come out in spoken words.
“Well, and that’s all,” he said. “I wanted to tell you because I didn’t—I couldn’t stand lying here and letting you wait on me—what are you, what on earth are you laughing at?”
“You can’t stand lying here. I just thought it was obvious that you can’t stand and lie down at the same time.”
“Oh, it’s funny.”
“No, not funny,” she said, “but I don’t know what you expect me to do. I won’t congratulate you.”
“Well, at least I’ve been honest with you. Now you can do as you please.”
“What do you suppose I please?”
“How should I know. I’ll give you a divorce. I mean, if you want a divorce in New York I’ll give you grounds.”
“You have. But I don’t want to talk about that now.”
“You haven’t one word of understanding. Not a single instinct of understanding.”
“Oh, now really.”
“Yes, now really. You didn’t even try to understand. The only thing that interested you was that I was unfaithful. You didn’t care about anything else.”
“I’m not going to quarrel with you. I’m not going to let you turn this into a little spat. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’ve got to talk about it. You’ve got to tell me what you’re going to do. I was honest with you, I told you the truth when I didn’t have to. You believed the story I made up.”
“I beg your pardon, but I didn’t believe the story you made up. I did at first, but not when I thought it over. I knew there was more to it than that. And don’t tell me I’ve got to tell you what I’m going to do, or that I have to talk about it. There aren’t any more have-to’s as far as you and I are concerned.”
“We’ll see.”
“All right, we’ll see.”
“Emily,” he said.
She walked out.
He dressed and had breakfast after the girls had gone to school. He knocked on Emily’s door and she called: “Yes?”
“May I see you a minute, please?”
“What about?”
“I’m leaving.”
She opened the door.
“You can stay.”
“Thanks, but I’m not going to. I just want to tell you, first of all, I’m going to a hotel. I’ll let you know which one when I’ve decided. Probably the Biltmore. In the second place, I’ll deposit some money for you some time today, five hundred now, and as much more than that as I can, later in the week. I’m going because I don’t want you to take the girls out to the country at least for the time being.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re looking for that Two-Gun Crowley, the fellow that murdered a policeman. He’s somewhere on Long Island and there’s a big reward out for him. Long Island will be full of crazy people with guns and policemen wanting to shoot this Crowley and it won’t be safe. Now please take my advice on this. Stay here till they’ve captured him or at least till the excitement blows over.”
“What else?”
“That’s all, I guess. If you want a lawyer, Harry Draper’s good. He isn’t a divorce lawyer, but if you were planning to go to Reno, for instance, you won’t need a divorce lawyer here. The New York lawyer will have a correspondent in Reno. That’s the way they always do it, unless the divorce is contested, then sometimes they—”
“If you don’t mind I’d rather not go into details now.” She shut the door quickly, because she suddenly knew by his face that he wanted her, and much as she loathed him, this would be one of the times when he could have her. That was disgusting.
He knew some of that, too.
SEVEN
That same day, Wednesday, a coincidence occurred: Gloria decided she di
dn’t want to see Eddie for a couple of days, and Eddie decided he didn’t want to see Gloria for a couple of days.
Gloria went shopping with her mother, purchasing a beach hat with a flowered linen band, for $8.50; a suit of beach pajamas with horizontal striped top to the trousers, which cost her mother $29.50. She bought a surf suit that tied at both shoulders for $10.95. A one-piece bouclette frock cost $29.50 and a stitched wool hat with a feather cost $3.95. Also a linen suit, navy jacket and white skirt, for the incredible price of $7.95, a woolen sports coat for $29.50, a tricot turban with a halo twist was $12.50, and two pique tennis dresses (with crocheted belt) for $10.75 apiece. Her uncle had given her mother $150 to spend and the purchases were practically on the dot of that sum. Gloria made the purchases with practically no interference from her mother and she felt good and went home for the express purpose of sending Norma Day’s suit to the dry cleaners’.
She was wrapping the suit in newspaper but she could not resist reading the paper. It was Monday’s Mirror, and she was surprised to discover that she had missed reading Walter Winchell’s column. She skimmed through it for a possible mention of her name (you never could tell) and then she read more carefully, learning that Barbara Hutton was being sent to Europe to forget Phil Plant, that the Connie Bennett-Marquis de la Falaise thing was finished, “Joel McRae being the new heart.” She read a few lines from that day’s installment of “Grand Hotel,” which was running in the Mirror, and then she turned to “What Your Stars Foretell”: “Today in particular,” it said, “should bring encouragement to correspondents, typists, writers and advertisers. Tuesday may be a nervous and upsetting day in many ways, but Tuesday evening as well as Wednesday evening are very satisfactory for pleasure and dealings with the other sex on a friendship basis. Do not expect too much of Wednesday. It is not a good day for anything outside of the regular routine, and Thursday will be a discouraging day for those with tempers. Beware of disagreements and quarrels in business and with your sweetheart. Saturday should be a very encouraging day from almost any angle; you may act with confidence in either social or business matters. This week is favorable for those born Jan. 29 to Feb. 10, Mar. 3–11, April 1–10, May 5–12, June 2–9, July 7–12, Aug. 1–8, Nov. 15–20, Nov. 29–Dec. 5, Dec. 7–11, Dec. 24–28.” Well, her birthday was December 5, so taking it altogether, by and large, if she would be careful today and keep her temper tomorrow—not that she had a really bad temper, but sometimes she did fly off the handle—she ought to have a good week, because Saturday was going to be a very encouraging day from almost any angle, the stars foretold. It might be a good time to plan a trip, and immediately she thought of Liggett. All these clothes, they were for the summer and the trip her uncle was going to give her, but if the weather was nice—but what was she thinking about? Had she gone completely screwy that she was planning anything with Liggett, when for all she knew he had a fractured skull? What if he had a fractured skull? It would be a nice mess and it wouldn’t take the police long to get her mixed up in it. Why, there was a policeman right there in the speakeasy when she ran out. All he had to do was ask the bartender her name, and she’d be mixed up in it. She was frightened and she read over again what it said about Tuesday: “. . . may be a nervous and upsetting day in many ways.” It certainly had been. It said Tuesday evening was satisfactory for pleasure and dealings with the other sex on a friendship basis, but her relations with Liggett had not been on a friendship basis, not by a whole hell of a lot, as Eddie would say. No, this stuff was right; ordinarily she didn’t put much stock in it, but it was like superstitions; maybe there was something to them so it didn’t do any harm to be careful. Besides, it was right enough about Tuesday being nervous and upsetting, and when you considered daylight saving time, then all that mess in the speakeasy was part of Tuesday the day, and not the evening. Do not expect too much of Wednesday . . . routine. Well, she would have Eddie’s girl Miss Day’s suit cleaned, and return the fur coat, those ought to be routine things. Tomorrow was Thursday, the day to be careful about disagreements and quarrels in business (that ought to cover the coat, so she would forestall any trouble tomorrow by returning the coat today), and she would guard against a quarrel with her sweetheart by returning the coat. How to do it would have to be figured out later. But she did not ignore the ease with which she was thinking of Liggett as her sweetheart. Whatever he was, she loved him. “Don’t I?” she asked.
When he was alone in his apartment Eddie smoked a pipe. It was one of the few gifts his father had given him that was not cash outright. It had a “2S9” in silver on the front of the bowl, which was the way his father had ordered it, but it happened to be a good pipe and Eddie liked it in spite of the adornment. It was cheaper than cigarettes, and when he had money Eddie usually bought a half-pound or a pound tin of tobacco and laid in a supply of cigarette papers. Thus he almost always had something to smoke.
It was a furnished apartment, and probably had a history, but the only part of its history that interested Eddie was that it had come down in price from $65 to $50 a month. Something undoubtedly had taken place in the apartment to account for the lowering of the rental. As Eddie well knew, the depression did not result in decreases in rents of apartments that took in $100 a month or less. One-room and two-room apartments cost just as much as they always had, and renting agents could even be a little choosy, for people who formerly had paid $200 and more now were leasing the cheaper apartments, and paying their rent. So there must have been a reason why this apartment could be held for fairly regular payments of $50 a month. It must not be inferred that Eddie never had any interest at all in the processes that brought about the reduction. At first he wondered about it a little; the furniture was not the kind that is bought for a furnished apartment and the hell with it. No, this was hand-picked stuff, obviously left there by a previous tenant. Eddie thought it possible that the previous tenant had been slain, perhaps decapitated with a razor. He resolved some day to suggest as a magazine article the idea of going around to various apartments in New York where famous crimes had occurred. The apartment where Elwell, the bridge player, was killed; the Dot King apartment; the room in the Park Central where Arnold Rothstein was killed. Find out who lived in the apartment now, whether the present occupant knew Elwell, for instance, had lived there; what kind of person would live in an apartment where there had been a murder; how it affected the present tenant’s sleep; whether any concession was made in the rent; whether the real estate people told the prospective tenant that the apartment had a past. It was one of the ideas that Eddie had and rejected for himself because he did not know how to write, but would have passed on to a writer friend if he had had any.
It was hard to tell whether this apartment had been a man’s or a woman’s. The distinguishing small things had been taken away. There was a bed that could be disguised in the daytime with a large solid red cover; a cheap (it was all cheap) modern armchair; a small fireplace that did not look too practical; a folding bridge table; three modern lamps; a straight-back chair like a “5” with the horizontal bar cut off. Over the fireplace was a colored map of New York with cute legends, and there was a map of Paris, apparently executed by the same cartographer, on the inside of the bathroom door. The pictures that remained were an amateur’s replica of a Georgia O’Keeffe orchid, and a Modigliani print. There were a few ash trays from Brass Town via Woolworth.
Whenever he shaved Eddie would hum “I Got Rhythm.” The reason for this was that he once had used the words in a sentence: “I had crabs but I got rhythm.” He had first thought it up in the bathroom, while shaving, and he would always recall it, at least until something else took its place. Eddie never told anyone he could use the title in a sentence; it was not his kind of humor. Some day he would hear someone else say it and then he would stop thinking of it. That, exactly that, often happened to Eddie. He would make up puns, keep them to himself, and then he would hear them from someone else and they would cease to be his property. It made hi
m wonder; he thought it was indicative of a great lack in himself; not that he cared about the puns, but it was just as true of his own work, his drawing. Once he had an idea that he turned into something; the drawings he did in college. But he also had thought and worked out a technique that was very much like that of James Thurber. In his case he knew it to be reminiscent of the technique employed in a 1917 book called Dere Mabel, by Ed Streeter, drawings by Bill Breck, but still he had done nothing with his idea, and then along came Thurber with his idea, and look what he did: everybody knew who Thurber was—and the people who knew who Brunner was were making a pretty good job of forgetting it.
All these things ran through Eddie’s mind, which was like blood running through Siamese twins; there was a whole other half of his mind.
Then he began to consider the other half of his mind, and gave himself up a little to the pleasure of the day, the first pleasure of its kind since he had come to New York. For this day, not two hours before he had come here to this apartment and lit this pipe and looked at this furniture and wondered about this lack in himself—two hours ago he had been promised work, and given a half promise of a job. “I won’t say yes and I won’t say no,” the man had said. “All I’ll tell you positively now is we can use your drawings.”
The work was for a movie company, in the advertising department, the art room of the advertising department. Eddie had gone there for a job several times two years ago, because he knew there was a Stanford man, a couple of classes ahead of him, working in the department. But the Stanford man at that time had been terrified at the idea of being responsible for increasing the company’s payroll by another salary. He knew that the officials of the company were worried about their own nepotism and the cousins of cousins were being laid off. And so Eddie had said well, he would leave a few drawings just in case, and never heard any more.
