The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan: Volume One

by Morley Callaghan

  In the preparation for the funeral they were all busy for a while because the older sisters were arranging for everyone to have the proper clothes for mourning. The new blue dress that Helen, the fair-haired one, had bought only a few weeks ago, was sent to the cleaners to be dyed black and of course Mary had to have a black dress and black stockings too. On the night when they were arranging these things Mary suddenly blurted out, “I’m going to wear my red shoes.”

  “Have some sense, Mary. That would be terrible,” Helen said.

  “You can’t wear red shoes,” Barbara said crossly.

  “Yes, I can,” Mary said stubbornly. “Mother wanted me to wear them. I know she did. I know why she bought them.” She was confronting them all with her fists clenched desperately.

  “For heaven’s sake, tell her she can’t do a thing like that,” Helen said irritably to Mr. Johnson. Yet he only shook his head, looking at Mary with that same gentle, puzzled expression he had had on his face the night his wife had talked to him about the shoes. “I kind of think Mary’s right,” he began, rubbing his hand slowly over his face.

  “Red shoes. Good Lord, it would be terrible,” said Helen, now outraged.

  “You’d think we’d all want to be proper,” Barbara agreed.

  “Proper. It would be simply terrible, I tell you. It would look as if we had no respect.”

  “Well, I guess that’s right. All the relatives will be here,” Mr. Johnson agreed reluctantly. Then he turned hopefully to Mary. “Look, Mary,” he began. “If you get the shoes dyed you can wear them to the funeral and then you’ll be able to wear them to school every day too. How about it?”

  But it had frightened Mary to think that anyone might say she hadn’t shown the proper respect for her mother. She got the red shoes and handed them to her father so that he might take them up to the shoemaker. As her father took the box from her, he fumbled with a few apologetic words. “It’s just what people might say. Do you see, Mary?” he asked.

  When the shoes, now dyed black, were returned to Mary the next day she put them on slowly, and then she put her feet together and looked at the shoes a long time. They were no longer the beautiful red shoes, and yet as she stared at them, solemn-faced, she suddenly felt a strange kind of secret joy, a feeling of certainty that her mother had got the shoes so that she might understand at this time that she still had her special blessing and protection.

  At the funeral the shoes hurt Mary’s feet for they were new and hadn’t been worn. Yet she was fiercely glad that she had them on. After that she wore them every day. Of course now that they were black they were not noticed by other children. But she was very careful with them. Every night she polished them and looked at them and was touched again by that secret joy. She wanted them to last a long time.

  Lunch Counter

  Ever since he had been a kid Fred Sloane had wanted to be a cook, not just any cook but a man who might some day be called a chef. For two years he had done the cooking for the O’Neils, who owned a small quick-lunch.

  Mrs. O’Neil, who sometimes helped him in the kitchen, was a heavy, hard-working woman with gray hair, a very clean, sober, earnest woman, always a little afraid of her husband, whom she obeyed from a strong sense of religious duty. Mrs. O’Neil thought Fred boyish but inclined to be easygoing, a young man who grinned too knowingly and was apt to laugh recklessly when she seriously tried to advise him about a more earnest way of living. She was a good woman and because of her strong convictions would not do any work in the restaurant kitchen on Sundays. Fred liked her because she was so motherly, and he was sorry when her husband openly quarreled with her. One morning when she was very tired and had remained in bed late, her husband told Fred that she was a lazy good-for-nothing slut.

  But Fred liked Jerry O’Neil, too, because he was so jovial. Jerry was a few inches over six feet, big-framed, red-faced, a bit bald. He kidded the customers at the counter, and to strangers he winked and whispered hoarsely: “You see that fellow with the cap at the end of the counter? He’s sore at me because his wife’s in love with me.” The man wearing the cap, a steady customer, laughed heartily. Everybody laughed. Jerry shook his head as if to apologize for having so much good humor.

  When they were not busy in the restaurant and Mrs. O’Neil was upstairs, Jerry talked through the wicket to Fred, who was in the kitchen. Invariably they talked about girls. Jerry had been married a long time, and though Mrs. O’Neil thought him a wild roustabout, he was far too steady and respectable to be unfaithful to her. He just enjoyed telling Fred many pointless jokes and laughing and because he was so eager, Fred used to tell him ridiculous stories about women.

  A niece of Mrs. O’Neil’s, very young and pretty, came to stay one night, and wanted to see them cooking in the kitchen. It was necessary for Mrs. O’Neil to help Fred during the seven o’clock rush hour before she could have her own evening meal upstairs, and the niece was amusing herself looking around the kitchen while waiting for her aunt. Jerry O’Neil was on the other side of the wicket waiting on two customers. When Fred saw the girl, Marion, standing beside him, he smiled and adroitly flipped an omelette in the small pan. Marion was only fifteen years old but well developed, dark-haired, and round-eyed. The sweater she wore fit her tightly. Her skirt was short, the right length for a girl her age, but in a longer skirt she would have looked like a full-grown woman. She was enjoying Fred’s self-assurance. Fred was glad to have her standing beside him, and out of the corner of his eye he noted her eager admiration. He tried to move with all the assurance of a first-class chef. Jerry O’Neil, pressing his wide face to the wicket called in another order. Fred, enjoying himself immensely, rubbed his hands together. He hadn’t spoken to the girl. Suddenly he said: “Would you like to try and flip an omelette?”

  “Show me. I don’t think I could do it right,” she said.

  “It comes easy, just like this.”

  The omelette, browned on one side, turned in the air and flopped down to the pan, sizzling freshly as the blue flames licked the edge. He could hardly help laughing out loud. “Another thing,” he said. “You ought to learn how to break an egg properly. Just tap it smartly once on the edge of the pan.” After he had prepared another omelette, she took hold of the handle of the pan. He, too, held the handle, his hand partly covering hers, and when the omelette was done on one side, he said, “Ready,” and jerked the pan upward.

  The girl, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the kitchen, laughed happily. “That was good,” she said. “I can do it myself now.”

  “You just need confidence. Cooking eggs is like boiling water. Anybody can do it.”

  As he stood there, hands on his hips, grinning and good-humored, he noticed Mrs. O’Neil, who was cutting bread at the other end of the table. “If you want to get your dinner, I can look after the place now,” he said.

  She said sharply: “You aren’t so willing other nights.”

  He was surprised, and then angry at the heavy, thin-lipped woman. By her sharp reply she was intimating that he wanted to be alone with her niece, that she understood his feeling when he took hold of Marion’s hand to help her flip the omelette. And so she remained there, big and heavy and alert. He was especially hurt because he had been only trying to show off with the girl and had not thought of her as a woman at all; she was just a young girl who seemed to admire and like him and smiled frankly when he grinned at her. He went on working while Marion stood beside him.

  Mrs. O’Neil left the kitchen. At the door she turned and said: “Come right upstairs, Marion.” Fred was so angry at Mrs. O’Neil that he could not be bothered with Marion, who was examining the pots and the mixing bowls and asking questions which he answered curtly. “Mrs. O’Neil is a fool,” he thought. Marion was standing beside him and he was telling her how to make a bacon and lettuce and chicken sandwich. He became more enthusiastic as Jerry O’Neil passed through the kitchen on his way upstairs. “Keep an eye on the place,” he said to Fred, who went on talking with Marion til
l O’Neil called suddenly from the top of the stairs: “Fred, come here.”

  Fred opened the door and looked up the stairs. Jerry O’Neil muttered down to him: “Look here, what are you keeping the girl down there for?” His big face was red and he was angry. He had never seemed so serious. “Cut it out,” he said. “Cut it out.” And he added: “Tell her to come up and have dinner.”

  Fred returned to the kitchen. His hands were trembling. Marion was waiting for him, her hands linked behind her back, eyeing him candidly. “They’re sure I’m after the kid. It’s the one thing the O’Neils had ever agreed about,” he thought.

  “Your uncle wants you to go upstairs,” he said.

  “All right, he ought to call me,” she said smiling. “Are you through showing me things?”

  “I am.”

  Reluctantly, she moved to the door. She had to pass the scales used for weighing supplies. Stopping, she insisted Fred show her how to operate the scales, and then asked if he could guess her weight within three pounds.

  The O’Neils had spoiled the simple pleasure he had been having with the girl, his pleasure in his own capability and, looking at her, he thought nervously of putting his arms around her and kissing her. When she was on the scales he placed his hands on her waist, his palms pressing down on the curve of her slender hips, and for no reason she put her small warm hands on his as they both bent forward to read the scales. On the nape of her neck he saw fine hair, and when she straightened, her back was arched and slender. “You’re a lovely little thing,” he said, almost shyly.

  “I like you too, Fred,” she said. By the way her hands were resting on his he knew he could kiss her. While he was having these thoughts and feeling a new need for the girl, he heard Mrs. O’Neil coming slowly downstairs. “Marion,” she called, and then, “Fred.”

  As she went out of the kitchen Marion said, “So long, Fred,” and smiled over her shoulder.

  “So long, kid.”

  Mrs. O’Neil waited till Marion had gone upstairs, then she warned Fred: “Jerry is sore at you. He’s so mad he’s ready to eat you alive.”

  “What for?”

  “You know.”

  “Then tell him to come down and tell me,” he called after her as she climbed the stairs.

  He sat on an upturned box waiting for O’Neil to come down, and knew he would not come. No one was in the restaurant; he waited, listening. He heard them talking upstairs. He would never see the girl again, he thought, and wondered why such honest, sober people as the O’Neils suddenly repelled him. Angrily he stood up, hating Mrs. O’Neil and her way of living. He hated Jerry O’Neil intensely because he had called his wife an old slut. He hated them both because they were old, and alert, and sly, and sure of what to expect from him.

  The Rejected One

  Karl brought her along the street early one winter evening, taking her to meet his people. As they walked in step with her elbow snug against his side, she was silent, as though feeling his uneasiness and sharing his thoughts. Karl kept glancing intently at her powdered face, at her fine shoulders, and at her thick blonde hair. He was wishing she had on a dark dress that might have looked more quietly elegant than this flowing green one. Even her hair, maybe, was too long and yellow, and her wide-brimmed black hat drooping low over her face gave her a startling full red mouth. He was trying to remember how she had looked that first time he had seen her, before he had grown to love her, but he could not remember, and as she turned and smiled at him, he seemed to feel all the warmth and roundness of her moving close to him.

  “Remember that Mother’s an invalid,” he said cautiously. “She does funny things sometimes.”

  “I’ll remember,” she said timidly. Then she began to look puzzled, as if his seriousness had begun to frighten her.

  “Anyway, you’ll like my brother,” he said reassuringly. “I feel sure of that.”

  When they went into the house, Mamie hung back a little behind Karl so that Karl’s brother and his young wife could not quite see her as they came out of the sitting room to the hall. Karl’s brother was tall and slender, and had big deep-set brown eyes that kept shifting around restlessly. Karl went up to him, took his arm affectionately, and said, “This is Mamie, John. I know you’ll like her. And you, too, Helen.”

  Then they all turned and looked at Mamie, who had been trying to keep close to Karl, but was now alone. She seemed to feel that his brother and his wife were looking at her more shrewdly than Karl had ever done. She swung her head to one side with awkward shyness. The young wife, tall and slim, with a dainty face and girlish in her simple gray dress, glanced swiftly at her husband and her face grew troubled, but she said graciously, “Won’t you come in and sit down?” and she led the way into the sitting room.

  Mamie then seemed to find the words she had prepared so carefully. “I’m glad to see you, John,” she said. “And you, too, Mrs. Henderson, I feel like we were old friends almost.” There was so much warmth in the way she put out her large hands that Mrs. Henderson smiled good naturedly.

  At the other end of the long room, a white-haired old lady was sitting in an invalid’s chair. She was dozing, with her head drooping forward, but when they came toward her she opened her eyes, which were blue and soft, and so much like Karl’s. “I’d like you to meet a young lady, Mother,” Karl said.

  “Who is it, Karl?”

  “It’s Mamie. I’m awfully fond of her, Mother.”

  “Tell her to come here and let me see her.”

  Karl was proud of the way Mamie stepped across the room to meet his mother: she seemed to walk across the carpet like a lovely mannequin, with a mysterious smile on her face as though she had been practising for this moment for a long time. She had never looked so elegant as she did now to Karl, so he couldn’t understand why his brother turned his head away and would not look at her, or why Helen began to bite her lip and look angry.

  “What’s the matter, John?” he whispered.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. What do you mean, Karl?”

  Mamie was saying sweetly, “Good evening, Mrs. Henderson. Karl has often talked about you to me, so of course I’ve been most anxious to meet you,” but she spoke with an almost mechanical sedateness. Then she suddenly smiled and said simply, “What I mean, I guess, is that you’re Karl’s mother and that’s enough for me,” and she grinned broadly. For a long time old Mrs. Henderson stared at her, and then her thin lips began to tremble. Then she said bluntly like one wise woman speaking to another and sure that she will be understood, “Karl is just a boy. I suppose you know he’s just a boy . . . Sit down, though, and have them get you a cup of coffee. Please don’t pay any attention to me. I’m very tired.” The old lady took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and would not open them again.

  Mamie seemed too bewildered to move, something seemed to be holding her to the spot in spite of her resentment, while her face reddened. But she started to laugh and said, “For the love of Mike, why are we all acting so stiff?” And yet she moved over closer to Karl with a kind of independent swagger. The way old Mrs. Henderson had closed her eyes made them all feel uneasy. Young Mrs. Henderson was instantly anxious to be hospitable and friendly to Mamie. But Karl noticed that his brother was still glancing furtively at her in the way men turn on the street to watch a flashy woman who has just passed by, and he did not know whether to like this or not. “Let’s sit down,” he said, “and I’ll tell you a story I heard today.”

  With a fine flow of words and many easy gestures, he told one of his favorite jokes, and for the first time they heard Mamie’s loud, deep, husky laughter.

  “Shall I tell one now, Karl?” she said.

  “Go ahead, Mamie.”

  “I’d better make sure it’s not the one about the salesman and the backwoods daughter,” she said, her eyes crinkling slyly. But she told no story. She began to talk quite wildly, as if she had to keep on chattering or grow desperate, and all the while Karl was trying to motion to her to be quiet. When she did se
e him staring at her, she grew sullen and did not know what to say. For some reason that he could not figure out, Karl was ashamed. He felt Mamie’s fumbling uneasiness there with his people and he remembered how proud she had been the first time she had taken him to her home. He remembered how her father, a big, rough, tousle-headed, genial man, had jumped up and put down his glasses and his paper and how he had talked to him warmly and with such respect.

  “I’ll go and get the coffee,” young Mrs. Henderson was saying. When she had gone halfway across the room, she stopped, turned, and looked back, looking really at Karl, whom she liked and admired so much because he had such a fine instinct for pleasing people with his impulsive ways, and in this one glance backward trying to figure out what he could see in a buxom, gaudy-looking girl like Mamie, she called out, “Do you want to help me, John?” and she waited so that her husband dared not refuse to follow her.

  As soon as they left, Karl said irritably to Mamie, “I never heard you talking so much. What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel crazy.”

  “What’s the matter, Mamie? Don’t you think they’re nice?”

  “Sure I think they’re nice. They’re fine people, but I just feel crazy. Maybe it’s the way they look at me. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  When John returned, he was smiling and trying to be very gay. And yet as he walked up and down making many gracious little remarks, he was obviously thinking of the conversation he had had with his wife. He was very fond of his young brother. Every time he passed him, walking up and down, he began to look at him more sympathetically. He never stopped talking to Mamie, but he was talking more quietly and easily now, and sometimes gently as if he knew all about her. The peaceful tone of his brother’s voice suddenly filled Karl with hope, and he became so eager to ask him if he liked Mamie that he said, “Why don’t you go and help Helen with the coffee, Mamie?”