The Tight White Collar

by Grace Metalious

  Jess lowered his head and stirred sugar into his coffee. Half-forgotten words flowed into his mind, words which, at one time, he had been sure that he’d never forget, so impressed had he been with their beauty.

  And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad . . .

  His mind stopped and he could not remember the next phrase.

  “He had ulcers, Val,” he said. “A bad case of ulcers. I guess he knew he was never going to get better.”

  Chapter XVI

  Margery and Nathaniel Cooper were quiet as their big car carried them almost silently along the highway leading south away from Cooper Station. It was winter. A cold, heavy northern New England winter and the shoulders of the road were piled high with snow. On top, the drifts were like diamonds on ermine, shining against soft, white depth but where the sides dipped down toward the road there were shadows, pale-blue and insubstantial-looking so that even when you looked at them in broad daylight, you thought of evening. It was cold with the special coldness of February that cuts through the warmest fur like a sharp razor blade going through flesh and the sun shed no warmth at all. It only blinded you when you looked too long at the whiteness all around you.

  Nathaniel Cooper’s car was a long, black Buick sedan. The Coopers had driven long, black Buick sedans ever since Nate could remember, for Ferguson Cooper had been of the opinion that Cadillacs were only for gangsters and rich people from New York who came north for the summer. Until recently, Nate had never considered changing the pattern but now he thought longingly of himself and Margery in a pale-blue convertible driving somewhere with the top down along a tree-shaded road where it was warm.

  Soon, perhaps, he thought. Perhaps very soon.

  Margery’s left hand rested lightly against Nate’s thigh as he drove and her head was thrown back against the seat cushions. It was the way she had used to sit in a car with him before they were married. Nate covered her hand with his and pressed it gently against his thigh.

  “Are you sure you feel up to going down there today, darling?” he asked. “We could always turn around and go home if you want.”

  “I have to go, Nate,” she said. “Somehow I have to keep assuring myself that she’s all right and that she’s happy.”

  “Are you happy, Margery?” he asked gently.

  “Almost, dear,” she replied and smiled at him. “Almost. Just give me a little longer.”

  His big hand ruffled her short hair as he pulled her head down onto his shoulder.

  “All the time in the world,” he said.

  But Nate was frightened at the day ahead of them for he remembered the desperate cry that had come from Margery on the night after they had left Robin, for the first time, at St. Jude’s home.

  “I can’t stand it!” Margery had cried. “We were wrong to do this thing. Take me to her, Nate. Take me now.”

  “Please, dear,” Nate had said. “Try. Try it this way for only a month and if you’re still so unhappy then we’ll go down and bring her home.”

  “I can’t do it, Nate. Please don’t ask me. I can’t stand it.”

  His voice had mingled with those of Jess Cameron and Virgie as they tried to console her.

  “Margery, dear.”

  “Margery, Margery.”

  “Miz Marg’ry, honey.”

  Jess had warned Nate of the way it would be right from the beginning.

  “The feelings of guilt attendant on placing a child in an institution are staggering, Nate,” Jess had said. “And it’s going to be harder for Margery than it’ll be for you because this has been her decision. You’re going to need all the patience in the world, Nate. More than all the patience in the world.”

  Nate glanced down at his wife as she leaned against him now. The window on her side of the car was open an inch or two and her hair blew in little wisps across her cheek. She lifted her hand lazily to brush them away.

  She’s getting well, thought Nate hopefully. It’s going to take time, but I know she’s going to be well soon. Then we’ll go away together. Somewhere warm and quiet. Haiti? he wondered and then smiled at himself. He knew nothing whatever about Haiti except that the name of its capital had always fascinated him. Port-au-Prince. It was a name that he could feel on his tongue. A place he could almost touch and feel and smell just by saying the name to himself. When Nate said Port-au-Prince to himself he thought of heavy, red blossoms trailing lazily down over an old stone wall while somewhere in the background someone played a guitar as he and Margery dozed in the hot sun. He was weary of the cold and tired of fighting the implacable winters of northern New England, and never again would he be able to live through the chill, rainy days of autumn without feeling fear.

  He thought of that chill, rainy day of autumn when he had been paralyzed with terror at the thought that Margery was never going to be well again. He would never forget that day, though she seemed to be all right now, thanks to Jess.

  Nor the time, several days later, when Jess Cameron had spoken to him.

  “We’re not going to waste time,” said the doctor. “Margery’s going to get well but first she’s going to have to make the decision about Robin.”

  “Do we have to talk to her about it now?” asked Nate. “She seems to be doing so well that I’m afraid of the least little thing that might upset her.”

  “It has to be done,” said Jess. “And I don’t like it any better than you do. But she can’t live the rest of her life in this state of suspended animation. I’ve got her shot full of tranquilizers now, but I can’t keep her on them forever.”

  “No,” said Nate and sighed. “I know you can’t. But, Jess, I’m afraid to even mention Robin to her.”

  “We’ll have to tread carefully,” said Jess. “We’ve got to make her believe that the decision to send Robin away is her own and not some trick that we’re trying to put over on her.”

  Nate poured himself a drink. “I admit it,” he said. “I’m a coward. You talk to her, Jess. Later, when I’m alone with her, I’ll back you up. But I can’t face her with it now.”

  Margery was sitting up in bed. Her face was thin and white, but there was a softness to her eyes now that had not been there before. Jess sat down on the rose-colored chair next to the bed and Virgie brought him his inevitable cup of coffee.

  “Margery,” he said at last, “do you have any idea what’s happened to you?”

  Margery tried to laugh. “I guess I just get lazy, Jess,” she said. “I wanted a few weeks off just lying around and getting fat.”

  “You were all tired out,” Jess said. “And you’re still tired. I don’t mean just plain, ordinary tired, either. I mean totally exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally. You need to rest. To sleep late every morning, to stop thinking and feeling, to lie in the sun and to stop running up and down stairs.”

  “And what about Robin?” asked Margery. “What’s going to become of her if I allow myself to become a bedridden invalid?”

  “What happens to Robin is entirely up to you, Margery,” said Jess. “I can’t make up your mind for you on that score. But I can give you the facts.”

  “But Jess, I’m better now. Why, in a few days I’ll be up and around as good as new.”

  “No you won’t, Margery,” said Jess. “Some people are equipped to cope with a situation like yours, but you aren’t.”

  “What are you talking about, Jess?” demanded Margery. “Don’t talk in riddles with me.”

  Jess finished his coffee and lit a fresh cigarette. He looked at her for a long time.

  “Margery,” he said at last, “unless you separate yourself from Robin, you will risk everything of value in your life, and in the end you’ll risk your sanity and your life itself. You’ll endanger any future children that you might be lucky enough to have, and you’ll e
ndanger Nate more than you have already. And you’ll give Robin an increasingly neurotic mother until you reach the point of where you’ll not only be unable to care for her but for yourself as well.”

  When he finished speaking there was no sound in the room at all, and then Margery pulled a Kleenex from a box and sponged at her wet face.

  “I understand you, Jess,” she said. “What you’re saying is what you’ve said all along for years. You want me to put Robin away in an institution.”

  “For everybody’s sake, Margery, including Robin’s, yes. If you get sick again you may not be as lucky the next time.”

  Margery thought for a long time while she brushed futilely at her tears with the back of her hand.

  “Jess, I could never send Robin to that place that your friend runs.”

  “Dr. Alter is a good man,” objected Jess. “He has a fine reputation.”

  “I know it, Jess,” she said. “But he tries too hard. He just doesn’t give up. I saw him and his school and I know. He spends years and years trying to teach one thing to one child as if he were in some horrible contest. I couldn’t stand to think of Robin with her little face all covered with sweat and tears of effort in her eyes, trying, trying, trying to learn something that’s never going to be of any use to her.”

  Margery put her face into her hands and wept and Jess went to the windows and stood looking down at the sodden garden.

  “There’s a place I know of,” he said when Margery quieted a little, “where you could leave Robin with absolute confidence that she’d receive all the loving care she could use.”

  “She gets that here,” cried Margery. “Who else could give her what she gets from me?”

  “This place is a home for retarded children and for children like Robin, called St. Jude’s,” said Jess. “It’s a Catholic institution.”

  “Catholic!” cried Margery.

  Jess turned to her and smiled. “Yes, Catholic,” he said. “Not everybody in the world is a Congregationalist, you know.”

  Margery smiled back and took the cigarette Jess extended toward her.

  “I know,” she said. “I guess I was just thinking of all the Coopers who’d take a shotgun to you at the idea of Robin being cared for by Papists.”

  “And you’re right about Dr. Alter,” continued Jess. “He’s a determined man all right. He’s sure, he knows that children like Robin can be taught, and he bends all his will and energy toward teaching them. At St. Jude’s though, the Sisters don’t know whether the children can be taught or not but they have one belief that’s even more firmly rooted in them than Dr. Alter’s is in him. They know that the spirit of God is in every child and they treat every child accordingly.”

  Margery leaned back against her pillows and the time of her thinking now was long and painful. When she sighed and straightened up at last, the sigh came from deep within her and left her feeling heavy and Jess wondered if perhaps this wasn’t the first real sigh that Margery had allowed herself in years.

  “I tried, didn’t I, Jess, to look after Robin the best I knew how?” she asked, but she did not wait for him to answer. “I know I did and yet she remained the same. You warned me, Jess, way back when we brought her home from the hospital that it’d be like this, but I had to try it my way.”

  “I know, Margery,” said Jess. “I don’t think you’d ever have been satisfied if you hadn’t tried.”

  “But it didn’t do any good,” she said. “No good at all. Perhaps it’s time now to try it your way. If Nate doesn’t mind, I’m willing.”

  “Will you give it a fair try, Margery?” asked Jess. “Even if you’re miserable at first, will you wait and give it a real try?”

  “Yes,” said Margery. “I’ll give it a real try.”

  Jess had arranged things swiftly and skillfully. Three days after his talk with Margery, Nathaniel took his daughter to St. Jude’s Home for Children. He watched the Sisters, dressed in their heavy black robes with starched ruffs of white around their throats and stiff white fans of linen framing their faces. The robes of the Sisters were belted with thick, silk cord and from each cord there dangled a black rosary and a heavy silver cross. Nathaniel had never heard women move so noiselessly. Robin went to one of the Sisters without a backward glance at her father. She took the nun’s hand and rubbed her cheek against the dark robe and smiled. Within an hour Nathaniel was on his way home alone.

  He felt almost foolishly lighthearted as he drove into the garage and he thought, guiltily, that even the old house looked different. Lighter, somehow, and not quite like the heavy old brick pile that it was. Margery was waiting for him, her eyes gazing anxiously from the living room window.

  “Darling, it’s going to be all right,” said Nate as he came in and took her in his arms. “It’s a wonderful place.”

  “Really?” she asked, wanting to believe. “Really and truly, Nate?”

  “Yes, darling, really and truly. I saw a lot of children today and every single one looked happy and well cared for and loved.”

  Later, Jess telephoned Nate. “How did it go?” he asked.

  “Fine,” replied Nate. “And Margery’s fine, too. Come on over and have dinner with us.”

  “Thanks,” said Jess. “I’ll do that and I’ll come armed with several topics of conversation, none of them to do with children.”

  “Good,” said Nate. “We’ll have a good evening together.”

  But it was not a good evening. When dinner was over and the three of them were having coffee, Margery began to cry.

  “It’s no good, Nate,” she wept. “I feel as if someone had cut a piece right out of me. You’ll have to go to get her and bring her home. Right now.”

  “Darling,” said Nate. “You promised to give it a fair try. We can’t leave Robin somewhere for a few hours and then go yank her home again. She’ll be happy, dear. I promise you.”

  “But I’ll never be happy again, Nate,” cried Margery. “We were wrong to do this thing. I can’t stand it.”

  Virgie came and led Margery upstairs. She crooned softly and patted Margery.

  “Don’t you worry yourself none, honey,” said Virgie. “Things gonna be fine. Every thin’ gonna work out jes jim-dandy in a little while.”

  Nathaniel Cooper sighed.

  “It’s not going to work, Jess,” he said. “She’ll kill herself worrying about Robin.”

  “Time, Nate,” said Jess. “Give her time. You can’t take a child out of a mother’s life without leaving a space soon filled with tears of guilt and regret. All we can do is hope that time will take care of the space and fill it with something else.”

  “She’s got to get well, Jess,” said Nate desperately. “She’s got to.”

  “She will,” said Jess. “Margery has strength. If she didn’t, she could never have carried the burden of Robin for ten years. I only wish that she’d never picked up the burden in the first place, but she had to. She’s been all tangled up with a mess of things she’s tried to prove.”

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Nate.

  “It’s a great tragedy to produce a child like Robin,” said Jess. “And in Margery’s case it wasn’t only a matter of tragic misfortune but a point of pride as well. She had produced an imperfect child so she felt that she had to prove to herself, to you and the world that she could be a perfect mother. Nate, Margery is a healthy, normal woman. Do you think for a minute that she enjoyed caring for a sick, abnormal child?”

  “But it was what she wanted, Jess,” objected Nate. “The only time she seemed happy was when she was with Robin.”

  “It wasn’t what she wanted,” said Jess. “I’ve often wondered how she coped with what must have been an almost overwhelming feeling of resentment toward Robin and how she managed to squash her feelings so that they didn’t show. And I’ve wondered how bitterly she must have hated herself for fee
ling like that and how many times she held Robin to herself, screaming silent denials.”

  “Good God, Jess. You’re trying to tell me that all this time she’s hated Robin.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Jess.

  “But you haven’t seen her as I have. Day after day and night after night there was no one for Margery but Robin, and even after all this time, it’s still Robin. How long do you think she can go on without her? You saw the way she was tonight.”

  “Tonight Margery was deliberately making herself unhappy,” said Jess. “She’s punishing herself for what she thinks of as abandoning her child. You’re comparatively lucky, Nate. You made a good adjustment to Robin. You got used to taking a back seat and waiting. Now you’re all that Margery has left and you’re going to have to make her feel as needed as Robin did or else she won’t feel as if she has any purpose in going on. But most important of all, Margery shouldn’t think of herself as a failure as far as being a woman goes and there’s only one way to solve that. Another child.”

  “Another child?”

  “Yes, Nate. Another child. A perfect, normal child.”

  Nate smiled. He was thinking of what Margery had told him, about the way she had watched Lisa Pappas and Anthony Cooper and had thought of love.

  “It’s queer the way things turn out, isn’t it?” asked Nate.

  “Like what?” asked Jess.

  “Like the way big things are often triggered by little insignificant things.”

  “Whatever that means,” smiled Jess. “I suppose I agree.”

  Nate shrugged and laughed at himself. “I was just thinking that the Pappas mess wasn’t such a total loss after all because there was one little facet of it that triggered Margery into thinking of feeling again.”

  “And what was that?” asked Jess.

  “Lisa Pappas’s love affair with my nephew,” said Nate. “I imagine that this is probably the only time in history that some good has come out of such a situation. Not that I respect Anthony any for it. I don’t approve of a man poaching on another man’s land.”