Ten North Frederick

by John O'Hara

  • • •

  Ruth Jenkins had lived all her life in Gibbsville, never had been out of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania except for two one-day excursions to Atlantic City, but in twenty-six years she had never been inside the courthouse. Every day of her life, practically, she looked at the courthouse clock and that ended it. Like many residents of Gibbsville, her attitude was that the courthouse was county, not town, and a place that drew to Gibbsville a lot of ignorant miners in trouble and a lot of lawyers trying to get them out of it. Nothing could have persuaded her to set foot in the place, nothing but the kind of thing that did: the legacy from her aunt, the papers to be signed, and Mr. J. B. Chapin the lawyer to accompany her up the hill. The business in the office of Register of Wills was brief and she would have been home in another hour had it not been for her casual mention to Mr. Chapin that it was her first visit.

  “Well,” said Mr. Chapin. “Wouldn’t you like to see what makes the wheels go round? Court’s in session. Let’s have a look in Number 3 Courtroom. We might run across something interesting.” She was unequal to the problem of how to refuse the invitation. He led her to Number 3, to a row of empty chairs inside the rail, and they sat down.

  “This is assault and battery with intent to kill. The defendant is that Italian man with the mustache.”

  “I see,” said Ruth Jenkins.

  “The witness is being questioned by Mr. Williams, Lloyd Williams, from Collieryville. Assistant district attorney, and smart as a whip. Watch him tie that witness in knots.”

  “I object, your Honor!”

  “That’s defense counsel. Mr. Troutman from Taqua,” said Joseph B. Chapin.

  “And quite rightly,” said the judge.

  “Judge Bramwell,” said Joseph B. Chapin.

  “Mr. Williams, shall we read back to you so that you’ll know better next time?” said Judge Bramwell. “Twice in the past four minutes I’ve sustained Mr. Troutman’s objection to that same line of questioning and now you persist in continuing it.”

  “I apologize, your Honor,” said Williams. “I am only trying to show—”

  “I think I know what you’re trying to show, Mr. Williams. Right now the clock shows the hour to be past my lunch time and I think we’ll all be the better for a recess. Let us adjourn until two o’clock.”

  “All rise!” shouted a tipstaff.

  They held their places during the confusion of adjournment. “I’m afraid this was a disappointment,” said Joseph B. Chapin. “But let’s go over and say hello to Lloyd Williams.”

  “All right,” said Ruth Jenkins.

  “Lloyd! Lloyd!” Chapin called.

  Williams turned and saw Chapin. “Hello, Joe,” he said, and it was another first-time for Ruth Jenkins; the first time she ever had heard anyone call Chapin, Joe.

  “I would like you to meet Mrs. Jenkins. Ruth, this is Mr. Lloyd Williams, our eminent assistant district attorney.”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Jenkins,” said Williams. They did not shake hands; his were occupied with papers and large heavy-paper envelopes. “You in the courtroom?”

  “Just got here,” said Joe Chapin.

  “Bramwell’s been like that all morning,” said Williams, to Chapin, and addressed Ruth Jenkins: “Are you Mrs. Edwin Jenkins?”

  “Yes, I am,” she said.

  “I thought so,” said Williams. “Edwin has a very pretty wife.”

  “Oh, now,” said Ruth Jenkins.

  “He has indeed,” said Joe Chapin.

  “Your client, Joe?”

  “I have that honor,” said Joe Chapin.

  “Well, you’re in good hands, Mrs. Jenkins,” said Williams. “Unless you get in trouble with the law and I have to be on the other side. Then you’d see me ripping Joe to shreds.”

  “Unless, of course, we were before Judge Bramwell,” said Joe Chapin.

  “Oh, him. He should have retired ten years ago while he still had possession of all his faculties.”

  “Uh—Lloyd doesn’t—uh—”

  “Oh, Mrs. Jenkins isn’t going to report me, are you, Mrs. Jenkins?”

  “What for?” said Ruth Jenkins.

  “For saying what I think. That Judge Bramwell should have retired. That remark of his about knowing what I was trying to show. That kind of a remark might come in handy on appeal, in a different set of circumstances.”

  “I thought of that,” said Joe Chapin.

  “He knows I can’t lose this case, so he’s having some fun at my expense. Be glad your husband isn’t a lawyer, Mrs. Jenkins.”

  “You wouldn’t be anything else,” said Joe Chapin.

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t,” said Williams. “Would you care to see my office, Mrs. Jenkins? As a taxpayer, you might like to see how some of your money is spent.”

  “I’m afraid we have to be running along,” said Joe Chapin.

  “Whatever you say,” said Ruth.

  “Come on, have a look,” said Williams. “Then I’ll ride downtown with you, if that’s all right.”

  “Would you like to do that?” said Joe Chapin.

  “All right,” said Ruth Jenkins.

  “But I can’t give you a ride downtown. You know that, Lloyd. I always walk.”

  “Have you got a car, Mrs. Jenkins?” said Williams.

  “Yes, I do,” said Ruth Jenkins.

  “Then she can give me a ride, that is if she wants to.”

  “It would be a pleasure,” said Ruth Jenkins.

  It was so arranged. They had a look at Williams’s office, which he shared with other members of the district attorney’s staff and which reflected no personality; then they parted from Joe Chapin and got in her Ford two-door sedan. “I’m having a valve job done on my wagon,” he said. “Could I ask you to drive me out to Klein’s Garage and see if it’s ready?”

  They drove to Klein’s Garage; his car would not be ready until later in the afternoon. She heard him telling the mechanic that that was a hell of a note, and she heard the mechanic say that that was when they’d promised it. She wondered about that, but not disturbingly. When he returned to the car he said: “That’s always the way.”

  “Where else can I take you?” she said.

  “Do you have to be home right away?”

  “No,” she said. “Ed eats lunch at the ‘Y’ Cafeteria.”

  “I go there sometimes, I’ve seen him there. I guess he goes there every day.”

  “Just about, except Saturdays,” she said.

  “A day like this, I often just get in my car and drive around instead of eating.”

  “That’s not good for you,” she said. “You ought to eat!”

  “Yes, but sometimes I get more out of going for a ride and getting rid of that courthouse air. I like fresh air, but my work keeps me indoors most of the time.”

  “I like fresh air, too,” she said.

  “But you’re probably hungry.”

  “No, I’m not so hungry. I had a milk shake around ten. Milk shake and a couple pretzels.”

  “You wouldn’t feel like taking a ride down Beaver Valley way?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” she said. She turned and looked at him. “Just down Beaver Valley and back?”

  “That’s all,” he said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we better not,” she said.

  “You don’t want to start anything?” he said.

  “What is there to start?” she said.

  “It’s started already. You can tell,” he said.

  She nodded. “I was never out with anybody but Ed since we got married.”

  “What about before?”

  “I used to go out with fellows, but not seriously.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “No,” she said. “Do you?”

  “No,” he
said.

  “That’s right. You married Lottie Danner, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. And you married Ed Jenkins,” he said.

  “I think I better go home. I think that’s best.”

  “Who is it best for?”

  “Everybody,” she said.

  “Everybody in the world? Everybody in the world? Everybody in Gibbsville? Everybody we know? Or everybody that’s going to know we went for a ride. And who will that be?”

  “People would recognize you.”

  “You didn’t, in court,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “But you’re well known.”

  “We were introduced to each other in the courtroom, by Joe Chapin. A lot of people saw that. You gave me a ride to the garage. If anybody wants to know why I’m in your car, Joe Chapin gave me an introduction to you and you helped me out with a ride to the garage. How many people are going to see you, just see you? Then ask yourself, how many are going to see you and recognize me? Then ask yourself, how many of those people are going to think anything about it? And of those people, how many are going to say to Ed Jenkins, ‘I saw your wife with Lloyd Williams’? All you have to do is tell your husband you took me to the garage, so he’ll know I was in your car.”

  “Ed won’t like it,” she said.

  “What won’t he like? The fact that Joseph B. Chapin took you over and introduced me to you? Joseph B. Chapin is the one that introduced us.”

  “It’d be different if it was just some ordinary man.”

  “Why does it being me make so much difference?”

  “Oh, quit your kidding. You know. You have a reputation. You know that.”

  “You mean, other than my professional reputation.”

  She laughed. “I’ll say.”

  “Well, how does it feel to be alone with a man with that kind of a reputation. Any different?”

  “Well—I don’t know.”

  “So far no harm has come to you? So far I haven’t said anything or done anything that would justify your alarm.”

  “So far.”

  “What do you think I might do, Ruth? What do you think I could do without your consent? You’re a married woman, aware of the relationship between man and woman—”

  “You’re clever. You got talking and got me talking, and now we’re practically out of town. You did that on purpose.”

  “To some extent. But at least we’re now getting in the country and not so many people can see us.”

  She was silent.

  “Are you alone a lot of the time?” he said, gently.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What do you do when you’re alone?”

  “When I’m alone? My housework.”

  “But you’re very neat, I noticed that. And I’ll bet you don’t have to use up much time doing the housework.”

  “No, not much,” she said. “I do my sewing.”

  “Oh, you can sew?”

  “I like to sew. I make some of my own dresses. The ones at the store are too dear, and half of them don’t fit right. I make some dresses for other girls, too. They give me the material but I do the dressmaking. Usually I select the patterns.”

  “Why don’t you go in the business?”

  “I thought of that, but Ed wouldn’t let me. He says it wouldn’t look right, a man at the bank’s wife a dressmaker.”

  “There’s money in it.”

  “Don’t I know that? I can make around fifty a month just making dresses for friends of mine.”

  “How does Ed feel about that?”

  “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  “Oh, you don’t tell him.”

  “He’d stop me,” she said.

  “What do you do with the money?”

  “I’ve got it hidden.”

  “It’s a wonder he didn’t hear about it, one way or another.”

  “He won’t, because the girls I make the dresses for, they get like twenty-five to buy a dress but I make one for around fifteen, and they keep the other ten, only they tell their husbands they bought the dress. They wouldn’t want to spoil that for themselves.”

  “No, I guess not. Do you know what you are, Ruth?”

  “What?”

  “You’re a kind of a bootlegger.”

  She laughed. “Another Ed Charney. I don’t care. Every penny Ed Jenkins makes goes into investments. If I didn’t make my own dresses I’d look like something the cat dragged in. He wants me to look neat and well dressed but he won’t give me the money for it.”

  “What would he do if you told him you decided you wanted to go into business?”

  “He’d say I couldn’t.”

  “But what could he do?”

  “What could he do? Why—he could forbid me.”

  “Yes, and then what, if you said you were going to.”

  “I don’t get what you mean,” she said.

  “Yes, you do,” said Williams.

  “You mean how could he stop me?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, I never thought of it that way.”

  “Then think of it.”

  “Yes, maybe you’re right. But he’s my husband.”

  “It isn’t as if you had children to look after. You have plenty of time and ability. It isn’t right for you to lose all that money on account of his pride. That’s what it is, it’s his pride.”

  “Well—I guess we better not talk about it any more.”

  “All right,” he said. “Ruth, you told me some secrets.”

  “Yes. I don’t know if that was such a good idea.”

  “Yes it was. I’m great at keeping secrets.”

  “Well, just so you keep those.”

  “Something inside you allowed you to tell me them. Is that right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You know so. I want to ask you something.”

  “Is it personal?”

  “Yes, personal and secret. Shall I ask you?”

  “Well—all right, if it’s not too personal.”

  “It’s very personal, but it’s secret,” he said. “No, I changed my mind. Do you want a cigarette?”

  “I don’t smoke,” she said.

  “I didn’t think you did. It doesn’t go with the rest of you.”

  “I just don’t like it. I have nothing against it,” she said. “What was it you were going to ask me?”

  “I don’t think you’d answer the question and I wouldn’t want to ask it if I wasn’t going to get an answer. It’s a very personal question. Private. Secret.”

  “What kind of a question?”

  “If I told you what kind of a question, that would be as much as asking it.”

  “Ask it.”

  “Does Ed thrill you when you’re together?”

  She made no answer. They drove in silence for a couple of hundred yards.

  “I don’t have any right to be sore at you. I made you ask me,” she said.

  “I don’t want you to be sore at me, that’s why I wasn’t going to ask it.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I want to know all about you.”

  “There isn’t much to know.”

  “As long as there’s one thing I don’t know, I’ll want to know it.”

  “Maybe I don’t know what you mean by thrill.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you. He doesn’t believe girls are supposed to get the same thrill as men do.”

  “I could thrill you.”

  “Yes, I guess you could,” she said.

  “Do I now, just talking about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am, too,” he said.

  “We’d better turn around,” she said. �
�I don’t like this. You shouldn’t get me like this. You ask me those questions and I don’t know what comes over me.”

  “It’s all right, Ruth. Turn around.”

  “Don’t ask me any more questions.”

  “I won’t. Do you want me to drive?”

  “No, no. I want to keep occupied.”

  They said no more until they were at the city limits of Gibbsville. “Will you let me off at the Reading Station? I’ll take a taxi from there.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Are you sore at me?”

  “No. I was, but not now.”

  “I know you were.”

  “Well, you expected me to be,” she said.

  “I guess I wouldn’t like you as much if you weren’t.”

  “Don’t like me, I don’t want you to like me or dislike me. Because I’m never going to see you again.”

  “I don’t blame you, Ruth. But I wanted to know.”

  “Well, you found out.”

  “I’m not going to phone you—”

  “You better not!”

  “I won’t. But you may want to phone me.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “If you do, tell the girl that answers that it’s Mrs. Jay. In our office we get a lot of calls that people don’t give their names.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll never phone you.”

  But she did; in two years, a hundred times, from the house in the 1900-block on Market Street. And he never let her forget the two years. The horn signal was his constant reminder.

  • • •

  In the comparatively brief period in which Gibbsville had had a mayor, a period dating from its changing from a borough to a third-class city, the office had been held by some scoundrels of varying degree, who had used money of their own in their campaigns, confident that after election their investments would be returned. The confidence was always justified, and in two cases so well justified that the confident men left Gibbsville to settle in California and Florida, never to return to the home town. Other men had invested in the office with less spectacular returns on their money, and they remained in Gibbsville. Conrad L. Yates was the only man to spend a large sum of money on his campaign and continued to spend his own money during his tenure of office. In that respect he was like the Lord Mayor of London, treating the position as a luxury he could afford and satisfied with the honor of the title. He liked being called Mayor; he liked better being called Mr. Mayor; and, in police court, Your Honor. He liked having letters addressed to The Honorable Conrad L. Yates. He liked having the radio and siren and blinker lights and city seal on the Cadillac he owned and equipped with his personal funds. He enjoyed making speeches and serving on committees. Like Fiorello H. La Guardia, a man whom he did not admire politically, he gave a weekly radio talk. His chauffeur, whom he called his driver, was a temporary special policeman, on the city payroll for a dollar a year, but entitled to wear a police uniform. (The driver’s actual salary was paid by Yates.) “What’s wrong with it?” he would say to his friends. “Some men want to be a general. Knudsen, the big man at General Motors. He’s a general. I ain’t a big shot like Knudsen, so I won’t never be no general. But I can be Mayor. That I like. Mayor I always wanted to be. Now I am.”