Ten North Frederick

by John O'Hara

  “Why should you, if you were right then?”

  “If I was right,” said Joe. “Some things don’t change, but all people do. And that isn’t as inconsistent as it sounds. I haven’t changed my mind much since I was thirty. By my mind, when I speak of my mind, I mean the things I believed in then. I still believe in them. But of course I’ve changed, you need only to look at me. You’ve changed. We all do. There was a nice girl that used to be a friend of yours, Kate Drummond.”

  “Well now, she hasn’t changed.”

  “How do you mean she hasn’t changed? I’d like to hear about that.”

  “She looks the same as when we had our apartment, just the same.”

  “Beautiful, smart, lovely,” said Joe. “Yes?”

  “And still in love with the same man.”

  “Her husband,” said Joe.

  “No, Kate was in love with someone else, and still is, whoever it is. But she’s happy with her husband. I suppose that’s inconsistent, too.”

  “Well, of course life is full of inconsistencies, Ann. I’d like to think that your friend Kate can be happy and still continue to love the other man. Very fond of Kate. Never got to know her very well, but she was quite a remarkable girl.”

  “I just love her,” said Ann.

  “Yes, you were great friends. Well, you must be tired.”

  “And you want to read. All right, you dear man, my lovely father.” She kissed him and hurried out of the room, hurrying—although she could not know it—from their last good talk together.

  Between Joe and Edith there came into being a relationship that never quite reached hostility, but with each day onward from her angry admission the relationship moved away from love. The practice of love had gone out of their life together; they continued to live in the same house, eat their meals together, expose themselves to the intimacies of living together; and Edith could count on Joe to pay the bills, to be the husband “for show.” Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Benjamin Chapin took pleasure in this, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Benjamin Chapin regretted that, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Benjamin Chapin requested this, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Benjamin Chapin were among those . . . There was nothing, certainly, in the public prints or in the public view that could be inferred to be proof or hint of a change in their relationship. They were getting older, like a lot of people their age, and unlike a good many people their age, they behaved toward each other with the same precise politeness that they had observed all their lives.

  Edith’s angry admission had, of course, been provoked by the sudden first suspicion that she no longer owned Joe, a doubt that never had given her the slightest reason for being in all the years of their marriage. The admission, she first feared, was a tactical error, but almost immediately she corrected herself: it had not been an error; it had been a lucky accident, for simultaneously, in the same scene, she and Joe had overtly put an end to pretense and deception. It was not one partner to the marriage who had done the disrupting thing; it was both. “I charge you—and I have done the same.” There was no lingering doubt between them; no miserable humility on the part of the guilty one; no waiting for a reprisal; no miserable humility on the part of the offended one; no waiting for the opportunity to strike back. Realizing all this, Edith at first referred to the situation, in her mind, as a clean break. But when she had time for more reflection she saw that it was not a clean break at all, but something in its way better. It was a new relationship, brand-new, with a man she had lived with most of her life and whom she had secretly, secretly despised. She had despised him because he, the catch of the town, had taken in marriage her, the plainjane, the notquite. In her mind she had condemned him because for so many years he had come back to her body, and hers alone, for the satisfaction and renewal of his passions. She remained convinced that until the affair of the woman he was protecting, he had known only one woman, and that herself. And she had other reasons for her secret scorn of him; he was too polite, too considerate, too easily defeated, and not very lucky or very unfortunate. But then she had found him out and had boasted of her own infidelity, and as the relationship was undergoing one sort of change for the worse, it was also undergoing another sort of change for the better. She saw him as someone who had more to him than he had ever revealed. She could not like him in the new relationship, but she accorded him a sort of retroactive respect, and some of it carried over into the new relationship.

  It was thus not difficult to maintain outward appearances of felicity, even though she found a new reason for the old contempt. She was, inevitably, the first and for a long time the only person to notice Joe’s drinking. The matter of quantity became apparent on their household liquor bills, then on the chits Joe signed at the Gibbsville Club. She looked for, and always found, the progressive signs that indicated the effect on his body. “The Mister is off his feed,” Marian would say. “I try to give him all his favorites.” And Edith would lie Joe out of it by pretending to believe he was eating bigger lunches at the club. She herself cleaned up after his first hemorrhage and vomiting, and she obeyed him when, in reply to her soft suggestion, he forbade her to call Billy English, but Billy English went to her.

  “Edith, Joe is drinking too much,” said Billy English. “We’d better do something about it.”

  “I wish you’d talk to him—or have you?” said Edith.

  “No, I haven’t, and I consider myself remiss, the way I found out. I, his friend, I didn’t notice it. Do you know who noticed it?”

  “Is it noticeable?”

  “It is to an eye doctor. He went to Ferguson to see about new glasses, and Ferguson wouldn’t give him new glasses. He told Joe straight from the shoulder, he told him it was liquor that made him think he needed glasses. Central retinal degeneration. Trouble seeing things straight on, and I should have noticed, because a couple of people have commented to me, asked me if Joe was worried about something or working too hard. He looked right through them. Edith, I want you tell him to come in and see me at my office.”

  “I’d like to, but how can I do that?”

  “I don’t know how. You’re his wife. Have you taken a good look at your husband lately? I mean that seriously.”

  “What a question!”

  “All right, answer some of these questions: has he had to have his pants let out lately?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Have you noticed whether his pubic hair is thinning out?”

  “No, I haven’t noticed that.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t look in that direction any more. Have you noticed the palms of his hands?”

  “No.”

  “Then notice them. They’re probably turning pink,” said Billy.

  “What are you leading up to?”

  “You’ve heard of cirrhosis of the liver. Your father died of it.”

  “Oh,” said Edith.

  “Ferguson did a very unusual thing, coming to me, but he knows Joe’s a friend as well as a patient, and he knows I’ve been seeing fewer and fewer patients. But he likes Joe. Now I’ll tell you, Edith. If Joe had any timidity or doubt about coming to see me, that’s all right. I’ll forgive him if he goes to another doctor. But you get him to somebody, and don’t take too long about it.”

  “I’ll try,” said Edith.

  “You’d better more than try. And you watch out for a hemorrhage. If Joe starts vomiting blood, you call me right away.”

  “Thank you, Billy.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank Ferguson.”

  “I hardly know Dr. Ferguson,” said Edith.

  Well, what was the use of having a talk with Joe when a man named Ferguson, whom he hardly knew, had already told him he was drinking too much? And what was the use of talking to a man who obviously was drinking because of an affair with some woman in New York, the misdirected gallantry of protecting a cheap tart?

  It was never any great problem for Edith to fin
d a reason to be failing in admiration for her husband. And in the new relationship—now no longer so new—they avoided as though by agreement discussions that would entail the disclosure of any feeling of concern, one for the other. If, as seemed to be the case, they had condemned themselves to the habit of intimacy without even a friendship, that at least was a way to live that had advantages over living apart; and to disturb the way, to risk losing the advantages through a distasteful scene, was not according to Edith’s accepted plan. And besides, Edith told herself, she was according Joe the courtesy of allowing him to live as he wanted to.

  Only once was her philosophical decision subjected to a judgment. Joby, who was teaching code-work at an O.S.S. camp near Washington, came home to Gibbsville “for a steak” one day, and during his visit he encountered Dr. English at the Gibbsville Club. As a result of the encounter he presented himself in his mother’s sewing room.

  “What’s happening to Father?” he said.

  “Why, he’s at the office.”

  “No, I don’t mean this minute. Or I do mean this minute. Every minute. I think he looks like hell.”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, don’t you?” said Joby.

  “You get home so seldom, naturally we’ve both changed. And there’ll be changes the next time you come home, I daresay.”

  “Look, Mother, I don’t know a God damn thing about medicine, but anybody can see that Father’s falling apart.”

  “Really? How do you think you’re going to look when you’re sixty-two? You’re not yet thirty, but you don’t look the healthiest.”

  “Never mind me. How long since Father has seen a doctor, gotten a check-up?”

  “Oh, I don’t really know.”

  “A year?”

  “Possibly,” said Edith.

  “Two years?”

  “It could even be two. Or three.”

  Joby stood up. “Will you make him go to a doctor?”

  “Why, no, I don’t think so.”

  “He’s old enough to take care of himself. Is that the idea?”

  “That is exactly the idea.”

  “And you refuse to make him go see a doctor?”

  “Refuse? Joby, it isn’t a question of refusing. If I understand you correctly, you’re ordering me to tell your father to see a doctor—”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “And I pay no attention to orders from you. It isn’t a question of refusing. Do you order people about in this job of yours? Are you really a lieutenant or a captain or something of the sort?”

  “God orders you, not me.”

  “Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear. You must be higher than a captain, to be so close to the Almighty.”

  “Mother, I don’t think I’ll ever set foot in this house again.”

  “Oh, you said the same thing in the very same words at least half a dozen times before, beginning when you were about twelve or thirteen. You always seemed to think that the way to solve your problems was to announce that you were never going to set foot in this house again. But that threat isn’t as effective as it may have been when you were a naughty, helpless little boy. We forgive our children a lot because they are children. What if I said you’re not welcome here? What if I reminded you that it’s time you had a home of your own, and a wife to give orders to as long as her patience held out? I can’t abide rudeness, never have, and I’ve never had to, except from you. We always tried to understand you, and we put up with a great deal because you were—I’m sure these modern child psychologists have some word for it. But we just thought you needed a little more understanding than most children, and we tried to give it to you. But of course we’ve known for a long time that our efforts were wasted. Well, now you threaten to leave us forever, I for one no longer consider it a threat.”

  “No, I guess you don’t. A woman that would commit murder wouldn’t be bothered by any threat I could make.”

  “I wish you’d pack your things and go, and before you ever come back here you’d better write me and make sure you’ll be allowed in this house.”

  “All right, Mother. But you didn’t have to lie to Dr. English.”

  “Lie? I never even mentioned your name to Dr. English.”

  “No, and you never mentioned his name to Father, did you? How long is it since he ordered you to have a doctor for Father? Mother, I know what you’re doing, and it stinks.”

  He was gone from the house in less than half an hour, and he never again saw his father alive.

  Joe’s second hemorrhage occurred at the McHenry & Chapin office, and Dr. George Ingram was called because he was Arthur McHenry’s physician and because the Chapins had no family doctor since the complete retirement of Billy English. They took Joe to the hospital.

  “Mr. Chapin has had a rupture of an esophageal varix,” he told Edith. “Could you tell me about any previous hemorrhage, Mrs. Chapin?”

  “Well, I suppose vomiting blood several years ago—would that constitute a hemorrhage, Dr. Ingram?”

  “It would indeed. Well, then Dr. English must have warned your husband.”

  “Dr. English wasn’t called.”

  “Oh? Who was?”

  “No one. My husband wouldn’t have it.”

  “But it must have been—well, never mind. The point is, another hemorrhage like this—we know what it’s from, Mrs. Chapin. Your husband has cirrhosis of the liver.”

  “Can you tell that right away?”

  Ingram smiled joylessly. “You can make a pretty good guess if you’ve been watching a man put it away at the club for several years. Dr. English would have had Mr. Chapin on a full diet, proteins, carbohydrates, et cetera.”

  “Is Mr. Chapin going to die?”

  “We’re all going to die, Mrs. Chapin.”

  “But Mr. Chapin is going to die sooner than the rest of us.”

  “It looks that way. I’m sorry.”

  “Today?”

  Ingram hesitated. “I’d advise you to send for your son and daughter. You’ve always been known as a woman of great courage, and that’s why I’ve felt free to speak frankly to you.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Ingram.”

  Shortly after eight o’clock on an April night in the year 1945, Joe Chapin died, never having come out of the coma that followed the hematemesis. In the Gibbsville Hospital room with him when he died were Edith Chapin, Arthur McHenry, Dr. George Ingram, Sally Orloski, R.N.; Mr. and Mrs. Charles W. Rohrbach and daughter Bertha Rohrbach, of Collieryville. The Rohrbachs were present because Charlie Rohrbach, the popular driver of the Collieryville Gibbsville bus line, was recovering from an operation for appendicitis which had been performed that morning. At that, Joe Chapin was lucky to get a bed in the overcrowded hospital.

  Out in the corridor, which contained two broken lines of beds, Arthur said to Edith: “Now, you get some rest. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “No, Arthur. I want to do as much as I can. I want to keep busy.”

  Arthur smiled. “So do I. We’ll both have enough to do.”

  They had enough to do. There is always enough to do while the heart keeps pumping. There is never, never enough time to do it all. Even when to remember is all that one has to do, it is enough, and there is not enough time to remember it all. And one man’s life is more than any one person can fully remember, just one man’s life, and so we remember what we can, what we are reminded of, what gives us pleasure or sadness to remember. There is here, in the biography of Joe Chapin, nothing that could not have been seen or heard by the people whose lives were touched by Joe Chapin’s life. Whatever he thought, whatever he felt has always been expressed to or through someone else, and the reader can judge for himself the truth of what the man told or did not tell. Just as, ten years after Joe Chapin’s death, the people who remember him slightly or well have to go by what he said and did and l
ooked like, and only rarely by what he did not say or do. Somewhere, finally, after his death, he was placed in the great past, where only what he is known to have said and done can contradict all that he did not say, did not do. And then, when that time was reached when he was placed in the great past, he went out of the lives of all of the rest of us, who are awaiting our turn.

  • • •

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