Earth and High Heaven

by Gwethalyn Graham

  “Listen, Mother,” said Erica, staring at her. “The first night I ever went out with Marc, he asked me where I wanted to go and I suggested a restaurant over on the Back River. It’s quite a long drive to the Back River, and when we finally got there, there was a sign on the gate saying ‘Select Clientele.’”

  In a voice of sheer despair her mother said, “And you expect us to help you and treat Marc Reiser as though he were anybody else, when all he has to offer you is that sort of thing for the rest of your life!”

  “I only told you that to make you see that I do know what I’d be letting myself in for, and so does Marc. The second time I saw him he said it was better to be on one side or the other than out in the middle where you get it both ways ...”

  “Then why doesn’t he leave you alone ...”

  “I don’t want to be left alone,” said Erica after a moment’s silence. She realized now that to have expected her mother and father to treat Marc as though he were anyone else was to have expected them not only to change character but to alter their scale of values, which was obviously out of the question and far more than she herself was capable of doing, even supposing she had been willing to try. They were not to be blamed for doing everything in their power to shield their daughter against even the possibility of a lifetime out in the middle and for acting in what, in all sincerity, they conceived to be her best interests.

  It was a complete deadlock.

  Her mother went on at last with a visible effort, “What I don’t agree with is the way Charles is going about it. This is your home, and although I can’t imagine your father and me and Marc Reiser having much to say to each other,” she observed with a slightly different expression, “whether we happen to care for him or not, he is a friend of yours and you should be able to invite him here. You might just as well be living in a boarding house ...” she said, and broke off, remembering that she had said it before in another connection altogether. Then, because Margaret Drake was nothing if not honest, she made herself go on. She said wearily, “Well, it’s true, and certainly that part of it is not your fault.”

  Erica was standing by the window, so that her mother had to turn her head toward the light in order to look at her. The long rays of the sun drove straight into her mother’s face, and for the first time, Erica could see how tired she was. She was tired out.

  In spite of everything Margaret Drake had been saying, Erica knew that left to herself, she would have followed a different course. She would have said what she thought, but having done that, she would not only have invited Marc to the house but she would have done her utmost to regard him objectively and to be fair to both Marc and her daughter.

  Erica said suddenly, “It’s Charles who’s behind all this! It’s our fault, not yours. Why should you have to be dragged into it?” she asked desperately. “You can’t do anything, you’re just caught ...”

  “I can’t stop unless you do, darling,” said her mother, smiling faintly. “I can’t help being dragged into something that concerns both my husband and my daughter. You’re such a baby in some ways, Eric.”

  A moment later she remarked, “I always wondered what would happen if you and Charles came up against each other. I don’t understand you as well as he does, and I don’t understand him the way you do, but I couldn’t just sit by and watch you killing the best in each of you, even if I weren’t involved in it myself. Your relationship with your father was a very fine thing, Eric,” she said, glancing at Erica and then back to the window again. “There’s one side of him which you’ve been able to bring out, but which I’ve scarcely been able to touch since we were first married.”

  Her eyes came back into the room, to the Poster of Carcassonne which Erica had brought back from her last trip to France, just before the war, and she said, “Because it was you and not me is no reason for me to let that side of Charles disappear again without a struggle. I don’t know what he’d do without you. If he should lose you, he’ll lose an outlet that he needs and that he’s never been able to find in anyone else.”

  She said quietly, “I want him to keep his outlet,” and got up, adding on her way to the door, “As for you, I just want what every mother wants — I want you to be happy, to marry the right person, and not the wrong one.”

  “Mother,” said Erica.

  “Yes?”

  “Won’t you meet Marc? Couldn’t we have lunch together some day, just the three of us?”

  “Why?” she asked, pausing with her hand on the doorknob. “What difference would it make?”

  “I don’t know,” said Erica, dropping her eyes. “I just thought that you wouldn’t be so worried if you really knew him. I’m sure you’d like him ...”

  “Liking him would just make everything that much more complicated, wouldn’t it? The situation is awkward enough as it is. I don’t think I particularly care about meeting him now in any case. After all, he must have some idea of the damage he’s doing by this time.”

  “You don’t know how hard I work to keep him from finding out!” said Erica involuntarily.

  “What do you mean?” asked her mother, staring at her. As Erica did not answer she said, “How hard you work to keep him from finding out the truth, is that it?”

  “I told you Marc was the one who really needed to be convinced,” said Erica after a pause.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her mother opened the door and Erica said, “You will meet him sometime, won’t you?”

  “I don’t see how I can manage lunch very well. You know I always stay at the Red Cross, it takes too much time if I go out.”

  “All right,” said Erica. “No harm in asking.”

  She realized that it was still Charles, and not her mother, but she was crying when Miriam wandered in through the communicating door between her bedroom and Erica’s.

  Miriam was in slacks and a white shirt, carrying a glass of rye in one hand and a hairbrush and another glass of rye in the other. She put the first glass down in front of Erica on the dressing table and retired to the window seat, remarking, “Private stock. If this goes on, we’re all bound to take to drink sooner or later anyhow, and I thought it might just as well be sooner. How are things?” she inquired conversationally.

  “Lousy, thank you,” said Erica, drying her eyes.

  “So I gathered. Is that a new dress? It looks nice, darling — I’ll say this for Marc Reiser, at least he’s got you out of suits.”

  She scrutinized Erica in silence for a while, absently brushing her dark hair, and then asked suddenly, “Would it make any difference if I came along some night? After all, I’m family — sort of,” she added, qualifying it.

  “Thanks, Mimi!”

  “You don’t have to start crying all over again. Have a drink instead. And how about a cigarette?” She tossed one to Erica, lit one for herself, and observed, “I suppose you’ve heard the latest ...”

  “No, what?”

  “The latest is that Mother and Charles are not going to take any holidays this summer because they’re so worried about you that they wouldn’t get any real rest anyhow, and they might just as well stay in town and go on working.”

  She inhaled deeply, blew out a long, thin stream of smoke and added, shrugging, “Well, it’s probably true, but it’s still blackmail. This whole business is so damn silly, all they do is stay at home brooding over a man they don’t even know.”

  “It isn’t just that,” said Erica. “Even if they knew him and liked him, he’d still be impossible.”

  “Yes, but not so impossible as he is now. People are funny,” said Miriam, gazing thoughtfully into space. “You’d think one problem would be enough, without going out of your way to invent a couple of extra ones. Most of what Charles says about Marc comes under the heading of pure invention, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess so.”

  “He reminds me of someone erecting an ogre to frighten himself with.”

  A moment later she said idly
, “Do you know what I’d do if I were you?”

  Erica was sitting on the edge of her bed, completely discouraged, with her head and her shoulders down, and as she raised her eyes inquiringly but without much interest, Miriam said, “If I were you I’d get out.”

  “Why?” asked Erica, startled.

  “Not for your own sake, but for Marc’s. I don’t know much about him, and maybe he’s so tough he can go on taking it, but there are other ways of knocking a man down than just hauling off and socking him!”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Every time he meets you somewhere and every time he brings you home and leaves you on the doorstep, it must get him down that much further, whether he realizes it or not. I think that is what Charles is counting on,” she went on reflectively. “He’s banking on the probability that some day, Marc will get so far down that he’ll just quit.”

  “How did you know that?” demanded Erica.

  “Oh,” said Miriam, raising her eyebrows. “So I’m not the only one.”

  “I didn’t mean about Charles. He can’t be doing it deliberately ...”

  “Why can’t he?”

  “He thinks Marc is the aggressive type with a skin six inches thick.”

  “Oh, nuts,” said Miriam.

  “But Mimi, he doesn’t know what Marc is like. You’ve heard him on the subject of Marc often enough.”

  “A lot of that is eyewash put on for your benefit. Charles doesn’t really believe it; he did in the beginning but he doesn’t now. The only person who does is Mother. You see, Eric, the great thing about being temperamental, like Charles, is that when ninety-nine times in a row your outbursts against someone are genuine, nobody is likely to spot the hundredth as partly faked. I don’t mean that Charles isn’t sincere — just say that he’s letting himself be carried away by his own arguments. He may end up where he started by believing that Marc is just a ‘cheap Jewish lawyer,’ as he so charmingly expresses it, but he doesn’t at the moment.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s been making a few judicial inquiries about Marc downtown and over at Divisional Headquarters ...”

  “But, Mimi, that makes all the difference,” said Erica eagerly.

  “Does it?”

  “Of course it does. Good heavens, it means that ...”

  Miriam interrupted. She said flatly, “It means nothing. What good does it do Charles to hear Marc described as quite exceptional — for a Jewish lawyer? Or first-rate — for a Jewish officer? You don’t imagine any of them left out the word ‘Jew,’ do you? Nobody ever does.”

  Erica sank back again. She said listlessly, “I suppose that was what Mother meant.”

  “Mother doesn’t know even that much. He hasn’t told her.”

  “Why?”

  Miriam regarded her quizzically for a moment and said finally, “What’s the use of getting Mother all confused?”

  She smoked for a while in silence and then remarked, “However, that’s not the point. If you think this atmosphere of concentrated disapproval is all you’re going to have to contend with, you’re crazy. Charles hasn’t finished with you yet, he has-n’t even started, and he’ll put up the fight of his life before he’ll hand you over to a Jewish lawyer — even if he is exceptional. And though you may be able to stand it, some of it is bound to get through to Marc sooner or later. Since he must have been getting it in one form or another all his life, my advice to you is to make up your mind whether you want Marc or Charles, because Charles isn’t going to allow you to have both of them, and if it’s Marc, then clear out where Charles can’t get at him and where you don’t have to leave him standing on the doorstep.”

  Miriam drank some rye, lit a cigarette and as Erica glanced at her clock and got up, Miriam said, “I guess I sound pretty hardboiled but compared to Charles, I’m not even coddled.”

  “He’s only trying to do what he thinks is best for me,” said Erica, running a comb through her hair and then taking her bag and gloves from the dressing table.

  “Nobody can really tell what’s ‘best’ for anyone else.” Looking up at Erica who had paused in the center of the room on her way to the door, she said, “If you don’t clear out, what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I’m just going to hang on. Charles can’t break this thing up if I don’t let him, and provided I just hang on long enough, he’ll come around sooner or later.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Miriam.

  Marc was waiting for Erica in the main dining room at Charcot’s, sitting at a table in the back of the room underneath a great golden cock painted on the smooth light wall over his head. He did not notice Erica until she was within a few feet of him; he was looking fixedly at the big menu in front of him. The menu was actually just a trick, a form of protection against his own nerves and the glances of the people around him, for he hated waiting alone in a crowd. Usually he bought a paper and took refuge behind the war news, but today he must have forgotten.

  “Hello, Marc ...”

  “Eric!” He got up so quickly that he almost upset the table. When he first caught sight of her, his face always lit up as though he had not seen her for weeks.

  “Have you been waiting long?”

  “No, only about five minutes.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Erica, smiling at him.

  They sat side by side on the white leather banquette facing down the room, Erica in a green and white print dress and Marc in uniform.

  “What’s ris de veau à la bonne femme?” Marc wanted to know.

  “Haven’t you read Young Man of Caracas?”

  “I’ve just started it.”

  “Well, when you get a little further you’ll find out that it means ‘Laugh of the sheep at the good woman.’”

  “Really,” said Marc. “It sounded more like an hors d’oeuvre than an entrée.”

  “What else is there?” asked Erica, looking at the menu over his shoulder.

  “Poulet, filet mignon, escaloppe de veau, filet de sole à la something and something grenouilles. Why do they always have to write these menus in purple ink?” He paused and then asked, “What does that remind me of, Eric?”

  “This Above All?”

  “Right. Cultured, aren’t we? Well, which do you want?”

  “Let’s have poulet.”

  “Poulet frit, poulet grille, or poulet roti?”

  “Grille. They do it well here.”

  “Poulet grille, s’il vous plait,” he said to the waiter. “Des hors d’oeuvres — do you want soup?” Erica shook her head. “Moi non plus. Fish?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Pas de poisson. We’ll choose our dessert later. How about a cocktail?”

  “Yes, Manhattan, please.”

  “Two Manhattans — non, je prendrai un martini.”

  “Un Manhattan, un martini,” said the waiter.

  “Merci.” He turned to Erica and said, “You look beautiful tonight, darling. Don’t ever cut your hair, will you?”

  He remembered that it was the combination of fine, almost delicate features and that look of emotional strength which came through from underneath, which had so struck him the first time he had met her. It was not only in her face but in the lines of her slender, almost boneless body, a blending of sensitivity and passion which disturbed him so profoundly whenever he was with her, close to her, that afterwards he forgot what they talked about and almost forgot where they had gone — what remained chiefly in his mind was his own sense of strain at always holding back, sitting on the opposite side of a table or if they were in a restaurant like this with seats along the wall, of keeping a foot of space between them, and when they were driving, staying on his own side of the car.

  Erica was something that had never happened to him before. With all the others, an essential part of him had remained detached and isolated from the rest of his consciousness, out of reach of everyone, including himself. He could do nothing about it but try to confine it and fight i
t off as long as possible. His detachment had set a time limit to all his relationships, and since he was always aware of it, he had never been able to fool himself into believing that any of them would be permanent. Sooner or later and against his will, because he had no liking for short-lived affairs and wanted permanence, the old withdrawal process would begin again, until eventually he would find himself back where he had started, having completed another circle and got nowhere.

  Then Erica had come along and for the first time in his life, he had found himself wholly involved. He did not know how or why it had happened, or, more important, since under the circumstances a lot of people were going to take a lot of convincing, how to explain to anyone else that, this time, he knew he was not going to get over it. So far he had only tried explaining it to one person, his brother David, having run into him accidentally at the Rosenbergs’ when both of them had been in Toronto on business the week before, and David had remained quite unconvinced. Apparently the more you talk about being in love, the more you sound like a dime novel. At one point he had even heard himself protesting that this time it was different and that he and Erica belonged together!

  They had been sitting in some ghastly Toronto beer parlor, having left the Rosenbergs’ with an hour still to spare before both of them had to catch their trains. He would probably not have mentioned Erica to his brother if he had not been thoroughly depressed, partially by things in general and partly by the Rosenbergs. Betty Rosenberg was not Jewish, and she was a Montrealer with much the same background as Erica. In order to get away from the apparently inevitable family complications, when they had been married two years they had moved to Toronto where Max had had to start all over again. They had two children, there was another due soon, and Marc had been heartsick at the way in which life was obviously wearing them down. He had not known Betty Rosenberg before her marriage, but she was fair-haired, and he supposed that she had once looked like Erica.