Institute

by James M. Cain

  Why it should have bucked me up, I have no idea, but it did. I suddenly felt proud of her—and hopeful—in spite of what I had to do. As soon as we got up and she made the bed, I got out my personal stationery and wrote my resignation in longhand.

  I addressed it to Mr. Garrett and simply said: “I resign as the institute’s Director.” I wrote it on the cocktail table in the living room while Hortense was back in the kitchen, fixing bacon and eggs. I went back and we ate. Then we sat in the dark, holding hands, whispering, waiting for Mr. Garrett to come. He had said he would be there about ten.

  At last Miss Nettie called to say he was there. I put on the lights, opened the door, and waited. When he came, I gave him my hand. He took it again and gave it that extra shake that said that he meant it. When he came in, he kissed Hortense and looked around at the apartment, especially the pictures. At the one of me on my perch as a lifeguard at Ocean City, he snapped his fingers sharply. “I knew I’d seen you somewhere!” he said. “I said so, didn’t I, that very first day, when you came to the apartment in Wilmington? Remember?”

  “Yeah. But give—what’s the rest of it?”

  “At Ocean City—I was spending the day there and got interested in this guard, the wigwagging he was doing, and asked him about it. But he corrected me. ‘We don’t wigwag,’ he said; ‘we semaphore.’ And it turned out that he was semaphoring about a child, a girl in a red dress with white polka dots—”

  “I remember now,” I said; “and you told me, ‘If that’s all that’s bothering you, there’s a red dress under the boardwalks, sticking out of the sand,’ and we both crawled under, and there was the lost child. A lot of gratitude we got. Some children get lost on purpose.”

  “It just goes to show,” Hortense said.

  “Show what?” he said.

  “Well, if you don’t know—”

  “She’s always doing that,” he complained, turning to me. “Getting off a real deep thought and then leaving it up in the air, dangling. But it does explain why I remembered you, and you had no recollection of me. You hardly looked at me.”

  He left the pictures at last, then crossed to a sofa and sat down, facing Hortense. “What’s this all about?” he asked her.

  “Richard, I want a divorce.”

  “No.”

  “I must have a divorce. I’m pregnant.”

  “I’ve known you were for some time, knew it before you did, perhaps. Your eyes betrayed you. For several days they had that madonna look they had that other time. The answer still has to be no.”

  “The answer has to be yes. Richard, I’m going to get a divorce whether you like it or not; I’m going to get it regardless of what you say.”

  “You’re not going to get it. Under the law, you must come to court with clean hands. As far as I’m concerned, you’re as clean as baby’s breath, but a court—when your pregnancy comes to light—might feel differently.”

  “How would it come to light?”

  “I would light it, that’s how. Hortense, I mean no.”

  “Why?” I said.

  He didn’t answer me or even look at me.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  He still didn’t answer or look at me. I took my resignation out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Mr. Garrett,” I said, sounding pretentious but not knowing how to sound otherwise, “that note will tell you, I think, the depth of my feeling for you, especially after today—what we did to that son of a bitch and the moment it gave us later. I mean the handshake we had. After that, I couldn’t play it slick. I couldn’t have false pretenses with you. So I wrote this note ... to get it over with. In spite of all that, in spite of what I feel, I have to tell you that you don’t get out of here until you spit it out—what it’s all about, why Hortense can’t have a divorce. A football player is no more persuasive than anyone else, except for one thing: he doesn’t mind playing rough. So, making it as plain as I know how, if it means you stay here all night, here’s where you’ll stay—until you tell Hortense why she can’t have a divorce. We know about Inga, so take it from there.”

  He got up, his face falling apart, apparently stunned. It crossed my mind that it was probably the first time that he had been told what to do, what he had to do, by anyone. He took out his handkerchief, crumpled it, and pressed it to the palms of his hands. Then suddenly he said: “I can’t stay out of her bed.”

  “But, Richard, how could you?”

  Her voice was quavering. Suddenly, instead of talking to me, he began giving out to her. “There’s no mystery to it,” he told her. “The night you had your miscarriage, I carried you downstairs. Remember? To the ambulance, and rode in it with you to the hospital. Then, when I got in the cab to go back to the apartment, I knew I had strained my back. That’s where Inga came in. She had a vibrator, already plugged in by her bed, which she used on herself sometimes. She stretched me out and put it on me. So ... I spent the night. That’s all—or almost all. Hortense, you, of all people should know: I have a hang-up about sex. I don’t know why, I just do. She’s the only woman I’ve ever known who really responded to me. As I said, there’s nothing mysterious about it.”

  He trailed off, still talking to her, and then sat looking at nothing while she stared at him for a long while.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” I said. “Why—?”

  “Oh. Oh, yes. If Hortense divorced me, Lloyd, I’d be free to marry this woman. I don’t think I would, but I might—I’m nuts about her, that I have to admit. I must not, cannot, will not let it happen! If she had stolen a million dollars or murdered someone or danced the hula in church, I don’t think I’d mind very much. I could probably tough it out. But marry a servant—no. No, NO!”

  He breathed it in a whisper that had the Book of Revelations in it. Hortense got up, walked around, and looked out the window as though thinking it over.

  “Yiss,” she trilled, “it devolves. It devolves that you smaken me on my pretty Swenska tail whenever I uppen my skurt. But wait, wait, wait unteel I peepen and see if mein pantyhosen iss clean!”

  “Goddamn it, knock it off!”

  “Now there’s a hostess for you! ‘Come in, pliz! Yiss, he iss home—aye tink.’ ” And she popped two or three kneebends which I have since heard are called “knicks,” so jerky they make you uncomfortable, while he chased her around, furious. I stepped between them and motioned for her to sit down.

  “We get the idea,” I said. Mr. Garrett stood for several moments, clenching and unclenching his fists. Then he stalked to the foyer, got his hat and coat from the closet, and put them on. He turned to her and said: “The answer is still no. While Inga is alive, there will be no divorce for you.”

  “But what am I going to do?”

  “Nothing! Nothing. Do that, you will be sitting pretty. Have your child—and who knows whose child it is except you, me, and Lloyd? I’ve told you, it’s well provided for. I’m putting it in my will, as well as any other children you have. I’m providing for you in the trust fund that’s already set up for you. I dote on you, you must know by now. I feel for Lloyd much as he says he feels for me. You can’t have everything, Hortense. All you need do is nothing and you’re sitting so pretty, someone should take your picture.”

  “Except for the one thing I want!”

  “I don’t. That’s the difference.”

  I went to bed but lay in the dark a long time before she came in and undressed and presently slipped into bed beside me. But she didn’t come close. Then, when I turned on the light, she was staring at me with a strange look in her eyes, as though she were scared to death or had just waked up to something or had gotten a terrific idea—or all three. I made a speech about getting some sleep, how we needed it so we would be fresh in the morning to tackle what had to be done in some kind of clear-headed way. She made no answer, so I turned out the light.

  I must have fallen asleep, because all of a sudden I woke up with the feeling that I was alone. I put out my hand. She wasn’t ther
e! I turned on the light. Jumping out of bed, I rushed through the apartment, shouting her name; but she wasn’t there. She was gone.

  I came back to bed and turned out the light. Now I faced a darkness blacker than black. I had lost my job, my dream, and now this woman who had meant so much to me. Yet there is a limit to how much you can feel. By daybreak I didn’t feel anything—just cold gray nothingness.

  22

  FOR THE NEXT TWO weeks I didn’t live. I skulked—alone, seeing no one except people who meant nothing to me, such as parking lot attendants, gas station men, and waiters, and doing nothing but pray she would come back. I’d make my own breakfast, go down and pick up my mail, the paper, and messages, then go out as though I were going to work, the way I always had. I would walk around to the parking lot, have a look at my car, then let myself in the back way and come back up on the freight elevator to the apartment again. Every time the phone rang, I dived for it. Around ten each morning, Eliza would come, make the bed, put out fresh towels, and straighten up; but on Fridays she really cleaned and would be there till midafternoon. So I wouldn’t be underfoot, I would go down the back way again, get in the car, and drive—anywhere—Annapolis, Baltimore, Richmond, Frederick, wherever. Then I would come back and at six watch the news on TV. I would go out to dinner, generally the Royal Arms. Then back to the apartment, “to catch up on my reading.” But reading just to kill time is the most pointless thing I can think of, and pretty soon, I would turn to cards. Then to bed, for the simple reason that there was no place else to go.

  The day after the hearing, Mr. Garrett called to say that Georgia had seen the news stories and that the aftermath was terrific, with editorials in the papers, “and all kinds of beautiful stuff.” But no word about my resignation or what his reaction was. Then Sam Dent called to find out where I was. When I told him that I had quit, he was stunned. Then, in no more than a couple of minutes, Mr. Garrett called again.

  “What the hell is this, Lloyd? I just read your note, the one you gave me last night. It’s been in my pocket all the time. I forgot it completely. What’s the point of it? Have I done something? Why are you resigning?”

  “That handshake we had did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “It meant I had to end the deception. On my part, sir, that handshake was sincere, and I felt it was on yours, too. So I had to resign.”

  “What deception?”

  “Do I have to draw you a picture?”

  “You mean, about Hortense?”

  “That’s right—about Hortense.”

  “But, Lloyd, I wasn’t deceived, so what deception was involved?” He paused and then said: “Well, yeah, I suppose I flinched a little. But not from what I knew had to be going on. It was how to take it that bothered me. But little by little we all liked each other so well that it was nothing to flinch from at all. You’ve dreamed yourself up a bugbear that doesn’t exist. What the hell. Let me talk to her.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Well, she’s not at the Watergate apartment. Where is she, then?”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment, then: “I don’t know.”

  “Say what you mean, Lloyd.”

  “I mean she’s walked out on me—or, at least, I think she has.”

  “If she wasn’t so goddamned headstrong—” He let it dangle, then finished: “She wouldn’t be Hortense, otherwise, Lloyd.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Getting back to your note—”

  “I’m sorry, sir, it’s final.”

  “It certainly is final. I’ve just burned it in the ashtray. I’m punching the ashes now. Now—will you be in? Can I tell Sam to simmer down?”

  “No, Mr. Garrett, I won’t be in.”

  “Lloyd, goddam it, I’m getting annoyed.”

  “O.K., but I won’t change my mind.”

  “Suppose I find her for you? Suppose I bring her back?”

  “Shut up, damn it, shut up!”

  “All right, now I know what I have to do.”

  On Friday when I got in, I rang downstairs to ask Miss Nettie if I had had any calls, and she said no but that I did have a visitor. “That girl who was here before. Rodriguez, I think her name is. She’s been here since just after lunch. I said you were out, but she said she would wait.”

  I told Miss Nettie to give me a moment to think and then said: “Send her up.”

  But what stepped out of the elevator was a girl I had never seen. In place of the ratty, reddish hair she had had before was a mound of black curls, a little crimson bow on them over one eye; a knee-length black dress, very smart; crimson shoes matching the bow, with high heels and open toes and a mink coat I could hardly believe when I saw it. It was full length, full fashioned, and dark, something a movie actress might have, but not many honest women. She also had a sulky look on her face which was quite different from the crazy, hop-skip-and-jump goof who had been there before. Actually, she looked like the Spanish dame she was, not like some sorority kid cutting up. She inclined her head for a moment and then brushed past me into the foyer, through to the arch to the living room where she stood looking around as though to get reacquainted with something remembered but not remembered too well. Then she took off her coat, spread it over a chair, and stretched out on a sofa to face it—all without saying a word.

  “Well,” I said, “you again.”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You.”

  “You can’t have me.”

  “I know that. You asked what I wanted. I told you.”

  “O.K., honesty’s good for the soul. But if I’m what you want, and you already know you can’t have me, I don’t get it. Why are you here? I don’t want to seem inhospitable, but—”

  “In other words, what am I doing here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just ... looking you over again. Hoping against hope that I didn’t like you so much any more. And now that that hope is dashed, how I’m getting the same old buzz, to catch up on you just a little, you and your girl friend—that I don’t like even a little bit. Where is she, by the way?”

  This caught me off balance, and I sat there not making any answer. Suddenly she jumped up, came partway around the table, and peered down at me. “She hasn’t been home for two weeks, that much I already know,” she snapped, biting off her words short. “And I know where she is—or was. Do you?”

  “Go back where you were.”

  “I asked you—”

  “And I told you.”

  She went back to the sofa, but didn’t lie down. She just sat on it, staring at me.

  “O.K., then,” I said. “I’ll answer you. I don’t know where she is. She blew one night. Just disappeared like that. When I went to sleep she was there, and when I woke up, she wasn’t. I’d see her in hell before I would lift a finger, before I would pick up that phone to try and find out where she is. So if you know, don’t feel you have to tell me. Don’t think you’ll be doing me a favor. You won’t be.”

  “Where do you think she is?”

  “Europe.”

  I didn’t know I was going to say it, but when things reach a certain point, you mean to clam up and don’t.

  “Europe? What makes you think that, Dr. Palmer?”

  I snapped: “If she had bought a ticket, that would be a reason. What’s it to you why I think it?”

  “One of her reasons could be to have her child over there.”

  “And another might be to find a place to mind her own business in.”

  “Okay, touché. It’s what you said to me one time, when I hadn’t even been touched. Remember? Just patted a bit on the patches I had. She is knocked up, isn’t she?”

  “If she were, would I tell you?”

  “If she weren’t, you would but quick.”

  I let that one ride and she began again. “Now that I’m caught up on her, at least a little bit, why not catch up on me? Ask me about me. Show some interest,
like, where did I get this coat?”

  “You might say how you got it.”

  “And you wouldn’t like that?”

  “Well? Would anyone?”

  “But you wouldn’t like me to say?”

  “Put an ad in the paper, why don’t you?”

  But I sounded the least bit wild, and she got up and came over and looked down at me again. Then in a low, slow whisper: “You care how I got it, don’t you? Dr. Palmer, that makes me happier than anything I can imagine! And all the more because I can say it wasn’t the way you think it was. Not that it mightn’t have been. Not that I’m morally pure. I wasn’t trying to be, but I am.”

  “That’s about as clear as mud in a wine glass.”

  “I was willing, but he was unable.”

  “What’s with that guy in bed?”

  “Something—he doesn’t know what himself. And I sure don’t. Except with one woman, he just can’t do it. Dr. Palmer—”

  “Get back where you were.”

  She went back to the sofa and went on without any break: “So let’s get back to that day when I carried the suitcases for you and he drove me to College Park. We sat in his car for a long time and he got to the point right away—how well he liked me, how pretty he thought I was, how he liked to hold my hand. And so he asked how’s about it. And I asked him back—did he mean what he seemed to mean, recreation done in bed in a horizontal position? He said, yes, that was it. At first I held back because of a yen I had for a certain Ph.D. in English poetry, perhaps by the name of Palmer. But then when he said I wouldn’t regret it and seemed to mean worldly goods, I screwed up my nerve and asked him if he meant something like a mink coat. And he said yes, he did mean that. I said, O.K., I asked nothing better. In my own mind I was faithless to poetry, English or otherwise, and particularly to a guy named Palmer. Well, I said I was morally pure. Didn’t I, Dr. Palmer?”

  “Get on with it. What then?”