Young Mr. Keefe

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Jimmy Keefe—the all-American party boy.”

  “Not that. Not just that. You were always graceful.”

  “Graceful?”

  “Yes. Graceful about being rich. Not like some people—”

  “You have an obsession about this business of being rich, don’t you?” he said.

  “No, I don’t. But I understand it. I’m rich, too, remember. Or I will be some day. It’s just that I never could be graceful. I, was always more blatant. But you’re different now—”

  “I’m blatant, you mean?”

  “No, just not as happy. You’re quieter. I think you drink more, don’t you? I mean, last night. I think you’d really had quite a bit to drink before we came.”

  He gave her a sardonic smile. “Now it’s out,” he said. “My ugly secret.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean to scold. Probably we all drink too much. It’s an easy thing to do. But I just don’t think anyone should ever drink alone.”

  “Next time I feel like drinking alone,” he said, “I’ll call you up. Will you come over and join me?”

  Claire laughed brightly. “I’ll go like the wind from San Francisco to Sacramento—just to join you in a drinking bout, darling,” she said. “Of course, it will take me a couple of hours, but you’ll wait.”

  “With open arms and open bottle …”

  “You’re not taking me seriously at all!”

  “Hey!” he said. “You’re Claire Denison—Mrs. Stuart Gates. Blazer Gates’s wife. Nobody’s supposed to take you seriously.”

  She frowned. “Yes, they are,” she said. “When I talk like this, they are.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Blazer used to say, when we were all still in college and I’d come up from Smith for all those fantastic house parties and week-ends, that all he wanted to do was stay drunk all the time! I couldn’t understand that in him. It worried me. I think I see now why it was—why he felt that way. Lord, but he used to drink a lot.”

  “Why do you think it was?”

  “I think it was just loneliness. People like Blazer—like you, too—are gregarious. You’re meant to have other people around, nice people who love you—” She paused again, and then she said, “Besides, I think now that you’re thinner, you have sort of sad lines around your eyes.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Sort of worry lines. Around your mouth, too.”

  “My job keeps me pretty busy. I may be behind in my sleep.”

  “That’s not all,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, Jimmy. Poor, silly Jimmy. You know what I mean.”

  He was silent for a moment or two He pulled on the end of his cigarette and then crushed it on the sole of his shoe and let the dry tobacco and ash fall to the rock below. He looked ahead; they were nearly half-way up. The line of towers which suspended the cable stretched precariously higher. Finally he said, “You mean because Helen has left me? Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know? How the hell did you know?” Suddenly he was angry with her. “Look,” he said, “have you been laughing at me the whole time? Is that it?”

  “Oh, no!” she said. “That isn’t it at all. I don’t care why it is. I don’t want to know anything! But I just don’t want you to go on feeling you have to lie to me.”

  “Thanks,” he said sharply. “Thanks for that consideration.”

  “Please don’t be sarcastic.” She put her hand gently on his knee. “Jimmy,” she said, “I love you. Did I ever tell you that? You’re like—well, you’re like a brother! I know it sounds trite, but—”

  “How did you know?” he said quietly.

  “I’m a woman. I’m really more than Claire Denison, queen of the Senior Prom! I know what a woman does and what a woman doesn’t. I hadn’t been in that apartment ten minutes before I knew. There was nothing—not a thing of a woman’s in that whole place. Bobby pins. When I was in the bathroom, I looked for bobby pins. That’s one thing a woman always has around. I couldn’t fine one. And of course there were none of her things in the closet—nothing in the kitchen. And those pearls! Really, Jimmy, what an obvious plant! Those were dime-store pearls, dear. A woman wouldn’t save them in a dish to have them restrung if they broke. I knew that was probably the only thing she left behind, probably in a waste-basket—”

  “You must have had a good laugh,” he said. “It’s pretty funny, isn’t it?”

  “No! I felt more like—like crying! Why did you feel you had to pretend?”

  “Look,” he said, “I just didn’t see any point in trying to inflict my problems on the two of you. I didn’t want you to feel you had to be sorry for me, or polite or anything. I wanted everything to be natural. I didn’t want you commiserating—”

  “I wouldn’t have—if you hadn’t wanted me to. I told you, I don’t want to know anything about it. I’m sorry if you’re upset, but that’s all.”

  “You’ve told Blazer, I suppose.”

  “No. I thought if you didn’t want him to know, there was no point in my telling him—”

  “Well,” he said, “thanks for that.” He turned to her. “I’m sorry I got mad just now,” he said. “You’re pretty fantastic, you really are.”

  “Nonsense. I like you, that’s all.”

  “I’ll have to tell him, I suppose,” he said. “Christ, Claire, I don’t know whether you understand how hard it is for me to tell people about it. The whole thing seems to call for explanations and post-mortems. I guess it’s because this is the first thing in my life that hasn’t gone hunky-dory. My first failure.”

  “Why should you feel that way?” Claire said. “Couples separate all the time.”

  “I just feel as though I’ve made such a flop of things. Do you know what hell I’ve been through?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Oh, it’s all very pretty. Shall I tell you about some of the fights we had? About the time she tried to kill herself?”

  “Please,” she said. “I’m just sorry—terribly sorry that it happened.”

  “My God, it’s been—”

  “Jimmy,” she said, “you love her, don’t you? You’re just feeling a little sorry for yourself, aren’t you?”

  He sighed. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “I don’t mind. Everybody does that. I just hope you’re not fooling yourself—that you don’t think these things to yourself all the time.”

  “I do, part of the time.”

  “What about the other part?”

  “I just want her back, I suppose.”

  “Of course. Oh, it’s too bad. But we are different.”

  “Who is different?”

  “You and Blazer and I—different from Helen. We must be. After all, we’re New Englanders. She’s from California. California people are different from Connecticut people. They really are. We were raised differently—secure, conservative …”

  “Baloney.”

  “No, I mean it. I know your family, and you know mine and Blazer’s. We’ll never surprise each other. We’ll always do expectable things. We’re all living on our granddaddy’s money. We’re sheltered, protected. If we’re a boy, we go to Kent, Choate, or Hotchkiss. If we’re a girl, we go to Farmington, Westover, or Ethel Walker. Then we go to New York to the Junior Get-Togethers, and the débutante parties, and we get on invitation lists, and dance to Lester Lanin’s orchestra. Then we go to some nice all-male or all-female college and join a fraternity and go to more parties, to Bermuda for Easter week, to a ranch in Wyoming in the summer. We meet each other over and over again, in the lobby of the Biltmore before Thanksgiving, at Joe King’s, at the parties and weddings—the same old faces! We gather together in little knots wherever we are and talk about the same things; And sooner or later we marry each other—like Blazer and me.”

  “Yes …”

  “You were the maverick. You whirled off and married a Westerner. ‘Tut-tut,’ everybody said. ‘It’ll never
last,’ they said. ‘Who is she?’ they asked.”

  “Do you mean I shouldn’t have married a California girl?”

  “No, no. I’m just saying that perhaps that difference between the two of you somehow accounted for it. Does that make any sense?”

  “Claire,” he said, “you know you’re rather amazing. You can be so damned motherly sometimes!”

  “Oh, God!” she said. “I didn’t mean to be!”

  “I don’t mean it unkindly—”

  “I know. You like me because I’m home. I’m familiar. I’m part of your upbringing and background. We talk the same language. I can say ‘Biltmore’ to you and conjure up a picture of what the Biltmore is to us. You like Blazer and me because we’re a relic of the East. We’re New York, New Haven, and Hartford wherever we go.”

  “A fragment of a foreign shore that is for ever Fairfield …”

  “But it is too bad. It’s a shame that things have to happen to us while we’re so young.”

  Jimmy looked at her and thought he saw tears in her eyes. With one hand, she pushed a lock of yellow hair back across her forehead. “I thought you were the great advocate of breaking away from the pattern,” he said.

  “Oh, I am. But sometimes it seems impossible. I try to avoid the Smith look—that well-groomed look! I used to wear my hair in bangs and wear black stockings. I smoked with a long green holder and read Kant. But all the other Smith girls were wearing bangs and black stockings and reading Kant. I wore baggy tweed suits and found all the other Smith girls wearing baggy tweed suits. I can’t escape it. I’m sure that if I shaved my head and wore my dresses backward, all the other girls from Smith would be doing the same!”

  “Look at the other Yalies,” Jimmy said. “They’re getting married, wearing hats to work, renting little apartments in Larchmont, taking junior memberships in the country club—they’re not getting fouled up with divorces after six months of marriage. I’m a freak.”

  “Oh—is it going to be a divorce?”

  “Sure. I suppose so. What else? We have Eastern lawyers, Western lawyers, complaints, cross-complaints …”

  “Oh, lord, lord!” Claire said. “Why can’t people—”

  “Damn it,” he said, “this is what I didn’t want to have happen. I didn’t want you feeling sorry for me.”

  “All right.” She reached out spontaneously and took his hand. “Enough. We’ve said enough, I’ve said enough. Look,” she said, “look at that mountain! Can you believe we’re going to climb it? It’s the biggest mountain in the world. I can’t, I simply can’t—not with this knapsack. You’ll have to leave me behind on the way.”

  He looked at the mountain, and it was indeed an impresive sight. Pinnacles, peaks, crests, and crevices. It had shot itself into the sky one volcanic morning long ago, and, in an attempt to be higher than all other mountains, it had made one noble thrust. It had clutched at the sky, groped, and missed. And it had cracked and broken on the final slopes, and its rocks had shaken away and rolled into the valley. Now it was tired and through, satisfied to be a pile of jagged stone. The air made Jimmy breathless. “It is beautiful,” he said.

  Through the wind, ahead of them, Blazer was shouting something to them. They couldn’t hear him.

  They hallooed back to him, and suddenly they were both at a high pitch of excitement. “I can’t wait,” Claire said.

  “Be careful getting off the lift.”

  Claire looked at him. “We’ve been holding hands!” she said. “Like children. Like kids on their first Ferris-wheel ride!” They both laughed. Then Claire was suddenly serious again.

  “There’s just one thing,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Some day—you must tell me how the pearls broke.”

  He thought of the awful, the terrible noise that the pearls made as they fell, one by one, from the string, slipping, and sounding like tiny bells as they struck the tile of the bathroom floor. And how they rolled, this way and that, about the floor for moments afterward.

  “I broke them,” he said.

  “I thought so. You see—we do the expectable thing.”

  He looked at her steadily, wondering whether she wanted his defence, the explanation, or whether, perhaps, she knew it already. Finally he said, “You know too much. You know entirely too damn’ much.”

  Then they both laughed again, turned, and pulled their pack straps tighter. They were ready to get off.

  Suddenly Claire cried, “Blazer! Wait for us!” Blazer, who had jumped from the lift ahead of them, was already half-way across the ridge.

  3

  They started across the ridge together, Claire ahead, Jimmy close behind; they had agreed that the slower of the two should set the pace. The surface ahead of them, across which they had to climb, was composed of loose, drifting shale, pieces of the flatness and size of dinner plates. There was no vegetation; there were no twigs or branches to grasp on to. They decided that the safest course was parallel to the slope, moving gradually upward to the sharp spine of the ridge. Blazer was more familiar with mountains, or perhaps had more bravado. He climbed faster, and straight up. At times, he would disappear in front of them. “What’s his damn’ hurry?” Jimmy said.

  “He wants to be first. Everything’s a race with Blazer.”

  Rocks slipped under their feet and clattered downward. They both thought avalanche simultaneously. There was not much breath now for conversation. They proceeded slowly, step by step. The falling rocks suggested a game; Jimmy began pretending that Helen was there. Fancifully, he began plotting an elaborate revenge. “See the view from here,” he said, motioning her closer to the precipice. His legs felt tight and the back of his neck ached. Ahead of him, he could hear Claire’s painful breathing. He wondered: Why in God’s name are we doing this?

  He tried to move faster. There was a declivity, a cavern. Here, he thought, would be a good place to do it. Then he thought of the long loneliness afterward. In his mind, she died; once again, he buried her, brought flowers to her grave.

  They climbed in silence, and suddenly Blazer, far ahead of them, stopped and opened his lungs in a magnificent yodel.

  Claire called, “Can we stop a minute?” But he had not heard her, and had turned away, so Jimmy and Claire climbed on.

  “Hate him, hate him, hate him!” Claire whispered. “Why does he have to drive us so?”

  Jimmy tried again to figure out what had gone wrong between him and Helen. Was it only the sex thing? Or was there something else, something that was his own fault? He had agreed to stay in California, which had pleased Helen. He had taken the job with the public relations firm; they had found the apartment. Once more, the gloom settled, dispersed for a moment the way a clock striking would make it do, then settled for good. For one thing was sure: the trouble, the beginning, was before the apartment. By the time they moved into the apartment, hurting each other had already become a force, a sickness. They hurt each other with looks, with silences, with words. Everything that happened in California—the quarrels, Helen’s father’s death—had been preceded by other things, farther back. On their trip to the Caribbean, or even before.

  Remembering the apartment on Capitol Avenue as it had been with Helen there, Jimmy found himself wondering: Does the living-room have one window, or two windows side by side? Are the walls pale green or pale grey? Recapturing the apartment in his mind was like trying to move back into a dream after waking. It was different from his home in Somerville, which could be remembered, lovingly, inch by inch. The apartment was colourless, shapeless. Only small, unimportant details stuck out. Like the gilt birds on the window-sill, poised for flight—a wedding present, gone with Helen. And the low glass bowl by the sofa in which she sometimes floated red camellia blossoms. Another wedding present, also gone. He remembered the Venetian blinds behind the curtains, slanted to keep out the heat of the afternoon, and, sometimes, the curtains pulled tightly across the blinds to achieve a cool, restful twilight in midday. He remembered watch
ing a piece of purple fluff from her skirt floating and settling on the glass top of the coffee table. He remembered ash-trays, clean and cool, sweating slightly from the heat outside. He remembered Helen at night, coming to bed, waiting anxiously a few feet away, waiting for him to say something or do something, or repeat a question.

  “Do you love me?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  Then, quite suddenly, her shoulders shook with sobs and she threw herself across the covers and cried silently into the pillow.

  He had met Helen at a party in New York. He had graduated from college the week before, and had been staying in Manhattan while he looked—in rather desultory fashion, perhaps—for a job. It was a hot June night, and the party, at an apartment in the East Sixties, was a cocktail party that had gone on too long by the time Jimmy arrived. His friend Charlie Somerby had taken him by the arm and said, “Hey, I want you to meet a new girl—she’s from the Golden West.” They threaded their way through the noise and people to the other side of the smoky living-room. “This is Helen Warren,” Charlie had said. Helen was small and dark. Her slim arms were deeply tanned and her figure was compact and boyish. There was something in her appearance—whether it was her small, finely boned features, her colour, or her extremely white, extremely even teeth—that immediately made her stand out, emphatically, against the others in the room. Jimmy had been attracted by the breathless way she talked—she began talking almost at once—and the quick, nervous way she smoked. She had a bright, sudden laugh, tossing her short brown hair back, and she laughed at nearly everything he said. People crushed around them. There was a shriek as a pack of matches went off in a girl’s hand, and, in the ensuing scramble to put out the flames where the girl had dropped the matchbook, someone spilled a drink on Helen’s dress. He mopped at it with his handkerchief. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. No one noticed when they left the party. They went down into the street. “How did you get mixed up in that?” he asked her.