Young Mr. Keefe

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  I’m thinking crazy again, she thought.

  She had come to the corner of Oakdale Avenue. The park ended there, and Lime Street continued on, downtown, past the hospital, the courthouse, the movie theatre, to the railroad station, out to where it joined Route 99. She turned and started back.

  She didn’t feel well. She felt a little dizzy. It was the heat, the terrible valley heat. She turned under the trees and found a bench and sat down. She felt breathless. Then she felt a curious flutter, soft and inward, like butterfly wings. That was all.

  She had felt life. Her child. It had gone as quickly as it had come, but of course that was what it was. She pressed her hands below her breasts, wondering if it would come again. It did not, but she waited for it anyway. And with a strange preknowledge, she thought: It’s a boy and his name is Billy. She began to laugh, as though the rock she had prayed would open had opened, sucked her inside, and pressed its hard warm sides about her, in ecstasy, mother and son.

  PART THREE

  17

  In California, the approach of winter is not distinct. There is no true autumn, no real foliage change. Leaves fall, and all at once the elms and sycamores are bare. But the palm trees remain the same, and the rhododendron and boxwood, and, except for a damp chill in the air, it is possible to believe that nothing really has occurred. Winter begins with a rain. Suddenly, the long, dry summer is drenched with a great downpour. Streets run with water, rivers rise in their banks, and dry creek beds become slowly moving, muddy ponds with eucalyptus and poplar trunks rising in the middle of them. Swimming-pools rise to their gutters and turn murky green with algae. In the valley, the ditches and canals from the great dams in the north run swiftly. After this first rain, every day seems to have more rain, or heavy fog, or cold wind, and, for a period, the land of eternal sunshine seems lost in a damp, swirling cloud.

  A true Californian respects the rain, and this curious half winter. For Californians never lose their awe of water, the water that made the desert bloom with peaches, apricots, artichokes, lettuce, tomatoes, and grapes. This great source of life returns to California each year, sometimes as early as September, sometimes as late as November.

  This particular year, the first rain came on Columbus Day, a Monday, in the evening. Jimmy was sitting on the terrace of the Maguires’ house in Fair Oaks, sipping coffee, listening to Bob Maguire tell about the trip he and Margie had made to Pyramid Lake the week before. It was summer weather, the flies buzzed in the air. They had finished dinner, and there was still a charcoal smell and a steak smell from the barbecue, and from other back-yard barbecues along the street. There was a soft, warm wind that tinkled the Chinese wind chimes Margie Maguire had hung in the branches of a lemon tree. Suddenly a drop of rain fell. Jimmy put his hand out, and all at once the downpour came. “Winter’s here!” Margie Maguire laughed, and there was a great scurry as they carried cushions, magazines, cigarettes, dishes, and linen from the terrace into the house. By the time they had finished, the three of them were soaking wet. Then Jimmy remembered that the top was down on his car, and raced out into the driveway to raise it. As he opened the door, a waterfall rushed out from the floor of the car. “Damn,” he whispered. “Damn!” He struggled with the clamps on the convertible top.

  Back in the house, Margie Maguire offered him a towel and a dry shirt of Bob’s. Bob had a tray of cold beers on the coffee table, and the television set was glowing. It was time for I Love Lucy. Jimmy said no to the shirt, the beers, and the television. He explained that he’d remembered leaving the windows open in the apartment, and he’d better get back to close them. “I’ve never known it to fail,” Margie said. “Whenever I plan a party for this time of year, it starts to rain.”

  “I thought it never rained in California,” Jimmy laughed.

  “Thank God it does,” Bob Maguire said.

  At the door, Margie Maguire took his hand. “Thank you for the box of chocolates, Jimmy,” she said. “You didn’t need to do it.”

  It was what she always said.

  “I wanted to do it,” Jimmy said. “It was a great dinner. The steak was perfect.”

  “Thank the chef, Monsieur Robert, for that!” Margie said, smiling. She had a wide, expressive face, full of wrinkles and laugh lines. “Come again soon.”

  “Some day I’ll repay your hospitality,” Jimmy said.

  “Nonsense. How’s your avocado doing?”

  “Fabulously,” Jimmy said. “It’s got three honest-to-gosh leaves. How long has it been? Six months?”

  “Give it plenty of water,” Margie said.

  Bob Maguire clasped his hand. “See you to-morrow, boy. Bright and early!”

  “Drive carefully,” Margie said. She opened the door. “Look at it rain,” she said. “Oh, lord, look at it rain!”

  “Good night—and thanks.”

  “Good night.”

  Jimmy ran across the lawn to his car.

  After he had left, Margie Maguire said, “He’s such a nice boy, isn’t he? He looks happier these days, don’t you think.”

  “He’s filling out a bit,” her husband said. “This California sunshine is good for him. He’s lost a lot of that Eastern whatchamacallit. That paleness.”

  “Too bad about his wife.”

  “He’s getting over her. This summer was good for him.”

  On the tiny lighted television screen, Lucille Ball flummoxed across the room. Margie Maguire hugged her skirt around her knees and laughed. “I love it when it rains,” she said.

  Jimmy drove slowly back through the rain. The streets were flooded, and a high north wind blew leaves from trees across his windshield. He had not left his apartment windows open, he was quite sure, but it had given him a good excuse. He liked the Maguires. It wasn’t as though he had genuinely wanted to get away from them. Normally, he would have stayed with them, talking quietly and easily, until eleven o’clock or so. But somehow, with the rain coming as it had, so suddenly, and Margie exclaiming, “It’s winter!” he had felt the need to go home. If this is going to be my first winter in California, he thought, I’d better face it alone. He thought of Somerville at this time of year—clear October skies, bright foliage, his mother bringing armfuls of chrysanthemums in from the garden, beginning to talk, expectantly, of “the holidays.” What did Californians do at this time of year? Just move indoors out of the rain, he supposed. On Saturday, he and Mike Gorman had talked about driving up to Stinson Beach for fishing. Would it be raining on Saturday, or would it be summer again to-morrow morning?

  He and Mike had spent a lot of time together over the summer. It was a curious friendship, in a way, because it was such a quiet one. Often, when they were fishing, for example, hours would go by when they would not speak to each other. There seemed to be no need to. It was as though each knew the other’s thoughts so well that conversation was unnecessary. It was a strong friendship, though, perhaps even stronger in its wordlessness. For Jimmy, it was a new kind of friendship, like having a brother. Mike was a quiet boy who was happiest when he was doing something which required a great intensity. One of these was bridge playing, and, at this, Jimmy could equal him. They competed at this, but with a mutual warmth and understanding that each one trusted completely. They laughed at the same things, hummed the same tunes from My Fair Lady as they played.

  They had played a great deal of bridge that summer. Al Whalen and Dex Pratt, two friends of Mike’s from the bank, played with them as a rule, but sometimes new people turned up. Mike had begun taking out a girl from San Francisco, Cathy Williams, whose tastes, Mike admitted privately, were a little rich for his blood—she liked being taken down to L’Omelette’s and Dinah’s Shack on the peninsular—but sometimes Cathy and her sister, Margaret, joined them in Mike’s Laguna Street apartment for a bridge game. Jimmy and Mike played wonderfully well together, as partners. Their bids always conveyed exactly what they had and wanted, and their hands, by some good fortune, always seemed to blend. They became legendary as they headed for
slams with speed and self-assurance. Sometimes, Jimmy spent the night on Mike’s couch, and in the morning they would drive to the beach for fishing or swimming, or sometimes they would begin a gin-rummy game, and eventually, by Sunday afternoon, the Williams girls or someone else would come by and another bridge game would start. Jimmy drank only Coca-Cola. He had had nothing to drink since Claire’s party. He and Mike never discussed this; again, there seemed no need to. Jimmy was proud of himself, and, he felt, Mike was proud of him, too.

  He had had no word from Claire or Blazer since that June night. Evidently, they would not forgive him for the fight in the apartment. This saddened and yet, in a way, relieved him. He tried to push Claire out of his mind. He tried to push Helen out of his mind. He tried to keep everything out of his mind except the present, his job, his new friends. It was not always easy to do, but when he was successful, he achieved a kind of high, lonely satisfaction.

  He drove down Capitol Avenue, turned, and put the car in the carport behind the apartment house. He got out and went up the back stairs. Then he remembered his mail—he had gone to the Maguires’ straight from work—and went back down the stairs to a row of mailboxes in the courtyard. There were several letters. He carried these up the front stairs with him and let himself into the apartment. He groped his way across the darkened living-room to the light switch. He found it, turned on the light, and started unbuttoning his wet shirt. He looked down at the letters. On top, was a letter addressed in a neat, round, schoolgirlish hand. He picked it up, flipped it over, and saw Claire’s Lombard Street address. He studied the envelope a moment before opening it, torn between reading it and not reading it. Then he opened it. “Dearest Jimmy,” it began:

  I kept hoping that I would hear from you, of course, remembering your manners and “bring-upping” enough to apologize to me, but since so much time has elapsed and you have not, I shall eat humble pie and write to you. You were a beast, and not at all funny, but live and let live, say I. I hope you have spent the last few months in perfect agonies of remorse, and knowing you as well as I do, darling, I wonder: have you?

  I hope not, because time heals all wounds, even mine, and I am asking you, begging you, to call or come see us. You see, I am forgiving you all on my own.

  Blazer blames me for saying what I did that night, ordering you out, and says I am a complete and utter bitch, that I have destroyed his best friendship. Have I? I hope not. You see, I just kept hoping that you would write or call!

  Jimmy dear, please come back. We miss you a great deal, really. I guess we got so used to you being around, we didn’t appreciate you until you stopped being around. I apologize 1000 times for saying what I did, and you, I know, are sorry, too. It was just a too bad thing, as they say out here.

  If it makes you grateful, Stan Erickson wanted to have you arrested for assault and battery, but I prevailed. He is really a nice guy. You were just both a little buzzy. So call. Please?

  Love,

  C.

  He folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. He flipped through the other letters—a fraternity newsletter, a couple of bills, a letter from an insurance company. Suddenly he saw that one letter was not a letter at all, but a Western Union telegram in a yellow envelope. He ripped it open. It was very short.

  YOUR FATHER HAD A FALL. CONDITION MOST SERIOUS. IMPERATIVE YOU FLY HOME AT ONCE. ADVISE FLIGHT NUMBER BY RETURN WIRE AND I WILL MEET PLANE. TURNER L. AMES

  Jimmy stood up abruptly. A fall? And why had Turner Ames sent the wire? What was the matter with his mother? He stood in the centre of the room, holding the telegram. Then he went to the kitchen and picked up the phone. He gave the operator the Somerville number.

  While he waited, he realized that it was three hours later in Connecticut—past midnight. The number began to ring, and surprisingly, it was answered almost immediately. He recognized the voice of Milly, his mother’s maid.

  “Milly? Is Mother there?” he asked.

  Milly’s voice was choked and strange. “Yes,” she said.

  “Can I speak to her, Milly?”

  “She’s not supposed to speak to you. You’re supposed to come home.”

  “Milly, what’s the matter?”

  A pause, then slowly: “Your father—he fell.”

  “Fell? What do you mean?”

  “Down the stairs.”

  “Is he all right?”

  There was silence, and then, at the other end of the wire, Milly sobbed.

  “Milly?”

  “He’s dead!” she cried.

  “What?”

  “He was going up the stairs—and—just like that! Oh! I wasn’t supposed to tell you! Please don’t tell them I told you! You’re just supposed to come home! Oh, please, Mr. Jimmy! It was his heart … it just stopped!”

  “How’s Mother, Milly?” he asked softly.

  “Oh, she’s terrible! She’s taking it so bad! Oh, just come home,” she sobbed. “Just come home as fast as you can. Don’t talk! Come home!”

  18

  The next few days blurred and clouded into one. The next morning, he took the plane from San Francisco, and, by evening, he was watching the lighted towers of New York below, the pattern of street lights throbbing up at him through layers of air. Turner Ames was waiting for him at the airport and soberly told him what he had learned already from Milly. (“Be a brave soldier,” he said, “just as he would want you to be.”) They made the long drive to Somerville in Turner Ames’s big car, in silence. As they drove in the drive, and turned under the porte-cochère, Jimmy saw that the white house was ablaze with lights. His mother ran down the steps to meet him and threw her arms around him. “Oh, darling!” she cried. “You’re the head of the house now! You’re the head of the house!” Tears ran down her face.

  Later, they sat in the green living-room, with the curtains drawn, talking—Jimmy, his mother, and Turner Ames. They talked in little sudden spurts, followed by long silences. Melise Keefe wore a long, pale dinner dress, and she held a glass of sherry in her trembling hand.

  “Do you want to see him?” she asked once.

  “I don’t know … not yet,” Jimmy said.

  “We can go now, if we want, can’t we, Turner? I haven’t seen him yet. But—no. No, we mustn’t see him,” she said quickly. “I remember something he said once—about how awful it must be, to have people looking at you! He’d hate it, Turner. We must have the casket closed at the services.”

  “Well, Melise, that’s a little out of the ordinary …”

  “Never mind,” she said commandingly. “That’s the way he’d want it. Will you take care of it, Turner?”

  “Very well.”

  There was another silence. Jimmy could think of nothing to say. He still couldn’t believe that his father was dead. At one end of the room, there was a painting of the two of them, his mother and his father. It was a curious painting. It had been done after their marriage, late in the twenties. It showed his father as a young man, in slim trousers and jacket and white shoes, standing in a romanticized garden bower, or pergola; his mother, a girl in white chiffon, sat on a stone bench, looking up at him. It was a Maxfield Parrish mood, full of foliage and sunshine, frankly a sentimental picture of love. And it was a huge painting, the figures nearly life size. How many times he had looked at it, searching the young, unfamiliar faces for things he knew. They were dream people, in a dream garden, strangers in a land where time was frozen. He had never known his father in that painting. He was struck now with the thought that he had never known his father at all. He was filled suddenly with pity for this unknown young man, tall, smiling, and handsome, one hand raised and holding the latticed arbor, dressed like a silent-movie star.

  After the funeral, the chauffeur drove James Keefe’s black Chrysler slowly back from the cemetery. Jimmy’s mother held his hand. “He was so worried about you,” she said softly, rubbing his knuckles slowly between the soft fingers of her glove. “He didn’t say much, of course, but he was worried just the s
ame—about you and Helen. There’s never been a divorce in our family, you know. He was so upset when he heard about the baby; it bothered him to think of her child bearing the Keefe name. When is she to have the baby?”

  “I don’t know, Mother, I try not to think about it …”

  “He was proud of you,” she said. “So very proud of you! For being so brave, and so grown-up, through all the trouble she’s caused. Oh, sometimes we used to think about it—about you, all alone out there, having to go through so much. It’s a shame! I wish—I wish he had lived to see you married again, happily, to some nice girl. Not a—”

  “Now, Mother,” he said.

  “I can’t help it,” she said. “I wish her dead! I’ve never wished that of anyone but her, but I do. I wish her dead!”

  “Please, Mother,” he said. “A lot of it was my fault.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Let’s not talk about it …”

  “I just hope he knew—before he went—that it was going to work out happily for you. Do you know what the last thing he said was?”

  “No.”

  “He was in the hall. We were about to go upstairs, but I’d forgotten my sweater. I’d left it in the library. I went back to get it. He started up alone. I keep thinking—if I hadn’t gone back for that sweater, if I’d gone up with him, beside him, perhaps I could have—but never mind. I went into the library—and he called, ‘Do you think we should phone Jimmy to-night? See how he’s getting along?’ And I didn’t answer right away, and then I heard him call out, ‘Mellie!’ like that, and then I heard—oh!” She released his hand and held her handkerchief to her eyes. “But anyway,” she said, “you were last in his thoughts, you were last in his thoughts!”

  Jimmy put his arm around her. The car turned into the driveway. The day was clear and cool. The house, when they entered it, was strangely quiet; the rooms stretched out emptily on either side of the wide hall. “People may come,” she said. “But I can’t see them. I’ve got to lie down. Will you take care of any callers, dear?” She started up the stairs, holding the railing in her gloved hand.