Young Mr. Keefe

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “I’ve got to be getting back soon,” Jimmy said.

  “Oh, don’t go yet!” she exclaimed. “Tell me more. Is Blazer kind to Claire-y? I hope so. We watched Blazer through the growing-up process, Junius and I. We had him sort of picked out—for Claire. He was a beautiful child. We didn’t care that he had no money. Goodness, Claire-y will have plenty of her own. He was such a nice, well-mannered boy. He used to come over here to play tennis. He played beautifully! Don’t you think that boys when they reach their puberty are at the most beautiful state? Something happens to them around the hips and around the eyes and shoulders, and their faces become a little bit grave and enchanted!” She smiled and her eyes glistened with tears. Then she put her head back on the sofa and closed her eyes.

  “I really must get back, Mrs. Denison,” Jimmy said.

  “No, no.” She straightened up once more. “It’s so wonderful to talk to you, dear,” she said. “It’s wonderful to know you’re out there—with them. Part of home.”

  “They’ve been very nice to me,” Jimmy said.

  “Have they? Oh, yes, I heard. I’m sorry. About your wife. Well,” she sighed, “we all make mistakes. But they are happy, aren’t they? Blazer and Claire?”

  “Very happy.”

  “Happy!” She laughed suddenly. “Happy! Thank God somebody’s happy! What do you think of a man who strikes a woman?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Her eyes closed once more. “Junius! He’s a brute. He struck me, knocked me down. Oh, I suppose there are some who think he’s God. Down at the plant, they all think he’s God! I’ve heard that. Junius is God. Well—”

  Jimmy put down his glass. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to—”

  “Little Claire,” Mrs. Denison said. Her voice was deep and rattling. “Little Claire-y. ‘Clair de Lune’!” Once more she opened her eyes, her head back, looking upwards at the dark rafters above. “Did I ever tell you why I named her Claire? When I was a girl, Claude Debussy played it for me on the piano! It must have been 1910 or 1911. I was just a child. Mother and I were in Paris and we were having dinner with the President of France. What was his name? I don’t remember now … such a nice, funny Frenchman. It’s on the tip of my tongue—his name. But Mother knew him. She knew Debussy. She called him Achille—I remember that. He was Claude Debussy, but Mother called him Achille—he went to the piano after dinner. I was sitting on the knee of the President of France—I had long, long blond curls! But Achille Debussy went to the piano and played and played! Then he said, ‘This is for you,’ only he said it in French, and looked at me. And it was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard! ‘Clair de Lune’! Just for me!” Her eyes widened and brimmed with tears; she reached for a lace-fringed handkerchief and dabbled her nose. “Oh, dear! To think that I’ve come to this … my little girl … and Junius! Everybody’s gone!” Tears ran down her face.

  “You know,” she went on. “You know my misery. You know death. You’ve just come from death …”

  “Please, Mrs. Denison,” Jimmy began.

  “No. Quiet. Don’t talk. Listen to me about Junius, what he’s done to me. He’s God, they say. He’s the most hateful, the most horrible—”

  “Please—”

  “Quiet. Leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m unhappy?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Denison—”

  She took a long, endless swallow from the dark brown drink and hunched forward on the sofa, rocking slowly back and forth, sobbing, a small, round, fat figure in green folds and festoons of silk, her grey hair rumpled, the pins falling out. She raised her small veined hands, heavy with the three emerald rings, and pressed them against her face. “Go away!” she moaned. “Go away! Leave me alone! Leave me to my misery!”

  He hesitated, then stood up, turned, and left her sitting there.

  He walked across the enormous living-room—the room so huge that the furniture in it seemed doll size, overpowered by the high walls, the dark tapestries, the curiously beamed and vaulted ceilings. It seemed to take an eternity to get across the sea of crimson carpet to the other side, through the archway, and across the black and white marble foyer to the door. Somewhere, in the empty house, a clock began to strike. It struck only four times, echoing hollowly in the night, although the time was ten o’clock. Jimmy lifted the iron latch on the great oak door that looked as though it had been built for a church, and let himself out.

  On Monday, Jimmy and his mother had a quarrel.

  “I never dreamed you were going back!” Melise Keefe said. “How can you leave me here all alone?”

  “But you won’t be alone,” he said. “You’ve got your friends, you’ve got Aunt Marian, Aunt Celeste …”

  “And I’ll be penniless!”

  “But that’s not true, Mother!”

  “You’re supposed to be the head of the house now! How can you desert me?”

  “I’m not deserting you! If you want me for anything, I can fly back in seven hours. Don’t you understand? I’ve got a job. I can’t just walk out on that—”

  “You could get another job.”

  “I like this one, Mother. And I’m—I’m committed to it.”

  “You’re committed to me! To your father’s memory!”

  “That’s not fair, Mother—”

  “What about the company? Are you going to let that go?”

  “I never wanted to work for the Keefe Company. Father understood that—”

  “But what will happen to it? There’s always been one of the family at the head of it!”

  “The Keefe Company will go on,” he said. “They’ll probably make Turner Ames president. We’ve got our stock in it. We don’t have to work for it, too!”

  “Oh, if your father could hear what you’re saying!”

  “Please, Mother. If he could hear—he’d understand—”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Look, Mother,” he said gently, “I’ve tried to do something on my own. It isn’t finished yet. Let me finish it first—if I can.”

  “Finish what?” she said angrily. “Finish making a mess of your life? You talk as though you were actually accomplishing something out there. What have you accomplished? All you’ve done is get some silly girl pregnant, and have her sue you for divorce! Are you proud of that?” She stood up. “You talk so noble! Doing something on your own! What have you done except fail at everything and bring shame on us all? Why don’t you admit you’ve made a fool of yourself and leave that place—while you have an excuse!”

  He was silent, staring at his open hands. Then he said, “I’m sorry, Mother.”

  She came to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “Forgive me, darling,” she said. “I didn’t mean that!”

  He said nothing.

  “Jimmy, I’m sorry. It’s just that I should think you’d want to get away from that state—where she is. Where you’ve had so much trouble. I should think you’d want to come home now—where we can be happy.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother, but I’ve made up my mind. I’m going back. For a while anyway. I’ve got to.”

  “Jimmy, I implore you!”

  “Mother,” he said quietly, “what would you say if I told you that I still love her? That I want her back?”

  “I would say,” she said, her voice breaking, “that you’re trying to break your mother’s heart!” Melise Keefe turned and walked rapidly out of the room.

  That night, in San Francisco, Claire and Blazer also quarrelled. Claire had put down the telephone after trying, without success, to reach Jimmy in Sacramento.

  “He’s just not answering the phone,” Blazer said angrily. “He knows it’s us, and he’s not answering. It’s all your damned fault!”

  “Why is it mine? Why? I wrote him—”

  “You told him to get out. You threw him out. He was my best friend. You threw my best friend out!”

  “I apologized … I did everything I could think of …”

  “You’ve destroyed a
friendship that meant a lot to me,” Blazer said, his voice hard and even. “I’ll never forgive you for that as long as I live.”

  She didn’t answer him.

  19

  The day was too cold for fishing. Jimmy and Mike sat in heavy sweaters and windbreakers on a rock above the beach and ate the hamburgers they had brought from Al’s place, back on the cliff. There was a raw north wind that whipped the grey sea into white caps and sent mists of spray into the air. They ate in silence. They had talked most of the afternoon. Jimmy had told Mike about his father, about the funeral, about. Turner Ames. He also told him what his mother had said. Mike listened quietly.

  They finished the hamburgers and wiped their fingers on the waxed-paper wrappings. They wadded the paper and stuffed it back into the paper bag. Suddenly, the late afternoon fog bank came sweeping in from the sea. They watched it racing across the surface of the water, and all at once they were inside it. The sea disappeared. All around the rock where they sat the fog heaved and floated; the sound of the breakers on the beach seemed to come from far away.

  “You know, it’s really kind of beautiful,” Mike said.

  “What is?”

  “This—everything. California.”

  “Yes,” Jimmy said.

  “Everything that happens out here is bigger than life. We have fog in New England—but it’s nothing like this. This is the granddaddy of all fogs.”

  “Sure,” Jimmy laughed. “It’s California. It has to be the most magnificent fog on earth.”

  “Everything’s that way. The mountains are bigger, the beaches are wider, the trees are taller …”

  “The Golden Gate Bridge has the longest single span—”

  “Ah, you’re not taking me seriously. I mean it. I mean it’s beautiful—nature.”

  “I know what you mean,” Jimmy said. And then he said, “Mike, how come you’re so grown up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how did you get to be? My God, you and I are the same age—but you’re really years older than I am. How did you go about it?”

  “Maybe I had to,” he said. “Maybe you always had somebody else to jump in and take your side and help you out.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Cheer up,” Mike said. “I’m sorry about your father, I really am. But you know, in the long run, it may be the best thing that could happen to you. Because now you’re really on your own. Don’t take that the wrong way—but think about it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I forgot to tell you,” Mike said. “She called me up.”

  Jimmy looked up. “Who did?”

  “That girl—Claire.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, last week when you were away. She was trying to get in touch with you.”

  “I got a letter from her,” Jimmy said. “I suppose I ought to call them up.”

  “She didn’t know where you were. She acted like I was trying to keep you a prisoner or something. I told her I didn’t know where you’d gone, but she insisted I was hiding something.”

  Jimmy laughed. “That sounds like Claire,” he said.

  “She’s in love with you, old trooper. Did you know that?”

  “Oh, no,” Jimmy said quickly. “We’re old friends, that’s all.”

  “No, there’s more to it than that where she’s concerned. I warn you.”

  Jimmy was silent.

  “How about you?” Mike asked. “How do you feel about her?”

  “She’s just an old friend,” Jimmy said slowly.

  “I’m not so sure. Have you—have you ever given her any reason to fall for you?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. I just wondered.”

  “You mean, have I slept with her?”

  “Perhaps …”

  Jimmy opened his hands. “Well,” he said, “you know everything about me anyway, so I might as well tell you. Yes. It was a damned stupid thing that happened when I was drunk, and I suppose I’ve got to live with it for the rest of my life. It’s just one of a lot of things about myself that I’m ashamed of.”

  “I sort of suspected it,” Mike said.

  Jimmy laughed softly. “Damn you,” he said, “you’re clairvoyant! Do you know everything without being told? How in hell did you know?”

  “Oh, at that party, that night we were there. It was just something that occurred to me.”

  “It was a noble thing to do, don’t you think? Your old college buddy goes out of town for a day or so, and you go and call on his wife …”

  Mike laughed. “I guess Frank Merriwell wouldn’t do it,” he said, “but the important thing is how you feel about her. Are you in love with her, I mean?”

  Jimmy thought about this. “I won’t deny there’s an attraction,” he said. “Maybe I could fall in love with her. But too many other things keep coming in between—like Blazer, and Helen. It would never work. Not in a million years.”

  “You still carry the torch for Helen, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “Then why don’t you go and see her?”

  “No, I can’t do that. I called her once—”

  “I mean, go and see her. If you really want her back—”

  “No, there’s no use in that. It wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Then forget about her.”

  “What?”

  “Forget about her. Let her get her divorce. How come she hasn’t got the divorce, anyway?”

  “There’s some mix-up on her residence,” Jimmy said. “At least that’s what they tell me. When we were married, she became a resident of Connecticut—because I was one. Now she’s got to re-establish a California residence from the time we took the apartment.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “But do you really think I should say the hell with her?”

  “Do you really want to know what I think?”

  “Sure. Tell me.”

  “I don’t want to lead your life for you,” Mike said. “But the only thing I think you’ve got to do is something. I mean, do one thing or the other. You’ve got to decide for yourself, but what you’re doing now is—well, it’s nothing. You’re not getting anywhere. You’ve got a bad case of inertia, if you ask me.”

  “Hey, give me time, give me time,” Jimmy said. “My God! I’ve been getting along—fairly well—without a wife. I’ve also been getting along without alcohol. Now I’ve got to get along without money. I might be able to get along without one of those things—but without all three? Hell, I just don’t know.”

  Mike looked at Jimmy searchingly. Then he smiled his wide grin and clapped a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “Now let’s get back to town and round up a bridge game.”

  They stood up and clambered down the wet, slippery rock. They walked slowly back across the beach through the thick, swirling fog to the path that led up the steep bank to the parked car.

  In the little hospital in Rio Linda, the elevators were too small to hold the rolling beds. The maternity patients from the private rooms on the first floor had to be carried up the stairs to the labour rooms on the second. At six thirty-five, Helen was transferred from her bed to a stretcher, carried up the stairs, and placed in another bed, then rolled down the corridor. It was an awkward, uncomfortable operation, but Helen, actually, was not entirely conscious of it. She was aware of bright yellow lights passing over her head, and the changing sounds of voices around her. With her teeth clenched, she was most conscious of the pain inside her. Then, in the corridor, she heard her mother’s voice calling, and above her she saw her mother’s face. “Helen, dear! why didn’t you call me? I raced over from the garden club as soon as Doris called me. Did you take a taxi all by yourself, you poor child?”

  “Please, Mother, go away …”

  “Helen, dear …”

  “Please! Go away!”

  “You’d better go, Mrs. Warren—” a man’s voice said.<
br />
  “But it’s my own daughter! She’s—”

  “Will you wait downstairs, Mrs. Warren?”

  “Helen! Speak to me!”

  The man’s voice, commanding: “Mrs. Warren!”

  The rolling continued, and then a woman’s voice said gently, “This is the labour room, Mrs. Keefe.”

  She was conscious of more bright lights, of shining chromium, of white sheets, and the sound of water running from a faucet. “I’m a little frightened,” she said.

  “There, there,” the nurse said. “It won’t be long, Mrs. Keefe.”

  “Will you call my husband?”

  There was no answer.

  “What is your name?” Helen asked.

  “Mrs. Adams.”

  “Will you call my husband, Mrs. Adams?”

  “No, my dear, the doctor says we mustn’t.”

  “Please, Mrs. Adams!”

  “There, there, dear.”

  She felt a cool towel pressed against her forehead.

  “Is the doctor here?” she asked.

  “Not yet, Mrs. Keefe.”

  “I can give you the number, Mrs. Adams.”

  “This is an injection, Mrs. Keefe,” the voice said. “It won’t hurt.”

  She felt a sharp pain in her arm. “Oh, God!” she screamed.

  Then, later, she said, “Mrs. Adams! Will you please call my husband?”

  “Mrs. Adams is off duty, dear,” a voice said. “You’ll be having your baby soon.”

  “Oh, please! Please!”

  She felt herself being lifted once more, then lowered on to a hard, flat bed. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “She’s a little groggy still,” a voice said.

  Then a masked face bent over her. “Just relax, Helen,” a man’s voice said. “Put your hands here. Now just relax.”