Young Mr. Keefe

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “For the thing I said. That night …”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Good! Whatever happened to that friend of yours—Mike somebody? The one that came with you to the party.”

  “Oh, I see him now and then. We went fishing last weekend.”

  Claire smiled a small, pinched smile. “So you have a new set of friends. What kind of a person is he?”

  “Well,” Jimmy said, “he’s quite a remarkable guy, really. He’s—well, he’s just one of the few really nice people I know—” He stopped, wondering if this had been an unkind thing to say, but Claire appeared not to notice it.

  “What does he do?” she asked.

  “He works in a bank.”

  “How fascinating!” There was sarcasm in her voice. “Rather prudish, though, isn’t he? At least I’m quite sure he didn’t approve of me.”

  Jimmy didn’t answer her, but looked down at the table.

  “But then,” she went on, “I suppose there are a lot of people who don’t approve of me.” When he said nothing, she said, “I’m sorry. I’m being unkind about your friend. It’s just jealousy. I’m just jealous because he’s seen you and we haven’t.” She sipped her drink slowly. “Do you remember your Ibsen? Do you remember A Doll’s House—I think it was A Doll’s House. The old doctor who lived upstairs. And when he went away, Torvald, or whatever his name was—Nora’s husband—said, ‘I shall miss him. He was like a dark cloud against our sunlit happiness.’ I don’t know what made me think of that, except that’s sort of what you were—only the other way around—to Blazer and me. A sunny spot in our cloudy happiness.” She laughed. “Oh, I’m getting silly! You must stop me when I get silly!”

  “That’s very flattering,” he said lamely.

  “Dare I?” she said, rattling the ice-cubes in her glass. “Dare I have another eau de vie …?

  “If you’d like—”

  “Tell me,” she said earnestly, “how are—things?”

  “What things?”

  “With Helen. Have you seen her?”

  “No.”

  “Are you divorced yet?”

  “No.”

  “What on earth is taking it so long?”

  “I guess these things take time,” Jimmy said.

  “Why doesn’t she go to Reno?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t want to go to Reno …”

  “I think she’s stalling it,” Claire said. “She’s heard about your father’s death. She thinks she’s going to get all that money somehow.”

  “Claire—” he began.

  “You forget I’ve met her,” she said. She hesitated, stroking the rim of her empty glass with a polished fingernail. “Has she had the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Last week.”

  “Is it—a boy or a girl?”

  “A boy,” he said.

  “Have you seen it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you plan to?”

  “I don’t know, Claire.”

  The vision was not vanishing this time as it should. It stayed in front of him everywhere he looked, beckoning. Voices rose and fell in the room, and somewhere, from a nickelodeon, a woman’s voice sang, “Love is a simple thing, love is a silver ring …” He rubbed his eyes with his fingers, thinking that the curious floating shape would be gone when he opened his eyes again, along with the dry, aching feeling in the corners of his mouth. He felt, all at once, that it was touch and go.

  “Jimmy,” Claire said, “take my advice. Don’t go to see it. Don’t ever go to see it. Just pretend it isn’t there.”

  He didn’t answer her. “It’s important,” she said. “You simply mustn’t ever see it.”

  He forced a smile. “Again, do you mind if we change the subject?”

  “Poor Jimmy! You’ve taken it hard, haven’t you? Why were we born with New England consciences! We suffer so from the things we bottle up inside us!” She looked away, and he looked at her, wondering if there were tears in her eyes. But she turned and smiled brightly. “Aren’t you going to buy me another drink?” she asked.

  “You’re drinking those things pretty fast, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she asked him. “Let’s face it, I drink for the effect. I like being a little tight. It’s fun. I think everybody should be a little tight all the time …”

  He rubbed his eyes again. The sounds in the room—voices, laughter, and music—seemed to grow louder. He tried, now, not to look at Claire. He studied the crowd that stood around the bar. With the exception of the way they were dressed, in bright ski clothes, they could have been a crowd at a Yale house party. It made college seem very real and recent. He remembered the self-assurance and swagger and the smell of the streets of college towns, and the smell and sound of college drinking places—always different from drinking places of any other kind. He remembered term papers and midnight candles and sudden bursts of destructiveness that overtook whole groups before exam time, that led young men in wild; spontaneous marches through quadrangles, into streets with pillows flying, riots that ended with someone being depantsed on Chapel Street. He remembered long, wonderful parties that followed the course of a summer’s day and ended in a happy twilight of romance.

  “Jimmy,” Claire said, “are you feeling all right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Sure.”

  “You seem so—you look a little odd,” she said.

  “Do I?”

  “Have a drink—”

  “No, no …”

  “Oh, why not? You deserve one—after what you’ve been through.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Who would know? I won’t tell a single, solitary soul, I promise!”

  “That’s not the point—”

  “What is the point? I like you better when you’ve had a few drinks,” she said. “You’re not so solemn. Don’t look at me that way—so solemn!” She laughed. “Here, let me show you how you look.” She reached in her purse and pulled out a jewelled compact, flipped it open and held it in front of his eyes. He smelled the heavy perfume of face powder. “Look at yourself! How solemn you are. You used to be so funny and gay.”

  “Funny and gay,” he said.

  “See what I mean?” She withdrew the compact, glanced at her own reflection briefly, and replaced the compact in her bag. “Have one little drink.”

  He laughed. “No, Claire, no.”

  She sighed. “Well, please let me have one.”

  “All right.” He turned and signalled the waiter once more.

  He couldn’t get over the feeling of drifting backwards, in time, to an older place. It was dangerous, he knew, to be sitting here with Claire like this. He felt, once more, the sensation of looking down the cellar stairs, the challenge of going down without turning on the lights.

  “You’re being positively morose!” Claire said. “Talk to me.”

  “What shall we talk about?”

  “Anything. Talk about thunderstorms. Do you miss thunderstorms as much as I do? I don’t think they ever have them out here. Remember the thunderstorms in Connecticut? Remember the way the day gets, just before the storm comes? Oh, I adore thunderstorms! I think I miss them more than anything else.”

  The waiter arrived, and Claire said, “I’ll have another Scotch-and-water. The gentleman is a teetotaller.” She smiled brightly. When the waiter left, she said, “The only thing that bothers me is that it’s so unnecessary! You didn’t need to quit drinking. You didn’t need it any more than Blazer, or I—or anyone. Why you feel you must put yourself through this sort of thing, I just don’t know. It’s masochistic, if you ask me.”

  “It’s sort of a challenge,” he said.

  “Why do you have to challenge anything? You’re more of a man than anybody else I know. Yes, I mean that. You’re more of a man than Blazer.”

  “Don’t say that,” he said.

  “Why shouldn’t I? It’s true.” She leaned forwa
rd, speaking with soft intensity. “Do you remember on the mountain? Do you remember going up? Remember—I fell, and you reached out to help me? You offered me your hand. And I said no—I said I’d make it by myself. I think of that so often. I said it because of Blazer—it was what he would have wanted me to say. He wants me to be independent, to survive by myself. He can’t have anyone trying to reach for him. If I tried to reach for him, he’d run away … he wants me to climb my own mountains. After all, I have the money, he says. But you reached out. You’re big enough to—to carry another person! And that’s what I want to be—I want to be carried.” As she leaned forward, a strand of yellow hair fell across her face, and with the back of her hand she brushed it away. “You’re the one who said, ‘Hold still, I’ll pull you up.’”

  He looked at her. “You’re really quite an amazing person, Claire,” he said. “You’re so—”

  She reached across the table and took his hand. “Ah, Jimmy,” she said. “I do love you! I just do, I can’t help it. I’ve thought about you so much …”

  “Don’t say that …”

  “Look,” she said, staring at him, her blue eyes seeming to grow bluer, “you can drink! You can do anything you want. You can say the hell with Helen. Why don’t you have a drink, and drink to—to the hell with Helen? Drink to the hell with the lousy way she’s treated you, making you eat dirt, having a child that she’ll hold over your head as a weapon—like blackmail. A child that she’ll simply use to create more misery for you!”

  He felt all at once very limp and tired. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Why did I have to run into you?”

  “It was fate,” she said, smiling. “You see, we’re just alike. We’re tougher and stronger than other people. You and I are people who tell other people what to do!” And then she said almost angrily, “Jimmy, you’re a man. Next to you, who is Blazer? Just a handsome loafer who married a rich girl! Oh, for God’s sake, don’t let me down!”

  “All right,” he said quietly, “I’ll have a drink.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s do it right,” she said quickly. “Come back to my room. I have a bottle of Scotch in my suitcase.”

  “All right.”

  “Let’s hurry!” She stood up, and suddenly giggled. “Oh! I’m fairly buzzed already! Come on. Let’s make it a party. Cancel that order!” she called to the waiter, who was already moving towards them with a drink on a tray.

  Jimmy fumbled in his pocket for money to pay the check.

  Then he followed Claire across the smoky, crowded room. “My room’s in the other building—the annex or whatever they call it,” she whispered. “Follow me.”

  At the door, she took his hand. “Oh, darling!” she said. “Are you scared?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of this—this affair of ours?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “We can cope with it, can’t we?”

  Then they were outside, coatless, in the clear, frosty night, and she clung to his arm, leading him along the path towards the annex. “It’s Johnnie Walker Black Label,” she whispered, and laughed again.

  They entered the annex and went up the flight of stairs to the second floor. Claire led him down the corridor and stopped in front of a door, fumbling in her bag for the key. She unlocked the door, stepped inside, and turned on the light. Inside, the familiar smells greeted him—perfume, soap, and luggage. The room was strewn with clothes, shoes, and cosmetics. “Don’t mind the mess,” she said. “I told you I’ve been relaxing.”

  She moved quickly about the room, scooping up little armfuls of debris and depositing them in the closet. Then she opened one of the suitcases and extracted the Scotch bottle. She placed this on the crowded dressing-table and disappeared into the bathroom. He heard water running and presently she emerged with two tumblers half full of water. She placed these on the dressing-table and splashed Scotch generously into each glass.

  “For ice,” she said gaily, “we use this!” She went to the window, threw it open, reached upward and snapped off a large icicle. She showed it to Jimmy triumphantly. “Break it in two for me, will you?”

  He snapped the icicle in two pieces and placed a piece of ice in each glass. Then Claire picked up the glasses and swirled them in her hands. “Oh, isn’t this fun!” she said.

  She handed him his drink.

  He carried it to the window and looked out. The mountain was only a dark shadow now against the stars; above the summit, the stars seemed to throb in the thin air. Well, he thought despairingly, this was as good a place to end it as any other; to end it darkly and dirtily in this untidy room, far away from home, against a backdrop of heavy snow. He thought of the snow at Yosemite when he and Helen had huddled in the drifts, waiting for the blizzard to pass. (“If the Donner party had done this, they wouldn’t have died crossing the Sierras,” Helen had said. “They could have kissed each other warm.”)

  He remembered coming down the mountain, in the summer, with Claire; drunkenly running, leaping. He remembered thinking that the mountain looked as though it had tried to reach something, but had failed. It had tried to touch one particular portion of sky, and, failing, it had fallen into a heap of stone. He remembered saying this to Claire, and she had looked at him, mystified, and said, “What else would you have it do? Why would a mountain want to reach the sky?” And, after all those Martinis, he had seen—or thought he saw—something vaguely shining in the things she said. And he had almost loved her then.

  She didn’t shine now. Would a drink make her shine?

  Claire came and stood just behind him. “Darling,” she said, “I know it sounds terrible, but I don’t love Blazer any more. And do you know when it happened? It happened up there. After that, what happened in the apartment was inevitable. Do you remember how Blazer fired that gun of his? That was when it happened, when I realized I didn’t love him. That was so typical of Blazer. He needs things like guns and axes and knives—all those props! I think it’s Freudian. I think he needs things like that to assert his masculinity.”

  “Claire—” he began.

  “You don’t. That was when I realized I loved you,” she said.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” he asked her.

  “Well,” she said, “do you really want to know? Because I’ve thought it all out. First, you must get your divorce. Then I’ll get mine.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then—” she said, “then the rest is up to you.”

  He set his glass down on the window-sill and turned to her. “Listen,” he said gently, “I want to make a speech. I want you to listen to everything I say and remember it. It may be that I’m in love with you, but. I don’t know. I don’t want you to say you love me, because I’m still not sure I feel the same. I’m very fond of you. I think you’re one of the most exciting and delightful girls I know, and I think I could be in love with you very easily. But I can’t be yet. I came back here to finish something. I don’t know how it’s going to end, but it hasn’t ended yet. Do you see what I mean? I’ve got to see Helen first, that’s one thing. Maybe it is all over with Helen. Maybe there’s nothing left. But right now she’s still my wife. I owe her something. Some day maybe I’ll wish I’d said I love you right now—to-night. But I can’t. That’s why I stayed away from you and didn’t answer your letter. A minute ago, I almost thought all right, to hell with her. But I’m afraid I can’t. I can’t give up now.”

  She was silent for a moment, standing there, swaying slightly. Finally, she said, “That doesn’t give me much to go on, does it?”

  “It’s all I can give you.”

  She turned and walked slowly across the room. “That was—quite a speech,” she said. Then she turned to him and he saw that her eyes were filled with tears. “Do you mind if I say you’re being a fool?”

  “That may be true.”

  “Oh!” she said. “You look so stern!” Her voice broke. She went towards the door. “I
guess you’d better go,” she said.

  He went towards her. “I’m sorry, Claire.”

  She leaned with her back against the door, her hand on the knob. “Well,” she said, “I’ll just have to be patient, won’t I? If I ever want to be happy!” She moved away from the door. “Kiss me,” she said. “Just once. For courage.” She closed her eyes tightly.

  He went to her and kissed her gently on the lips.

  “Oh, Jimmy,” she sobbed, “I can’t help loving you, even when you hurt me so!” Then she pulled away from him. “Good night,” she said.

  “Good night, Claire.”

  “Let me know,” she said. “Keep in touch.”

  “All right. Good night.”

  He let himself out the door.

  Alone, in her room, Claire wandered aimlessly about for a moment or two. She kicked off her shoes. Then she saw her drink on the dressing-table, went to it, and picked it up. She drank it rapidly. Jimmy’s drink, untouched, was still on the window-sill. She drank that. Then she returned to the dressing-table and began removing the rhinestone clips from her hair. All at once she lowered her hands, leaned forward, towards her blurred image in the mirror, and kissed the glass. She pulled back and there, on the mirror’s surface, was the imprint of her mouth in lipstick—a round, perfect Cupid’s bow.

  On the way back, Jimmy stopped to look at the pool. It was, as Claire had said, an incongruous sight, a warm black rectangle in the snow. He walked slowly around the pool’s perimeter, looking at the water. From inside the lodge, he heard the college voices at the bar raised in song—

  Each morning at dawning birdies sing—

  And everything!

  A sun-kissed miss said, “Don’t be late!”

  That’s why I can hardly wait—

  Open up, open up, open up that Golden Gate!

  California, here I come!

  He squatted on his heels beside the pool and trailed his hand in the water. The water was warm, and suddenly there was a moon. For the stillness of a moment, the pool was a moon, glittering and shimmering all around. And whether it was this sudden transition, or whether it was the words of the song, he felt he saw a dawn breaking. Right there. At the tip of his hand.