Young Mr. Keefe
Page 34
“None,” he said, smiling down at her.
She looked at him, puzzled. “None?” she repeated.
“Next to none—compared with thirty thousand.”
“But what about—”
“My father’s estate?”
“Yes.”
“It didn’t quite work out that way—I’m afraid I’m pretty poor now. Compared with thirty thousand.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Now, why don’t you go back to Blazer?” he said affectionately.
“Oh, no, no! No, he wants to stay in California—” she said absently. Then she said, “Well, it doesn’t make any difference, does it? Whether you’re poor or not? I still love you.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do. I didn’t mean to make it sound like it was the money, honestly I didn’t. I just meant—well, I just thought that with what you had and what I had—but it doesn’t make a particle of difference to me!” She gave him a brief, worried look, then looked away. “Does it?” she asked.
“Now I have to tell you another thing,” he said. “And I don’t want you to be hurt, Claire, because—because I don’t. I want to tell you that I’m not in love with you.”
“I see,” she said.
“Helen’s come back, Claire. She’s in the apartment right now. I’m very happy, Claire, and I want you to be happy, too, because you and I would always have been wrong for each other. We never would have been happy together—and we should both be happy to have found that out in time.”
She was silent. Then she said, “Let’s walk back this way—just a little bit. Then I’ll say good-bye.” They turned and started up the street again.
They walked in silence, then Claire said slowly, “It had to be you and Helen, didn’t it? It always was, wasn’t it? Even when you and I—”
“Yes,” he said, “it always was.”
“You affect me—” she said—“you affect me in the strangest way. I should say, ‘I’ve been a fool,’ shouldn’t I? But I don’t feel that way. You said I should be happy. So I will be happy. I’ll be happy that it’s going to work out for you …”
“Thank you.”
“I fell in love with you. I shouldn’t have. But I did. That day I went to see Helen the first time—it happened before then, I hoped that if I tried to help you two get back together again, perhaps it would help me, too, with Blazer. But it was no good. And I forced you.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was all my fault. I wasn’t innocent. I wanted it to happen—that night in the apartment. I wanted it to happen before that. That night on the mountain—that was when I decided I would make it happen. So don’t blame yourself. It was my fault.”
He was silent. “Claire,” he said finally, “it was my fault, too.”
“It doesn’t matter. But I can’t go on living with Blazer, anyway. Oh, look—” She stopped suddenly and pointed into the low shrubbery along the sidewalk. “What’s that? Oh, it’s a camellia. Look at it—in the middle of winter. Crazy California! Crazy California flowers. Jimmy—pick it for me.”
He reached into the bush and snapped off the flower.
“La Dame aux camélias!” She laughed, taking it and putting it in the buttonhole of her fur coat. “What a crazy place. Everything happens backwards out here.” She began chattering gaily and artificially. She put her hand through his arm and they began walking again. “Blazer!” she said. “Dear Blazer! He wants to stay here. But you know I could never bear to stay. That’s really why I left him. I couldn’t bear the thought of living here another minute. You must stay here, though. Your place is here now, with Helen—”
She began to cry, and as she walked, she pulled softly on his arm and cried strange little sobs that made no noise. “Walk me a little farther—” she said.
“I’m sorry, Claire …”
“Hush,” she said, “don’t say that. You must stay here. I can retreat—”
“Retreat?”
“Yes, go home. Retreat to the warm womb of love. I can retreat to money. I’m going to be very rich. Daddy’s setting things up—oh, but I told you all of that …” Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the crying stopped. “I’ll tell you one true thing,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Even if—even if Helen hadn’t come back. Even if you had told me you loved me, Jimmy. If you had said you loved me, wanted me to stay—if you had told me you wanted me to stay out here and marry you, I’d still go back. I wouldn’t stay here—even for you.”
“I’m glad you told me that,” he said.
“You and I are different after all,” she said.
They were. She had tried to fight a battle, but somehow she had lost it. And now she was trying to turn the defeat into a victory. She was ready now, ready to submit to whatever it was that came next, ready to stop fighting for anything. And yet, in a curious way, this submission was becoming her maturity. She was ready to go back to Mars Hill, to Junius Denison, to the Junior League, to the Smith Club, ready for all the things she had always shunned. She was ready to be rich, to follow the pattern of the rich. Perhaps she would take an apartment on Park Avenue, a pied-à-terre. Her Bohemian period was over, and her marriage, which had been an extension of her Bohemian period, really, was over. She was ready for New England again, for men in black ties and dinner jackets, smoked trout for breakfast, French toast, tea parties. She would never again eat spaghetti from a can.
What was it that pulled her back? he wondered. Was it really because she had loved him, and now saw the hopelessness of that? Or because Blazer had decided to stay in California? Suddenly, he felt that he had known all along that this would happen, that her departure had been predestined, and predestined to take place this way. That some subtle difference between the East and West had shaped the courses that their lives had taken. And that, somehow, to Claire, the circling view of Manhattan from the Eastbound plane, or the view from the George Washington Bridge, with the towers of New York rising like the spires of fairyland, signified a world that she had never wholly left. She had never left the cotillions, the Colony, the shops on Madison Avenue, the thing she called the warm womb of love. She was not running away with a broken heart; she was returning to a life she had always loved more than any person.
He stopped. “We’re almost back to the apartment,” he said.
“Oh. Well, I’ll leave you here.” She looked up at him and smiled. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ll survive. I’ll get over you. I’m beginning to already! I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”
“You’re such a funny girl …”
“We’re both funny. But different. We’ll be happy, I know it. Remember that song we played on the phonograph that night? ‘Scarlet Ribbons—’ That’s what you gave to me, my dear. Scarlet ribbons … for my hair.” She paused. “God bless you,” she said.
It was a curious moment, haunting and pendulous. They stood there, holding hands on the sidewalk. They were saying farewell to nothing. The rain had streaked her mascara; he could not tell whether there were tears. Her make-up—she always wore too much—looked raffish and haphazard.
“Good-bye, Claire,” he said.
“Merry Christmas, Jimmy.”
“And a Happy New Year,” he said softly. “Drive carefully.”
“Of course,” she said.
She released his hand quickly. Then she reached up and touched the camellia blossom on her coat. “Oh, I must get back,” she said. “My flower is dying!”
She turned away and started back along the sidewalk. He stood there and watched her. The white Angora mittens disappeared in the pockets of the fur jacket. He thought that she might turn and wave good-bye, but she did not turn. She walked, without turning, to the corner. She waited, without turning, for the light to turn to green. Without turning, she crossed the street, and continued on, along the sidewalk out of the lamplight. Just before she vanished into the shade of the trees and the darkness, he thought th
at she must turn. But though he waited until she disappeared, she did not turn.
The rain was letting up. In the sky, a searchlight arced from Mather Field. Then there was a distant roar of an engine. The planes were flying again. To-morrow would be clear. Soon it would be April and summer again.
Slowly, he turned and walked towards the house. At the foot of the rough-hewn redwood steps, he began to run.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1958 by Stephen Birmingham
Cover design by Amanda Shaffer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4051-8
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