“Lots of times. I know you’re very devout.”
Somehow, this made him feel awkward; he was too much aware of his own coloring. She sat there, staring at him.
“A priest,” she said.
“Well,” he said. “That’s over, now.”
“I like church,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind being a Catholic. I think it might be fun. I think I’d really like the confession part.”
“It makes you feel cleansed,” he said.
“I love to hear you talk about it. You must go all the time.”
“Not so much,” he said. “Pretty much.” The light seemed too bright.
“And you went from the priesthood to politics.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Politics, maybe.” How strange to have it all said out that way.
She looked at her own reflection in the mirror. “I read somewhere that every Catholic boy thinks about the priesthood at one time or another. Do you think Kennedy ever thought about the priesthood?”
“I haven’t seen anything—”
“I know who did think about it, though—a political figure of the twentieth century who was the leader of a whole country who thought very seriously about the priesthood when he was a young man.”
Marshall nodded. “Okay.”
“Can you guess?”
He shook his head.
“Hitler.”
He said, “Well, I’m sure there were others, too.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Mussolini.”
The waiter came to take their orders. He stood in front of them, holding his pad and waiting—a balding, heavyset man with a tattoo of a falcon on one arm.
“Oh,” she said. “Let me see. I’ll have a cup of chili with onions and crackers, and the pork chops, with a baked potato, and a salad. And these chicken wings. Am I going too fast?”
The waiter looked at her with drowsy eyes. “Salad—” he said.
“And milk. And coffee. Oh, and sour cream and butter on the potato.”
“And you?” he said to Marshall.
“I’d just like a chocolate sundae.”
“You’re really going to do it.” Alice was pleased. “Me, too, then. Drop everything I said and just give me that, too.”
The waiter glared at her.
“Chocolate sundae,” she said. “Sorry.”
He moved off.
“So Mitch Brightman knew your father and he knows mine. Small world.”
“They were a couple years apart in school.”
“Small world,” she repeated.
“What’s he like?” Marshall said.
“Brightman?” she paused, thinking. “Brightman’s—he’s—I don’t know. Actually, I’ve seen him lots around the house. You ought to be able to imitate him pretty easily, Walter. Have you ever tried?”
“His manner isn’t extreme enough,” Walter said. “I can do Walter Cronkite, though.”
“Let me hear you.”
“What so-ert of a dayy was it,” he said. “A day like all days…”
She laughed. “It’s close. I like it.”
“Brightman’s voice is too deep,” he said.
She thought a moment. “I know him pretty well, actually. He’s stayed over a few times when he’s had a snootful. He drinks a lot, you know. Dad covers for him sometimes. Once, not too long ago, he drank a whole bottle of I.W. Harper before lunch on a Sunday. I know this because he came to our house for dinner that night. The woman he was with told my dad what he’d had to drink already, and she asked us to go easy on the drinks. My dad gave him watered-down bourbon all evening, and I guess he didn’t notice it, but when they left he tucked a fifth of my dad’s whiskey under his coat. My dad missed it the next afternoon, and thought maybe he’d lost his memory or something, and then Brightman’s lady called to thank us for the dinner and apologized for the theft of the bottle.”
“He never looks like a drinker on television,” Marshall said.
“It’s kind of a secret. He can go for periods, you know, without having anything, and then he goes on these—I can’t remember what my father calls them. But they all have to watch out for the signs. Actually, he’s only tolerable when he’s sober. He gets so vain and conceited when he’s had too much. You never saw anything like him. You can be talking to him, and he can be drunk as a skunk, and you wouldn’t notice it. Except he turns into such a vain person. Much worse than when he’s himself, although my father says he’s really only himself—his true self—when he is drunk. It gets so he won’t let anyone leave the room while he’s talking—not even to the bathroom. You should hear my dad on the subject of Mitchell Brightman. And, actually, the two of them are friends, too. They’ve known each other for years and years. They both worked with the Person to Person guy.”
“Edward R. Murrow?” Marshall said.
“That was the team—Patrick Kane, Mitchell Brightman, and Murrow.”
They watched the waiter making the sundaes.
“So tell me,” she said. “How complicated is it to convert? Suppose a person wanted to convert?”
“You take instruction,” he said.
She thought this over. “You mean, like somebody who wants to be a citizen?”
“Right,” he said.
“And I’d have to have a sponsor.”
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
“Well, the person who converted me, wouldn’t that person be my sponsor?”
He nodded.
“And you’re still very religious.”
He felt the same rush of chagrin. At the other end of the counter, a very beautiful woman leaned close to an older man, talking fast, tapping the end of her cigarette into the ashtray at her elbow.
“Actually, you know, I have to admit it,” Alice went on. “I’ve never really thought much about being Catholic. I bet it’s wonderful. The lady who raised me, Minnie, she’s Baptist by birth, but I’ve never really seen her go to church. She’s religious, though. It’s in her talk.”
“And she doesn’t go to church?”
“She goes. I’ve just never been there.”
He thought she would say more, so he waited.
“Minnie,” she said. “The big colored lady who was leaving that night you came home with me.”
“She raised you?”
“Nothing but. Only mother I can ever remember. I used to love the smell of her. She always had the nicest smell—sweet, like something just baked, or like fresh-picked flowers. I used to love to sit in her big lap and go to sleep while she read to me.”
They were quiet for a time. Alice seemed to be replaying in her mind the memory of being read to.
“Anyway,” she said, “I used to want to be Jewish because of the holidays—you know, back when I was in high school. A hundred fifty years ago.”
When Marshall looked into the mirror and saw Alice’s thin, high-cheeked, staring face, he felt exposed, as though all the others at the counter were watching the two of them. It came to him that over the past few weeks he had done most of the talking, and that the talk had been about himself. He was briefly ashamed of this, and sought in his mind for some way of making up for it.
“Your mother died before you were old enough to remember,” he said.
“That’s the fact.”
“And your father never remarried?”
“Nope. He got close a few times. To tell you the truth, I don’t think he likes women very much. He seems much more comfortable around other men. I mean—he’s not queer or anything. Just—I don’t know. Masculine. He likes hunting and fishing—all that stuff.”
“I saw.” Marshall meant the trophies all around the house where Alice lived.
She cleared her throat, then looked at him. “A person has to convert, doesn’t she. If she marries a Catholic.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “My mother’s father was a Lutheran.”
“Really.”
“A practicing Lutheran sort of person,” he said, smiling at her. “No kidding.”
She sat back, her hands on the counter. Then she rested one elbow on it, looking around, biting the cuticle of one thumbnail. “What do you think made you want to be a priest? Was it just being a Catholic boy, like Hitler and Mussolini? Well, not exactly them, of course. I just meant not being cut out for it and thinking you are.”
He shrugged. There was something too defining about the question. It unnerved him.
“Boy, Hitler wasn’t cut out for it, was he?”
Marshall shook his head. He thought she was talking too loud.
“What did your mother say about it all? I guess a Catholic mother would love to have a priest in the family.”
“She didn’t say much—listen, could we talk about something else?”
The waiter set the two sundaes before them.
“I’m sorry,” Alice said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Marshall said and realized that he had sounded more brusque than he’d meant to. “There’s nothing to apologize about.”
“Of course there is.” She took a mouthful of the ice cream.
“No,” he said.
She wiped her lips. “That man’s awful cigar.”
The man with the cigar was standing at the book rack, just to her right. The rack squealed as he turned it. He blew more smoke.
“Do you want to move?” Marshall said.
She seemed not to have heard this. She took another spoonful of the ice cream, then looked at him in the mirror and gave a little, pained smile. A moment later, she said, “My father’s holding this silly party for me—it’s silly. I’m going to be twenty-four, you see, which is, I guess, the cut-off point in his little mind. Anyway, he wants you to come, too. He’s having some of the people he knows at CBS over. And I guess he’s hoping I’ll fall in love with one of them.” She laughed. “I don’t suppose you’d feel like coming to it. Actually, I’m fairly sure Mitchell Brightman will be there.”
She had spoken this last as though it would be an enticement to him. The fact that it was rankled him. “When?” he said, and then filled his mouth with ice cream.
“This coming Friday.”
The color in her cheeks, and the small, crooked smile on her face made him concentrate on the ice cream.
“I mean, you’ve never met these people, I know. And I know it’s late notice. That’s the way Dad does things. I know he makes you nervous. But you could talk to some of these people about Kennedy, I’ll bet.”
He had met Mr. Kane once, perhaps a month ago, having accepted an invitation from Alice to accompany her home for coffee after the two of them had been to see The Guns of Navarone, in town. The old man was large and imposing, with a clean, bald pate and dark, gray-tinged hair over his ears and around the back of his head. His face had the appearance of having been pulled over his nose, the end of which covered the line of his lips. Aside from a certain slant of the eyes, Alice looked nothing like him. To the young man he had been pleasant enough, but rather distant, finally, and he had driven him home without uttering a word—twenty minutes of the low hum of the radio, with Marshall issuing polite directions.
“I don’t think your father likes me very much.”
“Oh, that’s silly,” she said. “He didn’t know I was bringing anybody home that time. That’s all.”
“Yes, but—he didn’t seem to take to me later, either.”
“Well, he’s shy.”
“He goes around with people like Edward R. Murrow and Mitchell Brightman, and he’s shy?”
“It’s true. He is shy. And he doesn’t dislike you, either. You notice he didn’t stay around when we were sitting in the living room. If he didn’t like you, he would’ve stayed right there with us instead of going upstairs. He wouldn’t have trusted you with me.” She sighed, and tapped her spoon once against the lip of the bowl. “Actually, I’m dreading this party. Maybe I’ll miss it—just say thanks, no thanks and go out and see a movie. Have you seen My Fair Lady?”
“Not yet.”
“I haven’t, either.”
In the awkward silence that followed, he decided to try one more time, gently, to dissuade her from coming to the school with him. “Listen,” he said. “There’s really not much going on tonight. I’m not even up tonight.”
“Up. What’s that mean—up?”
“We practice being on the air. We do all the jobs there are in a normal radio station. But it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s just rehearsing, sort of. And I’m not up tonight. I’m just supposed to sit in the booth and watch.”
Her face brightened. “Great. Then let’s go see it.”
“See what?”
“The movie.”
He was momentarily at a loss.
“My Fair Lady.”
“Oh, that—no, I really have to go to class.”
She gave him an uncomprehending look.
“I just meant—you know, there’s really nothing for you to see.”
“Nothing—”
“There wouldn’t be anything happening, you know. Just me sitting in the booth and watching a lot of dials.”
She nodded, with that small smile, then gathered the coat on her lap, as if she had received a chill. “This is a lot of ice cream, actually.”
“If there was something going on,” Marshall said, “it’d be different…”
She’d taken a big bite of the sundae, and a dollop of the whipped cream dropped onto her chin. “Whoops,” she said, her mouth full.
To his horror, he saw tears in her eyes. “Here,” he said, reaching for a napkin.
“Oh, no—really.” She caught the ice cream with the palm of her hand, looking from one end of the counter to the other, then she took the napkin he held out. “Messy.” Her voice broke.
“They taste too good to worry about the mess,” he offered.
“I really shouldn’t have it,” she managed. “Too much sugar.”
“Anyway,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind this boring night at the school.”
“Oh, well, actually—it turns out—I really should be going home. It’s silly for me—”
“Aren’t you going to finish your sundae?” he said.
She touched his wrist. “You finish it.”
“I won’t be able to.”
She had stood, she was putting her coat on, in a hurry now.
“I’ll walk you to the bus stop,” Marshall said, standing, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut in the first place. “Come on, let me walk you there.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Alice. “It’s only on the corner—at K Street.”
“No, really—I want to.”
“I don’t want you to,” she said, looking into her purse. “Please.” She pulled a hanky out and brushed her eyes. “Something’s stinging me—that awful man smoking that cigar.”
“Alice,” he said. “Listen—you know—I don’t even know what ‘phlegmatic’ means.”
She gave him another uncomprehending look. “What?”
“Let me—” He reached for her arm. But then she started away from him. “Alice—”
“I have to go,” she said. “That’s easy to understand, isn’t it?”
“Alice,” he heard himself say, “don’t, please.”
She paused, stared.
“I—there’s something I’ve been meaning to say…” He had, in fact, been deciding over the past few days that he wanted to clarify things between them. He had liked the sense that he was having an effect on her—but this: He hadn’t imagined she could be hurt by any of it.
“Yes?” she said.
“I’ve been at such loose ends,” he told her.
She said, “I know.”
The pained look in her eyes, the clear anticipation of bad news, stopped his breath. He looked down, shifted his weight, trying to organize his thoughts. There were flattened cigarette butts on the floor. And he had known how she felt about him, he had basked in it.
“I think I know,” she said, “what you’re trying to say.
You’re trying to say you don’t want to see me anymore.”
“No,” he said quickly. “That’s not it. God, how can you say that?”
“It’s not?”
“No,” he said, and felt as though he had lied.
“Oh, Walter.”
He looked at her—the wet, bottomlessly dark eyes.
“Walter, are you—oh, please. Say it.”
“I can’t.” He was short of breath.
“Is it because you’re afraid I’ll say no?”
He nodded out of a kind of stupified reflex.
“I won’t say no, Walter.” Her eyes were filled with tears.
“Will you marry me?” he heard himself say. The words sounded like something he had mouthed in a game somewhere, a long time ago. It was only the next thing to say under these circumstances. He felt like a little, little boy, standing there under her suddenly happy gaze.
“Walter,” she said. “Yes, I will.”
“I mean it,” he told her, unable to believe himself, but feeling now as though this was the right thing to do. Somewhere in him there blossomed a sense of what an adventure it would be, to be grown enough to have a wife.
“Oh, darling.” She walked into his arms.
He held her, looking at the man with the cigar, who had turned, and regarded them with interest, still blowing smoke. Marshall thought the smoke was making him dizzy, too, now. “I didn’t mean anything—didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said in her ear. “I just—I didn’t want you to be bored.”
She stepped back the length of her arms and looked at him. “How could you think I’d be bored? We’d be together. It would be the nearest thing to heaven. Have you seen An Affair to Remember?”
He wanted to ask her to be quiet. “No,” he said. He couldn’t catch his breath.
“That’s what this feels like to me.”
It was coming down on him again that he had actually proposed to her. Somehow, he had caused this woman to fall in love with him, and even as his nerves shook, even as a part of him refused to believe it was possible, he determined to go through with everything. “I hope you’ll forgive me,” he stammered, having lost the thread of the conversation. She was going on about the movie—Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. She stopped herself at last, and looked at him with a shy turn of her head.
Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea Page 4
