“You look worn out.” She touched his forehead. “The weather is so bad. You look like you have a little fever.” Her hand dropped to her side. “Well, I have to memorize some poetry. And I’d rather talk to you.”
“I love poetry,” he said.
“I know, you told me that.”
“I did,” he said. “I guess I did.”
She smiled. “Sometimes, you know, I think maybe I make you nervous.” Her soft eyes were the color of a clear, early spring sky.
“Oh—no.” The last word came out in that terrible falsetto. He faked a cough, cleared his throat. “This weather—my sinuses.”
“Now you joke with me.” She sat down at his side. “We are making too much noise in the library, I think. Good thing there’s no one else around to scold us. They all vent out in the rain before you came.”
He looked at the doorway of the room, and then at her again. “No one,” he said.
“Tell me something funny, Walter. You seem upset.”
“No,” he said.
“You don’t seem so happy. Tell me a joke, maybe.”
“I don’t know any new ones,” he said.
“Oh, there must be something. Be funny. I’m lonely for a laugh.”
“I can’t think of anything. I’m sorry. It’s hard when you ask for it like that.”
“Don’t be glum,” she said. “Does the rainy day make you glum?”
“Rainy days make me feel all—rainy and watery,” he said.
She smiled. “There, that wasn’t so hard.”
“It wasn’t funny, either.”
“Too bad,” she said. Then she sighed. “It gets dark too early in the winter, but we have talked about that, I guess. We must be running out of talk.”
“There’s lots to say,” he told her. “The day’s tilting—you notice how light it is in the mornings?”
“It’s starting so qvick. The early dark.”
“I always hated it,” he said.
“I don’t like it, either.” She stood. “Now we’re both depressed.”
He gazed at her and felt that the smile on his face wasn’t enough. “I always feel good when I’m with you,” he said.
She laughed. “Oh, boy. Now, you make me feel ashamed for my bad mood about the dark. I take it all back.” She paused a moment, looked beyond him at the open door. “Well, anyvay. Good luck with your schoolwork.” Then she turned and went back to the window seat, where she opened her book and seemed to concentrate. He paged through his own book. On one of the pages was a picture of Alice’s father, Patrick Kane, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, standing in a gray space with Edward R. Murrow. Marshall saw the hand of God in it. His knee throbbed, reminding him. Natalie lounged quietly in the window seat, the lovely ankle of one leg under the thigh of the other. She held a big volume of Shakespeare on her lap, and seemed perfectly content the way beautiful women can sometimes be, as if quite aware of their own exquisiteness and quite at home with it, too. Certainly she was aware of the effect she was having on him. He tried hard to apply himself to the book, and after a few distracted moments he heard Albert coming in with his fiancée, Albert’s high-pitched voice gently coaxing, reassuring. “This way.”
Marshall heard them enter the room behind him. They settled into one of the sofas. He did not turn around. For some reason, there had to be an element of drama in this moment, since he was about to meet a person he had never met before. He stared at the book, at the picture of Alice’s father, with his small eyes and heavy jowls.
Albert spoke to his fiancée. “Walter has such powers of concentration, you know.”
“This is a nice room, isn’t it? I can smell the lovely books.”
Marshall felt awful, but couldn’t raise the will to lift his head just yet.
In the window seat, Natalie turned a page, sighed, then closed the book, rose, and walked breezily out of the room. “Good-bye,” she said. Marshall allowed himself a glance at her, and this was the opening Albert needed.
“Walter?” he said. “Here she is. Fresh in from Alexandria on the bus.”
Marshall turned, and with a kind of automatic impulse, feigned surprise. “Oh, hi.”
Emma was a young, squarely set woman with pale, faintly mottled skin and the look of a girl whose appearance is a matter for someone other than herself to consider. Her fine, sandy-colored hair was braided and pinned close to her head, and her eyes were clouded, turned so deeply in on themselves that one’s first impulse was to look away. She was holding dark glasses in one thin white hand, and he realized that she’d removed the glasses because she was being introduced to him. “Albert speaks so highly of you,” she said, smiling.
“How nice to meet you,” said Marshall, trying not to think about Natalie.
It came to him like all the badness of high school that Albert and his fiancée were not very handsome people physically, and something in Natalie’s so-well-inhabited beauty made him feel caught out, as though being with these two people might have somehow lessened his chances. He stood, and remembered Alice again. For a moment, he couldn’t find his voice. “Let’s go on upstairs.”
“Don’t let us bother you,” Albert said. “We’ll sit right here and wait for you.”
“I’m finished.”
“May I shake your hand?” Emma said, reaching.
Marshall took it. Her palm was cool. She let her fingers glide over his fingers and up to his wrist. Then she took hold again and shook.
“Nice,” she said. “I can tell you’re a nice person.”
No.
“And he’s joining the ranks of the snared,” Albert said.
“Albert, don’t put it like that.”
“Oh, but we love being snared,” Albert said. “Just try throwing us back.”
Marshall ushered them out and along the corridor to the stairs. Albert then led the way up, holding Emma’s hand.
Upstairs, beyond the aluminum and glass doors with the words THE D’ALLESSANDRO SCHOOL FOR BROADCASTING painted on them, sitting on stools in the light of the studio, with its acoustically baffled walls and its little sound booth crowded with equipment, were the other members of Mr. D’Allessandro’s radio school, class of 1965. This evening, they were all sitting quietly together, as if waiting for something or someone. This was supposed to be Martin Alvarez’s night in the sound booth, and it was Baker’s night to read the news and commercials. No one had done anything toward getting ready.
“I’m glad you’re—all—here,” Albert said, peering at them. “I wanted you to meet Emma.”
“Hello,” Emma said, removing her coat. Albert took it from her.
Alvarez stood and gently put his hand in hers. “Ees bery nice to meet you. We have some trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“What’s wrong?” Albert said. “The console break down?” He smiled, turning.
Marshall saw the expression on Alvarez’s face. He looked at the others. “What is it?” he said.
Baker spoke. “Mr. D’Allessandro is in the hospital. They think it’s his heart.”
“My God,” said Emma, taking hold of Albert’s arm. “Oh, my God.”
“Take it easy,” Albert said. Then, turning to Baker. “Do they know how bad?”
“Just that they took him in this afternoon around five,” said Baker. “We don’t know much more. We’re waiting for Mrs. D’Allessandro to call. She seemed pretty calm. But you never know with these things.”
Marshall stared at him.
“She said to wait. She asked us to wait here.”
Ricky Dalmas stood away from his stool, bringing the pipe with the chip out of the stem from his mouth. “I’m the one who answered the phone,” he said. “Heart trouble. But Mrs. D’Allessandro didn’t seem distraught.”
“I talked to her,” Baker said. “She seemed pretty calm.”
They were all quiet, then. Outside, someone leaned on a car horn. The sound came to them like a kind of insistence on the part of the city, and now, far off,
there were sirens. Marshall went to the sound booth and looked in. Here was Mr. D’Allessandro’s coffee cup in its place on the small table.
“I think he was at home when it happened,” Baker said.
“What’ll we do if he can’t come back to the school?” Ricky Dalmas wanted to know. “I need to get a job in radio. I need this degree.”
“We won’t get our money back,” said Mrs. Gordon. “That’s for sure.”
“Everything’ll work out all right,” Albert said, picking at his cheek, not looking at any of them. Emma had not let go of his arm. Her face was white as the walls.
“My father had a heart attack ten years ago,” Ricky Dalmas said. “And he’s still around. He drinks a lot, too.” It was clear from the expression on his face that he hadn’t meant to add this.
No one else seemed to have heard him, anyway. Marshall averted his eyes. The others were all deep in their own thoughts. After a few moments, Baker said, “Well, maybe we ought to go on and start with the night’s schedule.”
“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Gordon.
“You want to just sit here?”
“Mrs. D’Allessandro asked us to wait, and we’re waiting.”
“What’re we waiting for, though?”
“When she calls, we’ll know, I guess.”
“You think this is the end of the school?”
“Eet’s not the end of nothing,” Alvarez said. “The money ees spent.”
“They’ll have to get someone else,” said Mrs. Gordon.
“Who’ll they get?” Marshall asked.
Dalmas, sucking on the pipe, looked at him. And Baker said, “Let’s just wait and see what happens.”
They waited. Emma coughed, then cleared her throat. “I—I need to sit down.”
“Honey,” Albert said. “Don’t assume the worst. It could be perfectly all right.”
She turned to him, holding tight.
“Be easy,” he told her. Then he faced the others. “I didn’t introduce Emma to the rest of you.”
“Oh, Albert,” said Emma. “Nobody feels like that now. Please.”
“This is Emma,” he said, guiding her toward Mrs. Gordon, who stood and reached for Emma’s hands. For a little space, it was as though they had all gathered for a social occasion. Emma was introduced around, and Albert made a joke at his own expense concerning his worries about being a clumsy oaf married to the strict little Miss Em. Gradually, then, they all grew quiet, waiting for the phone to ring, or for someone to arrive.
Emma had taken a seat near the door, and Marshall saw that she kept wringing her hands. Albert stood at her side, gently patting her shoulder.
“Today,” Ricky Dalmas said, “I told my wife something like this would happen. I did. I said, ‘You watch, just as I’m starting to get better, Mr. D’Allessandro will have a heart attack and the school will close.’”
No one answered him.
“I’ve got some sort of sixth sense.”
“It’s a coincidence,” said Mrs. Gordon. “That’s all.”
“Oh, yeah? When Kennedy was shot—same thing. I was working in the office and the phone rang, right? And this girl I was with said, ‘I wonder what that is,’ and I said, ‘Probably the president’s been shot.’ I knew it, right? It’s some extrasensory thing, like that TV show.”
“I was sitting in a barber’s chair,” Baker said. “Over on Twelfth Street.”
“I was at work,” Marshall said.
“I was in Braille school,” Emma said, still clinging to Albert’s arm. “And it came over the intercom.”
“We were driving to Missouri,” said Mrs. Gordon. “For Thanksgiving. It was broadcast over the car radio. My husband was so upset we had to stop. We were both very upset.”
“What about you?” Baker said to Alvarez.
“Mun, I was home asleep with the flu.”
Baker looked at Marshall. “You?”
“At work,” Marshall said. “I saw him in a parade in the summer—some foreign dignitary was visiting.”
Albert said, “It’s like we’re all fixed in our own times and places. I know where all of you were at a certain hour of a given day on earth. My father said it was that way with Roosevelt. When Roosevelt died.”
“Where were you?” Marshall asked him.
“When Roosevelt died?”
“No—”
“Just kidding, Walter. I was at work. The stockroom at the AFL-CIO, across from the White House. Same place I work now, really, except I’ve moved up to the seventh floor, to janitorial. When I went home that night, the bells—church bells—”
“I know,” Marshall said, interrupting him. “It was raining, and they were tolling all over town. This slow tolling. And nobody talking—not on the streets and not in the buses. It was quiet as a funeral everywhere.”
“The only sound,” Albert said, “was the rain, and the car tires in the wet streets, and those bells going off every ten seconds or so.”
“Yes.”
They all paused, as though listening for the bells.
“Anybody want something to drink?” Baker asked abruptly.
“I’ll go,” said Marshall, thinking, in spite of himself and all his best intentions, of Natalie.
“Walter and I will go,” Albert said. Then he leaned down and murmured something to Emma. Marshall couldn’t make it out. He heard, “Sure?”
Emma nodded.
“Who wants what?” Albert asked.
Baker wrote the orders down on a piece of school stationery, and Albert took it from him, along with the money people had put in. “Let’s go,” he said to Marshall.
Marshall led the way down. As the two of them moved past the library door, he saw that Natalie was in the window seat again, but instead of reading, she was gazing—longingly, he thought—out at the street.
“Hey,” Marshall said to her. “Want something to drink?”
“No,” she said without quite looking back. “Thank you.”
“What’re you looking for? There’s a lot of drippy, watery people out there.”
“Nothing,” she said almost impatiently through a smile. “Thanks anyway.”
“What’s wrong?” Albert wanted to know.
Marshall moved quickly out of the doorway. “Nothing’s wrong.”
They descended to the basement of the building, where Albert paused under the one ceiling light and tried to read what Baker had written.
Marshall took the list from him. “Here, I’ll do it.”
“Poor Emma,” Albert said. “What a night to bring her here.”
“She got so white,” Marshall said.
Albert nodded, sadly, the one hand up to his face. “It scares her pretty bad. I’ve been trying to get her to stop worrying all the time.”
“It’s probably going to be okay.” Marshall wanted to change the subject. He put the coins in the machine, and as each bottle dropped into the pan, Albert retrieved it, bending low, groaning like an old man. On the way back upstairs, they saw that the night college was going ahead with the evening’s work as though nothing were amiss. Perhaps they didn’t even know about Mr. D’Allessandro.
At the glass doors, Baker stood. “Mrs. D’Allessandro wants to talk to you, Walter.”
“Me?”
In the studio, the others were all standing, and Albert passed the drinks around. Emma felt her way to his side and held one arm. “It’s okay,” he said, low.
Marshall stepped into the sound booth, thinking he would be talking on the phone, but Mrs. D’Allessandro herself was sitting there at the console, the phone handset held tightly to her ear. She was a big, platinum-blonde woman with a slightly puffy, ruddy face—the face of someone with an appetite for rich food and wine, whose features have not yet been ruined by these indulgences; it was somehow not the face of someone in distress. She signaled for Marshall to close the door, then turned away slightly.
She said into the phone, “That’s correct.”
Her accent was
like that of the new English groups. Liverpool. She had met her husband in London, during the war, and had come to America with him when the war ended. She was an American citizen now, taught history and English literature in the night college, and administered the schedules and classes from the office off the foyer downstairs. She said “All right” into the phone, nodding. She hadn’t looked at Marshall, but held one hand up as if to ask for patience. “I know. I’ll have the information sent to you.” She put the handset back in its cradle and turned to him. “Somebody asking about the radio school, believe it or not—I shouldn’t have picked up. But there’s nobody in the office.” Folding her hands in her lap, she took a second to study him. On the other side of the glass, he saw Dalmas talking to Albert while Baker and Mrs. Gordon looked on. Emma still held on to Albert’s arm, standing close, the side of her face against his chest, as though she were listening for his heartbeat.
Mrs. D’Allessandro sighed. “Nice lot, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” said Marshall.
“They can’t hear us, then?”
“No, ma’am. Not unless you put that switch on.” He pointed to the small red button on the console.
“Well, we shan’t push that one, shall we?” She smiled, took a breath, and sat up. “I—that is, we—have a favor to ask of you.”
Marshall waited.
“Don’t stare like that. It makes me nervous.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He was unaware that he had been staring.
“Do you know that your irises don’t reach the bottom lids of your eyes?”
“No, ma’am.” He looked at the ghost reflection of himself in the glass, superimposed over the faces of Albert and Emma. Albert smiled.
“It’s very disconcerting to look into eyes like that,” Mrs. D’Allessandro went on.
“I didn’t mean to stare,” Marshall told her.
“My husband has informed me that you—that he ran into you and your lady friend earlier today.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Yes, well—he wants to talk to you about it.” She cleared her throat, then pulled the edge of her dress down over her knees. “That is, he would like very much to discuss something with you. Tonight, if at all possible.”
“Is he—going to be all right?”
Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea Page 7
