Say then that Sara had mysteriously broken down, because of her nerves, or because of the suspense, or a feeling of being faint. She hadn’t gone to the cab because of this attack of wimwams. And by now Mr. Fallon was waiting for his doorbell to ring, or for Sara to open the door with her key and usher her in; or perhaps he was uneasy by now and was glancing out of the window and down at the sidewalk. And the tea in the teapot was getting cold and that funny sugar was sitting all unused in its beautiful bowl. Yes, imagine these things. I can’t believe in any of it for a moment.
She went back to the office, half-minded to tell it all to Mr. Dunavan. But of course Tom was at home with the Coulter letter. How was she going to get around that? She nerved herself, and went straight to Mr. Dunavan’s office, but Mr. Dunavan wasn’t there; he was upstairs and expected to be there all afternoon. He had left some work on the desk to keep her busy.
She spent the afternoon typing in the steno pool, the stack of outgoing work steadily diminishing beside her. The headache didn’t come back, but the tension had left a deadness, an inertia, that made her sleepy. When quitting time came at last, she hurried into Mr. Dunavan’s empty office with the completed work, left it stacked on his desk and got ready to leave quickly. She felt the other girls’ eyes on her as they all prepared to leave, speculating, amused perhaps, even critical, and she wanted to turn and shout at them, “Yes, he knows I have baggy hose and wash my own hair,” but the tiredness kept her from answering even by so much as a sharp look of her own.
She went out, waited in the packed mass for the arrival of the elevator. If I get downstairs and find Sara there, I’m going to give her the full weight of this old purse right in the mouth. And then, for some reason, she remembered the incident days ago on the subway, the creeping hand, the cry of pain that had seemed to sound like a woman’s voice, and she thought, “That was more Sara’s speed, sneaking around like a sick cat. I wish I’d given her a heel in the shin, to boot.”
She took a bus home. Mr. Keeley was in the lobby, smeared lenses, smelly shirt, mop and all. He paused as if to speak to her; he licked his lips; he started to prop the mop against a pillar. But then some other tenants came in, and a fat woman in a purple knit suit began to complain about a defective light-switch in her apartment. Mr. Keeley grabbed the mop and beat a hasty, silent retreat.
The apartment was empty. On the coffee table before the couch lay the envelope addressed by Uncle Bax which had arrived that morning. She dropped down wearily upon the couch.
She looked for the bill, the five hundred dollars, but inside was only the sheet of paper with Bax’s writing. She glimpsed the name Coulter, and something nagged at her briefly, something that didn’t jibe, that needed explaining; but she couldn’t pin it down. Five hundred dollars, she thought—a fortune, really; only now not quite such a fortune. She was going to have a very good job with Mr. Dunavan. There would be some additional expenses, of course, because her appearance had to be improved, but still in the end, things should be different.
Different.
She thought of how it had been these past months, of how the bills had steadily piled up, with her small wages parceled out here and there, never enough, and with, all of the time, the wild hope that Tom’s play would be completed, there would be this joyous turning in their life, the victory of success, the wildness of fame, money to throw away, lavish clothes, an apartment overlooking the river, furniture made for a palace …
She wondered in that moment how she had been able to believe in it.
The play didn’t seem to be any further along, really, than when she and Tom had moved here. He had learned a lot, he insisted. From Sean? From the experience of seeing words on paper, from transferring scenes to tape and hearing them replayed? From watching the new, experimental stuff and sitting around afterwards to argue about it? Did that represent progress and growth as a playwright?
I’m picking him apart. He hasn’t enjoyed living here on the edge of bankruptcy any more than I have. It can’t have been fun to go shabby, to juggle insufficient money, to worry over the least expense. It couldn’t have been fun for him—and yet he hadn’t seemed to be oppressed by it as she had.
Be honest, she told herself. Tom’s view is bigger, wider than mine. He isn’t distracted by inconsequentials. He still had faith in his play, in its success, in his own ability. He looked beyond miserable day-to-day emergencies. And perhaps I haven’t turned out to please him, either. Perhaps he has critical thoughts of me, even as I do of him. Something squawking from a tree—I’ve become a shrew, after a fashion, always ready to rage about money, about any least amount of money. I want the niggling bills paid, while he sees other more important needs.
Restlessly she got up and went to put her purse away in the bedroom.
She returned to the couch and picked up Uncle Bax’s letter. For the first time she looked with close suspicion at the postmark. It occurred to her that a postmark wouldn’t be hard to forge. This one was quite smudged, though it did say El Paso. It also said, beside her name, Air Mail, but not Special Delivery, and it appeared to have been forwarded as always from that hotel, the hotel for women, where she’d been living when Bax had been here in New York.
Miss Jennifer Hamilton. Forwarded from that hotel to this apartment? She tried to remember what had happened to those other envelopes. The first one, for instance. It had said Nueva—something. Smudged, that something. But if she had been closely questioned she could have replied that her uncle had written to her from Nueva Something. Even though he said he was in Mexico City.
What would have been the point of that?
Scaring people would have been the point of that.
On the surface it would seem that Bax cared about these people, meant to warn them of danger, the danger that would threaten all of them if the General ever returned to power. But for some reason Jennifer found she could no longer believe in Bax’s good intentions. There was something else in it somewhere.
Five hundred dollars to take Mr. Coulter’s letter to Brooklyn. No, this was not kindness, altruism, a watchful regard for an old friend and co-conspirator.
There’s cruelty in it somewhere.
This is what Mr. Shima meant to tell me, if he had lived. Mrs. Appleton had said that he had finally made up his mind about me and had decided that I could be trusted. He was going to tell me the real reason Uncle Bax had sent him his letter.
Mr. Shima had been a crook, no doubt, but perhaps what he’d had to say had been the truth.
Now Mr. Shima would never speak again.
Chapter 15
It seemed to Jennifer all at once that the apartment was filled with silence, an unnatural stillness, brooding, clammy, and that she was as remote from the crowded city as though she had been on another world. She put down the letter and stood up again, and then after a moment walked out into the kitchen. The gray light fell through the high old-fashioned windows, making the place look shabbier than ever, strange and full of enmity, a room where she didn’t belong. It was a scuffed, shabby room—and say what you would about soybeans and ducks, or wheat and pigs, they left you with a better sense of self-respect than this apartment.
And then she thought, with a terrible aching regret, I can’t go back there. I can’t be a child again. That part of my life is finished. All I brought with me were some things Dad gave me, things I didn’t acknowledge, didn’t at the time perhaps even want—but I have them. I want to feel good about myself, about my place in life, how I live, the kind of work I do, the things I value. He passed on an attitude toward life. I’m going to have it all of my days, until the end.
She went over to the sink, leaned there to look up toward the source of the gray dying light. It isn’t being poor that’s awful. You can even be kind of proud of that, in a way. In a way like Dad was, even while he struggled not to be. Being poor doesn’t get in your way when you try to see yourself. It can be a scraping annoyance, like a blistered heel or a sore throat, but it doesn’t disable you as
far as being right about yourself. But taking money like this money from Uncle Bax can twist you all up, can change you, destroy you.
She remembered with stinging embarrassment how she had felt when the first letter had come: the excitement, relief, astounded glee, and it seemed to her that her greed and her uncritical acceptance of the money had been unbelievable.
A few slow tears welled from her eyes and splashed into the sink.
There’s no use crying, this late. I can’t return the money that Bax sent earlier until I get on my feet in the new job, but I can keep this five hundred intact. Bax won’t pay any attention to that crazy letter Tom made me write. He’ll know that I would never demand fifty thousand dollars. Most of all, he’ll never get the letter.
He was not in Nueva Brisa. Nor in El Paso, for that matter. He could be anywhere.
A sense of uneasiness moved her away from the windows. The dejection and tiredness reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. There was no telling where Tom had gone, nor when he would be back. It would be best to get something to eat right now, a snack to keep her going.
She opened the refrigerator. She blinked in surprise at what she saw and for an incredulous moment glanced around to make sure that she was in the right kitchen. There were quarts and quarts of beer. There was whiskey. Rum. Mixes of various kinds. There were a lot of fancy spreads for appetizers. Even caviar. She took out one of the small jars of caviar and looked at it in unbelief. She put it back. Her hand felt stiff, unreal. She opened the freezer compartment. It was stuffed with meats: roasts, chickens, steaks, lobster, crabs.
She closed the freezer section quickly, feeling afraid.
Her glance fell on the row of cupboards under the sink. She crept over to the cupboard doors with surreptitious quiet, trying to make no noise, as if something inside mustn’t be alarmed. She knelt and thought, they’re empty as always. She turned the latch and took a reluctant look inside. It seemed that her heart made a great thud. A sick disbelief washed through her. Inside the cupboards was the contents of a food store. Cans, packages, snacks, jars … staring at her was a canned whole pheasant, the portrait of the pheasant almost lifesize on the colorful label. She noted jars of imported fruits, olives, exotic preserves, sardines, packs of fancy crackers, cakes canned in rum….
She shut the cupboard door and leaned on it for a moment before her scattered wits returned. There was only one explanation, of course. The five hundred. And Tom.
She needed to lie down. All thought of food was forgotten. She couldn’t have choked down a bite of all that largesse.
On her stumbling path to the bedroom she passed the couch, and there was Bax’s hateful letter lying where she had dropped it. She paused to switch on a lamp. She would leave a light on in here. Tom wouldn’t be back soon. He was out with Sean. They’d gleefully raided a liquor store, and then a market, had brought the loot home and had now taken off for other things.
I have to rest.
She was already sitting down, though, and picking up Bax’s letter again.
The letter gave off a sense of fakery. There was no Special Delivery stamp, though there should have been to account for its being brought to the door. The strange, derelict-looking old man had said that he was a relief postman.
I’ll just bet.
A relief wino, he should have said. Paid to run a quick errand for fifty cents.
What had happened to those other envelopes from Bax? Why couldn’t she remember? Why hadn’t she saved them, saved the notes Bax had enclosed with the money?
How had those other letters arrived here? She tried to figure out what the crooked procedure might have been. The rank of mailboxes downstairs was locked. The postman had a key which opened the upper section, and revealed the slots through which he dropped mail into the boxes below. Each tenant had a key to his own box, no other. Did Mr. Keeley have a key? Probably not, she decided. He got his mail through the box marked Super. He wouldn’t have access to the other boxes. Those other letters from Bax had been forwarded then, from the women’s hotel just as they were supposed to have been.
She remembered the casual way the mail had been handled at the hotel, dumped on the counter by the postman, to lie there until the day manager got around to separating it and putting it into the rank of pigeonholes on the wall across the lobby. Anyone could stroll in while the mail lay undistributed and drop a letter on the heap. The day manager would, later, note that the guest had moved on and would scribble a forwarding address on the envelope and leave it for the next day’s pickup.
During a few enforced vacations, between jobs, when she’d been so very new in the city, she had noticed the procedure in regard to the mail. Mainly, she remembered, because she had been so lonely for a word from home.
Forging a postmark, a cancellation—and those had been foreign stamps, she remembered, though she actually hadn’t looked at them closely—such forgeries wouldn’t present any trouble to Bax. Not if he had a wide acquaintance among people like Mr. Shima, who had specialized all those years ago in Nueva Brisa in supplying faked passports.
What a silly little fool I’ve been.
The tears came back to her eyes, and to force her mind off her own stupidity, she opened the note that Tom had read to her that morning.
Dear Little Niece—
By now I hope you are doing real groovy things about that homespun appearance. You can’t say that your old uncle doesn’t care!
Why did Bax have to sound like a sub-moronic teenager?
Your clothes must have improved a little. I’ve sent enough for a few knick-knacks, haven’t I? And now with winter coming along, I’ll bet you’re thinking about a fur coat. Something swinging, like.
“I’m not such a fool, you … you old nut!” she cried to herself. He had this ability to make her furious. She hated it and him.
Not a mink, kitten. You couldn’t afford a good one at this stage of the game. I’m not saying it couldn’t come later.
Now, what did he mean by that?
But for the enclosed bill, plus what I’ll send along in any case, from time to time, you ought to be able to get something pretty lively in what they call a sports fur. You know, leather belted, big lapels, that sort of thing. You’re young enough to look as cute as toast in it.
You seem to know all about it, she thought, raging. Out of your wide experience with women, no doubt!
So, all you have to do baby, is to trot along to this fellow Coulter’s place and give him his letter. He’s a sly old duck. Keep your guard up. And write me at my El Paso hotel.
“You know I don’t have any idea—the least, faintest idea—what your El Paso hotel is.” She folded the letter and thrust it back into its envelope.
The Coulter letter.
At Tom’s insistence, she had left it here with him.
She searched the apartment curiously, wondering if Tom had taken the letter with him, but found it finally in a jacket pocket in the closet off the bedroom.
It looked like all of the others, the name and address in Bax’s bold careless hand. The envelope was heavy, opaque, and tape was thick across the flap of the envelope. Bax had prepared it long ago. Out of the goodness of his heart. A favor for a friend.
Should she open it?
A bolder idea crossed her mind, a thought that made her shiver. Why not deliver it?
Tom was the one who was supposed to deliver any more letters. But she no longer trusted Tom. He was out now spending the five hundred. And she found in herself a deep, imperative need to see the end of the affair.
I want to be through, finished, done, with Uncle Bax and his affairs. I don’t even know, really, what I’ve done so far. Perhaps in some way I caused Mr. Shima’s murder. I scared Mrs. Appleton out of her wits somehow. Mr. Fallon and Sara—well, it seems that they made up a game, a crazy and mysterious game, and Sara played it with me on the street and into the arcade, where the whole thing petered out. I don’t know whether Mr. Fallon is mad, or full of mischief, or try
ing to find out where Bax is, or what.
I don’t know what delivering the letter meant to Mr. Fallon because he was too smart to let me know. He wanted me to sugar my tea, or rather Sara did, and I didn’t trust that sugar. That sugar was funny business. But Sara said they weren’t monsters.
If they weren’t monsters then they were just kooks.
Bax is saying in this latest letter that Mr. Coulter is a sly old duck and so perhaps Mr. Coulter is perfectly able to look after himself and I won’t be doing him anything but a favor now by bringing him his memento of their years-ago game in Nueva Brisa.
The tiredness, the deadly inertia seemed to be vanishing under the impetus of this new and utterly crazy idea.
She was at the door, ready to leave, knowing herself for a past and present fool, when the buzzer sounded. She hesitated, then took the receiver off guardedly. “Hello.”
“Miss Hamilton?”
She shook her head at the receiver, too stunned to reply in any other way that made sense; she wanted to say, “No. And please go away.” Only the voice belonged to Mr. Dunavan and she couldn’t tell him that.
“Y … yes. Speaking.”
“I need to see you right away.”
“Oh?” She glanced behind her. Here? There were too many signs of Tom’s occupancy. And no time to whisk them out of sight if Mr. Dunavan was right downstairs. An inspiration came. “I was just on my way out. Wait downstairs for me.” And let’s hope Mr. Keeley isn’t dragging a mop and calling me Mrs. Burch.
Mrs. Burch.
She was stepping out of Mrs. Burch at a most unusual time. The usual time for her transformation was early in the morning. She had never become Miss Hamilton this late in the day. She ran back into the bathroom and touched her hair with a comb, used a lipstick and powder puff, put a dab of cologne, the last of it, behind her ears. Now … now, I’m really Miss Hamilton. Goodbye Mrs. Burch of the faded bathrobe, barefoot evenings, check-stub tottings, and tears. Exit Miss Hamilton to meet her boss.
The Baxter Letters Page 14
