Fast Start, Fast Finish

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Thank God we’re leaving this lousy Lane.”

  “You didn’t exactly help things—calling names. But then of course you never do. Help anything.”

  “What did you want me to do? Stand there and agree with them?”

  “Why didn’t you tell them the Robinsons aren’t Jewish? Because they’re not, you know. But no—you had to turn it into a fight.”

  “How do you know they’re not? And what difference does it make? The point is—”

  “The point is that they’re not. Mrs. Monroe looked into that whole question very carefully. She knows the rules on this Lane, even if you don’t.”

  “Nancy, you’re beginning to talk just like one of them.”

  “I’m talking like a woman who wants to sell a house.” She looked at him. “You’re terribly transparent, Charlie. You heard what they said about the club. You did this just to make absolutely certain that you wouldn’t get the job, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t want a job working for people like that!”

  Nancy’s purse was on the windowsill. She went to it, opened it, took out a comb, and ran it through her hair. “Fortunately it’s very easy to fix,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to them. Each of them. To explain.” The comb flew through her hair. “And apologize.”

  “Apologize for what?”

  “For you, of course. What else? Before it’s too late. Before they call Paul McCabe. I’m going to tell them that you haven’t been yourself since Maggie died, that you didn’t mean—”

  “You’re going to do no such thing.”

  “Oh, but I am. Somebody’s got to take some steps.” She started toward the door.

  “Well, there’s one step I’m going to take,” he said. He picked up the telephone.

  She stopped in the center of the room. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to call the Robinsons and tell them what just happened.”

  “What?” She screamed and ran across the room and seized the phone, pressing down the buttons. “Why? So you can ruin the whole deal before it’s closed?”

  They struggled silently over the phone. “I wouldn’t let my worst enemy move into a street like this one without warning him what he’s up against,” he said.

  “Ruin the whole deal—as well as your chances for a job? So we can be completely penniless? Is that it?”

  “If he wants to back out of the deal after what I’ve told him, I’ll certainly understand.”

  “Why? Because of your stupid principles? Your principles that have made us lead the kind of lives we do?”

  “I think he should be told. Let go of the phone, Nancy.”

  “I’m telling you what to do!”

  He looked at her. “Is this your new executive personality? If it is, I don’t like it much.”

  “Someone has to take over where you’re concerned. Your sister pointed that out to me years ago. The trouble was I didn’t listen.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She said, ‘Charlie always needs direction. That’s the only thing wrong with him. He needs to be directed, always.’”

  “That’s a lie. Cathy never said a thing like that.”

  “She did. You forget I knew her long before I knew you. And it’s true. Why, the only reason that agency of yours was a success was because she took over. She was the boss.”

  “We were partners.”

  “But she was the one who called the shots. Now I’m calling the shots.” She lifted the telephone away from him. “Now I’m going to see if I can possibly salvage your job at the club for you,” she said.

  “This particular job,” he said evenly, “was something that was offered to me. If I don’t want it, there’s no way you can make me take it.”

  “And if you chuck it, what will it mean? Just another job that you’ve got and lost,” she said. “Got and been fired from. Just like all your other jobs—that long, dreary parade of jobs you’ve been fired from.”

  “I’ve never been fired from any jobs.”

  “Fawcett-Chisholm … Barry and Kohler … fired!”

  “Not fired. Resigned!”

  “Gotten your dander up, gotten your foolish pride up, making ultimatums, thinking you could run the company better than the president, too big for your britches, so you had to be gotten rid of—what difference does it make? I say fired.”

  “Resigned,” he repeated. “I’ve always resigned.”

  “And I’m not going to let you foul up the sale of this house, either,” she said. “I’ve worked too hard on that. Worked weeks and weeks—working, trying to support you! Trying—”

  “To support me? I haven’t exactly been idle.”

  “No—not idle. Busy screwing Tessa Morgan.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Think? It’s what I know—and it’s what everybody else knows. You didn’t exactly work to keep it a secret. Did you ever think what your children might have thought—or of me!”

  “Children …”

  “Did you?”

  “It’s not—true.”

  “I don’t care if it’s true or not. I don’t believe anything you say anymore anyway. You’re a congenital liar. Mr. Principles! Mr. Lofty Ideals! If you didn’t screw her, you’re the only man she’s ever met who hasn’t and you were a damn fool not to. She has a reputation of being the easiest lay on both sides of the Rockies, as a slut, as a—”

  “You’re a great one to talk about reputations,” he said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “When I married you, you weren’t exactly known as the Virgin Mary.”

  She looked at him steadily. “In other words, you have a penchant for sluts,” she said. “Rich sluts.”

  He turned on his heel. “I’m leaving,” he said. “Good-bye.”

  “Oh, you really think I could be so lucky?”

  He walked out of the empty house and climbed into his car.

  It was a beautiful September afternoon, warm for that time of year, Indian Summer weather almost, and the sky was blue and the sun was golden through the yellowing leaves of trees. His car made a smooth, clean path through this golden light.

  With the day so warm he thought that she might be there, and so he walked around the outside of the house without ringing the bell, and he found her there—sitting by the pool in one of the tubular aluminum chairs where they had so often sat, and with a pang he noticed how familiar her pose was, sitting with her feet tucked beneath her, her bare toes hooked under a strip of blue-plastic webbing as though she needed to anchor herself to the chair against the autumn breeze that might blow her away. And there was a breeze now, riffling the surface of the pool water, stirring her sun-streaked chestnut hair, and he thought suddenly, What is it that is so heartbreaking about a late-summer afternoon when the sun first moves behind the trees and the first evening breeze comes up? He also noticed that her lawn needed mowing—it was high and rank with weeds—which probably meant she had fired her gardener. If I had a canvas now, I would try to paint this Tessa, he thought.

  At first he thought she was asleep, her chin in her hand, nodding over a magazine, a cigarette consuming in an ashtray on the little table at her elbow, a drink perspiring in a glass beside it. But then a reflection of him must have caught in her dark glasses and she looked up quickly, as though startled, and adjusted the glasses on her nose. At first she looked puzzled; then she frowned. Unhooking her toes from the webbing she stood up. “What are you doing here?” she asked almost crossly. And then, with a quick look in the direction of the bath house, she said, “Charlie, I ought to warn you—I’m not alone.” It was only then that he noticed that her left arm was in a sling fashioned of a brightly printed scarf.

  “I’m sorry, Tessa,” he said. “I shouldn’t have barged in on you like this.”

  “What is it? What do you want?”

  “Just to talk to you, I guess.”

  “Well, y
ou can’t talk now, I have a guest.” Her tone was still unpleasant. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “There’s been a hell of a row at home.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I can imagine.”

  Through the dark glasses it was hard to tell what her eyes were doing, but her lips were still pursed, frowning. She gazed at him for a moment longer and then said, “Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  “Look, I’ll leave right now,” he said.

  “Wait here.” She turned and walked quickly along the perimeter of the pool toward the bath house.

  He waited. She was gone, it seemed, for a long time, but perhaps it was only minutes. It was as though, now, some summation of his life was taking place, and that this was going on beyonds the limits of time. Everything, all he had ever been and done and hoped of doing, was now being somehow capsuled, the loose threads brought together, and everything that would ever happen in the future depended, hung, on this timeless pause. He stood there in his slacks and sweater, looking at the pool she never swam in. Inside the bath house there was the sound of a shower running and the sound of voices, dim and unintelligible. Presently she emerged and walked swiftly toward him. “Come on in the house for a minute,” she said. “We won’t be interrupted.”

  “What did you tell your visitor?”

  “He’s showering. He showers more than any man I know.” She suddenly was smiling at him and she hooked her good hand into the curve of his arm. “I told him an old chum of mine had come to call. Come on,” she said.

  He grinned at her. “Your lawn needs cutting, Tessa. Want me to come and mow it for you?”

  “So that’s what this visit is about. I’m waiting for it to grow up into weeds.”

  She led him up the path and into the library. She turned on two lamps. “It must be the peasant in me, but I feel funny sitting in my house in my bathing suit,” she said, reaching for the white-silk robe that lay across a chair. “There’s still enough of the farmgirl in me to ask myself, What will people think?” Holding the collar of the robe between her teeth, she managed to slip the good arm into a sleeve. Charlie stepped toward her to help her, but she said “Thanks, I can do it. It’s a test.” With a toss of her body she got the robe over the other shoulder and then, with the deft fingers of one hand, even managed to tie the sash at the waist. “There. See how clever I am?” she said. Then she removed her sunglasses and fished for a cigarette in a bowl.

  “How did you hurt your arm?”

  “It’s not my arm, it’s my collarbone,” she said. “The only thing I can’t do is strike a match. Light me up.”

  He lighted the cigarette for her. She reached for the buzzer by the chair. “Let’s have a snort. What’ll you have? Scotch?”

  “Yes, Scotch,” he said. “I see you don’t have my portrait in here anymore.”

  “No. I hope you don’t mind. Two Scotches, Minnie, please,” she said to Minnie, who had appeared at the door.

  “Then how did you hurt your collarbone?” he asked her when Minnie had gone.

  She gave him a brief look. “I fell—I think,” she said.

  “The man in the shower, you mean?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is it the same one who blacked your eye that time? Did you let him come back?”

  “Look, I told Minnie I fell off an elephant. That explanation was good enough for her. Why isn’t it good enough for you? You didn’t come here to talk about my love life—or at least I hope you didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry, Tessa.”

  She settled herself in one of the threadbare silk chairs, pulling her bare legs up beneath her again, letting her hair fall back into a pool of lamplight. Outside the window a delegation of birds settled into the branches of a dogwood tree. Birds punctuated each limb, and the limbs sagged and swayed and brushed reddish leaves against the tall and silent windowpanes. Then all at once the birds rose together as though they were being lifted on wires.

  “I’ve always loved this room,” he said.

  She nodded absently. “Yes.” Minnie arrived with the drinks, serving Tessa first, then Charlie.

  “Hello, Minnie,” Charlie said, but Minnie did not answer.

  “Minnie, honey, close the door when you go out,” Tessa said.

  “Minnie’s mad at me too,” he said when the door was closed, and he laughed weakly.

  “No. She just thinks you hurt me, that’s all. You always criticize Minnie, but old Minnie has one quality that I like. She stays with me. Other people don’t.”

  “Did I hurt you, Tessa?”

  “A very famous doctor once told me that there’s no such thing as the memory of pain,” she said. She touched the scarf that held her left arm. “Take this. It hurt like hell at the time, I guess, but now I can’t even remember what it felt like. That’s the nice thing about it—being hurt.”

  “At least I never hurt you that way, Tessa.”

  She sat forward, holding up her drink and looking at him through it. “There are a lot worse things than broken collarbones,” she said. “Just remember that, Lord Charles. A lot worse things.”

  “Tell me one worse thing.”

  “All my life men have been scared of me,” she said. “Oh, I admit I’ve enjoyed having them scared of me. Now it’s kind of nice, for a change, to have a man I’m scared of. He terrifies me.”

  “The bastard.”

  She smiled. “Yes. I think I may marry him.”

  “You’re a damned fool if you do, Tessa.”

  “Um-hm,” she smiled, nodding. “Um-hm.”

  “I see you didn’t take that trip.”

  “Hey, and you know what you never did? You never remembered to ask to look at that sketch I did of you. Remember that?”

  “Oh, yes. Where is it?”

  She shrugged. “Somewhere around. I’m not sure now. It wasn’t very good. I never could get the tennis racket right in your hand.”

  “You sketched me with a tennis racket?”

  “I sketched you as you always looked to me.”

  “How was that, Tessa?”

  “As though you’d won the game,” she said.

  “Appearances can be deceptive,” he said.

  They were talking in circles, he knew, and he tried to remember where this particular circle had begun, how he could reenter it or cut it off and set them back on some sort of straight path.

  “Now, tell me why you wanted to see me,” she said. “You had a row. What about?”

  All at once, with no warning and for the first time in his life he felt on the verge of weeping, and he knew that he was no longer in control of his emotions. He opened his eyes wide, terrified that he was going to weep in front of her, feeling the tears already formed behind his eyelids, waiting to fall. He pressed the cold glass of whiskey, which he had still not touched, hard against his forehead for some sort of therapy. He had come with an organized rationale, hadn’t he? A point-by-point story of what had happened in the month since he had seen her, but now he couldn’t remember any of it, or really why he had come here to begin with, and all he could think of was what she had said about pain, and how there could be no memory of it. At last he said, “Oh, everything.” And his own voice sounded so strange and unfamiliar that he looked across at her to see whether she had even heard him. She was looking at him curiously, not unsympathetically, and he said, “She called me a congenital liar.” It sounded so foolish and childish and petulant—so much like, “She called me a big fat stinker”—that what had been about to be weeping-changed radically, and Charlie Lord began to laugh.

  She caught the mood immediately. “She did?” she cried out in her rich voice. “Oh, that dirty rotten little bitch! What a thing to say! A man who’s a congenital liar has enough to worry about without being told he’s a congenital liar! That woman should be behind bars.”

  “Yes …” And for several minutes they both sat doubled up in their chairs with laughter. His drink sloshed and spilled down across his fingers.

&
nbsp; “In school,” she said, “whenever anybody said a thing like that, we used to say, ‘So’s your old man.’”

  “We used to say, ‘Oh, yeah, and how, and a big brown cow, ya tried to be smart but ya didn’t know how.…’”

  And for several minutes they were off again.

  “Oh, Lord Charles,” she said at last, looking up at him, her eyes streaming, “I’ve missed you, my dear.”

  He brushed the tears from his own eyes. “And I’ve missed you.”

  “I told you a worse thing, once. I told you you were a lousy painter.”

  “But that was true—I was. And am. And always will be.”

  “Yes, but it was a cruel thing for me to say.”

  “Hey, are you saying I am a lousy painter?” He blinked, took a quick swallow of his drink, and tried to laugh again. But this time the laugh was not successful.

  She sat forward in her chair. “Now I’ll ask you an even bigger question,” she said. “Are you an artist—at all?”

  He studied the amber liquid in his glass. “All I know is—I used to think that there was something—something wonderful and beautiful inside me, and that it had to come out,” he said.

  “But are you an artist?”

  “What I don’t understand is—why, months ago, when I first had that letter from Myra Mirisch, and read what it said—why did I let Nancy believe it was a promise to give me a one-man show? I knew it wasn’t, but somehow, for some reason, when I got her to believe it, I began to believe it too. I let us move all the way here from California for something that I knew wasn’t true, do you know that? I walked right into Myra Mirisch’s office that first day, pretending I thought something was going to happen that I knew wasn’t.” He looked up at her. “Tessa—am I mad?”

  She returned his look with her dark eyes enormous, tense, and motionless. Then she said, “Probably. Or maybe you were a victim of that old Southern California sunstroke. Makes you think things are really there that aren’t.”

  He smiled and said, “Myra Mirage,” and his hand, holding the drink, trembled.

  “And as far as your wife’s concerned—well, if I was married to a man who was a born liar, I guess I’d try to conform to his tribal customs.”