Damnation of Adam Blessing

by Packer, Vin

  “Hello, Adam?” said Dorothy Schackleford. “Are you all right?”

  He was out of breath from his dash for the phone.

  “I’m sorry I had to leave last night,” he managed. “I had a migraine.”

  “We wondered what happened. Norman went looking for you and everything.”

  The robe of Billy’s which Charity had been wearing was on the couch. He walked across and picked it up, carrying the telephone in his hand. He sat down and put the robe near his face, to smell it. Then, thinking of Billy’s having worn it, he flung it to the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I thought you might be mad at me.”

  “It was a headache,” he said. He suddenly remembered that Charity Cadwallader had cried last night; it was so vague he could not be positive, but he remembered himself saying not to cry. It was all blacked out then.

  “I wouldn’t have left you, Adam, but Shirl was real upset. You see, she and Gingy Klein were — ” “I know all that!”

  “Don’t bite my head off, Adam. I’m just trying to explain!”

  “Never mind.”

  “You didn’t go to work today either, did you?”

  “No!” Adam said angrily.

  “You’re not very pleasant, Adam.”

  “I’m in a rush,” said Adam, “I’m on my way out.” He thought: the tennis racket: he had not even seen this tennis racket Charity had come for. He wondered if there was one, or if she had made it up.

  “I thought you felt ill!”

  “I’m going to the doctor!”

  “Well, thanks a lot Adam, for being so nice. I have to get back to work now, but thanks a lot. I couldn’t have spent my coffee-break in a nicer way.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I’ll never call you again, Adam.”

  Adam heard the click, then the dial tone.

  While he was having some of the coffee Charity had made that morning, he remembered she had mentioned a luncheon she was going to at the Colony tomorrow. He took the coffee out into the garden, along with the Manhattan telephone directory. He smoked another Gauloise and balanced the directory on his lap…. Just as he had thought, there were no listings for any Cadwalladers in the Nineties, nor on Park Avenue, nor on Madison Avenue. He sat trying to think what she could have meant when she told him that she lived just around the corner … or had she said ‘in the next block’? He smoked the last of the Gauloises and finished the coffee. In the adjacent yard the children were being let out to play, and momentarily he looked for the small boy with the thick glasses, the son of Luther Schneider. He could not seem to pick him out from the others. While he was watching the yard of the King School, his phone rang a second time. Adam Blessing nearly turned his ankle racing for it. It was the Bennan-Olicker Cremation Company. They wanted instructions for Mrs. Auerbach’s remains.

  7

  GOOD THINGS TO KNOW:

  1. Rare, fancy restaurant: Ficklin’s, East 59th Street. No sign out front. Dinners about $8 apiece. No liquor, but wine. No menu so don’t make a fool of yourself by asking for one. Intimate, candlelit. Must have reservations.

  (Source: “A Sophisticated Guide to New York.”)

  2. “The only red wines that may profitably be chilled are Beaujolais and Swiss Dôle.” — from Gourmet Cookbook.

  FROM ADAM BLESSING’S JOURNAL

  At noon on Thursday, Adam sold “The Lucy Baker Album” for $1500. He deposited $500 in his checking account, and $500 in the cash register of The Mart. $300 he put in his wallet. With the remainder he arranged for a small memorial service for Mrs. Auerbach, at a Unitarian church. The service was to be held that Saturday evening, and Adam spent the rest of Thursday notifying the merchants on Fifty-seventh, and tracking down a few former tenants from Mrs. Auerbach’s building. He also bought himself a chalk-striped black wool worsted suit for the occasion. Mr. Geismar, Adam’s lawyer, advised Adam to go more slowly, since Adam was still not Mrs. Auerbach’s legal heir, but Adam felt Geismar was something of an old maid in his cautious attitudes.

  At Wadley & Smythe, Adam paid for twenty dollars’ worth of long-stem red roses. He remembered that Charity had said she was going to a luncheon at the Colony that noon. The flowers were to be delivered to her table. Adam enclosed the tiny pearl teardrop on the gold chain, and after considerable deliberation about what to write on the accompanying card, chose simply to say: “Always, Adam.”

  Before he closed The Mart that evening, he took care of several other things. He placed an advertisement in the Times for a helper, and he petitioned for membership in The Diners’ Club. He ordered new stationery, with his own name printed on it, and the single word “owner” under his name. He made a draft of a letter to be sent to dealers, advising them of the availability of several albums Mrs. Auerbach had been loath to sell, and he cleared the premises of old rum bottles, and sundry trash can “souvenirs” Mrs. Auerbach had collected over the years.

  It was after seven when Adam arrived at his apartment. Before he fixed himself a highball, he called the Colony to check whether the flowers had been presented to Charity. He was assured they had been, and as he sat out in the garden sipping some of Billy’s Scotch, his sense of well-being was at its peak. Yesterday had been sloppy, all right — he had gotten off to a bad start — but that was over. Things were going along rather well now, he decided, and he felt some secret delight in the thought that he was doing everything with a certain flair.

  Since he did not know Charity Cadwallader’s phone number nor even her address, he was not sure when he would see her again. He felt certain it would be soon. He reasoned that it was Charity who had made all the moves. Why he had not seen that before, he would never know. He had been incredibly stupid about the whole business. He was naïve about women. He had never been able to figure them out, nor had he ever had much interest in the matter; but it was different now. He sipped Billy’s Scotch and imagined his second meeting with Charity. They would dine at an expensive restaurant. He would remind the waiter to chill the Beaujolais. If he took her to that restaurant he had read about, which did not present a menu, he would not have to worry about stumbling over French or Italian. Everything would be served them. Over candlelight he would tell her about his business. He had so many ideas, good ones. Just this afternoon he had thought of an idea for a tie-in with a nonprofit organization like the Heart Fund. The organization could buy dollar autographs of famous people. Adam would have cards printed up which would say: This autograph is a token gift. It symbolizes a $20 contribution to the Heart Fund made by (name of donor) in your name. Because you are the kind of person who would rather give than receive, this is your kind of gift. … It was an idea that had everything — snob appeal, an attraction for a person’s vanity, conscience, and benevolence. Adam could see endless possibilities in the idea. He had thought of a wonderful slogan to promote it: FOR THE PERSON WHO HAS EVERYTHING, INCLUDING A HEART…. He imagined Charity listening with a certain warm respect for him, as he told her about his idea. He imagined her writing to Billy, telling Billy what a fine person Adam was, not only kind and imaginative, but having a good business head as well. He was so delighted with this fantasy that he promptly made himself another drink, using two fingers of Scotch instead of one this time.

  • • •

  At nine o’clock, Adam was a little high. He had used up practically every background in his imagination, and in every candlelit restaurant, on every tree-lined walk, in all the various and fabulous places he had visited as he sat in Billy’s deck divan, Charity had watched him with admiring eyes. He had been brilliant and dynamic; he had even been a bit amusing, which was rare for Adam. Charity wrote so many enthusiastic letters to Billy, that by nine, Billy was writing back, “Are you in love with Adam, or something?” … and Adam was laughing aloud. Let the neighbors think he was some kind of nut, he thought. He had never had a better time. His spirits were so buoyed by his daydreams that Adam had an uncontrollable desire to contact Charity
that very night.

  He went through everything of Billy’s looking for her address. When this failed to produce any information, he decided on a direct course of action. She had told Adam she lived nearby. He parted his hair carefully before the hall mirror, slipped his suit coat on, and left the apartment whistling. “Another thing about Adam,” Charity was writing Billy as Adam Walked into the night; “he’s so forceful.”

  • • •

  At every apartment building where there was a doorman, Adam simply said: “What number apartment is the Cadwalladers’, please? I’m expected.”

  He was continually told there were no Cadwalladers in the building.

  Where there were no doormen, Adam read the name-plates on the bells.

  He walked up and down Ninety-third Street and Ninety-second, and the block between on Park. When he came to Ninety-first Street, he started at Fifth and decided to work toward Madison. It was in this block that he came across them.

  It was the boy he saw first. It was the piercing glint of the boy’s thick glasses, caught in the streetlamp’s light — the owlish look of the youngster. Adam saw him, and, once it registered that it was the same boy he had seen hanging on the garden fence of King School, he noticed the man and woman with him.

  The woman wore dark glasses, though it was now past nine-thirty at night. Her hair was pulled back in an untidy bun, so that wisps of it strayed in the evening breeze, as though she had been hurrying and had not had time to secure it. It looked blond, or red — Adam could not be sure. A mink stole hung off her shoulders, again giving the appearance of slight dishevelment. She was a small woman, unusually thin. It seemed to Adam that she was frowning, though her face was half in the shadow. She held Timothy Schneider by the hand in a way which was not “holding hands,” but more pulling him along, as though he were a heavy cart that held her back. The boy was looking behind himself at the man, holding his other hand out for the man to take. The man was a few paces away, and when he tried to take the boy’s hand, the woman gave the boy another yank forward.

  • • •

  Adam was close to them then. It was then that he got his first glimpse of the man. Luther Schneider did not look at all as Adam had thought he would. He resembled the portrait on the cover of Our Time only vaguely. The features were the same, but there was something in his expression which Adam was surprised by. Adam could not remember ever having seen the single emotion of disappointment written on the face of a stranger, but he saw it on Luther Schneider’s. It gave Adam a bewildering sensation, which manifested itself in an urge to break the woman’s hold on the boy with his own hand.

  If any of the threesome noticed Adam, they gave no sign. As they passed, the woman was still edging ahead, pulling the boy. Adam heard her say: “… keep him up this late, not mine! Do you hear me making excuses for him? I gave that up long ago. Tiresome excuses!” Then she said something else Adam could not entirely hear, about never learning discipline.

  Adam saw Luther Schneider sigh. It was a sigh of “giving up.” Schneider was so tall as to make the woman look nearly comical by comparison, but there was nothing comical about the scene. He sighed, and then his shoulders seemed to relax in a slump. He fell back a few more paces, so the woman and boy were well ahead of him. Adam could hear the boy’s high, nervous whine, as he was pulled along; then a shrill retort from the woman. Silence then, save for the groan of a bus starting on Fifth Avenue, and the clatter of the woman’s heels.

  Adam lighted a Gauloise and leaned against a chestnut tree near the curb. Mid-way in the block, by a street lamp, the woman turned in at a red brick house with a small spiral staircase leading up to it. With some difficulty, she yanked the boy with her. He caught the iron rail with his hand, letting his feet swing, to make it harder for her, but she jerked him away from it. A yellow door flashed open and shut. After a minute Luther Schneider turned in at the same house.

  Adam tossed his Gauloise in the gutter. His search for Charity Cadwallader seemed suddenly pointless. The disappointment he had seen in the face of Luther Schneider was somehow contagious, for he suddenly felt a keen sense of disappointment himself. But at what? He walked toward Madison Avenue. He thought about the woman, and about the fact that he had never speculated at all as to what his own mother had been like. He had that one memory of her, but he had never built on it. His childhood fantasies of being like other boys never actually sketched a mother; only a father. He could not even recall anything very specific about Marshall Bollin’s wife. She was simply Billy’s mother, and he could not remember one conversation he had ever had with her, though there must have been many. Nearly all the employees and counselors of the Home were women, yet

  Adam had forgotten half their names. Those whose names he did remember, he did not remember pleasantly.

  At Madison and Ninety-third Street, Adam turned in at a bar. He ordered a double Scotch and sat far down at the end, away from the small congregation of people toward the front. Most of them had come into the bar alone, but they were talking back and forth the way they did in neighborhood bars. Let them, Adam thought; he even felt sorry for them. A bald, middle-aged man was saying very unfunny things at which they were all laughing uproariously. Adam put a quarter in the jukebox, forcing the bartender to turn down the sound on the television. The music helped drown out the laughter and the unfunny things the bald-headed man was saying. Adam had another double Scotch. The last thing Adam remembered clearly was taking off Billy’s poodle cuff links and putting them down on the bar.

  8

  Geneva, Switzerland (WP) The four-year-old son of wealthy Doctor Thomas Zumbach was kidnapped from his home here last night. A note demanding a ransom of $100,000 was tied to the cord of the window shade in Thomas Zumbach, Jr.’s room. The Zumbachs’ home is in Klatz, a small village on the outskirts of Geneva. Dr. and Mrs. Zumbach begged for police and public cooperation in being allowed to make a rendezvous with the kidnapper, in order to pay the ransom, and secure the safe return of their child.

  Adam missed the poodle cufflinks as he was dressing Friday morning. On the Madison Avenue bus, with a blinding hangover, he tried to forget about it. When he read the story of the kidnapping in the Times, his eye caught the word “Klatz,” and he was reminded of his carelessness all over again. That morning he had received an airmail postcard from Billy. Billy was staying in Klatz, commuting to the hospital in Geneva where his father was a patient.

  • • •

  Adam told himself the first thing he would do at the day’s end would be to return to the bar where he had gotten so drunk last night. If the cuff links were not there, he would simply have to replace them, regardless of cost. He had no idea why he had taken them off in the first place. There were some dim recollections of talking to people in the bar, but they were too vague to explain anything. This morning, scrawled across a page in his Journal, he had found this notation: “Buy the Madison Avenue Inn and fire bartender!!!” He had scratched it out after he read it, and written under it: “Watch drinking!”

  • • •

  It was a steaming New York day, too hot and humid for mid-May. That fact, coupled with Adam’s headache and stomach upset, made his work go rapidly and smoothly. Adam found that he was much better at business when he did not feel well, particularly if half of his difficulty was his own fault. By noon he had paid the piper more than his due. He had interviewed seven young men, and hired one to start as his helper in a week. He had concluded the lengthy correspondence on the Poe manuscript, and sent out four copies of the letter he had drafted yesterday, on the availability of the autograph albums. He had sorted the mail, made arrangements for a rare-coin concession to be added to The Mart, and talked at length with Geismar on the telephone. Geismar reiterated that he could not advance Adam anything against the inheritance, and Adam did not bother to enlighten him about the sale of “The Lucy Baker Album,” the proceeds of which he could live on for some time.

  Adam padlocked the door of The Mart at twelve-thirty. Whi
le he waited at the bar of the Villa D’Este, for a table, he called Dorothy Schackleford at her office. She was delighted with Adam’s invitation for dinner, after Mrs. Auerbach’s memorial service tomorrow night.

  On the second Martini, Adam felt fine again. He ordered suprême de volaille for lunch, pointing to it so that he did not have to attempt pronunciation of the French. When the waiter repeated the order, Adam made a phonetic spelling of it in his notebook, and when it was served him, he wrote under the spelling, “breast of chicken.” For dessert, Adam had Cherries Jubilee, coffee and a brandy. Over the brandy, he thought again of Charity Cadwallader. He liked to remember her saying how she hated Billy. Now that he had Billy’s address in Switzerland, he might even drop him a line and hint at her feelings about him. He would not do it in a brash way. He might simply say: “The other night when Charity and I were having drinks, I tried to point out that she was all wrong about you. Women are so stubborn! They often fail to see the real worth in a man.” … Something like that.

  He ordered another brandy. What if he did write Billy a letter like that, and his letter crossed with one of Charity’s? What if Charity wrote Billy that she hated Adam? You couldn’t trust women…. Why hadn’t she called to thank him for the roses and the pearl teardrop? … The more Adam thought about the matter, the more determined he felt to find out Charity’s address immediately. He had to know where he stood. If she was going to make a fool of him in Billy’s eyes, he had to plan a counterattack! He had a third brandy, smarting a bit when the waiter presented the check along with it.

  On his way back to Fifty-seventh Street, he felt himself weaving slightly. The Madison Avenue bus passed him. For a fast second he thought he saw Charity looking out the window of the bus, looking and then laughing at him. He felt his face hot and red with embarrassment, and he made a great effort to walk in a straight line. He could not be sure whether or not people were laughing at him. When he tried to walk faster, he weaved more. He felt sorry for himself. He had not had dinner last night, and this morning his only breakfast had been a glass of juice. No wonder the drinks had hit him. What did the people who were laughing at him know about his troubles? He could be physically ill, bereaved — anything; they would still laugh! He had always wanted to protect Mrs. Auerbach from their laughter, but now they were laughing at him. Who wanted to protect him? When he arrived at The Mart there were tears in his eyes.