by Irwin Shaw
For once, Willie’s jokes made her uneasy. Although she had told him about Rudolph and Thomas and her parents, this was the first time he had had to cope with the actual presence of her family and she was worried that it was setting his nerves on edge.
Rudolph said nothing.
“What’re you doing in New York, Rudy?” she said, to cover up for Willie.
“I got a ride down,” Rudolph said. Plainly, he had something to say to her and he didn’t feel like saying it in front of Willie. “It’s a half-holiday at school.”
“How’s it going at school?” After she had said it she was afraid it sounded condescending, the sort of thing you say to other people’s children because you don’t know what else to talk about.
“Okay.” Rudolph dismissed school.
“Rudy,” Willie said, “what would you think of me as a brother-in-law?”
Rudolph looked at him soberly. Considering green eyes. “I don’t know you,” he said.
“That’s it, Rudy, don’t give anything away. That’s my big trouble. I’m too open. I wear my heart on my tongue.” Willie poured himself some more beer. He couldn’t stay in one place. By contrast, Rudy seemed settled, sure of himself, judging. “I told Rudy I’d take him to see your show tonight,” Willie said. “The toast of New York.”
“It’s a silly show,” Gretchen said. She didn’t like the idea of her brother watching her practically nude in front of a thousand people. “Wait till I play Saint Joan.”
“I’m busy anyway,” Rudolph said.
“I invited him to supper after the show, too,” Willie said. “He pleads a prior engagement. See what you can do with him. I like him. I am tied to him by profound bonds.”
“Some other night, thank you,” Rudolph said. “Gretchen, there’s something for you in that bag.” He indicated the little overnight bag. “I was asked to deliver it to you.”
“What is it?” Gretchen asked. “Who’s it from?”
“Somebody called Boylan,” Rudolph said.
“Oh.” Gretchen touched Willie’s arm. “I think I’d like a beer, too, Willie.” She got up and went over to the bag. “A present. Isn’t that nice?” She picked the bag up and put it on a table and opened it. When she saw what was in the bag, she knew that she had known all along. She held the dress up against her. “I didn’t remember that it was so red,” she said calmly.
“Holy man,” Willie said.
Rudolph was watching them closely, first one, then the other.
“A memento of my depraved youth,” Gretchen said. She patted Rudolph’s arm. “That’s all right, Rudy,” she said. “Willie knows about Mr. Boylan. Everything.”
“I will shoot him down like a dog,” Willie said. “On sight. I’m sorry I turned in my B-17.”
“Should I keep it, Willie?” Gretchen asked doubtfully.
“Of course. Unless it fits Boylan better than it fits you.”
Gretchen put the dress down. “How come he got you to deliver it?” she asked Rudolph.
“I happened to meet him,” Rudolph said. “I see him from time to time. I didn’t give him your address, so he asked me …”
“Tell him I’m most grateful,” Gretchen said. “Tell him I’ll think of him when I wear it.”
“You can tell him yourself, if you want,” Rudolph said. “He drove me down. He’s in a bar on Eighth Street, waiting for me now.”
“Why don’t we all go and have a drink with the bugger?” Willie said.
“I don’t want to have a drink with him,” Gretchen said.
“Should I tell him that?” Rudolph asked.
“Yes.”
Rudolph stood up. “I’d better go,” he said. “I told him I’d be right back.”
Gretchen stood, too. “Don’t forget the bag,” she said.
“He said for you to keep it.”
“I don’t want it.” Gretchen handed the smart little leather bag to her brother. He seemed reluctant to take it. “Rudy,” she said curiously, “do you see much of Boylan?”
“A couple of times a week.”
“You like him?”
“I’m not sure,” Rudy said. “He’s teaching me a lot.”
“Be careful,” she said.
“Don’t worry.” Rudolph put out his hand to Willie. “Goodbye,” he said. “Thanks for the beer.”
Willie shook his hand warmly. “Now you know where we are,” he said, “come and see us. I mean it.”
“I will,” Rudolph said.
Gretchen kissed him. “I hate to see you run off like this.”
“I’ll come down to New York soon,” Rudolph said. “I promise.”
Gretchen opened the door for him. He seemed to want to say something more, but finally he just waved, a small troubled movement of his hand, and went down the stairs, carrying the bag. Gretchen closed the door slowly.
“He’s nice, your brother,” Willie said. “I wish I looked like that.”
“You look good enough,” Gretchen said. She kissed him. “I haven’t kissed you for ages.”
“Six long hours,” Willie said. They kissed again.
“Six long hours,” she said, smiling. “Please be home every time I come home.”
“I’ll make a point of it,” Willie said. He picked up the red dress and examined it critically. “Your brother’s awfully grownup for a kid that age.”
“Too, maybe.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know.” She took a sip of beer. “He figures things out too carefully.” She thought of her father’s unlikely generosity toward Rudolph, of her mother’s standing at night over an ironing board doing Rudolph’s shirts. “He collects on his intelligence.”
“Good for him,” Willie said. “I wish I could collect on mine.”
“What did you two talk about before I came?” she asked.
“We praised you.”
“Okay, okay, aside from that?”
“He asked me about my work. I guess he wondered what his sister’s feller was doing home in the middle of the afternoon while his sister was out earning her daily bread. I hope I put his fears to rest.”
Willie had a job on a new magazine that a friend of his had just started. It was a magazine devoted to radio and a lot of Willie’s work consisted of listening to daytime programs and he preferred listening to them at home rather than in the little cramped office of the magazine. He was making ninety dollars a week and with her sixty they got along well enough, although they usually found themselves broke by the end of the week, because Willie liked to eat out in restaurants and stay up late in bars.
“Did you tell him you were a playwright, too?” Gretchen said.
“No. I’ll leave him to find that out for himself. Some day.”
Willie hadn’t shown her his play yet. He only had an act and a half done and he was going to rewrite that completely.
Willie draped the dress against his front and walked like a model, with an exaggerated swing of the hips. “Sometimes I wonder what sort of a girl I would have made. What do you think?”
“No,” she said.
“Try it on. Let’s see what it looks like.” He gave her the dress. She took it and went into the bedroom because there was a full-length mirror there on the back of a closet door. She had made the bed neatly before leaving the house, but the bedcover was mussed. Willie had taken a nap after lunch. They had been living together only a little over two months but she had amassed a private treasury of Willie’s habits. His clothes were strewn all over the room. His corset was lying on the floor near the window. Gretchen smiled as she took off her sweater and skirt. She found Willie’s childish disorder endearing. She liked picking up after him.
She zipped up the dress with difficulty. She had only put it on twice before, once in the shop and once in Boylan’s bedroom, to model it for Boylan. She had never really worn it. She looked at herself critically in the mirror. She had the feeling that the lacy top exposed too much of her bosom. Her reflection in the red d
ress was that of an older woman, New Yorkish, certain of her attractions, a woman ready to enter any room, disdainful of all competition. She let her hair down so that it flowed darkly over her shoulders. It had been piled up in a practical knot on top of her head for the day’s work.
After a last look at herself she went back into the living room. Willie was opening another bottle of beer. He whistled when he saw her. “You scare me,” he said.
She pirouetted, making the skirt flare out. “Do you think I dare wear it?” she said. “Isn’t it a little naked?”
“Dee-vine,” Willie drawled. “It is the perfectly designed dress. It is designed to make every man want to take you out of it immediately.” He came over to her. “Suiting action to the thought,” he said, “the gentleman unzips the lady.” He pulled at the zipper and lifted the dress over her head. His hands were cold from the beer bottle and she shivered momentarily. “What are we doing in this room?” he said.
They went into the bedroom and undressed quickly. The one time she had put on the dress for Boylan they had done the same thing. There was no avoiding echoes.
Willie made love to her sweetly and gently, almost as though she were frail and breakable. Once, in the middle of love-making the word respectfully had crossed her consciousness and she chuckled. She didn’t tell Willie what had caused the chuckle. She was very different with Willie than with Boylan. Boylan had overcome her, obliterated her. It had been an intense and ferocious ceremony of destruction, a tournament, with winners and losers. After Boylan, she had come back into herself like someone returning from a long voyage, resentful of the rape of personality that had taken place. With Willie the act was tender and dear and sinless. It was a part of the flow of their lives together, everyday and natural. There was none of that sense of dislocation, abandonment, that Boylan had inflicted upon her and that she had hungered for so fiercely. Quite often she did not come with Willie, but it made no difference.
“Precious,” she murmured and they lay still.
After awhile Willie rolled carefully on his back and they lay side by side, not touching, only their hands entwined, childishly, between them.
“I’m so glad you were home,” she said.
“I will always be home,” he said.
She squeezed his hand.
He reached out with his other hand for the package of cigarettes on the bedside table and she disentangled her fingers, so that he could light up. He lay flat, his head on the thin pillow, smoking. The room was dark except for the light that was coming in through the open door from the living room. He looked like a small boy who would be punished if he were caught smoking. “Now,” he said, “that you have finally had your will of me, perhaps we can talk a bit. What sort of day did you have?”
Gretchen hesitated. Later, she thought. “The usual,” she said. “Gaspard made a pass at me again.” Gaspard was the leading man of the show and during a break in the re-hearsal he had asked her to come into his dressing room to run over some lines and had practically thrown her on the couch.
“He knows a good thing when he sees one, old Gaspard,” Willie said comfortably.
“Don’t you think you ought to talk to him and tell him he’d better leave your girl alone?” Gretchen said. “Or maybe hit him in the nose?”
“He’d kill me,” Willie said, without shame. “He’s twice my size.”
“I’m in love with a coward,” Gretchen said, kissing his ear.
“That’s what happens to simple young girls in from the country.” He puffed contentedly on his cigarette. “Anyway, in this department a girl’s on her own. If you’re old enough to go out at night in the Big City you’re old enough to defend yourself.”
“I’d beat up anybody who made a pass at you,” Gretchen said.
Willie laughed. “I bet you would, too.”
“Nichols was at the theater today. After the rehearsal he said he might have a part for me in a new play next year. A big part, he said.”
“You will be a star. Your name will be in lights,” Willie said. “You will discard me like an old shoe.”
Just as well now as any other time, she thought. “I may not be able to take a job next season,” she said.
“Why not?” He raised on one elbow and looked at her curiously.
“I went to the doctor this morning,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”
He looked at her hard, studying her face. He sat up and stubbed out his cigarette. “I’m thirsty,” he said. He got out of bed stiffly. She saw the shadow of the long scar low on his spine. He put on an old cotton robe and went into the living room. She heard him pouring his beer. She lay back in the darkness, feeling deserted. I shouldn’t have told him, she thought. Everything is ruined. She remembered the night it must have happened. They had been out late, nearly four o’clock, there had been a long loud argument in somebody’s house. About Emperor Hirohito, of all things. Everybody had had a lot to drink. She had been fuzzy and hadn’t taken any precautions. Usually, they were too tired when they came home to make love. That one goddamn night, they hadn’t been too tired. One for the Emperor of Japan. If he says anything, she thought, I’m going to tell him I’ll have an abortion. She knew she could never have an abortion, but she’d tell him.
Willie came back into the bedroom. She turned on the bedside lamp. This conversation was going to be adequately lit. What Willie’s face told her was going to be more important than what he said. She pulled the sheet over herself. Willie’s old cotton robe flapped around his frail figure. It was faded with many washings.
“Listen,” Willie said, seating himself on the edge of the bed. “Listen carefully. I am going to get a divorce or I am going to kill the bitch. Then we are going to get married and I am going to take a course in the care and feeding of infants. Do you read me, Miss Jordache?”
She studied his face. It was all right. Better than all right.
“I read you,” she said softly.
He leaned over her and kissed her cheek. She clutched the sleeve of his robe. For Christmas, she would buy him a new robe. Silk.
II
Boylan was standing at the bar in his tweed topcoat, staring at his glass, when Rudolph came down the little flight of steps from Eighth Street, carrying the overnight bag. There were only men standing at the bar and most of them were probably fairies.
“I see you have the bag,” Boylan said.
“She didn’t want it.”
“And the dress?”
“She took the dress.”
“What are you drinking?”
“A beer, please.”
“One beer, please,” Boylan said to the bartender. “And I’ll continue with whiskey.”
Boylan looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. His eyebrows were blonder than they had been last week. His face was very tan, as though he had been lying on a southern beach for months. Two or three of the fairies at the bar were equally brown. Rudolph knew about the sun lamp by now. “I make it a point to look as healthy and attractive as I can at all times,” Boylan had explained to Rudolph. “Even if I don’t see anybody for weeks on end. It’s a form of self-respect.”
Rudolph was so dark, anyway, that he felt he could respect himself without a sun lamp.
The bartender put the drinks down in front of them. Boylan’s fingers trembled a little as he picked up his glass. Rudolph wondered how many whiskies he had had.
“Did you tell her I was here?” Boylan asked.
“Yes.”
“Is she coming?”
“No. The man she was with wanted to come and meet you, but she didn’t.” There was no point in not being honest.
“Ah,” Boylan said. “The man she was with.”
“She’s living with somebody.”
“I see,” Boylan said flatly. “It didn’t take long, did it?”
Rudolph drank his beer.
“Your sister is an extravagantly sensual woman,” Boylan said. “I fear for where it may lead her.”
Rudolph
kept drinking his beer.
“They’re not married, by any chance?”
“No. He’s still married to somebody else.”
Boylan looked at himself in the mirror again for a while. A burly young man in a black turtle-neck sweater down the bar caught his eye in the glass and smiled. Boylan turned away slightly, toward Rudolph. “What sort of fellow is he? Did you like him?”
“Young,” Rudolph said. “He seemed nice enough. Full of jokes.”
“Full of jokes,” Boylan repeated. “Why shouldn’t he be full of jokes? What sort of place do they have?”
“Two furnished rooms in a walkup.”
“Your sister has a romantic disregard of the advantages of money,” Boylan said. “She will regret it later. Among the other things she will regret.”
“She seemed happy.” Rudolph found Boylan’s prophecies distasteful. He didn’t want Gretchen to regret anything.
“What does her young man do for a living? Did you find out?”
“He writes for some kind of radio magazine.”
“Oh,” Boylan said. “One of those.”
“Teddy,” Rudolph said, “if you want my advice I think you ought to forget her.”
“Out of the depths of your rich experience,” Boylan said, “you think I ought to forget her.”
“Okay,” Rudolph said, “I haven’t had any experience. But I saw her. I saw how she looked at the man.”
“Did you tell her I still was willing to marry her?”
“No. That’s something you’d better tell her yourself,” Rudolph said. “Anyway, you didn’t expect me to say it in front of her fellow, did you?”
“Why not?”
“Teddy, you’re drinking too much.”
“Am I?” Boylan said. “Probably. You wouldn’t want to walk back there with me and go up and pay your sister a visit, would you?”
“You know I can’t do that,” Rudolph said.
“No you can’t,” Boylan said. “You’re like the rest of your family. You can’t do a fucking thing.”
“Listen,” Rudolph said, “I can get on the train and go home. Right now.”
