With Option to Die

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Both men were drinking coffee. The dark man lifted a metal pot and gestured with it toward the other’s cup and the blond man put a shielding hand over his cup and shook his head. Then the dark, slight man pushed the table away from them and started to get up.

  Faith twisted in her chair then and half stood so she could look through a grating behind their table and into the bar. She stayed so until the two men, the blond almost a head taller than the other, had passed the table and gone out into the entrance hall. Then she sat down again and turned to Ann and smiled at her and said, “Adam’s a dear. But he sometimes takes forever. He’s pouring them now.”

  Ann nodded her head, to show she listened.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” Faith said. “For a moment I thought one of them was somebody I knew. A long time ago. But it wasn’t, of course. What was I saying?”

  “That somebody had carved a date in a beam,” Ann told her.

  “Of course. They were making changes in the main dining room—that’s across the hall—and stripped off some of the ceiling plaster and one of the cross beams had a date on it—1800 the date was. And—”

  “Here you are, ladies,” Tony said, and took old-fashioned glasses from a tray for them. “Sorry to have been so long. Adam’s rather rushed.”

  They sipped iced Dubonnet and looked at menus. And heard a deep, pleasant voice saying, “They’ve really got the Dover sole today.”

  They looked up from their menus and were smiled down on by a tall, heavy man in, Ann guessed, his sixties. He wore a dark business suit complete (to Ann unexpectedly) with a vest. He bulged slightly under the vest, but he was tall enough to carry a good deal of weight. He had a full face, not quite jowly, and an expression of benignity.

  “Oh,” Faith said. “Hello, Lawrence. You’ve had lunch, I take it. This is Mrs. Eric Martin, Lawrence. Mrs. Martin, Lawrence Finch. President of the school board, among other things. Among a good many other things, isn’t it, Lawrence?”

  “Civic responsibilities,” Finch said, and firmed his face for them. But, Ann thought, neither the words nor the firmed face was meant to be taken seriously.

  “Since you own half the town,” Faith said, but she said it smiling up at the tall, heavy man.

  “She always exaggerates, Mrs. Martin,” Finch said. “Actually, it doesn’t come to more than three eighths.” He laughed at that, laughing it off. He said, “I understand you and your husband have rented the Barnes house.”

  Understanding spread quickly through North Wellwood, Ann thought, and said, “Yes. For the summer.”

  “Good house,” Finch told her. “Not one of the old houses, but a good house. Good solid house. Hope you’ll like it there, Mrs. Martin. Like our quiet little community.”

  Ann was sure they would.

  “Don’t like to see a house standing empty,” Lawrence Finch said. “Glad the Barneses rented it. Didn’t know they planned to, actually. We all expected them to come back this spring, as usual. Friends of yours, Mrs. Martin?”

  “Lucile and Ralph? Yes. That is, Ralph and my father were very close friends. I’ve known him and Lucile since I was a little girl.”

  “Fine people, both of them,” Finch said. “Kind of people who belong in North Wellwood. Living in New York now, I understand? Don’t see why they’d want to. Have to go in a couple of days a week and can’t wait to get back to the country. Well-l-l.” The lingered-on “Well” was an omen of departure. He added to it, “Enjoy your lunch.”

  He started off, but stopped.

  “Ought to have everything any day now, Faith,” he said. “If you still want to go through with it?”

  “Yes, Lawrence. I do want to go through with it.”

  “Your business, my dear. Give you a ring when it’s set.”

  Faith Powers said that that would be fine and they both watched Lawrence Finch leave the long narrow room.

  “Usually,” Faith said, “I have the blinis. They make them well here. Creamed chicken rolled in a crepe and browned under the broiler. But if they really have Dover sole—only, probably it would take longer.”

  They settled on the blinis. Tony approved their order. He was rather obviously unsurprised by it.

  “The biggest frog in our small puddle,” Faith said. “Town supervisor for years, until it was somebody else’s turn. Head of the school board since. I was on the board for a few years. Voted off it last time around. Walter Brinkley and I. New-fangled notions, that was what we had. Rather a relief to both of us, actually. Only—”

  She stopped abruptly, and then said, “I’m afraid I rattle on, my dear. Perhaps I always did. Poor Arthur.”

  There was nothing Ann could do but look interested and wait.

  “My husband, my dear,” Faith said. “Died five years ago last month. Think I’d have got over missing him, but I haven’t.”

  There is still sparkle in this small white-haired woman, Ann thought. She must be nearly seventy, but there is still sparkle. Then she realized she had thought this because, for a quick moment, the sparkle died out of the smooth, round old face, and the young blue eyes.

  “Probably,” Faith Powers said, “it’s the second Dubonnet. Shall we have another?”

  “Not I,” Ann said, and was told that she was probably right. Mrs. Powers rattled the ice which remained in her glass, and drained the glass. Then there was silence, and it seemed to Ann a tight silence. She loosened it.

  “Mr. Finch seems to have liked the Barneses,” she said. “To be sorry they’re not living here any more.”

  “Some are,” Faith said. “I am, for one. Lucile and I saw a good deal of each other. I’ll miss Lucile. And Ralph too, come to that.”

  “You said they were eased out.”

  “No, dear. Squeezed out. After Ralph sold a house on the other side of town to Thomas Peters. It’s against New York State law to discriminate in the sale of property because of race, color or religion, you know. It’s a law easy to circumvent, I’m afraid. Asking prices jump out of reason, and it’s hard, I suspect, to prove that they jump with reason. Definite reason. Peters is the only Negro who’s been able to buy around here for as long as I can remember. Oh, except on Clinton Street, of course. No village is too small to have its ghetto. Clinton Street is ours. Accepted and glossed over. And white people righteously join the NAACP. I have myself. Ease of conscience, available in the small economy size.”

  “People resented Ralph’s selling Mr. Peters a house?”

  “A good many did. Oh, publicly with the usual explanations. They themselves were all for complete integration. But one thing had to be faced. It would bring property values down. All very regrettable, but there it was. But you know these things, don’t you? Probably better than I do.”

  “Better?”

  “Because of your work, Mrs. Martin. On documentaries. Some of them are very good, nowadays.” She smiled suddenly. “Oh,” she said, “I’ve looked you up. You know a man named Stuart Leffing? An executive of some sort with UBN? News division, or whatever it’s called?”

  “I’ve worked for him.”

  “He was an instructor at Dyckman years ago,” Faith said. “Left us—I still feel I’m part of Dyckman—for greener pastures. A good deal greener, as it turned out. We’ve, a little, kept in touch. So when Lucile said you and your husband were renting the house—well, I called Stuart. Because, frankly, I saw this thing the network did on the deep South and stayed for the credits. It was a good thing to do, Mrs. Martin … Miss Langley.”

  “Why, Mrs. Powers? Why look me up?”

  From where Faith Powers sat she could look out into the narrow lobby of the Maples Inn. She looked now, instead of answering. She looked for several seconds and there was an intent expression on her round, pink face. Ann could not see what Faith was looking at.

  Faith Powers turned back to Ann and said she was sorry. She said, “You asked me something?”

  Ann repeated what she had asked this quick little woman, under whose wing she had been taken.

>   “After I talked to Lucile,” Faith said. “She—she and Ralph after they’d talked it over—were worried about you. She wasn’t too clear why they should be. She isn’t always too clear. I mean explicit, really. Something about, ‘with that TV show she wrote and all.’”

  “I didn’t write it,” Ann said. “Did preliminary interviews. What on earth did she mean? Why would they be worried about Eric and me? And what would the documentary have to do with anything?”

  “It wasn’t very favorable to the Klan,” Faith said. “Or the White Citizens’ Council. People like dear Lawrence talk about Communist influence. It’s all coming back from the past, dear. If it ever went away. Lucile and Ralph got to worrying if you—you and your husband—would be made uncomfortable.”

  Ann could merely shake her head.

  “I know,” Faith Powers said. “It’s hard to put your finger on. This is—call it a conservative community, my dear. More, just now, than I’ve ever known it to be. All over the country people are taking sides. In a place like this, it’s—call it concentrated. Because, in a way which isn’t true in the city, we’re squeezed together. Not physically, of course. Except on Clinton Street. Squeezed together mentally. And by mores. By an absolute certainty of what is right. And you can take the word ‘right’ either way. Moral. Right wing. In the last few years there’s been a fairly active John Birch Society unit here. It’s held meetings, one of them in the high-school auditorium. I don’t, of course, argue they shouldn’t hold meetings. Say what they like. And that everybody shouldn’t. Which, of course, is another matter. I’m … tolerated. I was a teacher most of my life. Teachers are notoriously crackpots. Also, my husband was born here, and his father was born here. My people have been here as long. Even now, with the community drawing up sides, that counts. Newcomers—that’s another matter. Here comes our food, finally.”

  Blinis came. Tony was sorry it had been so long. “He had to make fresh crepes.”

  “Ralph and Lucile Barnes lived here ten years,” Ann said. “Newcomers?”

  “Oh, yes,” Faith said. “By North Wellwood standards, very new.”

  They ate blinis.

  “For Eric and me,” Ann said, “it’s just a place to live for the summer.”

  Faith said, “Yes, dear,” and went on with food. Ann finished her crisply browned cylinders of thin pancakes which enfolded creamed chicken with an admirable wine-flavored sauce. They ordered coffee, and Tony brought it in a silvery pot.

  “You say the Barneses were squeezed out,” Ann said, “after they sold a house to a Negro? A very prominent one, incidentally. Known all over the country.”

  “Yes,” Faith said.

  “Made to feel unwelcome? But would that have mattered to them—really?”

  “Nobody likes to be shut out,” Faith said. “Even from places they don’t especially want to go into. But there were little niggling things. Nothing they could put their fingers on, really. Their water pump broke down and the plumber, who’d always been very prompt, somehow couldn’t make it for two days. Their telephone started ringing in the middle of the night, and just deep breathing on the phone when they answered it. Arnold’s—that’s the grocery which delivers—began to send them things they hadn’t ordered, and to leave out things they needed. Their mailbox got knocked over several times. A few people they knew didn’t recognize them on Main Street. Even when they came here there wasn’t a table in this room, or in the new room.”

  She gestured behind her, toward what apparently was the “new room” beyond the bar corridor.

  “They had to eat in the main dining room and nobody likes it as well. Sally puts in there people who drop in off the road. Not that many do. North Wellwood isn’t really on the road to anywhere in particular. This inn is—oh, more or less the village pub. And, in a way, a club.”

  “Trivial things,” Ann said. “I shouldn’t have thought Ralph was—is—a man to let people push him around.”

  “Little niggling things,” Faith said. “I told you that. Not that having a broken-down water pump is really too trivial.”

  She sipped coffee and poured another splash into her cup.

  “Matter of flushing toilets, among other things,” she said, with a countrywoman’s explicitness. “As to Ralph, yes, I agree. About anything worth the trouble. Living here wasn’t, I suppose. Came not to be. With the children grown. If things were to be abrasive—”

  She did not finish that, but looked up, as Ann looked up, at Sally Lambert, tall and gray-haired and smiling down at them, hoping that they had enjoyed their lunch.

  More or less simultaneously, they both said, “Very much.” Faith added “Sally” and Ann “Mrs. Lambert.”

  Sally Lambert was so glad. She had, Ann thought, rather a stingy voice.

  “By the way,” Faith said, “the thin dark man who was sitting over there.” She indicated “over there” with a movement of her head. “He’s a new guest, isn’t he. I mean, he went upstairs.”

  “You probably mean Mr. Pederson,” Mrs. Lambert said. “Why, Faith?”

  Faith Powers shrugged rounded shoulders.

  “Thought for a moment I knew him,” she said. “Chance resemblance, evidently. He is staying here?”

  “Plans to for most of the summer,” Mrs. Lambert said. “Working on a book, I understand. Wants a quiet place. A place where people won’t bother him. Who did you think he was, dear?”

  “Man I knew years ago,” Faith Powers said. “I don’t really remember his name. Except that it wasn’t Pederson.”

  “Harry Pederson,” Mrs. Lambert said. “Quite well known as an author, people tell me.”

  To that, Faith shook her head and turned to Ann with raised eyebrows. Ann shook her head.

  “Of course,” Faith said, “there are new writers all the time. Impossible to keep up with. Well, dear?”

  The last was to Ann who said, “Yes, I think so.”

  Tony, who had been carrying a tray of used dishes, put the tray down and pulled their table out from the wall. Sally Lambert hoped she would see Mrs. Martin again and Ann was sure she would.

  “Just follow me,” Faith said, in the parking lot. “It’s only a few blocks. And the jaybird is easy enough to spot, heaven knows.”

  Ann took it that the Mercedes was “the jaybird.” She followed its spurting progress to a parking lot spread widely around a large supermarket.

  IV

  Ann drove the station wagon into the garage and realized, as she had not before, that it was a two-car garage in name only. If Eric drove his sports car in beside the wagon, he was going to have to exit from it through the roof. One of the cars was going to have to live out-of-doors. Not that that, during the summer, would matter particularly.

  One thing had led to another at the supermarket as Ann trundled a cart through its aisles—found bread and coffee and cans of things on shelves; milk and cream and butter and eggs in a refrigerated dairy bin; frozen foods in open-topped freezer compartments. Things had certainly led on to things, Ann thought, raising the tailgate of the wagon and looking into it. I’m as bad in a supermarket as Eric is in a hardware store. Oranges … lemons. Did I remember to get lemons?

  She lugged heavy paper bags, cardboard cartons, through the back door of the square white house and into the kitchen. She unpacked and put away—in cupboards, in bins, in the refrigerator, and in the freezer. A frozen TV dinner! What ever had made her pick that up? In a supermarket, one buys things because they are there.

  She made three trips between station wagon and kitchen. She discovered that, although she had remembered sugar, she had forgotten salt. When she opened a suitable cupboard to stow four rolls of paper towels she found that there were already three rolls in it. It is a problem to awaken a house. I forgot potatoes, because I almost never eat potatoes. But Eric is a meat-and-potatoes man. It’s grown very warm for May. I’m a mess.

  It was almost five when, finally, she said a resentful “There!” to an unremembered container of turkey tetrazzin
i and dropped it into the freezer. She banged the lid on it. She went up to take a shower. When she first turned the shower on, water came from it reluctantly and cold. But then the light in the bathroom dimmed for an instant and something, apparently far away, began to go “uh-uh, uh-uh.” After a few moments the shower head spluttered at her and the water flow increased and was, abruptly, very hot. She regulated it and it became, again, almost cold. It also spurted at her. Again she turned the handle which was supposed to regulate the temperature of this erratic water supply.

  It settled, finally, to more or less the temperature she wanted, although it was still inclined to waver between extremes. Something, she thought, probably is wrong with it. The pump which had broken down for the Barneses or—Soaping, she half remembered what, the Friday evening before, she had half heard. Ralph Barnes explaining something to Eric—something which Eric would understand and take care of, if care needed to be taken. Something about something called a pressure tank? Vaguely that seemed right. A pressure tank, whatever that might be, and—wait a minute—“variable pressure.” She certainly had that.

  She rinsed soap from a slim body. Now the water rushed from the shower head and was just cool enough for comfort. She turned this way and that way under the rushing water, at once soothed and invigorated by its steady beating on her. And the telephone rang. All of the telephones in the house rang and the house seemed to vibrate with their clattering. Ann Martin made the only adequate response to this jangling, which was “Damn!” and stepped out of the tub and groped for a towel. Towels hide in strange bathrooms.

  She finally clutched a towel from the rack on which she had hung it and dripped on the bath mat. She dried hurriedly and only partially; wrapped the towel around her and that, also, because of the towel’s size, only partially. “I’m coming,” she told the jangle of telephone bells and went out of the bathroom, high-arched feet leaving pad marks behind her. And she thought, It’s Eric. Something’s happened to hold him up. Or—