George Mills

by Stanley Elkin

  Knowing. Knowing in advance. (But not, it turned out, as far in advance as Father Merchant had known. At least a day and a half behind Merchant, maybe more. Perhaps from the time Merchant had first laid eyes on her, on Mills’s ill charge, when they’d left the nightclub together—they’d gone after all—after the show, those terrible mixed doubles, and been tipped, that terrible time he’d seen first the ex-madwoman’s face, then her pocketbook, the sheaves of bank notes, the unsigned traveler’s checks.) (So maybe what he was going to tell Cornell was a boast, not prescience at all but ordinary induction and observed causality.) So that when he whisked the kid to the hospital and risked the speeding ticket it was not because he wanted to get her there in time, but because he knew that Mrs. Glazer was already dead, beyond embarrassment and concern forever, and would not see the brazen, floozy, bimbo kid in her gaudy bikini strips. Or Mills in the street clothes he had thrown on over his bathing suit when they had stopped for a light, the shirt and pants that still looked rolled, grass stains and the juices of crushed flowers about the knees and pockets where his shoe soles had touched them. Their rude parade a ruse, not deliberate at all, finally, but hidden, actually circumspect, broken out like hoard, trove, like the good champagne after the guest has gone, the best cigars and special chocolates.

  Speeding not to the deathbed—that’s what Sam would be doing—but to Father Merchant, the usurper retainer himself, and hoping he might yet make it—because Merchant could be wrong for once, because Laglichio might not need him, because if he made it he might not need Laglichio—that he could come like the cavalry (after all the hard work had been done, the legal stuff, the quasi-customary bribes dispensed, the extraconventional tips), not too late to play some part in the scene. (Haste hard on a man in grace, unaccustomed to pressure, who hadn’t felt necessity more than two or three times in his entire life, whose family hadn’t felt it eighty or so in a thousand years. Who’d resisted it in his courtship and during all those years of his oddly tame wild oats when he’d shoved dimes in jukeboxes and quietly popped for beers, when he’d neutrally revealed their feelings and explained their climaxes to those distracted women in whose automobiles and bedrooms he’d neither to his wonder nor dismay found himself naked. [Feeling, to the extent that he felt at all, only the mildest curiosity when it came to these women, as he might have been curious about the taste of certain dishes which no one had ever prepared for him.] Who—women—had not much played a role in the Mills history. Sisters rare as birth defects, widows and stepmothers uncommon as distinction. Something to do, perhaps, with that sense of default adaptation which he would speak of to Cornell Messenger, maybe even the random prescience some spilled remnant of neglected intuition. But, whatever, the whole business of having to rush, of there being something at last at stake, disagreeable to someone whose pride it was—and who meant by grace—that nothing could ever happen to him, that he was past it——anticipation and interest and concern and disappointment and injury, and glory too.)

  So what he found was what he should have expected to find——a Tuesday afternoon like a lesson in the usual, a child by the Coke machine, nurses on pay phones, a distant relation bored in the waiting room on a worn leather cushion, his behind on the smooth front cover of a newsmagazine, someone sucking on a cigarette he hardly knew was in his mouth, patting his pockets for a match for a stranger, getting the time in return.

  Yet the woman was dead. Her uncle stepped from the room and came into the corridor to embrace Mary, his gravity and the soured aromatics of his cologne and wrinkled linen giving it away, the distant early warning signs of worry and death. (This is how the rich attend their dead, Mills thought. Trailing some spoor of the bedside. Come from a deathbed as from a battle in a boardroom. But how had his clothes been mussed? How had his beard grown so fast?) All over her with apologies and explanations, including Mills even.

  “Oh,” Harry said, “Good. You got my message. I thought I’d missed you. I had you paged, but when you didn’t come to the phone I thought perhaps you’d taken Mary sightseeing. This is her first time in Mexico and she’s an alert little girl. We even checked with the rental car people to see if you’d returned the car. It crossed my mind that you’d gone to the pictures. I was going to go out looking for you myself, but Señor Merchant advised me to wait another half-hour. It’s fortunate he did. It would have been awful if you’d come back to the hospital and found Mother’s room empty.”

  “A small precaution,” Father Merchant said.

  “They never paged us,” Mills said. “There was no message. We were by the pool a couple of hours.”

  “Two hours? The child could have been badly burned. This is the tropics. Don’t you know what our sun can do?” Father Merchant turned to the girl. “You expose yourself the first day fifteen minutes tops.”

  “I was covered up with towels,” Mary said.

  “Towels. Oh, that’s all right then. Towels. You showed good sense. I hope they were white towels. White towels reflect the sun.”

  “Mama’s dead?”

  “Well you knew Mother’s convictions, sweetheart. She was a very spiritual woman. I guess in a sense you could say she’s dead, but she’ll always be with us. She was tired, sweetheart. She was all worn out, dear. She was so glad she’d seen you. It’s all she was waiting for. You remember that, darling. You made it easier for her. Didn’t she, Father Merchant?”

  “She was a tonic. That’s my opinion,” said the tout.

  “See?” said her uncle. “Even he thinks so.”

  “She didn’t see Milly,” Mary said. “She didn’t see Daddy.”

  “That would have been too hard, honey. That would have been so hard. Seeing all the people she loved would have upset her too much. Would you have wanted her to pass away while she was so sad? She left messages for everyone. She was at peace when she left us.”

  “I want to see my mother.”

  “Well, sweetheart, that wouldn’t be best just now. The doctors have to do certain things, the nurses do. And we’ve got to get ready to meet that plane. It was a darn good idea for Father Merchant to make arrangements to keep the room an extra few hours. You can change in there. You can use Mother’s shower.”

  The old man nodded. “The c’s for caliente. Caliente means hot. Just turn it lightly. You don’t want to scald.”

  “Scald?”

  “Mexico is an oil-rich country. Its hot water is its pride.”

  “Have I got time to freshen up?” the uncle asked.

  “It isn’t a question of time,” Father Merchant said. “Flight 272 doesn’t arrive till six. It will still be rush hour. I’d give you a special map I’ve drawn up, I’d tell you directions, shortcuts, which lane to be in when you’re stopped at the border. You could leave at five-thirty and still meet the plane. But it isn’t a question of time. It’s a question of signs, what you look like to Sam when he gets off the plane, the signals he picks up. Go as you are. That’s my advice.”

  Which, of course, he followed, looking, George thought, more the traveler than Sam, sending soiled semaphore, bereavement in the hang of his suit, the limp, creased cotton, got up like an actor in his tropical grief, his etched stubble. Merchant was right. Harry didn’t have to say a word to Sam or the little girl, Mrs. Glazer’s fate perfectly legible to them in Harry’s solemn, lingering handshake, his wordless hugs. It was Mary who spoke.

  “I haven’t taken it all in, Daddy. I may be in shock. Feel my head. You think I have temperature? I was out in the sun. Maybe I burned. It could be a fever. It could be shock fever. They made me shower in Mommy’s bathroom ’cause I was still in my bathing suit and we had to meet your plane. It was creepy, Daddy. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shower again. I’ll take baths and I’ll douche but I won’t ever shower.”

  There was no need to return to the hospital and on the way back to Harry’s hotel Mills heard the brother-in-law tell Sam that they would all be flying back again in the morning, that Father Merchant, who’d been very us
eful, had made the arrangements, first class for Harry, Sam and the two girls, Mills in tourist. The old man had even returned Harry’s rental car, since they were getting a rate, Merchant explained, on Mrs. Glazer’s. He’d given the Mexican, Harry said, a hundred dollars. They probably wouldn’t be needing the car that night but he didn’t think they ought to be stuck in a third world country without one. The girls were tired, Milly had had a long day. They all had. Would George mind getting back to his motel on his own? Harry’d be happy to pay for the taxi.

  Father Merchant was waiting for Mills outside his motel room.

  “I could have been mugged waiting for that cab,” George Mills said.

  “No no,” Father Merchant said, “everyone knows you’re under my protection. Nothin’ could have happen to you.” Mills opened the door and Merchant followed him inside. “Did anythin’ happened to you when you was flashin’ the lady’s money an’ she was tryin’ to get you both killed?”

  “Was that you?” Mills asked without interest.

  “I put in a word,” Father Merchant said modestly.

  George started to undress. “Aren’t you tired?” George asked Merchant who was seated in the room’s single chair. “All that running around you did today?”

  “Yellow,” Merchant said, “yellow? Yellow is for fairies. A man like you wants a dark blue bathing costume. Why should I be tired? I’m used to it. Anyway, I pace myself.”

  “He gave you a hundred dollars,” Mills said.

  “I left it up to him. Usually, when they come down, they come with family. It’s rare to see a servant. What could I do? You were already here. I left a lot of it up to you. I let you assist me. We didn’t get in each other’s way. It should have been more, I suppose, but he, that Harry, only came down last night. He didn’t know what to give. My other clients are more generous, but maybe Harry isn’t cheap. Maybe he don’t really know.”

  “How come you didn’t tell him?”

  The old man shrugged. “A tout’s pride,” he said.

  “Listen,” George said, “I’m pretty tired. I’m supposed to be over at their hotel tomorrow morning at seven o’clock to get their bags and check out for them.”

  “Of course,” Merchant said. “I’m gone in a minute. There’s some things I want to tell you. Go on, get in bed. I’ll let myself out.”

  “Could you get the light?” George said sleepily.

  “Sure,” Father Merchant said, and turned off the overhead light. He drew the night curtains and spoke to Mills in the dark.

  “Maria is courted by all the eligible ranchers in that country,” he said. “But she loves only one, the patrone, who is her father. She don’ know he is her father, but he knows. He suspects. It makes no difference, by this time he can’ help himself. She reminds him of her madre. Only this one is even more beautiful, more desirable. He tries to seduce her but she has too great honor. If he mean to sleep wit’ her he mus’ marry her. He arrange a fake pries’, a young fellow from the south to do it. The real pries’ is killed. He does this, the patrone. He knows he is damn to murder a padre but his passion has made him loco. The fake pries’ is brought in an’ they are married. They go away. He is a wonderful lover. Maria is sick with love, with sex. She has never experience nothin’ like this. All he has to do is touch her, she is on fire. She can’t get enough. But he’s a old man, the patrone. All this love is killin’ him, an’ now she is pregnan’. She is no longer so beautiful to him. She knows this but makes demands. To stop her he tell her all about the fake pries’, about himself. Now she is like her father, insane with passion. She don’ care she is pregnan’, she don’ care she’s his daughter. Maria is depraved. The old man is fearful about what he have done. He make a confession, first to a pries’, then to officials. The pries’ tell him God have forgive him if he is truly peniten’. He go to Maria. He fear for her soul. He tell her to confess. ‘Why?’ she says. ‘I am sorry for nothing. Only that you love God more than your daughter. That, that is the filth.’ They come for him, for the patrone. They take him away. They don’t know she knows, her father don’ tell them. He is hanged. For killin’ the pries’. No one know. Only the pries’ who hear his confession. He can’t tell. He is waitin’ for Maria to seek absolution. That how it end. We wait for the worse woman in the worl’ to ask for forgiveness. That how it end.

  “You’re going back. These programs haven’t been broadcast yet. No one knows this in Mexico. Only the planners of the program. Only me. Only you.”

  “Why are you tell——”

  “I told Mrs. Glazer,” Father Merchant said. “I whispered in her ear before she died.”

  “What are you talk——”

  “A hundred dollars,” Merchant said contemptuously. “I just see that rich gringo bastard and know I won’t get more.”

  “What do you——”

  “A hundred dollars,” Merchant repeated. “I saved him seventy on the rate of exchange, on red tape even more. A hundred dollars!”

  “What do you want?” Mills shouted. “What do you want?” He snapped on the bed lamp.

  “How much would you say?” Father Merchant whispered. “You were here for a mont’. I kep’ you both alive that first week. I didn’t know there’d be a servant. There’s not usual a servant.”

  “Do you want me to give you money? Is that what you want?”

  “You? You? A go-between’s go-between?”

  “What do you want?”

  “How could I know there would be someone to do the errands? Someone so indifferent he could bathe her, wipe her nose, her ass, take her for treatments, out for a ride? Death is what I do, the errands of cancer. The tips, the advice, all that’s just sideline.”

  “What do you want?” Mills demanded.

  “To give you your half,” Father Merchant said, “these fifty dollars,” and threw the money down on the bed.

  9

  In St. Louis, Louise still counted her breasts when she went to bed, taking inventory, too, since her husband’s employer had died, of her glands, pressing her stomach and kidneys, examining her cervix and rectum, obtaining skintight latex gloves which George frequently found on the rug when he stepped out of bed. She was purchasing as well home urinalysis kits, checking for diabetes, excessive leukocytes, early warning signs of a dozen diseases. She had bought a thermometer which registered temperature electronically, a gadget which noted blood pressure, a full-size doctor’s scale.

  “Are we refurnishing?” George asked.

  “Do you begrudge me a little security? It didn’t cost you a penny. All the money for this stuff came from what was left over from my father’s insurance policy. He even paid for the dress I bought for Mrs. Glazer’s funeral.”

  They were going to the funeral, George as one of the pallbearers, Louise because she was a fan and because she had not forgotten the dying woman’s condolence phone call on the occasion of her father’s death.

  Indeed, there was to be a small contingent from South St. Louis. Before she had left for Mexico, Mrs. Glazer had written to invite all the people on her Meals-on-Wheels route and had organized two limousines to pick up all those who were strong enough to attend and take them to the Church of St. Michael and St. George in west county and then on to Bellefontaine Cemetery. The limousines would return them to their homes in the city after a stop for lunch at Stouffer’s Riverfront Inn. All this had been detailed in Judith Glazer’s letters to the guests themselves, as well as to Crane, the funeral director.

  Only George and Louise had not been invited, George learning he had been asked to be a pallbearer when Harry approached from behind the curtains of first class on the flight to St. Louis. “My sister,” he said, “wanted you to serve as one of the pallbearers. She asked me to give you this.” He handed him a sheet of folded hospital stationery. All it said was “Please, Mills,” and had been written and signed with great effort. He examined the note closely. The signature would have been illegible had George not recognized it from some of the last traveler’s ch
ecks she had signed.