Little Less Than Kind

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “And Hob said to you …” Aaron was partner, shadow, following close enough to lead.

  “Yes. Hobart Arthur Cunningham, the Second, that brash and wonderful guy, was dying. And knew it. Abby hadn’t come, that night. He said to me, ‘Dave, somebody’s got to keep Cunningham Company intact for Abby. And for the boy. Will you do it?’

  “‘I’ll do what I can,’ I told him.

  “‘Then you’ll do it,’ Hob said. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘whether the boy will ever want it—to run, that is. If he turns to it, fine. If he’s got another way to go, then let him go his way. But I don’t want Abby worried, cheated, or ever low in the financial department. She never has been in her life, Dave, and I haven’t worked all my life, to let that happen. So you take Cunningham Company. Bring it along. Do this for me? On salary, of course,’ Hob said. ‘Give yourself a raise.’

  “I said I would. I said I thought I was worth it.

  “He said, ‘Teach the boy, when and if he wants to learn.’

  “‘That I will,’ I told him.

  “‘Or if not, then when there is a propitious time, sell it out and fix Abby to be safe. Do this for me?’

  “I said I would. You know, that wasn’t easy. He was—emaciated. If you’ve ever seen it …”

  “I’ve seen it,” said Aaron.

  “Yes. Well, then Hob looked at the wall and this is what he said. ‘It’s real nice,’ he said, ‘to make a will when you’re checking out, and nice to figure that your will is going to be done. Although I don’t think it can be … not altogether. Still, I’m going to tell you, Dave, what would be my will if I could have it. I’d leave Abby to you.’

  “I told him I’d look after Abby.

  “‘I know,’ Hob said. ‘But what I meant … I want you to support her. She’s that kind of woman. She needs support. Dave, she’s suggestible. She’s sensitive. I don’t want to leave her, but since I’m leaving, I don’t want her left. If I could have my will …’ Oh, he turned around and gave it to me straight. ‘I’d have her clinging where I know. Would you be willing to marry Abby?”

  “I stammered something, Hob raised up. He said, ‘Excuse me. I know I can’t arrange a thing like that. I only want the two of you to be sure. If such a thing should happen, it’s fine with me.’ He looked like death.

  “So I said to Hob, ‘Listen, for God’s sake, don’t talk like that to Abby!’

  “‘Why not?’ he asked me. You remember the shrewd look, his eyes used to have? And his long nose in the air?

  “I said, ‘You could spoil my chances, you old fool!’

  “And Hob lay back. I thought he’d been—eased.” David gazed blindly out at the hills. “That was two days after Thanksgiving. Four days after Thanksgiving, he—just died.”

  “He did not talk to Abby about it?”

  “No. I told her the gist, later on. After we had married.”

  “Why didn’t you want Hob to tell her?”

  “Because I didn’t want Abby to think that Hob had put the notion into my head.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he hadn’t,” David said flatly.

  Aaron took the pipe from his mouth and nodded comfortably. “When did you fall in love with her?”

  “How would I know, Doctor? It got up into my conscious mind, oh, late that summer.”

  “So you had thought of marriage?”

  “Yes. I was lonely. She had need. I foresaw.”

  “Had you been wishing Hob would die?”

  “Of course,” said David.

  “All right,” said Aaron in a moment. “I’ve seen what they call ‘terminal’ cases.”

  “It could have been worse,” said David sadly, “or so I am told. Hob is supposed to have escaped some of the modern keep-the-corpse-theoretically-alive routines. But it was bad enough.”

  “Go on. Especially about the boy.”

  “When Hob died the boy was shocked, subdued, and just as glad, I thought, that somebody else was taking the brunt. He stayed at school. I threw my weight around this plant. Stood by Abby. Well, I courted her. It was a long and fascinating winter, last winter. In May, Abby and I were married. The boy didn’t come down for the wedding, which was no great social occasion, just the knot tied in the minister’s study.”

  “In May?”

  “Seems soon?” said David cheerfully. “Ah, but not to have married might have caused worse talk. We were … very close by then.”

  “All right.”

  “Ladd had known all along … or he should have known, what was going on. Maybe he just didn’t pay attention. Anyway, the moment the date was set, we both wrote. He sent congratulations and best wishes. But he said he had finals. I don’t know. We thought he was living his life. We were not offended.” David’s mouth twitched.

  “Had Hob spoken about a possible marriage to his son, do you know?”

  “I doubt it. I’m pretty sure not. No time. He wouldn’t have done that before he spoke to me. And Hob … Well, he was a father who assumed that the boy would leave the nest and live his life. As Hob had done.”

  “But the boy is in the nest, eh?”

  “He’s been home since early August. Went to the mountains with some college types, early part of this summer. That’s been his pattern. Now, by the pattern, he ought to be going back next week. But he won’t say that he will. Or that he won’t. I’ve tried to discuss it, tried to wait and be patient, tried to establish some kind of liveable ease between us, but the truth is, I am just not getting anywhere. Any suggestions?”

  “For yourself?”

  “Naturally, for me.”

  “The intruder?”

  “I may be,” said David, vehemently, “but here I am. So, don’t toy with any suggestion that I step out, drop the works on the kid. Let him wreck the business. Let him try to support Abby which—in Hob’s sense—he cannot do. Leave Abby to the mercies of I don’t know what.”

  “It would be a nice revenge,” said Aaron thoughtfully.

  David looked at him and felt his scalp move and his face change. “I didn’t say I hated the boy. Love him, no.”

  “In my business, love and hate are not black and white.”

  “Everybody is a dirty gray, eh?” said David teasingly. “All right, then that’s what I am.” He watched his friend expectantly a moment, but his friend said nothing. “Lunch?” David picked up his phone. “What’s pending, Edna? Anything crucial?” He dealt with what was pending.

  When he hung up, he rose but his guest did not. Aaron said musingly, “You know, Dave, there was a time when a young fellow who wanted to get married went to the girl’s papa and asked permission to try for her hand.”

  “Yes?”

  “Quaint, eh? But it may be that, in those days, a lot of little dragons were slain before they could grow up to be big dragons.”

  David sat down abruptly. “You speak of the days when the parents could say No and make it stick?”

  Aaron stretched his eyes. “Not—necessarily.”

  “Then I don’t buy it,” said David. “A sop? No, I did not ask the boy’s permission, because he did not have the power to say No.”

  “An honest man,” said Aaron, beginning to squint his eyes and tilt his head.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to judge the impression you make. You look pretty good, Dave. A little too good, maybe. Where did you get that face?”

  “I look like my father,” said David, in surprise. “What are you driving at?”

  “You could be the cream of western civilization. Or a super-hypocrite. If they are not the same thing.”

  David stared at him.

  “Where Hob was loud, you are quiet. You are just as smart, but smoother. You seem to lead a more examined life. In fact, you display all the most respected virtues of our age. Reasonable. Kind. Honest. Patient. And understanding. I’m trying to see through the boy’s eyes.”

  “Then you’re not doing it very well,” snapped David. “To him,
I look like an old creep.”

  “Yes,” said Aaron softly.

  David got up. “I thought you said you weren’t a Freudian. Let’s eat.” On the way to the door, he said, “Can anybody help the boy through this? Could you?”

  “Not while he is happy.”

  “Happy?”

  “Nothing like a strong hatred to integrate the personality—temporarily. No, Dave, seriously … When and if he knows he needs some help, then someone might. Probably not I. Or it may suddenly leave him, roll up like a cloud and lift away.”

  “How?”

  “God knows,” said Aaron. “It works in him, you see? We can’t know how. Or whether he is, at all, aware.”

  “Steady does it, eh?”

  “What else?” said Aaron.

  All right, thought David. Up again, old heart.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ladd Cunningham drove his Corvette home, too fast for town streets. Displaying his virtuosity, he whipped into the long driveway without slackening speed, and zoomed between the high gray stucco house on his right and the pool enclosure on his left, screaming to a stop precisely upon the mark, under the carport. He got out and took up the black box from the floor of his car. The young people on the pool deck were shouting “Hi”—he didn’t want to answer. He had to keep his back turned toward the open triple garage where stood his mother’s car, the empty space for his stepfather’s car and that other car, never used now, that stood nearest the garden wall, covered with parachute cloth as if it wore a shroud.

  His mother had asked him once if he would like to drive it. But he didn’t want to drive it. He didn’t want to see it. The sight of it tied him in knots. Why didn’t they sell it? Didn’t do his father’s Caddy any good to sit there. Rotting.

  With the box under his arm, he sidled toward the fence. The Lorimers were in there and Gary Fenwick. He didn’t want to talk to the Lorimers. He said, “Hey, Gare?”

  “Hey, Ladd?”

  “Come on up.”

  “Sure thing.” Gary was huge. He lumbered along the deck, toweling his head.

  “Put your pants on,” Ladd said in icy command and turned and walked.

  The big L-shaped house, now on his left, stood on ground four feet higher than the driveway and the pool area. Broad steps led up into the garden that lay within the sheltering arms of the L. But Ladd veered away from those steps when he saw his mother and Rafe Lorimer on the quarter circle of brick terrace. They waved and called “Hi.” He waved but he went on to the kitchen door. Didn’t want to talk to them.

  “You all had your lunch, Mr. Ladd?” Cleona asked him.

  “I don’t need any. Where’s the beer?” Ladd swung open the refrigerator door and found the cans of beer. He found frankfurters and put one, cold, as it was, into his mouth as if it were a cigarette. He had the black box under his arm.

  Cleona materialized beside him with a small round tray, so he put four cans of beer on the tray and a couple more frankfurters and a piece of cheese. He balanced the tray on his right hand. Cleona projected some dark inarticulate communication that he sensed and rejected. “Don’t touch me,” his spirit screamed.

  He went into the spacious hall, and on the stairs that made a tilted question mark, flowing in beauty, he fled upward.

  Felicia Lorimer sat on the pool coping and lifted her brown legs, Jet them down, watched the blue and crystal movement of water and light swirling in beauty around her ankles.

  Her brother, supine on the diving board, said, “His not to reason why.”

  Gary Fenwick had trotted in his beefy way down to the pool house. This was built against a wall protecting the pool from the street, at the other end of the long rectangle. Since childhood, Gary had gone where Ladd Cunningham suggested that they go, played the pranks that Ladd dreamed up, been the muscle for Ladd’s brain. Even now that they had been separated during three college years, since Gary lived at home and went to a local college, for financial reasons—even now Gary reacted to the old habit. It did not seem to occur to him to argue, for instance, that this was the perfect sunny day for pool-lounging.

  The Lorimers said no more until Gary had reappeared, in shorts and shirt, let himself out of the self-latching gate, and lumbered off toward the house. Felicia leaned back on straight arms and lifted her face to the sunlight, very conscious of her taut little body, her flat tummy, her neat buttocks, her small breasts that were, nevertheless, unmistakably breasts. Her dark hair was wet and hung dismally.

  “Hey, Felicia?” Justin said softly.

  She didn’t want to talk to her brother. His world was a different world from hers. Justin was very well made, smooth skin over long muscles. He was blondly good-looking and he had a flair. He had a ruthless fitness about him and cared nothing for God or the devil.

  “What?” she said flatly. But she already knew what. Felicia wasn’t a “cute” girl. Her lips were too full, her nose was too flat, her eyes were too small, and no amount of suntan would change these features. She would never be pretty. She hoped to be attractive. But hers would never be an appeal that a thoroughly well-adjusted bourgeois like her brother Justin could recognize. She was just the tolerated little sister.

  “Look,” said her brother to the sky, “I’m taking off Saturday night.”

  “I know it.”

  “But Ladd’s not going.”

  She didn’t say anything because her heart jumped.

  “Something’s taken his mind off education,” said Justin impatiently. “What I want to say to you is—watch it, and don’t mess around with him.”

  “I don’t know why you say that to me,” said Felicia plaintively. “Ladd’s never even asked me out.”

  “Aah …” Justin rolled his head upon the fiber mat. She looked up and caught his glance out of his very dark blue eyes. “Come on,” said Justin Lorimer. “He isn’t dating. He hangs around. So do you. You think I’m stupid or something? He talks. You’re dumb enough to listen.”

  “It’s never dumb to listen.”

  “So”—her brother talked her down—“if you’re getting ideas about little old Cousin Ladd, I’m telling you to forget them. Because this kid is—”

  “What?” said Felicia belligerently.

  “Off the beam,” her brother said sharply. “You stick with your own crowd. Let him alone. Even a pretty near senior in high school, like you, is not the oldest and wisest character in the world.”

  “Off the beam, eh?” said Felicia musingly. “Because he may have problems and feelings that you don’t understand?”

  “Don’t tell me,” groaned her brother, “that you’re falling for that old sensitive-suffering-soul routine. After what we’ve been through?”

  Felicia held hard to her own mysteries. She slapped her legs upon the water. “Why the sudden concern?” she said flippantly. “Is it for my soul? Or what?”

  “Okay. Okay,” her brother said. But he rolled over and she couldn’t avoid his dark, his blue, his cool, his too bright gaze. “I’m not going to be around,” he said, “and Rafe’s been an idiot, all his life. Look, I never was Ladd Cunningham’s slave and admirer but I have nothing special against him.…”

  “All other people besides you may not be idiots,” his sister said. She let her shoulders bunch up to support her skull. Her full lips were drawn into a smile.

  Her brother said, “In one ear and out the other. Okay. It figures.” He put his face down on his folded arms and surrendered to the beating sunshine.

  Felicia felt that her brother didn’t believe in suffering, nor did he listen to tiny clues, prophetic whispers. Whole dimensions of life were sealed from him.

  “Que sera sera,” she said, feeling very happy, not noticing how she took his intuition for the truth. She believed what she had hoped. Ladd Cunningham would not go away this year. He would stay in the big house that stood back to back with the shabby old frame house where Felicia and her father lived, and her brother, in the summer.

  Up on the terrace, Abigail said to F
elicia’s father, “Take pity on the last muffin, please, Rafe?”

  Rafe crinkled up his whole face, top to bottom, in the way he had. “Cleona is a menace to mankind. Can’t you stop her from baking muffins?”

  “I really don’t try,” said Abby, who was still miraculously slim and fair.

  Rafe took the last muffin and spread it lavishly with all the rest of the butter. His gray hair stood up on his head. He was wearing a gray sweat shirt and a pair of cotton slacks, washed colorless. Sandals on his bare feet He was sixty odd, and in some vague way a cousin of Abigail’s. He was in and out of her house, and his children in and out of her pool, as naturally as cat and kittens. Rafe lived frugally on some income from his dead wife’s estate and never asked Abby for anything, but Abby was carelessly generous.

  Rafe had a philosophy. Never worry about money. So when Hob Cunningham had slipped Rafe a check one day, in an amount to cover four years’ tuition at Stanford for Justin, Rafe had accepted it with gracious secrecy, put it in Justin’s bank account, with a covering lie, and since had forgotten all about it. He was, complacently, a secessionist No rat race for Rafe. He had the old house and the sufficient income and the old stable made into a studio where he sculpted or painted or carved, according to where he felt his talents ought to go, in any given week. He was not greatly talented at any of the arts, but it never occurred to Rafe not to be an artist.

  Nor did it occur to him that he might not be qualified for the role of wise old counselor, which he blithely and frequently assumed. He said to Abby, “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. Ladd is just a little confused. He needs time to think. He’ll come into his own. Don’t fear.”

  Abby was a lovely creature. Her brow had a little built-in pucker on it and her big eyes searched faces for reassurance. People tended to reassure Abby. “I don’t know, Rafe,” she said. “He seems so especially moody and so far away. Of course, Ladd never has been a completely sunny personality.”

  “Brilliant boy. Brilliant boy,” murmured Rafe.

  “Do you think he is mourning for Hob, still?”

  “Why, Hob’s passing has had an effect naturally. Perhaps being at home. But all this will pass. It will pass.” Rafe patted her forearm.