The New Yorker Stories

by Callaghan, Morley; Callaghan, Barry;

  “He’s at a sanitarium. He got his spine hurt in the war, then he got tuberculosis. He’s pretty bad. They’ve got to carry him around. We want to love each other every time we meet, but we can’t.”

  “That’s tough, poor kid. I suppose you’ve got to pay for him.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have many men?”

  “I don’t want any.”

  “They come here to see you?”

  “No, no. I don’t know what got into me. I liked you, and felt a little crazy.”

  “I’ll slide along. What’s your first name?”

  “Lola. You’d better go now.”

  “Couldn’t I see you again?” he said suddenly.

  “No, you’re going away tomorrow,” she said, smiling confidently.

  “So you’ve got it all figured out. Supposing I don’t go?”

  “Please, you must.”

  Her arms were trembling when she held his overcoat. She wanted him to go before Irene came home.

  “You didn’t give me much time,” he said flatly.

  “No. You’re a lovely guy. Kiss me.”

  “You got that figured out too.”

  “Just kiss and hold me once more, George.” She held on to him as if she did not expect to be embraced again for a long time, and he said, “I think I’ll stay in the city a while longer.”

  “It’s too bad. You’ve got to go. We can’t see each other again.”

  In the poorly lighted hall she looked lovely, her cheeks were flushed. As he went out of the door and down the walk to the street he remembered that he hadn’t asked how she had found out his name. Snow was falling lightly and there were hardly any footprints on the sidewalk. All he could think of was that he ought to go back to the restaurant and ask Steve for his job again. Steve was fond of him. But he knew he could not. “She had it all figured out,” he muttered, turning up his coat collar.

  THE RED HAT

  It was the kind of hat Frances had wanted for months, plain and little and red with the narrow brim tacked back, which would look so smart and simple and expensive. There was really very little to it, it was so plain, but it was the kind of felt hat that would have made her feel confident of a sleek appearance. She stood on the pavement, her face pressed close against the shop window, a slender, tall, and good-looking girl wearing a reddish woollen dress clinging tightly to her body. On the way home from work, the last three evenings, she had stopped to look at the hat. And when she had got home she had told Mrs. Foley, who lived in the next apartment, how much the little hat appealed to her. In the window were many smart hats all very expensive. There was only one red felt hat, on a mannequin head with a silver face and very red lips.

  Though Frances stood by the window a long time she had no intention of buying the hat, because her husband was out of work and they couldn’t afford it; she was waiting for him to get a decent job so that she could buy clothes for herself. Not that she looked shabby, but the fall weather was a little cold, a sharp wind sometimes blowing gustily up the avenue, and in the twilight, on the way home from work with the wind blowing, she knew she ought to be wearing a light coat. In the early afternoon when the sun was shining brightly she looked neat and warm in her woolen dress.

  Though she ought to have been on her way home Frances couldn’t help standing there, thinking she might look beautiful in this hat if she went out with Eric for the evening. Since he had been so moody and discontented recently she now thought with pleasure of pleasing him by wearing something that would give her a new kind of elegance, of making him feel cheerful and proud of her and glad, after all, that they were married.

  But the hat cost fifteen dollars. She had eighteen dollars in her purse, all that was left of her salary after shopping for groceries for the week. It was ridiculous for her to be there looking at the hat, which was obviously too expensive for her, so she smiled and walked away, putting both hands in the small pockets of her dress. She walked slowly, glancing at two women who were standing at the other end of the big window. One of the two women, the younger one, wearing a velvet coat trimmed with squirrel, said to the other: “Let’s go in and try some of them on.”

  Hesitating and half turning, Frances thought it would be quite harmless and amusing if she went into the shop and tried on the red hat, just to see if it looked as good on her as it did on the mannequin head. It never occurred to her to buy the hat.

  In the shop, she walked on soft, thick, grey carpet to the chair by the window, where she sat alone for a few minutes, waiting for one of the saleswomen to come to her. At one of the mirrors an elderly lady with bleached hair was fussing with many hats and talking to a deferential and patient saleswoman. Frances, looking at the big dominant woman with the bleached hair and the expensive clothes, felt embarrassed, because she thought it ought to be apparent to everyone in the shop, by the expression on her face, that she had no intention of taking a hat.

  A deep-bosomed saleswoman, wearing black silk, smiled at Frances, appraising her carefully. Frances was the kind of customer who might look good in any one of the hats. At the same time, while looking at her, the saleswoman wondered why she wasn’t wearing a coat, or at least carrying one, for the evenings were often chilly.

  “I wanted to try on the little hat, the red one in the window,” Frances said.

  The saleswoman had decided by this time that Frances intended only to amuse herself by trying on hats, so when she took the hat from the window and handed it to Frances she smiled politely and watched her adjusting it on her head. Frances tried the hat and patted a strand of fair hair till it curled by the side of the brim. And then, because she was delighted to see that it was as attractive on her as it had been on the mannequin head with the silver face, she smiled happily, noticing in the mirror that her face was the shape of the mannequin face, a little long and narrow, the nose fine and firm, and she took out her lipstick and marked her lips. Looking in the glass again she felt elated and seemed to enjoy a kind of freedom. She felt elegant and a little haughty. Then she saw in the mirror the image of the deep-bosomed and polite saleslady.

  “It is nice, isn’t it?” Frances said, wishing suddenly that she hadn’t come into the store.

  “It is wonderfully becoming to you, especially to you.”

  And Frances said suddenly: “I suppose I could change it, if my husband didn’t like it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I’ll take it.”

  Even while paying for the hat and assuring herself that it would be amusing to take it home for the evening, she had a feeling that she ought to have known when she first came into the store that she intended to take the hat home. The saleswoman was smiling. Frances, no longer embarrassed, thought with pleasure of going out with Eric and wearing the hat, tucking the price tag up into her hair. In the morning she could return it.

  But as she walked out of the store there was a hope way down within her that Eric would find her so charming in the red hat he would insist she keep it. She wanted him to be freshly aware of her, to like the hat, to discover its restrained elegance. And when they went out together for the evening they would both share the feeling she had had when first she had looked in the shop window. Frances, carrying the box, hurried, eager to get home. The sharp wind had gone down. When there was no wind on these fall evenings it was not cold, and she would not have to wear a coat with her woolen dress. It was just about dark now and all the lights were lit in the streets.

  The stairs in the apartment house were long, and on other evenings very tiring, but tonight she seemed to be breathing lightly as she opened the door. Her husband was sitting by the table lamp, reading the paper. A black-haired man with a well-shaped nose, he seemed utterly without energy, slumped down in the chair. A slight odour of whiskey came from him. For four months he had been out of work and some of the spirit had gone out of him, as if he felt that he could never again have independence, and most of the afternoon he had been standing in the streets by the theatres, talking
with actors who were out of work.

  “Hello, Eric boy,” she said, kissing him on the head.

  “’Lo France,” he said.

  “Let’s go out and eat tonight,” she said.

  “What with?”

  “Bucks, big boy, a couple of dollar dinners.”

  He had hardly looked at her. She went into the bedroom and took the hat out of the box, adjusting it on her head to the right angle, lightly powdering her nose and smiling cheerfully. Jauntily she walked into the living room, swinging her hips a little and trying not to smile too openly.

  “Take a look at the hat, Eric. How would you like to step out with me?”

  Smiling faintly, he said: “You look snappy, but you can’t afford a hat.”

  “Never mind that. How do you like it?”

  “What’s the use if you can’t keep it.”

  “Did you ever see anything look so good on me?”

  “Was it bargain day somewhere?”

  “Bargain day! Fifteen bucks at one of the best shops!”

  “You’d bother looking at fifteen-dollar hats with me out of work,” he said angrily, getting up and glaring at her.

  “I would.”

  “It’s your money. You do what you want.”

  Frances felt hurt, as if for months there had been a steady pressure on her, and she said stubbornly: “I paid for it. Of course, I can take it back if you insist.”

  “If I insist,” he said, getting up slowly and sneering at her as though he had been hating her for months. “ If I insist. And you know how I feel about the whole business.”

  Frances felt hurt and yet strong from indignation, so shrugged her shoulders. “I wanted to wear it tonight,” she said.

  His face was white, his eyes almost closed. Suddenly he grabbed hold of her by the wrist, twisting it till she sank down on one knee.

  “You’ll get rid of that hat or I’ll break every bone in your body. I’ll clear out of here for good.”

  “Eric, please.”

  “You’ve been keeping me, haven’t you?”

  “Don’t, Eric.”

  “Get your fifteen-buck hat out of my sight. Get rid of it, or I’ll get out of here for good.”

  He snatched the hat from her head, pulling it, twisting it in his hands, then throwing it on the floor. He kicked it across the room. “Get it out of here or we’re through.”

  The indignation had gone out of Frances. She was afraid of him; afraid, too, that he would suddenly rush out of the room and never come back, for she knew he had thought of doing it before. Picking up the hat she caressed the soft felt with her fingers, though she could hardly see it with her eyes filled with tears. The felt was creased, the price tag had been torn off, leaving a tiny tear at the back.

  Eric was sitting there, watching her.

  The hat was torn and she could not take it back. She put it in the box, wrapping the tissue paper around it, and then she went along the hall to Mrs. Foley’s apartment.

  Mrs. Foley, a smiling, fat woman with a round, cheerful face, opened the door. She saw Frances was agitated and felt sorry for her. “Frances, dear, what’s the matter with you?”

  “You remember the hat I was telling you about? Here it is. It doesn’t look good on me. I was disappointed and pulled it off my head and there’s a tiny tear in it. Maybe you’d want it.”

  Mrs. Foley thought at once that Frances had been quarreling with her husband. Mrs. Foley held up the hat and looked at it shrewdly. Then she went back into her bedroom and tried it on. The felt was good, and though it had been creased, it was quite smooth now. “Of course, I never pay more than five dollars for a hat,” she said. The little felt hat did not look good on her round head and face.

  “I hate to offer you five dollars for it, Frances, but . . .”

  “All right. Give me five dollars.”

  As Mrs. Foley took the five dollars from her purse, Frances said suddenly: “Listen, dear, if I want it back next week you’ll sell it back to me for five?”

  “Sure I will, kid.”

  Frances hurried to her own apartment. Though she knew Eric could not have gone out while she was standing in the hall, she kept on saying to herself: “Please, Heaven, please don’t let me do anything to make him leave me while he’s feeling this way.”

  Eric, with his arms folded across his chest, was looking out of the window. Frances put the five dollars Mrs. Foley had given her, and the three dollars left over from her salary, on the small table by Eric’s chair. “I sold it to Mrs. Foley,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he said, without looking at her,

  “I’m absolutely satisfied,” she said, softly and sincerely.

  “AIl right, I’m sorry,” he said briefly.

  “I mean I don’t know what makes you think I’m not satisfied – that’s all,” she said.

  Sitting beside him she put her elbow on her knee and thought of the felt hat on Mrs. Foley’s head: it did not look good on her; her face was not the shape of the long silver face of the mannequin head. As Frances thought of the way the hat had looked on the head in the window she hoped vaguely that something would turn up so that she could get it back from Mrs. Foley by the end of the week. And just thinking of it, she felt that faint haughty elation; it was a plain little red hat, the kind of hat she had wanted for months, elegant and expensive, a plain felt hat, so very distinctive.

  THE DUEL

  In their light summer suits they kept coming up the steps from the Christopher Street subway into the warm night, their bright faces moving from the shadow into the street light. Sometimes they came slowly in groups, but those who were alone hurried when they reached the street. At first there were so many girls that Luther Simpson, standing a little piece away on Seventh Avenue, thought Inez would surely be among them. “She’ll be on the next train,” he thought. “If she’s not on that, I’ll only wait three trains more.”

  He grew more and more desolate, more uncertain and fearful, and yet, looking along the lighted avenue and remembering how often he and Inez had been among these people at this hour, he felt eager and almost hopeful. This was his neighbourhood, here among these people; they looked just the same as they did on any other night when he and Inez were together. At any moment she was apt to come hurrying along; she would try hard to look severe, smile in spite of herself, look very lovely, start to speak, and then maybe laugh a little instead, and then they would link arms awkwardly and walk in silence.

  But because he could not help feeling fearful, Luther started to walk along the side street toward her house, so he would be sure of not missing her. When he was nearly there a taxi stopped a few houses away with the engine running. The driver turned and hung open the door, and there was a little movement of his shoulders as he made himself more comfortable in his seat. Then the engine was turned off. After what seemed a very long time a big man in a grey flannel suit stepped out and then helped Inez to the pavement. He helped her out with a special tenderness, and when he made a little bow to her the light shone on his high forehead and black hair. “Good night, Inez. You’re a darling,” he was saying.

  She was smiling; her face looked more lovely than Luther had thought it would look when he was thinking of her coming along and smiling at him. “It was such a super time,” she said gaily.

  “Dream about it,” the man said, grinning.

  “I’ll try hard,” she called as she turned, waving her hand. Her face in that light was full of a glowing excitement; there was a reckless, laughing joy in it that Luther had never seen before, as if she had just come from some kind of delightful amusement she had not known for a long time, something that had left her a little breathless. The sound of her laughter scared Luther. It seemed to be the very sound he had been waiting for so fearfully. Now, in her white linen suit and white shoes, she was going across the pavement. She was taking the key out of her purse. Pausing an instant, she pulled off her hat and shook her thick, dark hair free. And then, as she opened the door, he called out sh
arply, “Inez, Inez, wait a minute.”

  Startled, she turned, but she did not speak. She stood there watching him coming toward her, and when he was close to her she said in a cool, even tone, “What do you want, Luther?”

  “What were you doing with that guy, Inez? Where have you been?” He took hold of her by the arm as if she had always belonged to him and now he was entitled to punish her, but when she pulled her arm away so very firmly he stopped speaking, as if he could not get his breath.

  “It’s none of your business where I was, Luther,” she said. “I’m going in now, if you don’t mind.”

  “Who was that guy?”

  “I won’t tell you.”

  “Was that the first time you were out with him?”

  “I won’t tell you,” she said wearily. “I’m going in.”

  He was trying to think of something harsh to say that would hurt her, but as he realized how aloof she was, how untouched by his presence, he grew frightened, and he said, “Listen, I was only kidding the other night. I’m not sore now, I love you, Inez. Only you should have said you were going out with someone else when I phoned. You said you were going to see your cousin.”

  “Supposing I did.”

  “Well . . . you ought . . . Never mind that. I’m not sore. I can understand you might want to see a show sometimes like we used to. Were you at a show? See, I’m not sore. Look at me.” Luther was trying to smile like an amiable young man who was happy to see people having a good time, but when Inez did look up at him she wasn’t reassured at all.

  She grew very agitated and said angrily, “You’ve got a nerve, Luther. You weren’t content to leave things the way they were. Any girl would get tired of the way you go . . .” She didn’t finish, she felt an ache growing in her for all the good times they had had during these last three years. Every trivial pleasure they had shared seemed to have an intense meaning now. And then she blurted out, “I’m sick and tired of the way you’ve been going on, Luther. That’s all over, I’ve made up my mind.”