At the moment he was taking some hard-earned ease on the living room couch, while the youngsters plunged through the front screen door, across the living room, into the kitchen, down the stairs and out the back door (whose slamming shook the house), only to repeat the whole procedure a moment later to the accompaniment of shouts and screams.
It was true that liberty had turned to license. But the time for restraint was not now. Tomorrow, perhaps. Or next week. But not yet.
The fact was, he thought while lying there and feeling each sound as a hammerblow at his temples, Evelyn was right. Things couldn't go on like this. He would have to take himself in hand. Maybe Evelyn's threat was the only thing that could have pulled him together.
She had said it last night. Not angrily. Not coldly, but gently, as though no other alternative existed.
Evelyn had been waiting for him in the kitchen. There was food on the table. The children were in bed. He came up the short flight of stairs from the back door, rigidly controlling his equilibrium.
"I don't want anything to eat," he had said. Evelyn said nothing. He had stood there swaying, then started for the livingroom.
Evelyn's voice stopped him halfway. "August," she had said, very quietly. "Sit down and eat something, whether you want to or not. I have something to say and you're going to be sober to hear it.
"I'm going to give you one last chance, Augie," she had said. "I don't know what's the matter with you, and I'm not going to try to find out. All I know is you're making the children absolutely sick. They're terrified of you.
"I'm a healthy woman, Angle. I need a husband. I need one for my children and a man for myself. But for months all I've had is a dipsomaniac.
"If you can't straighten yourself out, right this minute, and stay that way--if you frighten Alec or Bertha again, or come home drunk once more--that very instant I'll pack my things and leave you. That's final."
How could you argue with her? She was right. You couldn't go on like this. Another hangover and you'd make another mistake and ... That was a bad line of reasoning for a man to follow!
With painful caution not to jar his skull, he sat up. Maybe another couple of aspirin? He closed his eyes for a moment, then rose and started for the stairs. Again the front screen slammed, again small feet crashed across the room. Automatically anger rose in his throat. But he caught it.
"Look, kids," he said. "Daddy's got an awful headache. Do me a special favor and take it easy for a little while. I've got to go upstairs and get something. When I come down we'll go for a walk. But please take it easy."
Alec said, "Okay, Daddy. We'll wait for you right here."
"Thanks, pal," Hennler said. He labored up the stain and searched out the aspirin bottle in the medicine chest. He found it and opened the bottle, dropping out a pair of pills into his hand. He was just reaching for the tumbler when it came--his own voice booming at him.
"Montaugan to Long Island one thirteen. Montaugan to Long Island one thirteen, give ETA ..." The tape recorder! The goddamned kids!
He plunged down the stairs, hearing Evelyn say, "Alec! Bertha! Leave that ..."
And then he burst into the livingroom.
"Get away from that thing, goddamn you! Get away!"
Alec, at the machine, reached up toward the controls. But Hennler saw Buster, Alec's rag doll, lying on the couch. He seized it by one leg and ran for the boy, pummeling him with the limp doll.
"Keep your dirty little hands off that thing," he shrieked, belaboring the child's head.
"Daddy," Alec screamed. "You're hurting Buster! Daddy!"
The doll's body ripped from the leg and hurtled across the room. Alec let go a wail of purest anguish. "Oh, Daddy! You've killed Buster!"
Then Evelyn struck Hennler a stinging blow in the face, and he stood dazed, still clutching the doll-less leg, while she turned off the screeching machine. Her face was white with anger. Her hands shook as she confronted him. "I warned you, Augie. I told you I couldn't take another scene. This is the end. The absolute end ..."
He watched her, trying to think of something to say, some promise to make, some assurance to give, as she phoned for a cab.
In a matter of minutes the cab honked at the front door and he followed her down, watched silently as she urged the children ahead of her, said nothing as the driver slammed the door behind them, stared vacantly as the car curved into Park Avenue and disappeared.
XIV
DOLORES CARTER
Dolores tried to understand what had happened to her this afternoon. Whatever it was, it was the same as the day of the Ivalor's sinking. Then she had waited for radio bulletins, for the telephone, for something, anything to tell her where Ivan was, how he was, if he was.
When the phone call did come from the Coast Guard, reporting he was alive and safe, and he should be met at the Coast Guard facility, the relief had been greater than she had ever felt before. In that moment some tremendous orgasmic discharge of tension made her realize, as she never had until that moment, how very much she loved Ivan Carter.
It had been like that up to the final moment--the very last second when they entered the room where Ivan waited with Erica. Then, the instant she saw him with his blanket draped about him like some silly Roman toga, a steel shutter closed across the outlet of her emotions. In that instant she was utterly cold. "Well, Ivan," she remembered saying, "You certainly got yourself in a lovely fix this time."
It had been the same this afternoon.
No one more than she knew how crucial today, had been for Ivan. It had been a test, not only of his ability, but of his very personality.
It had been an unfair test--something loaded against him from the start. Thoracic surgery was a special skill. It required training and practice and knowledge of a very high order. But surgery of the skull, entry into the very tissue of awareness through all the delicate passageways and barriers, was another special skill so complex and different that the man most able in the one would never venture into the other.
All through the afternoon she had waited. Waited, waited. Once she was phoned the waterworks--there had been no chance to take the man to the hospital. A hoarse-voiced man had answered.
"Can you tell me if Doctor Carter has finished the operation?"
"I don't know, lady," the man said. "They're still in there. They keep getting more stuff from the hospital, but they don't tell us anything."
"Thank you," she had said, and dropped the receiver.
Then back to waiting--finding little things to do, a closet to be straightened, an account book to be brought to date, a business letter to be written. And all the time waiting.
Then, when the Jaguar came up the drive at last she had run through the house, meeting him as he came from the kitchen through the pantryway. He had looked tired, his face grim and unhappy.
"What happened?" she had said.
"Nothing happened," he said. "The man died."
"Well, I guess you did the best anyone could expect."
"I guess I did."
Even then it had not been too late. She could have followed him, said something to make him know she understood. Instead she had driven to Ella Magnuson's for something that was no more than pretext to escape the house. Worse, she had stayed for dinner, clinging to the Magnusons to avoid going home. Now, driving homeward through the evening, it was too late.
Then, coming up the road ahead, she saw the onrushing headlights of another car. They flashed by, low, trailed by an underslung body. The Jaguar.
She couldn't see the driver. It was dark, and the glare of the headlights had blinded her. It might be anyone. Gary. Erica. Ivan wouldn't be likely to go out, though. Not after a day like that.
She drove back to the garage, stopping outside. After a moment Gary emerged from the dark maw of the building. He tossed his cigarette to the gravel and stepped on it.
"Who was that just going out?"
"The Doctor and Miss Ledbitter," Gary said. His voice was harsh and, in the darkne
ss, his face looked hard and grim.
"Oh," Dolores said. She felt a passing dizziness. "Did he say when he would be back?"
"Not until tomorrow." He bit the words off.
"I guess something like that had to be expected after he blew up this afternoon," she said, getting out of the car.
"Blew up?"
"I meant to say, after the patient died."
"The patient didn't die of the operation, Mrs. Carter. The patient died because they didn't get enough plasma in time. The patient died of shock, Mrs. Carter. The operation, as an operation, was a complete success. Dr. Puhn told me. He said he'd never seen such masterful work." He stopped short. Then he said, "I just thought you ought to know, Mrs. Carter."
Without another word he turned and walked into the pitch darkness of the garage.
GARY HEASLIP
Gary had been drinking all evening. It had started right after the operation. Carter had stopped at a tavern near the waterworks and they had bent elbows together.
Gary had helped with the surgery, setting up lights on the surgeon's instructions, watching in horror as the glittering metal probed into the torn eye socket and searched about within the bleeding brain.
But the glow of alcohol had half-obliterated the horror as they drove back to the Carter residence, and Gary had been thinking about Erica.
He hadn't expected it to happen like that: one day she was a pretty girl, nice to be with and talk to, but somebody else's. The next she was your girl, and the focus of most of your thoughts.
In the car, driving Carter homeward, Gary searched out and studied the symptoms of his love. They were distinct from any he had ever had before. He had an awareness of heading homeward, though 'til now he had felt no special fondness for the Carter menage. He knew she would be waiting to see him. It was a very special feeling. He was selfconscious enough to wonder if it would last.
It was nice she had broken with Carter before she came to him. It meant this wasn't something developed of a moment's passion. It meant she had been thinking about it since their trip to New York.
"Let me off by the kitchen," the Doctor had said. "Mrs. Carter may have somebody in the front of the house and I'm in no mood to meet them."
He had followed Carter into the kitchen, where Vera and Paula May were making dinner. "Have you seen Miss Erica," he asked the cook.
"I don't know where she is," Vera said. "She hasn't been around all afternoon."
"She's upstairs in her room," Paula May had told him. "But I think she's kind of upset. I don't think she wants to see anybody now."
He went up the back stairs anyway, two at a time. There was no sound from her room but a crack of light showed under the door. He rapped lightly. There was no answer. He knocked again.
"Who's there?"
"Gary."
"I can't see you now."
"Why not,"
"I can't. Isn't that enough?"
"But I have something to tell you."
"I don't want to talk to you. Now let me alone."
"Erica--"
"Go away, Gary." Her voice was sharp. "What do you think I am, a fool? Leave me alone." He tried the knob, the door was locked. After a while he gave up. He drove the car into the garage, and climbed the stairs to the playroom.
From the bar he poured himself half a tumbler of rye to reinstate the glow that had vanished outside Erica's door.
At first, as he sat there, he tried to understand her--get inside her mind. Had Carter done something to her? But Carter hadn't seen her last night.
Then, as liquor smoothed things over, worry turned to anger. What the hell right had she to act like that? She wasn't a virgin. She had no right to feel hurt.
Another drink and it was startlingly clear to Gary that women were all alike; whimsical, irresponsible little beasts, whose vagaries were enough to destroy the reason of any sane man.
He heard voices crossing the yard. He put the bottle back in the bar and hid the tumbler. Then he went down into the garage.
Standing at the entrance, fumbling for the lightswitch, was Ivan Carter. The Doctor looked tired. His eyes were ringed and his posture was slack with exhaustion and benzedrine letdown. Beside him was Erica. Her eyes were sullen.
"Yes, Doctor?" Gary said.
"We won't need you, Heaslip," Carter said. "Just taking the car for a while. As a matter of fact I don't think we'll be back before morning."
He had hardly poured out another drink when he heard the Cadillac and he went down to meet it.
Dolores pulled up before the garage. "Who was that just going out?"
He told her, almost angrily. What did the woman want of a man?
"I guess something like that had to be expected after he blew up this afternoon," she said.
Suddenly his anger boiled over. How stupid could she be? Didn't she realize how she deprecated the man--in his own house; even in her own thoughts. Nobody had told her anything. She assumed Carter had fouled up. She assumed him to be incompetent. And she wondered who was wrecking her marriage.
As politely as he could he explained the facts. Then, afraid his anger would find its own vent, he turned back into the garage.
Mechanically, for something to do, he checked over the car, noticing the peculiar detachment between his hands and his mind.
What was Erica doing? Why had she gone with Carter again, after last night? What had he, Gary, done that she should turn on him this way?
What was she doing? Silly question! What did a man's ex-mistress do when she went out with him for the night?
There was a faint noise behind him and a voice said, "Gary?"
For one instant his heart leaped. Erica? Then he was disabused as Irene stepped from the shadows. "What are you doing here?"
"Nothing. I mean I just wanted to see you." Her sweater and skirt delineated the graceful line of her body. "I wanted to talk."
"Anything special in mind?" He came around the car, wiping his hands.
"I thought you might like to drive me to the Sea Shell for a drink?"
"Miss Carter," he said, with a mocking half-bow, "I would consider it a privilege." Why had you said that? Now you were stuck with it. What the hell! Anything was better than hanging around here trying to figure what Carter and Erica were doing. "I'd better wash up a little first, though."
He went into the washroom in the back of the garage. After all, there was nothing wrong with taking her out for a drink. She wasn't that much of a kid. The way she was dressed tonight, she didn't look like a kid. It would give you somebody to talk to; right now that was pretty important.
"I guess we're all set. Do you need a coat?"
For a while they drove through the evening in silence. But, as they reached the streetlights, Irene moved close on the seat. She touched Gary's arm. "You're being awfully nice to me tonight," she said.
"Why not? You're a nice person."
"Thanks, Gary."
"Don't thank me, young lady. I've had my eye on you right along." That was the right tone to set. A sort of mocking grandfatherliness. Irene was going to be a terrific woman when she grew up. She was a terrific looking woman already--though a little young. Oh, what the hell! Let her have a big time of it tonight. What could go wrong? They stopped at the Sea Shell for dinner and a few drinks. Then they dropped in at the Dew Drop Inn.
A little before midnight the moon began to creep upward in the east and Gary was suddenly smitten with an idea. "Let's," he suggested, "get a bottle of something and go watch the moon on the water."
For a while they scrabbled about for a liquor store. Failing at last, they negotiated with a reluctant bartender until he surrendered a quart for a grossly exaggerated fee. Then, in sudden, breathless excitement, they sped toward Montaugan Point.
Gary swung the car off the road, running it over the weed-grown sand to the shielding ridge of dunes. He extracted a heavy lap robe from the back of the car and they sat together watching the white breaking crests of the waves sweeping in muffled thunde
r along the moonlit sands.
There was no wind, but the warmth was going out of the air. Irene shivered and Gary put his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. She pressed still closer and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
"Getting a little chilly. Maybe we ought to open the bottle." He broke the seal and handed her the bottle, watching with some amazement as she gurgled it for several seconds. "Easy, lady! We might need some of that later."
She handed the bottle back. "I thought it might warm me up a little."
"Warming's all right, but there's no need to get fried." He uptilted the bottle for himself. It warmed him considerably.
There was a log caught in the surf. He pointed it out to Irene and for a long time they watched it. Sometimes it was left stranded momentarily, as a wave ebbed too swiftly to carry it. But, an instant later, another surge caught it and dragged it back out into the heaving surf.
"Gary, why don't you ever treat me like a woman?"
"Don't I?"
"Not much. You think of me as a kid, don't you?"
He was having a little trouble keeping the log in focus. He turned his head and looked down at her. Her face was pale and luminous, outlined in a heavy nimbus of dark hair. Her lips, by moonlight, looked black and full and sensuous. "Don't let me kid you. You're a woman, all right."
He bent his head down, intending to touch her lips lightly. But her hands rose and caught his head; her lips parted beneath his and her breath came warm into his mouth. He pulled away reluctantly.
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