A Reliable Wife

by Robert Goolrick

  He played the piano in a music hall frequented by ladies of the night, they said, ladies of the demimonde, and gamblers, probably one of the music halls she had passed. He played light classics and popular ditties, and sang sentimental songs of the moment, some in Italian, a language he seemed not to know. He didn’t sing well, they said. He wasn’t Caruso.

  He had traveled around. He traveled the country, from San Francisco to New York, always the same, sometimes a different name, playing the piano, lazing the midnights away in whorehouses, opium dens. And each town had gone sour, each town finally had enough of Tony Moretti and he moved on.

  That’s why they had a hard time finding him. That’s why several times they had found the wrong man. Each time they found that Mr. Moretti had just left the room, leaving only a shadow that resembled him.

  “How long have you looked for him? Have you followed him from town to town?”

  “Only two months, and only in Saint Louis. Speaking for Mr. Fisk and myself. Other operatives, detectives, in other cities.”

  They, in this case, meant anonymous men like Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk. The man they had found may or may not have been the man other investigators had tracked in San Francisco, or New York, or Austin, passing the information along to the home office, which sent it on to Truitt.

  “He’s not a good man, Mrs. Truitt.” Mr. Fisk held his notebook open in his hand, as though he had recorded even the points of the conversation so that he might speak clearly, like a telegraph, not a word wasted. “He’s not kind, or good, or particularly talented. He’s lazy. He’s dissolute. He’s illegitimate.”

  “You perhaps set high standards for moral character. Modern people, I’m sure . . .”

  “I’m afraid that is not the case, in this instance.” Mr. Malloy looked at her with a seriousness that lacked the slightest trace of humor. “He’s as worthless as a puppet. An exotic toy.”

  She was careful to make only the smallest gestures, not to show surprise at the catalog of Truitt’s son’s lurid life.

  “He is my husband’s son.”

  “If he is, you mean, Mrs. Truitt. Unlikely.” As though she herself were somehow not quite legitimate. She stared at him with what she hoped was disdain. Mr. Fisk looked back down at his notebook.

  Mr. Malloy paused a long time before speaking again. “Sometimes, Mrs. Truitt, we work very hard at something, we exhaust ourselves to accomplish something which seems vital to us.” He chose his words with care. “Our best hope for happiness. And sometimes we find that thing, only to find it has simply not been worth the effort.”

  “Mr. Malloy. That is not our choice. It is my husband’s wish. He is my husband’s son. You’re sure?”

  Mr. Fisk wiped Mr. Malloy’s slate clean. “He is. Tony Moretti is at least Ralph Truitt’s wife’s son. We have found him, Mrs. Truitt.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “And you will. We will go to his rooms.”

  “I want to see him before he sees me. I want to observe him anonymously, across a room, in the street. I want to measure the son against the father.”

  “The place he plays his music, this music hall, would not be suitable.”

  She had not thought. Had not thought that far. “That much is clear.”

  “There is a restaurant. It is frequented by the proper sort of people. You would not be ashamed. Not feel awkward. He goes there, in the evenings, before he goes to work, if that’s what he calls it, to eat oysters and drink champagne. It is seemingly all he ever consumes.”

  “Then we will go there.”

  Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk waited, as though there were more to say. There was not a speck of dust in the room. It was a fine room, not the best, but fine. It was the sort of room in which she might have served coffee or tea, dressed for dinner or the theater, might have kept a canary, if she had lived there, but she didn’t live there and no bird sang.

  Mr. Fisk and Mr. Malloy waited.

  “We will go there tomorrow night.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THERE WERE HYACINTHS, so brief and heavy with peppery scent. Jonquils. Campanula. Dianthus. There was allium, the French onion with its pendulous purple bloom, impossibly heavy, and lilac with its wafting fragrance, and violets, which young girls received as nosegays from their beaux. And the ornamental herbs, rosemary and sage.

  There were tulips, which had once driven men mad with their beauty. So delicate, so rare and brief. She read about the sultan, in Istanbul, who had grown over a hundred thousand tulips, brought as favors from the wild steppes of the East. Every spring, he would have an evening party to show them off. Tulips, she read, the ones that are fragrant, are fragrant only at night. Candles would be fixed to the backs of turtles, and the turtles would crawl among the flowers, as the courtiers strolled in their jeweled clothing, whispering amidst the beauty and the impossibly delicate scent, just a hint of fragrance from the East. Catherine could see their jewelry and diadems, their clothes of the thinnest silk, could hear the murmur of pleasure, their quiet singsong voices as they floated through the flickering beauty, drinking cool minted fruit juices.

  It takes seven years for a seed to turn into a tulip bulb. She wondered if the turtles that carried the candles were hurt.

  There were hydrangeas, which the Italians grew in giant terracotta pots, hydrangeas which change color with the chemistry of the soil. Acid soil would produce blooms of Prussian blue. Alkaline would turn the blooms to pink, a rose that matched the ridiculous extremes of the setting sun.

  Anyone can learn. Anyone can read and learn. The hard thing is to do, to act—to speak French, to go to Africa, or to poison an enemy, to plant a garden. Catherine absorbed her hours in learning, waiting for Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk, expanding her knowledge and perfecting her scheme, though she hardly knew anymore what her scheme was exactly. A son. The son. The son, obviously, of a harlot and a piano teacher. And Truitt, she was sure, knew this, had known it from the beginning. This extraordinary wish of Truitt’s to bring him home and make him heir to all that Truitt possessed. So much. What if he should come? Yes, her blue bottle with its subtle secret medicine was hidden deep in her luggage, shining in her mind with its deep clear cobalt. But to commit such an act under the eyes of another, of a son, the risk would be too great. She couldn’t inherit everything with a son in the picture. She was beginning to think she couldn’t inherit anything with so little work. It should be harder. It should not fall into your lap easily. Catherine had never once in her life been confused. Now she sat and waited for her plan to grow clear once again, clear and hard and bright.

  She wore a stiff black skirt and a short black jacket. She wore a hat with a veil. Although there was no reason to go anonymously, she wanted a screen between her and the man she had waited so patiently to see. She felt a deep and complex anxiety, caught as she was between her own desires and the needs of Truitt to restore some dream which would never again be made whole, no matter what. Before Fisk and Malloy arrived to call for her, she ordered a sherry, and drank it back fast, feeling the warmth and calm begin to pervade her body. She felt an almost erotic thrill, the old taste, the warmth, and she wanted another, wanted another and another, but she washed the glass and rinsed her mouth carefully until there was no trace left, and waited for the sunset.

  They were unaccountably late. She walked her rooms; she tried on her hat and felt the fabric of her fine dresses. What was beneath her hands was sure to her, the things she could feel would not betray her. She sat and waited. Her gardening books, delivered to the hotel in brown paper packets from the booksellers, lay open on the table in front of the window. The illustrations calmed her, the dream of Italy.

  They arrived with the dark, awkward and alert. She put on her hat and walked the streets of Saint Louis with her two watchdogs, until they came to a restaurant advertising beef and fresh oysters, lit from within by the warmth of gaslight, the sort of place with sawdust on the floor and portly waiters with long white aprons wrapped around their waists.
They sat and ordered small steaks. Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk refused drink, and put their notebooks on the table.

  He came in at seven, dressed in fine clothes, cleanly cut, spotless, carrying a walking stick and an air of insolence and familiarity. Everything about him looked clean. He had an aura of ownership that impressed her enormously. He sat without being shown to a table, and the waiters brought him oysters and champagne before he had settled in his seat.

  He ate the oysters as though each were its own specific moment in time. His face and his long black hair were luxurious, there was no other word for it, and Catherine peered at him through the haze of her veil, noting every detail, the way his hair lapped over his collar as he tilted his head back to down an oyster, the way his head bowed forward into his champagne, the way his eyes closed as the liquor washed down his throat, his lashes impossibly long, like a woman’s. A lock of hair fell into his eyes, and he tossed back his head. His shirtfront was sparkling, his tie of an exquisite dark silk, and he looked both artistic and antique. He was handsome, handsome in ways Malloy and Fisk would never have noted in their little notebooks, handsome in a way that could cause a woman to gasp. He was beautiful without being at all feminine, and his long strong hands hovered like great agitated birds over his food.

  There was no resemblance between the son and the father. But of course, she remembered, Truitt was almost certainly not the father. Truitt was quintessentially American, good-looking without being extreme or disturbing, stout and standard and strong. The son was European, the aquiline nose, the high cheekbones, the swarthy beard, the blue hollows of his cheeks, his sharp, glittering teeth, the lidded, almost oiled eyes. He was slender. His slim frame would have fit easily inside the warehouse of Truitt’s body.

  His eyes were black as the ice on the Wisconsin River, and just as cold. He existed, or seemed to exist, only for himself, for that moment in time when he ate his oysters and drank his champagne, aware that he was being stared at by every woman, women who sipped the details of his face and his body as he sipped his champagne, with obvious pleasure. The men looked at him with condescension, as though he were a child’s doll. He was not a person. He was an object of beauty, and he existed for that single reason and he existed for himself alone.

  He ate three dozen oysters. When he was finished, one of the portly waiters went over to him and whispered in his ear. Tony Moretti smiled and nodded. He got up slowly and languidly, like a cat in the sun, and moved to a piano in the rear of the room. He didn’t speak or turn around, but sat simply at the piano and stared at the keys. The room fell into a hush. Ladies put down their forks. Through the veil of Catherine’s hat, he was reduced to white skin and black hair, like a photograph, grainy shadow and glowing light. Finally he lifted his hands and began to play.

  He played a popular song, but he played it slowly and sorrowfully, as though it had never been played before. The notes, so light and inconsequential, took on a weight and a resonance that was altogether new, and entirely his. There was something small but magnificent about his performance, a little jewel, an invention of love. He played as though each note could be touched, could be held in the hand like mercury, touching and not touching, but miraculous in a minor way.

  When he was done, there was applause, but he did not acknowledge it, merely picked up his walking stick and stood, the sorrow of the music now in his face, a self-conscious look he had probably practiced a thousand times in front of a mirror.

  He felt his necktie, looked down, and looked across the restaurant floor. He began to walk slowly to the door, his eyes down. The diners went back to their food, the ladies casting admiring glances over their shoulders. Apparently there was to be no bill for Tony Moretti. Either he ran an account, or the brief music was enough. As he got to Catherine’s table, he stopped and crouched to the floor, running the silver tip of his stick through the sawdust.

  Catherine was panicked. Malloy and Fisk studiously looked the other way, subtly sliding their notebooks into their pockets. Tony Moretti looked up, stared at Catherine with his liquid eyes.

  “May I help you?” There was no air, no air in her lungs to bring the words out, but she did, in a short, soft gasp.

  “I’ve lost my stickpin. From my necktie. A diamond stickpin given to me by somebody I loved. I thought I saw it here. Have you seen it here?”

  “No. I’ve seen nothing.”

  “Well, then. Gone. Are you in mourning?”

  She was astonished at his forwardness. She glanced in quick nervousness at Malloy and Fisk. They looked down at their hands.

  “No. I’m not. I am recently married, in fact.”

  “I hope happily. You looked like you had lost someone, the way I’ve lost my stickpin. I’m glad that you haven’t.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve lost your stickpin.”

  “It’s of no importance. Of absolutely no importance at all. A girl gave it to me. She means nothing to me anymore. I just hate to lose things.”

  He stood up, bowed slightly from the waist, and left the restaurant.

  He was a calla lily, pure and white, meant for solitude and death. She turned to Malloy and Fisk. “I would never believe he’s Truitt’s son.”

  “Make no mistake. He is the man Truitt is looking for.”

  “He’s always been Mr. Truitt’s son. In San Francisco. In New York. He’s a liar and a wastrel, but he’s Truitt’s son, or the man Truitt calls his son, and now we have him.”

  Fisk looked at her sadly. “He’s a lost cause.”

  Malloy echoed the sadness. “And he won’t go home. Mr. Truitt has spent a great deal of money for nothing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There are too many pleasures he would miss. He’s entirely his mother’s creation. Overly refined. Immoral in every way. A pretty nothing. Truitt won’t like him. Wouldn’t want him around for five minutes. They don’t have anything to say to each other, no language between them.”

  “Nobody would like him, in fact.”

  “Still . . .” Her heart was pounding. She could feel the music in her veins, like liquor, warming her blood.

  “Exactly. Still.”

  “My husband has missed the music. He has missed his son. He has an idea, a dream. We’re here to make the dream come true.” She was careful not to appear overly excited. She was a woman who had been asked to execute a complicated transaction, no more.

  “And so we will.”

  “How will we speak to him? It’s important not to frighten him. He must listen calmly to his father’s request. There’s more in it for him than he might think. Than he might think at first.”

  “We go on Sunday.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SHE PACED HER ROOMS. She didn’t go to the library. She forgot her gardens and her ladylike ways. She thought of Tony Moretti, and imagined his body in bed, she imagined being in bed with Tony Moretti, and the desire she felt for him was like a drug in her veins. He was younger than she was; he would be the last adventure of her youth. She burned with the image of Tony Moretti sitting in the restaurant with his oysters, his liquid eyes, and his long fingers playing the sorrowful, trivial tune, his eyes as he looked into hers and inquired after his foolish stickpin. She tried to find a place to sit, a book to read, and she was uncomfortable wherever she perched. In the hotel dining room, her book useless and unopened, she felt everyone was looking at her, as if they could see, not her calm manner and her proper clothes, but only her desire. She was always lying naked and wanton next to Tony Moretti, her husband’s son.

  On seeing him, she had felt the sexual pulse of the city begin to beat. She had not noticed. She wondered, at any hour of the day and night, how many people were making love at exactly that minute. Behind every window the sexual act was being completed second after second. The poor with their ecstatic, animal grunts, the rich with their unimaginable refinements and perversions.

  She couldn’t sleep. She felt Truitt was watching her, that Truitt had known all along this would happen
.

  Sunday finally came. It was bright, bright and hard and cold, with snow in the air. They had said two o’clock. He would be awake, he would be sober, he might be alone. She was ready. She wore her gray silk dress, her wedding dress and her diamond engagement ring, and the long fur coat she had bought. As though they could protect her. She felt she was pretending to be a proper matron going to make a call on a distant relative.

  Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk walked her silently through bright, slick, shiny streets that led away from the hotel, from everything new and modern, and then through streets that weren’t nice, that were silent on a Sunday. They walked away from the fine stores and the streets so brightly lit at night, until they came to a neighborhood of low brownstones, houses not in good repair. They were without yards or even window boxes, just dingy marble stoops. Catherine could picture the rooms behind the grimy windows, rooms she herself had lived in, low, cramped, greasy from years without care. The furniture, too, would be old and comfortless, the floors unswept, the smell of onions frying, of cheap cigars, the windows always closed, a room in the back where the mother and father slept, another for the children, no matter how many, and one thing, or two, brought from the country and cherished. Sad, hard lives, without affection, without any moment but the present and that not to be enjoyed but endured. The only rhythm of their lives was the incessant turning of the machines in the factories where they worked, and their dreams in the night were of the little towns they had come from, the sun rising and setting, the turning of the seasons, the crops planted and grown and tended and harvested.