But once he knows that it is absolutely no dice, there is no persistence. They know how to keep their worlds separated. And most of them are wryly aware of the ugly fact that the overly male type who thinks he hates them so thoroughly is the man who is, deep in his heart, unsure of his own masculinity. The man who knows that his preferences are solidly heterosexual has no need to go about thumping everybody who lisps.
That outraged and muscular attitude always reminds me of a curious aspect of the Negro problem in the South. It is something seldom if ever touched upon in learned surveys of the situation, but the intelligent Negroes have been sourly amused by it for many years. When you see photographs of violence directed against Negro civil rights workers, photographs in newspapers and magazines and on the television screen, it is inevitable that among the most hate-filled and violent faces on the whites you will spot an interesting incidence of a touch of the tar brush a few generations ago. Through ugliness and violence they are trying to overcompensate for that inner awareness of an ancestor who studied himself in the mirror one day and decided he could pass and get away with it, and who-young man or young woman-went underground and reappeared a hundred or five hundred miles away as a white, married white, and prayed to God almighty that every baby would be fair enough. And, because the dark skin of the Negro is genetically a recessive characteristic, the babies were fair-unless, of course, by cruel chance both parents carried the recessive gene. Other characteristics of race are there, exposed these days by the impartial lens.
So, sitting in the back of the gallery, drinking cold beer, from a small refrigerator, I asked him what made Heidi tick. I knew that in the close associations of work they would have been like girls together, exchanging confidences.
"Poor Heidi," he said. "She's blocked. She's all tied in knots. She can't make out. Gadge had sort of a snowmaiden complex, I guess. But the kiss didn't awaken the virgin, the way it says in the books. To her it was just a lot of terrible senseless nastiness. Heavens, Gadge Trumbill would have been one of the least likely anyway. He's a possessor. He's a brutalizer. Horribly demanding. I met him through Heidi, of course. And I rue the day. I suppose it does give Heidi and me some kind of sick something in common. Disaster victims. A dear friend of mine, Anna VanMaller, the cellist, you must have heard of her, took a great interest in Heidi last spring, but poor Heidi can't go either way. She sublimates every bit of sexual drive into her work, and she uses the most fantastically subtle erotic symbolism without even realizing it. I keep telling her psychiatry might help, but she says she is perfectly happy the way things are. I think it is some sort of a father thing. When she was little, she adored him. Once I tried to tell her that she married an older man because the father had betrayed her by marrying the Doyle woman, and I actually thought she was going to scratch out my eyes. I will tell you this, though. It is a damned good thing Dr. Geis brought some good tough lawyers into that divorce action last year. I think Heidi would have settled for peanuts, just to get out of Gadge's bed forever. Funny, though, if Heidi had turned into what Gadge thought she might become, he wouldn't have had to go catting around after everybody in sight."
As I trudged back to the hotel for a late lunch, I decided there was no point in trying to sort out the fragments of inference and information until I had more.
In many ways life is less random than we think. In your past and mine, there have been times when we have, on some lonely trail, constructed a device aimed into our future. Perhaps nothing ever comes along to trigger it. We live through the safe years. But, for some people, something moves on the half forgotten path, and something arches out of the past and explodes in the here and now. These are emotional intersections, when lives cross, diverge, then meet again.
Rational examination of the specifics, like Janice Stanyard, Gretchen's disappearance, Heidi's coldness, Anna's denial of her daughter, would do me no good, not yet.
I had to get more of the feel of Former Geis' life before I could understand how he could accept so blandly a condition which caused him to steal the inheritance his heirs expected and then die without leaving any explanation, though he knew that it would create a curious kind of emotional and legal chaos.
It is almost impossible to bully a dying man, particularly one with the inner strength of Fortner Geis.
FIVE
AFTER LUNCH I rode up to my floor in an elevatorload of very noisy jolly fellows wearing nickname badges and smelling of sour mash.
I sat on my bed and checked the big phone directory and found several Stanyards. One was Mrs. Charles Stanyard. The others were male. It was a number on Greenwood. I had picked up a city map. Apparently the address would be reasonably handy to Methodist Hospital. Glory had given me Roger Geis' address in the Evanston area off Glenview. I wasn't interested in Roger. If there was anything he could add, Heidi would have known it. I was more curious about his wife, Jeanie, who'd gotten along well with Fort. Most of all I wanted to talk to Gretchen, to Susan, and again to Anna Ottlo.
I arranged for a rental Ford and drove out to the Roger Geis home, red brick with stubby white pillars, some fine old trees. I got there a little after three. The maid was there alone with the youngest child. She wouldn't take the chain off the door, and told me through the opening that the mister was playing golf, and that Mrs. Geis was at the Countryside Tennis Club with the two older children. When I asked her how to find it, she closed the door.
I got my directions at a gas station. The day was turning colder, but most of the dozen courts were in use. In a large play area noisy platoons of small children were keeping two young girls very busy. I asked a big winded lady carrying three rackets if Jeanie Geis was on the courts, and between pantings, she pointed to a game of mixed doubles and told me she was the girl on the far court. I moved over and watched them. Jeanie was a sturdy woman nearing thirty, not tall, a bit heavy in the leg. Brown legs, arms, face, hair. The heavy legs were the hard, muscular, springy legs of the athlete. She covered more than her share of the court. Her partner was a spry old man with white hair. They were playing a boy and girl in their early twenties. It was very respectable tennis, craftiness against power. Jeanie's little white pleated skirt whipped around as she twisted, cut back, dashed to the net. They weren't jolly about saves and misses. It was a blood game. On set point, Jeanie banged a cross-court shot to the young girl's backhand, and the girl took a nasty fall trying to get to it, but missed it. They gathered around her. She had taken some hide off her arm. She said she was all right.
As they all started back toward the small clubhouse, I asked Mrs. Geis if I could have a word with her. The others went ahead.
"Yes? What about?" She had that husky semi drawl of the better finishing schools, an effective delivery styled to give equal and additional impact to witticism, cattiness, or love words.
"Excuse the expression-money," I said. And there, for a few moments, was the jackpot, and I couldn't bet my hand because I didn't know what cards I was holding. Jackpot in the sudden draining of all blood and color from under the tan, in a sudden sickness of pleasant green eyes and in the shape of the mouth, and in a rigid kind of stillness. These are the parts of a terror almost animal in its intensity, when the body aches to spin and run blindly. But before I could find any way to make any use of it, I saw the swift return of control. It seemed almost as if control had returned through an exercise of logic. She had looked more carefully at me and had decided I did not fit into the pattern of fear, and so it had to be a misunderstanding on her part.
"Pretty broad topic to discuss, Mr...."
"McGee. Travis McGee."
"I've heard that name before. Where? I have a fantastic memory for names. Faces mean nothing. Could we move along? I don't want to get chilled." As I began walking beside her she said, "Got it! Daddy Fort and Gloria were talking about you... oh, at least three years ago. I'd taken the kids by. He was kidding her, in a nice way. Something about her Florida boyfriend. You? The tan would fit."
"Old friend, yes."
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"Wait just a moment, please." She went quickly over to the playground. As she was speaking to one of the girls in charge, two kids, a boy and girl perhaps seven and five, came running to her. She squatted and gave them a simultaneous hug. They went racing back to their group and she spoke to the girl again and then came back to where I waited. "I had to make sure we had the signals right. The sitter is going to pick them up here and take them home. And I go from here to join Roger at a cocktail thing. We'll have time to talk after I shower and change. You go through that door and turn left for the lounge. You could wait for me there. Order yourself a drink, please."
The lounge was comfortable. The healthy tennis set was noisily taking on a small Saturday night load before heading off to do the serious drinking elsewhere. The lounge had seen a lot of hard use, and the drinks were substantial. I picked a corner table where there seemed the most chance of privacy. After a half-hour Jeanie Geis joined me, looking more elegant in dark green cocktail dress, high heels, mink over her arm, than I'd expected. As I was seating her, the bar man brought her a Gibson, straight up. "Thank you, Jimmy, and another whatever he's having for my guest, Mr. McGee. How's Skippy making it?"
"You know. Drifting and dreaming. Twenty times maybe she's tried on the wedding dress, her mother telling her she's going to wear it out."
"She's a dear doll and she's getting a nice guy." When he was out of earshot she looked speculatively at me and said, "As a friend of Glory's, it has to be Daddy Fort's money you wanted to talk about. But why me?"
"I talked to Heidi. I don't think your husband could add anything. Incidentally, Heidi doesn't know I'm Glory's friend."
"How could I add anything Roger couldn't? I mean it is all terribly mysterious, and Heidi and Roger are furious, and it puts Gloria in a very odd position. But if she asked you for help, if she asked you to come and see if you can find out what did happen, I can understand but I don't have to approve."
She hesitated as Jimmy put the new drink in front of me, continuing as he moved away. "It's over, isn't it? If Fort thought anything should be explained to the family, he would have. And maybe you should explain why you came to me? Are you implying I'd keep anything from my husband?"
"I am not concerned exclusively with what people know they know, Mrs. Geis. From what Heidi told me, you were getting along with the Doctor better than his own children. So you saw him oftener. So you could have pertinent knowledge you don't realize is pertinent."
"Are you some kind of a detective?"
"Me? No. Just a friend of Glory's. You come in from the outside, sometimes it's easier to see the shape of things. You must have had some guess as to why Fort did what he did."
Her mouth firmed up. "Mr. McGee, the only thing I can tell you is what I have told my husband. And though I do not think it good taste to tell this to a stranger, Roger and I have come closer to... very real trouble in our marriage over this than anything. Heidi is in no financial pain. Neither are we. Gloria is the worst off, but if people would just leave her alone, I think she'd be quite content. We're not close friends. We don't have enough in common. But I realize how good she was for Fort. And certainly she'll marry again, and she should be able to marry quite well. She has a special style of her own, and a capacity for loyalty, and a very personal kind of warmth, and the urge to take care of a man and please him. I have told Roger that I think it is shameful and vulgar and disgraceful to keep prodding at this whole thing. It isn't a financial motive at all, really. It took me a long time to understand it. Foriner Geis was a very strong personality. When his wife died, he lost himself in his work. Roger and Heidi thought he.was rejecting them. It turned them into emotionally insecure people. Heidi is a crashing neurotic. I've had to work twice as hard as anybody knows to make this marriage of mine work. I think that all the time they hoped that one day he would... accept and cherish them. What happened? An affair with a nurse that lasted for years. That was a rejection. Then, after they learned he had a fatal illness, he came back here from vacation with a bride. That hurt them. It was a symbolic rejection when he changed his estate arrangements. in her favor. They hate her. The final rejection was to find that he had somehow arranged to leave them nothing. They talk about money but they are really looking for some proof of love. Heidi is far worse than Roger, God knows why. I feel this way. Fortner Geis must have had a very sound and good reason for not telling Gloria and Heidi and Roger what he was doing and why he was doing it. To me that -means that if they do ever find out, it might be worse than not ever knowing. They should trust him, accept it, forget it."
Had I not seen the earlier and more extreme reaction, I might have missed this one. It was just a hair too much intensity, too much edge in that hoarse social voice.
"Did you make any guesses why he did it?"
"It doesn't matter to me why he did it."
"You liked him?"
"I think... he was the finest man I've known."
"But he fouled up his kids, didn't he?"
"Did he? Maybe their mother did. They were eleven and seven when she died. She had enough time. And, believe me, I have heard far too much talk from Heidi and Roger about how sweet and brave and noble she was. She's assumed the stature of a mythological being, Mr. McGee. She's hard to believe in."
"Mrs. Geis, I'm a little puzzled by one thing. Who did you think I was when I stopped you and said I wanted to talk about money?"
"I had no idea who you were." "Then why were you terrified?"
She frowned and smiled at the same time. "Terrified? Oh come now, really! Why should I... Oh!" "Oh what?"
The green dress made her fine green eyes greener. Though they had shifted about during all the previous conversation, now they were very steady on mine, and she had widened them a little bit. "They kept us on the run for two long sets, trying to wear the old man down. When I stopped to talk to you, I suddenly felt quite faint. The world had a swimmy look and my ears were ringing, and then it went away; or I would have had to sit down right in the middle of the walk."
"Son of a gun!" I said. "That must have been it." It was more gallant than telling the lady she was a lousy liar. "I guess I should tell Gloria she shouldn't let all this bother her so much. Having Fort's children hate and resent her so much confuses her She's one of those people without malice. Did you ever tell her your rejection theory?"
"Yes. She seemed to understand how it could be that way"
Night had come: The lights were on. She craned her neck to look at the clock over the bar. I walked her out to the parking lot to her car. After she got in, she looked out at me and said, "I think it would do Gloria a lot of good to get away now. Maybe she could go back to Florida with you, Mr. McGee. You'd be doing her more good that way than by... trying to find out why the Doctor did what he did."
"It's an idea," I said.
I found my way, after several wrong turns, to Lake Pointe, the handsome house, snap and hiss of logs aflame, chunky glass in my hand, Glory Doyle Geis in wine slacks and white sweater sitting on a cushion on the raised hearth, dainty, bitter-sweet, semi-sad in the firelight.
"Not so good of a day for me," she said, "and I don't really know why. I couldn't settle down to anything. Kept roaming. I'm supposed to be inventorying the books. They go to the university library. What did you do? Who did you talk to?"
"Heidi. And Mark Avanyan. And a fat boy named Kirstarian. Jeanie Geis. I saw the happiest girl in Chicago, but I didn't meet her. I busted hell out of some very advanced sculpture. I nearly ran over a black cat wearing a red collar."
"Tell me all!" she cried, her face lighting up.
"First you tell me about Janice Stanyard."
She studied me for a few moments. "You mean you're annoyed I didn't tell you about her before?"
"Didn't you think it was pertinent?"
"Not particularly"
"You sound as frosty as Miss Heidi."
She looked dismayed, then grinned. "I didn't know I could. Anyway, when I tell you you'll understand. For
t told me about her while we were still on our wedding trip, before we came back to Chicago. We were talking about different kinds of love. And he just sort of casually mentioned he'd had a long affair with a nurse. He said it started a year after his wife died. And it ended two years before he met me. When I realized that was nearly eleven years, I was furious! And he laughed at me. He didn't explain for a while because he said he wanted to prolong the pleasure of having me so jealous of another woman. He said it was marvelously flattering at his age. But when he saw I was really getting upset, he told me just how it was."
About her husband's accident and the little boy drowning?"
One Fearful Yellow Eye Page 7
