Short Stories: Five Decades

by Irwin Shaw

  “That play tonight,” Virginia was saying, delicately winding spaghetti on her fork against a spoon, “was all right and I enjoyed it while I was there, but I’m getting tired of how awful all the female characters are in plays these days. All the women always are drunks or nymphomaniacs or they drive their sons crazy or they ruin the lives of two or three people an act. If I were a playwright, I’d write a nice, old-fashioned play in which the heroine is pure and beautiful and makes a man out of her husband, even though he’s weak and drinks too much and occasionally robs his boss to bet on the horses.”

  “If you were a playwright, you’d be in Hollywood,” Robert said.

  “Anyway, I bet it’d be a big success,” Virginia insisted. “I bet people are just dying to go to see a play that they can come out of and say, ‘Yes, that’s just how Mother was the time Dad had his trouble down at the bank and those two men in plainclothes came to see him from New York.’”

  “If anything like that comes up,” Robert said comfortably, “you go to see it some matinée. By yourself.”

  “And all the actresses these days. They try to act so ordinary. Just like anybody you’d meet in the street. Sometimes you wonder how they dare charge you admission to watch them. When I was a little girl, actresses used to be so affected you’d know you had to pay to see them, because you’d never meet anybody like that in real life in a million years.”

  “How did you like Duse?” Robert asked. “What did you think of Bernhardt when you were ten?”

  “Don’t be so witty. You know what I mean. That girl you liked so much tonight, for example …”

  “Which girl I liked so much?” Robert asked, puzzled.

  “The big one. The one that played the friend.”

  “Oh, that one,” Robert said. “I didn’t like her so much.”

  “You certainly sounded as though you did. I thought your hands’d be a bloody pulp by the time she got off the stage.”

  “I was just being neighborly,” Robert said. “I met her once at a party.”

  “Whose party?” Virginia stopped eating.

  “The Lawtons’. She went to school with Anne Lawton,” Robert said. “Didn’t you meet her?”

  “I didn’t go to that party. I had the flu that week.” Virginia sipped her wine. “What’s her name?”

  “Carol Something. Look at the program.”

  “I left the program in the theatre. Was she nice?”

  Robert shrugged. “I only talked to her for five minutes. She told me she came from California and she hates working for television and she was divorced last year but they’re still good friends. The usual kind of talk you get at the Lawtons’.”

  “She looks as though she came from California,” Virginia said, making it sound like a criticism.

  “Oakland,” Robert said. “It’s not exactly the same thing.”

  “There she is now,” said Virginia. “Near the door.”

  Robert looked up. The girl was alone and was making her way down the center of the room. She wasn’t wearing a hat, and her hair looked careless, and she had on a shapeless polo coat and flat shoes, and Robert decided, looking at her, that actresses were getting plainer every year. She stopped briefly once or twice to greet friends at other tables, then headed for a table in the corner, where a group of three men and two women were waiting for her. Robert realized that she was going to pass their table, and wondered if he ought to greet her. The party at which they’d met had been almost two months before, and he had a modest theory that people like actresses and book publishers and movie directors never remembered anyone they met who wasn’t in a related profession. He doubted whether the girl would recognize him, but he arranged a slight, impersonal smile on his face, so that if she did happen to remember, he would seem to be saluting her. If she just passed by, Robert hoped that it would merely look as though he were responding with polite amusement to one of Virginia’s remarks.

  But the girl stopped in front of the table, smiling widely. She put out her hand and said, “Why, Mr. Harvey, isn’t it nice seeing you again!”

  She wasn’t any prettier close up, Robert decided, but when she smiled, she seemed friendly and simple, and her voice sounded as though she really was glad to see him again after the five minutes in the noisy corner at the Lawtons’ two months ago. Robert stood up and took her hand. “Hello,” he said. “May I present my wife. Miss Byrne.”

  “How do you do, Miss Byrne,” Virginia said. “We were just talking about you.”

  “We saw your show tonight,” Robert said. “We thought you were very good indeed.”

  “Aren’t you dear to say that,” the girl said. “I love to hear it, even if you don’t mean it at all.”

  “What about the man who wrote the play?” Virginia asked. “He must be rather strange.”

  “Mother trouble.” Miss Byrne glanced significantly up at the ceiling. “All the young writers coming into the theatre these days seem to have the same thing. You’d think it’d be the war that would be haunting them, but it isn’t at all. It’s only Mama.”

  Virginia smiled. “Not only young writers,” she said. “Is this your first play, Miss Byrne?”

  “Heavens, no,” the girl said. “I’ve been in three others. Regret, The Six-Week Vacation.… I don’t even remember the name of the third one. Turkeys. Here today and closed by Saturday.”

  Virginia turned to Robert. “Did you happen to see any of them, dear?” she asked.

  “No,” Robert said, surprised. He never went to the theatre without Virginia.

  “Three other plays,” Virginia went on pleasantly, sounding genuinely interested. “You must have been in New York quite a long time.”

  “Two years,” Miss Byrne said. “A single blink of the eye of a drama critic.”

  “Two years,” Virginia said, politely. She turned to Robert again. “Where did you say Miss Byrne came from? Hollywood?”

  “Oakland,” Robert said.

  “New York must be quite exciting,” Virginia said. “After Oakland.”

  “I love it,” Miss Byrne said, sounding young and enthusiastic. “Even with the flops.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Virginia said. “Keeping you standing there like that, talking on and on about the theatre. Wouldn’t you like to sit down and join us for a drink?”

  “Thanks,” the girl said, “I really can’t. They’re waiting for me over in the corner.”

  “Some other time, perhaps,” Virginia said.

  “I’d love it,” said Miss Byrne. “It’s been fun meeting you, Mrs. Harvey. Mr. Harvey told me about you. I do hope we see each other again. Good night.” She waved and smiled widely again and strode over toward her waiting friends.

  Robert sat down slowly. There was silence at the table for a moment.

  “It’s a hard life,” Virginia said after a while, “for actresses, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Six-Week Vacation,” Virginia said. “No wonder it failed, with a title like that. Did she play the lead in it, that girl?”

  “I don’t know,” Robert said, waiting. “I told you I didn’t see it.”

  “That’s right,” Virginia said. “You told me.”

  They were silent again. Virginia began to twist the stem of her wineglass with little, jerky movements. “You told me,” she repeated. “It’s too bad she couldn’t have a drink with us. We might have learned a great deal about the theatre tonight. I find people in the theatre so fascinating. Don’t you?”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Robert asked.

  “Nothing,” Virginia said flatly. “There’s nothing the matter with me at all. Are you finished with your food?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s pay the check and get out of here.”

  “Virginia …” Robert said, drawling the name out complainingly.

  “Rah-ahbert …” Virginia said, mimicking him.

  “All right,” said Robert. “What is it?”

  “I said nothing.”
>
  “I know what you said. What is it?”

  Virginia lifted her eyes and looked at him closely. “Miss Byrne,” she said. “I thought you didn’t know her name.”

  “Oh,” Robert said. “Now it’s turning into one of those evenings.”

  “It’s not turning into any kind of evening. Get the check,” Virginia said. “I want to go home.”

  “Waiter!” Robert called. “The check, please.” He stared at Virginia. She was beginning to look martyred. “Listen,” Robert said. “I didn’t know her name.”

  “Carol Something,” said Virginia.

  “It came to me just as she got to the table. While I was standing up. Hasn’t that ever happened to you?”

  “No,” said Virginia.

  “Well, it’s a common phenomenon.”

  Virginia nodded. “Very common,” she said, “I’m sure.”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “You haven’t forgotten a girl’s name since you were six years old,” Virginia said. “You remember the name of the girl you danced with once the night of the Yale game in 1935.”

  “Gladys,” Robert said. “Gladys McCreary. She played field hockey for Bryn Mawr.”

  “No wonder you were so eager to get to the Lawtons’ that night.”

  “I wasn’t eager to get to the Lawtons’ that night,” Robert said, his voice beginning to rise. “And anyway I didn’t even know she existed. At least be logical.”

  “I had a hundred and three fever,” Virginia said, pitying herself all over again for the damp eyes, the hot forehead, the painful cough of two months earlier. “I was just lying there all alone, day after day …”

  “Don’t make it sound as though you were on the point of death for the whole winter,” Robert said loudly. “You were in bed three days, and on Saturday you went to lunch in a snowstorm.”

  “Oh,” Virginia said, “you can remember that it snowed one Saturday two months ago, but you can’t remember the name of a girl you talked to for hours at a party, that you exchanged the most intimate confidences with.”

  “Virginia,” Robert said, “I’m going to get up on this seat and scream at the top of my voice.”

  “Divorced, she said, but they’re still good friends. I’ll bet they are. I’ll bet that girl is good friends with a lot of people. How about you and your ex-wife?” Virginia demanded. “Are you good friends with her, too?”

  “You know as well as I do,” Robert said, “that the only time I see my ex-wife is when she wants the alimony adjusted.”

  “If you keep talking in that tone of voice, they’ll never let you in this restaurant again,” Virginia whispered.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Robert said blindly. “Waiter, where’s that check?”

  “She’s thick.” Virginia stared at Miss Byrne, who was sitting with her back to them twenty feet away, talking brightly and waving a cigarette. “Through the middle. Grotesquely thick.”

  “Grotesquely,” Robert agreed.

  “You don’t fool me,” Virginia said, “I know your tastes.”

  “Oh, God,” Robert murmured.

  “Always pretending to be such a connoisseur of beautiful women,” Virginia said, “and secretly what you really like are old-fashioned, disgusting brood mares.”

  “Oh, God,” Robert said again.

  “Like that Elise Cross,” Virginia rolled on, “two summers ago on the Cape. She always looked as though she had to be packed into her girdle under pressure. And whenever I looked around for you at a party, you both were gone, out on the dunes.”

  “I thought we had agreed never to discuss that subject again,” Robert said with dignity.

  “What subject am I permitted to discuss?” Virginia demanded. “The United Nations?”

  “There never was anything between me and Elise Cross. Not anything. And you know it,” Robert said firmly and convincingly. It was true that there had been something, but that had been two years ago, and he hadn’t seen Elise Cross since then, or anyone else, for that matter. And anyway it had been summertime then, and he had been drunk a good deal of the time for a reason he could no longer recall, and the people around them had been of that peculiar, handsome, neurotic, wife-changing type that appears at places like that in August and infects the atmosphere. He had been ashamed of himself by Labor Day and had resolved to change his ways once and for all. Now he felt blameless and aggrieved at being called upon to defend himself after all that abstinence.

  “You spent more time on the beach than the Coast Guard,” Virginia said.

  “If the waiter doesn’t come with the check,” Robert said, “I’m going to walk out of here and they can follow me in a taxi if they want their money.”

  “I should have known,” Virginia said, and there was a remote throb in her voice. “People told me about you before we were married. I knew your reputation.”

  “Look, that was more than five years ago,” Robert said doggedly. “I was younger then and more energetic and I was married to a woman I didn’t like and who didn’t like me. I was unhappy and lonely and restless—”

  “And now?”

  “And now,” Robert said, thinking how wonderful it would be to get up and walk away from his wife for six or seven months, “and now I am married to a woman I love and I am settled and profoundly happy. I haven’t had lunch or a drink with anyone for years. I barely tip my hat to women I know when I pass them in the street.”

  “And what about that fat actress over there?”

  “Look,” Robert said, feeling hoarse, as though he had been shouting into the wind for hours. “Let’s get it straight. I met her at a party. I spoke to her for five minutes. I don’t think she’s very pretty. I don’t think she’s much as an actress. I was surprised when she recognized me. I forgot her name. Then I remembered her name when she came to the table.”

  “I suppose you expect me to believe that.” Virginia smiled coldly.

  “I certainly do. Because it’s an exact statement of fact.”

  “I saw that smile,” Virginia said. “Don’t think I didn’t.”

  “What smile?” Robert asked, honestly puzzled.

  “Why, Mr. Harvey,” Virginia said, cooing, “isn’t it nice seeing you again? And then the teeth and the girlish crinkling of the nose and the long, direct stare …”

  “Finally,” Robert said to the waiter, who was leaning over the table, putting the check down. “Don’t go away.” Robert counted out some bills, feeling his hands shaking minutely with rage. He watched the waiter going toward the cashier’s desk, near the kitchen, for change. Then, he spoke, trying to keep his voice under control. “Now,” he said, turning back to Virginia, “what, exactly, did you mean by that?”

  “I may not be very smart,” Virginia said, “but if there’s one thing I have, it’s intuition. Especially where you’re concerned. And anyway that smile was unmistakable.”

  “Now, wait a minute.” Robert felt his fists opening and closing spasmodically. “It’s charming of you to think, even after being married to me for five years, that women just drop at my feet after speaking to me for five minutes, but I have to disillusion you. It has never happened to me. Never,” he said slowly and distinctly and with some disappointment.

  “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s fake modesty,” Virginia said. “I’ve seen you looking at yourself in the mirror, approving of yourself by the hour, pretending you were shaving or looking for gray hairs. And,” she added bitterly, “I’ve talked to your mother. I know how she brought you up. Drilling it into your head that the whole panting female sex was after you because you were a Harvey and you were so dazzling—”

  “Good God,” Robert said. “Now we have my mother, too.”

  “She has a lot to answer for,” Virginia said, “your mother. Don’t think she hasn’t.”

  “All right,” Robert said. “My mother is a low, terrible woman and everybody agrees on that. But what has that got to do with the fact that a woman I met at a party happe
ned to smile at me?”

  “Happened,” Virginia said.

  “I still don’t see how it could be my fault,” Robert said, trying to sound patient. “I can’t control the way people smile in restaurants.”

  “It’s always your fault,” Virginia said. “Even if you don’t say a word. It’s just the way you come into the room and stand there and decide to look … male.”

  Robert jumped up, pushing the table back. “I can’t stand it,” he said. “I can’t stand it any more. The hell with the change.”

  Virginia stood up, too, her face rigid. “I have an idea,” Robert said as he helped her on with her coat. “Let’s you and I not talk to each other for a week.”

  “Fine,” said Virginia crazily. “That’s perfectly fine with me.” She walked swiftly toward the door, through the middle of the restaurant, without looking back.

  Robert watched her striding down the narrow aisle between the tables, her black coat floating behind her. He wished that he had a worse temper. He wished that he had a temper so bad that he could stay out all night and get drunk.

  The waiter came with the change, and Robert fumbled with the tip. Over the waiter’s shoulder he saw Miss Byrne swing her head slowly toward him. Everybody else at her table was talking animatedly. For the first time, Robert looked at her carefully. It is true, he thought numbly. Most women these days are too damn thin.

  Then Miss Byrne smiled at him. Her nose crinkled and her teeth showed and she seemed to be looking at him for a long time. He felt flattered and considerably younger and very curious. And as he dropped his eyes and left a large tip for the waiter, he knew, helplessly, that he was going to call her next day and he knew what her voice was going to sound like on the telephone.

  Then he got his coat and hurried out of the restaurant after his wife.

  Age of Reason

  He had the dream only once—in December. He thought about it for a few moments the next morning, and forgot about it until one evening in April, ten minutes before his plane was scheduled to take off. Then, suddenly, it returned to him. Always, when he was about to board a plane, there was a slight tremor; an awareness of risk, however small and controlled; a slight, subconscious realization that each flight might end with death; a hidden knowledge that there was a small, lurking fatality in winds and cloud and valves and wings, and that no amount of airline skill and care and advertising could ever absolutely dispel it. It was that usual minute, buried twinge of disaster that made him remember the dream as he stood at the gate with his wife and sister, looking out at the dark field and the huge, substantial plane and the flickering lights that marked the runways.