Tom asked, “Hungry?”
“Not very,” Hugh said.
“Want me to heat Mrs. Trelinack’s stew for lunch?”
“Eggs are enough.”
“Ham?” Tom asked.
“No thanks.”
A knock sounded. Hugh stared around, terrified.
Tom was opening the window to take the food from the screened box on the ledge. “Get that, Hugh, will you.” But Hugh was scuttling into the narrow bedroom, closing the door after him.
Tom answered.
Flaherty held out an envelope. Tom snatched it. He was hoping—praying would be a more correct terminology—that Antonia had written to him.
He lived in constant horror at the lying obscenities he had shouted at her. Several times he had boarded the Woodward Avenue trolley, only to jump off at the next stop. After her rejection he could not be first to break the silence. Despairing and hopeful at the same time, he waited for her to give some sign, however infinitesimal, so that he could apologize.
Recognizing the Major’s bold writing, his eyes narrowed.
“The Major wants yer reply,” Flaherty said. “Shall I be waiting here?”
“Downstairs.” Tom slammed the door. His clippers were on the table, and using one blade, he cut the envelope, jerking out the triple-folded paper.
“Gone?” Hugh called.
“Yes.”
Hugh opened the door. “Who was it?”
“Stuart’s coachman, with this. The Major wants an answer.”
“Then he’ll be back? The coachman?”
Tom saw the anxiety on the right side of his brother’s face, the warped grimace on the left. “It’s all right, Hugh. He’s outside.”
Hugh came back into the room. “Aren’t you going to read it?”
“Why? There’s only one answer for the old bastard.”
Using his clippers, he cut the unfolded linen paper in half.
Hugh laughed sharply. “Right,” he said.
Tom cut again, shoving the unread pieces inside the envelope.
“That should give him the general gist,” Tom said.
Two children watched awed from a window as their neighbor left tracks in the fresh snow to thrust something at the liveried coachman in the lacquered carriage.
V
Antonia pushed the courses of her lunch around various plates, talking animatedly. When they returned to the study, she continued the same meaningless conversation. Hooves and pneumatic tires crunched over the snow and she fell silent, bending her head so that the mass of straight, shining black hair shadowed her haggard face.
Flaherty knocked.
The Major, seeing his own envelope, said hastily, “Thank you, Flaherty. That’ll be all.” Closing the door, he said to Antonia, “Another bit of that wearisome insurance business. What a relief it’ll be when that’s behind me.” He slipped the envelope in a desk pigeonhole.
Antonia retrieved it. He moved to take it from her, but the glitter in her eyes made him hesitate.
“You wrote Tom’s name,” she said, pulling out a scrap.
“Oh, my God,” said the Major. “My dear, let me throw that away.”
She stared at him. Afraid to touch her, he watched her nervous fingers piece together the sheet. As she bent over, reading, her hands arched up. A long ago memory came to the Major: Wounded at Gettysburg, he had been carried to a crowded hospital tent, and the young lieutenant next to him had arched his hands this same way, clawing the earth in his death agonies.
Antonia looked up, a frown etching her forehead.
“Uncle, when we were talking about Father and me leaving, did I say Rheims or Canterbury?” she asked in a rapid, high-pitched voice.
“Newport,” he said.
“Newport?” She circled the desk and paced up and back on the Shirvan rug. “How odd. How very odd. There’s no cathedral in Newport. That’s his interest. Gothic cathedrals. Uncle, here he has nothing to occupy his mind. Now if we were in Europe … He was so enthusiastic about the choir screen at Chartres—he spent two full days examining the carving. Once he’s involved again, it’s only a matter of time until he’s fully recovered. He planned a visit to Turkey—or was it Russia? What’s today?”
“Wednesday.”
“We’ll take the train Friday morning. That gives me this afternoon and tomorrow to pack and book steamship tickets. Uncle, can Nurse Girardin stay in her room until she finds another position? I’m sure it won’t take her long. She’s very qualified. You’ve been so wonderful to us that I hate to keep imposing, but you don’t mind, do you? We’ll go to Chartres first. The trunks can follow us. I’ll be able to handle everything until Father recovers.”
“Antonia, my dear, do stop walking around. Sit here, on the couch,” he said, his voice breaking.
“Not to Paris, though. That would remind him of his illness.”
“Your condition—”
“Condition? Dr. McKenzie said something about a baby, didn’t he? But he was mistaken. That man’s an incompetent! I’m sorry, Uncle. I know he’s your friend. But it’s true. Look at how he’s bungled Father’s case. Altering his habits, keeping him housebound. No wonder Father’s not himself! What do you think?”
“Well …”
“And don’t you agree that my taking him to Europe is best?”
“We’ll discuss it with Dr. McKen—”
“That quack!”
“So that he can consult with Dr. Abler in Chicago,” soothed the Major, turning, hoping she would not notice the tears in his eyes. “I’ll telephone him right away.”
By three fifteen, when McKenzie arrived, Antonia’s voice was hoarse from planning itineraries. The doctor maneuvered her upstairs. Her overwrought, overtired brain fought his laudanum, and he ended up giving her a far larger dose than he considered safe for anyone, much less a pregnant woman. When, finally, she slept, the two men discussed the feasibility of travel.
“For your brother, poor devil, it doesn’t matter. But that bewildered child can’t stay in Detroit.”
“By God, I’d like Bridger’s hide!”
“And to think that I encouraged him. Of course, I had no idea you didn’t want it, Andrew. She was lonely, and he was your partner. He seemed decent. Usually I’m a fair judge of character.”
“I begged him to come to her—begged.” The Major’s voice shook, and to control himself he looked out at the sparse snowflakes drifting in the early dusk.
“The boy’s a monster! How he pulled the wool over my eyes.”
The Major sighed. “What was all that agitation about dragging poor Oswald around Europe?”
“It’s a mental trick that we all use to a lesser degree. Throw ourselves into something else in order to avoid the unbearable.” The doctor took out his small notebook, scribbling. “I’ll arrange for an orderly to travel with your brother. Girardin will have her hands full with Antonia.”
“This, uhh, disturbance, it’s temporary, isn’t it?”
“In my opinion, yes. But the other—she’s far too thin and rundown. She needs the best of care. I’ll give Girardin instructions. Where do you plan to take her?”
“London seems the easiest.”
The doctor tore out a page, writing carefully. “Here’s the name of a top man on Harley Street.”
That same evening the Major sent for his attorney, three property brokers, and an auctioneer, arranging to divest himself of the factory property, this house, a tract of timberland he owned near Pontiac. He never ceased seeing those thin, arching hands, yet his very real anguish for Antonia did not prevent him from conferring briskly, quite himself again. In his heart he admitted that leaving Detroit suited him to a tee. That insurance investigation had roused a malicious hive of gossip among his friends.
CHAPTER 8
SOCIAL NOTE
Major A. Stuart departed today for an extended tour of the continent of Europe. Sympathizers hope that the journey will help him to recover from the tragic loss by fire of the Stuar
t Furniture Company, long a Detroit landmark. He was accompanied by his brother, Mr. O. Dalzell, and by his niece, Miss Dalzell. Major Stuart will be greatly missed by his numerous friends and old comrades at arms from the Michigan Cavalry. He—
A knock interrupted Hugh as he dawdled over a late breakfast of bread and strawberry jam. He knew it was either Mrs. Trelinack or one of the three girls—they took turns dropping in—yet his voice cracked anxiously as he called, “Who is it?”
“Me, Maud.”
“I’m resting,” Hugh said, unfastening the latch, diving toward his pallet, angling his good profile toward the other room.
“This is on the way to the Newberrys’—today’s my day there. I thought I’d pop in,” she said, putting down her basket and taking off her coat. The bib of her black dressmaker’s apron glinted with threaded needles, and around her neat waist was a belt with a red pincushion. She peered nearsightedly at the Detroit Journal as she folded it. “So you saw that about Major Stuart?” she asked, piling dishes to carry to the sink.
“Yes.”
“One time I saw Tom leaving Hudson’s with the niece. He knew her quite well, didn’t he?” Maud’s somewhat loud voice was pitched too high.
Hugh’s head tilted. Maud was overly blunt, so why this oblique question about Tom and Antonia? It came to him with a little jolt that Maud was setting her cap for his brother. Maud? With her heavy step and appalling candor? That frugal peasant? “We never discussed Miss Dalzell,” he said.
Nothing could deter Maud. “I did some alterations for her once. She’s too tall for such a tiny waist and those narrow hips. What a lively one! It was during the war in Cuba, and she took my specs and pretended to be Colonel Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill.” Maud’s brief chuckle was honest. “I never understood why the Woodward Avenue crowd were so down on her—the things they said about the Major and her! Did you hear any of that?”
“Why should I?”
“They said she was his mistress.”
“She’s his half brother’s daughter.”
“A lot of them knew that, but they still said she was.”
“Nice ladies you sew for,” Hugh said, his teeth gritting in a spasm. Antonia was everything Maud was not, light, joyous, wellborn, tender, and he resented Maud’s repeating old gossip.
“It was hard to believe. They’re a bunch of drones, society women,” Maud said. “Anyway, I liked her.” There was the clink of a dish being set on marble. “I brought you a fresh-baked honey loaf. Want me to heat the coffee to go with it?”
“I’ll fix fresh later.”
“Hugh, there must be a half pot left!”
“Mmm,” said Hugh.
“I put in two kinds of raisins.”
What a shame that Mrs. Trelinack, with her light hand and lavish ways with butter, had not done the baking. “Maud, you’re very good to us,” Hugh said, stifling a faint sarcasm.
“Save a slice for Tom.”
As soon as she left he poured the contents of the tall percolator down the sink. He felt sorry for Maud. Poor girl, with a crush on Tom. Surely all her common sense should tell her that any man involved with the scintillating, graceful girl Antonia, could never feel anything more than friendship for her. Yet Maud was kind. He cut a sliver of the honey loaf, and nibbling, tasted the lard.
II
After supper Tom glanced through the paper. When he came to Social Notes, beads of sweat broke out on his face and his lips moved convulsively. The item had the casual, bloodless finality of a death certificate. She was gone, gone with no word to him, not even a brief note, gone as companion to his enemy. Never, never would he receive permission to kneel and beg her forgiveness.
He thrust the newspaper in the stove, watching it curl and bubble into cinders. He flung open the cupboard, reaching for the nearly full fifth of rye.
He drank until he was sodden. Hugh led him to his mattress, placing a folded towel under his head in case he vomited, taking off his boots, covering him with the quilt, services he had performed quite a few nights these past weeks.
III
One particularly bleak Sunday toward the end of November, Trelinack came by. “The womenfolk are in church,” he announced, setting down a bucket of beer, rubbing his hands to warm them. “Tom, if you don’t mind my saying so, you look like hell.”
“It’s tough being on twenty-four-hour call,” Tom lied. Having already learned the personalities of the Rice dynamo, the Armington and Sims generator, the angry, crouching Beck steam engine, he had so little to do that boredom bloated his misery. Unhooking the three mugs, he called, “Hugh, Trelinack’s brought us some lager.”
Hugh disdained beer as a plebeian drink. “None for me, but thanks, Trelinack,” he said through the crack of the barely open door.
Trelinack poured himself a mugful. “Tom, a man asked me to put a proposition to you. He’s of a mind to invest in an automobile shop.”
“Did you tell him I’m through?”
“That I did. He said back that he never figured you for a quitter. And I said to him that you were badly stung by the fire.”
“The fire, hell! Only an asshole wouldn’t know that the automobile fad’s over. Finished. Dead.”
“Tom,” Trelinack said quietly. “She’s left Detroit.”
Tom’s fist slammed down. Beer sloshed on marble.
“Hit me,” Trelinack said. “If it’ll make you feel better, hit me. But that won’t alter the facts. Blood sticks to blood, and she’s left with her own people. So you might as well settle down to picking up the pieces of your life.”
“You should have gone with the others. Church is the place for sermons.”
“I’m a man of my word,” said Trelinack, fishing in his vest pocket.
“How many times do I have to say it? No fucking more toys for rich men!”
“It’s a good thing we’re friends, Tom, or I could take offense at your mouth.” Trelinack set down a folded sheet of yellow paper.
Hugh listened to them, the angelic side of his face, the right, broodingly intent. The skin was normal, freshly shaved, the lashes and brows growing in. He was healthy enough, strong enough, to get the white-collar job that his high school diploma entitled him to. Accordingly, a week before that he had set out with a clipped advertisement for an opening with the Soames Importing Company in the Hammond Building. That fifteen-minute walk was Hugh’s Gethsemane. People had either stared at him or looked away. After years of pleasure at unearned admiration, he had been stunned by the pain of equally unearned revulsion. At each passerby’s examination his body quivered, and this sensation was as horrible as the remembered anguish of his burns. He never had reached the Hammond Building. After seven blocks he had raced back to the flat. I can’t bear the stares, he had thought, knowing that this cowardice had imprisoned him. He was in for life. And as long as Tom remained in a mechanic’s job, he’d be stuck in drab living quarters.
When Trelinack closed the front door, Hugh pushed slowly to his feet. Go carefully, he told himself. You’ll probably never have another chance. He entered the other room.
“Aren’t you going to take a look?” he asked, picking up the yellow paper.
A check fell from its folds.
“Tom. Look!” Hugh’s surprise was unfeigned. “A thousand dollars made out to you! Signed John Trelinack.”
Without a word Tom snatched the check, folding it into his pocket, yanking his heavy jacket from its hook behind the door.
“Where are you going?” Hugh asked.
“The sooner this gets back to Trelinack, the better.”
“It is a lot of money,” Hugh said, judiciously pruning his tone of everything except warm friendship for Trelinack. “He must have mortgaged his house. Can you imagine that kind of trust?”
Tom halted at the door. “What does his note say?”
Hugh opened the letter. “‘John Trelinack backs Thomas K. Bridger to the amount of one thousand dollars in exchange for ten percent of any profits in the B
ridger Automobile Company.’ Tom, the Major didn’t put up any cash, and he took a quarter.”
Tom shook his head, his expression mingling affection and dismay. He cleared his throat. “I was pretty rough to him.”
“You can’t just throw this back in his teeth.”
“I’ll wait a couple of days.”
“Pretend you’re considering it.” Hugh reached for the check, hastily burying it amid aromatic beans in the coffee jar. “It’ll be safe here.”
IV
That evening Tom slicked down his hair and used his razor. Hugh guessed he was going to the Golden Age for a whore, the first time since Antonia’s reign. As he slammed out the door he looked as though he were going to be punished rather than to seek enjoyment in a woman’s arms. Hugh waited for five minutes before he took out his sketchbook.
“It’s goddamn late,” Tom said. His face red, he emanated odors of whiskey, cheap musk perfume, and sex. “What’re you drawing in the middle of the night?”
Hugh turned over the pad. “Big brother, I’m old enough to draw whatever and whenever I choose.”
Tom flipped over the pad. “The racer,” he accused.
“What of it?”
“So long as you don’t figure on talking me into anything,” Tom said belligerently.
“Who do you think got burned?”
Tom sighed, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean to sound off. I’m tired, that’s all.”
“And drunk?”
“Yeah, some. Ahh, as if boozing does any good.” Tom sat at the table, burying his face in his arms. “Nothing helps, Hugh, nothing. The more I try not to think about her, the more she’s on my mind.” His voice was muffled.
“Would talking help?” Hugh asked with heartfelt sympathy, momentarily deflected from his course.
“I can’t. Everything’s so locked up and painful.”
“I know what you mean.” Hugh wet his lips. “That’s why I was drawing the racer. To see if I could face up to things.”
Tom raised his head, pointing with a dark-rimmed nail. “You got the cylinders too short.”
“I did? This is what I remember.”
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