Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498)

by Robinson, Edna

  “According to you, all you need is just to want something, Mr. Briard. I want all right. I’m plenty good in that department. What I need is money.”

  “No, Sled-boy. You only think you want money. Which is interchangeable with a house like this, etcetera. Perhaps you don’t understand what I mean because I haven’t said it comprehensibly. What I call want has also been called ambition—which Shakespeare decries again and again with soaring odium, or pluck, as Mrs. Tippet might call it, or dedication, as our artists have always looked upon it. Or, as Mr. Freud’s flock sees it, ‘sublimation and hostility.’

  “Ben is doomed to be a successful actor simply because his want in that direction is as great, or greater in my opinion, than most of the wants in his generation. And, accident happens to be in his favor.”

  “What accident?” Ben said.

  “That I’m your father. That I’m not successful.”

  “You’re not?” Sled-boy said, perplexed, but no more so than Ben and me.

  Ben spoke for both of us. “How do you mean, you’re not?”

  “Consider the history. It took me forty years to understand what I’m telling you now—to define the importance of want. It took me even longer, inexcusably longer, to find a direction for my want. A successful man is positive of his direction when he’s your age, Ben. He’s not so sure, in his twenties. He’s even more doubtful in his thirties—and, at my age, he’s reached whatever goal he set out for and is too busy enjoying it to spend precious time analyzing it.”

  “But you’ve reached a goal,” I said. I couldn’t have said what his goal was, but it hurt me to hear him say he was unsuccessful.

  “Yeah. You got this house,” Sled-boy said.

  “That’s no more a goal than money is. My want was the simplest and most popular one in the world—for a home and family. And that want became enormous, unbearably heavy. But it came late, and, as accident had it, too late. Or, it could be, I too, right now, am costuming fact as accident. Was my wife’s death accidental? Or was it the result of both our greeds, our late-arriving, overwhelming wants?” He spoke without speaking to any of us, as though he forgot we were there.

  “The human body is sometimes tragically impractical for human wants. We’d been told it was dangerous for her to have another child. But we couldn’t make ourselves hear. Once, one feeble little once, I tried to talk to her about it…but she was so used to painting the world the colors she wanted it to be…”

  “She could have stayed home,” Aunt Catherine said in a tight voice.

  “She couldn’t have or she would have,” my father responded bluntly, and he was aware of us all again. “So, Sled-boy. I have part of a family—and a house. I’ve had a couple of dozen houses. Don’t worry about getting a house.”

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Briard,” Sled-boy said, “I wasn’t worried about that when I came in here tonight. I was only worried about maybe somebody tipping off the police.”

  My father laughed. “That’s a good, sensible worry, Sled-boy. Survival. You just keep worrying about surviving, and you’ll get the house to worry about it in.”

  The light in the guest room went on. Aunt Catherine noticed too, her cheeks flushing. It went off, and we heard Frank’s quick steps down the stairs. He danced into the room, a broad grin on his face, Aunt Catherine’s black leather pocketbook dangling from one triumphantly upraised hand.

  “Hey!” Ben cried in instantaneous protest.

  “Know what happens to be in here?” Frank orated. “I’ll happen to tell you.” With exaggerated delicacy, he lowered and opened the pocketbook.

  “Dear Lord, dear Lord,” murmured Aunt Catherine.

  “There happens to be…let’s just looky see,” said Frank, “two hankies with little flowers on the edge, one comb, two bottles of pills, a bunch of Kleenex, a bunch of keys, one bus ticket to Tulsa, Oklahoma—”

  “Oh!” cried Aunt Catherine.

  “Catherine!” said my father in an astonished tone. “What happened to the plane ticket? You promised this time.”

  She bit her lower lip.

  “Where was I?” Frank said, in his mincing satire of impossibly good manners. “One bus ticket, a pair of ladies’ stockings, a hair net, and, it just happens, eighty-seven dollars and fifty-six cents in this little zip-place!”

  “This is outrageous,” my father said calmly.

  “Oh, Walter…I was going to tell you,” Aunt Catherine said, blanching and starting to weep again.

  I couldn’t interpret that exchange right off. My first understanding was confused. Aunt Catherine never carried more than twenty dollars. She was certain any sum over twenty mystically magnetized thievery—which seemed to be the case here this evening. But how was it that she had trusted herself with eighty-seven? My father’s “outrageous” clearly referred to Frank’s or anyone’s unallowed and blatant inspection of another’s private property. Yet Aunt Catherine was apologetic to my father, rather than as incensed as my father at Frank’s rank intrusion.

  It wasn’t until Ben, more loudly objecting than my father, yelled, “That’s not fair. That’s hers!” and Aunt Catherine sobbed, “No, Ben…” that I realized that the extra sixty-seven had been contributed by the airline company to whom she had returned my father’s gift of a plane ticket—a gift which she’d accepted with effusive, nervous appreciation. Of course, the cheaper bus ticket was her real preference. In her present guilt and remorse at keeping the refunded money from the airline, obviously she thought “outrageous” referred to her embezzlement.

  But all of this was lost on Ben. “Her money wasn’t part of the bet,” he said to Frank. “I bet that we—meaning the people that live in this house—didn’t have more than what was in my pocket and my father’s and Lucresse’s four sixty-five anywhere in this house.”

  “You said ‘in this house,’ ” Frank rebutted, his voice rising.

  “Now wait a minute!” Sled-boy yelled at both of them.

  “Take it; take it!” Aunt Catherine wailed.

  “The bet was, if you found any more money than what’s here and her four sixty-five of ours, in this house,” Ben steamed.

  “So I found more—in this house!” Frank hollered.

  “Just a minute!” Sled-boy hollered back.

  Frank and Ben held their breath. But given quiet, Sled-boy found his mind inhibited by forces more powerful than noise. Uncomfortably, he fell as silent as the ones he had silenced for his say.

  “The problem is an enigma,” my father said, seeming greatly pleased about it. “But then, every problem is, while it exists. Did Ben designate ‘money in this house,’ or, ‘money belonging to people who dwell, currently, in this house’? What he actually said makes little difference. Did you, Sled-boy, and you, Frank, understand that he meant the money in this house, or, the money owned by the people who live in this house? That is of crucial importance. That makes this an issue of morality.”

  “We were talking about Briard money,” Ben said.

  “We were talking about money. Plain, ordinary money. Anybody’s,” Frank said.

  “It would seem that we’ve come to an impasse,” my father said. “This is why some people live as lawyers. So often, what was understood is not understood. Because nothing is ever fully said, you know. In fact, the more intelligent the people involved are, the less is usually said. In this case, for example, we all agree that it wasn’t necessary to say, ‘the money we have in this house precludes from the bet any monies in the Terters’ place down the street or in the Third National Bank.’ It was sufficient to say, ‘in this house,’ thereby, ibidem, limiting the bounds of the bet to funds, bullion, currency, specie, belonging in this house. Now comes the question of ethics. Does the money in Mrs. Tippet’s purse belong in this house?”

  “It was here,” Frank said.

  Sled-boy looked troubled. “But if it’s a question of ethicalness, like Mr. Briard says, then it don’t belong here, stupid.”

  “No, no, dear Sled-boy,” m
y father reasoned. “I don’t believe Frank is stupid. He merely wants to win the bet, for which I can’t blame him. I love to win bets. But being an intelligent young man, I know he wants to understand whatever he does, thoroughly. Frank, did you come here with any previous knowledge of Mrs. Tippet’s presence, or the presence of any of her possessions in this house?”

  “No,” said Frank uneasily.

  “Only the Briards occupied this house, to your knowledge?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You meant then to gather what you could from the Briards?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then certainly money belonging to Mrs. Tippet cannot be considered in this situation, as it was never understood to be considered, though that may not have been fully discussed—any more than money in the Third National Bank was discussed. It seems to me it was a fair bet. Had you found a hundred thousand dollars belonging to me or to Ben or to Lucresse, aside from her four dollars and sixty-five cents, it would have been yours to take.”

  “But—” Frank began.

  “He’s right.” Sled-boy stood, gun in hand and facing Frank. He held out his other hand commandingly, and Frank gave him Aunt Catherine’s pocketbook.

  “But, Sled-boy,” Frank groaned, “I couldn’t find her four sixty-five! I think she was lying. And if she was, then what kind of a fair ethics bet was it anyways?”

  “Where is it, Lucresse?” Ben asked.

  “In my socks’ drawer,” I answered. “Rolled up in the red pair.”

  “Jeez,” Frank said with disgust.

  “That’s typical of Lucresse,” Ben said. “It’s there all right. I’ll show you.”

  He and Frank left the room together. Sled-boy gave a long-suffering sigh. “That guy really is stupid, Mr. Briard. Never can find anything. Never can imagine anything different from just exactly what you tell him to expect. This job tonight, it turned out a lot different from what I planned. If he was smart, you’d think he’d know that by now and knock off.”

  “ ‘Gang aft a-gley,’ ” my father said.

  “What?” said Sled-boy.

  But Frank and Ben returned, Frank holding my sock. “It’s in here, okay,” he said miserably.

  “So that ends the bet,” Ben said. “You pay us four sixty-five.”

  “ ‘The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley’—‘often go astray,’ ” said my father. “Robert Burns. A superior romantic poet.”

  “Jeez,” Frank said again, and dropped my sock on the lamp table.

  Sled-boy laughed in a confident, patronizing way and put Aunt Catherine’s pocketbook next to my sock. He took a bright tan, tooled leather wallet from his back pocket and extracted a bill. “Here’s a five,” he said, giving it to Ben. “Keep the change.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” said Ben, risking hurting Sled-boy’s pride in order to preserve his own.

  “Ben!” said my father sharply. “You say thank you.”

  “Thanks, Sled-boy.”

  “That’s okay. I guess it’s getting late.”

  My father stood up and I did the same.

  “It sure was nice meeting you, Mr. Briard,” Sled-boy said. “I appreciate the talk we had.”

  My father guided him toward the front door, shaking his hand. Ben and Frank followed. Sled-boy’s awkwardness in the protocol of departure was no more or less than many people’s, only of shorter duration. And, considering the turn of the evening’s events, this spoke well indeed for his taste and control.

  “Funny how things happen,” he said, waving Frank ahead of him through the door. “Who would have thought? What you said about success and all, Mr. Briard? And accident? Well, it sure was nice meeting you.” He smiled to me and Aunt Catherine across the room. “Sorry if we disturbed you.”

  “Not at all,” my father assured him.

  Sled-boy about-turned and was gone into the dark.

  My father closed the door after him, but almost before it clicked, Aunt Catherine sprang to her feet, flat palms against the sides of her head, her neck muscles rope-like in contraction. “I was afraid you were going to say, ‘Come again!’ ” she whispered hysterically.

  My father reached toward her with placating arms, but before he could touch her, she whirled into the den, and a moment later we heard her frantic cry into the telephone, “Operator! The police! Send the police! The Briard house, Maple Drive! Robbers! Send the police! Hurry!”

  Then she sped back into the living room, straight to the lamp table, and grabbed her pocketbook. She examined its contents with knowing hands and passionate eyes.

  “I suppose there was no point in asking you not to make that call, Catherine,” my father said.

  She looked up in surprise. “Walter! They were robbers!”

  “But they didn’t rob.”

  Ben laughed incredulously. “They lost five dollars.”

  “Ben, move the tapestry nearer the wall,” my father instructed. “I don’t want the gens d’armes trampling on it.”

  “Walter, they had a gun!” exclaimed Aunt Catherine.

  “But they didn’t shoot. No harm was done. And I’d just as soon not have any publicity about this.” He took out his handkerchief from his shirt pocket, unfolded it carefully, and balanced the Peddicord diamond at its center in the palm of his hand.

  “No, Walter!” gasped Aunt Catherine. “You didn’t have that on you the whole time!”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Just think! They could have stolen that! And you say no harm was done.”

  “But in fact, it wasn’t.”

  “It was attempted robbery, that’s what it was,” she cried, “and I never will understand you! Poor Jen!”

  “Whether you understand me or not, I discount any attempt at robbery they made. It may have been an intended robbery, but not attempted, really. And I shall not press charges to the police. Do you understand that?”

  “No, I don’t. For the sake of these children, if you won’t press charges against men who come here with a gun, I will.”

  My father looked suddenly tired. “Have you never had an evil thought, Catherine? Is it possible that you alone, among human animals, never entertained a malicious idea?” He let a purposeful glance fall on the pocketbook in her lap. “If every bad intention were to be reported to the police, they wouldn’t have to investigate bad acts. Anyway, there is no such thing as justice against wicked intentions, and those who demand it are fools.”

  Aunt Catherine worked her hands inside her pocketbook. “Walter, there just wasn’t time to tell you. It was only this morning that I…” She shuffled through the bills and counted off most of them.

  “Forget that, Catherine.”

  “There just wasn’t time. I meant to tell you,” she pleaded, extending the money to him.

  He waved her aside. “I have no idea what you’re talking about now,” he lied, concentrating on refolding his handkerchief around the jewel. “I was talking about the idiocy of trying to punish a man for evil intent. And how I won’t do it. If it makes you feel better, one of the reasons I won’t is that I don’t want to invite any further visits from someone who may be more capable than Mr. Frank and Mr. Sled-boy.”

  “Do you think the police will bring reporters?” Ben asked.

  “And photographers?” I added.

  Aunt Catherine smoothed her hair.

  “Maybe,” my father said. “If the night man thinks the name Briard juicy enough.”

  “Listen, Dad,” Ben said seriously. “I don’t want my picture taken. Suppose, well, suppose when I’m playing Richard III or something like that, and it’s a hit, you know, and the papers have this old picture of me in a story about something as silly as this? Well, I’d hate to have them dig it up then.”

  “Don’t worry, Ben,” my father said.

  Aunt Catherine was smoothing the collar of her dress when the flashlights shone in the front windows.

  There were four men: two in police uniform, armed; one in a gray suit
, apparently unarmed—he was Detective Macci; and one young one, called Roley, lazily chewing gum. He carried a big camera with a flash attachment.

  After matter-of-fact introductions, not nearly as cordial as our ones with the robbers—all of which Detective Macci seemed to be recording verbatim in a small notebook—my father expressed his regret that they had been summoned, that it was an unfortunate misunderstanding on Mrs. Tippet’s part, that no crime had been committed, and that he had no charges to bring.

  “But they did have a gun. That’s why I called,” Aunt Catherine interjected.

  We all had to sit down with Detective Macci while the two uniforms wandered off, presumably to inspect the house. Roley rested himself and his equipment on the couch.

  Detective Macci monotoned questions, which my father answered, providing more details of what had happened. He stressed the facts that the young men had rung the doorbell and that he himself had admitted them, and that while he couldn’t be sure of what action they had originally intended—for, after all, how can one be sure of any other person’s intentions?—what actually occurred was that he and they, separately and together, had a most pacific conversation, and that the young men left in the friendliest of moods—with nothing other than what they had brought with them.

  I thought of saying “less five dollars,” but I feared that would initiate a long explanation that my father would consider unnecessary. Also, I figured Detective Macci’s writing hand must be getting tired. I know I sure was.

  “So, you see,” my father concluded, “this was a mistake. And I am sorry.”

  The two uniformed men weren’t as light and swift as Frank, but they were more thorough searchers. They came back, each holding an arm of a still drugged, pajamaed, utterly confused Fred.

  “Mr. Briard, Mr. Briard,” he bleated, blinking manfully.