Disturbing the Peace

by Richard Yates

  “Do you read it?” He was so relieved about the drinking question, as he put on his coat again, that an exchange of harmless pleasantries about his job seemed just the thing. He even forgot to ask what the arm-flexing had been all about.

  “Oh, I’ve been a subscriber for years. Started taking it originally because my wife liked the covers and the artwork – she’s an artist herself – and then I got hooked on it. Even wrote an article for them once last year. It’s surprising: for a commercial magazine they do maintain a very high level of scientific integrity.”

  “What issue was your article in, Doctor? I’ll look it up.”

  “Oh, don’t bother. August issue, I think. I don’t mean to rush you, Mr. Wilder, but this is one of my busy days.” And he rose to shake hands, walking Wilder to the door in readiness for his next patient.

  Later that week Wilder found a copy of the August issue on his desk – he had asked one of the girls to pull it from the file – and there it was, as big as life in the table of contents: “The New Psychiatry, by Myron T. Brink, M.D.” There wasn’t time to read it in the office, but he took it home and promised himself to read it soon. In the end the magazine somehow found its way to Pamela’s apartment, and when he asked her about it at Christmastime, long after it had ceased to matter very much, she said she guessed she’d thrown it away.

  All at once it was spring again, and Julian still hadn’t edited the film, let alone arranged to have it “scored” for recorders and guitars. For all they knew he hadn’t even taken his exterior footage of the streets around Bellevue. And he no longer made the excuse of having to work for money; all he could talk about these days was his deep involvement with Jerry’s adaptation of Burn All Your Cities, which he said might well be the professional breakthrough for them both.

  “I could slit him,” Pamela said after one more futile phone call from her apartment, one night when Wilder was there. “He seems to feel he doesn’t even have to apologize to us any more. I thought directors were only supposed to be arrogant and callous after they got famous.”

  “What I don’t see,” Wilder said, “is how Pratt would let a couple of kids do his book in the first place. I mean if it’s such a great novel he must’ve had offers from real movie people.”

  “No, I don’t imagine he has. The book wasn’t a big seller, and it’s a very downbeat story. Besides, he must find it flattering to have eager young men dancing attendance on him this way, talking about his Integrity all the time. Anyway, Pratt’s beside the point. It’s Julian. You know what I think? I think he’s decided he doesn’t really like ‘Bellevue,’ and he’s just too cowardly to say so.”

  “Well,” he said, “there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it, is there.”

  “All we can do is ride herd on him. I’m going to call him night and day until I wear him down, and I think you ought to call him too, from the office – will you promise to do that?”

  He did – or at least he tried: he got three busy signals at Julian’s number, and he was about to try again when his phone rang.

  “John?” Janice said. “I’m sorry to bother you at work but this is important. Could we meet somewhere for lunch today?”

  “I’m afraid not, dear. George wants me to—”

  “All right; wait. Let me think.”

  “Is everything all right? Is Tommy all right?”

  “Well, that’s the thing, you see; it’s something about Tommy.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “It’s not a thing we can discuss over the phone.”

  So there was nothing to do but sit there while she waited and thought. Somewhere in the outer office one of the girls shrieked with laughter over the clatter of typewriters, and another said “Oh, Mr. Taylor, you’re terrible!” He wanted to get up and shut the door, but the phone wire was too short.

  “Janice? You still there?”

  “Yes. I’m thinking. Oh, wait – we can discuss it tonight. I just realized you don’t have a meeting tonight. I know: we’ll tell Tom we’re going to a movie, and then we’ll go to that nice new coffee shop around the corner, what’s it called? You know the one. It’s all red and black, and they serve good pastry. We can talk there in comfort as long as we want.”

  For the rest of that day, all through his boring business lunch and his long afternoon of business calls, he was as preoccupied as a conscientious family man. But it wasn’t Tommy that kept his mind far away from the job, it was Janice. What in God’s name was he ever going to do about Janice? He couldn’t get over how pitiful she’d sounded on the phone – talking of nice new coffee shops all red and black, where they served good pastry and where two tired parents, however badly estranged, might go and discuss something painfully close to their hearts “in comfort.”

  “Oh, this’ll be such fun,” she said at dinner that night. “I don’t think I’ve been out to a movie in ages and ages.”

  “Sure you have, Mom,” Tommy said. “You went to a movie last week.”

  “That isn’t what I mean,” she told him quickly. “I mean going out to a movie with your father. It’ll be like a real oldfashioned date for us, won’t it, John?”

  “Sure will.”

  “Do you want to call up the Borgs, dear, and see if they’re free? If they are we could make it a foursome; that might be even nicer.”

  Was she kidding? What was he supposed to say to that? He glanced uneasily at his son before answering. “Isn’t Paul out of town this week?”

  “Oh, that’s right, he is. Of course we could call Natalie – I imagine she’d love to get out – but somehow a threesome isn’t nearly so much fun, is it?” And when he stole a quick look at her he found one of her eyes wrinkled shut in an elaborate wink of conspiracy. The funny part was that Tommy wasn’t even paying attention.

  “May I be excused, Mom?”

  “Of course you may.”

  Because the night was warm she wore a summer dress – the same blue-and-brown, breast-enhancing dress she’d worn to visit him in Bellevue, the dress she always called his favorite – but because it might turn chilly later she carried a wide, light stole over one arm. That stole, too, was a heartbreaker. He had given it to her as a birthday present years ago, after seeing one just like it slung from the shoulders of a pretty girl at the office. But the girl at the office had known how to wear the thing, as a sort of elegant loose shawl, and Janice hadn’t. From the moment she’d rushed from her birthday celebration to pose with it at the hall mirror (“Oh, I love this, John …”), he knew she would never learn to wear it – it looped and dangled from her elbows like a rope – and every time she tried only made it worse.

  “We’re going now, Tommy,” she sang now from the vestibule. “Be sure and get to bed the minute that program’s over. No fooling around tonight, okay?”

  “What was the point of all that about the Borgs?” he asked her in the elevator.

  “I don’t know; I just felt I had to keep talking about something, so he wouldn’t see how anxious I am.”

  The coffee shop was very much like the one uptown where Bill Costello had dramatized the value of Alcoholics Anonymous for him, but this turned out to be an even more dramatic evening.

  “Oh, let me see,” she said to the harried young Puerto Rican waiter. “I think I’ll have some of your lovely cherry cheesecake, and coffee with lots of cream. Are you sure the pastry’s fresh tonight?”

  The waiter could only stand there with his order pad, sweating and looking confused.

  “One cherry cheesecake, two coffees,” Wilder told him.

  “God,” she said before the waiter was out of earshot, “doesn’t anybody speak English in this town any more?”

  “Sh-sh.”

  “I know. I keep forgetting how much New York has changed. Everything’s changed. All right. Let me start at the beginning. Last Friday there was a phone call from the school. All his grades are down and he’s failing two subjects. They’re going to hold him back, John. He’s not going on into seven
th grade with the rest of his class; at this rate he may never get to college – and that’s only the beginning.” She fumbled in her handbag for Kleenex, pulled out a cluster of the stuff and blew her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I knew I’d cry.” And there was nothing to do but reach across the damp plastic table and hold her hand.

  “Look, Janice; this is nothing to get upset about. Kids go through phases, that’s all. He can go to summer school. You should’ve seen my grades when I was that age.”

  “Yes, and you were a great success at Yale, weren’t you? You’ve had a wonderful, distinguished career, haven’t you? Oh, you earn good money, I’m not saying that, but since when has the measure of a man been – oh, I’m sorry; I’m sorry; don’t let me get this way. It’s just that I’ve been so—”

  “Okay; okay.”

  “I’ve been so lonely, John, and there’s never anyone to talk to. I’d be in analysis myself if I thought it would do any good. Oh, thank you so much, waiter, this is lovely. Oh, and look, it is fresh too – it must’ve been baked just this morning – thank you; that’ll be all for the moment.”

  “Missus? Something else?”

  “No, I only said—” She closed her eyes and whispered “God, God” through clenched teeth.

  “That’s all for now,” Wilder said, and the waiter retreated with a wavering smile.

  “But that’s only the beginning,” she said. “That was last week, and it was only the principal’s office. Yesterday there was another call, and this time it was the guidance counsellor.”

  “The what?”

  “Guidance counsellor. All the schools have them now. He wouldn’t say a word on the phone; he said I’d have to go in, and I did. I thought he’d just want to talk about the grades, and it was partly that, but the rest of it is much, much worse. He said – oh, John, he said Tommy’s emotionally disturbed and he thinks we ought to have him see a psychiatrist. Right away.”

  Wilder had learned once, in some elementary science course either at Grace Church or at Yale, that the reason for a retractable scrotum in all male mammals is to protect the reproductory organs in hazardous or distressful situations: sharp blades of jungle grass, say, will brush against a running animal’s thighs, and the testicles will automatically withdraw to the base of the trunk. He wasn’t sure if he had it right – did he have anything right that he’d ever learned in school? – but the basic idea seemed sound, and in any case it was happening to him now: his balls were rising, right there in the coffee shop.

  “What does he mean, emotionally disturbed?”

  “He exhibits hostile, antisocial behavior,” she said. “He doesn’t have any friends. Twice this term – or maybe it was three times – he’s pulled chairs out from other boys just as the other boys were sitting down, and one of those boys had to have X rays taken of his spine.” She had been slicing her cherry cheesecake into neat, moist sections; now she raised one piece to her bared teeth but it crumbled and part of it fell on her dress, and it seemed to be this small disaster as much as the spinal X rays that reduced her, once again, to tears.

  “A child psychiatrist, you mean?” Pamela said. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”

  “I thought so too, at first. Went in and talked to the guidance counsellor myself, tried to have a few hearty, man-to-man talks with Tommy, but I finally had to give up. There’s no denying it: he is kind of withdrawn and sullen. Janice says I ought to spend more time at home, and I guess she’s probably right.”

  “Oh, you guess she’s right, do you? Well, I think it’s emotional blackmail.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, John, you’re too much. Do you really think she still doesn’t know you have a girl? After all this time?” She sat up quickly in bed – not to stand and fight, as he’d feared, but only to make sure her cigarette wasn’t burning the sheet. “Sometimes you’re the most sensitive, intelligent man in the world, and sometimes you’re as dense and naive as a – I don’t know. Certainly she knows. If she hasn’t asked you about me point-blank it’s just part of her strategy.”

  “Okay, I’m naive,” he said. “I guess the really naive thing was thinking I could talk this over with you.”

  “I don’t know; it seems to be a thing married men do. God knows Frank Lacy spent enough time pouring out his dreary little domestic problems.”

  This was bad. If she started comparing him with Frank Lacy he might not survive the night. He got out of bed and put on the terry-cloth robe she had bought him for Christmas, and the feel of the robe alone was enough to brighten him. “Let’s change the subject,” he said. “In fact let’s not talk about anything at all. Let’s sing.”

  “Sing?”

  “Sure. If there’s one thing I know better than old-time movies it’s old-time songs. Didn’t I ever tell you that? Wait. We’ve got to do this right.” At the bathroom mirror he doused and combed his hair and made sure the lapels of the robe were straight, and then he was ready. “You ready?” he called. “Turn on the light, then, and get this.” Only when he’d heard the click of the light switch did he throw open the bathroom door and advance on her with a tricky little dance step, in full song:

  Columbus discovered America

  Hudson discovered New York

  Benjamin Franklin discovered the spark

  That Edison discovered would light up the dark

  Marconi discovered the wireless telegraph

  Across the ocean blue

  But the greatest discovery

  Was when you discovered me

  And I discovered you

  “But that’s marvelous,” she said when she’d finished laughing and clapping her hands. Throughout the performance she had sat up in bed and hugged her knees like a little girl, and now her face was radiant. “You even sing well. I mean you don’t just carry a tune, you really sing.”

  “Sure.” At least she wasn’t close enough to feel the rapid beating of his heart. “I wasn’t a choirboy for nothing.”

  “Sort of a light, funny Eddie Fisher,” she said, “or a heavier Fred Astaire. Listen. Go back in there and come out again. Sing me another.”

  “Nope. The secret of any entertainer is knowing when to stop. Anyway it’s time to – you know. Go home.”

  “Oh, please. Will you promise to sing another one next time?”

  “Sure. I got a million of ’em.”

  He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, staring at his empty shoes, and the shape of his back must have been eloquent because her arms came tenderly around him from behind and her fingers played with the hair of his chest.

  “Poor baby,” she said. “I know you’re feeling terrible about your boy.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just – hell, you know. Going home, is all.” Because going home meant riding for miles on the IRT with the city’s lost and beaten night people, with nothing to do but remember nights long ago when a plain, pleasant girl named Janice Brady had said she loved the Brooklyn Bridge and the Staten Island Ferry, and because “Columbus Discovered America” was the best of the many, many songs that had helped win Janice Brady’s heart.

  He did begin to spend more time at home – he told Janice he would cut down to two or three AA meetings a week, instead of five – and though it meant less time with Pamela it made him feel like a responsible father. Twice he left work early to take Tommy to ball games (wasn’t that the kind of thing responsible fathers did?), and both times, nursing an after-game beer in some clamorous eating place near the stadium, he tried to draw him out.

  “How’s summer school going, Tom?”

  “I don’t know; all right, I guess.”

  “Think you’ll do a little better next year?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Once he asked him about the psychiatrist – ”You getting along all right with Dr. Goldman?” – before he realized that this was an invasion of privacy, and he amended it quickly: “I mean, you know, you don’t have to tell me about that if you don’t want to,” while Tommy s
oberly chewed his hot dog and kept his own counsel.

  “Does he ever talk to you about the psychiatrist?” he asked Janice.

  “Not a word – and I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad one. What do you think?”

  Seeing Pamela only two or three nights a week did make a difference: every time, it seemed, she was full of news that had nothing to do with him.

  “I had lunch with Chester Pratt today,” she said one night, “or rather I had lunch with Jerry and he brought Chester Pratt along. He’s really very nice when he’s sober.”

  “Oh?”

  “Jerry made something of an ass of himself, as you can imagine – trying to hog the conversation, calling him ‘Chet’ all the time – but when Pratt did get a word in edgewise I thought he was charming. Very intelligent and witty and – well, charming, that’s all.”

  “He writing another book now?”

  “No, that’s the sad part. He says he can’t afford to start a new book yet; he has too many debts. He owes money to his ex-wife, and he owes back taxes and I don’t know what-all. He’ll have to get some kind of job; it seems an awful shame.”

  “Why? Most people work for a living.”

  “I know; I just meant – you know. It’s a shame because he’s so terrifically talented. Of course you haven’t read the book; you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Well, if he’s going to hold down a steady job he’d better go easy on the booze.”

  “Oh, that’s silly; just because he was drunk at Julian’s party that time doesn’t mean – besides, you drink a lot, and you hold down a job.”

  “What kind of job is he looking for?”

  “He said he might go back into public relations – he’s done that before – or he might look for work in Hollywood. He said both prospects were equally bleak.”