People Who Knock on the Door

by Patricia Highsmith

  “I’m trying to earn some money and save it.” Arthur was a little amused, because sitting on your rear end in church was easier than doing yard work, and lately he was tackling the yard of a neighbor of Mrs. DeWitt’s, which was nearly as messy as Mrs. DeWitt’s had been. “Sorry about the church,” Arthur added.

  “And your behavior this spring—I have not forgiven you or excused you.”

  Arthur knew. Once more, under his father’s stare, Arthur felt as if he were absorbing guilt through his pores, like radioactive fallout. External, okay, Arthur told himself. Guilt was supposed to come from inside. He didn’t feel guilty, really. “No, I didn’t think you had.”

  “And the Brewsters,” Richard went on with faint contempt. “Are they any better? No. Money doesn’t gloss over their—their life-style. Nice clothes, a fine house, doesn’t hide anything. And you hang out with them.”

  His father was maybe jealous, Arthur thought, as well as off the beam. “They’re certainly not the richest people in this town,” Arthur said. “I don’t think they flaunt their money. Not at all.”

  “I’m saying that money doesn’t make arrogance look any nicer. What they flaunt is lack of human decency, basic morals. I wouldn’t have the Brewsters as my clients. Just tonight I’m looking through my list again, getting rid of two families, one of them every bit as well-off as the Brewsters. I’m suggesting they go to another insurance investment in town.”

  That must be losing money for Heritage Life, Arthur thought, but he didn’t want to comment. Was Heritage Life, like his father, conducting a purge, making sure its employees went to church on Sunday? Arthur moved toward the door.

  “These with-it people like the Brewsters, the jet set, abortions, heavy drinking, never setting foot—”

  “That’s not true about the Brewsters—heavy drinking. My gosh, Norma Keer drinks more than—Look at the quiet life Norma leads.”

  “Norma leads a silly, selfish life in my opinion. Soon to die, she says, and I believe her. And she spends her evening watching TV programs, reading silly books, when she could be—communicating more with the human race, preparing herself by going to church with the rest of us. Small wonder she drinks!”

  Arthur supposed his father meant preparing for eternal life in the next world. “The books she reads aren’t all silly. I’ve seen a few. Philosophy and poetry.”

  “Oh, I don’t care about her books,” his father said impatiently, “I would like you to come to church with us this Sunday, Arthur.”

  18

  The Reverend Bob Cole’s sermon on Sunday was on “Man’s Relationship to Woman,” which sounded promising to Arthur. Amid the stuff about fidelity and family unity he thought there might be a useful tip or two in regard to Maggie.

  “The other day,” the tall, dark-haired Bob Cole began, “a young woman—one of us here today, I hope, though I certainly won’t point her out or mention her name—came to my office in the middle of the working week and said, ‘I’m so unhappy. Can you tell me what to do about my marriage?’ I began with tactful questions: Was she mistreated; did her husband drink? . . .”

  The church was quite full, Arthur noticed, and there were eight or ten people standing at the back. Arthur was in clean blue jeans and clean shirt, but it was too boiling hot even for a cotton jacket. He was off in Mrs. DeWitt’s direction as soon as his family drove him home after church and he could pick up his bike. The woman in whose yard he worked now gave him Sunday lunch and paid him three dollars an hour.

  “. . . didn’t talk to her enough. She felt she was married to a stranger, she said. I said to her, ‘Do you realize your responsibility as a wife as well? Do you try to talk to your husband about his work, his problems?’—No, she said, she hadn’t. I quoted to her a few passages from the Scriptures which I intend to quote this morning.” He bent over his rostrum. “From Genesis two, verse eighteen. God reveals that he created man first and woman second. Thus: ‘And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helpmeet for him.’ That means,” said the minister, looking up, removing his glasses, “that man needed assistance from that helpmeet at home . . .”

  Robbie scratched a mosquito bite on his ankle. His mother’s tan was fading already on her arms. Arthur smelled at least two different perfumes near him, neither his mother’s, and it struck him that perfume wasn’t appropriate in church, because it was a device for sexual attraction (at least perfume advertisements hammered that point), just as scents in animals served either as a sexual attraction or as warning to enemies. Funny to think of perfume being a signal to shove off, though in fact some perfumes such as Irene Langley’s really did send him the other way. Ariadne Maggie’s perfume was called, and damned expensive, Maggie had implied, and it was a name Arthur wouldn’t forget, and one day soon he’d buy her some, if he had to go to Indi or Chicago for it, because it wasn’t obtainable in Chalmerston.

  “Now!—Now!” the Reverend Cole shouted, jolting Arthur out of his daydream. “Now we suffer the misery of which this poor young woman spoke, because women lack guidance—from their husbands! Yes, we are all bewildered! Both sexes. Woman, the lesser vessel, finds no guidance from her husband!—Why?—Because neither sex knows its function anymore in the system of God. Neither knows its place and its duty. Now we have husbands too busy earning money to listen to their wives; we have wives rebelling, finally, against husbands who come home drunk—who curse and abuse the children, husbands who don’t help enough or praise enough the backbreaking work of their wives within the household. Hence the so-called feminist movement with its so-called emancipation for women, freedom—to go it alone, to obtain abortions—just by asking for them; freedom—they call it, to walk the streets at night, to drop into bars and drink like the very husbands they despise; freedom—to quit their homes and children and go out and slave at a job as hard as their menfolk . . .”

  Their drunken menfolk slaving? Arthur shifted on the hard pew.

  “. . . ask you now is this freedom? No! Both sexes are entirely mixed up!”

  In bed, Arthur thought, wallowing together, happy and mixed up. Arthur had to cough. What was going on in the heads of the people around him? Arthur saw only the backs of heads and washed necks in clean shirts, a few fresh haircuts, most of the women in hats. Were they as bored as he, daydreaming, too? They weren’t all elderly; lots were under thirty. Most if not all had voted for Reagan, Arthur thought. His mother had voted for Carter and had told Arthur not to tell his father.

  The rest of the sermon was predictable. Woman’s place was in the home, caring both for husband and children. Man’s job was to lead. It was a mistake for women to want equal rights, and he put the word rights in quotes, when they had equal rights already, but different rights. A mistake for women to fight against their nature, when their hearts and souls were dedicated to hearth and home, just as man’s was dedicated to breadwinning and to the protection of wife and family. Easy to see how the message slipped down, Arthur thought, because it was partly true, yet the real message was “the man is the boss.” Same in the case of abortion, it was men who laid the law down, the Pope for instance, men who dominated the courts who made the laws. Of course he didn’t consider himself pro-feminist-movement. They were extremists and sounded nuts sometimes. But women should have the real say about abortion, Arthur thought. Hadn’t he just seen the situation in front of his face? And as for being the boss, Arthur loved it when Maggie wanted her way about things, even when she drove the car—after all her own—when he was riding in it, though at first he had felt like a eunuch. Funny, deferring to Maggie, about what kind of car they’d buy, for instance, if they ever did, if they ever got married, would make him feel more like a man rather than less. Bob Cole—

  Here his mother touched him gently in the ribs with her elbow. Arthur sat up. He had been slumped in the pew with his arms folded.

  Bob Cole was simply a
bit primitive, behind the times. Organ music now. The collection. Arthur deliberately hadn’t brought a cent, and he didn’t glance to see what his father had put in.

  Then it was over.

  “Hello, Lois!” Jane Griffin, one of their neighbors and another worker at the Beverley Home for Children, greeted his mother warmly as the congregation moved toward the door.

  Arthur successfully edged through the doorway without having to shake hands with the black-and-purple gowned Reverend Cole. With the blue sky over his head now, Arthur breathed in the fresh, warm air. Everyone was chattering and smiling in front of the church, as if glad it was over, glad they could go home now and put on comfortable clothes, eat Sunday dinner and relax in the afternoon. Arthur noticed his brother focusing on something and looked in that direction.

  His father stood under a curbside tree, talking to a bending figure that Arthur recognized instantly as that of Irene Langley, though the back of her broad-brimmed white hat concealed her face. And his father nearly obscured her with his broad figure made broader by his jacket, which he held open with his hands on his hips. Irene bent appealingly toward him, touched his forearm, and his father stepped back and glanced up at the church steps. Robbie trotted down the steps directly toward his father, stood straight and said something to Irene with the air of making a military announcement. Irene seemed to say, “Oh-h-h,” and bent the other way.

  Arthur looked around for his mother and saw her in a group of five or more people.

  “Oh, hello, Arthur!” said a woman whose name Arthur was not sure of. “How’re you? You’re looking very fit.”

  Kind remarks. Apparent friendliness. Arthur was aware that some of the congregation, he didn’t know who or how many, knew about Maggie and him.

  “Where’s Richard?” his mother asked as they walked down the rest of the steps.

  “Stuck with Irene Langley.” Arthur noticed that Miss Langley leaned, then moved away from his father, when she saw his mother and him approaching. Robbie still stood like an arrow by his father.

  “Got to go visit her tonight,” Richard said in a grumbling way as they walked to the car. “Had to promise.”

  “What’s the matter now?” asked Lois.

  “Just that I haven’t visited her since I’ve been back. Means a lot to her.”

  Ghastly, Arthur thought, visiting a creep like that with a lazy sister and a dying mother who was probably in bed all the time. Arthur knew the intersection of Haskill and Main. It was probably a small, depressing apartment in an old walk-up building. Arthur was in the backseat with Robbie. Since his father was still grousing as he drove, Arthur said, “Can’t somebody else at the church go to see her, Dad?”

  “She says I give her the right words,” his father replied. “I say the right things. Well, it only takes a few minutes, and she might slip if I don’t.”

  “Slip?” Arthur asked, curious.

  “She used to be a prostitute,” Robbie informed Arthur, when his father hesitated.

  Arthur wanted to laugh. Robbie sounded drunk. “Pro—sti—tute,” Arthur said carefully. “I thought it was drugs, Dad.”

  “Both,” said his father. “The two things hang together—like everything else.”

  “She could be one again—a pros—ti—tute,” Robbie said to Arthur.

  “Robbie, that’s enough,” said Lois as the car pulled up the driveway. “You see what Arthur did with the hedge there, Richard? Doesn’t it look nice?”

  “Yep, very nice,” said Richard.

  “Must say again you did a very good job of keeping the house, too, Arthur. Didn’t he, Richard? I do appreciate that.” His mother gave Arthur a smile over the back of her front seat before she got out of the car.

  Maggie was to leave on Tuesday for Canada, and Arthur had a date with her on Monday night. Maggie had expected her mother to be out that evening, but her mother’s dinner party was canceled, and Arthur, Maggie, and her mother spent the evening in the Brewster house. As it turned out, it wasn’t a bad evening. They played records. Betty showed him a few pages of an old family photograph album, laughing at some of the pictures. Maggie as a baby looked like any other baby, but by two was quite recognizable. Arthur felt accepted by the family, even by Warren, who wasn’t there. Warren’s indifferent attitude to him was simply his way, Arthur had decided, even with people he liked. One evening that summer, Warren had offered Arthur one of his prized Havana cigars, and Arthur had never forgotten that. Warren was to join the family on Wednesday in Canada. Arthur had the address. The lake had an Indian name, and so had the town near it.

  Maggie would be gone two weeks, she said, and Arthur supposed a little longer. Even Tuesday afternoon, he felt directionless and blank, and this was the way he would feel, he knew, in September, when she went away east for a longer time. He would be looking at the same walls in his family’s house and thinking that Maggie wouldn’t be back till Thanksgiving or even Christmas.

  On Friday his mother telephoned him at the shop to say that a Mr. Lubbock of C.U. had called up and Arthur was to go and see him today or next week at any time during business hours. Tom Robertson let him off for forty-five minutes that afternoon to go there, and Arthur learned that he had been accepted. Mr. Lubbock even said with a friendly smile that it was good to have a local boy with a special aptitude for science.

  Arthur added this news to the letter he was currently writing to Maggie, his second letter to her, but he did not say anything about the brief interview with Mr. Lubbock to his parents, leaving it to them to ask, if they were interested. His mother did ask, in the middle of dinner, when he was going to see Mr. Lubbock.

  “Saw him today,” Arthur replied. “It went all right. I’m admitted.”

  “Oh, wonderful, Arthur!—Isn’t that nice, Dick?” At least his mother meant it. Her smile was genuine.

  “Well—good,” said his father with a glance at Arthur. “Yes, that’s fine.”

  Robbie munched celery steadily, like a bemused rabbit.

  The telephone rang, and his mother made a grimace, then smiled again.

  “Get that, would you, Robbie?” said their father.

  Robbie jumped up. “What’ll I tell ’em?”

  “Not here and I’ll call back. Find out who it is.”

  A few seconds later, Robbie was saying, “He’s not here,” for the second time.

  “Who is it?” asked Richard, rising, turning around.

  “You know,” Robbie replied.

  Arthur looked at his mother, amused. “Why doesn’t she get a psychiatrist instead of latching on to busy people?”

  Patiently, his mother got up and went into the living room. “Tell her our cat’s sick,” she said with a nervous giggle.

  Robbie came back stern-faced. “Old hag! Why’s she always bothering us?”

  “Why does Dad put up with it?” Arthur said. “After all, she’s found God. You’d think she’d use him, wouldn’t you?”

  Their father returned, frowning. He had agreed to go to see Irene. It was his duty. “She’s weeping. It’s worse tonight, I can tell.”

  “Is she drinking a little?” asked Lois.

  “Not a drop in the house,” Richard said. He went to the front hall hooks for his jacket.

  “Say, Dad, could you drop me at Gus’s?” Arthur said, getting up. “It’s on the way. Just a minute while I call him?”

  His father sighed as if this were a nuisance.

  In the car, Arthur and his father were silent for a few minutes; then Arthur asked, not really caring, “What do you and Irene talk about?”

  “Oh—patience. Morale.” His father drove cautiously, as if taking a driving test. “Remember I used to talk to you about that? How to build and keep morale. Inner strength.”

  Arthur’s mind jumped to money. Even before Robbie’s crisis last May,
morale, in the way his father talked about it, was connected with money. It was his grandmother who had talked about patience and doing work that one could be proud of, “otherwise don’t do it.” Arthur asked, “Has Irene got enough money?”

  “No. That’s one of her problems. Not that she asks me for any, mind you. I wouldn’t yield to that. Yield once and it goes on forever. No, she works now as a waitress in a couple of diners,” his father continued. “Truck-stop type. Has to go by bus at crazy hours sometimes. I’m afraid she’ll yield to temptation and go off with some truck driver one night or day. And he’ll give her more money than tips can. So that’s a temptation, you see.”

  It sounded awful to Arthur, untempting. Imagine going to bed with Irene! Or from Irene’s point of view, sleeping with a truck driver who hadn’t had a bath or a shave in a couple of days! “Well—is she demented?”

  “No. Why?” His father slowed to let him off at the next crossing.

  “Because she didn’t seem quite right in the head the night I saw her.—Is her sister any better?”

  “Um-m—no.” His father stopped the car.

  Arthur got out and said through the open window, “G’luck Dad. And thanks.”

  On a dark sidewalk between Main and Gus’s house, where the commercial started to blend into the residential, Arthur encountered a prostitute. She was strolling languidly and said, “Good evening,” as they passed. What was the world coming to? His father had his work cut out for him.

  Arthur rapped on the frame of the screen door at Gus’s, and getting no answer, walked in.

  “Hi, Art! I’m in the kitchen!” Gus yelled.

  Arthur went into the kitchen and found Gus on the linoleum floor near the back door, working on a lawnmower, a small Wolf that ran with gasoline. Gus’s mother greeted him. She was slicing orange peel and the kitchen smelled nice.

  “Sit down, Art. I won’t be long on this.—Want a beer?”