by Herman Wouk
With this practical concern went genuine regret at having hit her husband at a bad time. She still loved him, somewhat as she loved her grown children. He was part of her life. So she had fired off the repentant cable, and the short agitated letter which he read aboard the Northampton, withdrawing her divorce request. His reply to the request had filled her with remorse, pride, and relief; remorse at the pain traced in each sentence, pride and relief that Pug could still want her.
So Pug knew the worst, and she still had him. But what about Kirby? One look at him, hurrying up the train platform with those long legs, coaless and hatless in the billowing vapor, told Rhoda that she still had this man too. Her risky spring was turning out well. You never knew! She stood there waiting, gray-gloved hands outstretched, eyes wide and shining. They did not kiss; they never did in public.
“Palmer, no coat? It’s ARCTIC outside.”
“I put on long johns in Chicago.”
She darted him a mischievous intimate glance. “Long johns! Shades of President McKinley, dear.”
Side by side they left the thronged terminal, clamorous with train announcements and with Bing Crosby blare. Dr. Kirby peered through whirling snow as they walked out into the lamplit night. “Well, well! The Capitol dome’s dark. There must be a war on.”
“Oh, there’s all kinds of a war on. The shortages are starting already. And the prices!” She hugged his arm, her motions elastic and happy. “I’m one of these awful unpatriotic hoarders, dear. Do you LOATHE me? I bought two dozen pairs of silk stockings yesterday. Paid double what they cost three weeks ago. Cleaned out two stores of my size! Silk’s all going into parachutes, they say, and soon we’ll be lucky to get even nylon stockings. Ugh! Nylon! It bags around the ankles, and it’s so CLAMMY.”
“Heard again from Pug?”
“Nary another word.”
“Rhoda, on the West Coast they’re saying we lost all the battleships at Pearl Harbor, the California included.”
“I’ve heard that, too. Pug’s letter sort of did sound like it. Real low. But if it’s true, he’ll get some other big job. It’s inevitable now.”
Kirby slung his suitcase into Rhoda’s car in the dark parking area. Once inside the car they kissed, whispering endearments, his hands straying under her coat. But not for long. Rhoda sat up, switched on the lights, and started the motor. “Oh, say, Madeline’s here, dear.”
“Madeline? Really? Since when?”
“She fell in on me this afternoon.”
“Staying long?”
“Who knows? She’s muttering about becoming a Navy nurse’s aide.”
“What about her broadcasting job?”
“I guess she’s quitting — oh, BLAST you, you IMBECILE!” A red Buick pulled out from the curb ahead of her, forcing her to brake, skid, and wrestle with the wheel. “I swear, the MORONS who have the money to buy cars nowadays! It’s so AGGRAVATING.”
This kind of irascible snap was normal for Rhoda. Her husband would not even have noticed. But it was new to Palmer Kirby, and it grated on him. “Well, in wartime prosperity does seep down, Rhoda. That’s one of the few good things that happens.”
“Possibly. All I know is, Washington’s becoming UNLIVABLE.” Her tone stayed shrill and hard. “Just BOILING with dirty pushy strangers.”
Kirby let it pass, weighing the news of Madeline’s presence in the house. Would Rhoda consent to come to his apartment? She didn’t like doing that, she knew too many people in the building. So the reunion looked to be a fiasco, at least for tonight. His inamorata had a family, and he had to put up with it.
In point of fact, Rhoda was counting on Madeline’s surprise visit to help her through a difficult evening. Madeline’s presence luckily postponed certain tactical and moral questions; such as, whether she should sleep with Palmer, after having written to Pug that she wanted to preserve their marriage. In a quandary Rhoda’s rule was “If possible, do nothing.” With her daughter in the house, doing nothing would be simple. Her casual announcement of Madeline’s presence had masked great tension about how Kirby would take the news, and this lay under her little outburst at the Buick. Her natural crabbiness had hitherto been unthinkable with Kirby; in irritated moments she had bitten her tongue, choked down her bile, and kept her face smiling and her voice honeyed. It amused and relieved her to note that he reacted like Pug; after one admonishing remark, he did not speak again. He too was manageable.
They were driving past the darkened White House, on the side where the Christmas tree stood on the lawn, amid crowds of gawkers. “I suppose you know that Churchill’s in there,” she said gaily, sensing that the silence was getting long. “Churchill himself. What a time we’re living in, love!”
“What a time, indeed,” he replied with deep moroseness.
Like most pretty girls, Madeline Henry had a doormat suitor. She had briefly fallen in love with Midshipman Simon Anderson at her first Academy dance because his white uniform fitted so well and he could rhumba so smoothly. He too had fallen in love, mooning and carrying on about the beautiful Henry girl, and sending her atrocious poems; and upon graduation he had fecklessly proposed to her. She was barely seventeen. Enchanted with this very early bloody scalp on her belt, Madeline of course had turned him down.
Scalped or not, Simon Anderson was a dogged customer. Five years later he still pursued Madeline Henry. He was with her tonight. On her telephoning him from New York that afternoon, he had made himself free for her. A prize-winning physics student at the Academy, Lieutenant Anderson was now working at the Bureau of Ordnance, on a secret radical advance in antiaircraft fuses. But to Madeline Sime remained the doormat: good for filling an evening on short notice, and for pumping up her ego when it lost pressure. Anderson accepted this status, tolerated her treading on him, and bided his time.
Rhoda and Dr. Kirby found them drinking by a log fire in the spacious living room of the Foxhall Road house. Rhoda went off to the kitchen. Kirby accepted a highball and stretched his legs, chilled despite the long johns, before the blaze. He was struck by Madeline’s almost blatant allure. Her red wool dress was cut low, her crossed silk-clad legs showed to the knee, and she had a roguish buoyant sparkle to her. “Oh, Dr. Kirby. The very man I want to talk to.”
“Delighted. What about?”
Madeline did not dream, of course, that there was anything between her mother and Kirby but elderly friendship. Rhoda’s church activities and her prim manners and speech had in no way changed. Kirby seemed a nice old gentleman, with a hint in his eye of relish for women, which decades ago might have been beguiling.
“Well, we’ve been having the maddest conversation! My head’s spinning. Sime says that it’s become possible to make radioactive bombs that may blow up the world.”
Anderson spoke crisply. “I said conceivable.”
Kirby gave Anderson a cautious glance. This blond middle-sized lieutenant looked like any other junior naval officer: young, clean-cut, commonplace. “Are you a physicist, Lieutenant?”
“That was my major, sir. I did postgrad work at Cal Tech. I’m a regular officer of the line.”
“Where are you stationed?”
Erect on his chair, Anderson rapped out his words like answers to an oral examination. “BuOrd Proving Ground, sir.”
“I have an E.E. from Cal Tech. How would you go about making this frightful bomb?”
“Well, sir —” he glanced at Madeline — “it requires a new technology. You of course know that. All I said was that Germany might be well along toward it. Their technology is outstanding. They made the first discoveries, and they have high military motivation.”
“Why, I’d be petrified” Madeline exclaimed, “if I could believe any of that. Imagine! Hitler drops one of those things on the north pole, just to show his power, and it melts half the polar cap and lights up the night sky, clear to the equator. Then what happens?”
“Good question,” Kirby replied mournfully. “I wouldn’t know. How long will you be in Washingto
n, Madeline?”
“I may just stay here.”
Kirby saw surprised gladness on Anderson’s face. “Oh? You’re giving up your radio work?” As he said this, Rhoda came in wearing a frilly apron over her gray silk dress.
“I’m not sure. It’s getting hard to take — same idiotic cheerfulness, same grubby commercials, war or no war. Just phony patriotic stuff. Why, we had a songwriter on the show last night, singing his brand-new war ditty, ‘I’m Going to Find a Fellow Who’s Yellow, and Beat Him Red, White, and Blue.’ What a creep!”
Anderson’s sober face cracked in a boyish laugh. “You’re kidding, Mad.”
Her mother asked, “Now what is this, dear? Have you quit your job or not?”
“I’m trying to decide. As for Hugh Cleveland, that egomaniac I work for, what do you suppose he’s contributing to the war effort, Mom? Why, he’s bought his wife a sable coat, that’s what. And he’s taken her off to Palm Springs. Just left the show on my hands, with a dumb comedian named Lester O’Shea to interview the amateurs. Christ, what a coat, Mama! Huge collar and cuffs, solid sables down to mid-calf. I mean it’s vulgar to own and wear such a coat in wartime. I plain got disgusted and came home. I need a vacation myself.”
Madeline had told Rhoda with great indignation of Mrs. Cleveland’s unjust suspicions about her and Cleveland. The mother now had a clue to Madeline’s conduct. “Madeline, dear, was that quite responsible?”
“Why not? Didn’t he just up and leave?” She jumped to her feet. “Come on, Sime, feed me.”
“Won’t you two eat here, dear? There’s plenty.”
Madeline’s ironic glance at Kirby made him feel his years, it declared so plainly her lack of interest in the idea.
“We’re just snatching a bite, Mom, before the movie. Thanks.”
Rhoda treated her lover, in the matter of creature comforts, as she had her husband. She served him excellent lamb and rice, and a good wine. She had a hot mince pie for him, and the heavy Italian coffee he preferred. They brought the coffee into the living room by the fire. Kirby lolled his great legs on the sofa, mildly smiling at her in warm well-being over the coffee cup.
This was the moment, Rhoda thought, and she walked out on the tightrope. “Palmer, I have something to tell you. I wrote Pug about a month ago, asking for a divorce.”
His smile faded. His heavy brows knotted. He put down his coffee and sat straighter. Rhoda was not surprised, though this was a letdown; he might have showed gladness. In good balance, she ran lightly along the rope. “Now, darling, listen, you’re free as air. Just remember that! I’m not sure I ever want to marry again. I’m in a terrible turmoil. You see, I thought he might ask me to come and set up house in Honolulu. I simply couldn’t face leaving you. So I did it, and now it’s done.”
“What reason did you give him, Rhoda?”
“I simply said that we’d been seeing each other, and that I’d fallen so hopelessly in love that it was wrong not to tell him.”
Slowly, heavily, he shook his head. “Gruesome timing.”
“I agree. I’m not clairvoyant, my darling. I couldn’t know that the Japs were about to bomb Pearl Harbor.”
“Has he answered yet?”
“Yes. A lovely, heartbreaking letter.”
“Let me see it.”
She went to her bedroom to get it.
Kirby clasped his hands between his knees, staring at the fire. He at once thought of repeating his proposal. In the circumstances, it seemed mandatory. But marrying Rhoda Henry now wore a different aspect than it had in his hotel room fantasies. He was on the spot. This development struck Kirby as a maneuver. He was a hard-grained man, he knew maneuvering, and on principle resisted being outmaneuvered.
The war rose again in his mind. How much better was he, after all, than the Christmas celebrants he despised? Stuffed with lamb, rice, mince pie, and wine, hoping to sleep with another man’s wife, and perhaps to steal her for good while the man fought the war; could self-indulgent pettiness sink any lower? Right now his place was back in the apartment, writing a report for the meeting tomorrow with Vannevar Bush…
In the bedroom, meantime, Rhoda read over her husband’s letter, as it were with the engineer’s eyes. For an instant, she saw herself as shallow, tawdry, and unworthy of either man. She weighed making some excuse to withhold it from Kirby. But she had observed in his eyes all evening that he desired her. That was the main thing. Let the rest go as it would. She brought him the letter where he sat hunched, poking the fire. He read it, studied the scuffed snapshot of Natalie and Louis, then without a word handed the envelope to her. He rested his head on the back of the sofa, rubbing his eyes.
“What’s the matter, dear?”
“Oh, nothing. I’ve still got a report to write tonight.”
“It is awkward, isn’t it — I mean, Madeline being here and all?”
With a grimace and a shrug of one shoulder Palmer Kirby said, “It really doesn’t matter.”
So chilly were those words, all of Rhoda’s recently gained security was blasted away. “Palmer,” she said in a charged voice, “take me to your apartment.”
This startled life into his drooping eyes. “What? Is that what you want?”
“What do you think, you fool?” They looked at each other. Rhoda’s expression smouldered and a little half-smile curved her thin pretty lips. “Don’t you?”
She returned to the house around one. The living room was dark, and Madeline was not in her bedroom. Having already bathed in Kirby’s apartment, Rhoda changed into a housecoat and went downstairs. She felt a bit silly about all this rapid-fire dressing and undressing. Otherwise she felt very good indeed — an afterglow in her body, a new peace in her mind. Kirby had proposed, as expected, after the lovemaking. She had firmly put him off. She could not consider, she had told him, a proposal made under pressure. Brilliant response! He had wonderfully cheered up, his dutiful manner vanishing in a great grin and a strong hug.
“Well, meantime, Rhoda, will we — well, go on seeing each other?”
“Dear, if ‘seeing is what you choose to call this, why yes, by all means. I loved being seen by you tonight. Very penetrating vision.” Rhoda enjoyed such wheezy ribaldry with Kirby; a taste that somehow, with Victor Henry, she seldom indulged. Her remark brought Kirby’s sudden vulgar smile, showing teeth and gums. Then when she left, some time later, his unreflecting remark, “When will I see you again?” made them both whoop with laughter.
She threw logs on the red embers, mixed herself a drink, and reread Pug’s letter. With Kirby’s proposal in hand, it affected her differently. She was a grandmother twice over, and here she was loved and wanted by two fine men! Not since her adolescent days, when the phone had jangled with dance invitations, and she had turned down two boys in the gamble that a preferred third one would call, had she felt quite this pleasure in her own power to attract.
With such thoughts running through her mind, she jumped when the telephone rang. It was the long-distance operator, calling from Palm Springs for Madeline Henry.
“She’s not here. I’m her mother.”
Rhoda heard Cleveland’s unmistakable voice: “Operator! Operator! I’ll talk to this party… Hello, Mrs. Henry? Sorry to disturb you.” The celebrated rich rumble charmed and soothed the ear. “Is Maddy really in Washington?”
“Yes, but she’s out for the evening.”
“Look, how serious is she about becoming a nurse’s aide? I mean, I’m all for patriotism, Mrs. Henry, but that’s a ridiculous notion. Any nigger girl can become a nurse’s aide.”
“Frankly, Mr. Cleveland, I admire her. There’s a war on.”
“I realize that.” Cleveland heavily sighed. “But the morale effect of The Happy Hour is a great war service, I assure you. You should see the letters from admirals and generals framed in my office!” The voice grew warmer and more intimate. “Rhoda — if I may call you that — with two sons and a hubby in the armed forces, aren’t you making enough of a sacrifice
? Suppose they send her overseas? You’d be alone all through the war.”
“Madeline didn’t like your going off on a vacation at this time, Mr. Cleveland. She feels you’re indifferent to the war. And she said something about sables.”
“Oh, Jesus! What did she say about the sables?”
“Sables for your wife, I believe.”
With a low groan, Cleveland said, “Christ, if it isn’t one thing it’s another. She manages the show backstage, Rhoda. I can step out for a week, but she can’t. We have to train a replacement for her. Please tell her to call me when she gets in.”
“I’ll probably be asleep. I can leave her a message.”
“Thanks. Write it in lipstick on her mirror.” That made Rhoda laugh. “I’m not kidding. I must talk to her tonight.”
Rhoda was finishing her drink by the fire when she heard Madeline in the hallway saying good-bye to Sime Anderson. The daughter marched in perkily. “Hi, Mom. Nightcap? Think I’ll join you.”
“Dear, Hugh Cleveland called.”
The daughter halted, frowning. “When?”
“Not long ago. His number in Palm Springs is on the telephone table.”
Tossing her nose in the air like a little girl, Madeline sat down by the waning fire, and picked up the snapshot beside her father’s letter. “Wow, Briny’s baby, hey? Poor Natalie! She looks fat as a cow here. Mom, can’t you find out what’s happened to them?”
“Her mother wrote to the State Department. I haven’t heard from her since.”
“That’s a weird marriage anyway. Most marriages seem to be. Take Claire Cleveland. She hasn’t grown with Hugh, and that makes her insanely jealous. Did Dad write anything about that stupid letter I sent him?”
“Only in passing.”
“What did he say?”
Rhoda looked through the three sheets. “Here we are. It’s short. ‘I don’t know what went wrong with Madeline. I’m kind of sick about that, and don’t propose to dwell on it. If the fellow wants to marry her, that may clean the mess up as much as anything can. If not, he’ll be hearing from me.’”