by James Jones
Bent over as she was, this time she turned her back away from him, he noticed. Looking at her Dave had the same feeling he’d had observing Edith Barclay in Smitty’s Bar: I could really love this woman!
Gwen straightened up. This time when she looked at him she smiled, her eyes going out of focus with excited self-awareness, and when she moved it was with a conscious grace.
It was working! Dave thought exuberantly, in spite of all her promises of disinterest, even though she knew her way around plenty, this gal. A smell of rich meat and of some spice or other had flowed out of the oven into the room and this seemed too to fit exactly like everything else. She likes for me to look at it, he thought, even if she does turn it the other way.
“What’re you cooking?” he said.
“Stuffed beef hearts. Do you like them?”
“I don’t know. I never ate them.”
“You’ll like these,” she promised, smiling, and for a moment looked him fully in the eyes. Then she looked down at her watch, and moved to turn off the burner under the single boiling pot that had been boiling away ever since he had come in. Holding the lid as a strainer, she poured the water off of what when she removed the lid was disclosed to be over a dozen huge potatoes, both Irish and sweet potatoes. Taking a big spoon, she began to put some of both into the oven with the meat, bending as before with her back away from him. Then, looking up and seeing the surprised look all those potatoes had brought to Dave’s face, she laughed.
“You won’t have to eat all these tonight,” Gwen said gaily, getting another one on the spoon. “You don’t know much about cooking, do you?”
“Oh, a little bit,” Dave grinned. “Why?”
“You thought I was going to serve all of these, didn’t you? But I always boil a big batch when I boil them,” Gwen smiled up at him, her eyes squinted. “It saves me time, you see, and what’s left over I keep in the icebox. The Idahoes become hash browns or I use them in soup or hash.” For a moment, her eyes changed; they opened wide, looking up at him in a way that was intimate, and inviting, and made the smile still on her face suddenly flirtatious. “And the sweet potatoes I fry.”
“Fried sweet potatoes?” Dave said, leaning on the countertop.
“It’s Southern,” Gwen laughed. “You’ve never tasted anything good until you’ve eaten cold, sliced leftover sweet potatoes fried in butter and sprinkled with sugar.” She had put four of the huge potatoes, two of each, into the oven. She straightened and shut the door.
“You always boil baked potatoes first?” Dave grinned, looking into her face.
Gwen nodded. “Again, it saves me time. I’m not one of these cooks who likes to spend hours and hours in the kitchen. And also, boiling them first makes them bake moist.”
“Oh,” Dave said. He straightened himself a little and sipped at his drink, watching her over the rim of the glass.
Still with that squint of embarrassed self-pleasure, Gwen turned and walked down to the other end of the counter by the door, not the one they had come in by, she walking rawboned and leggy with that almost masculine angularity, but with those definitely female hips. Hips she was aware of and enjoying now, obviously. She was having a flirtation as much as he was. And she knew how to play it, he thought. She wasn’t beautiful, at least you never thought of her as beautiful when you were away from her, but when you were with her, she was beautiful.
“What’re you fixin now?” he said.
“Apples,” Gwen said. “And now you go on down to the other end and talk to Dad until I get this food fixed. Or I’ll never get it fixed,” she laughed. “We will be ready to eat in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” Dave muttered. It was all set. There was a note almost of promise in her voice and he reflected how easy it was, really, once your mood was right. But at the same time, he was suddenly aware of Bob French, still standing down at the other end of the counter, still mixing his manhattans. It seemed to be taking him a very long time. He had completely forgotten he was here. He turned quickly and started down the long room toward him.
“Guinevere, your drink is ready!” Bob called almost immediately.
“Put it on the coffee table, and I’ll get it in a little bit,” she said.
“It may get warm,” he cautioned.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll get it in just a minute.”
Dave walked on down the long length of the room to where he stood beside the inside counter which served as the bar, holding the two red-tinged drinks with their maraschino cherries in them.
“Let’s sit down,” Bob said. Then he grinned delightedly. “By the fire!” It was impossible to tell whether he had followed anything that had gone on up the counter or not. Dave looked at his face to see if he could read it.
“Let me put some records on,” Bob said, and went to the console where two thick albums were set up neatly on its top. “I’ve been listening to Bach’s The Art of the Fugue a lot lately,” he said, in that almost apologetic way he had whenever he spoke of anything that might be construed as culture, “and I have it out, here. Will that be all right with you?”
“Sure,” Dave said. He looked around the room again. Down at the other end, Gwen was gracefully squatting down putting apples into a bowl, and he could see part of the inside of her bare thigh where the top of her stocking ended.
Suddenly, as if realizing exactly where he was looking, though she did not look up, Gwen seized her dress and tucked it up under her knee, covering the offending spot. Dave, confident now, did not bother to look away, and grinned at her openly.
“This is group III,” Bob said, coming up behind him. Startled, Dave swung back around.
“My recording is transcribed for orchestra,” Bob said. “I prefer that to piano only—for this, at least.” He sat down beside Dave on the divan and picked up his glass from where he had set it on the coffee table, in the warmth radiating out to them from the huge fireplace.
Again, it was impossible to tell from his face whether he was following what was going on, or just missing it entirely. Then the music came out into the room—like also the warmth of the fire—low in volume, first one violin, then two, then other instruments, exceedingly simple apparently and yet tremendously complex, slow and measured seemingly even in its faster parts, calm, cool, melodiously sweet. To Dave, who knew next to nothing about classical music, it seemed as if this were the only music which could have been played here and now, and be such a perfect complement to all the rest of this place.
“Tell me,” he said suddenly, feeling again that ridiculously emotional desire to please the older man, “tell me, is it all like this?”
Bob grinned, coming up out of the music, the grin a little rueful. “No. No, as a matter of fact, it isn’t. It’s rather a good deal less so. Except here and there. But we hope to get it all done someday. I’ll show you the rest of the house later, if you like.”
“I would,” Dave said. “Very much.”
“You see, we have so much stuff,” Bob said, as if ashamed for having it. “Like that big table there. We have stuff like that all over the house. That table is from my mother’s family. It was carried overland in a covered wagon from New York State to Ohio, then again from Ohio to here. We have clothes chests, and sugar chests, and cedar chests,” he said wearily, “and old beds, and corner cupboards, and chairs, and tables, sitting all over the house. Most of it comes down from one family or another. Although a few of the things my wife bought. She was an antiquer. But, you see, it rather got so we almost couldn’t get into the house in Parkman, and in order to get something from one chest we had to move another you know. Practically.”
“That isn’t true,” Gwen said, coming down toward them with a bowl of apples. She sounded very positive, and almost prim. “I don’t think you should persist in using the furniture as an excuse for buying this house just because you’re ashamed of having a little money. I don’t think that’s fair to yourself or to anyone else. It’s cheating, and it’s immoral.”
Both of the men looked at her. In a very short time, she seemed to have changed completely into another person; a person more like the coldly responsible schoolteacher Dave had met at Frank’s, than the warmly sympathetic woman he had ridden downtown with.
“You are quite right, dear Gwen,” Bob said, looking at her quizzically. She went right on with her apples.
“Is that what you call Early American?” Dave said, looking away from her to the table.
“Well, if it is, it is rather a bastard type you know,” Bob said in a pained voice that was very like his apology for culture.
“It’s nothing of the sort,” Gwen said without looking up, “and you know it.”
“Early American is rather supposed to be quite plain, I understand,” Bob went on to Dave. “Whereas you can see the legs of this table are not plain.”
“They’re not ornate, though,” Dave said.
“Yes,” Bob said. “They’re not ornate. You see I have rather an idea, as I said before, about eventually fixing up different rooms as different periods and styles, you know. For instance, we have enough Pennsylvania Dutch things to outfit a whole room. We have so much stuff, and so many rooms. And it’s a project. And I like to putter around,” he said.
Gwen said nothing. Then quite suddenly she reached out for her drink, which she had hardly touched, and drank it all down in two swallows.
Bob looked over at her again, his face not derisive so much, as understandingly humorous.
“What kind of wood is that?” Dave asked of the table.
“That?” Bob said. “That is cherry and rosewood. That’s unusual you know. Mostly they mixed mahogany and rosewood. The legs are solid rosewood. The thing that makes it good is the carving of the legs, however. Not the turnings themselves, but the hexagonal tapered panels between them. I’ve never seen another quite like it actually.”
“It’s very beautiful,” Dave said. “So are those chairs.” He felt he had just about run out of anything else to say, or to comment on.
“We have a lot of antique furniture,” Gwen said without looking up from her apples. “And in spite of the way he talks, he’s going to have a very unusual and beautiful thing when he gets the place finished.”
“Yes, but it is coming along rather quite slowly,” Bob said.
“I don’t see how you can expect to complete a project like you have in mind in a few weeks or days,” Gwen said. She got up with her apples, which she had finished cutting, having put each unpeeled slice in the pan, and took them down to the stove, as if there were nothing more to be said.
“Here!” Bob said heartily. “What about another drink, Dave. Your glass is empty.” He got up, unfolding the long lean legs below the long, lean torso.
“Yes,” Dave said. “Yes, I’ll have one. In fact, I’ll have two!” He didn’t understand about Gwen, what had happened to her, but Bob made him feel wanted, honestly wanted.
“A double?” Bob said, “fine! fine!” He went to the bar.
“Or a triple,” Dave said. A kind of wild emotion, reaction to all he had been feeling, all day and this evening, was spreading through him.
“Guinevere?” Bob said.
“Yes,” Gwen said from the stove. “Yes, I believe I will have another.”
“And so will I!” Bob said. “This is an occasion!”
“I had no idea you had any such place as this,” Dave said, looking into the glowing coals of the fire. He looked over at Bob, “I thought nobody but the very rich owned things like these.”
“Well, of course, we have a little family income,” Bob said in that apologetic tone, from the bar. “They are valuable. But, of course, we didn’t have to buy them you know. Most of them. If we had had to live off what we made as teachers and writers, I’m afraid we’d have become wards of the state some time ago.”
“Oh, now, I wouldn’t say that,” Dave said.
“Dad,” Gwen called, in that clear disapproving voice, “I wish you would stop castigating yourself this way. It isn’t healthy.”
“But it’s a proven fact, dear Gwen. Let’s face it,” Bob said, smiling at his use of the modern phrase. “I’m passé. I’m one of those old-fashioned poets. I’m afraid the young people don’t read me much anymore,” he smiled sadly to Dave. “And why shouldn’t one admit the facts?” he said to Gwen. “One’s vanity you know. It makes one rather want a little acknowledgment.”
“The hardest thing in the world to get,” Dave said.
“The least important,” Gwen said, turning the stove burner on. She put a skillet on the burner, added butter and sugar, then dumped in half a small jar of old-fashioned red hots. Dave watched to see what she would do with the unpeeled apples. She dumped them into the skillet on top of the rest and began to stir.
“Here you are, Dave,” Bob said, bending to set a larger glass on the coffee table in front of him. “I believe there’s just a little more there than a double,” he grinned, hunching his spare shoulders and winking. Once again, in the reddish light of the fire, Dave was struck by the strangeness of that full mustache and the crew-cut hair, and between them those blue, bright, all-engulfing eyes.
“Thanks, Bob,” he said as the tall man went back to the bar.
“Pleasure!” Bob said. “Pleasure!” He commenced mixing the new manhattans.
Dave turned to look at Gwen again, who still stood by the stove, stirring. He couldn’t figure out what had happened, what he had done wrong.
“Your drink, Gwen dear!” Bob said. “I assume you want it up there.” And without waiting for answer, he carried it up to where she stood and set it down beside her on the countertop. Gwen, still stirring the apples, glanced down at it and did not touch it. “Thanks,” she said as he walked away.
“And my own!” Bob said. He poured it out into his glass with a flourish and carried it to the coffee table where Dave sat on one divan and sat himself down on the other. Behind them, the Bach still played on on the loaded record changer.
“Gwen tells me you’ve been writing some poetry,” Bob said in a tone that was carefully inflected to express both genuine interest and at the same time the knowledge that he need not talk about it if he didn’t want to.
Dave looked over to where Gwen stood, her untouched drink beside her on the countertop. “Oh, just a little bit,” he said looking back at Bob. He felt embarrassed. “It’s not very good, and it’s not even poetry really.” She shouldn’t have told it. When he looked back at her again, he was surprised to note that her drink was gone. The glass sat where it had before, seemingly untouched, but nothing was in it now but the cherry. Apparently, she had swallowed it off the same way she had the first one.
“Don’t be too sure!” Bob cautioned, holding up a finger. “I wonder if I might have the privilege of reading some of it?”
“He didn’t bring it,” Gwen said from the stove in that clear, prim voice.
“How do you know?” Dave said.
“I just know,” Gwen said and turned to look him full in the face again, her eyes withdrawn this time, instead of warm. “Well? You didn’t, did you?” she said. Then before he could answer, “Gentlemen, we are ready to eat!” Using a hot pad, she lifted the skillet and with a spoon scraped the apples into a dish of that same olive-green-and-white restaurant ware, and carried it to the table.
“No, I didn’t,” Dave muttered. “I thought about it. But I didn’t. I didn’t think it was good enough.”
“Perhaps some other time,” Bob said, apparently unperturbed by the action going on around him. “Come, let’s sit.” He got up. “Bring your drink. If you want another after you finish that one, don’t be afraid to holler at me.”
“If I do, and I probly will, I’ll mix it myself,” Dave smiled at him.
“Good!” Bob said, nodding, “fine! Better yet! Do that! I hope I got that last one dry enough for you?”
“It was fine,” Dave said. He was beginning to feel the drinks a little now.
“You know,” he said as he sat down,
“the thing that gets you about this place so much is that it’s so safe.”
“So what?” Bob said, sitting.
“Safe!” Dave said, looking around the room. “You know. Safe!”
“Safe,” Bob said. Looking surprised, taking up his napkin and spreading it, he looked around at it himself. “Yes, I guess it is that,” he said. “Although I had never thought about it in just that way you know.”
“Naturally,” Dave said. “You wouldn’t. But it’s the safest place I’ve ever seen in my life. I feel safe here! It’s safe!” he said, as if just extra emphasis on the word would convey what he meant.
Gwen had taken the beef hearts and the huge potatoes from the oven and put them on dishes and set them on the table. That was all there was. No bread, no little extras, no second vegetable dish. Now she brought the big salad bowl of lettuce and cut tomatoes and put it on the table, together with three salad bowls, and a small bottle of salad dressing, which said Girard’s, San Francisco, on its label and which she shook vigorously for a moment and then set beside the bowls.
“No,” she said as she sat down. “You’re wrong, it isn’t safe. It just seems that way to you. Actually, it isn’t safe at all. It only removes danger to a more subtle level.” She picked up her own napkin. Her eyes were just a little bit wavery from the liquor, and a wisp of her nondescript-colored hair had fallen over her forehead, her face still flushed a little from the heat of the stove.
“How is that?” Dave said, feeling very prudent. He still didn’t know what it was he had done wrong, but he assumed he must have done something. Maybe it was the way he had looked at her leg. Whatever it was, the confidence he had felt a while ago was fast going out of him, and along with it the charm. And in place of it, he was having difficulty in keeping from getting really angry now.
“Well, what kind of dangers are there?” Gwen said, with that positiveness of hers, as if answering a student’s question. “There are only two. Financial danger and spiritual danger. Financial danger is the social danger from others, the outside danger. Spiritual danger is the danger from ourselves, from within. If we’ve removed the financial danger of day-to-day struggle, we have only removed it to the more distant and more subtle danger of the bank and credit and economizing. We’ve given up a lot of other things to have this place.”