by James Jones
When Gwen had first called him up about the book manuscript, a couple of days after he had taken it over to her, he had gone over that same evening. Neither of them had mentioned what had happened the time before. And yet there was no constraint. They had sat down with the manuscript and a sheaf of notes Gwen had made on it, and while Bob sat back by the record player reading, had gone over the whole thing together. They had been very close, warm friends—nay, he thought poetically, they had been lovers; lovers in that private silent language lovers have, that is mostly with the eyes, but that is just as valuable—perhaps more valuable—than the spoken word. And yet not a word about love or anything of that sort was said. It had been a wonderful evening. And when he went home to bed celibate (for that night at least), he not only had not minded but had actually enjoyed doing it.
Since then, he had been working with her closely, going over two and often three evenings a week, and in the little over a month since that first trip after getting back from Florida he had finished one chapter and part of another. It was slow, boring, head-cracking work—not the kind of wild, quick, excited work he had done when he wrote “The Confederate” in six weeks; but he was enjoying it. It was going to be a long pull.
He would take over what he had done for her to read, and then would amuse himself playing their records or reading their books while she took the pages off in the corner, and then they would dissect them and perhaps have a drink or eat something or talk to Bob or play a game of chess. Only rarely did she have a criticism, and she admitted to him rather happily that she had been pretty worried whether or not he would be able to do this kind of work. “This is fully conscious writing,” she smiled, “you have a preconceived effect consciously in mind and are working deliberately toward it. There’s all the difference in the world between this and what I call unconscious writing—where you merely write out of the excess of your own emotions. The unconscious writer doesn’t really know what he’s writing or its significance. He has no criterion of judgment except his own personal emotions. That’s the way your first two books were written, and ‘The Confederate’ also, except that in ‘The Confederate,’ you showed a really first-class overall organizational sense. But that’s not the same as writing consciously.” She sighed and ran her fingers back along her temple. “Wally is still in that stage of unconscious writing,” she said, in what was a sudden new intimacy with Dave, because she never talked to him about others’ writing. “And I dread when he will have to grow and change over into conscious writing. It’s the worst period a writer can go through. And a lot of them never make it. Because once you become conscious of what you are doing, you lose the validity of innocent emotion. It’s no longer enough to just feel something, and then write it. You have to construct. So most writers never make the change. They simply avoid it, and live on, trying to imitate their old unconscious writing—which, of course, they can’t do. God knows what will happen to Wally when he becomes sophisticated and begins to see himself.”
Dave had seen Wally over at the house in Israel a couple of times, and there had been nothing but the nicest of friendliness between them both times, and yet he could not help but sense a new stiffness between them also, that had not been there until just recently. They were like two strange male dogs bristling. It seemed to date from the housewarming party, when Dawn had made her comment about “competition,” and even when Wally came down to the house in Parkman to play Ping-Pong, it was still there, although Wally never stopped coming. Hearing Gwen talk about Wally’s work had somehow done away with his own competitive drive.
Bob French himself had not read any of the book, and said he did not want to until he could read it in more or less final draft. That way, he said, he could give them both a completely fresh viewpoint. But he had read “The Confederate” and was enthusiastic about it, and had already sent it off to the New Living Literature people. He expected an answer in a month or two, and he expected it in the affirmative. They talked about this, and about all writing in general, and about people, and about pretty nearly everything else, while Dave was over there. Twice he had upon invitation stayed over for the entire weekend, writing just the same every day. He could not have enjoyed himself more. And he did not even mind sleeping two or three rooms away from her and knowing that she was lying so close, alone and undressed.
All this of course was taking a good deal of time away from his gambling junkets with ’Bama. But the tall man was all for it. After all, that was what they’d first taken the house for, wasn’t it? so as to help him out with his writin? What the hell was he worryin about, anyway? The thing was to stay with it, do whatever was necessary to get it done.
The result was that they were now only spending three or four evenings a week at poker. But the truth was, ’Bama had a good deal to occupy himself also, because he was spending a lot of time now with Doris Fredric.
Dave did not know exactly when all this had started, but a week or so after the housewarming party (which she had not been at) Doris Fredric had suddenly started showing up at the house at night with ’Bama. And it was obvious from the very first that ’Bama had been going out with her for some time before they went to Florida. Just how long, Dave didn’t know. Because ’Bama never talked about her.
It was clear that ’Bama was being a gentleman about her, a rare circumstance for ’Bama with a woman. And as to whether he was actually sleeping with her, Dave did not know; he had never seen any indications of it between them; but knowing ’Bama, he assumed that he was. And yet there was some quality about the girl that half-convinced you that they were not sleeping together and were in fact only just sort of “dating.” And yet she must know he had a wife; everybody did.
Dave had spent a lot of time studying them—and had had plenty of opportunity to do so. From coming to the house secretly at night with ’Bama (although neither of them acted in any way as if it might be secret), it was only a short step for Doris to start coming by in the daytime—either with or without ’Bama—and in her own car. It was as if she were intent upon either calling fate down upon her pretty little cherrywood-colored head with her own destruction, or else proving that she could (because she was Paul Fredric’s daughter) do any damned thing she wanted to in Parkman and get by with it.
In another woman, it might have made Dave admire her. But for some reason—which he could not formulate in words in any other way except to say he felt she was “false”—he had taken a strong dislike to her. And her more or less tempting of fate—or else her desire to be above it, whichever it was—just made him dislike her only that much the more. And Doris, who was obviously no fool, sensed it and disliked him equally, although she was always sweet and polite to him and you could not have told she disliked him. And yet you could.
Another thing about Doris that made him dislike her was that she was so dumb. While a long way from being a fool, she was so dumb about everything except herself that it was actually irritating. For instance, she was a teacher of English in the high school—in itself a kind of lying pose, since with her money she didn’t need to do anything; and yet she knew nothing about literature, except just the barest rote necessities which she taught her classes. This had become apparent the first time she came to the house. ’Bama had hauled all of his books up from the farm, after getting Dewey and Hubie to build and paint them some shelves, and had installed them in the house. ’Bama’s books were almost entirely on two subjects: the Civil War, and esoteric metaphysics; and while he openly did not consider himself an educated man, he had read all of them through at least twice. And in addition, there were all of Dave’s books, literary ones, which he had been collecting ever since they had gone to Florida. Doris Fredric had walked along past them, trailing her finger along the book spines, as she inspected the house. “Oh, the Civil War,” she said airily. And, “Oh, metaphysics.” And, “Oh, Thomas Wolfe’s Letters to His Mother.” All as if she knew everything about all of these. But it turned out, upon questioning, that she knew nothing about any
of them. She had never even heard of Nathan Bedford Forrest, and she had not even read one of Wolfe’s novels, but none of this bothered her in the least. “I’ll have to borrow some of your books and start reading up again,” she said with her sweet demure little-girl’s smile to ’Bama. But to date, she had never borrowed a book.
’Bama himself did not appear to be at all violently in love with her. Indeed, he seemed merely to be amused by her. He would sit, listening to her talk, a half-humorous expression on his face as he watched her. He himself said little, and said that in a half-sneering, half-bantering way.
She would come by the house in the morning now that school was out, around noon, when they were just getting up, and park out in front on the street, and march into the house wearing a long expensive terrycloth robe over a cute little one-piece bathing suit and take ’Bama off to go swimming with her, driving her yellow convertible with the top down and ’Bama with that hat sitting beside her. Evidently, she wanted people to know, while she herself kept up the appearances of not wanting them to.
This then was the woman who, along with the coming of Jane Staley, had partially helped to change the house. She had brought out fluffy expensive towels and distributed them around the bathrooms. She had brought contour sheets for the beds. She had bought them a large, expensive table lighter and installed it on the cocktail table in the living room. She even kept it filled. She had brought out some red-and-white checkered tablecloths for the kitchen table where they usually ate and some heavy medieval-looking candles, which she liked to eat by the light of. And, perhaps the crowning and consummate gall, Dave thought, she had brought out a number of her own books, all of them third-rate romantic historical novels, and with complete aplomb and total unawareness of any difference had placed them on the shelves with ’Bama’s and Dave’s books. She had, in short, moved in and—and yet without any sense of encroachment—taken over.
Also, she was learning to cook. They were teaching her.
His own self-cooked meal finished, Dave sat on, staring at Doris’s red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She had in the past month also become very friendly with Wally, whom she already knew, and with Dewey and Hubie and their girls. She played a good game of Ping-Pong and was able to beat himself and everybody else except Wally and sometimes ’Bama. She appeared to be an excellent loser. ’Bama had been talking lately about buying a secondhand billiard table and setting it up in the basement, too, and Doris was delighted and urged him to do it. Her pale blue eyes would light up like a child’s when they talked about it, and she would shake her old-cherrywood-colored curls excitedly. She was really a very pretty girl. Dave didn’t know what it was. He guessed he just didn’t like her. The only way he could sum it up was that she was “false,” was not what she seemed to be. But then which of us was? Still, he felt she was somehow dangerous. Old Janie felt the same way, too, apparently, though she was careful not to say anything. Christ! if ’Bama thought Ginnie Moorehead was dangerous—! At least Ginnie didn’t impose herself on all of them all the time. Ginnie was just a big pathetic slob. But ’Bama’s new mistress—!
Shaking it all out of his head as idle speculation anyway, and looking irately at the tablecloth and big brown candles, he was just getting up to get himself a cup of coffee when he recognized the motor of ’Bama’s Packard driving in on the driveway. Pouring the coffee, he heard through the open screen door’s two doors slamming, and then voices, male and female. That would mean that Doris was with him.
He poured cream in the coffee and took it back to the table and sat down and prepared himself to be pleasant. And just then, something struck him: Doris Fredric never talked of herself, or even thought of herself, apparently, as a rich girl. In fact, she was always looking for an opportunity to drag in some allusion—usually completely out of context—to the fact that she had little or no money. And yet, all of them who hung out at the house always thought of her as a rich girl, and in fact, she did not have to talk of or think of herself as a rich girl, because she always on a subconscious level acted like one, whether she herself knew it or not. But he suspected that she knew it. Certainly everybody else in Parkman knew that she was one of the wealthiest young people in town, her mother being Tony Wernz’s sister and all, and she stood to inherit a large part of the Wernz family interests—as well as some farms up around Morris through the Fredrics who were Amish, Old Janie had told him. And Doris must know all this. But of course she could just blank her mind out to it.
Anyway, that wasn’t the point. The point was she was a rich girl and they all of them knew it, and that had given him just now a sudden new insight into ’Bama. For the first time, he thought he could see why ’Bama had always been so strangely interested in Wally Dennis: Wally came from one of the older wealthier (or they once were) families of Parkman. And for the first time since he had met him, Dave thought he could understand now that strange, warm friendliness when they first met that was all out of proportion to the time they’d known each other: It was because he was Frank Hirsh’s brother and Frank Hirsh was a big wheel in Parkman, a comer. The fact that both of them, himself and Wally, were “writers” only added to the gambler’s sense of accomplishment at having them for friends. ’Bama was, it turned out, a snob—and not a rebel at all. But then, were not all rebels perhaps only inverted snobs who saw no way of getting the things they wanted and so eschewed them? That was all he himself had been, wasn’t it? out in Hollywood? And even after he came here, at first. And those very things—wealth, family, entrenched social prestige—the very things ’Bama himself did not have and sneered at—those were the very things about Doris that fascinated and flattered him. Dave felt let down. As though he had lost another ideal. He remembered all the times he had tried to get the tall gambler to go over to the Frenches’ big house in Israel. And how ’Bama had always refused, on some pretext or other, but the real reason, of course, was his feeling of inferiority.
It was a strange new picture of his old friend ’Bama, and Dave had barely time enough to adjust his mind to the idea of it before the two of them were through the screen door and in the room.
“Well,” Doris smiled, “the brooding novelist, mulling over some deeply thoughtful sequence of events.” Her summer dress looked very becoming on her.
“I was just looking at the candles,” he said pleasantly. “Where’d you get them, anyway?”
“Oh, those things,” Doris said, with a shy smile. “Just some cheap store somewhere.” That seemed to take care of that.
Behind her ’Bama winked at Dave tiredly. “Hi, buddy.” There was a strong affection in his voice.
Dave, sitting with one elbow on the table, winked back, a wink that like his, had nothing to do with Doris was only friendship, and grinned. “Anybody feel like a game of Ping-Pong?” he said. Whether ’Bama was a snob or not didn’t matter. Neither did it matter whether or not he had first cultivated him, Dave, for obscure snobbish reasons of his own. Too many other things had happened since then, things that were important to a friendship and couldn’t be canceled out by anything.
“Whoo-o-o! not me,” Doris said. “I’m famished. And right now, I badly need a drink,” she smiled in a little-girl way and marched to the cabinet where they kept the bottles and pulled forth a Jack Daniels Black Label. She had been drinking a great deal more lately he thought than when she had first started coming. “What’s in the refrigerator?” she said.
“Steak and hamburger,” Dave said. “And some lettuce, if you want a salad.”
“Shall I fix us a steak?” Doris said, smiling back over her shoulder at ’Bama. She had already got two glasses out and now moved to the refrigerator and got ice cubes for them. She poured a double jigger in each and from the sink added water to one. Then opened the cupboard door below and drew out a bottle of 7-Up and filled the other glass to the brim with it. Then she turned around, holding the two glasses and smiling with what Dave could only call coyness at ’Bama. She leaned the top of her rump back against the countertop. Ther
e was a sort of dramatic pause, and then smiling, she raised her own glass—the one with the 7-Up—and drank, at the same time extending the other one out to ’Bama.
It was such a characteristic sequence of action from her, and at the same time pointedly deliberate “big operation,” that Dave watched it, hypnotized almost. It always made him cringe inwardly anyway, to see her pour 7-Up into such excellent whiskey.
’Bama, who had been watching her with a sort of appreciative amusement, came forward and got his glass. “Shore,” he said; “I could shore eat a steak.” He stepped to one side and reached behind her for the bottle and added more whiskey to his glass.
Doris smiled at him. “Well, I’ll get them right on,” she said.
In the end, however, it was ’Bama who had to tell her when the steaks were ready to turn, and when they were done enough. As she herself said, ruefully but at the same time sort of proudly, she had never learned to boil water until she started coming here.
Dave sat with them while they ate and had another cup of coffee by the light of the candles which Doris had lit and then turned the lights off, and finally, another drink after they had had several. Doris ate very slowly, and very little, sitting very straight up in her chair. She did not like her steak rare, but very well done. She ate only about half of it. When she had had several drinks, like she had now, her eyes took on a strange smoky look, and she would stare at you with them half-closed as if she were not seeing you. Many people’s eyes got more vivid and penetrating, but with Doris it was just the opposite, and if she kept on drinking, they finally got until she actually looked like a blind person, smokier and smokier until her irises seemed to merge with her eyeballs. It was not sexy looking at all. It was not deadly looking, either. All through the meal, she kept talking, demurely, about what they had done that day, how they had gone over into Indiana for a “little ramble.” Dave figured if they had done any rambling they had done it in the car.