by James Jones
“I know how,” Dave said. “And you’re absolutely right. All I can say is I’m sorry and that I apologize. I’ve been upset about a lot of other things that have nothing to do with you, lately. That’s the only reason I can give, and it’s not very good.”
“I’m a human bein and I got my rights,” Ginnie said. Gradually, she let down a little, the stiffness went out of her back and her eyes returned to their former dullness. She picked up her glass and took a drink.
“’Bama don’t like me much, does he?” she said in her dull way after a moment.
“What?” Dave said, startled. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
“He’s never tried to make me again,” Ginnie said, “except that once a long time ago.”
“Well, maybe your type just don’t especially appeal to him.”
“No; I know he don’t like me. And he don’t like for you to run around with me, either.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that,” Dave said. He looked all around, not meeting her eyes, and then got up to make himself more martinis. He needed them.
“You don’t have to kid me,” Ginnie said. “He druther you went out with that English teacher Gwen French over in Israel.”
“Look,” Dave said, stirring the pitcher rapidly. “Let’s leave Gwen French out of this, what do you say? As for ’Bama: no; it’s true he doesn’t like you. But then that’s his privilege, isn’t it?”
“I knew it,” Ginnie said; “I knew it all the time. I could tell. You don’t have to kid me: I know you been sleepin with that Gwen French. Why, last Christmastime, there was more’n a whole month when you was over there in Israel all the time.”
“Look,” Dave said, bringing the pitcher back and pouring himself a big one. “I said leave Gwen French out of this. She has nothing to do with you and me.” He took a big swallow of his drink. “I’ll tell you one thing, truthfully: I’ve never slept with Gwen French in my life. So let’s just drop her.”
“You mean you never really screwed her?” Ginnie said.
“No, I never have,” Dave said irritably. “Now let’s leave it, I said!”
“Then what do you go over there all the time for?”
“Because she helps me with my writing. She teaches writing. At the college. She helps Wally Dennis, too; and a lot of other people.”
“Then you ain’t in love with her?” Ginnie said.
Dave hesitated—a pause that he could tell Ginnie did not fail to notice. “No,” he said. “I’m not in love with her. I’m not in love with anybody.”
Suddenly, Ginnie got up and left her glass and in her lumpish way, dull-eyed, came around the table. He was reminded of that first time he had slept with her at the Douglas Hotel: She had done that same sort of thing then. While he sat, she twined her arms around him and blew her whiskey breath in his face. “Oh, I love you so much, Dave,” she said painfully. “You don’t know how much I love you. You’re kind and honest and smart and aboveboard—all the things I ain’t.” Tears welled up in her dull eyes, and then commenced to run out of them, carrying with them in black streaks down her round cheeks the mascara Doris Fredric had bought her and taught her how to use. “I ain’t never met nobody like you nowhere ever. Oh, I love you so awful much.”
Dave, irritated, but full of pity and of sickishness at what he had done to her before, patted her on her broad fatty back. “There, there,” he said. “Don’t cry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He stood up and Ginnie released him and stepped back. “Come on, I’ll take you home,” he said gently.
Ginnie snuffled up through her nose and looked at him dully. “I don’t mind stayin a while if you want to sleep with me,” she said.
At the moment, he most emphatically did not want to; but for a moment, he contemplated going to bed with her anyway. But it was just too much. He couldn’t do it.
“Ginnie, I’m just too worn out,” he said. “Not tonight. All I want to do is get about half-tight and go to sleep.”
It was impossible to say, from her face, whether this made her unhappy or not. She did not say anything, and he finished off his drink and took her out to the car.
After they had driven almost back to town in silence, Ginnie said suddenly: “And you never really slept with her?”
“I never have; really,” Dave said. “Honestly.”
“When’ll I see you again?” she said after a moment’s thought.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You come down. Anytime. Just as long as you don’t come in the morning. Or in the afternoon when I’m working. Other than that, come down any time you want.”
“Well— Okay, Dave,” she said. “I wish you knew how much I love you.”
“I do,” he said, “I do.” He watched her get out and make her lumpish way across the yard of the house where she had a room. It was out in the East End, amongst the slightly better houses nearer in to town. Even so, it wasn’t much of a house. A great pity and sorrow for everything—for everybody—filled him up. And he turned around and started back toward town.
Probably it was that, more than any other separate thing, that gave him the idea for the second story. Of course, his run-in with Frank and his damned Cadillac had something to do with it, too. But he could—driving across town—suddenly see her, and see all of them: Dewey and Hubie, and Lois and Martha, and Gus Nernst and Eddie the bartender and all of the brassiere factory girls—see all of them in a sudden, new, sad, pitying—and blinding—light of insight. All their lives, and always the bums, always the ones just on the fringes—see that together with all of their own weaknesses (so like his own) and vices (which, of course, the respectables never had, did they?) and all of their violent emotions so close to the surface because they never had been raised (I wasn’t raised; I was jerked up) to repress, and which so shocked all the respectables. Perhaps it was that very thing—that closeness to the surface of their violence and frustrations—which had drawn him to them all from the very first. Anyway, the story seemed suddenly to leap full-blown into his head, the same way “The Confederate” had done down there in Florida. Perhaps even the publishing of “The Confederate,” and so recently, had something to do with inspiring him to the new one. Perhaps also his guilt over the way he had treated Ginnie, too. Anyway, whatever it was, he had it full-grown, plotted, the characters complete, everything but writing it. When he got home, he sat up alone in the kitchen (’Bama was still gone) with another pitcher of martinis and made notes on it, writing so fast his hand would hardly scribble fast enough to keep up with his surging head. He did not know what to call it. He wanted to call it “The Plebeians;” or “The Plebes.” But the connotations of both words, which had been almost completely divorced from the original Roman meanings—both words were too ambiguous. “Plebe” connoted West Point; “Plebeian” connoted hick or commonplace. And he wanted the old Roman usage, the meaning that had once existed in the Empire of Augustus. Finally, he decided to call it “The Peons.”
They would all of them be in it; ’Bama and Dewey, Rosalie and Ginnie, Raymond and Lois Wallup; and the story of it was the fight between Dewey and Raymond and then the death of Raymond and how in some strange guilt-ridden, life-haunted way, it affected all their lives. When he went to bed, he had it all, whole, in his drunken mind.
The next day, he began to work on it. He worked all day and late into the night, and fell in bed asleep without a drink. He worked on it the same way all the next day, and the next. ’Bama came and went, and realized his pal was up to something and left him entirely alone. And when anybody came to the house, ’Bama ran them off. He carefully allowed nothing to bother Dave; and in a week, it was done. Dave copied it up in duplicate and sat down and read it through with tears of disbelief in his eyes and then proceeded to get wall-eyed drunk.
As soon as he sobered up, he took the original over to Israel to show it to Bob and Gwen—only to discover that in the week since he had seen them a change toward him had come over both of them, but especially over Gwen. She
was no longer warm like she had been—although she was, of course, being Gwen, always pleasant and gentle. Both of them thought it was a powerful, excellent story; even a great one. But they both said it with such reserve. Bob sent it in to the New Living Literature people for him and not Gwen, like the last time. Gwen said she was too busy at school just now to be able to do it for him. Also, she informed him that she was already making plans to go away next summer and go back to school herself. Well, how long would she be gone? Perhaps only for the summer, perhaps for much longer. She couldn’t be sure. She had been seriously thinking of taking a teaching job in a larger school. In any case, he was far enough along with his novel now that he wouldn’t need her help by then. Yes, she would be glad to work with him on it up until she left. Dave had never seen such a tremendous reserve in her since he had known her, not even that first night he had met her there at Frank’s.
No matter what he did he couldn’t reach her. If he looked at her warmly and tried to smile his love at her, she looked back—but her eyes were guarded, her smile only friendly. Naturally, it frightened him.
And he never did, of course, ever find out just exactly why.
Chapter 58
GWEN HAD BEEN SITTING by the fire in the kitchen grading papers, when she heard the knock on the side door. It seemed to her sometimes that she was always grading papers. She had been home from school for nearly an hour, and already the gray overcast day showed signs of sliding off into night. Bob was out, either in his workshop, or else gone somewhere. And she had already figured out what she was going to serve for supper: sweet-sour cabbage stuffed with her mother’s old recipe for Spanish rice. It was one of Dave’s favorite dishes and since she had not seen him for almost a week, she had thought he might turn up tonight. She had cooked beef roast, another of his favorites, two nights ago and he had not shown up then, either. Five days or a week had gotten to be in the past year a pretty long time without his coming over. She could only conclude he had gotten hot on his book and was going to town on it, or else had gotten off onto something else, perhaps a story. He had been talking to her a lot lately about the death of Dewey Cole’s brother, Raymond; apparently, in some obscure way that he either could not or would not say directly, it had disturbed Dave greatly; and she would not be surprised to see him turn up with something written about it. It was strange how, when you had started working closely with a person on their writing, how intimately you became involved with their thoughts and lives—especially if you happened also to be in love with them. She had the same intimate involvement with Wally and his book, though not, of course, to the extent she felt it with Dave. It was as if she somehow knew the thoughts and emotions and mechanics of their minds even better than they themselves did, know not only what they were thinking but also what they were going to be thinking; but then, of course, she had an objectivity about them which they themselves naturally lacked. For instance, Wally’s writing had changed its whole tone recently about love, and had become mocking and blasé and cynical about it. Prior to Christmas, he had been deeply disturbed about love, and the writing had a deep sadness and sense of loneliness; but after Christmas, when Dawn Hirsh had been home on vacation, something had happened between them, Gwen was sure, and the writing had changed to this sardonicism. It was not really inconsistent with the progress of the book, if a little work was done on it; and she could see where it would even be a very great enhancement of it. With Dave, of course, she thought smiling warmly, it was different. There wasn’t any love in Dave’s novel, and to drag in a love affair would merely ruin it. And he knew that himself. Or to drag in some series of events approximating the powerful emotional experience Dave felt about Raymond Cole. That was a different structure entirely; and Dave, of course, knew that, too. But she was willing to bet that for the last five days or week he had been off the novel, working on a new story that involved Raymond Cole, just simply in order to get rid of it and go back to the book.
With all of this running haphazardly through her mind, Gwen laid down the paper she was reading without finishing it and slammed a B- on it and got up and went to answer the door.
She had no idea who it could be. Everybody who came to the Last Retreat in Israel used the side door on the cellar stair landing exclusively, just as she and Bob did, but none of them ever knocked. They just came on in.
She went down the steps and opened the door and saw a dumpy young woman with dull eyes and several chins in a new-looking winter coat, which nevertheless had already begun to show its wearer’s personal sloppiness. Behind her on the drive stood a battered weather-beaten black Ford coupe that Gwen did not recognize.
“Yes?” she said. “What is it?”
“Are you Miss French?” the dumpy girl said in a voice that matched her dull eyes. She could have been twenty, or forty. “Gwen French? The English teacher out the college?”
“Yes?”
The dumpy girl looked her up and down. “I thought you was. You’re awful purty,” she said.
“Well, thank you,” Gwen said; “but—”
“My name’s Ginnie Moorehead,” the dumpy girl interposed, “you probly don’t know me. But I know you. Least I know about you. I wanted to talk to you.”
Gwen looked her over again. So this was—to quote Shardine—“the biggest whore in Parkman;” the same who had sent Shardine running stiff-backed out of the house on Lincoln Street, simply by her presence. There was about her, in addition to her natural lumpishness and naturally dull eyes, the sort of held-in quality of a distrustful and watchful animal. And over and above, this quality, faintly, there was also something else: a sort of irascible, nervous hawklike quality which showed in a tiny brilliant pinpoint in the very deepest bottom of the dull eyes. Well, if this was “the biggest whore in Parkman,” it certainly did not speak very highly of the taste of the men, Gwen thought harshly, and immediately put this typically feminine reaction down.
“Well, won’t you come on in, Miss Moorehead?” she said pleasantly, and stepped back. The girl went ahead of her up the steps and into the kitchen without a word. Gwen followed, suddenly feeling sorry for the poor drab thing.
“My! this sure is a purty place!” Ginnie Moorehead said.
“Thank you.”
“But can we talk private here?” the girl said, looking about.
“Surely. There’s no one here but me. Come on over here and sit down,” Gwen said smiling at her, and led the way to the big table. The girl sat down without taking off her coat. “Will you let me take your coat?”
“No,” Ginnie Moorehead said. She rolled her eyes around at Gwen nervously.
Gwen smiled. “Well? What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Miss French,” Ginnie Moorehead said, trying—apparently—to achieve Gwen’s formal tone of address, but succeeding only in sounding like a child addressing a teacher: “Miss French, are you goin to marry Dave Hirsh?”
“Am I what!?” Gwen said sharply, stiffening.
“Are you and Dave Hirsh goin to get married,” she repeated, looking at Gwen dully, but steadily.
“Certainly not!” Gwen said stiffly. “Whatever gave you such an idea!”
Ginnie Moorehead put a forlorn expression on her face. “I just thought it. You see, he’s in love with you.”
“I think you must be mistaken,” Gwen said. “However, if he and I were getting married—which, I can assure you, we are not—I don’t think it would be any of your business, would it? Why do you ask?”
“Well, it is sort of my business in a way, Miss French,” Ginnie Moorehead said. “You see, Dave’s been sleepin with me for over a year. Ever since almost the first when he came to this town.” She looked at Gwen mournfully. “Course that was before he met you, I guess. I knew him real well, back then. He wanted to marry me, then. Before he met you.” She smiled sadly.
Gwen stared at her, torn between this invasion of her privacy which made her stiff, and a strong sense of revulsion at finding herself—in essence, at least—pl
aced in the same category as this creature. And, over both, a sense of shame at her own snobbery for thinking of Ginnie as “a creature” like she did.
“I know I don’t look like much,” the girl said, as if reading her mind; “and I ain’t got a good reputation, especially like a fine lady like you. But he never use to let that bother him none before. When he use to hold me. And tell me all the things we’d do, someday, when he got his book done. When he use to kiss me and make love to me.”
“Really, Miss Moorehead!” Gwen protested.
“Oh, I know,” Ginnie Moorehead said. “I know. But now he’s comin over here so much the time, I don’t hardly never see him. After he’s been over here, he don’t want to touch me nor even want me around. So it ain’t too hard to see. Oh, I know,” she said again, “I know I ain’t no fine lady like you. But I’m a human bein, too. I got some rights, too. I know I don’t stand a chance with you. But don’t forget, he use to love me, too; before he met you. He use to hold me in his arms; and whisper things to me; and make passionate love to me, too.”
“You certainly do have rights,” Gwen said abruptly; “you certainly do have. Miss Moorehead, you don’t need to—”
“Why don’t you just call me Ginnie?” the girl said.
“What?”
“Well, we’re sort of friends, or acquaintances, you know.”
“Oh,” Gwen said. “Yes. Well. Well, what I was about to say, Ginnie, was that you don’t need to catalog all of your intimacies with Dave for me. I perfectly understand your position.”
“Don’t take him away from me, Miss French!” Ginnie Moorehead cried out. “He’s all I got!”
“I’m not going to try to take him away from you,” Gwen said. “Please don’t cry.”
“I’ll try not to, Gwen,” Ginnie said, peering at her over the handkerchief pressed against her mouth.
“What I’m trying to tell you,” Gwen said, “is that—whatever you may have thought, or whatever Dave himself may have told you, or inadvertently caused you to think, there is absolutely nothing between myself and Dave, and never has been. Consequently, I’m not your rival at all. You’ve made a mistake.”