The Incredible Charlie Carewe

by Mary Astor

  The flowers were a beautiful arrangement of Talisman roses in a large pale amber bowl. Instead of a card, there was an envelope of Charlie’s personal stationery perched between the stems.

  “Darling love.” The single gray sheet in Charlie’s handwriting was covered in a hastily written but still flourishing style.

  I do hope you won’t feel too horrible when you wake up. You really scared me!! Naughty, naughty girl! Also, if you remember anything about the fairy story last night—about the little brown bird—it was just that. I don’t know what possessed me to spin a yarn like that—you’re such a good listener! These flowers bear my love, and my regret that I had to leave so early this morning, without kissing you good-by. Call me when you get up. I love you, love you. . . .

  C.

  As a flash of lightning will expose clearly all the forms of a landscape in a split second, where before there had been only darkness and unidentifiable shapes, so did the words “little brown bird” enlighten and integrate Zoë’s muddled thoughts. And like the quickly following thunderclap a word exploded: “Bigamist!”

  Zoë sipped her coffee, sitting at a portable tray where she could stare out at the somber sky.

  Her head still ached, her hands still were not co-ordinating smoothly. Jerkily she lighted a cigarette, feeling her lips tighten around the cylinder. Impatiently she rose, almost upsetting the little table. She felt that she must, at any cost, dispose of these annoying discomforts in order to think clearly. For she knew she was going to have to do some extremely clear thinking. Bigamy—bigamy—what was the law, what was the penalty? Whom could she talk to, who would be able to tell her what she knew already—that Charlie should go to jail—and their marriage should be annulled?

  She glanced at the clock on the table as she went toward the bar. She poured a small amount of brandy in a glass, and ridiculously was reminded of an alcoholic friend who said he wasn’t an alcoholic because he never drank in the morning—he never got up before one in the afternoon. Anyway, hair of the dog, she thought, and at first sipped the fluid tentatively, testing the effect on her stomach. For a moment it felt as though she had swallowed something whole and solid—but it quickly dissolved and as she drank the rest, it seemed but seconds before her whole body relaxed and came to order.

  “Call me when you get up,” his note said. The lovely pinkish-yellow hues of the roses seemed terribly dear to her as she leaned to their fragrance. Still looking at them, she dialed Charlie’s private number. She needed to talk to him, to bring him close to her, just for a moment before she started thinking what she must do. Put it off, put it off, just for another minute anyway.

  “Yes?”

  “Charles——”

  “Yes, my love—how are you feeling?”

  “Awful.”

  “Really? Shame on you! Passing out on me!” he chuckled.

  “Charles. We’ve got to talk—about last night. Can you come home early this afternoon?”

  “I’ve got a million appointments, but I’ll cancel ’em all if you need me. What’s the trouble?”

  “We’ve got to talk—about the little brown bird.”

  “What? Oh, for Pete’s sake, honey. I told you—didn’t you get my flowers? I made the whole thing up.”

  “Not over the phone, Charlie—and let’s not play games!” Her voice grew harsh, uncontrollably.

  “Why in hell are you accusing me of playing games? I’m telling you the truth. What kind of a guy do you think I am?”

  For a moment, for one lifting light moment, she believed him. Wanted to believe him. What kind of a guy did she think he was? A person so stupid as to marry some kid on an impulse and then be such a fool as to simply not bother to get a divorce before he married again. That’s all! Ridiculous!

  “Look—Charlie—let’s not fight over the phone—let’s save it till you’re close enough for me to hit you with something—okay?”

  “I’m terrified. Look, I’ve asked Blystone to come by for a drink. It’s about some article for a weekly; about the clinic for Larry. They’ve got wind of it and they’re making me out a big philanthropist. Blystone wants to handle it for me and keep it down to size. Tasteful, modest, and all that. And at the same time keep out the fact that it’s a handsome tax deduction for me.”

  “Well then—what time?”

  “Early—fivish. And, oh, I almost forgot. Virginia called me. Wants us for dinner. Said she called you but you weren’t up yet. I told her it was okay. Okay?”

  “Fine, darling. Want me to buy a dingus for Alma, or will you?”

  “Oh, sweetie, she doesn’t expect something every time we go over—don’t bother.”

  “Well, I’ll see. I’ve got a hair appointment and I’ll go to Schwarz’s.”

  “ ’Kay. ’By, love.”

  And the world moved in again. An important article in Time about the Carewe Fund for Mental Health. “Mr. Carewe’s handsome donation . . . prominent in the world of Wall Street . . . valuable advancement in scientific research . . .” Dinner with relatives, whose lives would be deeply affected by scandal; (my God, what of my life!) a hair appointment—Mrs. Carewe has such amazing hair, and tips amazingly well, rich people don’t usually, you know.

  And Mavis—what was her name—Dunbar, no, Dumont, French, it sounded. What of her? Where was she? Did she know about Charlie’s marriage to her, Zoë? What about blackmail? Perhaps she had a child. Would that make a difference? Perhaps Mavis wouldn’t want a scandal for the sake of a child. If there was a child. They had only been together a short time. Probably not. She wondered if Charlie ever sent money.

  Round and round she went, and then she began to see what she had known all along. That she was going to put it out of her mind. Push it out of sight as you carried something up to the attic. Of course it would still be there, but you didn’t have to look at it. And going to the bar, she poured herself another brandy, and felt just fine.

  Charlie had his own headache, not of the hangover variety. After he hung up the telephone he sat pressing his temples with hard fingers. What idiots women were! They just couldn’t leave things alone. One of the things he liked best about his wife was the fact that she was not a soft, mushy female. She was hard and brilliant, she laughed at sentimental things; but now even she was disappointing him. Picking at him about Mavis. If a wife can’t be a confidante, someone you can trust with your innermost feelings, she’s not being much of a wife. He supposed he’d have to admit that the story was true, eventually. But then that meant he’d have to tell the rest of it, and somehow it went against the grain to go bragging around about the fact that one was a gentleman of honor.

  The amount of publicity that surrounded his wedding to Zoë had bothered him quite a lot. He hadn’t worried so much about Mavis finding out as Mme. Durand. That money-grubbing bitch of a Frenchwoman would be sure to poke her nose around and stir up some trouble for him. He felt certain that Mavis had somehow got back to Clarke Falls like a homing pigeon; he could just see her, poor thing, with Grand-mère yelling at her, probably for running away. Well, he’d fixed that for her. He was really quite proud of himself. Regularly he enclosed a few ten-dollar bills in a plain envelope, with no return address, to “Mavis Durand.” It said a lot of things. It didn’t admit she had married him, and therefore it was her word against his, unless Mme D. wanted to go to the trouble of finding the justice of the peace who had married them. She might try, but Mavis had been in such a dream world that she didn’t even know the name of the town. Neither had he, for that matter, until recently he ran across the license among some papers. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. All Frenchwomen were practical and thrifty, at least all French peasant women, he amended, so he was quite sure Madame would be most appreciative, and wouldn’t do a thing to stop the “generous flow” of money. To him it was a mere trickle, but it made him feel he was being most honorable and gave him a sense of security.

  Now, last night he’d been stupid enough to talk about the whole
silly affair to Zoë, simply because he wanted to please her, to tell her by way of contrast that he thought she was a wonderful woman. He had felt sorry that she was upset about something connected with his not going to be with the Navy. What a fuss she had kicked up! Probably disappointed that her visions of being the wife of Lieutenant Commander Carewe, roughing it at some naval base like San Diego with other Navy wives, had been shattered. Well, he wasn’t about to get himself killed just to please her vanity. She was really very vain, his dear Zoë; vain and spoiled. He smiled to himself as he thought of how tenderly he indulged her. Letting her in on business matters, so that she could feel important, even shifting some of the burden of decisions onto her. Of course she was sharp; even Rush and McGuire had to admit it, often actually asking him to bring her in when something sticky came up.

  He realized that he had made a slip of the tongue when he spoke of Mavis last night. But it was a happy slip. It showed how much he thought of her, didn’t it? Well, then, it wasn’t reasonable of her to want to “talk about it” as she had said over the phone. She had sounded so serious, as though it really were important. Maybe she just meant that because she had been a little stewed she hadn’t heard the whole story. That was it, probably. It wasn’t like her to get drunk like that. It was true she drank quite a bit, no more than a lot of their friends actually, but he’d never seen her slug herself. As to his own drinking—well, that was another thing, entirely.

  The intercom buzzed, interrupting Charlie’s thoughts. “Yes, Betty? Who? Mr. Blystone? Fine, ask him to come in—what? Oh, and a reporter? And a photographer! Wow! Well, uh, give me a minute, tell ’em I’m on the phone. And then after they’ve been here for about fifteen minutes, come in and remind me of another appointment. . . . Atta girl!”

  It was an excellent photograph. The photographer had waited for some of the Carewe charm to subside, the winning smile and the twinkling eyes, and had caught him in a fleeting, thoughtfully intense attitude more appropriate to the serious nature of the article. The caption read, “. . . generosity lauded.” At the close, it summarized his background of New England stability, his wealth; his lovely social wife, the daughter of the owner of a chain of fashionable hotels.

  Months old, the magazine had reached Clarke Falls in the duffel bag of a now forgotten fisherman; it had lain among similar discarded periodicals on the hall table of the Inn. It was the first word of Charlie’s existence to reach Mavis, except for the cold but useful money in the cold plain envelopes. Idly she had leafed through the magazines before burning them. They were rarely read and were dust-catchers. Carefully she tore the page out and showed it to Mme. Durand, who read it with pursed lips.

  “The poor man. I was right, he is completely a fool. Now he is a bigamist.” She tossed the page away in disgust, and Mavis retrieved it quickly. Carefully, she took a pair of scissors and cut the photograph clean from the text and burned the rest of the magazine. She would treasure the photograph, if only to show to young Jean Charles a picture of his fine-looking father someday. Grand-mère had been right, when Mavis had asked her fearfully long ago, “What are you going to do?” and she had answered, “Nothing.” They had talked over the subject once, and once only, and the subject had never been brought up again until now. “You are married,” Mme. Durand had stated. “In the eyes of le bon Dieu and legally. In my heart I would like to kill him—to destroy him, to make him pay for his foolishness. But to satisfy the emotions is not always wise. No, we have nothing to prove. Nothing to be ashamed of. You ran away and married a man with whom you found you could not live. You are the deserter, not he. I could demand your rights, and make him support you, but to move the wheels of justice is a ponderous business. Your husband is a rich man. If he was forced to support you, he could insist that you live with him. If he is the kind of man I think he is, he would follow the letter of the law—and that is all. You would live a lonely existence in a foreign atmosphere—for what? For the satisfaction of having forced a man to do his duty. This is not a happy satisfaction.”

  When the envelopes began to come in, she smiled, pityingly. “He is so afraid—of something.”

  “Perhaps his conscience bothers him, Grand-mère.”

  “Conscience? No. He is afraid you will interrupt his life. It is childish and transparent. He is sending these small amounts—which are like fortunes to us—because he could afford much more, but he wants you to think he cannot, and so you will leave him alone. Imbecile!”

  “Perhaps if he knew about Jean Charles, he wouldn’t leave us alone,” Mavis voiced her painful fear.

  “You are absurd, Mavis; the boy is like a young prince born ‘under the rose.’ He would be most embarrassing.”

  And so the young prince lived happily in the woods with the kind old witch and his beloved M’ma. He grew sturdy and strong, and learned to climb the apple trees, to catch minnows in the streams, and he squealed with delight when on moonless nights his mother would take him to a certain spot near the orchard to show him the glowing fox fire, and wondered, only a little, at the wetness of her cheeks.

  It was such a pity, everyone thought, that Zoë Carewe drank so much. She had “everything”—a fine husband, money, status, all the things that should make any woman happy. And poor Charlie—it was killing him, anyone could see that. He’d spent a fortune in doctors and sanatoria. In discussing the situation with all of his friends he always said, “I’d give my very life to make her happy! I’m patient with her, I make sure she has the best of everything when she’s getting over a drunk, nothing’s too good for her.” Somehow it had even affected his work; he said his own efficiency was impaired and finally, late in ’47, the firm was dissolved, his partners absorbed into other companies.

  Naturally nobody blamed him when he was seen around with various exotic-looking creatures; a man had a right to amuse himself, and undoubtedly most of those rumors about so-called “wild” parties on his yachting trips to Bermuda and Jamaica were grossly exaggerated.

  The sleep of the Shelley household was often shattered by plaintive phone calls in the early dawn. They had become used to them. Virginia would fumble for the phone and listen for a while, saying, “Yes, Zoë. I know, dear. Yes. Yes. Of course.” Then she would hand the phone over to Jeff, while she got up and put on some coffee. “It’s me now, Zoë,” Jeff would say. “I’m sorry you’re feeling so badly.” There would be long silences, during which both he and Virginia lighted cigarettes, prepared for a good half hour of at least knowing that while Zoë was talking they had a small amount of control over her. Often they would talk her to bed and to sleep, like a pilot being talked down to safety out of the fog.

  “Where are you, Zoë? In the living room?”

  “Yes. Where d’you think? Nearest the bar, of course.”

  “Where’s Charlie, honey? Is he in bed?”

  Sound of her breath, laughing. “Charlie. He’s . . . Charlie is working . . . late. . . .”

  “Zoë. Listen. Zoë, will you do something for me?”

  “Anything . . . anything you ask . . . Virginia? Or is it Jeff, now . . . you two . . . I would do anything.”

  Then one of them would go through the little routine that they found had worked. It took maybe fifteen minutes. They would get her to go back to the bedroom and pick up the extension beside her bed. It took a few minutes before they heard the click of the other receiver being lifted. Then they played a little game, as though she were a small child. “Did you take off your slippers?” Yes. “Are you lying down, now?” Yes. “Now isn’t that more comfortable? Now you can talk where you won’t catch cold.” Disjointed sentences, decreasing in the number of words, a sound of sobbing, more words that meant nothing to them: “Do you know that Mitch Cooper is a real crook? Do you know who pays his tailor? What happened to my backbone, Virginia? It’s like mush. I’m the strong girl, remember? ’Member I tol’ you . . .” But soon the voice would drift off, and a sound of delicate snoring would finally terminate the conversation. Their own sleep wo
uld be hours away.

  Over and over they went through the problem. “What can we do? How can we help?” became the theme.

  Zoë sober was another matter. Virginia and Jeff were the only people she felt she could trust to talk to, and even with them she could not completely unburden herself. Of course, she was not fully aware of the extent of her drinking. It was absorbed by blackouts, and she would have no memory of having made phone calls, of having wandered around the apartment, of having poured drink after drink. Neither did she make light of it. The parts that she did remember were bad enough.

  The most practical advice that Virginia and Jeff could give her was not acceptable. She said, “Go to Doc Payne? I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. I’m simply not the type for the couch!”

  Her laughter had become harsher. Her voice was husky, and her never still fingers constantly raked through the once symmetrical golden cap of curls. Now its natural reddish blonde was losing its luster, she needed a permanent, and Virginia’s sympathy welled up in her as she saw the swollen eyelids, the coarsening texture of the skin on her throat, the mouth that looked cracked and dry through the rouge.

  “Whoever would have thought I’d become a booze-hound!” she laughed again. “Don’t worry, kids, I’ll quit one of these days. It’s not Charlie, really. It’s just that I can’t make him see that there is an end someday to the money. I think I just got tired of being a business partner, and a hostess and a mediator between him and McGuire, especially.” Cover the little frauds, explain to McGuire that it was she who had been demanding and Charlie had had to withdraw some funds. Frantic when Charlie said he was paying Mitch Cooper to keep his mouth shut; entering into the conspiracy to somehow keep paying him more and more. The confusion that was too hard to bear when in protecting one’s reputation one somehow unaccountably lost it.

  With the cunning of the drunk, Zoë was able to keep her treasure of trouble intact. As her drinking increased her lips became sealed, and her reaching out to Virginia and Jeff was an appeal only for comfort. She felt that they would be kind, that they would not judge, that when the natural question “Why?” rose in their eyes she could talk at length and around and around the real subject, without even getting close to the truth.