Jack and Susan in 1953

by Michael McDowell

  The banker took Susan and Rodolfo down to his apartment by way of the elevator. While the banker turned on lights and the elevator man telephoned for an ambulance, Susan and Rodolfo rushed through toward the terrace doors. They pushed them open and went out. They heard the traffic from the street below them, and the confused murmur of Libby’s party from above. Jack lay unconscious on the concrete. His left arm was bent crazily beneath his body.

  Susan looked up through the ragged awning. Woolf was leaning precariously out of the maid’s room window, barking happily into the night.

  Rodolfo said to Susan softly, “You never answered my question…”

  With an entirely new set of bruises, Jack lay propped up in the hospital bed. His left arm, in a plaster cast, was caught up in a sling, and a wide white bandage was wrapped around his head. It was Sunday morning. Jack had been taken to Roosevelt Hospital on the West Side, an institution that had come to specialize in what were known as “Saturday night accidents.” It was said that the news photographer Weegee was an habitué of Roosevelt’s emergency room.

  Libby stalked around his bed, complaining. On top of everything else that had happened, she was unhappy about the necessity of going over to the West Side to visit Jack. Libby visited Florida more often than she did the west side of Manhattan.

  “After that I couldn’t, I just couldn’t make the announcement. How could I say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to announce my engagement to Mr. John Beaumont, Esq. I’m sorry Mr. Beaumont isn’t here to receive your congratulations, but he just jumped out of the window.’ How do you suppose that would have sounded? I mean, as it is, your little escapade got into the papers today. Did you see Walter Winchell?”

  “The nurses showed it to me,” said Jack faintly. “Winchell didn’t imply that it was a suicide.”

  “When a man jumps—”

  “Falls—”

  “—falls out of a twenty-third story window on the night of his supposed engagement,” said Libby severely, “people talk. People have a right to talk when something like that happens. And what am I supposed to do with that dog? The caterers called to complain today. That dog got into the caviar, and it upset the ice sculpture and now there is a water stain to end all water stains on the new carpets I just got last week. When Henry and Henry saw that carpet they just about jumped out the window after you. What am I supposed to do with that dog?”

  “Take him to a kennel. There’s one on Second Avenue I used for him last week. But you have to take his papers with you or they won’t accept him. The papers are on the top of my dresser, I think.”

  “I’m not going to do all that. I’m just going to let him loose,” said Libby.

  “Please don’t do that. Just take him to the kennel. Please, Libby. I’m in pain…”

  “I’m the one who’s in pain,” returned Libby sharply. “I’m the one who really wanted to die last night, after what happened happened.” She continued to stalk and fume. “Do you know who saved me last night?” she demanded suddenly.

  “Saved you? I was the one who nearly fell to his death.”

  She paid no attention. “Rodolfo, that’s who. He was a gem. He got you into the ambulance, came right back up, and saved my life. He and Susan both. I love those two. What a happy couple they’ll make. He loves her like”—Libby paused for a comparison, and then found one that appeared, in her mind at least, to apply directly to Jack—“Rodolfo loves Susan the way a man ought to love the woman he’s going to marry. Anyway he and Susan were wonderful. Rodolfo calmed everyone down—he has a fine speaking voice, and not one person laughed at his accent. I guess everybody’s so used to Cuban accents now with Ricky and Lucy—and Susan dealt with the caterers. I was prostrate, Jack, I can’t tell you how prostrate I was. With humiliation. Thank goodness my mother and father are not alive. My mother would have died from humiliation, and my father would have gone downstairs and tossed you off that terrace, that’s what he would have done. I bet if I had asked Rodolfo to toss you off the balcony, he would have done it.”

  “I bet he would have,” Jack agreed.

  Libby continued to fret in silence.

  Jack watched her. She was wearing an outfit he’d never seen before. A bright red jersey dress with narrow mink cuffs, a large gold safety pin over her left breast, short red gloves and a narrow bracelet of rubies. Jack supposed it was an ensemble she reserved for high dudgeon days.

  Jack was not completely sorry for the fall. It hurt, of course, and it hurt still, but it had given him a reprieve. He wasn’t engaged to Libby.

  Of course whether he was or not would make little difference if Susan Bright had become engaged to Rodolfo García-Cifuentes. If Susan married Rodolfo, he thought, then he might just as well go on and marry Libby, reflecting that some forms of suicide are less painful than others.

  “I’m not giving another party,” said Libby definitely. “No, I’m not, so don’t ask me. I’m simply going to have the engagement announced in Sunday’s Times. Something nice and discreet, with just my picture. Luckily for us, Jack, the Times has a policy against printing stories about prospective bridegrooms leaping to their deaths out of twenty-third-story windows.”

  “Libby—”

  “Don’t you dare,” she cried.

  “Dare what?”

  “Try to say anything to me after the humiliation you put me through last night. The severe humiliation. Just tell me what place on earth you hate most of all in the world.”

  He didn’t give it a second thought. “Havana,” he replied.

  “Good,” said Libby. “Then that’s where you’re taking me on our honeymoon.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DESPITE THE INAPPROPRIATENESS of the moment, single-minded Rodolfo pressed Susan for an answer. As they were riding down on the service elevator of Libby’s building with the two ambulance attendants and Jack on a stretcher between them, Rodolfo again asked—in Spanish—if she would marry him.

  After they saw Jack safely into the ambulance, Rodolfo persuaded Susan to return to the party with him. “Miss Mather would be very upset to discover that you had accompanied her fiancé to the hospital.”

  “Will you marry me?” he asked her, once more, when they were helping to calm and disperse the guests.

  “I can’t think about it right now,” she replied.

  Actually, she was thinking more about her three-hundred-dollar dress. The fringe had caught on something in the banker’s dark apartment, unraveling a whole length of its waist attachment. She had smeared grease on the right sleeve in the service elevator, and her white gloves were streaked with black.

  But she was also thinking about Rodolfo’s proposal. And about Jack’s ill-fated but interesting interruption.

  It certainly seemed as though he had been sincere. For him to have pulled himself across an abyss that was twenty-three stories up showed a certain spirit. But why had he interfered? That was the question.

  Susan knew Jack didn’t trust Rodolfo. He didn’t want her to marry the Cuban, that much was clear. But was he a disinterested third party, or did he want her for himself?

  The latter seemed unlikely, since all this had taken place at the party to announce Jack’s engagement to Libby.

  The doubt in Susan’s mind was sufficient for her to put Rodolfo off for a little while. The only reason for haste in this matter was courtesy to Rodolfo. Much more, however, was at stake.

  At the door of her apartment building, he asked her, in both English and Spanish, if she would marry him. He loved her with his soul, he said. His entire soul. He was damned and dead without her.

  But she put him off.

  He asked to see her in the morning.

  Her Sunday mornings—as he well knew—were spent in translating Soviet agricultural documents.

  Could he watch her while she did her translating?

  She couldn’t concentrate when someone was watching her.

  Could he see her in the afternoon?

  She hesitated, then c
onceded, “If I finish my work…”

  He kissed her violently. His beard still scratched her face, and his lips remained hard and dry.

  Susan got up early the next morning and began work; she didn’t want to put herself into the position of having lied to Rodolfo.

  At eight o’clock she went out and got the Sunday papers. She began looking through the Times, starting with the engagements. Jack and Libby weren’t there, she was relieved to see. She cursed herself for not having asked the ambulance attendants which hospital they were taking Jack to. She debated calling Libby, then finally decided to call. She dialed the number, but then hung up before anyone answered.

  She got out the Manhattan Yellow Pages, and began calling the hospitals on the East Side—assuming that surely Jack would have been taken to one that was as close as possible to Libby’s flat.

  Jack wasn’t on the patient register of any of them.

  Perhaps he’s already been released, she thought with relief.

  Maybe his arm hadn’t been broken after all, or it had already been put into a sling; if the concussion had been light, it was possible that he had already been sent home to recuperate.

  She started to dial his number, but then thought that if his phone were not near the bed then he would be forced to get up to answer it. She didn’t want that. If he were asleep, she didn’t want to disturb him. If he was being hounded by Libby or a reporter he wouldn’t answer the telephone at all.

  Susan wanted to see Jack, she didn’t want to talk to him over the telephone. So she looked at herself in the mirror, decided she ought to change. She put on another dress, looked at herself in the mirror again, regretted the change, but didn’t go back to the first outfit. She next donned a large all-over print silk dress with a pattern of enormous pink and red peonies against a cream background. The skirt was wide and stiff, the back was bloused out, and when she looked at herself, she thought she looked like a stick puppet got up in a pair of old draperies. At least the colors were bright and spring-like, and perhaps they’d help to raise Jack’s spirits. She picked up her pocketbook and went down to the street, startled by the number of people out at what was still—by Greenwich Village standards—an early hour of the morning. Then she realized that the Village Art Show days around Washington Square were on, and that hundreds of artists were gathering to display their latest work, to gossip with one another, and perhaps even to sell a Pollock-like canvas or a Klee-like gouache or an Ernst-like collage to tourists entranced with the idea of taking home a genuine piece of Manhattan culture.

  She hurried up Fifth Avenue until she was free of the crowds and then caught a taxi. She got out at the corner of Sixty-sixth and Third, then walked down the block slowly. She was trying to calm herself. She’d decided, on the ride uptown, that she’d tell Jack the truth—that she felt no animosity toward him, that in fact…

  The door of Jack’s building was locked. She peered through the vestibule doors, and saw the elevator door propped open with a broomstick.

  She hesitated just a moment, and then pushed the button of the apartment marked beaumont, j.

  Susan waited with suspense.

  After a few moments, the speaker crackled to life—but there was no voice.

  Susan spoke into it, “Jack, it’s Susan Bright. May I come up for a few minutes?”

  There was a moment of hesitation—Susan imagined Jack with his finger on the release, wondering what this visit meant—and then the buzzer sounded on the door catch.

  Susan grabbed the handle and pushed inside the building.

  She stepped into the elevator and waited. The elevator man did not appear. She looked at the mechanism, and thought she could work it on her own, if necessary, but she continued to wait.

  After a few minutes, an old woman with a small Pomeranian used a key to enter the building, then joined Susan in the elevator. The woman stared at Susan’s dress in a disapproving manner; Susan knew then that the choice of outfits had been a mistake.

  Eventually, the elevator man appeared and stared into the elevator as if Susan and the old woman with the Pomeranian had been visitors from Hades. He shook his head, came inside, and said, “Floors, please.”

  Susan got out on the fifth floor, looked around and saw half a dozen doors.

  “Beaumont,” she said to the elevator operator, and he pointed.

  The elevator doors shut and Susan proceeded to the indicated door and knocked.

  Susan had never been to Jack’s apartment, but hoped it was nicer than the place he’d kept in Boston. She remembered that place well enough. It—

  The door of Jack’s apartment opened.

  Libby Mather stood there wrapped in a sheet and holding a bottle of green Prell shampoo. She was smiling.

  “Hello, Susan,” she said.

  Woolf bounded up to the open doorway and tried to get at Susan, but Libby blocked the way. Woolf jumped up on the margarine heiress, who cried, “Ooop!” and let go of the sheet.

  She was naked underneath.

  Libby swooped down and grabbed the sheet, as Woolf leaped by her to get at Susan.

  “Hello, Woolf,” said Susan in a voice so strangled that she barely recognized it as her own.

  “Jack’s taking a shower,” said Libby. Inside the apartment Susan could see that the bathroom door was open and she could hear running water. “He has a hard time reaching his back, so I was just…” Libby smiled a knowing smile.

  Susan backed away, farther out into the hallway. Woolf was still with her.

  “How is he?” Susan asked weakly. “I just came to—”

  “He’s fine now. The doctor said all he needed was bed rest, and I’m going to see that he gets it. Don’t you want to stay and—”

  “No, no,” said Susan. “I—”

  “Oh yes,” Libby said, “Jack was going to call you today.”

  “He was?”

  “To ask you if you would mind taking care of his dog for a few days, till he gets better.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” said Susan. “I’ll—”

  “Fine,” said Libby, and she shut the door in Susan Bright’s face.

  Susan was mortified beyond the words to tell it. In a daze she pushed the elevator button. When she got down to the lobby she looked around as if she’d been transported there suddenly from the far side of the moon. Then, dragging Woolf by his collar, she climbed into another taxi and rode back down to Washington Square.

  Over and over in her mind she replayed the conversation with Libby. As she did it, her own distress increased, her defeat grew more grinding and cruel, and Libby’s triumph higher and greater. By the middle of the afternoon, Susan felt like crawling into the closet among her old shoes and gathering dust for a few years.

  And she just might have if Woolf had not been so anxious for a walk.

  Susan was intensely embarrassed. Intensely chagrined. Intensely depressed. How could she have so misread a situation? How could she have talked herself into a totally groundless hope that Jack was still in love with her? How could she have showed up at his apartment, unannounced, expecting—what? A kind word? A reconciliation? A proposal of marriage?

  Of course, Woolf was the final insult. That Jack Beaumont considered her a kind of kennel, her Washington Square apartment a place to park his dog while he got a little bed rest—with Libby Mather.

  She walked Woolf around and around Washington Square Park half a dozen times, until the dog was panting from thirst and stopping every twenty yards to rest. She was alternately shivering with embarrassment, quaking with anger, and shaking with her own great disappointment.

  Finally, she had worn herself out. She returned to her apartment, took the telephone off the hook in case Rodolfo called, and then fell asleep on the sofa with her head pushed as far down between the cushions and the upholstered back as it would go. Woolf snored on the floor at her side.

  She awoke sometime in the middle of the night, cried for a little while, took off her clothes, crawled into bed, and slept til
l morning.

  The first thing she did when she got up was to telephone Rodolfo, apologize for not seeing him the day before, and ask if he would be so good as to take her out to dinner that evening.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JACK’S BED IN Roosevelt Hospital was too short, though the nurses insisted that he was merely too tall and that people tended to shrink the longer they remained in bed. They told him that by the time he was well he’d fit into the bed without difficulty.

  Nobody visited Jack in the hospital. He’d shared his room with a fat man for the first couple of days, and the fat man was cheerful and always awoke in the middle of the night to smoke a forbidden cigar. Both of these things, the cheerfulness and the smoking, annoyed Jack intensely. Finally the fat man was taken away for an operation and didn’t come back. This made Jack feel guilty that he had resented the cheerfulness and the cigars so much. The fat man’s twin daughters, also fat, dropped by and asked Jack what the fat man had been like in his last days, and Jack thought, How do I get into these situations…?

  “He was very cheerful, right up to the last,” said Jack.

  The fat man’s family wept to hear it.

  Jack had tried several times to get hold of Libby, but after her visit to him the previous Sunday morning, he’d neither seen her nor heard from her. The servants in her home took his calls, said merely that Miss Mather was out, that they didn’t know what time she’d return, and that they’d give her the message that he’d called.

  Libby never called back.

  Susan Bright never answered her telephone at all.

  If he’d had a telephone in his room, he would have dialed Libby and Susan incessantly, but the only telephone for the use of patients was a pay phone down the hall. It was frequently in use, and the nurses seldom allowed him to leave his bed. Besides, he was always running out of nickels, since there was always some servant around Libby’s place to answer. Also, it was a tricky physical matter for a man with a broken arm to operate a telephone.