5:45 to Suburbia

by Packer, Vin

  “Oh?”

  “There’s no sense working at cross-purposes, is there, papa-doodle? We both work at Cadence, so we might as well get along.”

  “I wish you’d stop using that expression. It’s nauseating.” ‘Scuse, ‘scuse, ‘scuse … a thousand pardons … Want another drink?”

  “I’m still working on this one.”

  “Well, I’ll have one before all that ice melts and turns it into water.” She reached for the pitcher, and knocked a cigarette to the floor. She fumbled to find it, lurched a little against the table, recovered the cigarette and poured herself a seventh Martini.

  “Love these,” she said.

  Wally Keene said, “Look, Marge, I’ll put my cards on the table.”

  “Okay, papa-doodle.”

  “As far as I’m concerned you’re not right for the job you have. Bruce hired me as a troubleshooter. That’s not my fault. That’s my job; and part of my job is to decide what’s best for Cadence — and to be perfectly frank and honest about it to Bruce.”

  “And I ain’t best for Cadence, huh, papa-doodle?”

  He gave her an exasperated glance. “You really go all to pieces when you drink, don’t you? You forget how to talk. Your hair starts getting wispy; you really sort of go to pieces — with this “ain’t” and “papa-doodle.” You really regress, don’t you?”

  “Regress?”

  “Become infantile. Like a baby.”

  “You and your psychology, papa-doodle. You and your lousy psychoanalysis. If you’re a troubleshooter, papa-doodle, whyn’t you shoot for the trouble that’s the trouble with you, ‘stead of running to a head-shrinker, papa-doodle?”

  “You drink to make people sorry for you. You just become helpless, don’t you, Marge, like a baby — to make people feel they have to take care of you.”

  “If I make people feel that way, ‘n why in hell do you want to try and get me demoted, if I make people have to take care of me?”

  “You’re awfully drunk. There isn’t much point in talking with you.”

  “Papa-doodle ain’t going to be friends with Margie?”

  “Papa-doodle couldn’t care less. Besides, I have a train to catch at the moment.” He set his drink down on the marble-top table with an empathic gesture.

  She grabbed his sleeve. “Wally?” she said. “Why don’t you like me? You didn’t from the start, papa-doodle. Why not?”

  “I had no feelings about you personally whatsoever. I just knew that, objectively, you weren’t right for the job.”

  “Aw, no, papa-doodle, you didn’t like me. You didn’t. What’d I do, huh? What can I do to make you like me, Mr. Keene?”

  “Christ, you’re a lush! You’re not a very pleasant lush, either. You’re an old lush.”

  “Ah ha, so! Now we hear, hah, papa-doodle. I’m old lush, hah? Well, you wait. Now, you wait.” She pulled herself to her feet, pointing a finger at him. “Now, you wait. You wait.” She walked into the foyer, passing the bar there. She stopped and thought aloud, mumbling: “Didn’t come in here. Went into the dressing room. Whoops, did so come in here. Mistake. This ain’t the dressing room, mamma-doodle. This here’s the bar … Whoops. Got to go back.” She stared at a bottle of J. & B., grinned foolishly, and grabbed it by the neck after unscrewing the cap in a careful, studied way. Then she raised it to her lips, letting the Scotch pour down her throat.

  From the other room, Keene shouted: “What are you doing, anyway? You’re not fixing yourself another drink, for the love of God?”

  “Just you wait,” she said. “Now, I’m coming right out there.”

  She appeared, wearing the same silly grin. This time she walked to the couch opposite the one where Keene was sitting. With effort, she pulled off first one pillow, then the other.

  Keene said, “What the hell are you doing?” and got up, his eyes angry.

  “Well, papa-doodle, I’m pulling down my bed is what. I’m pulling down the bed that only a child can work. You seen ‘em advertised on TV, papa-doodle.”

  “Here — ” Keene tried to help, but the bed came crashing out and down, the mattress covered with crumpled white sheets.

  Keene said, “Yeah, go on to bed and sleep it off. Best idea you’ve had all night.”

  “Wait,” she said, “just wait,” and she staggered off across the room to the dressing room. Then she slammed the door.

  Keene started for his coat.

  She shouted: “Don’t leave, now; just wait.”

  He was uncertain of what to do. He thought maybe he ought to wait until she fell into the bed; once she did that, she’d surely pass out. He thought: God damn her anyway.

  She squealed: “I’m coming out, papa-doodle. In a minute. And I ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie, papa-doodle.”

  Keene hit his head with his palm. God Almighty!

  Then he looked up and saw her.

  “Old lush, hah?” she said, standing there, naked, running her hands over her naked body. It was a mature woman’s naked body, with the huge hips and pendulous breasts; the great white thighs; the body of a woman no longer young, but female — female and somehow very pale and too soft, with slight stretch marks — those slight wrinkles which Keene had never seen on a woman because he had never seen a woman who was old standing naked before him. “Old lush, hah? Ever see a body like this on an old lush? I got a good body. A young good body.” Her hands ran down her flesh, up again. She kept smiling in that silly way.

  She said, “Surprised, aren’t you?”

  He began to feel sick, repulsed and sick inside. “I have a train to catch,” he said. “I’m going now.”

  “I can tell by your face, papa-doodle,” she said, walking to the bed. “You’re getting that weak-in-the-knees feeling, aren’t you, papa-doodle? You didn’t expect your mamma to come across like this, hah? And you’re a scared little boy, hah? You want me, don’t you, papa-doodle? You want me.”

  He stood staring at her; staring incredulously as though he were watching some bizarre and hideous something which he didn’t quite understand, and knew only that it was there. He was there with it, listening to it, a witness to the sad and pitiful and awful exposure of the preposterous proportions of the human ego, a witness to a person’s tragically deceived self-concept. And it made him hate her that he had to bear witness.

  But he stood, almost as though transfixed; stood those slow seconds and watched her stretch her naked woman’s body on those wrinkled sheets. He watched her trying to force some semblance of remembered coyness to the features of her face and heard her say in the bygone voice of another time’s seduction: “Take me. You can have what you want.”

  Wally Keene turned, took up his coat and without looking back at her, he snapped the light button off, opened the door and walked out of her apartment.

  In the hallway he punched the elevator button frantically. He was shaking, and he began to whistle; he began to whistle I Want a Gal Just Like The Gal That Married Dear Old Dad and kept it up until he stepped into the little box and rode down. Then, when he realized it, he felt a surge of nausea, and knew that his hour on Dr. Mannerheim’s couch the next day would be an agonizing one. He tried (to keep from actually being nauseated) to concentrate on something frivolous and unimportant — his home in Greenwich, Mary and the kids.

  • • •

  And in the darkness, back on the fifteenth floor, Marge Mann began to moan, began to moan in the manner of the member of a Greek chorus mourning death.

  • • •

  Once again that morning, Marge Mann forced her eyes back to the Times, back to “…. on another political front, the Secretary of the Interior chose Senator — ” until what always seems like a miracle to a person waiting for a phone to ring, happened: the phone rang. And Charlie Gibson said, “Hi, there. I would have called you sooner, but something’s happened that’s really shaken me up.”

  Marge felt the sinking sensation in her stomach, and thought, Here it comes …

  “… can’t seem to bel
ieve it,” Charlie was saying. “I think you’ll find it hard to believe, too.”

  “Okay,” Marge said. “Fire away.”

  “Well, maybe we can have lunch. Are you free?”

  “I’ll get free…. Charlie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is it real bad news?”

  “It’s pretty serious,” Charlie Gibson answered. “It’s about Jane.”

  MARCH 6, 1939

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AT thirty-two, Charlie Gibson was still writing poetry.

  Mitzie Thompson had long since been forgotten and Charlie had been married for three years to Joan Quigly, a girl he had gone to school with back in Auburn, New York. He was the father of a two-year-old daughter; they had an apartment on Central Park West, which cost a little more than they could afford, and Charlie was employed as an assistant editor at Cadence. He was, everybody said, Bruce Cadence’s new fair-haired boy.

  Charlie wasn’t writing a lot of poetry; just every now and then, and only for one person — Marge Mann.

  On the afternoon of his thirty-second birthday, immediately after lunching at The Lambs’ Club with Bruce, Charlie did two things, which more or less explained his predicament in life at that time.

  First, he stopped at a florist and arranged to have three yellow roses sent to Marge c/o Cadence. Then, from a piece of scratch paper, he copied a poem he had composed that morning, onto a card to be enclosed.

  On the envelope of the card he wrote, “5:15 at the 50th Street entrance to Saks.”

  The card itself read:

  Wear a hat with a feather on it and walk

  Like a duchess stepping over the bodies of serfs

  In your blond-laughing look and dearest talk

  Stand by the counter where they sell men’s hats And wait for me, though I’ll be early.

  The next thing Charlie did was to cross the street to a drugstore, call his wife in the phone booth, and tell her he would be quite late.

  “How late?” she wanted to know. “Charlie, it’s your birthday. I — ”

  “I know it’s my birthday. I know that! This is business.”

  “But how late? I’ve planned dinner. You’re not going to miss dinner?”

  “All right, I’m not going to miss dinner. But it’ll be late. Nine or ten o’clock.”

  “Oh, Charlie.”

  “Well, you can have a sandwich or something before, can’t you?”

  “I guess I’ll have to.”

  “I’ve got a right to be late on my own birthday, haven’t I?” Charlie Gibson said inanely; then added quickly, “It’s important business.”

  “Wait a minute,” Joan answered. “Can you hear her, Charlie? Listen … could you hear that? … Hear, Charlie? She’s cooing at you … say dada, Janie.”

  When Charlie Gibson finally did wait by the counter where they sell men’s hats, at the 50th Street entrance to Saks that afternoon, he was still brooding over the phone call, still hearing his daughter’s sounds, still resenting the fact that Joan had held Janie to the phone so that he could hear her — as though Joan were reprimanding him in some subtle way, by reminding him they were married people now, with responsibility; responsibilities! Of course it was silly for Charlie to think it was an insidious bit of strategy on Joan’s part; but it helped to think it was; and in the unreasonable manner of someone searching for an excuse, for some salve to alleviate the burden of guilt this affair with Marge was inflicting upon him, Charlie began to gripe: Well, what if I really did have an important business appointment tonight? That would have been a hell of a tactless maneuver; first, complaining because I’m going to be a little late; then forcing our daughter to gurgle into the receiver as though I were deserting them to go to China! You’d think a wife would be more sensitive to her husband’s feelings … What the hell, she doesn’t know anything about Marge. For all Joan knows, it is business … It was a damn unnecessary thing to do. Typical!

  “When did you start talking to yourself, darling?” a voice said behind him. He whirled and saw Marge smiling at him — tall, beautiful, flamboyant Marge, with the boa furs strung over her shoulders; the Femme she always wore, giving the excitement of its scent to Charlie; and the red hat with the feather bobbing dizzily off to the side. He saw her and thought: Beautiful bitch; and thought: Smart, sophisticated Marge. He marveled a little at how enchanting she always looked, and then at the fact he was with her — all of this in the few seconds it took for them to touch hands, and for Charlie to say: “Was I honestly talking out loud?”

  “No, but your lips were moving. I walked right past you, looked right at you. You didn’t even see me.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “No, it’s true … I loved the poem, darling. The roses. I love you.”

  “Did you finish your shopping?”

  “I only had one thing to get. Something for you. But I’m not going to give it to you here.”

  “How about the Gotham? Feel like a drink?”

  “The Gotham … I wore a feather.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Is something the matter, Charlie?”

  “I could use a drink. That’s all.”

  • • •

  The Gotham was crowded. It was a bad choice; they were crowded between two couples on either side, and it was noisy.

  Marge said, “Let’s not even order. We can cab to my place.”

  “Might as well have one here.”

  “You are going to take me to dinner, darling?”

  “I said I would.”

  “Thanks, Charlie … thanks.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Just remember, I didn’t make the date for tonight. I knew she’d want you home tonight. Remember that.”

  “It hasn’t got anything to do with her.”

  “Then what has it got to do with? Everything went all right with Bruce, didn’t it? Did you suggest the blurbs under the titles on the contents page?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, he liked it, didn’t he?”

  “He always likes your ideas, Marge. That’s why he likes me.”

  “Order me a Martini — very dry. No, order me two. I think I’m going to need some fortification.”

  “He said it was a hell of a swell idea. He said no one else would have thought of it. He said only new blood could come up with good creative suggestions like that.”

  “And so I’m to be punished for giving you a good idea, eh?”

  “If it were only just one good idea … Two Martinis very dry, please.”

  “Don’t try to blame it on that, Charlie. Whatever it is, it isn’t that. You’re the best brain-picker in the business, or I wouldn’t have picked you to pick mine. You know damn well these kinds of ideas aren’t any help to me, anyway, even if I were to suggest them instead of you; so why shouldn’t you suggest them? I’ve got enough ideas in my line to keep Bruce aware of my worth, and these ideas are just random ones. So why shouldn’t you suggest them? And you know it.”

  “In other words, you’ve got ideas to spare — enough for yourself and enough to go all the way around three times, and everyone’ll be rich and successful and happy because you’re a regular priceless idea factory. My hat’s off to you, Marjorie.”

  “Happy birthday, Charlie,” she said. “Don’t ever change. Stay just as sweet as you are tonight. Promise?”

  Before Charlie had taken the job at Cadence, he had not believed in the notion that stereotypes in life are unavoidable — nor that eventually, not only does one have to choose from stereotypes those who are to be his colleagues, lovers, friends, neighbors, and enemies, but also choose for himself his own stereotype.

  Before Charlie had taken the job at Cadence, he had believed in the myth of unique individuality.

  Perhaps he had believed in it because he had been too young to see its lie; too young to know that even “characters” were stereotypes of “characters” and that, ultimately, everyone could be classified. And perhaps he had bel
ieved in it because he had not, until he met Marge Mann, found himself in two such quite stereotype situations.

  He was, in the one, the bright young man at the office having the affair with the more sophisticated and older and more important woman at the office.

  He was, in the other, the married man who “inadvertently” had fallen into an affair with a woman, during the last month of his wife’s pregnancy.

  In both, Marge Mann was the woman — she, too, a stereotype: the woman-on-the-verge-of-forty, never married, attractive, aggressive, with an apartment where they could be alone, a good bar, a good bed, and the kind of lingerie and negligees most men appreciate.

  What Charlie found unique in Marge were her inconsistencies.

  She who could cuss like a fiction writer’s version of a Marine sergeant, read Millay, Yeats, Swinburne, Keats — and read them with regularity too, Charlie knew — and was always reading them to him or quoting from them. She revived in him his own enthusiasm for poetry, which had been waning as he became more engrossed in the business world. She revived his interest in reading and, ultimately, in writing bits of poetry now and then — for Marge.

  Joan had once — not long after Charlie met Marge — remarked about a Housman poem Charlie read to her one lazy Saturday afternoon when they were lolling about in the kitchen over coffee: “What do I think of it? … I think it’s awfully gloomy. After all, life’s not that bad, is it? … Go get the Times, darling, and see what’s playing at Loew’s.”

  Another of Marge’s inconsistencies was that she was inconstant, and that from the very beginning she had not been an easy conquest, even when she was in love with Charlie. He was not yet in love with her but wanted her, enough to plead with her, though he had always felt it was disgusting to do so; and she had not been easy to take to bed.

  Yet at Cadence, she had a reputation for being fast. There were even rumors that occasionally she cornered the boys down in the mailroom, and most all of them were under twenty.

  The inconsistency of Marge’s which Charlie enjoyed most of all, however, was her reluctance to let a quarrel begin between them. As hot-tempered and trigger-fingered as she was around the office, she always put Charlie off when he felt like arguing. And she very rarely started one herself.