5:45 to Suburbia

by Packer, Vin

  “Oh, it’s always crowded here.”

  “Seems more than usual.”

  “Do you think so?” she said, thinking: Maybe just one drink, one very light one to get things going, a Vermouth Cassis, something like that.

  Charlie must have read her mind. “Sure you don’t want something?” he said.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t feel like anything.” Then she said quickly, “Charlie?”

  “What?” He looked up at her. He couldn’t even make himself smile.

  “I’ve got some news,” she said. “I’m resigning from Cadence. I have a better position.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No, I’m not. I’ve had a good offer somewhere else. You remember Blance Phelan? She’s over at Dorset now.”

  “That’s a very good house,” Charlie interrupted, his tone picking up. “You’re going there?”

  “I think it’s time I moved along anyway, and it’s a wonderful opportunity.”

  “Marge, I couldn’t be happier.”

  “Sooner or later I would have run into trouble at Cadence. It was in the wind … And this is really a top opportunity.”

  “I’m delighted,” Charlie said as the waiter put a Rob Roy in front of him.

  “You know, I think I’ll change my mind after all and have a drink.”

  “Swell! Want what I’m having?”

  “No, something light. I really think I just feel like a rye and soda, not a cocktail.”

  “Rye and soda,” Charlie said. “Will you be working for Blance?”

  “Well be working more or less together. It’s a new project that just got out of the talking stage, not even in dummy, so I can’t go into it too much with a competitor, my deah,” she said, and Charlie’s laughter was more generous than the incident merited. It was a laugh of relief, she knew, and she felt suddenly heroic and martyred and good … and where was her drink?

  She said, “It’s gratifying to know that I’m still considered tops in my field, even though I am almost as old as Moses. I guess that’s what thrills me most of all.”

  “I can’t tell you, Marge — I just can’t tell you how pleased I am.”

  She thought, Yes, you can. It’s written all over your face.

  “I’ll be leaving almost immediately,” she said, “even though I probably won’t start full time with Dorset for a few months.”

  “You haven’t told Bruce yet, have you?” Charlie asked. It was obvious from his tone that he knew the answer.

  “No.”

  “Gosh I’m happy for you, Marge. I’m very happy.” They beamed at one another momentarily. Then her drink was served.

  “Is it a new shelter magazine?”

  “Now, now — can’t be giving away secrets to the enemy,” she answered, picking up the glass, laughing — then feeling the quivering of her hand; she’d purposely ordered a highball knowing she wouldn’t be able to handle a long-stemmed cocktail job, but God! Shaking so the ice cubes rattle, glass chattering against my teeth. Does Charlie notice?

  Marge Mann laughed. “I have a real case of nerves over this new position.”

  He grinned, apparently oblivious to the glass and her hands. Then she gulped the whisky, too fast; too much; but got the glass back on the table safely, without incident.

  “Say, Charlie, tell me … you said you had some news about Jane.”

  “Oh, God, yes! Yes, it’s really turned me inside out.” He reached into the inside pocket of his suit, unfolded a letter and passed it across to her. “Why don’t you read this? It’ll explain it better than I can.”

  While she was reading it, she noticed that he ordered himself another drink. Well, she didn’t want another one anyway; wanted it, maybe, but wasn’t going to have it; had to play this scene well, didn’t want sympathy, didn’t want Charlie Gibson thinking, Poor old bag. I ever love her? All washed up now; poor old Marge.

  In the middle of the letter she laughed. “What?” he said anxiously.

  “This,” she said, reading it, “Ezra Pound wrote poetry; poetry called cantoes; that’s an interesting piece of news.”

  “It’s that condescending tone all through the letter.” Charlie frowned as she continued, watching her face. She could feel his eyes on her and she thought, God, what a brat Charlie has. But she could only half-concentrate on the smug, officious sentiments. She was wondering if Charlie had any inkling at all that she was faking about the job offer, that she was simply trying to make it easy for him, for both of them. And in a way she wished he were at least semisuspicious, not so quickly believing. She finished the letter and put it down between them on the table.

  “What do you think of it?” he said.

  “She’s your flesh and blood, all right.”

  Charlie was very serious. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I was more or less joking, Charlie — but she sounds terribly idealistic, in that savagely progressive way of the younger generation, and terribly modern in the same way. I suppose you must have been that way too a little, hmm, when you were in college?”

  “I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about,” Charlie said.

  Marge shrugged, thinking, He’s selfish, really selfish. My God, I’m out on the ash heap, about to become a problem for the Geriatrics Association and he sits there worrying about that little brat of his. God, men are really selfish; no more about Margie this noontime; all about Janie. He can’t even see through my act. Typical, typical.

  But aloud she said, “It’s hard to describe. What I mean is — she’s probably not any different than you were at that age; or than I was. Kids don’t change that much from generation to generation….” God, she wished she had the nerve to get herself another drink. Why couldn’t she just say she felt like having one — just casually, “Order me another, Charlie.”

  “I never took anything like an affair so lightly,” Charlie said. Then he wondered why he felt as though he shouldn’t have said that in front of Marge. After all, he had been in love with her. Poor Marge, pretending she had another job offer with Dorset — poor Marge, but good Marge — typical Marge, taking the burden off his shoulders, acting as though she didn’t give a damn. She probably had stocks to tide her over; wonderful the way she actually cared about other people’s problems in the face of her own. Well, hell, he’d play along, never let her know he guessed her game, let her save face — that was always important to Marge; she was proud, God love her — and now she was going to help him solve this riddle that was suddenly Janie.

  “Oh, men never take affairs lightly,” Marge Mann answered him. “Only women can, but they don’t let men know they can.” And that should relieve the twinge of guilt she sensed he felt the moment he’d said he’d never taken an affair lightly. Gosh, Charlie was like an open book. His face told you everything he was thinking. She had one of those insane impulses to butt in: “Charlie, I’m on the ash heap. Can’t you see beyond your nose? I’m only acting.” But instead she said, “Order me another, Charlie,” and her voice sounded immediately calm. Everything was going to be all right — she would sit and listen about Jane and it would be all right now. In the split second between the impulse and the drink order, it had been resolved; she resigned herself.

  “Sure,” he said, “rye and soda … But even in my college days — I swear I can’t remember any girl I was ever interested in who took — sex lightly.”

  “I don’t know that Janie’s taking it — ”

  “Wait a minute,” Charlie said, “I can so think of one. I sure can! Her name was Mitzie. Mitzie,” Charlie said snapping his fingers, frowning. “Mitzie something. God, how could I forget …”

  MARCH 6, 1957

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “WHERE have you been?” she said.

  She was sitting under the covers of the bed in the small West Side hotel room, working a crossword and smoking a cigarette. She was dressed in her slip, with a worn-from-too-many-washings cardigan over her shoulders.

  Elliot Basescu s
aid, “Walking.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s nice. Nice that you had a walk.”

  “Walking around Rockefeller Center. Walking around the N.B.S. building. Walking around and thinking.”

  “Well, you walked right through lunch,” she said, “and I’m starved.”

  She had been pretty once. Now she wasn’t. Her black hair was wiry and she had a careless, dowdy appearance. When she smoked a cigarette she smoked it so far down that it invariably burned the tips of her fingers and stained them, and sometimes she never bothered to put them out, but left them cradling in the notch of the ashtray until they were either dead ashes stagnating there, or smoking ashes that had toppled from the notch to the table or the rug, singeing them.

  “I’m starved,” she repeated as he pulled a manuscript from the briefcase he was carrying. “I hope you’re through with that secret project of yours. Is it written in code too?”

  “I’m not through with it, as a matter of fact,” her husband answered. “I have to cut and add.”

  “It’s so top secret, I hope they’re paying top-secret prices.”

  “Why don’t you go out and get some lunch,” he said, “if you’re starved. I have to finish this.”

  “Thanks,” she said, “I’ll always remember New York because we had such a nice time here.”

  “Why don’t you eat over around N.B.S.,” he said. “Maybe you’ll run into somebody you know.”

  “Shut up,” she said flatly. “Just shut your mouth.”

  Basescu didn’t say anything to that. He opened his typewriter case and set it up on the frail wooden desk.

  Slowly she pulled herself out of the bed and wandered across to the bureau. There in a leather frame were the pictures of her son — the baby picture, and the picture of him taken in Korea, where he was killed. She looked at them, her eyes lusterless, and every time she looked at them, even now when Mikie was dead and gone, she wondered what it would have been like if his father had married her — instead of Elliot, and she wondered too why Elliot had; he hadn’t loved her, that was obvious.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” her husband said as he set paper in the roller of the typewriter. “Charlie Gibson is the executive editor of the magazine house where I was today … There, now. What do you think of that?”

  “Charlie?” she said incredulously. “Charlie Gibson?”

  “Your old flame,” he said. “All your old flames seem to be located in the big city … All your old successful flames,” he said.

  “I was so sure Charlie’d be a writer,” she said, leaning against the bureau with her back to it, in an idle, lazy fashion. “I was almost positive.”

  “You were always positive, about the wrong things and the wrong people.” He set his margins and lit a cigarette.

  “I wasn’t wrong about Charlie. He was wonderful to me — always — just wonderful. I hurt Charlie a lot.”

  “But you didn’t get hurt.”

  “Not by Charlie Gibson.”

  “And I didn’t get hurt.”

  “Okay, Elliot — we both got hurt. You became a martyr and I became a mother. What do you want me to do, go over to N.B.S. and kill him! Take a gun in my purse and blow his brains out because he wouldn’t marry me … Aren’t you ever going to forget him?”

  She turned around and opened a bureau drawer. She took out a garter belt and stockings and slammed the drawer shut.

  Basescu said calmly, “I don’t want you to do anything. In the long run he’ll be discovered for what he is.”

  “Oh, please,” she said, bending to roll a stocking up her leg, “don’t start that hogwash again. If he’s a fairy, I’m a Lesbian … He’s got a family now, you know — and kids! Legal and all. Please, don’t start that again, Elliot!”

  “What about that Chicago incident?”

  “That’s your yellow-journal scuttlebutt. You never printed it. How come you never printed it if it was news?”

  “I would have printed it,” Elliot Basescu said. “I can believe that.”

  “It was all verified,” he said. “Don’t worry. Some day the story will be told.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “I told you how he ran after me; the propositions he made to me. I was a nervous wreck. I was very sensitive and he made a nervous wreck out of me; nearly sent me to a psycho ward. I told you that.”

  “Sure,” she said, hooking the garter belt, “you told me. You told me you married me to get away from him, to feel like a man again. You told me that night out by the columns when we both got drunk, you had to feel like a man again — because of him. Sure, you told me.”

  “Mike could have been mine as well as his. I still believe that,” Basescu answered.

  “Mike could have been anyone’s,” she said. “After that night in your room with Charlie, I didn’t give a damn. He could have been anyone’s, but he happened to be his. And you know it … And whatever all this other stuff is about Avery being a queer, I don’t know.” She straightened up, adjusted her seams, then said, “But I do know you’re a little preoccupied with the subject.”

  “I’ve got to finish this work,” he said. “Aren’t you going out for lunch?”

  “And I do know,” she said, “that you were at it again last night.”

  “Go on to lunch,” he said. “Go walk by N.B.S. Maybe you’ll meet somebody you know.”

  “Whenever you’re at it, you bring home scores of matchboxes. One from every place, huh? Happy hunting, huh?”

  “Go on to lunch,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of nice places over in Rockefeller Center.”

  “Got some money?” she said, grabbing her coat from the edge of the bed.

  “My wallet’s on the table,” he grunted. Then he looked up from his typewriter, frowned, and shook his head slowly. “That’s funny!”

  “What?” She took out two dollars.

  “I was just going to say, ‘Why don’t you go over to Times Square and get your voice recorded for Mike.

  He’d love it.’ I was just going to say that. Isn’t it funny?”

  She stood in the doorway. “Yeah,” she said slowly, sighing, “I know. I’ve been thinking a lot of him too this trip. All those things he bought the week he was here after High.”

  “I knew they made records over there and I was just going to say it. That’s the funniest thing,” he said.

  Neither of them said anything for a moment. She looked at the rug worn threadbare beneath her, and he stared at the walls.

  “Golly,” he said, “makes you feel funny.”

  “I know,” she said, “I know … Well, see you later, El. Don’t work too hard.”

  “Okay, Mitz,” he murmured. “See you.”

  MARCH 6, 1957

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BRUCE CADENCE was an uncomplicated sort of fellow once one knew what made him tick.

  He was a “follow-through” man. He could follow through on anything, better than anyone, but he could never start anything himself. He was like a car who needed a push to get going, and any time he had ever tried to begin on his own, he only flooded his motor with his impulsive enthusiasm, and stalled, and had to wait for the old reliable push again.

  He had married Mildred Cadence shortly after they had been graduated from high school, even though he had barely spoken to her at all during their four years of classes together. He had noticed her and liked her, but he had never been an aggressive person, nor an original one, nor very confident either — unless someone put the firecracker under him; then he could go like hell.

  Mildred’s firecracker was something she wrote in his school yearbook: “I’m the girl who ruined your book by writing upside down.”

  She hadn’t intended it as a firecracker. As a matter of fact, she had deliberately debated what on earth to write in his book, because he was so mild-mannered and she hardly knew him, and she couldn’t just gush across the page as she did with others. So she chose a frivolous sentiment.

  But to Bruce Cadence it was clever
, eye-drawing, amusing, and ironic.

  Bruce Cadence called her up and asked her out, and four weeks later found himself riding beside her on a train to Niagara Falls, wondering what on earth he was going to do with her once the door slammed behind them in the little hotel for honeymooners there.

  But Cadence needn’t have worried, for Mildred was swept off her feet by this quiet boy who had given her a whirlwind courtship and proposed to her on top a roller coaster. He had burst into tears when she accepted, then gagged and vomited once they got on solid ground again, but took her arm gently and announced: “We’ll have to wait three days. It’s the law. Come on, we’ll tell your father.”

  Without framing it with words in her mind, Mildred understood what made him tick — if not during the courtship, certainly on that wedding night, after they had lain beside one another quietly in the double bed that smelled vaguely of mildew — and she had taken the initiative by reaching for his hand under the covers and, quite tenderly, squeezing it … He was a follow-through man; once someone started him, Bruce Cadence went like hell.

  Bruce Cadence needed no one besides Mildred in his life apart from Cadence Publications. He relied wholly upon her, and found her wholly reliable; and consistently reliable. But in his business microcosm he found his partners less faithful, a little fickle, and not altogether comprehensible to him in their sundry moods and metamorphoses.

  Charlie Gibson’s metamorphosis, for example, bewildered Cadence because he had always depended upon Gibson, not merely for business ideas, but for business deals — ethics and integrity. He respected Charlie’s opinion, not alone because it could sell magazines in Duluth, but also because it could sell them tastefully. Taste was Charlie’s word.

  “It’s not in good taste,” he used to say, or, “I don’t care about sales figures, Bruce, it’s in very bad taste!”

  And while he “told” Bruce Cadence what he thought, while he raged at him over a certain issue that was unsettled between them — Charlie’s language, conduct, Charlie himself, was never in good taste; but he was always effective, usually right, and nearly always convincing.