Nightwork

by Irwin Shaw

  “Over here, Hank,” I said, standing up.

  We shook hands wordlessly. I was sure Henry knew the changes that had taken place in him were apparent and that I was trying to hide my reaction to them.

  “You’re in luck,” Henry said. “I found it right off.” He reached into his pocket and took out a yellowed envelope and gave it to me. I slipped out the certificate. There it was. My identity was confirmed. Douglas Traynor Grimes, citizen, born in America, male, son of Margaret Traynor Grimes, heir to the continent.

  While I was examining the frail piece of aging paper, Henry was fussily taking off his coat and folding it on a chair. The coat was worn at the cuffs and elbows.

  “What’ll it be, Hank?” I asked, overly hearty, false.

  “An old-fashioned will do it.” His voice had somehow remained the same, full and deep, like a cherished and lovingly polished relic from better days.

  “The same,” I said to the waiter, who was standing at the table.

  “Well, boy, well,” Henry said. “The Prodigal returns.” If I closed my eyes the voice was still my brother.

  “Not exactly. More of a refueling stop, I would say.”

  “You’re not flying anymore?”

  “I wrote you that.”

  “That’s the only thing you wrote me,” Henry said. “I’m not complaining, you understand.” He spread his hands in a placating gesture. I noticed that the hands shook a little. Holy God, I thought, he’s only forty years old. “The world’s a busy place,” Henry said. “Communication is difficult. Time passes. Brothers go their different ways.”

  We toasted each other when the drinks came. Henry drank greedily, half the glassful in one gulp. “After a day in the office,” he said, catching my glance. “Those’re long days in that office.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  “Now tell me the news,” Henry said.

  “You tell me the news,” I said, “Madge, the kids et cetera, et cetera.”

  There were two more drinks for Henry while he told me about Madge and the kids. Madge was fine, a little run down taking care of everything with no help and the PTA and teaching a stenographic course at night, the three daughters were lovely, the oldest at fourteen something of a problem, high-strung, the way kids that age these days were likely to be, and having a little psychiatric help. The photographs came out of the wallet, the family beside a lake in the Poconos, all the females brown, robust, and cheerful, Henry, in a pair of bathing trunks that were too big for him, pale and worried-looking, as though a drowning was imminent. The news of our brother Bert was not surprising. “He’s a fag radio announcer out in San Diego,” Henry said. “We should have seen it coming. Did you see it coming?”

  “No.”

  “Well, these days, it’s not so bad, I suppose,” Henry said with a sigh. “Still, in our family … Pa would have split a gut. He’s got a good heart, Bert, he always sends the kids gifts on Christmas from California, but I wouldn’t know what to do with him if he ever showed up here.”

  Our sister Clara, the youngest of the family, was married, in Chicago, with two kids, did I know that?

  “I knew about her being married. Not about the kids.”

  “We don’t see much of her either,” Henry said. “Families sort of just disintegrate, don’t they? In a few years I suppose my kids’ll go off, too, and Madge and I’ll be sitting home looking at the television together.” He laughed ruefully. “Happy thoughts. Still, there’s one good thing. The bastards’ll never be able to drag any son of mine off and kill him in one of their goddamn wars. What a country, where you thank God you don’t have a son. More happy thoughts.” He shook himself, as though the conversation had gotten away from him onto subjects that would have been better left unexamined. “Don’t you think it’s time for another drink?”

  I still had my first glass almost full in front of me, but he ordered two more. In a little while Henry would be drunk. Maybe that explained it all, although I knew it never explained it all.

  “Clara’s doing all right,” Henry was saying. “At least that’s what she writes us. When she writes us. Her husband’s a big shot in a brokerage firm out there. They have a boat on the lake. Imagine that—a Grimes with a yacht. Okay, enough about all of us. What about you?”

  “Over dinner,” I said. By now it was obvious that Henry had to get some food in him—fast.

  In the dining room, Henry ordered a big meal. “How about a bottle of wine?” he said, smiling widely, as though he had just thought of a brilliant and original idea.

  “If you want,” I said. I knew that Henry would be much the worse for the wine, but I had been in the habit all my boyhood and youth of taking orders from him, not the other way around, and the habit, I saw, persisted.

  Henry neglected his food, but paid a great deal of attention to the wine during dinner. He had flashes of sobriety, when he would sit very erect and peer fiercely across the table at me and speak almost sternly, as though suddenly remembering his position as the head of the family. “Now let’s have it, son,” he said, during one of these periods. “Where’ve you been, what have you done, what brings you here? You need help, I imagine. I don’t have much, but I guess I could manage to scrape up a couple of …”

  “Nothing like that, Hank,” I said hastily. “Really. Money isn’t the problem.”

  “That’s what you think, brother.” Henry laughed bitterly. “That’s what you think.”

  “Listen carefully, Hank,” I said, leaning forward, speaking in a low voice, trying to freeze his attention, “I’m going away.”

  “Going away? Where?” Henry asked. “You’ve been going away all your life.”

  “This is different. Maybe for a long time. To Europe first.”

  “Do you have a job in Europe?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You don’t have a job?”

  “Don’t ask any questions, please, Hank,” I said. “I’m going away. Period. I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to see you again. Maybe never. I wanted to touch some of the bases before I took off. And I want to thank you for what you’ve always done for me. I want to tell you that I realize it and that I’m grateful for it. I was a snotty little kid and I guess I used to think gratitude was effeminate or degrading or un-British or something equally idiotic.”

  “Oh, shit, Doug,” Henry said. “Forget it, will you?”

  “I won’t forget it. Another thing. Pa died when I was thirteen years old …”

  “He left a nice little piece of insurance.” Henry nodded approvingly. “Yessirree, a very nice little piece of insurance. You’d never have expected it—a man who worked as a foreman in a machine shop. A man who worked with his hands. His thought was only for his family. Where would we all be today if it wasn’t for that nice little piece of insurance …?”

  “I’m not talking about that part of it.”

  “Talk about that part of it. Listen to an accountant when it comes to death and insurance.”

  “What do you remember about him? That’s what I want to talk about. I was just a kid, it seems to me I hardly ever saw him; he was just somebody who came in for meals mostly. I still have dreams about him, but I never get the face right. But you were twenty. …”

  “His face,” Henry said. “His face was the face of an honest rough man who never had any doubt about himself. It was a face out of another century. Duty and honor were written plain on those simple features.” Henry was mocking himself, mocking our father’s memory now. “And he gave me bad advice,” Henry said, almost sober for the moment. “Also out of another century. He said, Marry early, boy. You know how he was always reading the Bible, and making us all go to church. It’s better to marry than to burn, he said. I married early. I have a bone to pick with good old dad; insurance or no insurance, burning is better.”

  “Will you for Christ’s sake stop talking about insurance?”

  “Whatever you say, boy. It’s your dinner. I take it it is your dinner?”

&n
bsp; “Of course.”

  “Forget Pa. He’s dead. Forget Mom. She’s dead. They worked their fingers to the bone and worried night and day and got the old royal American screwing and raised a family, one who’s a fag radio announcer in San Diego, the other who’s a drunken accountant in Scranton working his fingers to the bone to raise a family, who in turn will work their fingers to the bone to raise their families. I’ll say this for our dad, he had his religion. Clara has her yacht. Bert has his beach boys. I have my bottle.” He smiled owlishly. “What have you got, brother?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said.

  “You don’t know yet?” Henry cocked his collapsed, pale head to one side and grimaced. “You’re what—thirty-two, thirty-three? And don’t know yet? You’re a lucky man. The future is all ahead of you. I got something beside the bottle. I got a pair of eyes that are no good for anything and steadily getting worse.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Did you ever hear of a blind accountant? In five years I’ll be out in the street on my naked ass.”

  “Jesus,” I said, shaken by the coincidence. “That’s why I was grounded. My eyes started to go bad.”

  “Aha,” Henry said. “I thought you’d run a plane into a hill or screwed the boss’s wife.”

  “No. Just a little failure of the retina. Nothing much,” I said bitterly. “Just enough.”

  “We none of us ever did see clearly, I guess.” Henry laughed foolishly. “The fatal flaw of the Grimeses.” He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes, which were watering. The marks of the frames on his nose were like small deep wounds. His eyes without the glasses looked almost blank. “But you said you were traveling, you were going to Europe. What’ve you got—a rich woman to support you?”

  “No.”

  “Take my advice. Find one.” Henry put his glasses on. They fitted automatically into the slots on each side of his nose. “Romance yourself no romance. That’s another thing I have.” He was off ranting again. “I have a wife who despises me.”

  “Oh, come on now, Hank.” In the photograph Madge hadn’t looked like a woman who despised anyone, and the few times I had met her she had seemed like a good-natured, even-tempered woman, solicitous at all times of her husband’s welfare.

  “Don’t say come on now, brother,” Henry said. “You don’t know. I know. She despises me. You know why she despises me? Because by her high American standards I am a failure. She does not get new dresses when her friends get new dresses. I can’t afford to pay for a psychiatrist for the older kid and send her off to a private school and she’s afraid the Blacks at the high school will rape her between lunch and gym class. The house hasn’t been painted for ten years. We’re behind on our payments for the television set. Our car is six years old. I am not a partner in my firm. I keep track of other people’s money. You know what the worst thing in the world is? Other people’s money. I …”

  “That’s enough, Hank, please.” I couldn’t stand the wave of self-hatred at the dinner table, even though there was nobody near enough but myself to hear any of it.

  “Permit me to continue, brother,” Henry said. “My teeth are bad and they smell, she says, because I can’t afford to go to the dentist. I can’t afford to go to the dentist because all three goddamn kids go to the dentist every week to have their braces worked on so that they’ll all look like movie stars when they grow up. And she despises me because I haven’t been able to fuck her for five years.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m impotent,” Henry said with a crazy smile. “I have every reason to be impotent and I’m impotent. Do you remember when you came home that Saturday afternoon and you found me in bed with that girl? What was her name?”

  “Cynthia.”

  “That’s it—Cynthia. Cynthia of the big tits. She let out a shriek when she saw you that I can hear to this day. And she slapped me because I laughed. What did you think of your big brother then?”

  “I didn’t think anything. I didn’t know what you were doing.”

  “You know now, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wasn’t impotent then, was I?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “Take your brother’s word for it. Glad you came back to Scranton, Doug?”

  “Listen to me, Hank.” I grabbed both his hands and pressed them hard. “Are you sober enough to understand what I’m saying?”

  “Approximately, kid, approximately.” Henry chuckled, then frowned. “Give me back my hands.”

  I let go of his hands. I took out my wallet and counted out ten bills. “This is a thousand dollars, Hank,” I said. I leaned over and stuffed it into my brother’s breast pocket. “Don’t forget where I put it.”

  Henry let out his breath noisily. He fumbled at his pocket, took out the bills, smoothed them out on the table. “Other people’s money,” he said. He sounded dead sober.

  I nodded. “There’s more where that came from. Now, I’m going away tomorrow. Out of the country. I won’t tell you where, but from time to time you’ll hear from me, and if you need more there’ll be more. Do you understand that?”

  Henry slowly folded the bills and put them in his wallet. Then the tears started, silently rolling down the pallid cheeks out from under the glasses.

  “For Christ’s sake, Hank, don’t cry,” I pleaded.

  “You’re in trouble,” Henry said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Anyway, I have to keep on the move. If anybody ever comes to you and asks you if you know where I am, you don’t know anything. You got that?”

  “I got it.” Henry nodded. “Let me ask you a question, Doug.” He was sober now, sobered by money. “Is it worth it? Whatever you’re doing?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when I find out. I think we can skip coffee, can’t we?”

  “I don’t need any coffee. I can get coffee in my happy home from my happy wife.”

  We stood up and I helped Henry put on his coat. We walked out together, after I had paid the waiter. Henry walked in a straight line, a bent, oldish figure, then stopped for a moment, as I was pushing at the door. “Just before he died,” Henry said, “do you know what Pa said to me? He said, of all his sons he loved you best. He said you were the purest.” His voice sounded petulant, almost childish. “Now why would a man on his deathbed want to tell his oldest son something like that?” He started walking again, and I opened the door for us, thinking, I am an opener of doors.

  It was cold outside, the night wind gusting. Henry shivered a little, settling deeply into his coat. “Beautiful old Scranton, where I live and die,” he said.

  I kissed him on the cheek, hugging him, feeling the wetness of his tears. Then I put him in a cab. But before the cabby could start off, Henry tapped him on the shoulder to stop him and rolled down the window on my side. “Hey, Doug,” he said. “I just noticed; I knew something was peculiar about you all evening and I couldn’t put my finger on it. You don’t stutter anymore.”

  “No,” I said.

  “How’d it happen?”

  “I went to a speech doctor,” I said. It was as good an explanation as any.

  “Why, that’s great, that’s wonderful. You must be a happy man.”

  “Yep,” I said. “I’m a happy man. Get a good night’s sleep, Hank.”

  He rolled up the window and the cab started away. I watched its tail-lights go down the street, disappear around a corner, carrying away the brother of whom our mother had said that of all her children he was the one who was born to be rich and successful.

  I took a deep breath of the icy night air, shivered, remembered the warm beds of Washington. Then I went in and took the elevator to my room and watched the television for hours. Many objects were advertised that I would never buy.

  I slept badly that night, tantalized by fleeting visions of women and funerals.

  The ringing of the telephone on the bedside table put a welcome stop to my dreams. I looked at my watch. It was
only seven thirty. “Doug …” It was Henry on the phone. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Nobody else in the whole world knew where I was. “Doug … I have to see you.”

  I sighed. I felt as though we had exhausted each other the night before, that there was no need to see each other for another five years. “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Downstairs. In the lobby. Have you had your breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll wait for you in the dining room.” He hung up before I could say yes or no.

  He was drinking a cup of black coffee, alone in the dining room. It was still dark outside. Henry had always been an early riser. It was another one of his virtues that my parents had praised.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you,” he said, as I sat down across from him. “I wanted to make sure I got hold of you before you left town.”

  “That’s okay.” Half-remembering my dreams, I said, “I wasn’t particularly enjoying my sleep.”

  The waitress came over to us and I ordered breakfast. Henry asked for a second cup of coffee.

  “Listen, Doug,” he said, when the waitress had gone, “last night, you said something. When you … when you gave me all that money. Don’t think that I’m not grateful …”

  I waved my hand impatiently. “Forget it,” I said. “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “You said … and I can’t forget it … you said, if I needed it, there’s more where that came from.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Did you mean it?”

  “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

  “Did you mean as much as twenty-five thousand?” He flushed, as though the effort of getting the question out had been enormous.