Marianna was too young, and he himself was almost too young to have heard that song, but she was able to catch the mood of it. It went with the sound of the motor and with the sound of the tires on the road.
“Darling,” Marianna said, “I’m your baby.”
“Perhaps,” he answered, “but I’ve never telegraphed to any baby, dear.”
“Jeffrey,” she said, “you love him, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t say so, exactly,” he answered. “He’s really a big bastard, dear.”
“Darling,” she asked, “who’s his baby, now?”
Marianna had never seemed so near to him. He dropped one hand from the wheel and raised her hand and kissed it. Somehow she belonged to him more than she ever had.
“I haven’t seen this new baby,” he said, and he was laughing. “I’ve had to cope with the other ones, but not this baby. This one—she’s a widow. Alf met her playing numbers. Do you remember that song? How did it go? ‘Give me a kiss by the numbers, one, two, three.’”
“That was in the last war, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, “the last war.”
“I was ten in the last war,” she said, “that was when we lived in Portland.”
“Did you wear pigtails?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “two pigtails.”
Then he was telling her about Alf. This new wife, this time, Alf had told him, was the jack pot. You couldn’t be wrong always. They had met right at one of those tables in the center of a drugstore at Las Vegas where you could play the number game or buy a thermos jug for the desert, or get a Coca-Cola. It was just the time of the Helldorado at Las Vegas, when they had the beard-growing contest and Gila Monsters in cages on street corners. It was all wide open at Las Vegas, not that everything wasn’t always wide open there. Alf said that you ought to be there in Helldorado Week. The only thing that he had seen that gave him more of a laugh was the Poets’ Round-up at Sante Fe. The poets’ round-up, Alf said, was a sort of rodeo. The master of ceremonies was dressed like a cowboy and he would call out a poet’s name and they would open the trap of the pen and out would come a poet and read a poem. They had poets, too, in Las Vegas—poets and pansies, everything, in Las Vegas, and they had the beard-growing contest during Helldorado Week. Alf had been growing one for the occasion and he was going to lead a burro in the parade and be dressed like a desert rat.
He was growing a beard right there in the drugstore when he met Agnes next to him at the number game, and he’d hit the jack pot this time. She wasn’t so much to look at. She was a little on the fat side. She was a numerologist—that is, as Alf said, she could do anything with numbers, and when she asked him the date and year of his birth, she got out a piece of paper and worked out those numbers with the date and year of her own birth, and there you had it. She wasn’t so much to look at, but she could do anything with numbers. She was lonely and you know why Alf was living in Nevada, and he was lonesome, too. He wanted to pick up the pieces and start all over again; and she was a real widow, not grass, and her husband had left her an orange grove at San Bedoo—that was what you called San Bernardino out there, in case you didn’t know it—and the numbers showed that they had the same vibrations, right there in the drugstore at Las Vegas. And as Alf said, what did you know about that? There wasn’t much else to know about it. They were married that night at Las Vegas, because it was down in the numbers. She wasn’t much to look at, but he was tired of looks. Her name was Agnes, just plain Agnes, five letters and when you added them to Alf, it made eight, and Alf was settling down. It was a little cuckoo sometimes, having Agnes fry the eggs and do the coffee all by numbers, but she could do it if she liked. No one had understood Alf for a long while. He was getting fat himself and he was settling down.
Jeffrey could ad lib like that with Marianna. Nothing mattered that afternoon. He was thinking it was the way his life always should have been. They were passing through San Bernardino by then and Alf had told Jeffrey how to get to their place. You went to the end of the Main Street and to the left, then past a Giant Orange Drink Stand and then past Hawkins’ Lemon Grove, and then past a roadside stand run by a man called a “rockologist,” who sold mineral specimens he had brought from the hills—ROCKOLOGIST was written with rocks in front of the stand—and then the next gate on the left was Alf’s. The name was “Rednow”—Wonder spelled backwards.
“Show me something that it hasn’t got,” Jeffrey said.
“What?” Marianna asked him.
“Nothing,” Jeffrey answered, “nothing, dear.”
40
Wonder Spelled Backwards
They were approaching the Giant Orange Drink Stand before Marianna spoke again. It was one of those huge plaster and composition spheres, painted like an orange, with a hole cut in it, from which projected a counter that was heaped with oranges and glasses, and bearing that familiar sign: “All you can drink—ten cents.” The thought of stopping there and testing one’s capacity with successive glasses of orange juice brought up an unpleasing gastronomic picture.
“Jeff,” Marianna said, and her voice broke abruptly into his mood. There was a hesitation in it, and a studied carelessness that was reminiscent of Madge’s voice. “You’re not worried, are you?”
“Worried?” he answered. “About what, sweet?”
He supposed she meant that he was worried about explaining her to Alf, and that was nothing to bother about, but her voice went on, still carefully and hesitantly.
“About you and me and Madge.”
Jeffrey felt his hands grip the steering wheel tighter. This was an impasse which he had tried to keep out of his mind and it had not been there much, but now it drained the joy out of him like liquid from a bottle. It was not the time or the place to bring it up, and he wondered whether all women were alike and whether they all chose instinctively to embark on difficult subjects at just the wrong time. It reminded him of the way Madge would bring up some problem in a taxicab just before they reached a friend’s house for dinner. It was not the time and place. He did not want to think of it as a problem, and certainly not now.
“Why?” he said. “What makes you think I am?”
“I thought you were,” Marianna said. “You must be. Darling, I keep wondering. Have you ever done anything like this before?”
His hands still gripped the steering wheel. He could not imagine why she had brought it up now, when he had to watch the side of the road for the shop of the rockologist. They were passing other roadside stands—“Orange Water Ice For Sale”… “Persian Kitties For Sale”… “Canary Birds For Sale”… just tell him something that wasn’t here.
“No,” he said, and it was true, but she must have known that he would say no. “Do you mean I’ve been too casual? I’m awfully sorry, dear. I’m—well, maybe I’m not the type. But you knew that, didn’t you? You’ve known me long enough.”
“No,” she answered quickly, “of course—of course it isn’t that—but you must be worried, dear, and I wish you’d tell me about it. You’re—so enigmatic sometimes, and so reticent about some things.”
Jeffrey stared straight ahead at the road. There were orange groves everywhere—just oranges with the mountains to the east. It sounded exactly like Madge when Madge said that he never told her anything.
“I wish you’d tell me, dear,” Marianna said again, “please. I have a right to know, haven’t I? How do you feel about Madge and you and me?”
“I wish you wouldn’t bring it up now,” Jeffrey said, “right in the middle of everything. We’ll be at Alf’s in just a minute.”
“Then stop the car,” Marianna said, “please, dear.”
“Oh, God,” Jeffrey said, and he stopped the car. “I don’t see what we have to get into this now for.”
“Darling,” Marianna said, “I just want to know.”
“Well, there’d be plenty of other times to know,” Jeffrey said.
It was much warmer, now that he had stopped
the car right beside an orange grove. He could feel the sun beating down on him and he could smell the orange blossoms. He could see the black smudge-pots under the trees, left there the previous winter in case of cold. It was not the time and the place to tell her, but he had to tell her. He had to sort it all out in his mind and separate it from the smell of the orange blossoms. A bee struck the windshield, and that was not peculiar. After all, you could not have oranges without bees.
“Oh, God,” Jeffrey said, “all right, Marianna. Just wait a minute and don’t say ‘please.’”
“Don’t be so rude,” Marianna said.
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” Jeffrey said. “Just wait a minute and let me think. I guess this had been growing on me for quite a while. You see, Madge—well, Madge. Oh, hell.”
He stopped and stared straight ahead at the road, but there was nothing on the road, just the sun and the orange trees. She was waiting for him to go on and he did not want to think about it. His hands relaxed on the steering wheel.
“I don’t mean I’m not understood,” he said, “but I suppose I do mean it. Everyone says that.”
“You mean she doesn’t give you what you want?” Marianna said.
“Dear,” Jeffrey said, “are you telling me, or am I telling you?”
“Darling,” Marianna said. “You’re telling me. At least, I hope you are.”
“Then let me tell it,” Jeffrey said. “All those things are always a part of it, but it isn’t the real reason. I suppose it’s been building up, building up, for quite a while. Madge just sees things one way.”
He stopped again and suddenly he wondered how he had ever got there, on the side of the road, telling things about Madge that he had never told to anyone.
“It’s more that I haven’t anything to give Madge,” he said. “I suppose when two people get married each thinks he can change the other; it must have something to do with sex.” It was hot and Jeffrey pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “You see, Madge was brought up in a certain way. She thinks in terms of concrete possessions. She’s wanted security—she’s wanted children. Well, I’ve tried to give them to her. I’ve made quite a lot of money. She doesn’t know about money. She only thinks that all nice people have it. She wants me to be like people she used to know. I’ve tried to be. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried so hard. Well, I suppose this has been building up for quite a while. You just wake up suddenly—something hits you. There’s been the war—I can’t explain it, Marianna. There’s just nothing I can give her.”
He wished she would say something. He was aware that he had been talking for a long while and not saying much. He was simply saying what anyone would say who had strayed off the reservation.
“Oh, well,” he said, “it’s about Jim too, I suppose. The other kids have always looked on me as an abstraction, but there was always Jim. When Madge called up that night—I suppose something just hits someone suddenly, sometimes. It just seemed to me I was superfluous. It seemed to me I had a right to something else—and you were there.”
It occurred to him that this was not entirely complimentary.
“I don’t mean it would have been just anybody,” he said, “I mean you’re all the things I should have had if everything had been a little different, if I had known more about myself—but nothing you do is ever right, is it? I suppose it’s a matter of self-expression, a matter of feeling I’m not dead yet. I’d just like to try something else. I’m not dead yet—” His voice trailed off, and he looked ahead at the road.
He felt her hand close over his, and he turned to look at her. He could see her blue scarf knotted under her chin. The color matched her soft, blue sweater. She was not looking at him, but ahead at the road.
“Darling,” she said, “you’re awfully sweet.”
“No,” he answered, “I feel like Alice in Wonderland. I wish you hadn’t brought it up.”
“Dear,” she said, “you’ve found me, haven’t you? It’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Is it?” Jeffrey asked her. “Maybe—if the play’s any good.”
“Yes,” she said, “of course it is.”
Jeffrey knew very little about California, aside from a few hotels and the studios. The rest of it he had seen from the highway, or from his seat in the car when he had stopped at filling stations. Although he had been in California often, he had never turned off the road into any place like Rednow.
The bungalow looked frayed and seedy, somewhat like a disreputable unrepentant old man sitting on a curbstone whittling in the sun. It was of plain board construction, painted green and white once, that universal color of bungalows, but now the paint was peeling off so that it looked more gray than green and white. It had been built on posts quite high off the ground, and the posts at one end had begun to settle, so that the roof was sway-backed, and the stovepipe, which protruded from the ridgepole as a chimney, was canted at an acute angle. There was nothing in the way of shrubbery, only a stretch of sand and crab grass in front of it, decorated by a rusty bathtub and some assorted lengths of pipe. The only new thing there was a robin’s-egg-blue coupé that stood in an airy shelter beneath a tree. The steps leading upward to the porch were sagging and the tread of the lower step was gone.
Alf was seated on the porch, and it was plain that he was not expecting visitors because his costume was so like the house that it resembled a sort of protective coloration. It came as a shock to Jeffrey, because Alf had been well-turned-out when he had called at the Bronxville the first week Jeffrey had arrived, but now Alf looked seedy and old. He was seated in an armchair, tilted back against the house, with his feet encased in frayed white sneakers. His dungarees were so tight about the waist that his stomach protruded and sagged over the piece of knotted clothesline which supported them. The rest of his costume was a simple sleeveless undershirt, yellowed by the dust, and a pair of nickel-rimmed glasses. Jeffrey had never thought of Alf’s needing glasses, particularly to read the last Sunday’s comic sheet that he was holding.
It was unfair to have come unannounced like that on Alf. It was almost like that scene in the Bible where the boys had encountered their father sleeping naked in the sun, for Alf and the plumbing on the lawn gave that same sense of indecent exposure. Alf peered through his glasses. They must have been reading glasses and not bifocals, because when he took them off, he saw Jeffrey right away.
“Whoops,” Alf called. “Hello, kid. Who’s your lady friend?” Jeffrey had stopped the car. Alf got out of his chair and walked carefully down the steps, seemingly testing the treads before trusting them with his full weight.
“Well, well,” Alf said, “so it’s the kid. ‘Who are you with tonight?’ Do you remember that one, kid?”
“What one?” Jeffrey asked, and he glanced sideways at Marianna. He could see as Marianna glanced at the house and Alf that she was obviously trying to throw herself into a part without knowing just where to throw herself. In spite of all he had tried to tell her, Alf must have been a shock to her.
“What one?” Alf said, and he patted his white hair. The gesture reminded Jeffrey that someone had once mistaken Alf for Paul V. McNutt, and since then Alf had always worn his hair that way. Alf was pulling himself together, slowly, but steadily.
“‘Who are you with tonight?’” Alf said. “This one—hold everything kid: ‘Who is that peachy, dreamy, creamy vision of sweet delight? Is she your little sister, mister? Answer me, honor bright. Will you tell your wife in the morning, who you were with tonight?’ That one, kid, get it?”
In spite of all the years, a certain reluctant admiration and awe returned when Jeffrey heard Alf.
“Alf’s quite a card,” he said to Marianna. “Quite a card. This is Miss Miller, Alf, Miss Marianna Miller.”
“Oh-oh,” Alf said. “Oh-oh, excuse me for living, Miss Miller.”
“That’s all right,” Marianna said, and then she began to laugh.
“Oh-oh,” Alf said. “Where
have you been all my life, bright-eyes?”
“Alf,” Jeffrey said, “just relax.”
“Don’t be so tense yourself, kid,” Alf said, and he winked at Marianna. “The kid’s always been tense, but he’s a pretty good kid. Welcome to the old plantation lovely lady, honey bee. And bless yore pretty soul, missy, never yo’ all mind the pickaninnies and the houn’ dogs, the little rascals. Just yo’ light down and rest yo’ pretty se’f on the veranda, missy, effen you-all doan’ want to rest yo’self in yonder bathtub. An ol’ Mose, mah body servant, will come a totin’ out the juleps in jes’ a jiffy, missy. Light down and bless yo’ pretty se’f for coming to the ole plantation and laying eyes on the pore ole Colonel, so tired from the wo’.”
Jeffrey could not help laughing, although he had heard it all before.
“Whah, honey,” Marianna said, “Ah don’t mind if Ah do.”
Until she answered, Jeffrey had been afraid that she might think Alf was drunk, and Alf was not drunk.
“Atta baby,” Alf said, and he patted Marianna’s shoulder as he helped her from the car. “Don’t mind me. Oh-oh. I know you’re big-time, baby. Jes’ you lean on the ole Colonel and never fret yore pretty head about the houn’ dogs and pickaninnies, baby.”
Then the screen door of the bungalow slammed and Alf glanced sideways quickly. A stout woman in a chintz Mother Hubbard was standing on the porch. Her gray hair was cut in a page bob with a straight bang over her forehead and Jeffrey thought that her eyes looked like the coal eyes in a snow man. She was wearing a heavy Navajo silver necklace and she was blinking in the sunlight. To Jeffrey she looked half like Ma in The Grapes of Wrath, and half like someone from a religious cult, and he was thinking again, just show him anything that California hadn’t got—anything. It was his new sister-in-law, Agnes; he imagined that she must have struck him in much the same way that Alf had struck Marianna. He had tried incapably to picture her, and there she was.
“Wha’, God bless me,” Alf called, “if yonder ain’t Missus Betsy herse’f, jes’ up from seeing those no-’count niggers killin’ hogs and hominy in the kitchen. Betsy, honey! Light down these steps. Throw a kiss to your brother Jeff. It’s Agnes, Jeff, you ole rascal. Don’t yo’ know yo’ sister when you see her?”
So Little Time Page 51