The Collected Stories of Richard Yates

by Richard Yates

  “Don’t be silly, honey. Why’d they think that?”

  She supposed it was silly, after all, and when she looked up a minute later she knew it was. The two chief petty officers were standing there with the kindliest, most reassuring smiles in the world. “Part of the States you girls from?”

  Betty grinned. “How’d you know we were Americans?”

  They both laughed, and their laughter was kindly too. “Aw, listen,” the first one said, “I can spot a Navy wife a block away. You’re Navy wives, right? I knew it. Part of the States you from?”

  He put the question to Marylou this time, and when she said, “Raleigh, No’th Ca’lina,” he burst out laughing. “Sho ‘nuff? Well, shet me mouf!” Through it all the other man just stood there smiling, and Betty decided she would probably like him better. He was less handsome than the talkative one, but gentler looking, and shy men appealed to her.

  “Listen,” the talkative one said. “My name’s Al and this here’s Tom. You girls don’t mind if we sit down, do you? Long as we’re all old married people here?”

  Betty and Marylou squeezed close together, making room for the men on either side, and it wasn’t until he had settled himself beside Betty that Tom, the quiet one, finally spoke. “You from the South too? You didn’t tell us yet.” His voice was very low, and his lips curled in a bashful smile around the words. He had a big plain face and a little sandy mustache.

  “No,” she told him, “I’m from Bayonne, New Jersey. My name’s Betty, by the way. Betty Meyers.”

  “Glad to know you, Betty. Mine’s Tom Taylor. Bayonne, huh? I been through Bayonne a couple times, never stopped there. My home’s in Baltimore.”

  “Is your wife over here with the fleet too, or is she staying home?”

  “Oh, no, she’s home. We got the three kids, you see, and she figured it’d be kinda tough for her over here.”

  “Now there’s a smart girl,” Betty said. “Your wife is really smart. Me, I got three kids too, but my husband told me all about how wonderful it’d be, with the beach and all, and how he’d be home a lot of the time and we’d have a lot of friends, and like a big sucker I said yes. Now if there was a boat going home tomorrow I’d be on it, believe me. How old are your kids?”

  His wallet flipped open in the dim, smoky light, and she bent to look at snapshots. There was a heavyset woman of about thirty-five in a print dress, smiling pleasantly—Tom’s wife—and a couple of tow-headed little boys in T-shirts, grimacing into the sun. “The big one’s Tom junior, he’s ten now, and the little one’s Barry, he’s six. Then we got a little girl fifteen months old—here, I’ll show you. There. I took that when she was only about six months.”

  “Aw!” Betty said. “Isn’t she a darling!”

  “C’mon, c’mon, break it up!” Al was reaching across Marylou and snapping his fingers in front of their eyes. “Break it up, you two. Whaddya gonna drink?”

  So they ordered another round, and Marylou and Al left the table to dance, on the small patch of cleared floor by the jukebox. “Care to dance?” Tom asked, and as they got up she noticed that the two young sailors were watching them, grinning and nudging each other. It annoyed her, and when they got to the dance floor she said, “Are they friends of yours? Those two?”

  Tom laughed. “Them? Nah, they’re just a couple kids from the ship; we were just talking to them.” He laughed again in his soft, easy way, and slipped his hand around her for dancing. “These damn young kids you get in the Navy nowadays, they’re all the same. You talk to them on liberty, buy ’em a beer or something, and right away they think they’re in, you know what I mean? They think they’re some kind of a big deal because the Chief buys ’em a beer.” He held her stiffly at first, well away from his body, hardly touching her back with his hand. “I get kind of a kick outa that one on the right,” he went on, “the redheaded one with the big ears? We call him Junior on the ship, and oh Jesus, does it make him mad. So tonight I called him Red once or twice, and I practically thought he was gonna lick my hand or something, like a puppy.”

  She laughed and glanced over at the redheaded one. The boy lowered his eyes blushing, looking about fourteen years old.

  “No, but it’s funny,” Tom said, “when I talk to him it’s almost like talking to my own kid—he don’t seem no older’n that. I mean it, the kids you get in the Navy nowadays! It’s like back in the war.”

  She let him draw her closer and relaxed, turning with the music, thinking: Isn’t he nice? I’ll bet they do think it’s a big deal when he’s nice to them. And wasn’t I silly to worry about the way they looked at me! They’re only kids.

  Marylou and Al went back to the table when the tune ended, but Betty wanted to stay and dance some more. She hadn’t danced in a long time, and Tom was a good dancer. The songs were all French, but that didn’t matter—they were slow and rich, sung by girls with low, tearful voices, and they were nice to dance to.

  When they finally went back to the table Betty found little shot glasses of whiskey beside their beer. “Hey, what’s this? We didn’t order this.”

  “Sh-sh-sh!” Al said, peering around Marylou. “Santy Claus brought it.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Betty said. “Is it okay to drink it after all this beer?”

  Al held up one finger and quoted solemnly: “Beer on whiskey—pretty risky. Whiskey on beer”— he wagged the finger —“never fear.”

  After that things got confused. They must have stayed in the Hollywood Bar for another hour, maybe longer, dancing and drinking and talking. She wasn’t drunk—she knew she wasn’t drunk—but everything blurred together because she was having such a good time. Afterwards it was hard to remember exactly what happened, except that when they left Al got a taxi from somewhere—a big square taxi—and she and Tom rode on the jump seats. They drove along the promenade: on one side the brilliant hotel fronts, some of them with tables outside, and orchestras in white dinner jackets and girls with beautiful shoulders in beautiful evening clothes; and on the other side palms and shrubs with colored floodlights hidden in the grass around them, and beyond them the dark sea. “Gee,” Betty said, “isn’t it nice the way they fix it up at night? It’s really beautiful.” She turned around to ask Marylou if she didn’t think so too, but Marylou and Al were a single shape in the backseat—all she could see was the big blur of Al’s back, with one of Marylou’s white arms slanting across it.

  Then they were back in the apartment and everybody was laughing, and Al was setting up glasses for a bottle of scotch he’d picked up somewhere. She turned on all the living-room lights, but somebody turned most of them off again and got some dance music on the radio.

  “Sh-sh-sh!” she said, “turn it down, willya? I gotta check the kids.” She tiptoed into the dark bedroom and looked at them, one by one: the twins dead to the world in their carriage, Bobby stirring a little as she tucked him in, Brenda buried in her pillow.

  When she got back to the living room only Tom was there. “What happened to Marylou?” she asked him. “And Al?”

  He stood up from the couch with a drink in his hand, smiling. “I think they went up to her place, to check her kid.”

  “But her kid’s here.”

  “Well,” Tom said with a little laugh. “I guess they just went up to—take a look at her apartment or something. C’mon, sit down.”

  She knew it was going to happen, then. Her throat tightened as she walked over to the couch, and the room seemed to roll like a ship in a slow ground swell.

  “Here,” Tom said. “Your drink’s getting stale.” His face was red and the corners of his bashful mouth twitched a little under the mustache as he handed her the glass. “That’s a real pretty dress you got, Betty.”

  “Do you like it?” She smoothed the satin skirt over her thighs, sitting down beside him. “This is the first time I’ve worn it since Eddie—that’s my husband—was home. We went to the movies.”

  “Oh yeah?” His eyes glittered at her.

 
; “We went to see this big Cary Grant picture that was in town, I forget the name of it. Only we didn’t find out till we got there that the sound track was all in French.” Her voice sounded high and choked, and she had trouble getting her breath.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “The whole sound track was in French, and we couldn’t understand a word of the whole picture.”

  “Oh yeah?” A muted piano waltz came from the radio, and the palms rustled outside. They both put their drinks down at the sametime, and she knew it was going to happen. His hands were shy at first, and then they began to be sure—gentle but sure. “Don’t, Tom,” she said, turning her mouth away. “Don’t. Please.” But nothing in the world could stop it from happening now. “They’ll come back,” she whispered.

  “No they won’t,” he mumbled against her mouth. “Not if I know old Al they won’t.” But she didn’t really give in—couldn’t—until she heard him say: “And anyway, I locked the door.”

  Then she gave in, surprised at the whimpering animal gasps of her breath between kisses, locking her arms around the warm strength of his neck and giving in, giving in, not caring about anything else in the world.

  When it was all over they lay silent for a long time until their breathing was normal again, and she waited for a rush of guilt to overtake her. But it didn’t come. Even when she forced herself to think of Eddie—to picture his face—it didn’t bother her. This didn’t have anything to do with Eddie at all. With her finger she traced the line of Tom’s cheek, his smiling mustache, his rough chin. “Tom,” she said. “Oh, Tom.” She was beginning to feel breathless again. “I’ve just been lying here thinking about my husband, and you know what? I don’t care. I just don’t care about anything but us, Tom.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “That’s the way it is, all right. I don’t care either.”

  “Do you mean it? Do you mean it? Well, but Tom—what’re we going to do?”

  He sighed. “It’s just something we’ll have to think about, honey. We’ll just have to figure it out. Gonna miss me?”

  “You’re not going—”

  “I got to, Betty. I really got to. But I’ll come back real soon. Soon as I possibly can.”

  “Oh don’t go yet. Please stay a little while.”

  But he got up, and in a few minutes he was ready, buttoning his trim tan blouse, straightening it, combing his hair. Then they finished their drinks and had another cigarette, and they both wrote out their full names and addresses, very carefully, and gave them to each other. He kissed her and played around a little, and she did everything she knew how to make him stay, but it was no use. He kept saying he had to go, whispering, fondling her, reassuring her, backing toward the door. “Soon as I possibly can, honey, and we’ll talk about it. Now let’s see a smile.” And after a final kiss she was alone. The important thing was to keep busy. She gathered all the glasses and ashtrays and rinsed them out, and straightened up the room. She turned the radio off, then turned it on again. She got into her pajamas and robe and spent a long time brushing her hair—a hundred strokes on each side—the way she used to do before she was married. If she was going to regret it, this was the time to start. And if she wasn’t, well then, she wasn’t. It was as simple as that. She tiptoed in to check the kids again. They were all covered. The soft light from the door fell on Bobby’s face, sweet and babylike in sleep, and it made her smile to think how different it had been this afternoon: dirty and loud and wide-awake. (“Hey Ma, whaddya cryin’ about?”) Her eyes stung a little as she bent over the bed, very gently, and kissed him. She strolled back into the living room, moving gracefully, feeling loved and secure. She could write him tonight—“My darling Tom:”—but she was too tired. Tomorrow night would do, and maybe the next morning there would be a letter from him—maybe that night he would come back. She stood at the tall windows for a long time, looking out. The moon made a wide silver stripe on the sea, irregularly broken by the ships (which one was Tom’s?), and the slick tops of the palm leaves glistened, almost as if they were coated with ice. The word “peace” ran through her mind. Everything was at peace.

  Tom stopped for a cup of coffee in one of the late cafés near the pier. Looking into the bar mirror, the first thing he did was scrub the lipstick off his mouth with his handkerchief. He couldn’t get it all off; it would take soap and water to get rid of the lingering pink glow. Then he saw in the mirror that the two kids were there at a table—Junior and his friend. They had their little white hats shoved down into their eyebrows, trying to look salty, and they were grinning and getting up to come over.

  “Look who’s here,” Junior said. “Whaddya say, Chief?” He was eager as a young bride. Tom looked around without smiling. “What the hell you kids doing out so late? Too late for nice kids to be out.”

  “What happened to your buddy?” Junior asked, grinning. “He find a home?”

  Tom looked narrowly at the boy and picked up his coffee. Any kid ought to know better than to talk to a chief that way. What happened to your buddy, for God’s sake. But never mind; he’d get squared away quick enough, back on the ship. “How the hell should I know?” he said. “Don’t act wise, Junior.”

  That shut him up, but the other kid moved right in. “So how’d it go, Chief? You make it?”

  Tom put the cup down in its little saucer. “Son,” he said, “any man couldn’t make that oughta turn in his uniform.”

  They both howled and slapped their thighs. Tom spread out the slip of paper Betty had given him and got out his address book. “One a you kids got a pen?”

  Two fountain pens were thrust upon him, opened for action. He selected one and carefully transcribed the address into the book. Mrs. Betty Meyers . . . Then he handed the pen back, dropped the paper on the floor and waved the book in the air a few times before closing it, to dry the ink.

  “Well, I see you’re keepin’ her address, anyway,” Junior said. “Couldn’t of been too bad, if you’re keepin’ her address.”

  “Sure,” Tom said. “Why not?”

  “She got your address?”

  It was such a stupid question that Tom played it along. “Sure,” he said softly, looking at the kid with a slow smile, raising the cup to his lips. “Why not?”

  The boy exploded. “Oh-ho-ho-ho! You wanna watch that, Chief—you wanna look out for stuff like that! Her husband’ll be in town one of these days!”

  Still smiling, Tom put the cup down and shook his head from side to side. It was hard to believe. The kids you got in the Navy nowadays. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Junior. When’re you gonna grow up? Whaddya think—I told her my real name?”

  Thieves

  “TALENT,” ROBERT BLAINE said in his slow, invalid’s voice, “is simply a matter of knowing how to handle yourself.” He relaxed on his pillow, eyes gleaming, and shifted his skinny legs under the sheet. “That answer your question?”

  “Well, now, wait a minute, Bob,” Jones said. His wheelchair was drawn up respectfully beside the bed and he looked absorbed but dissatisfied, begging to differ. “I wouldn’t define it as knowing how to handle yourself, exactly. I mean, doesn’t it depend a lot on the particular kind of talent you’re talking about, the particular line of work?”

  “Oh, line of work my ass,” Blaine said. “Talent is talent.”

  That was how the evening’s talk began at Blaine’s bed. There was always a lull in the tuberculosis ward after the wheeling-out of supper trays, when the sun threw long yellow stripes on the floor below the west windows and dazzled the silver spokes of wheelchairs in its path; it was a time when most of the thirty men who lived in the ward convened in little groups to talk or play cards. Jones usually came over to Blaine’s bed. He thought Blaine the most learned man and the best conversationalist in the building, and if there was one thing Jones loved, he said, it was a good gabfest. Tonight they were joined by young O’Grady, a husky newcomer to the ward who sat hunched at the foot of Blaine’s bed, his eyes darting from one speaker to the other. What was tal
ent? Blaine had used the word, Jones had demanded a definition and now the lines were drawn—as clearly, at least, as they ever were.

  “Best definition I can give you,” Blaine said. “Only definition there is. Knowing how to handle yourself. And the ultimate of talent is genius, which is what puts men like Louis Armstrong and Dostoyevsky in a class by themselves among horn players and novelists. Plenty of people know more about music than Armstrong; it’s the way he handles himself that makes the difference. Same thing’s true of a first-rate ballplayer or a first-rate doctor or a historian like Gibbon. Very simple.”

  “Sure, that’s right,” O’Grady said solemnly. “Take a guy like Branch Rickey, he knows everything there is about baseball, but that don’t mean he’d of made a top ballplayer.”

  “That’s right,” Blaine told him, “that’s the idea.” And O’Grady nodded, pleased.

  “Oh-ho, but wait a minute now, Bob—” Jones squirmed eagerly in his wheelchair, charged with the cleverness of the point he was about to make. “I think I got you there. Branch Rickey is very talented—but as a baseball executive. His talent is in that field; he’s not supposed to be a player.”

  “Oh, Jones.” Blaine’s face twisted in exasperation. “Go on back to bed and read your comic books, for Christ’s sake.”

  Jones howled triumphantly and slapped his thigh, giggling, and for an instant O’Grady looked undecided whether to laugh at him or at Blaine. He picked Jones, and Jones’s smile sickened under the attack. “No, all I meant is that you can’t very well hold Branch Rickey up as an example of—”