Point of No Return

by John P. Marquand

  The sight of the house at Sycamore Park still gave him qualms of uneasiness. Its whitened brick, its bow windows, still reminded him of what might have happened and of what he would have done if things had turned out differently. Those worries were all top-secret between Nancy and himself, to be shared with no one else. Yet, no matter what, that house was his and hers, a tangible achievement of the past and a sort of promissory note for the future.

  When he had paid the driver and the car had driven off, he stood for a while at the end of the flagstone path that led to the green front door. The light from the ground-floor windows sharpened the outlines of the ell and roof, and his imagination enabled him to put the rest of it together in the dark—the yard, the lawn and trees, the garage and the flagstone terrace by the windows of the library. Now they were even talking at odd moments about selling and getting something larger, but nothing would ever be the same as that particular house. No other house of theirs would ever have the sleepless nights, the hours of argument, spent over it. There was too much of him connected with the house ever to view it objectively. He was thinking of the copper gutters and of the way the conductors drained over a part of the lawn. It would be necessary to have a dry well dug for the conductors; and then there was the broken latch on the garage door, and the oil burner needed a new lining of firebrick; and then there was the weather stripping around the living room windows, and there was something still wrong with the gas water heater. Then there was the mortgage. Then there was the part of the cellar that he was going to turn into a workshop for himself and Bill, now that you could buy lathes and drills again. Those were the species of thoughts that came over him as he stood there by the door, and they were a relief after everything else.

  The hall, when Charles entered, seemed what the architect had called gracious and welcoming. At the left came the dining room; the living room was opposite, then the stairs, and the pine-paneled library at the end. Once he had thought this ground plan was entirely original until, to his amazement, he had found it repeated in all the other houses at Sycamore Park. The hall furniture was what made it undeniably their own hall, for the furniture, though Nancy had kept changing it, came from other incarnations, from apartments in New York, from the little house in Larchmont. The four rush-bottomed chairs they had bought once on a vacation trip and on which no one could sit were good antiques that never fitted well with the reproductions that Nancy had bought before she knew better. They still stood, with the gilt mirror and the console table, like parts of older civilizations, waiting to be absorbed into another way of life.

  It was strange the way a family developed habits. For instance, no one seemed to use the living room much, although it was the largest and most comfortable room in the house. The children as usual were in the library listening to the radio—no longer learning parchesi and reading the Wizard of Oz. Instead they had progressed imperceptibly to the outer edge of childhood, a strange, transient region. Bill was sprawled on the sofa in a manner which he must have copied from some older boys. He was wearing a pullover sweater and his gray flannel trousers had worked halfway up to his knees, showing stretches of bare shin, and garterless knitted socks that wrinkled above those laceless moccasins that all the boys were wearing. His face seemed to have outgrown itself, like his body, so that his nose looked too big for his eyes, and he had a crew cut which was very unbecoming.

  Evelyn sat sideways in an armchair. Instead of being nervous, petulant, and slender, as she had been when she was seven and eight, Evelyn was almost fat. He could imagine she would be pretty someday for she had Nancy’s tranquil features and Nancy’s chin and mouth, yet it was hard to believe that Nancy, when she was thirteen, could have looked like Evelyn, that Nancy could have worn a little girl’s plaid dress or that Nancy’s light brown braids had ever been so untidy.

  When they saw him they both jumped up, clumsily yet with a puzzling sort of co-ordination. There had been a time when he had taken it for granted that they were fond of him, but now he found it very reassuring to realize that they were still glad to see him, even though their feelings toward each other were undergoing some adolescent change. Evelyn still kissed him like a little girl, winding her arms tight around his neck, but Bill simply stood there grinning at him, with his wrists dangling out of the sleeves of his sweater.

  “Hello,” Charles said. “How about turning that radio off?”

  “It’s going to be over in a minute, Daddy,” Evelyn said, “and then there’s going to be Eddy Duchin.”

  “Well, never mind Eddy Duchin,” Charles said. “Turn it off. I’m tired.”

  Bill switched it off and there was a silence that was almost embarrassing to Charles. It was obviously incredible to both Bill and Evelyn that anyone could exist who could bear to miss Duchin.

  “What’s the matter?” Bill asked. “Don’t you want to hear it, Pop?”

  “Not right this minute,” Charles answered, and he put his arm around Evelyn’s shoulders. “You’re getting to be a big girl, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t,” Evelyn said. “You tickle.”

  “Where’s Mother?” Charles asked.

  “She’s gone to the club,” Bill answered. “The Martins took her and she left the car. She said for you to go up there when you’ve had supper.”

  “Your supper’s in the oven,” Evelyn told him, “but I’ll get it.”

  “Why do you have to go out?” Bill asked. “Why don’t you just stay here?”

  “Because he’s on the committee,” Evelyn said. “And don’t forget to shave.”

  She sounded just like Nancy.

  “Don’t worry,” Charles answered. “I’ll put on a black tie and everything.”

  “Mother laid your clothes out,” Evelyn told him. “Daddy, why don’t you use lotion?”

  “What?” Charles asked.

  “After-shaving lotion. Don’t you want to be like other people?”

  Charles started to laugh, but a desperate, tragic note in her voice stopped him.

  “Do you really think that would help?” he asked, and she nodded without speaking.

  “All right,” Charles said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you really think so, I’ll buy some of it tomorrow.”

  It must have been worrying her, because she smiled the triumphant smile of someone who has been through a considerable ordeal and who has been brave enough to speak frank thoughts.

  “Oh, Daddy,” she said, “you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

  That expansive mood was still with Charles as he sat in the dining room eating warmed-over corned beef hash and string beans and drinking a cup of bitter, warmed-over coffee. Now that it was spring, he found himself saying, they would take the car some Saturday soon and drive away out in Connecticut for a picnic. It would be a cooking picnic, if they could find a place somewhere near a brook where they could light a fire. When he was their age, he was saying, they often went for picnics down on the beach and they always built a fire of driftwood because there was always a lot of dry wood on a beach. Bill was saying that he wished they had a sailboat, but Evelyn was saying that of course they couldn’t afford a sailboat, and Charles said that perhaps they could sometime. Then Bill was saying that he had been with some of the boys to the airport that afternoon watching the Piper Cubs, and Charles said that maybe Bill could take flying lessons sometime, if he wanted, when he was seventeen or eighteen. This brought the conversation around to the war, and Charles was telling them again, as he had before, that he had not done anything much in the war and that a great many people in the Air Force were on the ground all the time, repairing the planes and briefing the crews who were going on missions. Then Bill was asking him if he had ever been on a mission, and Charles said that he had been, twice, but not doing anything, just there to see what it was like. He had never thought that their talk would end that way after beginning with shaving lotion.

  “What was it like?” Bill asked.

  Charles pushed his plate away. He wo
uld never be able to tell Bill what it was like, even if he wanted to. He was thinking that he had been about Bill’s age after the last war and that he had always wondered what it had been like.

  “It was cold …” he said. “If I’m going to the club, I’ve got to get dressed … It’s all over anyway, Bill. All of it’s all over.”

  He must have spoken sharply without having intended to because they were quiet when he stood up, but Bill followed him to the stairs.

  “Do you mind if I come up with you?” he asked.

  “No,” Charles said, “of course not, as long as we talk about something else.”

  His brother Sam had been old enough to go to the last war.

  While he was putting his studs in his shirt, he kept looking at Bill, who sat on the edge of the bed, and wondering whether he could ever have looked like Bill when he was fifteen. It did not seem possible that he could have ever been a gangling sight like Bill, so awkward or so immature.

  “I don’t want you sitting around wishing you’d been in that war,” Charles said.

  “Well, just the same, I do,” Bill answered.

  “It doesn’t do any good to wish,” Charles said. “I kept wishing I’d been to the first one and that’s why I went to this one and it wasn’t a very good idea.”

  “Why wasn’t it a good idea?” Bill asked.

  “It didn’t help anything,” Charles said.

  “How do you mean,” Bill asked, “it didn’t help anything?”

  “Never mind,” Charles said. “It didn’t. It was a luxury.”

  “A luxury?” Bill repeated.

  The subject was not worth discussing. Bill was too young to understand him.

  “When you do something that you don’t have to do, it’s generally a luxury,” Charles said. “You’ve got a lot of other things to think about, Bill. I want you to go to college, and I want you to have more opportunities than I’ve had.”

  “What sort of opportunities?” Bill asked.

  They were on ground where they could never meet.

  “I want you to be able to see more things and do more things than I ever have,” Charles said. “I’d like you to have some sort of profession, something you’ll be proud and happy doing.” He was pulling on his black trousers and it occurred to him that it was an undignified position from which to deliver a pontifical speech.

  “Aren’t you happy,” Bill asked, “working in the bank?”

  “Yes,” Charles answered, “but that hasn’t anything to do with you. What do you want more than anything else?”

  “I want to go to Exeter,” Bill said.

  Charles did not answer. It was an anticlimax, but he could understand it. It was a disappointment, but he could understand it. It meant that Bill was like himself. When he was that age, he too had usually wanted something small and definite.

  “Dad, is there any chance of sending me to Exeter?”

  “Why, yes,” Charles said, and he put on his coat. “I think so, Bill. I think there’s a pretty good chance, if everything turns out all right. Do you know where the keys to the car are? I ought to be going now.”

  Not since he had left Clyde had Charles ever felt as identified with any community as he had since he had been asked to join the Oak Knoll Country Club. They were in a brave new world involving all sorts of things of which he had scarcely dreamed after they had moved to Sycamore Park. This cleavage between past and present, Charles realized, was a part of a chain reaction that started, of course, with one of those shake-ups in the bank. Charles had known that he had been doing well. He had known for a year or so, from the way Mr. Merry and Mr. Burton and particularly Mr. Slade had been giving him little jobs to do, that something was moving him out of the crowd of nonentities around him. He was aware also that Walter Gibbs in the trust department was growing restless. There had been a premonition of impending change, just like the present tension. One day Walter Gibbs had asked him out to lunch and had told him, confidentially, that he was going to move to the Bankers’ Trust and that he was recommending Charles for his place. Charles was not surprised, because he had been a good assistant to Walter Gibbs, and he was glad to remember that he had been loyal to his chief, ever since the old days in the statistical department.

  “Charley,” Walter Gibbs had said, “a lot of people around here have been out to knife me. You could have and you never did, and I appreciate it, Charley.”

  He had known, of course, for some time that Walter Gibbs was not infallible, that he was fumbling more and more over his decisions and depending more and more on Charles’s support, but Walter had taught him a lot.

  “Slade keeps butting in,” Walter had said, and then he went on to tell the old story which Charles had often heard of conflicting personalities and suspicions. Walter had felt that frankly he was more eligible for a vice-presidency than Slade, and the truth was he had never been the same after Arthur Slade had been selected.

  “If they don’t like you enough to move you up,” Walter had said, “it’s time to get out, Charley.”

  God only knew where Walter Gibbs was now. He was gone like others with whom you worked closely once and from whom you were separated. Walter Gibbs was gone with his little jokes and his bifocal glasses and the stooping shoulders that had given him a deceptively sloppy appearance. He was gone with his personality that would never have permitted him to be a vice-president of anything.

  Charles was ready, not surprised, when Tony Burton, though of course he did not call him Tony then, had called him downstairs and had asked him if he knew what was coming, that he had been with them for quite a while and that they had all had an eye on him ever since he had done that analysis on chain stores. Even if you were prepared for such a change there was still an unforgettable afterglow, and an illuminating sense of unrealized potentiality. It was a time to be more careful than ever, to measure the new balance of power, and not to antagonize the crowd that you were leaving. One day, it seemed to Charles, though of course it was not one day, he was living in a two-family house in Larchmont that smelled of cauliflower in the evenings, stumbling over the children’s roller-skates and tricycles, taking the eight-three in the morning, keeping the budget on a salary of six thousand a year. Then in a day, though of course it was not a day, they were building at Sycamore Park. The children were going to the Country Day School. They were seeing their old friends, but not so often. Instead they were spending Sundays with Arthur Slade. There was a maid to do the work. He was earning eleven thousand instead of six, and he was an executive with a future. New people were coming to call; all sorts of men he had hardly known were calling him Charley. It was a great crowd in Sycamore Park and he was asked to join the Oak Knoll Country Club. They were a great crowd in Sycamore Park.

  It would have made quite a story—if it could have been written down-how all those families had come to Sycamore Park. They had all risen from a ferment of unidentifiable individuals whom you might see in any office. They had all once been clerks or salesmen or assistants, digits of what was known as the white-collar class. They had come from different parts of the country and yet they all had the same intellectual reactions because they had all been through much the same sorts of adventures on their way to Sycamore Park. They all bore the same calluses from the competitive struggle, and it was still too early for most of them to look back on that struggle with complacency. They were all in the position of being insecurely poised in Sycamore Park—high enough above the average to have gained the envy of those below them, and yet not high enough so that those above them might not easily push them down. It was still necessary to balance and sometimes even to push a little in Sycamore Park, and there was always the possibility that something might go wrong—for example, in the recession that everyone was saying was due to crop up in the next six or eight months. It was consoling to think that they were no longer in the group that would catch it first, or they would not have been at Sycamore Park—but then they were not so far above it. They were not quite indispe
nsable. Their own turn might come if the recession were too deep. Then no more Sycamore Park, and no more dreams of leaving it for something bigger—only memories of having been there once. It was something to think about as you went over your checkbook on clear, cold winter nights, but it was nothing ever to discuss. It was never wise or lucky to envisage failure. It was better to turn on the phonograph—and someday you would get one that would change the records automatically. It was better to get out the ice cubes and have some friends in and to talk broad-mindedly about the misfortunes of others. It was better to go to the club on Tuesday evenings and to talk about something else—and that was where Charles Gray was going.

  Charles was frank enough to admit that the Oak Knoll Club was not as good as the older country club at Hawthorn Hill. Charles’s knowledge of people in the bank and his acquaintance with Hawthorn Hill clients had taught him that the Oak Knoll Club was intended for a definite sort of person, either one who could not afford the Hawthorn Hill dues or one who had not had the edges polished off. It was all very well to say that the Hawthorn Hill Club was meant for old men and older dowagers and that the Oak Knoll was a young man’s club. That was what the Sycamore Park crowd always said, but any one of them would have dropped Oak Knoll like a hot potato if he had been asked to join Hawthorn Hill and could afford a share of stock. It was reassuring to Charles to recall that several members of Hawthorn Hill had spoken to him casually about joining it someday when he got around to it. Cliff Dunbarton, who kept his polo ponies and his hunters at the stable at Hawthorn Hill and who had come to Charles several times at the bank to ask him about investments, had once invited Charles and Nancy to the house for a drink, when he had met them walking on Sunday, and had said that any time Charles wanted to get into Hawthorn to let him know. Tony Burton himself, who was a member, had said only last year that it might be a good idea for Charles to think about getting into Hawthorn Hill, as long as Charles was a confidential advisor to so many of its members. It might even be a good thing for the bank to have him in there. When Charles had pointed out that he could not possibly afford the initiation fee or the purchase of the necessary share of stock, Tony Burton had said that there might be some way to wangle it, but it had either gone out of Tony’s mind or there had not been any way, for the subject had not been brought up again.