Point of No Return

by John P. Marquand

  “It interests me,” Roger said, “because it just goes to show we’re in the same boat. No matter what happens, we’re still in the same boat.”

  Charles moved uneasily in his hard oak armchair. Roger’s voice was brisk and cheerful, full of sweet reason. Charles did not know why it should have annoyed him, except that it brought a disagreeable picture before him of himself and Roger in a small boat, each knowing that there was not room enough in it for two.

  “You mean we’ve all got to pull together?” Charles asked.

  “Now, Charley,” Roger said, “don’t be bitter. If we’re not in a boat, where are we?”

  “I don’t know where we are,” Charles said, “and neither does anybody else. But it doesn’t do any good to oversimplify, Roger.”

  “What?” Mr. Swiss asked, and he woke up again. “How do you mean we don’t know where we are?”

  Charles saw from the way they were all watching him that he had introduced a new idea at an unpropitious time. He shifted his position again in his hard oak chair. He had not intended to get into an argument with Roger.

  “I think we’re in a pretty good boat,” Roger said. “It rocks a little but it’s the best boat in the world and I’m glad I’m aboard and I guess everyone else is.”

  From the way everyone else was listening, he was sure that they must have heard something about the bank. He could think of no other reason for their fascinated, strained attention.

  “That’s right,” Charles said, “as long as we don’t get tossed overboard. “Well, I’ve got to be getting along now. It’s pretty late.”

  He stood up and smiled and said good night and walked away through the open door of the bar and over the worn boards of the dimly lighted locker room. As he left he was aware of a silence behind him. As far as he could recall, he had said nothing unusual, and yet something must have been wrong or they would have started talking. In some way he had been a disturbing element back in the bar. They were not speaking. They were waiting carefully until his footsteps died away; and what would they be saying then? He did not know, and it did no good to tell himself that he did not care. He had not made good with his group. They were all like strangers to him. He had not fitted in.

  It was now late enough so that no one would say they were leaving early, and it was early enough so that no one would say the Grays were always up late at parties. It was, in fact, the right psychological moment for going home, and Nancy was waiting for him, because, as Nancy often said, she had been a working girl herself. It did not take Nancy half a minute to get her wraps on, and she was even waiting at the steps of the club when he drove there from the parking space, instead of allowing herself to be drawn into conversation like other people’s wives.

  “Move over. I’ll drive,” Nancy said.

  All he had to do was to thank her and to feel pleased that she not only knew he was tired but cared about it. Probably she also knew that the combinations of his day had not turned out very well, but she would not ask questions. She would wait for him to tell her, because she knew he would, eventually—but then, what was there to tell? There was only a premonition. There was nothing to explain, because the disturbance was inside himself.

  “These parties,” he said, “sometimes they’re good and sometimes they’re bad. Did you have a good time, Nance?”

  “Well, yes,” she answered, “in a sort of long-term way.”

  “How do you mean, a long-term way?”

  “You know,” Nancy said. “It’s what I’ve told you before. I like feeling we belong somewhere. You know it’s what I’ve always wanted.”

  “Well, so do I,” Charles said. “So does everyone.”

  Nancy knew every turn on the road home, and she took each turn as unconsciously as a taxi driver.

  “It isn’t the same for a man,” she said. “He always belongs much more than a woman, up to a certain point. A woman just has to tag along. It’s nice, when she likes tagging.”

  “What did you do all day?” Charles asked.

  “You always ask that. You don’t have to.”

  “I know I don’t have to,” Charles said. “I just want to know.”

  There was a slight pause before she answered.

  “I’ve had a good day, but you wouldn’t understand why. It’s partly being a woman. I took the car to the Acme place and got the choke fixed. Do you notice the engine goes better?”

  “That’s right,” Charles said. “I notice now.”

  “Then I went to the A & P and bought some corned beef. Then I left Bill’s shoes at that place below the drugstore, that new Italian place.”

  “I wonder why Italians always like to repair shoes,” Charles said.

  “Then I left that book of yours at the lending library. Then I bought some soap. I still keep buying soap whenever I see it. Then I came back and did the breakfast dishes. Then the man came to fix the unit in the stove, and while he was doing it the men from Hanson’s came to wax the floor in the living room. I had to be there to see that they put everything back right. Then I went upstairs and made the beds and counted the laundry. Then I went over and had lunch with Polly Martin and helped her run up some new curtains, because she’s going to lend me her sewing machine. I don’t know why Polly wants everything in chintz—curtains, dresses, everything. Then I came back and worked on the bills.”

  “How were they?”

  “They were terrible. There were two mistakes again on the Thaxter bill, always plus mistakes, never minus. I called him up about it, and then Bill and I glued the back of your old chair in the hall, and then I read to Evelyn for a while.”

  “What did you read her?” Charles asked.

  “You’d be surprised. I read her Plutarch. Then there was their supper, and the Martins called, and we all went over to the club. That’s all. I knew it wouldn’t sound like much if I tried to tell it, but it was a very nice day.”

  “I’m glad you liked it,” Charles said, “but I don’t see why.”

  They had passed through the gates of Sycamore Park, up the blue gravel of their own short drive, and the car had stopped.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Nancy said. “Because I’m married to a damn nice man. That’s the only possible reason I can think of. Now get out and open the garage door and don’t jerk at it.”

  That door had never worked well in wet weather. Charles opened it carefully and stood holding it so that it would not swing to while Nancy drove the car inside, close to the garden tools, and shut off the lights. Then she was beside him in the dark.

  “And now you can give me a kiss,” she said.

  9

  A Fitting Place for the Enshrinement of Ancestral Relics

  —MALCOLM BRYANT

  Only the light at the top of the stairs was lighted, but the switch was just beside the door. There was a smell of fresh floor wax from the living room, and a moist smell in the dining room from Nancy’s potted plants.

  “Charley,” Nancy said, “isn’t it a lovely house?”

  “Yes, it’s a swell house,” Charles said. Nancy had taken off her evening wrap and was straightening her hair by the mirror.

  “I know it’s got outs about it,” Nancy said, “but don’t forget one thing. You and I did this by ourselves, without any so-and-so to help us. I suppose you think it’s a corny thing to say, but that’s why it’s a nice house.”

  Of course, the appearance of any house depended on one’s state of mind, and now he was feeling more cheerful.

  “And now come in and look at the living room floor,” Nancy said. “Do you want a glass of milk before you go to bed?” The last thing he wanted was a glass of milk, but then Nancy had known that he had taken a drink after dinner.

  The living room was always too neat for him ever to feel at home in it. The logs in the fireplace had a little paper fan beneath them, ready for a match, but the fire was too beautifully constructed for him to want to disturb the logs by lighting them, especially so late in the evening. Everything was dusted,
every ornament on the tables was exactly where it should be. The picture of the ship above the mantelpiece, which had come from Clyde, had been cleaned and was bright with new varnish.

  “I forgot to tell you,” Nancy said, “it came back today from Jacobson’s.”

  “They did a good job on it, didn’t they?” Charles said, and he thought of that page in Yankee Persepolis about the lower-upper family. The picture had hung in a shabbier room in Clyde. Here it was stiffly formal, the central theme of a self-conscious decorative scheme.

  “We ought to use this room more, shouldn’t we?” Nancy said. “I wonder why we don’t.”

  “That’s easy,” Charles said. “Because we’re afraid of it.”

  “Well, let’s not be afraid of it,” Nancy said, and she lighted a cigarette. “Charley, take off your coat and sit down on the sofa.” Nancy kicked off her slippers. “Don’t say we’re afraid of this room. I don’t like it.”

  “Why not?” Charles asked.

  “Because I don’t like being afraid.”

  She looked as though she were startled by her last words. She had a blank, embarrassed, provoked expression and she caught herself up quickly before he had a chance to answer.

  “I don’t mean that I’m afraid of anything. I only mean I don’t like the idea. You know what I mean.”

  Every word only made a top-heavy structure destined eventually for a clumsy fall. It was like the match game so popular before the war, that late evening pastime in which you laid a match over the mouth of the bottle and then your opponent laid one upon it, and so it went until there was a tower of matches rising in the air. The loser was the one who put on the last match and tipped it over. Nancy had put on the last match. The room was uncomfortable and strange in an entirely new way; and he seemed to see it, and Nancy too, through a lens that had suddenly come into focus. Charles found himself passing his hand over the stuff on the sofa, half aware of its softness and of its light color, which, Nancy had said, would show every spot, though admittedly it was just the right shade. Now that the truth was there, now that the thing was there in the living room—the thing of which neither of them had spoken—it was a relief, in a way.

  “Nance,” Charles said, “we didn’t use to be afraid.”

  She was sitting opposite him on one of those small upholstered chairs, very straight, just the way she had been sitting the day he had first seen her.

  “Oh, are you afraid too?” she asked, and though his instinct was already preparing him to answer that of course he was not, he found himself nodding slowly.

  “Well, you might have told me,” Nancy said.

  “It’s all relative, you know, Nance,” he said.

  “What’s relative?” She spoke impatiently.

  “The more you get, the more afraid you get. That’s all I mean,” Charles said. “Maybe fear’s what makes the world go round.”

  “Not love?” Nancy said, and she tilted her head sideways. “I used to hear that it was love.”

  It reminded him of the first night he had taken Nancy anywhere, when they were both obviously trying to impress each other. There was the same atmosphere of suspense, the same effort to be at one’s best, and the same intense consciousness of each other. It was almost like falling in love, an unfamiliar sensation now—but they were talking about fear.

  “Of course,” Charles said. “Everyone’s afraid of something—afraid of living, afraid of dying. Maybe it’s better than being afraid of losing money. That’s what the boys are afraid of downtown. Do you know what I wish?”

  “What?” Nancy asked.

  He was filled with a childish desire to show off before Nancy. It was almost like falling in love.

  “I wish we weren’t always being pushed around. I’d like for once in my life to be able to tell someone to go to hell.”

  She was smiling at him as he had seen her smile at Bill when he asked for an impossible Christmas present.

  “Darling,” she said, “basically you have the most expensive tastes. You’d better just tell me to go to hell, if you want to, and let it go at that.”

  “All right,” Charles said, “but it isn’t the same thing, is it?”

  “Maybe it isn’t,” Nancy said, “but I’m awfully glad we’re afraid of the same thing. It’s healthy to have things in common. I’m awfully glad we’re in the same boat, darling.”

  “That’s what Roger said tonight,” he told her.

  “What else did he say,” Nancy asked, “and what did Molly say?”

  “She said you looked lovely in the plainest frock,” Charles said, “and Roger thinks so too, and he wants the children to call him Uncle Roger and she wants us all to do something together on Sunday, and Roger does too. Wait a minute, there’s something else I’ve got to tell you. I’m taking the plane to Boston first thing in the morning. I’m going up to Clyde for a day or two on business for the bank.”

  He saw Nancy’s lips tighten. Then he saw her grind the end of her cigarette carefully into an ash tray.

  “How did Clyde get into it?” she asked.

  “It’s funny the way things happen,” he began. “When I got up this morning it was raining, do you remember? I looked out of the window at the trees. They reminded me of Clyde. Spring’s always late at Clyde. No one ever admits it. Every year they only say that it’s a late spring. Have you ever found yourself thinking about a thing and then finding later that something was happening about it?”

  He saw Nancy glance uneasily about the room, as though she were afraid that someone might be listening.

  “When something bad happens,” she said, “you keep going back and wondering how it started.”

  “I don’t see why you always get edgy whenever I mention Clyde,” he said.

  “You know very well why,” Nancy answered. “Clyde makes you difficult. It’s a queer place full of ingrown people, and you say so yourself.”

  It always made him sensitive when she began criticizing Clyde, even when her points were well taken. He had never expected her to fit into Clyde. He had never asked her to, and he knew what she thought about it without her telling him.

  “I can’t help it if I was brought up there,” he said, and it occurred to him that he might say something to Nancy about upstate New York and about Nancy’s town with its gingerbread trimmings and its pseudo-Greek columns.

  “Never mind,” Nancy said. “You’re always peculiar when you think about Clyde.”

  “Well, when I was at the bank,” Charles began, “a man came in to see me and who do you think it was? I didn’t recognize him at first. It was Malcolm Bryant.”

  “Oh,” Nancy said. “You used to talk about him quite a lot once.”

  “That’s the one,” Charles said. “He wanted to marry Jessica Lovell once.”

  “Oh,” Nancy said. “I always thought you were the one who wanted to marry Jessica Lovell.” She said it in a very slow, disinterested way, as though Jessica Lovell bored her.

  Charles spoke more loudly so that Nancy could not interrupt. “Then I went to the morning meeting, in the depositors’ room downstairs by the vault …”

  At last he was back where he wanted to be, telling her the details of that meeting and about the collateral on the loan and the stock in that company in Clyde. Then he told about Tony Burton’s having called him later, and it was a relief to go into it fully. He never should have mentioned Jessica Lovell. Nancy was sitting up straight again, following every word.

  “So you’ve got to go away for a day or two right now?” she asked. “At just this time?”

  “Yes, it looks that way,” Charles said.

  “Why didn’t you do anything about it? Why didn’t you ask them to send someone else?” When it came to the bank, Nancy was always right there with him.

  “I thought of it,” he said, “but I think that anything I might have said would have made it worse. You’d have thought so too.”

  “If I’d been there, I’d have done something,” Nancy said. “Something. A
nything.”

  “No,” Charles told her, “you just think so because you’re here. If you’d been there, you’d have let it go. Besides”—he stopped and stared at the design on the Islamic rug—no animals, nothing but symbols—“I don’t think it makes much difference. I think Tony Burton’s about made up his mind which of us he wants.”

  Suddenly Nancy stood up.

  “Then for God’s sake why doesn’t he tell you instead of letting us—letting us—” Her voice choked on the last words and she swallowed.

  “Because perhaps he doesn’t like to do it,” Charles said. “Tony’s quite a nice guy, as far as anyone like him can be nice. I think we’ll get the news when we go there to dinner. He almost said so.”

  Nancy stood looking straight ahead of her. She did not answer, and Charles went on.

  “Besides, maybe it’s just as well for me to be away. Tony knows Roger worked it, at least I think he knows. Maybe Roger will try a little too much. Tony’s rather bright sometimes.”

  Nancy still stood there and he noticed that her hands were clenched.

  “If he picks out that damn fool he isn’t bright.”

  “I only said,” Charles told her, “that he’s pretty bright sometimes.”

  Nancy was no longer staring in front of her at nothing. She was looking at him in a level, appraising way, putting herself in Tony Burton’s place, balancing his faults against his assets, wondering whether he had the personality and the broad-gauge ability to occupy one of the front desks.

  “Listen,” Charles said, “it doesn’t do any good trying to look like a statue on a courthouse.”

  “If you’d only get mad,” Nancy said.

  “You were just saying it’s a luxury,” Charles said. “There’s no use getting mad at a system. We’re part of a system where there’s always someone waiting to kick you in the teeth in a nice way.”

  “It’s a rotten system,” Nancy said.

  “Maybe it is,” Charles answered. “A lot of people have been saying so lately.” He looked up at her and smiled, but she did not answer.