Point of No Return

by John P. Marquand

  “Why, Charley,” he said, “if you really feel that way … But just think it over and we’ll talk about it again tomorrow.”

  “All right,” Charles said.

  “And now I’d better be going. It’s getting awfully late.”

  “Wait a minute,” Charles said, and his mind was back to where it should have been. “Just a minute before you go, Jackie. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. What do you know about the Nickerson Cordage Company?”

  His voice at last sounded the way it should have through all that conversation.

  For a minute or two after Jackie Mason closed the door and after the sound of footfalls disappeared, Charles Gray had the illusion that he was in a hotel room somewhere else and that Jackie Mason had appeared unsubstantially and that their conversation had been still another fantasy. Although the place had the impersonality peculiar to any hotel room and though the presence of people who had occupied it could be erased from it as one wiped chalk off the surface of a blackboard, the imprint of Jack Mason’s posterior was still visible upon the cushion of the small upholstered chair. The bottle of rye was gone, because he had insisted that Jack Mason take it back with him, under his overcoat if necessary, but the two bathroom glasses were on the table—his own empty and the other only faintly colored and still three quarters full, showing that Jackie Mason very seldom did that sort of thing.

  Charles took his thin gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, the unnecessarily expensive watch that Nancy had given him just before they were married. Nancy had never liked wrist watches in an office because, without meaning to, you always glanced at them. It was very late for Clyde, almost half past eleven o’clock. He picked up the two glasses automatically and walked into the bathroom, where he rinsed them out carefully, but rinsing glasses could not change his frame of mind. He could not get his thoughts away from Jack Mason and the career of Jack Mason. A sense of emptiness and futility hung darkly over him. It was late, but he wanted to call up Nancy. He had never wanted so much to speak to anyone and he felt better already when he had given the number at Sycamore Park.

  “Ring me when you get it, will you, please?” he said.

  Then he walked to the single window and opened it wider and stood breathing the cool night air. There was the sound of a train in the distance. It would be the eleven-thirty going north to Portland. The timetable had not changed. It was a dark, cloudy night but the sky was lighter than the earth and he could see the blurred shapes of the elms and the houses on Fanning Street. The town was asleep but it was still alive and as full of blind instinct as a beehive. Malcolm Bryant had perceived this once and he had tried clumsily to translate it into the pages of Yankee Persepolis, so named because the Persians had worshiped memories there.

  He thought again of Jackie Mason, beset by this instinct and wanting to get on according to the rules, and he had seen the result that night, a preordained and sterile ending. The worst of it was that it partially reminded him of his own career. He had been living carefully according to other rules. Someday he might be a vice-president of the Stuyvesant Bank in New York City, and Jackie Mason was engaged to Jessica Lovell. He wished that the night were not so dark. He wished that everything were not so deathly still. There was not even a sigh of wind in the branches of the trees.

  The sharp ring of the telephone broke into those thoughts and he was relieved to hear the low and sleepy sound of Nancy’s voice.

  “What are you doing? Where are you?” she asked.

  “I’m here in the hotel in Clyde,” he said, and it sounded like the beginning of a letter—Clyde Inn, Clyde, Massachusetts. “Did I wake you up?”

  “Yes, you did,” Nancy said. “Never mind it. Are you all right?”

  Nancy always hated wasting money talking aimlessly on the long distance and he disliked it too, but nothing could have made him stop talking.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Are you all right? Are the children all right?”

  “There’s no perceptible change,” Nancy said. “Molly Blakesley came to call.”

  “Oh,” he said. “What did Molly Blakesley want?”

  “She didn’t want anything, damn her.”

  “Molly’s all right,” he said. “What else has happened?”

  “Well, Bill cut his lip. A baseball hit him. And that man you called to see about the roof, he never came.”

  “Well, never mind,” Charles said. “How about the Buick?”

  “Why do you want to know about the Buick?”

  “I don’t know,” Charles said. “I’m just feeling lonely for you and the Buick.”

  “It’s a nice association of ideas,” Nancy said. “How lonely are you?”

  “Very lonely,” he answered. “There are too many ghosts up here.”

  “Well, when are you getting back?”

  “The midnight tomorrow,” he said.

  “What about that company?”

  “I’m attending to it tomorrow.”

  “Well, what have you been doing?”

  “Just talking,” he said. “I had supper at the Masons’.”

  “Oh,” she said. “The Masons—those people who lived next door?”

  “Yes, they’re the ones,” he answered.

  “Well, what about that Lovell girl?” He knew that Nancy would ask about the Lovell girl. “Have you seen her yet?”

  “No,” he said. “She’s going to marry Jackie Mason. What do you think of that?”

  “You mean the boy next door is marrying the girl in the big house?” Nancy said. “I’ve never seen him, so how should I know what to think?” It was wonderful to hear the indifference in Nancy’s voice. “Now wait a minute. Is that why you’re lonely?”

  “No,” he said, “it isn’t. I wish you were here.”

  “Well, I’m glad you do,” Nancy said. “Now listen, we’re not getting anywhere and we’ve been talking more than three minutes. Come home as early as you can on Friday, and don’t worry about anything.”

  “About what?” he asked her.

  “You know what … the bank … And Charley, I didn’t really mean what I said—about its not being much but its being the only thing we had. It was a silly thing to say.”

  “Just a second.” At least he was no longer thinking about Clyde. “Have you heard anything?”

  “No,” she answered, “I didn’t mean it that way, darling. Don’t sit alone there worrying. I’ll see you on Friday. Good night, dear.”

  He set down the telephone and stood up, conscious of a new sound which he had not noticed while they had been talking. It was the rushing sound of rain. It was pouring rain outside.

  The rain had a finality that reminded him of the mechanical whir of the curtain in a theater falling inexorably upon the last line of a play. Random, undisciplined thoughts were with him again and there were voices in the persistent beating of the rain as clear as though they had been real. His mind was wandering off in aimless reminiscence as it had just the night before in his knotty-pine library at Sycamore Park. For no good reason, he was thinking of the time he had sat on the stage in the Clyde City Hall for the graduation exercises of his class at grammar school. He remembered exactly how his stiff collar had chafed the left side of his neck and Jackie Mason had been beside him, in a stiff collar, too. Jackie’s hair was slicked smooth with soap but soap could never straighten the wave in it. They sat bemused in the second row behind the fluffy dresses and the big bow hair ribbons of the girls, while Mr. Martin J. Gifford, who was going to run that fall for the state legislature, was addressing the graduating class. His voice came back with the rain.

  “Don’t let anyone tell you, my young friends, that there is any such thing as luck … no, no … The wonderful ladies and gentlemen on your school committee, your teachers … your great mayor, my dear old friend Francis X. Flynn … The greatest country of the world … the United States of America, where all men, I thank God, are free and equal, living in the frame of freedom, life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness … Each of us can look the other in the eye and say, ‘I am as free as you are … I have the same chance as you.’”

  The voice was in the patter of the rain, mingling with other voices, and Charles could hear his father’s voice beside it.

  “The system, Charley. You have to beat the system.”

  The sound of the rain was growing louder. It was tapping out its own refrain on the sodden earth and on the sidewalks and on the roofs of Clyde—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

  It was true—the harder you pursued happiness, the less liberty you had, and perhaps if you pursued it hard enough, it might ruin you. His father had died pursuing it. No one had told the school children that freedom of choice was limited. He could see himself hurrying, always hurrying, and he would be hurrying again tomorrow, back to Nancy and the children and back to taking care of other people’s money. It was not what he had dreamed of, there in Clyde, but if he had to start all over again he would not have acted differently. He would not have stayed at Wright-Sherwin. Inevitably he would have gone to Boston in that pursuit of happiness and he and Jessica Lovell would have pursued it for a little while together, but he would have used the same judgment and he would have made the same mistakes.

  “But there is no such thing as luck,” he heard Mr. Martin J. Gifford saying, “not for American boys or girls,” and he remembered what Sam had said.

  “It was the same old bushwa, kid,” and so it was, but in a certain sense Martin J. Gifford was nearly right. It was not due to luck that Martin J. Gifford had been there to address the boys and girls.

  The drumming of the rain was slackening, changing to the gentle, persistent sound of steady April rain, and again he was acutely conscious of the weather. Weather was a part of living again as it used to be long ago and he remembered how he had once hoped for northeast storms, wild enough and heavy enough to make the sirens blow in the morning, signaling no school. The brooks, already swollen, would spill over parts of their banks by morning, and the tufted grass on the swamp would be covered near the bridge on the road to Walton Spring. The peeper frogs would be singing their thin, plaintive song there in the morning. Jessica had not known what it was when she had heard it on the road that day …

  4

  I Suppose She’ll Wear a Long Dress

  Charles might have reserved a bedroom on the midnight back from Boston. It would not have been out of line and it would have been sensible, because he had not slept well that night in Clyde. The cost would not have exceeded that of a hotel room and no one would have dreamed of questioning the expenditure, but he was always very careful about expense accounts. His training in handling other people’s affairs had made him absurdly meticulous in spending money that was not his own. He had taken a lower berth in what might have been the same grim and antiquated car that he had boarded at Boston when he left Clyde for good in 1930. He checked his suitcase in the morning at the Vanderbilt Avenue checkroom, just as he had checked his suitcase when he had arrived from Clyde that other time. There was the same sleepy emptiness in the Grand Central Station. He was in New York again following a familiar procedural pattern.

  It was a quarter before eight when Charles arrived at the bank, too early for anyone to be there except Martin, the night watchman, and his assistant, Francis. Martin opened the side door carefully and spoke softly, like the sexton of a church.

  “Good morning, Mr. Gray,” Martin said, and his hand was on the emergency button, just where it should have been. “You’re pretty early, aren’t you?”

  “Hello, Martin,” Charles said. “I’m just down from Boston.”

  “How is the weather up there?” Martin asked.

  “Rainy,” Charles said.

  “Is that so?” Martin said. “It rained here yesterday but it was fine last night.”

  “It certainly is quiet here,” Charles said.

  “It’s spooky until you get used to it,” Martin said. “You always keep waiting for an alarm to go off.” There was no reason why Martin should not have been used to it. He had been in charge at night for over fifteen years.

  The banking floor was very still and all the curtains were drawn over the windows so that the light reminded him of a bedroom in the morning. The officers’ desks beside the windows all had their tops closed tight and his own desk and Roger Blakesley’s stood side by side on the edge of the green carpet, impersonal and bare. Charles laid down his brief case and took off his overcoat.

  “Well, it’s nice to be back,” he said. “I feel as though I’ve been away for quite a while.”

  He opened his brief case and pulled out his notes. The yellow scratch pad and the pencils were in his upper right-hand drawer and Miss Marble always saw that his pencils were sharp. He began to write his memorandum to Mr. Burton in clear, very legible handwriting. He could thank Miss Jenks, his teacher in the seventh grade, for that readable script, and once he had tried very hard to please Miss Jenks.

  Another day was starting. First the bookkeepers and the tellers appeared, laughing and talking until their voices were lost behind all the preparatory sounds in the cages. He was conscious that the room around him was filling up but he kept persistently on with his writing. If he could get his memorandum finished before he was interrupted the whole day would run more smoothly and on schedule. He did not realize how late it was until he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Roger Blakesley, with his rimless glasses, still in his overcoat, carrying his brief case. All the desks were occupied and Miss Marble was there. It was almost half past nine.

  “Well, well,” Roger said. “Did you blow in on the midnight?”

  It was exactly the way Roger would have put it, “blowing in.”

  “Hello, Roger,” Charles said. “That’s right. On the midnight.”

  “Well, it’s nice you’re back, fella,” Roger said. “How are things up north?”

  “Fine,” Charles said. “It was a nice trip, Roger.”

  Roger’s grasp on his shoulder relaxed and they smiled at each other, like old friends, aware that they were being watched.

  “Well, everything’s just the same here,” Roger said, “the same old rat race,” and he lowered his voice. “Damn it, I wish they’d get this thing settled, Charley. It’s getting on my nerves.”

  It was the first time either of them had mentioned the Thing to the other.

  “So do I,” Charles said. “It’s on my nerves too, Roger.”

  “Anyway,” Roger said, “it’s nice to see you back, fella.”

  It was no time to look at Roger too sharply. He could only wonder whether anything had happened while he was away to make the Thing get on Roger’s nerves.

  The three-two local for home was a slow train, stopping at nearly every point along the line. Charles could tell where he was by counting the stops, and instead of looking out of the window he read the World Telegram and the Kiplinger Washington Letter and Time magazine. It was a beautiful, bright, sunny afternoon, not a reluctant New England April afternoon but more like mid-May. When he stepped off the train the station platform gave off a warm, tarry smell and the air was cool but languid. The waters of Long Island Sound in the distance had a blue that was almost like the blue of summer. It was suburban New York weather and so warm that he did not need an overcoat.

  When he saw the Buick he knew that Miss Marble must have called Nancy or that Nancy had called Miss Marble at the bank. At any rate, she was there waiting for him and Bill and Evelyn were with her.

  “Why, Nance,” he said, “I didn’t expect to see you all here.”

  This was not exactly true, because he had half expected them, and the best of it was they looked just as they had when he had left them, Nancy in her greenish tweed suit, Evelyn with her braids and her low-heeled shoes and Bill in his gray long trousers and his coat that was too short in the sleeves. It was time to take Bill into town and buy him a new suit. Perhaps they could all go to town and have lunch at Longchamps and see some sort of show, if there was anything
on the New York stage that the children ought to see. It had been a long while since they had been to town together. All sorts of other plans came to mind as he saw them but there was no opportunity to sort out those plans because they were all so glad to see him.

  “I called up Marble,” Nancy said. “She said you were going to take the three-two.”

  “Here,” Bill said, “let me carry that for you,” and he took his suitcase.

  “Hello, Evvie,” he said. “Do you know what I did in Boston? I bought a bottle of that after-shaving lotion.”

  “Evelyn, get in back with Bill,” Nancy said, and then she held his hand for a moment as they walked to the car. “I’ve got to pick up my dress at the cleaners’. That’s all we have to do.”

  “What dress?” he asked.

  “The almost new one,” she said, “with flowers on it, for tonight.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Tonight,” but there was a long while until evening. He felt pleasantly tired and he could not be worried about that dinner at the Burtons’.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “I feel as if I’d been across the ocean. The climate’s different here.”

  “I know,” Nancy said. “It must be very difficult to pick up all the threads, but don’t try too hard … just give yourself time.”

  “It isn’t so hard,” he said, and he laughed.

  “It’s nice to know it,” Nancy said. “The first thing for you to do is to get to know the children all over again. I can come later and more gradually. We all may be a little shy with each other at first but we can all adjust together.”

  The grass was beginning to turn green and forsythia was out already and there were tomato plants and forget-me-nots in baskets in front of the hardware store.

  “Mother,” Evelyn said from the back seat, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Daddy’s only been away two days.”

  “Oh, put on another record,” Bill told her. “Don’t you know when Mother’s being funny?”