by Edwin West
Paul was at the workbench, surrounded by parts of the phonograph. He looked over at her as she came down the stairs and grinned. “Who was that on the phone, chicken?” he asked her.
“Uncle James,” she answered.
The grin faded. He put down the screwdriver with which he’d been dismantling the phonograph. “What the hell did he want this time?”
“He says we’re supposed to meet him tomorrow at Jake McDougall’s office. You know, the lawyer Dad saw that time when the man slipped on the ice out front and wanted to sue.”
“The son-of -a-bitch!” cried Paul. He threw the screwdriver down on the workbench angrily. “He isn’t going to get away with it, goddamn it! This is our house, Angie and that son-of-a-bitch isn’t going to get away with it. I promise you.”
“Maybe we’d better go see what he wants,” said Angie gently. She knew how much the house meant to her brother--more, perhaps, than it did to her. It symbolized home for both of them. In fact, it was the only symbol for home that either of them had, but she had never been away from it and he had. It made, she supposed, a difference in the intensity of your feelings.
“Why?” Paul demanded. “Why should we have anything at all to do with the son-of-a-bitch?”
“We might just as well get it over with,” Angie told him. She crossed to him and laid a hand gently on his arm, smiling at him. “Don’t be so upset, Paul,” she said. “You told me yourself we have the papers for the house. Mr. McDougall will tell him that and then he’ll leave us alone.”
“I suppose so,” said Paul. He shook his head. “Why the hell did he have to come bothering us, that’s what I want to know?”
***
After supper that evening, they played cards together awhile--Russian Bank, Casino and Cribbage. There was nothing they wanted to see on television before nine-thirty.
A little after eight there was the sound of someone on the front porch and then the doorbell rang. Angie and Paul were in the kitchen, sitting at the table. Paul looked up, sudden irritation crossing his face. “If that’s Uncle James again--”
“I don’t think so, Paul,” said Angie, getting to. her feet. “Not if he said he’d see us tomorrow at the lawyer’s office.”
“Let me get it,” said Paul. “You wait here.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Angie and she followed him through the house to the front door. In case it was Uncle James, she wanted to be present to see to it that they didn’t quarrel again.
But it wasn’t. It was Bob, grinning sheepishly at them.
Angie felt a sudden, cold, heavy lump in her stomach, and she felt dizzy. It was more than two weeks since the day of the funeral, when she had let Paul make the final decision for her. She had successfully put all thought of that decision out of her head ever since.
It wasn’t that she had thought: Now I’m finished with Bob.
Actually, she had thought: 1 don’t have to see Bob for a while.
Without thinking about it, this had been her assumption. Bob was still there, in case she should ever feel the need to return to him. But he had been silenced, taken out of view, so that he could no longer press her for a decision about their future.
And here he was back again, suddenly, without warning, smiling sheepishly at them and saying, more to Paul than to her, “Is it okay if I come in for a minute?”
And Paul, looking awkward and uncomfortable, was backing to the side and saying, “Sure. Come on in.”
Bob stepped hesitantly across the threshold, the sheepish smile still on his face and said, “Hi, Angie. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, surprised to hear that her voice was little more than a whisper.
Paul closed the door and said, “Come on into the living room.”
Once they were all in the living room, seated, there was an awkward silence for a few seconds. Then all three of them started talking at once. Then they were all silent again, confused. Angie and Bob looked at Paul, waiting for him to speak first.
Paul cleared his throat. “I wanted to say,” he told Bob, “that I was sorry about us fighting the last time you were here. I--I was kind of upset and--”
“Gee, Paul, it isn’t up to you to be sorry,” protested Bob. “I came in here like a damned fool. I just completely forgot all about, uh--”
“I was mad at the world in general that day, I guess,” said Paul. “I took it out on you and there wasn’t any reason for it. I’ve been thinking about that and I’ve been wanting to tell you that I was sorry.”
Bob laughed a little, still sheepishly. “Well,” he said. “Here we are, apologizing to each other. Anyway, I’m glad you aren’t still mad at me. Are you, Angie?”
“No,” she said immediately, almost desperately. “No, of course not.” And she wondered why her whole relationship with Bob had to boil down to this one thing: he asked questions and she tried to answer them, or tried to avoid them, or tried to live through and beyond them.
He’s going to ask me again tonight, she thought with sudden certainty. It had been two-and-a-half weeks since Mom and Dad had been killed. Tonight, he would ask her again to marry him, she was sure of it. That was the only reason he’d come over.
And his arguments would be stronger than ever. Her parents were dead now--the only family she’d ever known was dead. Now was the time for her to start a family of her own.
With Bob.
Once again it was immediate. Once again it was the decision that had to be made--now.
And still she didn’t know. A lifetime with Bob? A lifetime without Bob? It was one or the other and which did she want?
She didn’t know.
Paul made as though to get to his feet, saying, “Well, I’ll leave you two--”
“No!” She said it too quickly, with too much force, and tried to make it less strong at once, adding, “You don’t have to go anywhere, Paul. Gee whiz, Bob came over to see you, too. And you wanted to see that show on television tonight.”
He looked at her, and she prayed he would be able to see the urgency in her expression, but that Bob wouldn’t.
He hesitated, glancing at an unhappy-looking Bob, looked back at Angie, and finally settled into the chair again. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll stick around a little while.” He turned back to Bob again. “How are things going with you since you got out of school, Bob?” he asked.
Bob shrugged, doing a good job at hiding his disappointment.
“Pretty good,” he said. “I’ve just been loafing, pretty much. I’ll be going into the Army in a month or two, so right now I’m just kind of waiting around. You know how it is.”
“Sure,” said Paul, and he started talking about how things had been with him just before he’d enlisted in the Air Force. Then the two of them talked about basic training and the military life in general.
Angie joined the conversation every once in a while, but most of the time she was silent. There was only one sentence Bob had said that really stayed with her: “I’ll be going into the Army in a month or two.”
And she didn’t even know if that made her glad or not.
***
Later that night, in bed, Angie wondered what would eventually happen between herself and Bob. He’d been annoyed when he left tonight and it was understandable. She was ashamed of herself for the way she was treating him, but she just couldn’t help it.
He had left early, before eleven o’clock. By that time the first twinges of guilt and shame had already touched her, so she had walked him to the door. When they were in the front alcove they were out of sight of the living room, and she had made no objection when Bob had taken her in his arms and kissed her.
Then he had said, “Angie, I want to talk to you, you know that. I want to talk to you soon. And I think you know what I want to say to you.”
“Yes. But, please, not now, Bob. I’m sorry, Bob, I really am. I know this is an awful way to treat you, but I just need time. I can’t make any decision now.”
“All right,�
� he had said, and his arms had dropped away from her. “I’ll give you time,” he said. “But not too much. I’m not going to stay on the string forever.”
“I’m sorry, Bob,” she had whispered. “I wish I didn’t have to be this way.”
“Okay,” he had said and, without another word, had pushed open the front door and left the house.
She had gone back to the living room and sat a while longer with Paul, watching television, trying not to think about the way she was treating Bob.
But now she was in bed, in the darkness, Paul sleeping a room away. She couldn’t avoid the issue any longer.
She could avoid it with Bob--he was patient with her, God knew, too patient--but she couldn’t avoid it with herself.
And she had made the decision once. Or at least she had acted, which was the same thing. The night her parents had died. She had been ready then to sleep with Bob, and that would inevitably have meant that she would marry Bob and spend the rest of her life with him.
But her parents were dead. It hadn’t happened. Instead they had come back to a house of chaos.
Was that an omen?
No. It wasn’t an omen. God wasn’t going to go out of His way to kill two people purely and simply to give a stupid little girl like herself an omen.
She couldn’t try to find the decision, ready-made, in signs and symbols; She had to work it out for herself. She had been ready to sleep with him, that one time. Was she ready to sleep with him now? Was she ready to sleep with anybody now?
She didn’t know. She was afraid, of course--afraid of the act itself and of what it meant. And she was curious, more than curious. Actually, she was fascinated by the idea of sleeping with a man. But she didn’t know whether or not she was ready now, as she had thought herself ready that night with Bob.
She tried to imagine that Bob was in the bed with her. She thought back to the little she knew of the sex act, Tried to visualize herself and Bob doing it. His body atop hers, her legs adjusting themselves to receive him, His face looming over hers and--
She shut her eyes in sudden terror, turning spasmodically onto her side, and lay shaking with awe and fear beneath the single sheet.
For in her imagining, and quite without plan or warning, the face that had seemed to be above her in her make-believe had not been Bob’s face.
It had been Paul’s. It had been the face of her brother, Paul!
SIX
Paul didn’t want to go to the lawyer’s office. He didn’t want to have anything to do with lawyers or Uncle James or anybody else. All he wanted was to be left alone, to live quietly in hiss home and be left completely alone.
But it wasn’t to be that way. He had to go down to see Uncle James and this Goddamn lawyer, Jake McDougall, and maybe now he could get the whole thing taken care of once and for all.
In one way, he was sorry Angie was coming with him, and in another way, he was glad of it. He was sorry that Angie had to be exposed to this sort of thing, but at the same time he knew that she was a calming influence on him, that she would keep him from flying off the handle and maybe doing something stupid that would only hurt his chances of keeping the house.
But what did he mean, chances? It was his house, wasn’t it? He had a Manila envelope containing the papers--the property deed, various papers from the city assessment office and other papers--which proved conclusively that the house had belonged to his father. And he was his father’s heir, so the house went to him. There just wasn’t any question of it.
Then why did he feel so nervous?
Because, Goddamn him, Uncle James had something up his sleeve. Him and the lawyer. Paul knew it, he was sure of it. Uncle James was older than he was, and he had more money, and he knew a lot more about skating the edge of the law. If there was any sort of loophole he could use to get the house away from Paul, he’d be the one to know about it. He or the lawyer.
He remembered the lawyer, vaguely, from the time Dad had been sued by that man who’d slipped on the icy sidewalk. And he also remembered that it had been Uncle James who had recommended him, saying, “You see Jake McDougall. He can fix anything up for you.”
And he’d done it, too. Dad hadn’t had to pay.
Uncle James was probably pretty sure that Jake McDougall could fix this up, too. And for all Paul knew, he was right.
He didn’t want to go and that was the truth. He almost turned back half a dozen times. But he knew Angie was right. The best thing to do was go and see the lawyer and settle the matter.
But they weren’t going to get the house. No matter what, he was sure of that much. Uncle James was not ever going to get his hands on the house.
Jake McDougall had his office in a building on Thornbridge’s one downtown street. It was the Merchants & Manufacturers Trust Co. Building, with the bank on the two-story-high main floor, and offices on the eight floors above. Jake McDougall’s office was on the seventh floor.
McDougall was unusual for a lawyer in a suburb like Tbornbridge--he wasn’t part of a firm, he was simply the one-man operation, plus secretary, in a three-room suite of offices. Paul seemed to vaguely remember hearing that Jake McDougall had something to do with local politics, but he wasn’t sure what.
The office itself was impressive. First there was the secretary’s reception room, very modernistic in pastel green, with a leather sofa and a coffee table and a lot of old Time magazines. And, of course, the secretary’s gray metal desk.
The secretary herself was a woman in her middle thirties, haughty and austere, who looked at Paul and Angie precisely as though she thought they must surely have come into the wrong office, because they could certainly have no business with Mr. McDougall. Paul bristled at the unspoken condemnation, and when he spoke his voice was harsher than he had intended. “Mr. McDougall, please,” he said. “My name’s Paul Dane. I have an appointment.”
Her expression didn’t change, and Paul knew it had to be his imagination that she didn’t believe his statement about having an appointment. But imagination or not, he disliked this woman. His mood--grim and taciturn when he’d left the house--was getting steadily more sour as time went on.
The secretary picked up her phone and dialed one numeral, then said softly, “Mr. Paul Dane, sir.” She listened, returned the receiver to its cradle and said to Paul, “Go right on in. Through there.”
“Thank you,” said Paul, failing to keep the harshness out of his voice. He took Angie’s arm and they crossed the deep-piled carpet and went into Jake McDougall’s office.
It looked very plush and expensive. The right wall was lined, side to side and top to bottom, with book shelves, all of them filled with old- and dull-looking law books. The left wall was spotted with signed photographs of politicians and veteran organization functionaries and other minor celebrities. The wall opposite the door was dominated by a large window overlooking Capital Street. The window was flanked by flags in holders--an American flag on the right, and a flag Paul didn’t recognize--mainly dark blue--on the left.
Mr. McDougall’s desk was so modern it practically had jets on it. It was kidney-shaped and metal, with a formica top. The sides were bluish gray, the top an off-white. There were a few papers on the desk top, plus a white telephone and a large pen-pencil-and-ink-stand set and framed photographs of Mr. McDougall’s family.
In addition to the desk, the furniture included three blue leather armchairs, a table against the left wall, a filing cabinet and an empty coat rack near the door.
Mr. McDougall was sitting behind his desk. More than anything else in the world, he looked like a political cartoon senator. He wore a black suit coat of an old-fashioned cut, over a black vest and a white shirt and a thin black tie. He was short and stocky, with a wild mane of white hair and a round, lined, humorous face, belied by eyes that were small, shrewd and unsmiling. He wore a thick gold ring on the third finger of his left hand, a ring from some fraternal organization on the third finger of his right hand, a huge wrist watch on the left wrist, and larg
e round, gold cuff links that peeped out from his coat sleeves.