Young Mr. Keefe

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “No, it was something I did by myself.”

  “Oh, I think that’s wonderful, Jimmy!”

  “That’s why,” he said, “that’s why—I thought possibly we might try again.”

  She looked away again. “Look,” she said, “we’re not children any more. There’s no point in fooling ourselves, is there? You can’t just ask me to forget—just like that. There were other things—like the night Daddy died—and you were nowhere to be found—and—”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “I’m sorry I mentioned it.” He turned again to the baby. “Diddle-diddle dumpling, my son John,” he said cheerfully, “went to bed with his breeches on—how does the rest of it go?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said absently.

  “And what was the story about the princess who woke up and found that the frog had turned into a prince?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m just trying to remember some of the stories I used to be told when I was little.”

  “I’m afraid he won’t take much of it in at this stage,” she said.

  “Well, I’m really just trying to make conversation,” he said, “just trying to prolong the visit.” He held the baby’s head between his two hands. “I’m glad I met you,” he said. “I’m glad I came. Do you realize it took a lot of courage to come down here? Did you know that?”

  “A lot of what?” she asked.

  “Courage.”

  “It’s almost time for his supper,” Helen said. “You’d better give him back to me now.” He rose and handed her the baby.

  “Helen—” he began.

  “Yes?”

  “If you’re going to feed him, could I watch?”

  “It’s not very interesting to watch him have his dinner, actually,” she said. “He spits the formula up sometimes, and—”

  “I don’t want to interfere.”

  “Perhaps some other time. I think he’s had enough excitement for one day.”

  “Yes, yes. I agree. Perhaps the next time I come.”

  “What? When will that be?”

  “Next Sunday?”

  “Well—I think—no. I don’t think so. Not next Sunday, I really don’t think so. I think you’d better work through Mr. Gurney, Jimmy.”

  “There once was a fellow named Gurney, who decided to be an attorney,” he said.

  Her eyes flashed at him. “I don’t think it’s very funny,” she said. “He’s getting a divorce for me.”

  “Do you want a divorce?”

  “That’s a silly question!”

  “I don’t want one either,” he said.

  “Please, Jimmy. It’s time for you to go.”

  As they talked, she was slowly and surely walking him towards the door. In the hall, he stopped.

  “Do you mean I can’t come down again?”

  “No, I don’t mean that. But not next Sunday. Jimmy, this was a bit of a surprise—your coming to-day. Give me a chance to think about it. We’ll work something out, some arrangement. But don’t rush me.”

  “Let me hold him again,” he said. She handed him the small, almost weightless bundle again. “Hey,” he said, looking down at the small face, “you and I will spend a lot of time together when we’re older, you know that? We’ll take trips and go fishing together. You’ll spend at least half your life with me—because you’re half mine, anyway.”

  “Don’t hold him so close,” she said. “Here, let me have him—”

  Suddenly, as she lifted the baby from his arms to hers, the baby began to cry a thin, despairing wail. And Jimmy held on to him almost roughly. For a brief moment, they swayed together, the baby between them. She held the baby then, and he put his hands on her elbows and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Do you believe in change?” he asked her. “Do you believe that people have the ability to change? That’s what it all hangs on, doesn’t it—whether you believe or not that in the last few months I might have changed?”

  She didn’t resist him or try to pull away, but lowered her eyes and shook her head sadly. “I don’t believe in fairy tales,” she said. “Frogs turning into princes—”

  “I’m talking about the future, too,” he said urgently. “I don’t give a damn about the past. But this is the future, right here—”

  She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “I want to believe,” she whispered.

  “Then say it. Say, ‘I believe!’”

  “Oh, I can’t, I can’t. I know I can’t.” She drew away from him and he let his hands fall to his sides.

  “You know it wasn’t really Billy I came to see,” he said. “You know why I came. You know it was you—”

  At the door at the end of the hall, Mrs. Warren appeared. “Helen,” she said pleasantly, “the Kerrs are here, dear. Won’t you bring the baby in to show them?”

  “Yes, Mother.” She held out her hand. “Well, good-bye, Jimmy,” she said.

  “Will you let me know when I can come again?”

  “Yes—or rather Mr. Gurney will, I think. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.” He took her hand briefly. Then he turned quickly, opened the front door, and let himself out.

  After he had left, Helen stood for a moment in the hall.

  “Coming, dear?” her mother asked. And when she said nothing, Mrs. Warren said, “Helen? Helen?”

  Helen turned sharply to her. “Why do there have to be so many others!” she said. “Why are there always people who have to intrude, who have their own ideas and keep telling me what to do! Did you ever think that this was a problem for the two of us—the three of us! Did you?” Her voice broke. “I mean, we do have things to say to each other, and we do have to be alone, don’t we? Don’t we?” Holding the baby in her arms, she ran sobbing up the stairs.

  A week later the weather suddenly broke, and, as occasionally happens, California became balmy and tropical again for several days. The sun shone, the thermometer climbed to eighty, and Californians flocked to the beaches. The California Bureau of Commerce took photographs and sent long, jubilant Press notices back to Eastern cities that were at that moment shivering under sleet and snow. Convertible tops were lowered. Swimming-pools that had been allowed to stagnate were hastily refiltered. Outdoor living began again.

  Jimmy and Mike lay on the beach at Half Moon Bay, soaking up the sun. The tide was pounding in. They debated whether or not to go in the water.

  “It’s cold as hell,” Jimmy said.

  “Look, I’ve got to do it,” Mike said. “I want to write my folks back in New Hampshire that I went in the ocean in November.”

  They walked to the water’s edge. The waves were crashing in heavily now, sweeping the sand in front of them, tossing kelp and bits of rockweed into the air. “We’d better stick close to shore,” Jimmy said. “There’ll be a terrific undertow.”

  Then they dived into the surf. For a while they splashed about, shouting and laughing. The water was cold, but the air was warmed by the western breeze. After a while, wet and salty, they came out of the water and flopped on the hot sand again.

  Jimmy lighted a cigarette. The smoke, in the salt air, tasted clear and sharp. “Well,” he said, “I went to see her.”

  “Who? Helen?” Mike asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought probably you had,” Mike said.

  Jimmy roared. “What do you mean, you thought I had?”

  “I just figured you had. I figured you were close to it, anyway.”

  “My God,” he laughed, “are you always clairvoyant? Do you have a crystal ball or something?”

  “No, but it’s logical, that’s all.”

  “All right,” Jimmy said, “then tell me how it went. How did I do?”

  “How did you do what?”

  “How did I get along with Helen?”

  Mike thought about this. He lay on his stomach with his arms out, scooping up handfuls of white sand and letting them trickle through his fingers. He frowned. “Well,” he said at last,
“I’d say it went pretty well. Considering. I mean you’ve got to give these things time. You can’t expect her to come flying into your ever-loving arms the minute she sees your face. She’s been through a lot, too, don’t forget. She has to think things out, too, the way you did. By herself. I think you’ve made a good start. The girl was only a baby when you married her and so were you. You were both all mixed up. Give it time. Don’t be impatient. That was the mistake you made before.”

  Jimmy said nothing. He lay there, looking straight ahead, up the beach, at the great grey cliffs that rimmed the coastline as far as the eye could see.

  22

  A week later, the weather changed and winter returned. It returned with a cold, damp wind that blew steadily from the north and ruffled whitecaps in the bay. Claire got back to San Francisco on Monday—the Monday before Thanksgiving—and, in the apartment on Russian Hill, she was immediately depressed. The apartment was immaculate and cool; she had had it cleaned while she was away. But for some reason the cleanness and orderliness of it, with the low, handsome Chinese tables waxed and polished, the great glass walls freshly washed, made her feel out of place and rather purposeless. She had absolutely nothing to do, that was part of it. Ordinarily, there was some small housekeeping chore that could occupy her, but now, wandering from room to room, everything was perfect. She had left Squaw Valley out of boredom, too. The ski-ing lessons had turned out badly. She had begun, in the evenings, to drink much more than she was used to. She had sat, night after night, in the little cheerful, noisy bar and got herself pleasantly tight. Then, in the mornings, she had lain in bed for hours, wrestling with giant hangovers, hating herself, improvising elaborate and futile ways to relieve her tedium.

  And now she was back. She was all alone. Blazer would not be back from Honolulu for another week. Norden-Clark had considerately planned Blazer’s sales trip so that he would be away over Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving was a holiday that had always had a great sentimental meaning to her. She thought, miserably, of spending it alone, in this chilly, unfriendly city. She thought, nostalgically, of Thanksgivings at Mars Hill. They were always huge, warm, bustling family affairs that began in midmorning with cousins and uncles and aunts arriving from all over the East, their long black cars filling the driveway and the circle in front of the huge front door. She remembered that her mother always ordered at least two extra turkeys for the chauffeurs, who were served a banquet identical with the one that the family was served, in the servants’ dining-room. She remembered the huge, long table set up in the family dining-room—set up sometimes for as many as forty—with the long, white banquet cloth, the silver place plates, and, in the centre, her mother’s traditional Thanksgiving centrepiece—a group of three stuffed pheasants with brightly coloured feathers and long, drooping tails in a lifelike arrangement of wheat sheaves, Indian corn, and artificial fruit. She remembered the chatter of servants in the kitchen—extra girls, brought in for the day, and her mother, in a long dinner dress, hurrying about, arranging last-minute details, greeting relatives, lighting the tapers that rose from the four five-branched silver candelabra. Dinner began with cocktails in the drawing-room, children curtsying and bowing to their elders as they helped pass bowls of nuts and trays of hors d’œuvres. Then it proceeded into the dining-room for course after course of dinner, with the magnificent turkeys, the wines. The mood was cheerful, warm, and intimate. They were all family. They were Denisons and Walthours and Merrimans and Sloats on her father’s side, and Chases, Hockings, and Van Camps on her mother’s. Daughters, home from college, brought their fiancés—smooth-faced, cheerful, polite young men from Yale, Dartmouth, and Williams. After dinner the party spread out, lazily and informally, throughout the house at bridge tables, chess tables, billiard tables. There were always an energetic few for ping-pong. The sky darkened, lamps were lit. Soon the whole house glowed with light. Then, some time during the course of the early evening, her father would propose a Thanksgiving toast. Everyone stood quietly to hear him utter it, and the servants were brought in from the kitchen and were given drinks, to join in it. It was a solemn moment, and Junius Denison raised his glass. The toast was always the same: “We live in an anxious, troubled world,” he said. “A world that, at times, seems to have lost its standards. Standards of dignity and humanity. But at the very centre of the world stands an institution—the family. If this institution is lost, then the world is lost. But as long as there are families who stand together and work together in kinship and in love, there is hope for mankind. So I drink to the family!”

  The toast was drunk in silence, and, in the silence following it, Georgette Chase Denison moved towards her husband and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  Claire knew it would be the same this year. It would be the same, except she would not be there. She had considered, actually, flying home for Thanksgiving. In fact, she would do it without any hesitation at all if it weren’t for the fact that she had spent rather mountainous sums of money at Squaw Valley. She thought guiltily of the balance in her cheque-book. Blazer would be annoyed, she knew. For Blazer cherished the illusion—even though it was nothing more than an illusion—that the two of them lived within the limits of his salary. Or at least practically within them. Whenever he was reminded of the number of dividend cheques which Claire endorsed and deposited in his account (Claire collected cheques as they came and placed them in the bottom of her jewel-case in her bureau drawer, and withdrew them when they were needed), Blazer was apt to become angry. So there was nothing for her to do but spend a lonely, quiet Thanksgiving Day in the apartment.

  Claire now went to the window and looked out. There was the view, sifting through fog. Alcatraz, Angel Island, Belvedere, Tiburon … Mount Tamalpais and the Golden Gate. She stood there, a slim figure in tight black toreador pants and black sweater, her yellow hair falling over her shoulders. She crossed slowly behind the sofa to the side of the room which hung, cantilevered out over the story below, towards the east. Standing there, she had the sensation of falling through airless space slowly, the way one falls in a dream. She felt dizzy and ill. She pulled the heavy curtains closed.

  She went back and stretched out on the white sofa, stomach down, with her feet, in black ballet slippers, hanging over the edge. She put her cheek on the white nubby upholstery and lay there for quite a while. She thought about Jimmy. Jimmy was a bright, shimmering spot of hope. It all seemed so simple, and yet, in a way, it all seemed terribly complicated. It should be simple. Jimmy loved her, she was sure of that. Anyway, he would love her as soon as he got over feeling guilty about it. Jimmy’s wife had left him. They had been separated now for over six months. Obviously, she was never going back to him. Obviously, she would get a divorce. And yet everything seemed to have come to a curious standstill. That night in Squaw Valley had been suddenly nothing—nothing. He had appeared, then disappeared. Well, she thought sadly, a lot of that had been her fault. In fact, most of it. If she wanted Jimmy, she had hardly played her cards well. She had been impulsive, demanding, hasty. She had tried to back him into a corner. After all, Jimmy was a man. No man liked to be pushed around by a woman, she should have known that. She had literally thrown herself at him. Tears of shame came to her eyes. There was no other way to describe it. She had thrown herself at him.

  And yet, she felt, he did need help. He needed to be manœuvred, helped to make up his mind. Yes, but manœuvred with a little subtlety! She had practically lain on the bed and pulled up her dress. What every woman knows, Claire thought, I don’t seem to know. Or practise, anyway. What would happen, she wondered suddenly, if she were to go again to see Helen? She knew what to expect now. She wouldn’t be frightened as she had been before. She could go to Helen, meet her on her own ground, and have it out with her, woman to woman. “I am the other woman,” she would say pleasantly. “Jimmy and I have grown fond of each other in recent months, and my own marriage, unfortunately, seems to be disintegrating due to my husband’s—” No, she wouldn’t go into that. �
��My own marriage seems to be disintegrating.” Period. “And I would like—I would like to ask you exactly how soon you plan to release Jimmy.” That would be simple enough. Blunt and frank, not possibly misunderstood. There was certainly no reason why she couldn’t do that. If she wanted Jimmy. And now she asked herself, did she want Jimmy? Analysing herself in a cold, impartial light, Claire realized that she had always yearned for unobtainable objects, simply because they were unobtainable. It was a game. She remembered it from college. See that young man over there with Kathy Squiers? Watch me take him away from her. And later, in what she called her Bohemian period, living in the Village, wanting to be an artist, had that been part of the game, too? She had believed it to be sincere at the time.

  Oh, yes, she thought, it must have been sincere! It was the only thing I ever tried to do! More tears came. Am I a nice girl? she wondered. And then, despairingly, she thought: It isn’t my marriage that’s disintegrating, it’s me.

  She pushed herself up on her elbows, and, urgently, for something to do, she seized her yellow hair with her hands. She pulled half the hair to one side, divided it into three strands, and began, rapidly, to braid it. When she finished one braid, she held the loose end with her teeth as she began to braid the other side. It’s the weather, she thought. It’s California. It’s living in this dreadful fish-bowl room that’s putting me into these morbid emotional states. I’m being subjected to a peculiar Oriental torture, known as view torture. It was like living in a room completely surrounded by mirrors, only this was worse. With mirrors, at least you could look at yourself. With clear glass, the whole world was looking at you. She finished the second braid, and, holding both ends in her teeth, she jumped up and went into the bedroom to look for elastic bands. In the mirror, she caught a glimpse of her reflection—two thick yellow braids clenched in her teeth. She grimaced at her image. There, she thought. Do I look like all the other damn’ fools from Smith now? Do I?