Young Mr. Keefe

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  Claire leaned forward. “Go to Reno. Go to Reno, where you can get it done quickly. Don’t go through this California process—waiting a year for the decree to become final. California is the worst place in the world to get a divorce, you must know that. And if it’s a question of money—”

  “How much are you offering me?” Helen asked, her face amused.

  “I don’t mean that,” Claire said hastily. “But I’m sure Jimmy would be willing to take care of all your expenses. It would be worth it to him. I’m sure you know his circumstances. His people are—well, quite wealthy.”

  “Yes, I know,” Helen said softly. “But it’s not money. It’s—”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Nothing, I guess.” She stood up.

  “Then will you do it?”

  “I wish I could talk to him—”

  “There’s no need for that. Jimmy and I have talked about everything. Everything.” And she added, evenly, “Everything that two people in love can talk about.”

  Helen put out her cigarette. She raised her empty hand, her wrist trembling, and touched her hair. “All right,” she said finally. “If that’s what Jimmy wants, I’ll do it.”

  Claire jumped up. “Will you?”

  “Yes, yes …”

  “Oh, he’ll be so happy when I tell him!”

  “Yes. Please tell him it’s all right. I’ll do it.”

  “I knew you’d be a sport about it!” Claire said. “Thank you! This means so much to us!”

  “Don’t mention it,” Helen said wearily. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Of course,” Claire said. “And I hope you don’t think I’m a dreadful bitch. I like you, really. I think you’re a very sympathetic person. I can’t help liking you. If I sounded hard-boiled in some of the things I said, it’s because—well, I guess back East we’re a little more sophisticated about things like this. And I don’t mean that unkindly. But we are. Heavens, marriages break up all the time—nobody thinks a thing about them!” She laughed.

  “Good-bye,” Helen said.

  Claire started towards the door. “I knew you’d be understanding,” she said. “I knew you were that kind of person. I knew you’d see that this was the only right thing—for all of us.”

  At the door, she turned. “I don’t know whether we shall ever see each other again,” she said. “I know Jimmy wants to keep completely out of the picture where the baby is concerned—”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes,” Claire said confidently. “He told me he never plans to see it. Not that he doesn’t care about it, but he just doesn’t want to get involved with it. He—”

  For the second time that afternoon, Helen looked at the other girl with surprise, at the incredibly polished, animated face. “He never plans to see it?” Helen asked.

  “Never.” Claire chatted on. “Oh, Jimmy will be so pleased when I tell him this news. He’s been so miserable through all of this. Poor guy—poor sweet guy! If you’d seen him during these last few months as I have, you’d have seen a completely different person. Gloomy, refusing to take a drink or have a good time, flying off the handle, taking punches at people! Oh, he’ll be so happy to have this over with!”

  “Taking punches at people?” Helen said.

  “Yes, but it was nothing—it didn’t mean a thing. Just an indication of the state he’s been in—”

  “It doesn’t sound like Jimmy.”

  “Well,” Claire said, “when a guy’s going through a crisis, you can’t blame him for flying off the handle, can you? Poor guy. For no reason at all—they were talking together, Jimmy and this friend of ours, and all of a sudden Jimmy went at him. Tooth and nail! Goodness, we thought he was going to kill poor Stan—”

  “Stan?”

  “Stan Erickson. But it was just an emotional thing, I’m sure—”

  “Did he—?” Helen stopped. She moved across the room, away from Claire. “What a curious thing!” she said finally.

  “Of course I think I know why he did it,” Claire said.

  “Why?”

  “I think Stan must have said something—about me—that Jimmy didn’t like. And Jimmy has such a crazy sense of honour! He probably thought he was defending me. At least,” she said, “I like to think that’s what it was!”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” Claire said, “I must be going. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” Helen said softly.

  “And thank you!” Claire lifted her hand and blew a kiss. “You’re an angel!” She opened the door and let herself out.

  Helen stood in the centre of the room for a moment. Then she went to the front window and watched as the blonde girl ran down the front steps to the sidewalk, then down the sidewalk to the red car. The girl opened the car door and slid gracefully into the front seat, behind the wheel. The motor started with a roar and the car pulled away from the curb. Helen watched as the car went down Magnolia Street, then turned at Lime and disappeared, beyond the park. She smiled; then she too raised her hand and blew a kiss to Claire. Then, all at once, she had so many things to do it was difficult to decide where to begin. Where had she put Jimmy’s letter? she wondered. It had been so brief, so terribly brief! First, she wanted to read it again.

  In San Francisco, the wind blew.

  On the street, it scattered the dry leaves of magnolias and lemon trees. In the apartment on Russian Hill, it buffeted the huge, heavy panes of glass; the windows creaked in their frames. A portion of the glass room jutted out over the story below, and from this corner of the living-room, standing, looking out and down, one had the feeling of being surrounded by nothing at all; it was like being imprisoned within a huge glass paperweight far above the bright fairy-tale city. The effect was peculiarly insular; only the frail cobwebby strands of the two bridges, stretching to the east and north, created any feeling of escape. From here, the drop was easily seventy feet to the ground, which fell away below. Standing there, Blazer Gates contemplated it.

  Then he went into the bedroom, placed his drink on the dresser top, and opened the drawer. He looked at the object inside; he had gone, like this, to the drawer and looked inside several times that afternoon. This time he picked the object up, curling his fingers around the hard steel butt, and, with his other hand, stroked the slim, cold barrel. Tentatively, he aimed through the doorway at the glass wall opposite. In his mind, he heard the great, thundering fall of shattered glass. He envisioned it all around him, stabbing him. He was a matador; in the arena, the bull came towards him, head lowered. He felt the dark upward thrust …

  Trembling, he replaced the gun in the drawer among the handkerchiefs and closed the drawer.

  It was a foolish wish. He would never do it. It was an untrue wish. He would never have the courage. The kind of destruction that he dreamed of for himself was always impossible in fact. Helplessly, he saw this now. He saw, stretching bleakly before him, all the rest of the years of his life. He went to the bed and threw himself across it. He lay there. Then he began to sob, lifting himself on his elbows and beating the bedclothes with his fists.

  26

  The wind was still blowing on Sunday afternoon. Jimmy and Mike stood on the sidewalk outside Mike’s apartment building, feet apart, braced against the gale. It was almost five o’clock; the day was darkening.

  “You sure you don’t want me to help you move out?” Jimmy asked.

  “No,” Mike said, “I’m just going to throw all my stuff in the back of the station wagon next Saturday morning and head back over the Great Divide. Just the way I came …”

  “Well,” Jimmy said, “don’t forget to drop me a line when you get assigned somewhere. Who knows—you might be shipped back to California.”

  “That would be just like the Army, wouldn’t it?” Mike said.

  “Well, we’ll get together again some time,” Jimmy said.

  “Sure, and if you ever get back East—”

  “I’ll look you up.”

  “You mi
ght get back for a vacation or something.”

  “Well, drop me a line. And good luck—”

  “Good luck to you, too,” Mike said. “Let me know how things work out.”

  “Well, so long. It’s been great knowing you. Thanks for everything.”

  “So long,” Mike said. “Thanks for bridge games.”

  “It’s a good thing we never played for money—”

  “Too bad you can’t play bridge by mail.”

  “So long, Mike.”

  They shook hands. “So long, trooper.” Mike saluted.

  “You’re getting better at that,” Jimmy laughed. He opened the door to his car. “Christ, what a wind!” he said. “Give my love to New England.”

  “I will … so long.”

  Jimmy climbed into the car and started the engine. At the foot of the block, he made a wide U-turn and started back up the hill. From the sidewalk, Mike gave a jaunty wave. Jimmy waved back. He blew the horn three short blasts.

  Driving across the Bay Bridge, the wind tugged at the car. The convertible top slapped noisily against the metal frame. It was quite dark now. Thousands of tiny lights pierced the blackness from the Berkeley shore. The wind continued as Jimmy drove along the East Bay, then up into the hills. About an hour later, as he entered the valley, the wind turned to driving rain. In patches, he encountered low-lying tule fog—fog that formed in the tollin rushes along the river-beds and spread out across the valley floor. In each of these sudden swirling mists he had to reduce his speed almost to a crawl. It was after eight o’clock when he reached Sacramento. Crossing the bridge and entering the city, he discovered that over the week-end the streets had been strung with Christmas decorations, gaudy festoons that glowed red, green, and yellow. And all at once he was achingly lonely. It was not the sinking, despairing loneliness of a few months ago, after Helen had left, but a different kind. It was the loneliness of being in a strange city at Christmas time, with no place to go. Oddly enough, he had not thought much about Christmas until now. He thought, wryly, of sitting alone at his kitchen table eating Christmas dinner.

  Driving under the bright street decorations, he thought suddenly of Claire Denison’s debut party at Mars Hill, coloured lights strung from trees in the garden, balloons floating in the lighted swimming-pool at the foot of the terraced lawn. Claire, standing in the garden, in a long white dress, white gloves, a bouquet of pink rosebuds in one hand, the other outstretched, being presented to the guests. At her throat, he remembered, hung a diamond lavaliere. Give my love to New England. He thought of home, of the white house in Somerville. It would be empty now. His mother had written, telling him that she was spending Christmas with Aunt Celeste Kimball in the Bahamas. The white house in Connecticut would be dark this year, though it, too, had been strung many times with coloured lights for parties, Christmases …

  Was he cherishing some foolish, childish dream, this dream of accepting a challenge, fighting a battle, making his own terms with life? Was there anything, really, to look forward to with Helen? The assurances of a happy ending were certainly slim. Perhaps they had all been right—his father, his mother, Turner Ames, Claire—even Blazer. Perhaps he should simply forget her. They had all thought so, said so—everybody except himself and Mike. He remembered thinking once that the rich were never really troubled. They were only inconvenienced. Inconvenienced by death, federal taxes, disappointing children, divorces, Democrats, impudent servants. For no reason at all, he remembered a conversation with his mother when he was fifteen or sixteen. He was home from school and he and a friend, Scrib Newton, had been planning to go to a dance in New York. Scrib’s father had promised to drive both boys into town, but at the last minute Scrib had telephoned to say that Mr. Newton couldn’t take them, he was having trouble with his car. Jimmy’s mother had been astonished. “Trouble with the car?” she had said. “Why would they have trouble with the car? Heavens, if you turn a car in at ten thousand miles, as we do, you never have trouble with a car!” She had probably not intended the remark to sound as vacuous as it did; to her, it was that simple. Cars might be late. They might be tied up in traffic; they might even, though one hoped they wouldn’t, be smashed to smithereens in a ghastly accident. But they never had trouble.

  “If you do as we do …” If one did as they did, life was graceful, polite, untroubled. He wondered now if, because he had been brought up in this tradition, he had set out in pursuit of trouble as a quaint, romantic adventure. He had thought of himself as fighting a lonely battle to save his marriage. But did he actually want to save it—or was it just the experience of battle that he wanted? He was not at all sure now. It would be easy—terribly easy—to end the trouble by going home, going down to the office to talk to Turner Ames, going to work for the Keefe Company. Some day, surely, he would be president. He could build his own house in Somerville. He could marry someone like Jessica Morton. No, not someone like Jessica Morton. Someone like—Claire.

  He wished now that there were someone with whom he could talk about it, but that was another trouble. There was no one. His father was gone, Mike was gone, Blazer was gone—all the voices he had once listened to with respect. Of course there was Claire. He could have Claire, he supposed, for the asking. There would be no trouble to that. When he got back to the apartment, he would only have to pick up the phone, call the Clift Hotel …

  He turned into Capitol Avenue, drove slowly down it, and turned into the narrow alley behind the apartment house. He parked the car in the open carport, got out, and walked slowly through the courtyard and up the wide redwood steps. He fished in his pocket for the key and let himself in. As usual, he had forgotten and left the living-room lights burning—through the open door, the living-room was flooded with light. He would have to watch out for things like that, he thought. After all, he was not so rich any more. He started to go into the living-room, then changed his mind, stepped into the kitchen, and flipped on the light there. He went to the refrigerator, opened it, and took out a bottle of milk. He reached in the cupboard for a glass, and then, all at once, he noticed a strange scent in the air. Not strange, but familiar. He stopped, his hand frozen in mid-air, reaching for the glass, wondering if he was awake or dreaming, his heart pounding, because he knew that Helen was in the living-room.

  It was several moments before he could move, go to the door, and look into the lighted room. She was sitting on the sofa, her brown hair brushed back, her small, sculptured face looking at him, smiling.

  “Hello,” she said. And then she said, “I hope I didn’t frighten you.”

  He stared at her.

  “Did you think you were being burglarized?” she asked. “I’m sorry—”

  He sat down limply in the chair opposite her. “How did you—” he began.

  “How did I get in?” She smiled again. “I still had my key,” she said. “I’ve been here quite a while—hours, in fact. I came up this afternoon and rang the bell and thought: Darn it, he’s not home—now I’ll have to go all the way back. Then I remembered that I still had my key!”

  “You’ve been waiting here—all afternoon?”

  “Oh, I’ve kept busy,” she said lightly. “Or don’t you notice? Don’t things look a little cleaner? Didn’t you even notice that your dishes had been washed?”

  “I’m sorry—I guess—”

  “I was going to give you till nine o’clock. Then—well, by then I decided you would be—out with another girl.”

  He said nothing, simply stared at her.

  “You saved my pearls, didn’t you?” she asked. “I found them in a little dish in the kitchen. Why did you save my pearls?”

  “I thought—you might like to have them restrung.”

  “They were only ten-cent-store pearls. But they could be restrung,” she said. “I think I will have them restrung …”

  “I think I’ve got them all,” he said a little wildly. And then he said, “Where’s Billy?”

  “His grandmother’s been dying to baby-sit.”r />
  “Is he—all right?”

  “Of course. He’s fine.”

  “Well—” he said, taking a deep breath, “I don’t mind saying—well, I’m absolutely—I don’t know what to say!”

  “I’m sure I scared you out of your wits.”

  “I was in the kitchen, and I smelled—your perfume, I guess.”

  She laughed. “That smell isn’t my perfume! It’s Clorox!”

  “You didn’t have to do all that.”

  “I told you, I had to do something to keep busy!”

  “I’m sorry, Helen. If I’d known you were coming—”

  “I thought of telephoning,” she said slowly. “But—I was afraid. I was afraid that if I telephoned, I’d lose my nerve. I wouldn’t come …”

  He forced a laugh. “Well,” he exclaimed, “how does the old place look?”

  “Exactly—exactly as I’d remembered it. I saw your avocado in the kitchen—I gave it a drink. It’s beautiful—”

  He laughed again. “The remains of a salad—you know, from my salad days—”

  “It’s big enough to be put into a pot. Yes,” she said, “I think you could put it into a pot now and it would get bigger—even bigger, I mean.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said seriously. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Then suddenly they both laughed. Helen swayed forward, her hand on her bosom, choking with laughter. “Oh!” she gasped. “Oh, I don’t know what’s so funny, but—”

  Jimmy rocked in his chair, holding his sides. “I don’t know either, but it is—”

  Then they stopped laughing simultaneously. Helen dabbed at her moist eyes. Finally, she said soberly, “I had to come.”

  Just as soberly, he said, “Why did you?”

  “Because,” she said, her eyes pleading, “I wanted to see you again.”

  “Oh,” he breathed.

  “I’ve thought—” she said, “I’ve thought a lot about the things you said. When you came down, I mean. About the future, and—”

  “Yes?” he asked.