Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea

by Richard Bausch

  Mrs. D’Allessandro opened her purse and looked into it, then shut it again. She cleared her throat, set her hands together, with the little puzzle in the middle, and rested her elbows on the purse in her lap, staring at Marshall.

  Mr. D’Allessandro addressed the young man. “We wondered if you’d be willing to help us out.”

  “Sure,” said Marshall, wanting, as always, to please.

  “What we thought,” Mr. D’Allessandro said, putting his hands carefully together over his chest, “was that if we could bring someone well known to the school, to give a talk—maybe spend the evening. You see? Someone—er, famous, who’d do it for nothing—for a favor, let us say.”

  They were both watching him now. “I see,” he said.

  “Well?”

  He nodded. He could think of nothing else to do.

  “Your nice lady friend,” Mrs. D’Allessandro said.

  “Alice Kane,” Marshall told her, and the sinking sensation came back.

  “Kane. There, yes,” said Mr. D’Allessandro. “You—you introduced me to her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh,” he said quickly. “You shouldn’t address me as ‘sir.’ I consider that we’re all on the same footing here.”

  “All on the same footing,” said his wife with a surprisingly jovial laugh. “Except you, Lawrence, who happen to be flat on your back with a possible ruptured spleen.” She grew serious again, turning the little puzzle in her hand. “Bruises and lacerations in the chestal area and abdomen.” She paused. “My darling.”

  Marshall looked from one to the other of them.

  “As you can plainly see, I’m not flat on my back, as you put it,” D’Allessandro said. “Dear.”

  She made a huffing sound in the back of her throat, but said nothing.

  “What we hoped,” D’Allessandro went on with an air of at last getting down to business, “is that you might approach your lady friend about her very influential father. See if he might be willing to give us the favor of—the company of anyone he might prevail upon, you see, in order for us to put together a program that might draw a few extra students for the spring. It has to be a big name, though. Like—well, like on the Edward R. Murrow level. Someone of that ilk.”

  Marshall sat with his hands on his thighs, nodding.

  “You—you think you might help us out?” D’Allessandro said. “I’m afraid I haven’t done a very good job of”—he looked at his wife briefly—“explaining things. The truth is, it’s a bit in the area of a desperate situation—but we did have Averell Harriman once, for a graduation speech. Well, he agreed to do it, and then the whole thing fell through.”

  “Do you want to tell him why?” she said.

  “That won’t be necessary. Love.”

  “It’s such a lovely story, though. And I’ll bet young Mr. Marshall would like to hear another gambling story.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a gambling story, Esther.”

  She leaned toward the young man. “The school will be forced to close its doors at the end of this term.” She spoke crisply.

  “That’s unfortunately a possibility,” said her husband with an air of resignation.

  She opened her purse and dropped the little plastic puzzle in. Snapping the purse shut, she put it on the floor at her feet, straightened and touched her hair lightly, then folded her hands on one knee, regarding Marshall with a calm, measuring expression.

  “If we could get five or six new students by spring,” her husband said. “I’ve just signed someone on to start immediately, in fact. A young fellow who will help us on another score. The—with the way we appear to the—the—well, let us say the surrounding environs. But that’s another thing. What I thought was that along with a slight increase in the present tuition—this program I was thinking about. You see, we might get a temporary permit to broadcast in the area—a onetime deal. With a famous name—somebody your young lady friend’s father might get for us, see—we’d be able to do that. And we could make it a night of public affairs, or some such thing. While advertising what we do so well. We could talk about the profession of newscaster. There we are. A—a symposium.”

  “Or maybe something in honor of our martyred president,” Mrs. D’Allessandro said.

  “There. Now that’s a wonderful idea, Esther.”

  “Why, thank you,” Esther said. And, after another little pause, “Darling.”

  Marshall had the unnerving impression that the two of them had been through all this before, and that this brainstorming was a performance, for his benefit. But then Mr. D’Allessandro looked at him with such apparently innocent hope in his moist green eyes, and with that complicated smile on his face. They were both waiting for him to respond. And as though to contribute to the increasing sense of expectancy in the room, the other patient abruptly stopped snoring.

  “Do you want me to bring Alice here?” Marshall asked, feeling, in the heavy silence, as though he should whisper.

  “Bring her here?” Mrs. D’Allessandro said, also whispering. “To the hospital?”

  Mr. D’Allessandro seemed alarmed at the prospect. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to bother her that much. No, no indeed. I was thinking you might prevail upon her yourself.”

  After a pause, in which the young man continued to nod, though he was still confused, Esther D’Allessandro said, “We want you to ask her for us.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then you’ll do it?” her husband said.

  Marshall was still nodding at him.

  “Marvelous. Esther, I feel the tide is going to change.”

  “We’ll see,” Esther said, rising, bending to retrieve her purse. “Now you should rest that spleen.”

  “Ha ha,” said her husband mirthlessly. “I feel better already.” He turned to Marshall and offered his thin hand again. “My young friend,” he said, “bless you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The snoring started up once more, so loud that it required them to pitch their voices nearly at the level of a shout.

  “You’ll report back tomorrow?” Mr. D’Allessandro said.

  “Tomorrow?”

  A shadow seemed to cross his face. He sat forward. “We need an answer very soon.”

  “I’ll try,” said Marshall.

  “What?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “There’s the spirit.” D’Allessandro settled back on his pillows, and clasped his hands behind his head. “A young man of definite talent and ability,” he said to his wife. “I knew we could count on him.”

  “Rest,” Mrs. D’Allessandro told him, then turned and ushered Marshall out of the room. She closed the door, and left him standing out in the corridor for a moment. There was a window above the water fountain a few feet away, and he looked at his reflection in it, put his hands in the side pockets of his coat, and thought of being president. Then he pushed the hair across his forehead, and patted it down. Mrs. D’Allessandro came out of the room and took him by the arm. “The thing about my husband is his unlimited capacity for hope.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I don’t give this much of a chance for working. And the trouble is, it was his damned hopefulness that got us in this trouble in the first place. That’s what a bet always is, young man, whether anyone admits it or not. Naked, childlike hope. I’ve gone along with it all this time, like a fool.”

  They went down in the elevator, the two of them doubled in the shining metal doors, and when they stepped out into the lobby, a man in a gray overcoat blocked their path. He was small in the way a miniature terrier is small—nothing at all out of proportion; a full-length photograph, without anything to compare him against, would give utterly no clue as to his actual size: One could easily be convinced that he was six feet tall. Under the bright light of the downstairs lobby of the hospital, moving to confront Mrs. D’Allessandro, his fingers closing on the cloth of her sleeve as he pulled her aside to talk, he seemed not quite real. A toy man, with toy hands and
toy feet, wearing a toy overcoat, a toy hat atop the toy head. The face was aquiline, with sharp lines in the cheeks and on either side of the mouth, running down into the neck. “I don’t understand,” said Mrs. D’Allessandro with an edge of distress, pulling from his grasp.

  Out of reflex, Marshall stepped forward, and the little man put his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and smiled, showing a perfect row of small, white teeth.

  “Please wait for me outside,” Mrs. D’Allessandro said. It wasn’t immediately clear to whom she was speaking.

  “This your son?” the toy man wanted to know, still smiling.

  “He’s a—friend.”

  “Tough?”

  No one said anything.

  The little man hadn’t taken his eyes from Marshall. He was still smiling, and his voice when he spoke was almost friendly. “How tough are you, kid?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Mrs. D’Allessandro said to him. “This boy can help us get what we need. Do you understand? Your boss gets what he wants.” She turned to Marshall. “Please. I asked for you to wait for me outside.”

  The little man stepped forward and offered his hand to Marshall. The hand was very warm, the grip surprisingly strong. It hurt, and Marshall quickly pulled his own hand away. “Name’s Marcus,” the man said. “Nice to make your acquaintance, kid. So tell me, you got a rich aunt or something?”

  “Please,” said Mrs. D’Allessandro. “We’re working it all out. He said we could have a couple of weeks.”

  “So he did,” the little man said, smiling. “So you do.”

  “Then I don’t understand.”

  He turned to her. “Mr. Brace just wanted to demonstrate his continuing interest. I’m to serve as a gentle reminder of that interest. Accruing daily, of course.”

  “We’re aware of everything,” she said through her teeth. “How dare he do this.”

  “You’re aware,” said the little man, still smiling. “That will be a mar-vu-lous boost to Mr. Brace’s confidence.” He stepped back and tipped his hat. “Mar-vu-lous, yes. Good day to you both.” Then he gave an exaggerated bow, looking for that instant like a dressed-up boy at a party, bending with a sweeping motion of the hand that held the hat. “I’ll probably see you tomorrow, of course. Mr. Brace likes to keep reminding his clients of their obligations.”

  “We don’t need reminding. You might remind Mr. Brace—if that’s what he wants to call himself—that Lawrence is not one of his ordinary clients. He’s not going to run off or anything.”

  The little man had started away, and only called back over his shoulder, “Nevertheless.”

  They watched him go out through the revolving door and on down the street.

  Mrs. D’Allessandro held her purse tight, with both hands, and did not move for a moment. Marshall thought of touching her arm, offering his support—he thought she might topple over. At length she seemed to come to herself, and she stared at him as though surprised to find him there. “I have to go,” she said. “There are things I have to do. I don’t think—I suppose I could take you back to the school.”

  “I can take the bus home,” Marshall told her.

  “Yes,” she said, distracted. “The bus.”

  “If you could drop me on K Street.”

  “Of course.” She started out, then stopped, turned around, and headed for the bank of elevators. “I should tell him—” She stopped again. Marshall waited a few feet behind her. She whirled suddenly and faced him, her small hands gripping the closed purse. “You will help us?”

  “I certainly will,” Marshall offered, though, in fact, he had no idea how he would begin to be of any real help. He wanted to tell her that Alice’s father was really rather stern and frightening, and he did not know how he would ever find the words to ask him what Mr. D’Allessandro wanted asked.

  “Bless you,” Mrs. D’Allessandro was saying. “Come on. We have to hurry. I’m supposed to be somewhere by eight o’clock. Lawrence isn’t the only one scheming to find money.”

  They hurried out to the car. Getting in, and sitting there while she wrestled with her coat and then worked to get her timing right on the clutch, Marshall felt weirdly close to her, as though they had lived through years together.

  “What’re you staring at?” she said as the car jerked backward and stalled.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t…”

  She struggled with the gearshift, and there was a loud grinding. “You think I’m old,” she said, looking back, then turning to work the gearshift once more. “It’s natural. But listen, I have my whole life in front of me, just like you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Marshall said.

  “And stop calling me ‘ma’am.’” She had gotten them moving along the street, and began to pick up speed. The surfaces before them reflected light, all in motion, colors bleeding into each other from the rain and mist. “Tell me how to get to K Street,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure, and she must have read his hesitation that way.

  “Well, it has to be in this direction,” she said, turning into the stream of traffic.

  It took them awhile to find it, and through it all she kept veering in and out of lanes, nearly missing several collisions. At one point, she turned down a one-way street, and in order to correct herself, abruptly spun the wheel to the left, bumped the car up onto the sidewalk, scattering a group of startled pedestrians, then backed down into the road and headed in the appointed direction.

  Finally, they pulled onto K Street, and she stopped. “Can you meet me at the school tomorrow afternoon at five?”

  “Yes,” he managed. But it seemed important to add, “I don’t know if I can have an answer for you that soon.”

  “Please try.” She gestured for him to get out.

  He did so.

  “Don’t forget,” she said, lurching away as he shut the door.

  He watched her drive on, jerking, nearly stalling, to I Street, where she went left with a smoothness that seemed to contradict everything that had gone before. When, a moment or two later, he heard squealing brakes, he believed he knew the cause.

  It was past nine o’clock, and the street was quiet. He let the first bus go by, and then, on an impulse, walked up Eighteenth Street to the school. The upstairs windows were dark. He sat alone in the little library, not quite admitting to himself what he was waiting and hoping for while others moved past the doorway, going in and out. Two women stood on the stone stairs of the entrance and talked about Christmas shopping. Natalie was nowhere to be seen, and no one else came to the library. He turned the pages of a magazine and stayed where he was, ashamed of himself. He had given no thought to what he might have said, or to what might have happened had she been there.

  Natalie, I’ve been wanting to talk to you because you’re the one I really want to marry. You’d make such a beautiful First Lady…

  “God,” he said aloud, “cut it out.” He stirred, checked to be certain that he hadn’t been heard by anyone. The building seemed empty.

  In the street door, on his way out, he ran into Natalie. She was hurrying up the stairs to get out of the rain. She wore a white scarf that made her skin look darker. She looked at him and smiled. It was raining hard again, a torrent, sheets of it sweeping across the street. She stood waiting, seemed almost unaware of him, and he remained where he was.

  “Miserable weather,” he said.

  She nodded. She had folded her arms and was staring out with a look of consternation on her face.

  “Are you waiting for a ride?” he asked.

  She hadn’t heard him. She sighed, unfolded her arms, and thrust her hands into the pockets of the coat. She was almost as tall as Marshall.

  He repeated the question.

  “No, Walter,” she said. “I was valking home.”

  “You live near here?”

  She nodded. “I’m getting out of the rain.”

  “I thought you forgot something, maybe.”

  “No. I just took a jo
b.”

  “You were coming from somewhere else.”

  She seemed bemused by this. She only glanced at him as she spoke. “I was down the street. I have a new job.”

  “Did you memorize the Shakespeare?”

  “Shakespeare, yes. A sonnet.”

  “I love Shakespeare,” Marshall told her.

  “So you said.” She looked out at the rain.

  “Has something upset you?” he said.

  Again, it was as though she hadn’t heard him.

  “Natalie?”

  “Yes, I hear you, Walter.”

  “I’ve been reading some Shakespeare, too,” he said.

  She looked at him and seemed to consider, then shrugged. “I vould like to read him better. I have trouble with his word choices. It’s a langwege problem.”

  He nodded. He was running out of things to say. This meeting was oddly disjointed, and he supposed it had to do with the fact that it was removed from the usual context, sitting in the library or standing by the vending machines in the basement.

  The rain had let up, and she reached her hand out to test it.

  “Want to go get some coffee or something?” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Walter—no. I haf to go now.” She was already stepping away from him. “’Bye.”

  “Wait,” he said. “I’ll walk you.”

  She headed in the opposite direction from where he needed to go to catch his bus. He walked along at her side, trying to keep his mind absolutely blank. They had gone about two blocks when she stopped, and extended one slender hand. “You are so kind.”

  “You know me,” he said. “Saint Walter.”

  She shook her head, smiling at him. “You shouldn’t make fun. You are nicer than some men. You don’t need to have heroes.”

  “I guess that makes me your hero,” he said, trying for a lighter tone. “Gee, tanks,” he added, in the accent of Jackie Gleason doing Joe the bartender.

  “You don’t understand me, Walter.”

  “I tought I did, tho, lady.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I was just trying to be funny. You wanted me to be funny earlier—”