Terrence said, “Shut up, Lawrence.” He was staring at Albert and at Marshall.
“If they want to quit,” Mrs. Gordon said, low, “it’s up to them.”
Terrence turned to her and pointed. “You shut up.”
She sank back against the wall.
Terrence stared at D’Allessandro, drawing on the cigarette, apparently thinking something over. Presently, he turned to Walter Marshall and Albert Waple. “What is it with you two, then?” He looked around at the others. “Is this an odd pair?”
“I’m sorry,” Albert said to Mr. D’Allessandro. “I thank you for your help.”
“I’m going to finish, and graduate,” Ricky Dalmas said.
“Me, too,” said Mrs. Gordon.
Terrence turned to her again. “Pardon me, I didn’t hear you.”
“I—” she glanced at D’Allessandro, who was staring fixedly straight ahead. “I—I said I was not going to continue.”
“Why should that matter to you?” Mrs. D’Allessandro said to Terrence. “I don’t understand.”
“I couldn’t hear what she said, Esther.”
Joe Baker and Wilbur Soames stepped up. “We’ll finish.”
“I weel, too,” said Martin Alvarez.
There was a general sense of relief. Mrs. D’Allessandro spoke of opening a bottle of wine. But no one moved. Terrence crushed his cigarette out, and produced some papers for everyone to sign. Mrs. Gordon signed, then walked out, her coat wrapped tightly around her. She spoke to no one.
Marshall stepped into the foyer, and Natalie went with him.
“Want to go for a valk?” she said.
“I’ve got Albert with me.”
“I’ll wait here for you,” Albert said from the entrance to the room.
“Let me get my coat,” Natalie said.
They went up the block, into the bath of light from a streetlamp there. The sky was almost completely dark. Along the street, lights were going on in all the houses.
“I haven’t been honest with you,” she said. “Walter.”
He said, “I want to marry you.”
“No. It would be wrong.”
“Why?” he said.
She was staring. “What’s the matter with you, that you can’t see how wrong it would be? I’m older, I don’t have your innocence, do you understand?”
“Innocence,” he said. “I’m not innocent. You know what I found out recently? I found out that Kennedy wasn’t what they’re making him out to—”
“Who told you this?”
“Never mind,” he said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us. Besides, I don’t believe it. It was just some drunk talking—”
“No, Walter,” she said. “It was me. Don’t you understand?”
He waited.
“Me,” she went on. “I vas one of those—the—I was with him, Walter. That way. I was one of the girls he had, and now do you see? Do you see how I really am?” She turned away from him. She walked a few paces, out of the lamp’s illumination.
Here, the night sky showed angry clouds high up, torn shapes sailing past the thinnest glow, a sourceless shimmer.
He moved to look into her face. “Natalie?”
She turned away again, then sighed. “Someone from the embassy came to me and asked if I would like to meet the president in person.”
“You—” He halted. She had moved another step away from him.
“You’re such a nice boy, you see. And you stand there looking at me vith your god—damn—innocent—face. But you don’t know anything. You don’t know.”
He simply remained where he was.
“Was the president of the country, and I thought maybe I love him. I am only twenty-three at the time.”
“God,” Marshall heard himself say. “My—God.”
The wind blew and caught a wisp of her hair, which shone as if bordered by a thread of fire. Her dark eyes were too bright now. She turned from him once more. He moved to face her again, his hands on her arms. “Anyway,” she said, “I need to go home. I’m going back to Germany.”
“Natalie,” he said. “I don’t—”
She kissed his forehead. “You are so kind.”
“No,” he said.
She removed herself from him, and started back down to the D’Allessandros’ house. He followed, then caught up.
“Natalie?” he said.
And she stopped again. “Oh, don’t you understand? I’m not your girlfriend, Walter. It was a bad game I played with myself. You must please forgive me. It vas selfish and stupid, and I’m sorry.”
“We could still be friends,” he said, feeling the absurdity of it.
She sighed, then reached out and touched his face. “You sweet, true, young man. Don’t be a politician, Walter.” She put her arms around him then, and kissed him on the mouth—a slow, soft, heart-quickening kiss. “There,” she said, smiling. “Good-bye, Walter.”
He watched her go on up the walk, and the porch steps, into the lighted entrance, where Albert stood. Albert stepped aside for her, murmured a good-bye, then came out and made his way carefully down the steps.
“Guess it didn’t work out,” he said to Marshall.
“No.”
They got into the car, and Marshall pulled out slowly.
“What’re you gonna do?”
“I don’t know,” Marshall said. But he thought he did know. “What about you?” he asked.
“It’s like I said—I make a pretty good salary right where I am. I can stay as long as my sight holds out. And Emma can teach Braille. There’s plenty to do.”
They were quiet for a time, moving through the cold streets behind the gray fan of the headlights.
“I hope we won’t lose touch,” Albert said.
“We won’t,” said Marshall, feeling as though he were lying. Against the feeling, somehow flying in the face of it, he repeated the phrase. “We won’t.”
He drove Albert home, and went into the apartment to say good-bye to Emma, who stood with Albert at the doorway and waved as he drove away.
He would go back to the recruitment office in the morning. His mother was probably getting married; Albert and Emma were already married; Natalie was going home, to the country she had been born in; Minnie was home; Alice was set to go out into the troubled world where her compatriots had gone. Well, he would go there, too. There must still be places where concern for what was right mattered, and people were what they seemed to be. Tomorrow he would enlist in the army, he would give his oath, his word, which he hoped had some value, for all his recent failures, and he would travel far from these endless confusions—to the fight whose outcome mattered most; to the center of the action. He would ask to be sent to that place, Saigon, where the war was being fought for freedom, and where the conflict was definite, the enemy clear. Yes, he would go there; he would seek the truth.
Broad Run, Virginia
1993-1996
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction. I made up everything except the facts and the politics, which everybody knows are of little importance.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Alan Cheuse for suggesting this book to me while riding through Washington, D.C., during the inaugural parties in January 1993, and for providing me with the title.
Thanks also to Robert Jones, for fighting.
About the Author
RICHARD BAUSCH’S books include Rebel Powers, The Fireman’s Wife and Other Stories, and The Last Good Time. He is the recipient of the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1995 he was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He lives with his wife, Karen, and their five children in rural Virginia.
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GOOD EVENING MR. & MRS. AMERICA,
AND ALL THE SHIPS AT SEA
“Bausch blend
s the comic, the brutal and the poignant in this funny, touching study of extreme innocence in the last moment such a thing was possible.”
—New York Daily News
“Richard Bausch’s new novel starts off as a charming coming-of-age tale, a breezy period piece, but slowly and confidently it morphs into a flinty, dream-slaying chiller. The impeccably graceful, nearly translucent prose introduces you to a young idealist, Walter Marshall of Washington circa 1963, and invites you to watch the progress of his—and by proxy the country’s—disillusionment.”
—Baltimore Sun
“As evidenced by his four prior, often award-winning fictional works, and no less by this latest book, Richard Bausch is an exceptionally accomplished realistic novelist. His characters are finely and economically drawn, largely through their own eminently believable dialogue. His plots are both inventive and lucid. And Mr. Bausch’s ear for comic timing is close to unerring.”
—Dallas Morning News
“Bausch is a wily and subtle writer…. Walter’s slide from idealism to disillusionment is revealed through brilliant passages of mundane (but revealing) conversations, hilarious comic moments and characters’ poignant attempts to communicate with one another…. Bausch’s ability to make us empathize with his pathetically artless character is as flawless as his evocation of the political and social issues of the time.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“There’s so much richness of character and craft in the story-telling that to describe Bausch’s novel in detail is a disservice. The honesty and painfulness of the young characters and the decisions they must make give the book a resonance that will touch its readers.”
—Orlando Sentinel
ALSO BY RICHARD BAUSCH
REAL PRESENCE
TAKE ME BACK
THE LAST GOOD TIME
SPIRITS, AND OTHER STORIES
MR. FIELD’S DAUGHTER
THE FIREMAN’S WIFE, AND OTHER STORIES
VIOLENCE
REBEL POWERS
RARE & ENDANGERED SPECIES: A NOVELLA AND STORIES
THE SELECTED STORIES OF RICHARD BAUSCH
Copyright
GOOD EVENING MR. & MRS. AMERICA, AND ALL THE SHIPS AT SEA. Copyright © 1996 by Richard Bausch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition APRIL 2008 ISBN: 9780061732706
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