And suddenly, without my realizing at just what moment, she spoke. It came to me a second or two later, and what she had said was; “I know you are going to leave me. Something tells me — you tell me. The look in your eye — every move you make — tells me.”
I didn’t answer. Meaning: “Yes, I am going to leave you. Tonight. Right now.”
And that cursed infernal thing in there went on. “Don’t ever leave me — now that you’re here — or I’ll have no one to run to.” Damn the words, and damn the music, and damn everything connected with that show! It fitted too closely into my own life. I flung myself out of the chair and went in there and snapped it off. But above us and below us it still went on. “Why do I want the thing I cannot hope for? What do I hope for, I wish I knew.” And Maxine was still looking at me. An almost invisible silver thread lay beside her nose now, where one tear too many had lost its balance and escaped the watchfulness of her lashes. “Why was I born — to love you?” At last it stopped. The people above us had gone to a movie. The people below us had turned to a prize fight at Forty-Ninth and Eighth Avenue without leaving their chairs.
The coffee in our two cups was stone-cold; the cream she had put in it had gathered around the edges, where it met the cup, in a hollow white ring, leaving the middle black — each cup looked as though it contained a satanic fried egg with a black yolk. This last supper of ours hadn’t been a success.
“Oh, I’m so frightened,” she said sepulchrally. “What are you going to do, Wade?”
Again I didn’t answer.
Again she said, “Won’t you speak — and tell me? I’d rather know — and have it over with.”
“Why go out of your way to look for trouble?”
“Oh, I know, don’t try to tell me,” she said all in a breath. “You have something up your sleeve, I get it with every heartbeat!”
“Nothing in particular,” I answered facilely. But those were the soothing tactics of last night, of all the nights before, perhaps, but not of tonight. They wouldn’t do any more; she had to know. So instantly I belied what I had just said, and told her: “Don’t put it that way; not up my sleeve. I’m not trying to hide anything from you — I’m going to say good-bye to you tonight.”
Bernice’s face had expressed fright that afternoon; hers didn’t. It looked as though a little death had gathered between her eyes. There was not the insanity of escape, of struggle there; there was the agony of muteness, of somebody gone down in quicksand with only the eyes and forehead showing.
It didn’t matter now, I supposed, whether I said anything more. I went on speaking, nevertheless. The drawing room consoling the torture chamber. “I’ve lost my job. What’s the use of going on? Things haven’t been any too sweet between us even without that, you know that as well as I do; now they’d only be ten times worse. Why drag it out any longer? Don’t you think this is the best way?”
“I’ll do anything, anything under the sun,” she said, “anything you want me to, only not to lose you! If it’s the job — I’ll get a job, I’ll keep things going for us, Wade! If it’s Bernice, if it’s that you want to see her as often as you like, why, see her, Wade, see her all the time — don’t even live with me anymore — I won’t say a word, as long as I have you here near me sometimes. Wade, I’ll forget there’s such a thing as self-respect, I’ll forget I’m a woman even. What more can I do? Wade, Wade, make it a little easier for me!”
I saw her rise an inch above her chair, as though to come to me, and matter-of-factly motioned her not to. “I don’t want you near me, Maxine. My love for you’s gotten away from me, there isn’t any in me any more.”
The pallor of her face literally shone across the table at me; it was awful to see any one suffer like that. I brushed my hand before my eyes to take the sight away. “Don’t, oh, please don’t look at me like that, it goes right through me! I can’t stand it. I’m going!”
I made two false moves to rise, and as though she were sending something hypnotic through the air toward me, couldn’t seem to get out of the chair at all. Finally I managed to kick it back from me with my heel, stand, and walk out of the room with rigid, forced steps, my head actually turned the other way so as not to see her.
I went into the bedroom, snapped on the light, picked up my valise from beside the wall, looked around me to see if I had left anything out. Meanwhile, not a sound from in there where she was. Not a breath, not a sigh. As though I were alone in the place.
The bureau clock said quarter to eight; it was usually a little slow, though, and until I ride down and everything—
I put out the light, went through the living room, valise in hand, and instead of going back to the kitchen, took the other door, to the little foyer. There I set the grip down a second, not knowing what I was going to call out to her by way of parting, and principally because I wanted to put my hat on properly, and that required two hands.
I had left it over the telephone, always my favorite rack, and as I lifted it off, the phone rang as though the hat had been holding it muffled all along. I chuckled whimsically and picked it up to answer it; it would be too nerve-racking to have to go down the stairs with that ringing behind me as though pleading with me to come back, and if I didn’t answer it myself, it might bring Maxine out into the foyer, stunned though she seemed to be. I had rather have her stay where she was until after I’d gotten out — I didn’t want to have to see that terrible look on her again; I would probably remember it for a long time after this as it was.
“Hello?” I said quietly.
An unmistakable negro drawl greeted me, so exaggerated, in fact, that it almost resembled the accent of a member of some black-face comedy team — Moran and Mack or Amos and Andy. He asked what number I was.
I was so certain there had been a mistake on the line that I told him without further ado, “You’ve got the wrong party.”
“Mistah Wade? You Mistah Wade?” came back engagingly.
“I am. Who’re you?”
“All right if I talk to you? Nobody c’n hear?”
“I’m busy. What do you want?”
“Well, look hea’, Mistah Wade, this Miss Bernice’ do’man — I got a message fo’ you.”
That was different! “You have?” I cried at once. “What is it?”
“Miss Bernice say for me to tell you she done change her mine—”
I got all cold around the ankles and the wrists.
“—and instead of going to the station from whea’ yo’ at, will you kinely stop by hea’ fo’ her and she’ go ’long with you.”
“Hasn’t she left yet?” I cried.
“Nossir, she’ busy, gettin’ ready right now.”
“Well, then let me talk to her herself a minute, will you?”
“She doan’ want to use the outside wire from the ’partment, for nobody, Mistah Wade, and she hasn’t got time to come all the way downstai’s hea’ and speak over this hea’ phoam. She jus’ now phoamed down the message to me husself, axin me to tell you.”
“All right,” I said. “Did she tell you what time she’d be ready?”
“She tole me you could leave any time beginning fum now, and she’ be waiting fo’ you when you get hea’.”
“All right,” I repeated a little dissatisfiedly. “Thanks a lot. I’ll be there.” But as I hung up, I couldn’t understand why, when she had been so frightened all along of Tenacity and everybody around her, almost of her very shadow, she would trust a message like that to the doorman instead of speaking to me for a minute herself. But, as he had just said, it might have been the safest way after all.
However, to go there instead of directly to the station, I would have to get a local at Seventy-Second Street, get off a station sooner, walk or taxi several blocks eastward, and then continue on down to Forty-Second Street with her. Which would take considerably more time than the other way. So I knew I’d better leave then and not hang around any more if we wanted to make the train — because Bernice might keep me waiting
several minutes at her place, too.
I picked up the grip, opened the door, glanced back over my shoulder just once, and left — without another word to Maxine. What was there I could have said, anyway? The word “goodbye” wouldn’t have comforted her any.
I was down on the street now, walking toward the subway, and the place I had lived in was behind me forever. My farewell to Maxine was to think about her for a few minutes. “Had to leave without a thing being arranged between us; if she’d only been modern, instead of 1920! I suppose I should have told her about that compound-interest account in Brooklyn.” I went down the steps, dropped my nickel in, sought a bench on the platform, shoved my valise under it, and sat down to wait for the next train. It was already audible in the length of tube between the next station and this, when the turnstile cracked open a second time and Maxine joined me on the platform. She came and sat beside me on the bench. She had no hat, but she had thrown a coat over the housedress she had had on just now in the apartment.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I said quietly. “This won’t help any; you may as well go on back. I’m not afraid of a row in public, you know; that won’t stop me, if that’s what your game is.”
“I didn’t come after you to make a scene, Wade,” she answered. “I want to ride with you part of the way; five minutes more is better than nothing.”
“You’re crazy, absolutely out of your mind—” I tried to tell her, but the train came hissing and spitting in and drowned my voice.
She followed me onto the car and sat beside me. People looked at us a little curiously, but I glared at them, and they turned their eyes away. The first few stations drifted by, and she didn’t speak. I didn’t either, because I had nothing to say; our relationship had ended back there as far as I was concerned.
When she did begin to speak at last, it was tragically comic and comically tragic. For she couldn’t speak too loud, or the others in the car would hear her (and I could see she didn’t want that any more than I did), and yet she must speak loudly enough for me to hear her above the roar of the subway. And I must hear every word, for she hadn’t much time — the stations went dropping behind us like beads on a steel-and-electric rosary — and she must win me over, get me to listen, get me to turn back before I got to the end of the line, where Bernice’s domain began, where she couldn’t follow me any further. I knew that that was what had brought her after me like this — the hope that one supreme, last-minute plea would succeed where all the others had failed. I almost admired her in spite of myself, but, as though the love that was making her go through all this were meant for somebody else altogether and not for me, I was not at all interested. If she knew me as well as she thought she did, why couldn’t she see how useless it was? Bernice occupied every cell of my being, there was not a molecule left over for Maxine.
So why even listen to all that she said? I lost most of it in the noise the train was making, anyway. Just once or twice a remark stood out above all the rest, and made me simply wonder at her, simply wonder at her, and fail to understand what I had done to her to make her love me so. Not a trait in me did she neglect to appeal to, did she overlook; the good and the bad, the high and the low. One by one she sounded them out—
“Is Bernice going to give you money, Wade, until you get started again? No? Well, I can give you some, Wade. All you need. I’ll give you a whole lot if you’ll put off going a while longer—”
Poor little liar, where would she have been able to get it from? But I didn’t dare say that aloud, for fear she would think I was intrigued. And I wasn’t.
“Would you want Bernice to stop with us a while, so I could get to know her better? I’ll gladly ask her out, Wade, if you want me to. Do you think she’d come? I could take a little of the house money and go down to Atlantic City for a little while, and wait until I hear from you — shall I do that, Wade? Shall I do that for you?”
“Don’t insult me, Maxine,” I murmured close to her face. “That isn’t the way — there isn’t any way! Please go back, kid, won’t you? For old times’ sake?”
“How far are you going, Wade?”
“Very far.”
“How long are you going, Wade?”
“Forever.”
There was just one more station to pass now — because I was damned if she was going to get on the local with me at Seventy-Second Street! What was this anyway, a vaudeville show?
“Wade, if I promise to divorce you and let you go, will you stay with me just until we get the divorce?”
“No, not a day longer,” I told her simply. “I don’t care whether I marry Bernice or not. I’m happy enough just to be with her.”
“Do you hate me that much, Wade?” she said.
“I don’t hate you at all, Maxine,” I answered truthfully. “I like you tonight, like you more than I have the whole past year.” I looked at her pityingly and touched her hand for a minute. She sort of shivered. “I like you an awful lot. Don’t you think you can find somebody else after a little while, and get me off your mind?”
“But I don’t want to,” she said innocently.
“Well, will you promise me something?”
“Yes, Wade,” she said unqualifiedly.
“I’m going to leave you at the next station; will you promise you won’t do anything damn foolish — oh, you know what I mean!”
“I’ll promise if you want me to, Wade,” she replied surprisingly, “but I wasn’t going to, anyway. Because I know this isn’t forever; one of these days — you will, won’t you, come back?”
The doors slid open, and I reached for my valise and pulled it out from under my legs. She reached down and helped me with a corner of it that had got wedged in under the seat.
“Good-bye, Max. Try to forgive me, will you?”
“I’m going on down to Forty-Second Street,” she explained limply, “because if I get off here, I’ll have to pay an extra nickel to cross to the uptown side.”
That reminded me, although I was out of the train already. I ran to the window opposite her and pounded on it to attract her attention. Every one else in the car looked around at me, but she had picked up a newspaper some one threw away and was holding it open before her face, as though she were reading it. I guess she was crying behind it, though. The train carried her away. I had wanted to tell her about that compound-interest account over in Brooklyn.
I had just time to light a cigarette and get one drag out of it before my local came in. I had meant to watch from the express window and see just where we passed it, to find out how long I would have to wait, but Maxine had kept my mind occupied. I carried the lighted cigarette in with me anyway — I was so nervous by now I needed it badly — and smoked it secretively out of the little opening between the two cars. Still, it would have been a rotten thing to get arrested then, that close to train time.
I got out at the Circle instead of Fiftieth, telling myself it would save time if I walked four blocks down, instead of five up. Which was undeniable, if you took into consideration the two or three additional minutes it would have taken the train to reach the next station. I walked to her place instead of taking a cab, because it was still early, and because I wanted to see just how nearly ready she was before ordering a taxi and keeping it waiting at the door. It wouldn’t take the doorman a minute to do that for us, anyhow, once we had her grips ready at the door.
“I’ll leave this with you a minute,” I greeted him as I entered, transferring my valise into his kid-gloved and rather reluctant (I noticed) hand.
“Yessir,” he said snobbishly, “it’s Miss Pascal you want to see, isn’t it?” He spoke a purer English than I did myself, evidently had gone to college.
I didn’t like his airs, so I answered bellicosely: “You ought to know it is by now; you were the one telephoned me yourself a little while ago to come up here!”
“Nossir, not I,” he said urbanely, “you must be mistaken.”
This business of contradicting didn’t make me l
ike him any better. “I ought to know!” I said. “Are you trying to tell me I’m crazy?” And I gave him a threatening look.
He bore up very well under it; his poise was the last straw — I had taken a decided dislike to him by now. “I didn’t say anything about you’re being crazy, sir; I said I didn’t telephone you, that was all.”
“You didn’t give me a ring at quarter of eight to the minute and let me know—?” I insisted aggressively.
“Quarter to eight?” he interrupted suavely, with a sort of a Harvard smile transplanted to his iodine-colored face. “Oh, that explains it. I only just went on duty a few minutes before you came in here. It must have been the relief man.”
“Is he a colored fellow too?”
“The same as I,” he said arrogantly.
“Well, that must be it, then,” I remarked lamely, and turned to the elevator.
“Shall I announce you, sir?” he continued. “It’s Mr. Wade, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s Wade, if you insist,” I sighed weariedly, “but Miss Pascal expects me more than she ever expected any one in her life.”
”I see, sir,” he remarked ironically, and didn’t move toward the switchboard at the back. Evidently, not knowing that we were going away, he had a mistaken impression that this was simply another of our “do-not-disturb” rendezvous.
I got out of the car, the door closed behind me, and I rang her bell. I cocked my head toward the panel and could hear the radio humming away inside. “Eat an apple every day, get to bed by three, take good care of y’self, you belong to me!” She didn’t come to let me in; evidently she was in the bedroom putting the finishing touches to her packing and hadn’t heard me ring through the noise the Ford was making. So I rang again and drummed lightly on the door with my nails, and rang again, and then again. She must have heard that; I had nearly pushed the mother-of-pearl button out of its socket.
Manhattan Love Song Page 14