Fast Start, Fast Finish

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “But, Paul, I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “Of course you’re not a big name in pro-tennis circles, Charlie. So we can’t offer you the salary we would to a big name. But we can offer you a respectable salary, I think—ten thousand a year to start.” Paul smiled. “And who knows? You might get to be a big name.”

  “Do you really think I could do it? Now, look, Paul—”

  “I know you’re a painter by preference, but here’s a thought I might just throw into the bag. You’d make a lot of contacts here—wealthy contacts—and I’ll bet you’d run into plenty of people here who’d want their portraits painted, like you did of Miss Morgan. You could do some of that weekends, in your spare time. Where is she, by the way—Miss Morgan?”

  “I really don’t know, Paul, I haven’t—”

  “She never shows up around here anymore,” Paul said. “But anyway, what do you think?”

  “Paul, I don’t quite know what to say. I—”

  “Of course you’d have to be passed by the members. But I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t be acceptable to the members here—can you?”

  “No … no, I guess not,” he said.

  Paul stood up. “Think about it for a day or so, will you, Charlie?” he said. “Don’t say no till you’ve thought it over, okay? It really might be a big break for you.”

  He felt himself beginning to laugh again and coughed softly into his hand. It was so outlandish, it was funny. Himself—a tennis pro. And he thought of Cathy. Cathy would have loved this, she would have been convulsed. What would she have said? Tennis, anyone? No, something fresher and funnier than that. He suddenly wondered if he could ever play tennis with a straight face again. Of all the job offers he had had in his life, this was the most ridiculous. But he refused to let himself laugh. Paul McCabe was a nice guy. He cleared his throat once more and said, “Paul, I—”

  “Meanwhile, come on down to the bar and I’ll buy you a drink,” Paul said.

  “Well, I’ll never say no to a drink, Paul,” Charlie said.

  “Well, what do you think of that one?” he asked Nancy when he told her about it that evening.

  “Why, I think it’s absolutely wonderful!” she said.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious! Ten thousand a year—it’s wonderful.”

  “Me? Tennis pro at the Westmount Club? Taking my lunch in a paper bag—”

  “Won’t they let you eat in the dining room with the members? Oh, I think they will—”

  “Look, I’m a painter, not a tennis pro.”

  “But this is a job, darling! You can always paint. And you won’t be using up your creative energies at a job like this. That was what was wrong with the advertising thing, wasn’t it? It used up so much of your creative energy—drained you—so you didn’t have any left at the end of the day to paint with. Isn’t that what you always used to say?”

  “Oh, Nancy. Come off it, please.”

  “Come off what? It’s ten thousand a year, Charlie! We’ve got to have an income, darling—we can’t go on like this. And I can’t go on selling my stocks, Charlie, because—well, because you’ve just got to stop depending on me for that.”

  “Now, see here—”

  “Look on it as temporary if you want to, but for God’s sake take it. It’s a job.” She suddenly bit her lip. “You don’t suppose the members wouldn’t accept you, do you? Oh, dear—”

  “It doesn’t matter, because I’m certainly not going to take it,” he said.

  “What?” she cried. “But you’ve got to!”

  “Why do I have to?”

  “We’ve got to live on something, Charlie. We can’t live on my salary, and it’s going to be at least a year before I can take my A.I.D. exam and get my decorator’s license, before I can even think of going into business for myself.”

  “I’ll get a job, but not this one.”

  “Why not? What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s stupid, it’s degrading, it’s beneath me, it’s—”

  “Why beneath you? It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?” She gripped his wrist. “For God’s sake, don’t let this fly away from you,” she said. “Take it. God knows when you’ll get another offer—”

  “You want to be Mrs. Charlie Lord, wife of the club tennis pro?”

  “Oh, stop being a snob. I know who I am. Besides, what’s wrong with being a tennis professional. One of the girls I came out with in Detroit is married to a professional tennis player. Pancho González is a professional. So is Tony Trabert, and the Traberts are accepted everywhere.”

  He laughed. “I love you,” he said. “You can take the girl out of Detroit, but you can’t take Detroit out of the girl. Being a professional tennis player is one thing, but being a tennis pro at a club is something else.”

  She waved her hand. “Semantics,” she said. “That’s what I said to one of Singleton’s clients today when she was trying to decide between bluey-beige and beigey-blue for her foyer walls. Anyway, you’ve got to do something; we need the money. Now, shall I tell you my good news?”

  He turned slowly and walked to the window and looked out, his hands in his pockets. “Okay. Tell me your good news,” he said.

  “We’ve sold the house!”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “The Robinsons. They came up to fifty-two-five. I know it isn’t quite as much as we paid for it, but the market is so depressed around here, Mrs. Monroe says. And she did get them up twenty-five hundred from their original offer. She thinks we’re very lucky. She thinks it’s a very realistic price for this time of year. Aren’t you pleased, Charlie?”

  “Yes,” he said. And so the house was gone, the floor on which he stood was gone, the view from this window was gone, and he was swept with another terrible sense of the loss of time. “There is a tide in the affairs of men,” et cetera. His moment, his season, had passed and gone.

  “I called the movers. We move on the twenty-sixth and close the deal on October first.”

  “Just like that. You really meant it about selling the house, didn’t you?” he said.

  “Charlie, what are you talking about? Of course I meant it and so did you.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Just like that, and we’re rich again!”

  “Then the pressure’s off,” he said.

  “What pressure’s off?”

  He turned and faced her again. “I won’t have to take this tennis thing now, will I? We’ll have the money from the house to live on until my show—”

  “Show?” she said sharply. “Oh, no, Charlie—I’m not going to go through that again, living on money from a house. We did that once and look where it got us. No, this money is going to buy a lot of gilt-edged stocks and bonds.”

  Looking at her, there was all at once something in her eyes that told him exactly what she was saying; they seemed to be saying it in words. Carefully he said, “You’re saying that if I don’t take this job you’ll leave me, aren’t you?”

  Her answering gaze was steady. “Yes,” she said.

  They faced each other, from opposite sides of the room. Then she sat down in the pale-green armchair and pulled off her shoes, first the left, then the right. She placed the shoes side by side on the floor and then sat back in the chair. “I’ve been on my feet all day,” she said. “Thank God, no class tonight. Fix us a drink, darling, will you?”

  “All right.”

  He went into the kitchen and took down two highball glasses from a shelf, fetched the whiskey from the cabinet under the sink. He stood at the sink, cracking open icetrays, thinking, Just like that.

  When he returned with a drink in each hand, she reached out for one of them and said, “Thank you darling.” She took a sip. “Just think,” she said, “a year from now I’ll have my decorator’s license. I’ll be able to earn real money then. And you, with this job—they said ten thousand to start, didn’t they? You’ll be making more than t
hat by then, and we’ll have nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.” She raised her glass. “To Lord and … Lord,” she said. She touched her glass to his with a little click. “And when my father dies …”

  “What will happen when your father dies?”

  “More gilt-edged stocks and bonds!” she said.

  Some time later, when they were both a little tight, Charlie stood up and stepped toward her, his drink in his hand. “Nancy?” he said, “did you mean that? About leaving me?”

  But before she had a chance to answer Carla came into the room carrying her schoolbooks.

  “Carla, guess what?” Nancy said. “We’ve sold the house!”

  Carla dropped her books and burst into tears. “I don’t want to move!” she said. “We’re always moving. I don’t want to move again! When are we going to stop moving?”

  Nancy jumped up and put her arms around Carla.

  “I love this house! I love this Lane! I don’t want to move!” Carla said.

  Inexplicably, Nancy was crying too. “I loved it once, Carla,” she said. “I really did. I loved it once.”

  Seeing them dimly in a haze of too many drinks, Charlie tried to circle them both with his arms, but together they seemed to compose a close and sobbing unit, a feminine unit, a unit that excluded him. Feeling extra and unneeded, he withdrew to his chair.

  On September twenty-sixth the movers arrived, and by noon they were nearly finished. By noon Nancy and Charlie Lord found themselves—again—in an empty living room, stripped even of ashtrays. Charlie poured himself a drink in the kitchen, and then he followed Nancy slowly through the house as she looked for unfound objects, overlooked details. It was then that the front doorbell rang, echoing hollowly in the emptiness, and Nancy, thinking that it was the moving men again, went downstairs to the door to answer it. But when she opened the door there were four people on her front steps—Jane Willey, Vera Phelps, and Genny and Bob McCarthy. Thinking at first that they had come to bring her some sort of gift, some sort of farewell offering, Nancy said, “Oh, how nice!” Then she saw their solemn faces and realized that she was mistaken.

  “May we come in?” Genny McCarthy said abruptly, and then, without waiting for a reply, stepped inside, brushing past Nancy, and the others followed her.

  “You thought you’d get away with this, I guess,” Vera Phelps said. “Trying to sneak away behind our backs. Well, you can’t hide a moving van.”

  “Get away with what?” Nancy said.

  “What is this?” Charlie said, coming down the stairs.

  “We know all about it,” Jane Willey said. “And we’re simply here to tell you that we know.”

  “Know about what?” Then Nancy’s fingers flew quickly to her lips. “You mean your watch?” she said.

  “We mean these people you’re trying to sell your house to,” Vera Phelps said. “You’re not going to get away with it. Not on this Lane.”

  “You mean the Robinsons?”

  “Of course we mean the Robinsons. Who else?”

  “What’s wrong with them? I met them just the other day. They’re lovely people, they’re—”

  “How big were their noses?” said Genny McCarthy.

  “He’s awfully nice,” Nancy said. “And she was here, taking some measurements. She’s a sweet little thing, with—”

  “Oh, don’t hand us that!” said Genny with a sneer. “The Jacob Robinsons? Changed from Rubinstein—the way they all do.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Charlie said. “Get out of here!”

  Bob McCarthy, it became suddenly apparent, was very drunk. He stood swaying in the center of the room. “That’s right,” he said thickly. “What are we doing here? Let’s go back to my place, have a little drink.”

  “Shut up, Bob,” said Genny.

  “Mr. Lord, this Lane is a Christian neighborhood and it always has been. We have an agreement here.”

  “What’s that? Another of your stupid rules?” Charlie said.

  “All their rules are stupid rules,” Bob McCarthy said.

  “There are plenty of other places where they can go,” Jane Willey said, “right here in Westmount, where they’re perfectly welcome. But not here.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Nancy said. “I know what you mean. But Mr. and Mrs. Robinson are not Jewish.”

  “The Jacob Robinsons? His wife is probably Becky—”

  “Her name is Carol,” Nancy said.

  “John Jacob Astor wasn’t Jewish, was he?” Charlie said. “Oh, get out of here, you people make me sick.”

  “He’s in the garment business,” Genny said. “What more proof do you need? I found that out just by looking in the phone book.”

  “But they are not Jewish, Genny!” Nancy said.

  “Why do you argue with these stupid bigots?” Charlie said.

  “Bigots,” Bob McCarthy repeated. “Come on. Let’s go. Let’s go back to my—”

  “Bob, will you shut your drunken mouth?” said Genny.

  “Anyway, you can’t do this without our approval,” Jane said. “And we’re unanimous in this. I speak for Edgar now; who happens to be president of the Roaring Brook Lane Homeowners’ Association, in case you didn’t know.…”

  “Unanimous? Where are the others?” Charlie said. “I want to hear from them. Where’s old Edgar? Where’s—”

  “Some men have jobs they have to work at,” Genny said.

  “Where’s my pal Alice?”

  “Alice?” said Jane Willey. “Poor Alice! Do you think she can bear to face you again after the lewd overtures you made to her?”

  Charlie laughed. “She made lewd overtures to me!” he said.

  “Revolting man …”

  “Well, anyway, you’re all too late because the deal’s all made and the house is sold,” Charlie said. “Now, get out.”

  “We happen to know,” Genny McCarthy said, “that the deal is not made. Your sale does not close until next Monday, October first.”

  “So what? I’m not going to do a thing about it.”

  Genny looked at him levelly for a moment, her cigarette poised in her hand. “I hear you want to work at our club,” she said.

  “Get out of here.…”

  “We members will have to vote on that, of course,” Genny said.

  “To hell with your members.”

  “Charlie! Stop this!” Nancy said.

  “I’ll sell my house to anybody I please.” He turned to Genny McCarthy. “And please stop flicking your ashes on my floor. Even the worst-mannered Jew would have better manners than that.”

  “Charlie, for God’s sake—”

  “Genny?” said Jane Willey. “I really don’t think we want this man working at our club under any circumstances, do you? In a position like that, where he’d be coming into contact with young people?”

  “You’re absolutely right, Jane,” said Vera. “I think I’d rather have a Jew on the Lane than him at our club. Oh, isn’t it nice that he’s finally going? Look what we’ve had to put up with—flagrant philandering—abortions—”

  “Now, wait a minute, Vera,” Genny said. “We weren’t going to get into any of that.”

  “Didn’t you read in the high-school paper how he likes the Russians? Let him go back to Russia where he belongs! Mrs. Lord,” Vera said, reaching out to touch Nancy’s hand, “I feel sorry for you, truly sorry.”

  “Get your filthy hands off my wife.”

  “Oh, Charlie,” Nancy said. “Charlie, please …”

  “Do you know what I said to Nancy the first night I met you all?” he said. “I said you were a bunch of stupid, mediocre, banal bores. And she agreed with me.”

  “No! I did not! I never said that. Genny … Vera … Jane—please listen to me. We’ve both been through so much. Charlie doesn’t mean what he’s saying. He—”

  “I certainly do mean it. Bores and boobs and bigots.”

  “Oh, Charlie! Stop!”

  Suddenly Bob McCarthy lurched toward Nancy and put o
ne hand heavily on her shoulder. “Now, wait a minute,” he said, and hiccuped. “Nice people. Is somebody saying this nice people is Jewish? This is a nice people, and we’re getting this nice people all,” he hiccuped again, “upset.”

  “Cut it out, Bob.”

  “My wife’s father was a Nazi,” Bob said, bending close to Nancy. “Everybody knows that. Not a nice people, my wife’s father. He had”—he gestured vividly—“hair. Big tufts of hair coming out of his ears.”

  “Bob, you shut up!” Genny said.

  Leaning against Nancy, Bob McCarthy said, “Jews. I love Jews. Christ was a Jew … right? So was Minnie Tannenbaum in the seventh … grade. She had … beautiful tits. How about you and I go have a little drink? Huh? Iron it all out?” Two large improbable tears were running down his cheeks. “I loved those … beautiful tits,” he said.

  “Will you horses’ asses get out of here before I call the police?” Charlie said and walked to the telephone. “I’ll give you exactly two minutes to clear out.”

  “Won’t you all please listen to me?” Nancy said.

  Bob McCarthy wagged a thumb in Charlie’s direction and said to Nancy, “He should let … you do the talking, maybe.”

  “Yes, can’t we talk about this in a civilized, tasteful way?”

  “She’s right,” Bob McCarthy said. “You forget her poor little kid died? Be nice. Civilized. Taste.”

  Charlie stepped quickly toward him. “I say fuck your civilization,” he said. “I say fuck your taste. Get out.”

  There was a long silence, and Nancy stood very still, her eyes closed. Then Genny McCarthy said, “Well, I think we’ve heard about enough, don’t you? Let’s go.”

  “Goodness yes!”

  Then they were all filing out the door. Just before he reached the door Bob McCarthy turned to Nancy, grinned foolishly, and said in a heavy voice, “Well, I did my best. I tried.” Then he was gone too, and the door was closed behind them all.

  “Well. Would you believe it?” Charlie said to Nancy after a moment. And then, “What are you crying for?”

  She brushed angrily at the tears in her eyes. “I’m not crying!” she said. “And of course I believe it.”