The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  Inside, Luke was about to leave, under the impression Dan was not at home. Then he thought of the thefts. A kind of uncontrollable wrath gave him the encouragement to remain. He heard some sound down the long, brightly-lit hall. His sense of outrage over the thefts allowed him to walk toward the room where he heard the sounds. He entered a large kind of sitting room which contained a number of upholstered chairs arranged as if for a meeting of some kind. Then he could hear someone singing in the room adjoining.

  “Just a minute!” It was Dan’s voice.

  Again Luke had the wish to leave and forget the whole affair. In his discomfort he had come to the conclusion Dan could not have been the thief.

  As he turned to leave, the door to the room, from which Dan’s voice came, opened. At first Dan appeared thunderstruck at the sight of Luke.

  “Why, Luke,” Dan greeted him, “I can’t believe my eyes. What a surprise!”

  Dan was silent, then stared at Luke for a full minute.

  Luke on the other hand couldn’t get over Dan’s appearance. He had on evening clothes!

  Usually Dan dressed (in the words of Luke’s mother) in a very casual manner, by which she meant he appeared slovenly. Tonight he resembled a young man out of a fashion magazine. His curly hair was carefully combed (his mother once laughingly called it marcelled). His cheeks were flushed to an extent they appeared almost touched with rouge.

  “Take a chair, why don’t you,” Dan spoke unlike his usual self-assured manner.

  Luke almost stumbled into one of the mammoth, cushiony affairs which might have just come from the upholsterer.

  Dan walked around the room aimlessly, occasionally glancing at his guest.

  “Tell me what I can do for you, Luke,” he spoke as if he was addressing a stranger.

  Luke shook his head. A sigh almost like a sob came out from him.

  “See here, Luke, what is the matter? You look so confounded upset.”

  Then going directly up to Luke and observing him closely, he all but shouted, “Do you know how pale you are, Luke!”

  Luke touched his face with his hand, as if paleness could be checked by touch.

  “You’re so dressed up tonight, Dan,” Luke changed the subject. “Are you going to town?”

  “I was going to the dance tonight,” Dan mumbled.

  Then Dan sat down in a chair rather at a distance from Luke and studied Luke’s face. “But I needn’t go now you’re here!” he finished effusively.

  Luke showed surprise at this remark. Then all at once, remembering Dan’s comment that he looked pale, he felt all at once indisposed. A thin thread of spittle came out from his lips.

  “Let me get you a drink,” Dan jumped up and hurried out of the room.

  He returned with a bottle of brandy and a glass, and pouring out a shot, he brought the glass directly to Luke’s lips.

  “Go ahead, drink it,” Dan spoke with authority. Luke obeyed.

  “Drink all of it,” Dan insisted.

  Even after Luke drank some more, there was some brandy left in the glass as Luke handed it back to Dan. Dan drank off the residue. Then grasping the bottle, he poured himself a full glass and downed that.

  “You’re very troubled, you know,” he told Luke impatiently, and then all at once smiled a kind of smile Luke had never seen on Dan’s face before.

  “I’d best be going then,” Luke proposed.

  “Going! For cripes’ sake!” Dan shouted now. “Before you’ve even told me why you came to see me, you’re going!”

  “But you’re off to a dance!”

  “I’ve already forgotten the dance,” Dan replied and gave Luke so eloquent a look the younger boy let out another sigh; and removing a large blue handkerchief from his hip pocket, he wiped his lips assiduously.

  “You must have come here for something, Luke. And do you realize you’ve never bothered to visit me before tonight.”

  “You never invited me,” Luke complained.

  “You didn’t need an invitation, and you know that! You know you are welcome here more than anybody else!”

  “Know! I don’t know!” As he said this, Luke looked about the room as if the opulence surrounding him was the reason for his never having been here before.

  “I want you to take a little more brandy,” Dan spoke with a kind of lofty inflection.

  “If you think so,” Luke said in a monotone.

  “Unless you mind drinking out of the same glass I drank from,” Dan laughed as he poured Luke another drink from the bottle.

  Luke stared at the edges of the glass; then closing his eyes, he drank it all at one gulp and handed the glass back to Dan.

  “What is it now?” Dan wondered softly. “What do you want to tell me?”

  “You don’t know?” Luke raised his voice slightly.

  Dan avoided looking at Luke now.

  “Dan, see here,” Luke lowered his voice, “Why don’t you go to the dance, and I’ll be going back home.”

  “Because I don’t want to go to the dance now, smarty. Why should I leave you alone here. Especially since you won’t tell me why you’ve showed up here out of the blue!”

  “Are you scared I might steal something if you go away and leave me?”

  “What in the hell do you mean by that remark?”

  “All right then. Let me ask you. Why did you do it?” Luke had gone very pale again.

  “Do what?” Dan muttered between his teeth.

  “Took money from my mom! When you’re rich as Croesus!”

  “Money?” Dan spoke crazily. “What money!” He turned and picked up the bottle of brandy and drank thirstily from it.

  “You don’t know what money I am talking about?”

  “Wait a minute, just wait,” Dan said. He passed his hand over his eyes; then blinking, he mumbled something.

  “You did take the money, why not say it, Dan. Say it, Goddamn it. Get it off your chest.”

  Dan kept shaking his head. He ran his fingers through his thick auburn hair and was silent.

  “That’s why I came here tonight, and you damned well knew it the minute you set eyes on me!”

  “Supposin’ I told you I don’t know why I took the money; what would you say to that?” Dan searched Luke’s face for an answer.

  “You sure don’t need the money, do you,” Luke sneered, and he waved a hand at the fancy wallpaper and drapes.

  “So go ahead, judge me then! When you’ve never been through the mill, never had to go through the gauntlet like me. Always safe at home with your mom and little Vance. A real mama’s boy, aren’t you. Never did anything wrong!”

  Having said this, Dan rose and walked aimlessly about the room. Then seizing the bottle, he drank more of the brandy and wiped his mouth noisily with his free hand.

  “So look down on me and go to hell!” Dan shouted. “What do you know about life. You spoiled little snot.”

  “But you did steal the money. Why not say it?”

  “You call taking chicken feed stealing? All right. Sure I took it. But not to steal.”

  “What in hell did you take it for then?” And Luke all of a sudden took the brandy bottle up and, following Dan’s example, drank direct from the bottle.

  “Ask me the question again, why don’t you,” Dan growled. “Why did I steal? Ain’t that your question.”

  Luke shrank now at the rage in Dan’s eyes and mouth.

  “Why did I steal? And do you know what the answer is?” And walking over to Luke, he took both the boy’s hands in his. “The answer is: I don’t know if I was to be shot why I took it.” Going more closely up to Luke, he slapped him sharply across the face. “You good people!” he shouted. “You make me sick.”

  “What’s being good have to do with you stealing, will you tell me that,” Luke said as he touched the place where Dan had slapped him as if the blow had given him something he stood in need of. “You sure didn’t need the money, did you? A rich boy like you,” and Luke snorted with anger but kept touching
the place where Dan slapped him.

  “For your information I am the poorest son-of-a-bitch who ever lived. It’s you and Vance and your mother are the rich ones, but you are too spoiled and pampered to know it! I am dying of my own poverty! Dying!” As he said this Dan approached Luke again so closely Luke covered his face as if he expected a new blow.

  Dan pulled Luke’s hands away from his face.

  “You and Vance and your mother have everything, everything I don’t have and never will have! You have one another for one thing. You live in a real love nest. Don’t interrupt me, or I will slap you to sleep! You three lack nothing in my eyes.”

  “And you stand there and tell me you don’t have a lot!” Luke rushed to the fray. “All this luxury,” and he waved his hand at the chandeliers and the fine molding of the walls.

  “What do I have? Less than nothing. My mother hasn’t got ten minutes a year for me. I’m not even positive she’s my mother. I don’t think I ever heard her call me son. My dad, if he was my dad, was never home. Spent all his time, before he shot himself, at the races trying to rake in more money. They meant zero to me, and I never even meant a zero to them.”

  “But what’s all that got to do with your thieving!” Luke cried out as if he saw another blow coming.

  “Thieving!” Dan jumped up as if a hot iron had touched him.

  “What do you call it, taking money from my mother’s meager earnings!” Luke drew closer to him.

  All at once Dan became quiet, thoughtful. “I always left a few quarters and fifty-cent pieces from what I took.”

  “And what good did that do you, then?”

  “Now you’re getting to it, ain’t you. What good did it do, yes. Let me tell you something,” Dan advanced again as close as possible to his visitor. “I don’t have a clue as to why I took the money in the kitchen cabinet. All I know is you and Vance and your mom have everything. As I say, you live in a love nest! That’s right, a love nest! You have each other. And I have nothing and never have had anything and won’t never have anything in the future.”

  Luke stared speechless. His mouth was filled with half-swallowed brandy, and as it overflowed to his chin, he began to wipe his face with his handkerchief. Dan grabbed the handkerchief from him and began to wipe the boy’s lips carefully and then silently handed him back the handkerchief.

  “I always hoped I would have the three of you for my own friends,” Dan said looking up at the ceiling. “I thought you would share some of the love you had from each other. But you didn’t have none to spare, did you.”

  Luke now held the handkerchief awkwardly in his hands, staring at it as if it was something that had a pulse.

  “You are the only family that I ever had,” Dan spoke so low his words were nearly inaudible. “But, as I say, I soon realized you didn’t have nothing to spare for me. So it was, I guess, then I began to steal from you. I did so ’cause I wanted to have something from you, I guess. Something I could touch and feel.”

  Luke covered his eyes with his hands. Dan stared at him fixedly; then going over to Luke he pulled his hands away from his eyes.

  “I want you to watch me as I testify against myself, do you hear.” The sternness of his voice made Luke gaze at Dan in a kind of hushed desperation. “I have kept all the small change and some loose strings that happened to be in the drawer in a little hiding place of my own. I wish somebody loved me enough to steal them from me! But nobody loves me. Nor ever will.”

  “My head is swimming,” Luke mumbled, but perhaps Dan did not hear him.

  “Anyhow, I was planning on leaving town even before you came here tonight. So when you go home, Luke, you can tell your mother I will never come to your house again. You can all sleep peacefully from now on. I won’t trouble your domestic bliss! Will you tell her?”

  Luke had wanted to tell Dan that if he left town after what they had said tonight that he would not be able to bear it. He felt he could almost fall to his knees and beg Dan not to leave. He wanted to say he would feel somehow lost without him. He walked toward the door.

  “I don’t know what I’ll say to her,” Luke said, after the silence between them.

  “Before you go, Luke may I ask one last favor of you.”

  “What is it?” Luke turned to stare at Dan.

  “Will you grant me the favor?”

  “Yes I will,” Luke practically shouted.

  “Let me kiss you.”

  Luke advanced toward Dan in the manner of a sleepwalker.

  Dan waited quite a while before slowly, chastely, even icily kissing Luke quietly first on his mouth then over each of his eyes. Dan then broke away and rushed into the next room and closed the door.

  WHERE WERE YOU so long?” His mother was waiting up for him.

  “Where’s Vance?” Luke wondered.

  His mother went up to him just then, “Do I smell liquor on your breath?” she asked. When there was no answer she said, “Vance is asleep upstairs.”

  “I hear tell Dan is leaving town,” Luke said, and sat down in mother’s favorite chair. “Maybe for good.”

  “Did you have a talk with him?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “No, Mama, I’m not. I don’t see what the point would be now if it’s true we won’t be seeing him for a good long time. It ain’t likely he’d admit to anything now anyway.”

  She shook her head. It was the thought Luke was drinking which occupied her mind.

  They both sat there then in complete silence.

  “It’s so very late, Luke, I will bid you goodnight. Don’t stay up too much longer then. Do you hear, Luke.”

  Luke nodded.

  His mother blew him a kiss and went toward the front stairs.

  But then coming suddenly back into the room, she said looking nowhere in particular, “If Dan didn’t steal the money, who did then, Luke, I ask you?”

  “The wind, Mama. The wind.”

  REACHING ROSE

  Mr. Sendel in his late years spent almost the entire evening in his favorite saloon, seated in an imposing manner on the center barstool from where he could survey very close to Richard, the bartender, all that went on. After a few drinks which he sipped very slowly, Mr. Sendel would gaze absentmindedly at the telephone booth nearest him.

  Then giving another taste to his drink, leaving it more than half full, he would make a rather stately progress to the booth, partly closing the door. He would take down the receiver and hesitantly begin speaking into the mouthpiece.

  Actually Mr. Sendel was talking only to himself. He would talk for several minutes into the silent phone, explaining how worried he was and how despairing it was at his time of life when all or almost all those dear to one have departed.

  Opening the booth door wide, Mr. Sendel would stroll back to the bar and finish his drink. Feeling the eyes of others fastened upon him after a while he would again leave to go back to the phone booth.

  He was convinced that nobody suspected he was in the booth talking to himself. Not even the bartender who was smart suspected it, he consoled himself.

  Mr. Sendel always went through the motions of dialing the number, however, to throw anybody off the scent who might be watching, and then he would begin speaking again through the black opening of the phone. As he spoke the cold blackness of the mouthpiece warmed up slightly, throwing back the smell of the liquor he had drunk, the tobacco fumes, even perhaps the smell of the dental work he was always having done.

  As he talked into the phone he felt, if not quieter, more of one piece, whereas when he sat at the bar he would often feel like a pane of glass struck by an invisible hammer and so about to crash, not in one piece, but all over, so that the broken glass would fall into shimmering and tiny silver particles to the floor.

  Mr. Sendel now talked to prevent himself from collapsing like glass into smithereens.

  When Mr. Sendel first began going to the telephone booth he had talked only to himself, but this had never reall
y satisfied him. First of all he no longer had anything more he wanted to say to himself. He was an old man, and he did not care about himself; he no longer actually wanted to exist as he was now. Often as he sat at the bar he wished that he could become invisible, disembodied, with just his mind at work, observing. He wished the painful husk of ancient flesh which covered him would be no more, that he might live only remembering the past currents of his life. Perhaps, he reflected, that was all immortality was: the release from the painful husk of the flesh with the mind free to wander without the accumulated harvest of suffering.

  Later when he would go to the telephone, he would pretend to talk with people whom he once knew, but after a while he tired also of this pretense. The people he really cared for were all dead. They had all been gone for many years. He realized this for the first time when he was in the phone booth. “They are all gone,” he had said into the mouthpiece. “All of them.” He had sat there for a long time after that, thinking, the mouthpiece unspoken into, the receiver lying in the palm of his hand like a wilted bouquet. Finally a man had tapped on the pane of the telephone booth. “Are you finished?” he asked Mr. Sendel somewhat anxiously. He had looked at the man a moment, then nodded slowly, and turning to the mouthpiece he said, “Goodbye then, dear.”

  He saw that the man in his hurry to get into the telephone booth did not notice anything unusual in his behavior.

  He went back to his place at the bar and ordered another brandy.

  IT WAS THE next evening things came to a head.

  “What I like about you, Mr. Sendel, is you are always busy,” the bartender greeted him. “You always have something on tap. That’s why you look so young.”

  He looked at the bartender without changing his expression, despite the surprise which he felt at such a remark.

  “Isn’t that true, sir,” the bartender asked him hesitantly.

  “You really think I look occupied?” Mr. Sendel wondered in a tone rather unlike himself, perhaps because for the first time in that bar, for the first time perhaps in many years, he had made a comment about himself.