The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  Vera was so relieved to hear this, she almost rose as if to give Clifford one of her special kisses.

  “I know Dr. Ray through my dear brother Jack. And if you will allow me to get in touch with him I know he will see you in Gilboa or for all I know he will come here. But I will drive you to see the doctor.”

  “You would do that, Clifford?” Vera pretended he had agreed to a difficult even impossible assignment.

  “For you, Vera, I would do anything to chase away your sorrow.”

  Clifford came over to Vera, took her hand in his, and for the first time kissed her in a manner so resolutely Vera burst into one of her most resounding laughs.

  “But isn’t Gilboa a bit of a trip, Clifford?”

  “You know better,” he proposed such a statement. “I have Jack’s darling car now. Gilboa is only a half hour from where we are.”

  “My eldest boy, Richard, used to go there, come to think of it.”

  “Richard went to see the doctor?” Clifford wondered.

  Vera caught the alarm in Clifford’s voice.

  “Oh, it was not serious.” She spoke also with a kind of perturbation.

  “You know as well as I the kind of company he kept before he went to New York.”

  Everybody remembered Richard as a stage-struck young man who finally had achieved a modest success on the stage.

  DR. RAY’S THREE story house was nearly invisible by reason of a massive wild ivy and a small forest of oak and elm trees which further made the edifice nearly hidden from view.

  Clifford did not bother to knock and helped Vera into the waiting room.

  As if he was expecting them, the doctor came out and took Vera in his arms. He was a man who had watched his own health so carefully except for his Havana cigars that he could have passed for forty instead of advanced old age.

  “You are in good hands I see,” Dr. Ray took Clifford’s hand.

  Leaving Clifford in the anteroom, Dr. Ray drew up an antique overstuffed chair for his guest.

  “Is it about Richard?” he began.

  Vera immediately flushed and took a hand stitched handkerchief from her purse as if she perhaps meant to stop the beginning of tears.

  “Richard is as far as I know, dear doctor, well in New York circles of theater.”

  Vera almost babbled as she spoke of her own ailment.

  “I wish most of my women patients, Vera, looked as well as you,” the doctor said.

  Vera a little rattled told the doctor of her malaise (a word the doctor had used in times past with Vera’s health). Vera had always found Dr. Ray capable of putting her completely at ease. She felt now a wonderful kind of drowsiness. And it seemed to her that she was telling the doctor all the years of heartache and sorrow which her life had been ever since her marriage to Will.

  “The last time I was happy . . . ,” she heard her own voice as if someone else was speaking in her stead. On and on came her torrent of words.

  The next thing she remembered the doctor was speaking again with a voice which calmed her even more deeply. After some other questions and answers, the doctor brightened, and opening a door to an adjoining room in no time at all came back with a small box which resembled a gift rather than something from the pharmacopoeia.

  “I never, well almost never prescribe drugs when there are herbs that cry out to be taken by my women patients.”

  Vera now daubed her eyes at the doctor’s mentioning herbs and not medicine.

  “You will find these little herbals the very thing you will be happy with.”

  Vera thanked the doctor again and again. She felt already better than she had in weeks.

  “If you need more of these little fellows,” he said and touched the herbal box he had given Vera, “please let Clifford bring you again. But I say this that without a doubt you may not need to see me as your doctor but as a friend from times past.”

  Grateful for anything the doctor could give her, Vera again broke into sobs, and then just as suddenly into tears, more refreshing than if she had been caught in a small spring shower. She all at once saw she was with Clifford who ushered her into his car. Vera felt so much more in good spirits that Clifford could not help telling her she looked the picture of health by whatever the doctor had given her. And Clifford helping her in his car began whistling to Vera’s added gratefulness. The doctor had been of such benefice.

  “You look better already,” he said. He touched her hand and pressed it as they reached Vera’s house.

  THAT EVENING VERA undid the costly package. The doctor had explained several times he had given her an herb, not an ordinary medicine. Sitting alone in her own room, she took two of the herbs and drank them down with some spring water drawn from her well.

  To her wonder within five or ten minutes she felt the discomfort which had plagued her for many months leaving her entirely. She picked up the package of herbs and wondered if they would tell her what she had taken. There was no written explanation of their name.

  LATE THAT EVENING long past her usual hour of retirement, Vera sat alone. But now as if she had entered the room to be with her she felt the presence of her mother.

  “Minnie,” Vera spoke aloud.

  As a young girl she had been allowed at times to call her mother by her Christian name. But it seemed now to Vera that Minnie herself had entered the room. It was then Vera could at last realize that she had only been happy when she lived the carefree and even paradisiacal life with Minnie. Everything else—her marriage to Will, the disaster he had brought to Minnie and her, her being the mother of three ungovernable boys who had brought even more sorrow to her than their father Will—her life then as now was a sea voyage that knew only storms and near shipwreck.

  And now having swallowed Dr. Ray’s herbs, she was again the young girl with Minnie in a timeless region of some unknown world but the only world she had ever been happy in. One of her young roomers awakened her, Neils Laferty. His fresh youthful face was not unwelcome. Neils asked her permission to postpone paying her the rent past due for his room.

  Vera told him not to spend a minute worrying about the matter. He looked rather skeptical at her reply then smiling, he took her hand in his and kissed it.

  YOUNG AND HANDSOME as a youth, Will was also as pure and unversed in passion as a high school boy. Cliff had discovered his neighbor when he had shown Will some of his secret and prized books of pornography albeit the kind done by the greatest Italian artists.

  After he had perused these burning portrayals of lust and passion, Will had become afflicted with a nasty headache and, at Cliff’s suggestion, had lain down on an antique sofa. It was then Cliff administered for the first time his imported coffee. Will’s headache, if not entirely dissipated, was banished in part so that Will could sit up instead of lying prone. From then on like a youth seeking forbidden pleasures, Will would venture again in Cliff’s mansion to peep at the unspeakable and taste again the caffeine known only to wealthy sybarites.

  Word soon leaked out that Clifford had escorted Vera to Dr. Ray’s mysterious sanctuary. Will Patterson struggled day and night not to visit Clifford in order to get news of Vera. But in the end, shame-faced and lame, he rang the front door bell of the Shrader home.

  Cliff answered the bell with a broad smirk. He would have bet money of course that Will would yield to temptation and present himself to Cliff. Cliff knew that Will never drank strong drink. He also once offered his friend a cup of English tea which he turned up his nose at after sipping a couple of teaspoons of in the words of Will “dishwater.” Will’s only vice Cliff remembered was his love of coffee which he liked to drink black. But he seldom was able to find any coffee which deserved the name of caffeine. Cliff had gone out of his way then to procure some expensive Colombian coffee which he now brewed to celebrate Will’s yielding to temptation.

  As Will drank one cup after another of the steaming black luxury, Clifford cold sober studied his guest. Will looked even younger, he believed, than his lost darling V
era. His hair was only partially gray and he did not weigh more than he had weighed as a twenty-five-year-old man. He stood six-foot-three in his stocking feet and his eyes which Vera once described as the color of robin eggs blue, sparkled like a youth looking for an ideal love.

  Today Will, now assigned devotee of the forbidden, managed to get out, “What on earth did Dr. Ray find Vera ill of?”

  Clifford took a long time replying and had a small glass of imported brandy after asking Will’s permission to so imbibe. “I could not help hearing what your dear girl Vera and the doctor were saying.”

  Will sat up a bit straight, and his mouth opened hungrily. But Cliff was in no mood to yield to Will’s eagerness to know why Vera had gone to the good doctor.

  “Your wife,” Clifford used the noun on purpose, “though it is impossible to believe, is going through the change of life.”

  “Change of life?” Will spoke with total disbelief. “Impossible.”

  “I would have thought so too, but in one of Vera’s conversations with me she was overwrought, and told me her other doctor had prescribed a pill containing mares’ urine which is known as a palliative to one going through change of life.”

  Will fell back again on the sofa as if his good friend Clifford had shot him. “Our Vera, like any ordinary woman, is menstruating.”

  Will, unversed in so much of life’s ordinary transitions, gagged slightly and he shaded his eyes. Clifford was immediately at hand with another cup of steaming strong restoring caffeine. Will was barely able to say thank you. From then on Clifford and Will Patterson were if not bosom friends, closely knit in forbidden secrets.

  AFTER LEAVING CLIFFORD and his long bewildering recital of Vera’s visit to old Dr. Ray and her facing “change of life,” Will found himself in such a state of nerves, he had no thought of doing anything but taking a long stroll. Going to his lonely bachelor’s hall as he called home now was unthinkable. He was also wondering if Clifford had not put something stronger than coffee in the drink Clifford had carefully prepared for him. Will felt both excited and in an angry, irascible mood. Before he knew it, he found himself standing in front of Vera’s rooming house! From the front rooms he could hear a myriad of voices, laughter, and a mixed chorus of hilarity. He felt as shut out from this happy conviviality as if he was a beggar or a common tramp. Before he knew what he was doing he had entered the house of joy.

  Coming toward it at that moment was Vera bearing a heavy tray of refreshments. Vera did not see Will bearing down on her until she had bumped with force against him. The steaming supper spilled in all its richness and heat against his jacket and stiff collar. Both Vera and Will looked at the damage wrought with a kind of horror. He heard her call out as she might have years ago, “Will!”

  Finally collecting herself, he heard her voice. “Will, sit here on the settee while I call for some help for us.”

  Will was “so far out of it,” in his phrase, he hardly realized that a young woman from the kitchen was helping Vera take care of Will’s ruined suit and his brand new tie and collar.

  Will felt Vera’s hands move over him so that this closeness made him even more if possible beside himself.

  HOW LONG THEY sat side by side with Vera lamenting the damage to his clothing, Will hardly knew. The last word however he heard come from Vera was in a cordial note. “Will, you are always welcome here on Friday when we have our Friday summer special.”

  The next thing he was conscious of was he was walking in a labored gait—where he didn’t know.

  “That damned coffee,” he said aloud. “Cliff put something in it, I’ll be damned.”

  It was too early or too late to go to his own gloomy digs.

  All at once as when he had happened on the supper in progress at Vera’s he saw he had come upon Bide a Wee, Spirits and Ales.

  He stumbled in and was greeted by the owner bartender Hal Jaqua, who tried to conceal his amazement that Will Patterson, known as a spoil sport and teetotaler, had entered his disreputable abode.

  “Will, Will, what’ll it be?” His cordiality would have melted an iceberg. Will, now helpless for the events of the day and evening, slumped down on a barstool.

  “Coffee?”

  “Coffee be damned!” Will responded. Looking at the bill of fare in great red letters, Will almost shouted, “I will have brandy.”

  Jaqua’s Adam’s apple rose and fell convulsively. He put a nice glass of French brandy before his guest. Will raised the glass, bowed, and swallowed the entire draught in one swallow.

  ADA COE, AFTER a career of giving piano lessons to the ungifted from the coffers of wealthy parents, found she had a more rewarding gift as a psychic consultant. Beginning modestly, she soon found she had more people seeking psychic advice than her years at the pianoforte. Everyone, she once remarked, is dying to know the future; men, women, even children.

  Vera was no exception. A few days after Will’s unscheduled appearance at her Friday gala, Vera could think of nothing else. She even wondered if she could possibly forgive Will’s past behavior and take him back, divorce or no divorce. But having called her mother Minnie for advice, Minnie had warned her that to go back to a man who had ruined all of those he touched would be the act of supreme folly.

  This advice from Minnie sent Vera therefore to seek the good word from Ada.

  Ada’s prices had soared since she taught piano lessons to ungifted youngsters. She now dwelt in a rather expensive three-story mansion, and had undergone some kind of beauty treatments so that on entering her studio Vera did not at first recognize her. She recognized Vera immediately and knew Vera would be a perfect consultant to the unknown hidden powers of the psychic.

  First of course Ada insisted on Vera’s drinking two or three cups of Japanese tea. Both ladies were impressed by the changes in Vera’s own change in perception, and her willingness to hear what the unseen powers had to say to her.

  Ada insisted they both close their eyes for a few minutes and inquire if the great powers were ready. They were more than ready as the unknown spirits saw in Vera a perfect seeker of the mysteries.

  Unlike many psychics Ada enjoyed her work. Nothing inquired of her bored her. She felt an immediate electricity when hearing Vera’s anguished questions. For one thing, should she consider remarrying Will? For another, if she did not soon marry one of her suitors, how on earth could she continue to keep body and soul together in view of the rising cost of the present world of dollars and cents?

  “You must never dream of giving up your boarding and rooming house,” Ada began after another cup or two of tea.

  This rather mundane message from the occult dampened Vera’s spirit. She had expected something more of the unseen.

  “Ah, but listen, dear heart,” Ada scolded a little. “Your house for wayfarers is the ideal meeting place of one who can be your all-in-all.”

  “And where is he?” Vera wondered crisply.

  “There is a rather young gentleman, I see dear Vera, whom you have not as yet come to know. And your rooming house is the exact site he will be drawn to. Make no other plans until you meet him. Is that clear? No other plans.”

  But Vera, ever practical, wanted to know when this prince charming might be expected.

  Ada closed her eyes again, for nearly five minutes.

  “I see the number 5 and 7; five days perhaps or more correctly five months.”

  Vera went back into a trance of anticipation and wishfulness. “I see,” she said after a long wait during which Ada offered her a tiny sweet probably also from Japan.

  Whether it was the tea, the sweet, or the message, Vera suddenly felt uplifted, or inspired—even hopeful.

  Both ladies rose at the same time, perhaps propelled to do so by the psychic forces themselves.

  But when Vera offered to give her seer a crisp bill, Ada having noted the denomination threw up her hands and said, “Not one cent from you, my dear girl. Absolutely nothing. Perhaps later.”

  Vera however was somehow d
isappointed, as if not to give the psychic reading something was perhaps to nullify its promise, its seriousness.

  At last, after more protests Ada accepted one of the bills now offered and kissed it gingerly. It was this kiss of the money that somehow restored Vera’s faith in the mysterious psychic reading.

  DAYS, WEEKS PASSED and Vera heard nothing from Ada Coe. Going through some old clippings one afternoon Vera discovered a little book published by an obscure “New Thought” semi-religious organization. Leaping through the book Vera came across a sentence that Ada had once spoken to Vera some time past. “Nothing is ever lost,” the sentence read. Vera had never forgotten this statement. She was not sure what the words meant, but she was sure they were from some great wisdom and the words meant something, Vera was sure, for her present spiritual darkness.

  She plunged again into her work as the operator of a boarding and rooming business. She was often surprised at the sighs that came unbidden from her. A deep depression had overtaken her. She had come to the realization that Ada’s psychic pronouncements were probably no deeper than fortune telling. At the same time Vera still believed in Ada. Why, she did not know. And the crowning bit of wisdom, that “nothing is ever lost,” kept recurring to her mind.

  ONE DAY A special carrier arrived at her house. For a moment Vera felt the unfamiliar messenger was bringing some bad news. He asked her to sign document after document, and to Vera’s bewilderment she saw the package had come from Morocco in Africa.

  She took the package inside but did not open it for a few hours as her business required her immediate attention.

  It was not until that evening and after her boarding house was closed that Vera was able to open the package. Inside was what looked like a kind of legal document. Vera went to her own room to get a pair of stronger glasses. She did not like to use glasses while operating her boarding house. The glasses made her look older, she feared.

  She was grateful now that she had the spectacles on. The legal document was a check. She could not believe she was reading the figures correctly. But after reading and re-reading the figure she saw that she was being given an international check for twenty thousand dollars. The donor was Dan Schofield whom she had known some years past. He was a close friend of her youngest boy and Vera had always feared Dan was not a proper companion for her son. There had been rumors Dan had led a dissolute life and was even arrested at one time in Chicago. But she had always liked Dan despite the rumors. She had done him many favors and had listened to his own sorrows and problems. Now all her kindness was being rewarded. However, looking more carefully at the accompanying papers, she read to her shock that the donor Daniel Schofield had died in Africa a month or so past and the money had been sent to Vera as part of his will.