The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Two

by Morley Callaghan

  “Let’s go to a show tonight,” she said.

  “The show would hurt my eyes, Flora.”

  “Then let’s go down to the Greek’s and have some ice cream and listen to the nickelodeon.”

  “It’s quite an old machine,” he grinned cheerfully.

  “We should worry; maybe he’s got some new pieces.”

  So she washed and dried the dishes and they went down street to the ice cream parlor. The Greek did a splendid business in the summer months. The walls of the long parlor were blue, with many large, bright paintings of nymphs and fauns, garlands of flowers encircling each painting. The nickelodeon was at the back, and young fellows took turns putting in nickels. One of the Greeks with a white apron and hairy arms took the order for two butterscotch sundaes. Bill was at first interested in the sounds from the nickelodeon; then, restively, he asked Flora if she were enjoying herself. He had finished his sundae and sat at the table, his knees crossed, not listening to anything she said. A loud laugh and some giggles came from a group of fellows gathered around the nickelodeon. Two of them had hold of big Artie McGuin, a dark, clumsy fellow who blinked his eyes constantly, and who hadn’t been right since birth. Artie laughed awkwardly but good-naturedly and shook off the two fellows, and a Greek came from the soda fountain at the front of the store and made them all sit down at the tables. Bill stared resentfully at the boys who had been teasing Artie. He smiled politely when Mrs. Milligan and her daughter, on the way out, stood at the table and Mrs. Milligan invited them to come over some night and have a game of croquet on the lawn. Bill thanked her genially, but when she had gone he was silent and uninterested again. Flora became embarrassed, sure that the young people passing stared at them, and finally suggested that they go home.

  They got as far as the Catholic church on the corner, two blocks below Main Street, just before the railway crossing. Bill stopped under the chestnut tree at the corner. The church lawn was well kept, a low iron fence following the margin from the church door alongside the walk to the cinder driveway at the rear of the church.

  “Would you mind waiting here a few minutes, Flora?” he asked.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just going to take a look in the church.”

  “Man alive, what’s ailing you?”

  “Nothing. I just want to be in there when it’s dark and quiet. I kinda think I ought to have a talk with a priest. Wait here a minute, Flora.”

  He walked toward the church steps. She watched him hesitate at the top step, come down, and walk across the lawn to the presbytery. He stood on the lawn, looking in the lighted window of the front room. Finally he turned, went up the church steps again and into the church.

  She waited under the chestnut tree. A buggy and an old horse came down the street. Someone was talking on Ingram’s veranda across the road, and she tried to make out the words but could hear only voices. She walked out of the shadow of the tree and paced up and down in front of the church steps. Once she stood opposite the lighted window of the priest’s house, wondering what Bill had seen in the room. She saw Marjorie Stevens, Father Stacey’s housekeeper, come into the room, stand at the window, and then turn out the light. Marjorie was a slim pretty woman of thirty-five, aloof and dignified, who had gone to the city five years ago and had got married, and no one ever knew what had happened to her husband. Many people tried to be friendly with her and start interesting conversations, but she remained aloof and dignified. Flora suddenly felt angry at Bill. “He’s behavin’ like a nut — a juicy nut. What does a smart fellow like Bill want with monkeyin’ around like this?”

  Then he waved to her from the church step, came down lightly, two steps at a time, in good humor. Sullenly she walked beside him. Twice he spoke to her and she did not answer, so he shrugged his shoulders and began to whistle. On the old bridge opposite Starr’s house she felt she must talk at once, for she was angry and very curious, and wanted him to see that she was angry before discovering that she was curious. “You’re a fine one!’ she said. He kept on whistling. “You’re a fine one!” She took hold of his arm, asking mildly what he had done in the church.

  “Nothing whatever,” he said. “Absolutely nothing. Just sat in the dark and twiddled my fingers. There’s a red light up over the altar. I rather liked looking at it.” He had looked in the window of the house, thinking he might see the priest. If he had seen him he would probably have gone in and had a talk with him.

  A week later, the end of August, Flora had a long talk with old Mrs. Lawson. She had become uneasy about Bill, and now regarded him as a stranger, who worked too hard in the evenings and couldn’t sleep at night and went for long walks. Sometimes he went for a walk down on the pier, he said, or once or twice for a swim in the moonlight. Flora was sure that he had reached a point in his work where he’d become confused and discouraged. At first she had seen only books on geology in the sewing room, but recently he had brought home two books on paleontology and three short ones about chemistry. One night he was feeling good and explained to her that chemistry was the perfect illustration of form in the material world, a truth that he had grasped very quickly, and soon he would be able to demonstrate that all of life, scientifically speaking, could be regarded as a beautiful chemical formula. He was very much in earnest and told her he had decided to have a long talk with a priest about becoming a Catholic, because it was the next logical step to take in his work. Flora believed that he did have a talk with Father Stacey, for he explained, two days later that he was happy to find that he could lead a normal blameless life with a little effort and a careful examination of his conscience. Flora said to her mother-in-law that Bill had become far too scrupulous; living had become too complicated for him, and it was a nuisance having him worry whether his thoughts were in order and his life as worthy as his work.

  His mother said: “Willie’s probably making a great fool of himself. But he always did get impressions easy, and I’ll give him a good talking to. Anyway, his father was a good Anglican. Why should he fool around with any other church?”

  Flora went home to have an afternoon sleep, but couldn’t close her eyes. Before lying down she had looked at herself in the mirror, realizing that Bill hadn’t put his arms around her for a month. The diet he’d recommended had taken some fat off her shoulders. She was young and rather good-looking, and no one had put his arms around her for a long time.

  It was a hot afternoon. She began to breathe heavily, imagining her clothes were stifling her. She wiped sweat from her forehead. Trembling, she took off her blouse and put the palm of her hand on her shoulder; then sat down quickly, kicked off her shoes and pulled off her stockings, laughing. She walked over to the window and discovered a space between the wire screen and the sash. “That’s where the mosquitoes have been getting in, I bet,” she thought, and decided to take a fly swatter and, in the next few minutes, kill all the flies that were upstairs. So she got dressed slowly, got the fly swatter in the kitchen, and moved around aimlessly upstairs, occasionally killing flies. She was alone with her thoughts and was restless.

  On Friday afternoon she went for a walk with Pete Hastings. They walked down by the lake, far past the blue drop near the blockhouse, and beyond the vines where the kids played tree tag. Once they sat down for a long time. He put his arms around her. She became nervous and hesitant, and got up so quickly that he teased her the rest of the afternoon. She hadn’t felt so uncertain of herself since she had got married, and had often thought that a married woman would not get excited easily when a man put his arm around her.

  5

  On Friday at 4 p.m. Bill came home from work and sat on the front veranda before coming into the house. Flora, working in the kitchen, watched him through the screen door sit down slowly in the rocking chair. She went on getting supper and called him when she had poured tea.

  At one time he had been fond of salad; tonight he stared at the plate, unable to understand why it had been placed before him.

  “What’s
the matter, Bill?”

  “Nothing. Do I look like something is the matter?”

  “You look like you’ve been thinking a good deal.”

  “Well, I have in a way; I quit my job.”

  “You silly, silly, silly man. No! You’re just having some fun with me.”

  “It’s not funny. Does it sound funny?”

  “It doesn’t even sound funny.”

  “That’s the way it should be.”

  “You mean you quit your job on the paper?”

  “Yeah, I know it sounds bad, Flora, but I’ve quit my job on the paper. I felt I ought to do it and I did it. A man should not go on doing a thing when he feels like that about it.”

  “What did Johnny Williams say?”

  “He said it was too bad and was ridiculous enough to suggest I might change my mind in a week or two. Johnny doesn’t get the point, and God help me, Flora, looking at you and that expression on your face, I’d say you don’t get the point.”

  “I haven’t got any expression on my face.”

  “You have an expression on your face.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Stop moving your lips. Now stop it, do you hear? Stop crying. Here. Here, take my handkerchief. Go on now, eat your supper, and I’ll talk to you about it.”

  “Awright, Bill.”

  “No, I won’t start till you eat something. Dip your fork in the salad. Take a sip of tea.”

  He leaned back in the chair, linking his hands behind his head. He scratched his head slowly, letting his wrists come down gradually till they pressed against his eyes.

  “You’re with me, aren’t you, Flora?”

  “Ain’t I always with you, Bill?”

  “That’s right, only this is a little different. A long time now working on the paper’s been botherin’ me. Even on a small paper like this one there’s an awful lot of bunk tossed around, lies and suggestions, so a man can no longer be scrupulous. I don’t mean old Johnny isn’t all right. But he looks at it differently. Maybe I’ve got so I’m too scrupulous. I dunno about that, only it got to bothering my thoughts, I tell you. I can’t go on working and worryin’ over whether everything I’m doing’s right or wrong. And it’s not right. Say, how often in a day are you right? How often, afterward when you examine your conscience, are you wrong?”

  “Please tell me, Bill,” she said timidly, “what do you mean about your conscience?”

  “Oh, that’s simple, Flora. It’s an old custom in the Catholic Church and it’s too bad it went out of fashion with so many people. Sometimes a priest in a school would sit in front of a class and examine his own conscience and really be examining everybody’s conscience. But you don’t need that. A man can walk along the street and examine his conscience just as well.”

  “Who told you all that?”

  “I just picked it up somewhere.”

  “Please don’t talk any more about it, Bill.”

  “Why?”

  “It just don’t sound good, walking along the street doin’ that.”

  “I was just explaining why I quit my job.”

  “And now, while you’re at it, would you explain how we’re going to live?”

  “I’ll do something else.”

  “Not in this town, you idiot.”

  Getting up, he looked at her carefully. She glared at him, hoping he would get angry, but he merely stood there, regarding her indifferently, and she groped for words that might enrage him. If he would become violently angry and beat the table with his hands or strike her violently on the face, she knew she would like it. He pushed back the chair and walked out of the kitchen.

  He went upstairs. She heard him walking into the sewing room. A chair scraped, and he was sitting down. Then the white tablecloth, freshly creased and really a Sunday one her mother had given her last Christmas, attracted her attention. With the handle of a fork she made lines on the tablecloth, then stood up quickly and yelled upstairs: “Bill, oh Bill, you haven’t eaten any supper.” He did not answer. “Honest, Bill, I wasn’t tryin’ to get you sore.”

  For three minutes she waited at the foot of the stairs, feeling miserable because he had looked thin and half-starved. Then, in the front room, she lay down and felt surprisingly tired. Something should occur to her, a speech so impressive she could go upstairs and talk to Bill authoritatively. But she was afraid of what he might say. For the first time she realized that he was capable of terrifying her. The sofa was old, and thick black hairs, protruding through the cover, pricked her hip till she shifted her body to a more comfortable position. Often Bill, lying on the sofa, would be tickled by one of the hairs and jump up complaining that the sofa ought to have been thrown out years ago, though when she suggested getting a new sofa he had objected bitterly. She longed for old days when he was happy in the evenings. Tonight, after supper, he should have gone into the front room to lie on the sofa while she did the dishes, two pillows behind his head, and make strange but satisfactory noises on his mouth-organ. Not for two months had he played a tune. Nothing he might do with books would be as pleasant for her as the noises he got from the mouth-organ, though often she had made him quit playing, the sound getting on her nerves.

  She got up to go out to the backyard and look at the garden. Only a few white roses were on a single bush, but all July there were roses. It was poppy time. Bill, though not interested in flowers, occasionally noticed dark-red poppies. Neighbors had noticed the dark-red ones and asked for seeds, but always she carefully gave away seeds for pink or white poppies: it was no use everybody on the street having a yardful of the same fine red ones.

  Watering the rose bushes with a small green watering can, she felt that she was no longer in her own home. She watered all the flowers, then sat on a grocery box on the lawn long after it got dark, thinking of having many fine friends. Bill had grown aloof from her and stubbornly she told herself she would never again suggest that he make love to her, as she had done the night before. Her legs were cramped, sitting on the grocery box, and she felt more restless than ever before. Her hand, patting the side of the box, touched the grass, and the dew felt good. She ran her fingers lightly along the surface of the grass, then touched her forehead with the moist tips. Three times she did it and her forehead felt cool. The yard was shadowed by the house and a light was in Mrs. Fulton’s kitchen window next door. A dog howled down the street, and in front of the house she heard Mike barking eagerly, the bark moving farther away as he trotted down the cinder path. Letting her breath out slowly, she got up, stretched her back, and walked around the alleyway to the front gate, to go over to Dolly Knox’s house.

  Next morning, talking to Bill, she mentioned Pete Hastings’ name four times, to worry him; but it never occurred to him that there was a personal implication, since he found Pete uninteresting and was astonished whenever anyone took him seriously.

  He was staying home all day. In the morning he got up at nine o’clock, had two slices of whole-wheat bread and an orange, and went upstairs to work for three hours. Always at noon hour he seemed tired and puzzled, and she imagined the work was getting very difficult. One afternoon he came down at three o’clock and complained of light spots floating in front of his eyes. She suggested that he rest a few days. He shook his head, went on working and next day had a very bad headache. He drank two cups of hot water and went out for a walk, without eating any breakfast. At noontime he did not come back and she was so worried she could not eat anything. Later on in the afternoon he returned and said he had forgotten all about the time, and had just kept on walking around the town.

  His hair was uncombed and his shirt open at the throat. He hadn’t shaved all week, and his hands were dirty. She talked bitterly about his carelessness and his shirts, and one boot laced only halfway up, and said that soon he would be walking around the town in his bare feet. He answered mildly that there was no reason why he shouldn’t wear a tie and, fingering his chin, said that he might just as well shave, only he had forgotten about it. Sh
e told him angrily to get his own dinner.

  She walked over to his mother’s place and they had a long talk about Bill. The old woman offered to talk to him at once, and on the way over Flora insisted he would come to a bad end. He was sitting in the kitchen, at the table, a knife and a fork and a plate in front of him.

  His mother put her hand on his shoulder and told him he was starving himself and was a fool not to eat.

  “Of course I’ll eat,” he said.

  “Go ahead, cook a steak, Flora,” his mother said.

  “I’ll eat till I’m full,” he said. “That’s all you can expect of anybody.”

  But next day he ate very little and she avoided him in the house. She avoided him but really watched him carefully, hoping he would notice that she was no longer interested in him and discovered that he was no longer aware of her. She wanted to hurt him and sneered at him. She put food on the table at suppertime and turned her back on him to read the papers from the city. In the evening she went downtown by herself and met Pete Hastings and allowed him to bring her home. He was such a gentleman that they walked very slowly, and they stepped off the road into a shadow under a big tree and he kissed her eagerly. A nighthawk swooped by screeching, and she trembled and put her arm tightly around Pete. They walked slowly away from the tree, saying nothing important but talking happily. Before they got to the corner she left him, promising that he could see her in the house some night when Bill was out for the evening.

  Bill continued taking the long walks in the evening. Usually he went alone, though Mike, the fox terrier, followed sometimes. Once Bill came home and shut the door before Mike got in. The dog scratched at the door and howled, and Bill asked Flora where it had been all evening. Another time he was going down the front path at twilight, Mike tagging at his heels, and he turned, kicking out viciously, catching the dog on the lower jaw. Mike yelped and ran back to the house.