by Irwin Shaw
Oh, that’s it, Thomas thought. The sonofabitch knows. He didn’t say anything.
“This is a clean house, Tommy,” Uncle Harold said. “The family is respected. Your aunt is received in the best homes. You would be surprised if I told you what my credit is at the bank. I have been approached to run for the State Legislature in Columbus on the Republican ticket, even though I have not been born in this country. My two daughters have clothes … I challenge any two young ladies to dress better. They are model students. Ask me one day to show you their report cards, what their teachers say about them. They go to Sunday school every Sunday. I drive them myself. Pure young souls, sleeping like angels, right under this very room, Tommy.”
“I get the picture,” Thomas said. Let the old idiot get it over with.
“You were not wandering around town tonight till one o’clock, Tommy,” Uncle Harold said sorrowfully. “I know where you were. I was thirsty. I wanted a bottle of beer from the Frigidaire. I heard noises. Tommy, I am ashamed even to mention it. A boy your age, in the same house with my two daughters.”
“So what?” Thomas said sullenly. The idea of Uncle Harold outside Clothilde’s door nauseated him.
“So what? Is that all you have to say, Tommy? So what?”
“What do you want me to say?” He would have liked to be able to say that he loved Clothilde, that it was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his whole rotten life, that she loved him, that if he were older he would take her away from Uncle Harold’s clean, goddamn house, from his respected family, from his model, pale-blonde daughters. But, of course, he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say anything. His tongue strangled him.
“I want you to say that you are sorry for the filthy thing that ignorant, scheming peasant has done to you,” Uncle Harold whispered. “I want you to promise you will never touch her again. In this house or anywhere else.”
“I’m not promising anything,” Thomas said.
“I’m being kind,” Uncle Harold said. “I am being delicate. I am speaking quietly, like a reasonable and forgiving man, Tommy. I do not want to make a scandal. I don’t want your Aunt Elsa to know her house has been dirtied, that her children have been exposed to … Ach, I can’t find the words, Tommy.”
“I’m not promising anything,” Thomas said.
“Okay. You are not promising anything,” Uncle Harold said. “You don’t have to promise anything. When I leave this room, I am going down to the room behind the kitchen. She will promise plenty, I assure you.”
“That’s what you think.” Even to his own ears, it sounded hollow, childish.
“That’s what I know, Tommy,” Uncle Harold whispered. “She will promise anything. She’s in trouble. If I fire her, where will she go? Back to her drunken husband in Canada who’s been looking for her for two years so he can beat her to death?”
“There’re plenty of jobs. She doesn’t have to go to Canada.”
“You think so. The authority on International Law,” Uncle Harold said. “You think it’s as easy as that. You think I won’t go to the police.”
“What’ve the police got to do with it?”
“You are a child, Tommy,” Uncle Harold said. “You put it up in between a married woman’s legs like a grown man, but you have the mind of a child. She has corrupted the morals of a minor, Tommy. You are the minor. Sixteen years old. That is a crime, Tommy. A serious crime. This is a civilized country. Children are protected in this country. Even if they didn’t put her in jail, they would deport her, an undesirable alien who corrupts the morals of minors. She is not a citizen. Back to Canada she would go. It would be in the papers. Her husband would be waiting for her. Oh, yes,” Uncle Harold said. “She will promise.” He stood up. “I am sorry for you, Tommy. It is not your fault. It is in your blood. Your father was a whoremaster. I was ashamed to say hello to him in the street. And your mother, for your information, was a bastard. She was raised by the nuns. Ask her some day who her father was. Or even her mother. Get some sleep, Tommy.” He patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. “I like you. I would like to see you grow up into a good man. A credit to the family. I am doing what is best for you. Go—get some sleep.”
Uncle Harold padded out of the room, barefooted, beery mastodon in the shapeless striped pajamas, all weapons on his side.
Thomas put out the light. He lay face down on the bed. He punched the pillow, once, with all his strength.
The next morning, he went down early, to try to talk to Clothilde before breakfast. But Uncle Harold was there, at the dining-room table, reading the newspaper.
“Good morning, Tommy,” he said, looking up briefly. His teeth were back in. He sipped noisily at his coffee.
Clothilde came in with Thomas’s orange juice. She didn’t look at him. Her face was dark and closed. Uncle Harold didn’t look at Clothilde. “It is terrible what is happening in Germany,” he said. “They are raping women in Berlin. The Russians. They have been waiting for this for a hundred years. People are living in cellars. If I hadn’t met your Tante Elsa and come to this country when I was a young man, God knows where I would be now.”
Clothilde came in with Thomas’s bacon and eggs. He searched her face for a sign. There was no sign.
When he finished breakfast, Thomas stood up. He would have to get back later in the day, when the house was empty. Uncle Harold looked up from his paper. “Tell Coyne, I’ll be in at nine-thirty,” Uncle Harold said. “I have to go to the bank. And tell him I promised Mr. Duncan’s car by noon, washed.”
Thomas nodded and went out of the room as the two daughters came down, fat and pale. “My angels,” he heard Uncle Harold say as they went into the dining room and kissed him good morning.
He had his chance at four o’clock that afternoon. It was the daughters’ dentist day for their braces and Tante Elsa always took them, in the second car. Uncle Harold, he knew, was down at the showroom. Clothilde should be alone.
“I’ll be back in a half-hour,” he told Coyne. “I got to see somebody.”
Coyne wasn’t pleased, but screw him.
Clothilde was watering the lawn when he pedaled up. It was a sunny day and rainbows shimmered in the spray from the hose. The lawn wasn’t a big one and was shadowed by a linden tree. Clothilde was in a white uniform. Tante Elsa liked her maids to look like nurses. It was an advertisement of cleanliness. You could eat off the floor in my house.
Clothilde looked at Thomas once as he got off his bicycle, then continued watering the lawn.
“Clothilde,” Thomas said, “come inside. I have to talk to you.”
“I’m watering the lawn.” She turned the nozzle and the spray concentrated down to a stream, with which she soaked a bed of petunias along the front of the house.
“Look at me,” he said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” She kept turned away from him.
“Did he come down to your room last night?” Thomas said. “My uncle?”
“So?”
“Did you let him in?”
“It’s his house,” Clothilde said. Her voice was sullen.
“Did you promise him anything?” He knew he sounded shrill, but he couldn’t help himself.
“What difference does it make? Go back to work. People will see us.”
“Did you promise him anything?”
“I said I wouldn’t see you alone anymore,” she said flatly.
“You didn’t mean it, though,” Thomas pleaded.
“I meant it.” She fiddled with the nozzle again. The wedding ring on her finger gleamed. “We are over.”
“No, we’re not!” He wanted to grab her and shake her. “Get the hell out of this house. Get another job. I’ll move away and …”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said sharply. “He told you about my crime.” She mocked the word. “He will have me deported. We are not Romeo and Juliet. We are a schoolboy and a cook. Go back to work.”
“Couldn’t you say anything to him?” Thomas was des
perate. He was afraid he was going to break down and cry, right there on the lawn, right in front of Clothilde.
“There is nothing to say. He is a wild man,” Clothilde said. “He is jealous. When a man is jealous you might as well talk to a wall, a tree.”
“Jealous?” Thomas said. “What do you mean?”
“He has been trying to get into my bed for two years,” Clothilde said calmly. “He comes down at night when his wife is asleep and scratches on the door like a kitten.”
“That fat bastard,” Thomas said. “I’ll be there waiting for him the next time.”
“No you won’t,” Clothilde said. “He is going to come in the next time. You might as well know.”
“You’re going to let him?”
“I’m a servant,” she said. “I lead the life of a servant. I do not want to lose my job or go to jail or go back to Canada. Forget it,” she said. “Alles kaput. It was nice for two weeks. You’re a nice boy. I’m sorry I got you into trouble.”
“All right, all right,” he shouted. “I’m never going to touch another woman again as long as—”
He was too choked to say anything more and ran over to his bicycle and rode blindly away, leaving Clothilde watering the roses. He didn’t turn around. So he didn’t see the tears on the dark, despairing face.
St. Sebastian, well supplied with arrows, he headed for the garage. The rods would come later.
Chapter 9
I
When she came out of the Eighth Street subway station she stopped for six bottles of beer and then went into the cleaner’s for Willie’s suit. It was dusk, the early dusk of November, and the air was nippy. People were wearing coats and moving quickly. A girl in slacks and a trench coat slouched in front of her, her hair covered by a scarf. The girl looked as though she had just gotten out of bed, although it was after five o’clock in the afternoon. In Greenwich Village, people might get out of bed at any time of the day or night. It was one of the charms of the neighborhood, like the fact that most of the population was young. Sometimes, when she walked through the neighborhood, among the young, she thought, “I am in my native country.”
The girl in the trench coat went into Corcoran’s Bar and Grill. Gretchen knew it well. She was known in a dozen bars of the neighborhood. A good deal of her life was spent in bars now.
She hurried toward Eleventh Street, the beer bottles heavy in the big brown-paper sack and Willie’s suit carefully folded over her arm. She hoped Willie was home. You never could know when he’d be there. She had just come from an understudy rehearsal uptown and she had to go back for the eight o’clock call. Nichols and the director had her read for the understudy’s job and had told her that she had talent. The play was a moderate success. It would almost certainly last till June. She walked across the stage in a bathing suit three times a night. The audience laughed each time, but the laughter was nervous. The author had been furious the first time he had heard the laughter, at a preview, and had wanted to cut her out of the play, but Nichols and the director had persuaded him that the laughter was good for the play. She received some peculiar letters backstage and telegrams asking her if she wanted to go out to supper and twice there were roses. She never answered anybody. Willie was always there in her dressing room after the show to watch her wash off the body make-up and get into her street clothes. When he wanted to tease her, he said, “Oh, God, why did I ever get married? I am quoting.”
His divorce was dragging along, he said.
She went into the hallway of the walkup and looked to see if there was any mail in the box. Abbott–Jordache. She had printed the little card herself.
She opened the downstairs door with her key and ran up the three flights of stairs. She was always in a hurry, once she got into the house. She opened the door of the apartment, a little breathless from the stairs. The door opened directly on the living room. “Willie …” she was calling. There were only two small rooms, so there was no real reason to call out. She found excuses to say his name.
Rudolph was sitting on the tattered couch, a glass of beer in his hand.
“Oh,” Gretchen said.
Rudolph stood up. “Hello, Gretchen,” he said. He put down his glass and kissed her cheek, over the bag full of beer bottles and Willie’s suit.
“Rudy,” she said, getting rid of the bag and dropping the suit over the back of a chair, “what’re you doing here?”
“I rang the bell,” Rudolph said, “and your friend let me in.”
“Your friend is getting dressed,” Willie called from the next room. He often sat around in his bathrobe all day. The apartment was so small that you heard everything that was said in either of the rooms. A little kitchenette was concealed by a screen from the living room. “I’ll be right out,” Willie said from the bedroom. “I blow you a kiss.”
“I’m so glad to see you.” Gretchen took off her coat and hugged Rudolph hard. She stepped back to look at him. When she had been seeing him every day she hadn’t realized how handsome he was, dark, straight, a button-down blue shirt and the blazer she had given him for his birthday. Those sad, clear, greenish eyes.
“Is it possible you’ve grown? In just a couple of months?”
“Almost six months,” he said. Was there an accusation there?
“Come on,” she said. “Sit down.” She pulled him down on the couch next to her. There was a little leather overnight bag near the door. It didn’t belong to Willie or her, but she had a feeling that she had seen it someplace before.
“Tell me about everything,” she said. “What’s happening at home? Oh, God, it’s good to see you, Rudy.” Still, her voice didn’t sound completely natural to her. If she had known he was coming she’d have warned him about Willie. After all, he was only seventeen, Rudolph, and just to come barging in innocently and discover that his sister was living with a man … Abbott–Jordache.
“Nothing much is happening at home,” Rudolph said. If he was embarrassed, he didn’t show it. She could take lessons in control from Rudy. He sipped at his beer. “I am bearing the brunt of everybody’s love, now that I’m the only one left.”
Gretchen laughed. It was silly to worry. She hadn’t realized how grown-up he was.
“How’s Mom?” Gretchen asked.
“Still reading Gone With the Wind,” Rudolph said. “She’s been sick. She says the doctor says it’s phlebitis.”
Messages of cheer and comfort from the family hearth, Gretchen thought. “Who takes care of the store?” she asked.
“A Mrs. Cudahy,” Rudolph said. “A widow. She costs thirty dollars a week.”
“Pa must love that,” Gretchen said.
“He isn’t too happy.”
“How is he?”
“To tell the truth,” Rudolph said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s actually sicker than Ma. He hasn’t been out in the yard to hit the bag in months and I don’t think he’s been out on the river since you left.”
“What is it?” Gretchen was surprised to find out that she was really concerned.
“I don’t know,” Rudolph said. “He just moves that way. You know Pa. He never says anything.”
“Do they talk about me?” Gretchen asked carefully..
“Not a word.”
“And Thomas?”
“Gone and forgotten,” Rudolph said. “I never did find out what happened. He never writes, of course.”
“Our family,” Gretchen said. They sat in silence, honoring the clan Jordache for a moment. “Well …” Gretchen shook herself. “How do you like our place?” She gestured to indicate the apartment, which she and Willie had rented furnished. The furniture looked as though it had come out of somebody’s attic, but Gretchen had bought some plants and tacked some prints and travel posters on the walls. An Indian in a sombrero in front of a pueblo. Visit New Mexico.
“It’s very nice,” Rudolph said gravely.
“It’s awfully tacky,” Gretchen said. “But it has one supreme advantage. It’s not Port Philip.”<
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“I understand what you mean,” Rudolph said. She wished he didn’t look so serious. She wondered what had brought him down to see her.
“How’s that pretty girl,” she asked. Her voice was falsely bright. “Julie?”
“Julie,” Rudolph said. “We have our ups and downs.”
Willie came into the room combing his hair. He wasn’t wearing a jacket. She had seen him only some five hours earlier, but if they had been alone she would have enfolded him as if they were meeting again after an absence of years. Willie kissed Gretchen quickly, leaning over the couch. Rudolph stood up politely. “Sit down, sit down, Rudy,” Willie said. “I’m not your superior officer.”
Briefly, Gretchen regretted Willie was so short.
“Ah,” Willie said, seeing the beer and the pressed suit, “I told her the day I saw her for the first time that she would make some man a good wife and mother. Is it cold?”
“Uhuh.”
Willie busied himself opening a bottle. “Rudy?”
“This will do me for awhile,” Rudolph said, sitting down again.
Willie poured the beer in a glass that had been used and still had a rim of foam around it. He drank a lot of beer, Willie. “We can speak frankly,” Willie said, grinning. “I have explained everything to Rudy. I have told him that we are only technically living in sin. I’ve told him I have asked for your hand in marriage and that you’ve rejected me, although not for long.”
This was true. He had asked her to marry him again and again. Quite often she was sure that he meant it.
“Did you tell him you were married?” she asked. She was anxious to have Rudy leave with no questions unanswered.
“I did,” Willie said. “I hide nothing from brothers of women I love. My marriage was a whim of youth, a passing cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand. Rudy is an intelligent young man. He understands. He will go far. He will dance at our wedding. He will support us in our old age.”