Rich Man, Poor Man

by Irwin Shaw

  “When I grow up,” he said, “I am not going to invite anybody.”

  Not your father’s child, Gretchen thought. Even though he looked exactly like him, blond, serenely dimpled. NoJordache there at all. Yet. Unless her brother Thomas had looked like that as a child. She kissed him again, leaning low over the bed. “Go to sleep, Billy,” she said.

  She went over to the work table and sat down, grateful to be out of the chatter of the room below. She was sure nobody would miss her, even if she sat up there all night. She picked up a book that was lying on the table. Elementary psychology. She opened it idly. Two pages devoted to the blots of the Rorschach test. Know thyself. Know thine enemy. She was taking extension courses at NYU in the late afternoons and at night. If she stuck at it she would have her degree in two years. She had a nagging sense of inadequacy that made her shy with Willie’s educated friends and sometimes with Willie himself. Besides, she liked classrooms, the unhurried sense that she was among people who were not merely interested in money or position or being seen in public.

  She had slipped away from the theater after Billy was born. Later, she had told herself, when he’s old enough not to need me all the time. By now she knew she would never try to act again. No loss. She had had to look for work that she could do at home and luckily she had found it, by the simplest of means. She had begun by helping Willie write his criticisms of radio and later television programs, whenever he was bored with them or busy doing something else or had a hangover. At first, he kept signing his name to her pieces, but then he was offered an executive job in the office of the magazine at a raise in pay and she had begun signing the pieces herself. The editor had told her privately that she wrote a lot better than Willie, but she had made her own judgment on Willie’s writing. She had come across the first act of his play one day, while cleaning out a trunk. It was dreadful. What was funny and bright in Willie’s speech turned arch on paper. She hadn’t told him her opinion of his writing or that she had read his play. But she had encouraged him to take the executive job in the office.

  She glanced at the sheet of yellow paper in the typewriter. She had penciled in a tentative title. “The Song of the Salesman.” She glanced at random down the page. “The innocent air,” she had written, “which theoretically is a national asset, the property of all Americans, has been delivered to merchants, so that they may beguile us or bully us into buying their products, whether the products are benevolent, needful, or dangerous to us. They sell us soup with laughter, breakfast food with violence, automobiles with Hamlet, purgatives with drivel …”

  She frowned. Not good enough. And useless, besides. Who would listen, who would act? The American people were getting what they thought they wanted. Her guests downstairs were most of them in one way or another living off the thing their hostess was denouncing above their heads. The liquor they were drinking was bought with money earned by a man singing the salesman’s song. She tore the sheet of paper from the machine and balled it up and threw it in the wastebasket. She would never get it printed, anyway. Willie would see to that.

  She went over to the child’s bed. He had fallen asleep, grasping the giraffe. He slept, miraculously complete. What are you going to buy, what are you going to sell when you are my age? What errors are ahead of you? How much of love will be wasted?

  There was a tread on the stairs and she hurriedly bent over, pretending to be tucking in the child. Willie, provider of ice, opened the door. “I wondered where you were,” he said.

  “I was restoring my sanity,” she said.

  “Gretchen,” he said reproachfully. He was a little flushed from drink and there were beads of perspiration on his upper lip. He had begun to bald, the forehead more Beethovenesque than ever, but somehow he still looked adolescent. “They’re your friends, as well as mine.”

  “They’re nobody’s friends,” Gretchen said. “They’re drinkers, that’s all.” She was feeling bitchy. Rereading the lines from her article had crystallized the dissatisfaction that had sent her upstairs in the first place. And, suddenly, she was annoyed that the child resembled Willie so closely. I was there, too, she wanted to say.

  “What do you want me to do,” Willie said, “send them home?”

  “Yes. Send them home.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Willie said. “Come on down, honey. People’ll begin to wonder what’s wrong with you.”

  “Tell them I had a sudden wild urge to breast-feed,” Gretchen said. “In some tribes they breast-feed children until the age of seven. They know everything down there. See if they know that.”

  “Honey …” He came over and put his arms around her. She could smell the gin. “Give a little. Please. You’re getting awfully nervy.”

  “Oh. You noticed.”

  “Of course I noticed.” He kissed her cheek. A nothing kiss, she thought. He hadn’t made love to her in two weeks. “I know what’s wrong,” he said. “You’re doing too much. Taking care of the kid, working, going to school, studying …” He was always trying to get her to drop her courses. “What’re you proving?” he had asked. “You’re the smartest girl in New York as it is.”

  “I’m not doing half enough,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go down and pick a likely candidate and go off and have an affair. For my nerves.”

  Willie dropped his arms from around her waist and stepped back, martinis receding. “Funny. Hah-hah,” he said coldly.

  “On to the cockpit,” she said, putting out the lamp on the table. “Drinks are in the kitchen.”

  He grabbed her wrist in the dark. “What’ve I done wrong?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” she said. “The perfect hostess and her mate will now rejoin the beauty and chivalry of West Twelfth Street.” She pulled her arm away from his grasp and went down the stairs. A moment later Willie came down, too. He had stayed behind to plant a martini’d kiss on his son’s forehead.

  She saw Rudolph had quit Johnny Heath and was in a corner of the room talking earnestly to Julie, who must have come in while she was upstairs. Rudolph’s friend, the boy from Oklahoma, Babbitt material, was laughing too hard over something that one of the executive secretaries had said. Julie had her hair up and was wearing a soft, black-velvet dress. “I am in a constant battle,” Julie had confided to her, “to suppress the high-school cheerleader in me.” This evening she had managed. Too well. She looked too sure of herself for a girl that young. Gretchen was certain that Julie and Rudolph had never slept with each other. After five years! Inhuman. There was something wrong with the girl, or Rudolph, or both.

  She waved to Rudolph but she did not catch his eye and as she went toward him she was stopped by an advertising account executive, too beautifully dressed, and with a haircut that was too becoming. “Mine hostess,” the man said, thin as an English actor. His name was Alec Lister. He had started as a page boy at CBS, but that was long behind him. “Let me congratulate you on an absolutely splendid do.”

  “Are you a likely candidate?” she asked, staring at him.

  “What?” Lister transferred his glass uneasily from one hand to another. He was not used to being asked puzzling questions.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Train of thought, I’m glad you like the animals.”

  “I like them very much.” Lister put his imprimatur firmly on the assemblage. “I’ll tell you something else I like. Your pieces in the magazine.”

  “I will be known as the Samuel Taylor Coleridge of radio and television,” she said. Lister was one of the guests who could not be insulted, but she was out after all scalps tonight.

  “What was that?” He was puzzled for the second time in thirty seconds and he was beginning to frown. “Oh, yes, I get it.” He didn’t seem happy to have gotten it. “If I may make a comment, Gretchen,” he said, knowing that anywhere between Wall Street and Sixtieth Street he could make whatever comment he pleased, “the pieces are excellent, but just a little bit too—well—biting, I find. There’s a tone of hostility in them—it gives them a
welcome tang, I have to admit—but there’s a general underlying feeling of being against the whole industry …”

  “Oh,” she said calmly, “you caught that.”

  He stared at her evenly, all cordiality gone, his office face, cool and pitiless, replacing in a fraction of a second his tolerant English actor party face. “Yes, I caught it,” he said. “And I’m not the only one. In today’s atmosphere, with everybody being investigated, and advertisers being damn careful that they’re not giving their good money to people whose motives might not be acceptable …”

  “Are you warning me?” Gretchen asked.

  “You might put it like that,” the man said. “Out of friendship.”

  “It’s good of you, dear,” she touched his arm lightly, smiling tenderly at him, “but I’m afraid it’s too late. I’m a red, raving Communist, in the pay of Moscow, plotting to destroy NBC and MGM and bring Ralston’s Cereals crashing to the ground.”

  “She’s putting on everyone tonight, Alec.” Willie was standing next to her, his hand tightening on her elbow. “She thinks it’s Halloween. Come on into the kitchen, I’ll freshen your drink.”

  “Thanks, Willie,” Lister said, “but I’m afraid I have to push on. I have two more parties I said I’d look in on tonight.” He kissed Gretchen’s cheek, a brush of ether on her skin. “Good night, sweets. I do hope you remember what I told you.”

  “Chiseled in stone,” she said.

  Expressionless, flat-eyed, he made his way toward the door, putting his glass down on a bookcase, where it would leave a ring.

  “What’s the matter?” Willie said in a low voice. “You hate money?”

  “I hate him,” she said. She pulled away from Willie and wove through the guests, smiling brightly, to where Rudolph and Julie were talking in the corner. They were talking in near whispers. There was an air of tension about them which built an invisible wall around them, cutting them off from all the laughter and conversation in the room. Julie seemed on the verge of tears and Rudolph looked concentrated and stubborn.

  “I think it’s terrible,” Julie was saying. “That’s what I think.”

  “You look beautiful tonight, Julie,” Gretchen interrupted. “Very femme-fatalish.”

  “Well, I don’t feel it.” Julie’s voice quavered.

  “What’s the matter?” Gretchen asked.

  “You tell her,” Julie said to Rudolph.

  “Some other time,” Rudolph said, lips tight. “This is a party.”

  “He’s going to work permanently at Calderwood’s,” Julie said. “Starting tomorrow morning.”

  “Nothing is permanent,” Rudolph said.

  “Stuck away behind a counter for his whole life,” Julie rushed on. “In a little one-horse town. What’s the sense of going to college, if that’s all you’re going to do with it?”

  “I told you I’m not going to be stuck anywhere all my life,” Rudolph said.

  “Tell her the rest,” Julie said hotly. “I dare you to tell her the rest.”

  “What’s the rest?” Gretchen asked. She, too, was disappointed, Rudolph’s choice was inglorious. But she was relieved, too. Working at Calderwood’s, he would continue to take care of their mother and she would not have to face the problem herself or ask for help from Willie. The sense of relief was ignoble, but there was no denying to herself that it existed.

  “I’ve been offered the summer in Europe,” Rudolph said evenly, “as a gift.”

  “By whom?” Gretchen asked, although she knew the answer.

  “Teddy Boylan.”

  “I know my parents would let me go, too,” Julie said. “We could have the best summer of our whole lives.”

  “I haven’t got time for the best summer of our whole lives,” Rudolph said, biting on the words.

  “Can’t you talk to him, Gretchen?” Julie said.

  “Rudy,” Gretchen said, “don’t you think you owe yourself a little fun, after the way you’ve been working?”

  “Europe won’t go away,” he said. “I’ll go there when I’m ready for it.”

  “Teddy Boylan must have been pleased when you turned him down,” Gretchen said.

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “I wish somebody would offer me a trip to Europe,” Gretchen said. “I’d be on that boat so fast …”

  “Gretchen, can you give us a hand?” One of the younger male guests had come over. “We want to play the phonograph and it seems to be kaput.”

  “I’ll talk to you two later,” Gretchen said to Rudolph and Julie. “We’ll work something out.” She went over to the phonograph with the young man. She bent down and fumbled for the plug. The colored maid had been in to clean that day and she always left the plug out after she vacuumed. “I bend enough,” she had told Gretchen when Gretchen complained.

  The phonograph warmed up with a hollow sound and then it began to play the first record from the album of South Pacific. Childish voices, sweet and American, far away on a make-believe warm island, piped the words to “Dites-moi.” When Gretchen stood up she saw that Rudolph and Julie had gone. I’m not going to have a party in this place for a whole year, she decided. She went into the kitchen and had Mary Jane pour her a stiff drink of Scotch. Mary Jane had long, red hair these days and a great deal of blue eye shadow and long false eyelashes. From a distance she was a beauty but close up things came apart a little. Still, now, in the third hour of the party, with all the men passing through her domain and flattering her, she was at her peak for the day, flashing-eyed, her bright-red lips half open, avid and provocative. “What glory,” she said, whiskey-hoarse. “This party. And that new man, Alec What’s-his-name …”

  “Lister,” Gretchen said, drinking, noting that the kitchen was a mess and deciding that she’d do nothing about it till morning. “Alec Lister.”

  “Isn’t he dazzling?” Mary Jane said. “Is he attached?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Blessings on him,” Mary Jane said, “the dear fellow. He drowned the kitchen in charm when he was in here. And I’ve heard the most terrible things about him. He beats his women, Willie told me.” She giggled. “Isn’t it exciting? Did you notice, does he need a new drink? I’ll appear at his side, goblet in hand, Mary Jane Hackett, the faithful cup-bearer.”

  “He left five minutes ago,” Gretchen said, meanly pleased at being able to pass on the information to Mary Jane and wondering at the same time what women Willie was intimate enough with to hear from them that they had been beaten by Alec Lister.

  “Ah, well,” Mary Jane shrugged philosophically, “there are other fish in the sea.”

  Two men came into the kitchen and Mary Jane swung her red hair and smiled radiantly at them. “Here you are, boys,” she said, “the bar never closes.”

  It was a cinch that Mary Jane had not gone two weeks without making love. What’s so wrong with being divorced, Gretchen thought, as she went back into the living room.

  Rudolph and Julie walked toward Fifth Avenue in the balmy June evening air. He did not hold her arm. “This is no place to talk seriously,” he had said at the party. “Let’s get out of here.”

  But it wasn’t any better on the street. Julie strode along, careful not to touch him, the nostrils of her small nose tense, the full lips bitten into a sharp wound. As he walked beside her on the dark street he wondered if it wouldn’t just be better to leave her then and there. It would probably come sooner or later anyway and sooner was perhaps to be preferred than later. But then he thought of never seeing her again and despaired. Still, he said nothing. In the battle that was being waged between them, he knew that the advantage would have to go to the one who kept silent longest.

  “You have a girl there,” she said finally. “That’s why you’re staying in the awful place.”

  He laughed.

  “Your laughing doesn’t fool me.” Her voice was bitter, with no memory in it of the times they had sung together or the times she had said, I love you. “You’re infatuated with some ribbon
clerk or cashier or something. You’ve been sleeping with somebody there all this time. I know.”

  He laughed again, strong in his chastity.

  “Otherwise you’re a freak,” she said harshly. “We’ve been seeing each other for five years and you say you love me and you haven’t tried once to make love to me, really make love to me.”

  “I haven’t been invited,” he said.

  “All right,” she said. “I invite you. Now. Tonight. I’m in room 923 at the St. Moritz.”

  Wary of traps, fearful of helpless surrenders on a tumbled bed. “No,” he said.

  “Either you’re a liar,” she said, “or you’re a freak.”

  “I want to marry you,” he said. “We can get married next week.”

  “Where will we spend our honeymoon?” she asked. “In the garden-furniture department of Calderwood’s Department Store? I’m offering you my pure-white, virgin body,” she said mockingly. “Free and clear. No strings. Who needs a wedding? I’m a free, liberated, lustful, all-American girl. I’ve just won the Sexual Revolution by a score of ten to nothing.”

  “No,” he said. “And stop talking like my sister.”

  “Freak,” she said. “You want to bury me along with you forever in that dismal little town. And all this time, I’ve thought you were so smart, that you were going to have such a brilliant future. I’ll marry you. I’ll marry you next week. If you take the trip to Europe and start law school in the autumn. Or if you don’t want to do that, if you just come down here to New York and work here. I don’t care what you do here, I’ll work, too. I want to work. What’ll I do in Whitby? Spend my days deciding which apron to wear when you come home at night?”