by Irwin Shaw
“Yeah,” Thomas said. He knew he wanted to keep seeing Gretchen, but Rudolph was another matter. He had suffered too much at Rudolph’s hands. “Yeah,” Thomas said. “I’ll have my secretary send you a copy of my itinerary in the future.” He stood up. “I’m going to bed. I’ve had a long day.”
He went up the stairs. He wasn’t all that tired. He just didn’t want to be in the same room with Rudolph. If he’d known where the funeral home was, he’d have slipped out of the house and gone there and sat up all night with the body of his mother.
He didn’t want to wake Gretchen’s kid, asleep in blue pajamas in the other bed, so he didn’t turn on the light as he undressed, but just left the door open a little so that enough light came in from the hallway to see what he was doing. He didn’t have any pajamas and he wondered if the kid would comment on his sleeping in his shorts when he woke in the morning. Probably not. The kid seemed like a nice boy and he wouldn’t know automatically that he was supposed to have a low opinion of his uncle. The kid smelled clean, soapy. He had tried to comfort Gretchen at the hospital, hugging her, both of them crying. He didn’t remember ever having hugged his mother.
Looking at the kid made him think about Wesley. He had to see him. He had to do something about him. He couldn’t let him be brought up all his life by a tramp like Teresa.
He closed the door and got into the soft, clean bed. Rudolph slept in a bed like this every night of his life.
III
Teddy Boylan was at the funeral. So were a great many other people. The newspapers in Whitby and Port Philip had considered the news of the death of the mother of that leading citizen Rudolph Jordache important enough to display the obituary prominently. There wasn’t much to say about Mary Jordache, but the newspapers made up for it with descriptions of Rudolph’s honors and accomplishments, Chairman of the Board of Dee Cee Enterprises, President Junior Chamber of Commerce of Whitby, graduate cum laude, Whitby University. Member of the Board of Trustees, Whitby University, Member Town Planning Committee of both Whitby and Port Philip, bold and forward-looking merchant and real-estate developer. There was even a mention of the fact that Rudolph had run the two twenty for the Port Philip track team and that he had played the trumpet in a jazz combination called the River Five in the middle 1940’s.
Poor Mom, Rudolph thought, as he surveyed the crowded church, she would have enjoyed seeing so many people come out for a ceremony in her honor.
Father McDonnell was worse and longer than Rudolph feared and he tried not to listen to the lies spoken above the flower-banked coffin. He hoped Gretchen wasn’t taking it too hard, remembering the other coffin in the crematorium in California. He glanced at her. There was no sign on her face that she was remembering anything.
The birds were singing in the cemetery trees, pleased with the onset of summer. At the grave, as the coffin was being lowered, to the sobs of the bridge ladies, Rudolph and Thomas and Gretchen stood side by side, Gretchen holding Billy by the hand.
Boylan caught up with them as they walked away from the grave toward the line of waiting black limousines. “I don’t want to intrude,” he said, as they halted, “Gretchen, Rudolph—I just wanted to say how sorry I was. Such a young woman.”
For a moment, Rudolph was confused. His mother had looked ancient to him, was ancient. She had been old at thirty, had started dying before that. For the first time her real age made a conscious impression on him. Fifty-six. Just about Boylan’s age. No wonder Boylan said, “Such a young woman.”
“Thank you, Teddy,” Rudolph said. He shook hands with Boylan. Boylan didn’t look ready for the grave. His hair was the same color as always, his face was tanned and unlined, his carriage was as erect, his shoes were as well shined as ever.
“How’ve you been, Gretchen?” Boylan asked. The mourners had stopped behind the group, not wishing to push past them on the narrow graveled walk between the gravestones. As usual, Boylan accepted without thinking about it the fact that others waited on his pleasure.
“Very well, thank you, Teddy,” Gretchen answered.
“I take it this is your son.” Boylan smiled at Billy, who stared at him soberly.
“Billy, this is Mr. Boylan,” Gretchen said. “He’s an old friend.”
“How do you do, Billy.” Boylan shook the boy’s hand. “I hope we meet again on a happier occasion.”
Billy said nothing. Thomas was regarding Boylan through narrowed eyes, hiding, Rudolph thought, what could only have been a desire to laugh under the lowered lids. Was Thomas remembering the night he had seen Boylan parading naked around the house on the hill, preparing a drink to take to Gretchen, in bed upstairs? Graveyard thoughts.
“My brother, Thomas,” Rudolph said.
“Oh, yes,” Boylan said. He didn’t offer to shake hands. He spoke to Rudolph. “If you have the time, Rudy,” he said, “with all your multifarious activities, perhaps you could give me a ring and we could get together for dinner sometime. I want to confess that I was wrong and you were right about your choice of career. And bring Gretchen along, if she’s available. Please.”
“I’m leaving for California,” Gretchen said.
“What a pity. Well, I won’t keep you any longer.” He made a little bow and stepped back, a slender, expensively maintained figure, brilliantly out of place, even in his dark suit, in the drab march of small-town mourners.
As they walked toward the first limousine, from which Rudolph had steadfastly barred Father McDonnell, Gretchen realized, with a little shock, how much alike Rudolph and Boylan were, not in looks, of course, and she hoped not in character, but in attitudes, turns of speech, gestures, choice of clothes, manner of moving. She wondered if Rudolph knew how much he owed to the man and whether he would be pleased if she pointed it out to him.
She thought about Boylan on the trip back to Rudolph’s house. She supposed she ought to think about her mother, whose grave was being filled with earth at that moment in the sunny cemetery, full of the summery sound of birds. But she thought about Boylan. There was no sense of loving or desire, but no feeling, either, of distaste or hatred or wish for revenge. It was like taking an old girlhood toy, a special doll, out of a forgotten trunk and holding it curiously, trying to remember how you felt when it meant something to you and not succeeding and deciding to throw it away or give it to some later child down the block. First love. Be my Valentine.
When they got to the house they all decided they needed a drink. Billy, who looked pale and drawn, complained that he had a headache and went upstairs and lay down. Martha, despite her unceasing flow of tears, went into the kitchen to prepare a cold lunch.
Rudolph made martinis for Gretchen and himself and gave some bourbon over ice to Thomas, who had taken off his coat, which was uncomfortably tight across his massive shoulders. He had unbuttoned his collar, too, and was sitting hunched forward on a straight-backed wooden chair, his elbows resting on his thighs, his hands hanging between his legs. He makes every place he sits look like a stool in the corner of a ring, Rudolph thought, as he gave him the drink.
They raised their glasses, although they did not mention their mother.
They had decided to leave for New York all together after lunch, because they didn’t want to be in the house for the calls of condolence. Great heaps of flowers had been delivered, but Rudolph had instructed Martha to send all but one bunch to the hospital where his mother had died. The flowers he had kept, daffodils, made a little yellow explosion on the coffee table in front of the couch. The windows were open and the sun streamed in, a smell of warm grass came in from the lawn. The low-beamed eighteenth-century room was handsome, subdued and orderly, not quaint or cluttered, not aggressively modern, Rudolph’s taste.
“What are you going to do with the house?” Gretchen asked. “Now?”
Rudolph shrugged. “Keep it, I suppose. I still have to be up here a good part of the time. Although, it’s a lot too big for me now. Would you like to come and live here?”
Gretch
en shook her head. The debates with the lawyers went on and on. “I’m committed to California.”
“What about you?” Rudolph asked Thomas.
“Me?” Thomas said, surprised. “What the hell would I do here?”
“You’d find something.” Rudolph was careful not to say, “I’ll find you something.” He sipped at the martini, grateful for it. “You must admit it’s an improvement on where you stay in New York.”
“I don’t plan to stay there long. Anyway, this is no place for me. The people here look at me as though I’m an animal in the zoo.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Rudolph said.
“Your friend Boylan wouldn’t shake my hand at the cemetery. If you don’t shake a man’s hand in a cemetery, where the hell would you shake his hand?”
“He’s a special case.”
“He sure is.” Thomas began to laugh. The laughter wasn’t loud, but it was somehow alarming in the atmosphere.
“What’re you laughing about?” Rudolph asked as Gretchen looked at Thomas puzzledly.
“The next time you see him,” Thomas said, “tell him he was right not to shake my hand.”
“What’re you talking about, Tom?”
“Ask him if he remembers the night of VE Day. The night they burned a cross on his property and there was the fire.”
“What’re you saying?” Rudolph asked sharply. “That you did it?”
“Me and a friend.” Thomas stood up and went over to the sideboard and refilled his glass.
“Why did you do it?” Gretchen asked.
“Boyish high spirits,” Thomas said, as he put in some more ice. “We just won the war.”
“But why did you pick on him?” Gretchen asked.
Thomas fiddled with his drink, pushing the ice down, his back to Gretchen. “He happened to be involved with a lady I knew at the time,” he said. “I didn’t approve of the involvement. Should I mention the lady’s name?”
“There’s no need,” Gretchen said quietly.
“Who was the friend?” Rudolph asked.
“What difference does it make?”
“It was that Claude, Claude What’s-his-name that you used to hang around with, wasn’t it?”
Thomas smiled, but didn’t answer. He drank standing up, leaning against the sideboard.
“He disappeared right after that,” Rudolph said. “I remember now.”
“He sure did,” said Thomas. “And I disappeared right after him, if you remember that.”
“Somebody knew you boys had done it,” Rudolph said.
“Somebody.” Thomas nodded ironically.
“You’re lucky you didn’t go to jail,” Gretchen said.
“That’s what Pa was intimating,” said Thomas. “When he kicked me out of town. Well, there’s nothing like a funeral to get people to remembering the good old days, is there?”
“Tom,” Gretchen said, “you’re not like that any more, are you?”
Thomas crossed over to where Gretchen was sitting on the couch and bent over and kissed her forehead gently. “I hope I’m not,” he said. Then he straightened up and said, “I’ll go up and see how the kid’s doing. I like him. He’ll probably feel better if he’s not alone.”
He took his drink with him as he went upstairs.
Rudolph mixed two more martinis for himself and Gretchen. He was glad to have something to do with his hands. His brother was not a comfortable man to be with. Even after he went out of a room, he left an air of tension, of anguish.
“God,” Gretchen said finally, “it doesn’t seem possible that we all have the same genes, does it?”
“The runt of the litter,” Rudolph said. “Who is it—you, me—him?”
“We were awful, Rudy, you and I,” Gretchen said.
Rudolph shrugged. “Our mother was awful. Our father was awful. You knew why they were awful, or at least you thought you knew why—but that didn’t change matters. I try not to be awful.”
“You’re saved by your luck,” Gretchen said.
“I worked pretty hard,” Rudolph said defensively.
“So did Colin. The difference is, you’ll never run into a tree.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Gretchen, that I’m not dead.” He couldn’t hide the hurt in his voice.
“Don’t take it the wrong way, please. I’m glad that there’s somebody in the family who’ll never run into a tree. It’s certainly not Tom. And I know it isn’t me. I’m the worst, maybe. I carried the luck of the whole family. If I hadn’t been on a certain road at lunchtime near Port Philip one Saturday afternoon, all our lives would’ve been completely different. Did you know that?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Teddy Boylan,” she said matter-of-factly. “He picked me up. I am what I am today largely because of him. I’ve slept with the men I’ve slept with because of Teddy Boylan. I ran away to New York because of Teddy Boylan. I met Willie Abbott because of Teddy Boylan and despised him finally because he wasn’t different enough from Teddy Boylan and I loved Colin because he was the opposite of Teddy Boylan. All those scolding articles I wrote that everybody thought were so smart, were digs at America because it produced men like Teddy Boylan and made life easy for men like Teddy Boylan.”
“That’s maniacal …. The luck of the family! Why don’t you go consult the gypsies and wear an amulet and be done with it?”
“I don’t need any gypsies,” Gretchen went on. “If I hadn’t met Teddy Boylan and laid him, do you think Tom would have burned a cross on his hill? Do you think he’d have been sent away like a criminal if there’d never been a Teddy Boylan? Do you think he’d be just what he is today if he’d stayed in Port Philip with his family around him?”
“Maybe not,” Rudolph admitted. “But there would’ve been something else.”
“Only there wasn’t anything else. There was Teddy Boylan, screwing his sister. As for you—”
“I know all I have to know about me,” Rudolph said.
“You do? You think you’d have gone to college without Teddy Boylan’s money? You think you’d dress the way you do or be so interested in success and money and how to get there the fastest way possible without Teddy Boylan? Do you think somebody else would have sought you out and taken you to concerts and art galleries and pampered you through school, and given you all that lordly confidence in yourself, if it hadn’t been Teddy Boylan?” She finished her second martini.
“Okay,” Rudolph said, “I’ll build a monument in his honor.”
“Maybe you should. You certainly can afford it now, with your wife’s money.”
“That’s below the belt,” Rudolph said angrily. “You know I didn’t have the faintest idea …”
“That’s what I was talking about,” Gretchen said. “Your Jordache awfulness is turned into something else by your luck.”
“How about your Jordache awfulness?”
Gretchen’s entire tone changed. The sharpness went out of her voice, her face became sad, soft, younger. “When I was with Colin I wasn’t awful,” she said.
“No.”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to find a Colin again.”
Rudolph reached out and touched her hand, his anger blunted by his sister’s continuing sorrow. “You wouldn’t believe me,” Rudolph said, “if I told you I think you will.”
“No,” she said.
“What’re you going to do? Just sit and mourn forever?”
“No.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going back to school.”
“School?” Rudolph said incredulously. “At your age?”
“Postgraduate school,” Gretchen said. “At UCLA. That way I can live at home and take care of Billy, all at the same time. I’ve been to see them and they’ve agreed to take me.”
“To study what?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“I’m not laughing at anything today,” Rudolph said.
“I got the idea from the father
of a boy in Billy’s class,” Gretchen said. “He’s a psychiatrist.”
“Oh, Christ,” Rudolph said.
“That’s more of your luck,” Gretchen said. To be able to say, Oh, Christ, when you hear the word psychiatrist.”
“Sorry.”
“He works part time at a clinic. With lay analysts. They’re people who aren’t M.D.’s, but who’ve studied analysis, who’ve been analyzed, and are licensed to treat cases that don’t call for deep analysis. Group therapy, intelligent children who refuse to learn how to read or write or are wilfully destructive, kids from broken homes who have retreated into themselves, girls who have been made frigid by their religion or by some early sexual trauma, and who are breaking up with their husbands, Negro and Mexican children who start school far behind the others and never catch up and lose their sense of identity …”
“So,” Rudolph said. He had been listening impatiently. “So, you’re going to go out and solve the Negro problem and the Mexican problem and the religious problem all on your own, armed with a piece of paper from UCLA, and …”
“I will try to solve one problem,” Gretchen said, “or maybe two problems, or maybe a hundred problems. And I’ll be solving my own problem at the same time. I’ll be busy and I’ll be doing something useful.”
“Not something useless like your brother,” Rudolph said, stung. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Not at all,” Gretchen said. “You’re being useful in your own way. Let me be useful in mine, that’s all.”
“How long is all this going to take?”
“Two years, minimum, for the degree,” Gretchen said. “Then finishing the analysis …”
“You’ll never finish,” he said. “You’ll find a man and …”
“Maybe,” Gretchen said. “I doubt it, but maybe …”
Martha came in, red eyed, and said that lunch was ready on the dining-room table. Gretchen went upstairs to get Billy and Thomas and when they came down the entire family went into the dining room and had lunch, everybody being polite to everybody else, saying, “Please pass the mustard,” and “Thanks,” and “No, I think that’s enough for me right now.”