Rich Man, Poor Man

by Irwin Shaw

  “Jean,” Rudolph said, “what the hell are you doing?”

  Jean looked up, peering slyly through her hair. “His Honor the Mayor wants to know what his beautiful, rich young wife is doing. I’ll tell his Honor the Mayor what his beautiful, rich young wife is doing. She is making a junk pile.” Her speech was thick and she was drunk. Jean smashed the hammer down on a big wide-angle lens and splintered it.

  Rudolph grabbed the hammer from her. She did not struggle. “His Honor the Mayor now has taken the hammer from his beautiful rich young wife’s hand,” Jean said. “Don’t worry, little junk pile. There are other hammers. You’ll grow up and one day you’ll be one of the biggest, most beautiful junk piles in the world and his Honor the Mayor will claim it as a public park for the citizens of Whitby.”

  Still holding the hammer, Rudolph glanced over at Gretchen. There was a shamed, frightened look in his eyes. “Christ, Jean,” he said to his wife, “there’s at least five thousand dollars’ worth of stuff there.”

  “Her Honor the Mayor’s wife doesn’t need cameras,” Jean said. “Let people take pictures of me. Let poor people take pictures. Talented people. Hoopla!” She made a spreading, gay ballet gesture with her arms. “Bring on the hammers. Rudy, darling, don’t you think you ought to give your beautiful rich young wife a drink?”

  “You’ve had enough to drink.”

  “Rudolph,” Gretchen said, “I’d better be off. We’re not going to Whitby tonight.”

  “Beautiful Whitby,” Jean said. “Where the beautiful rich young wife of his Honor the Mayor smiles at Democrats and Republicans alike, where she opens charity bazaars and appears faithfully at her husband’s side at banquets and political meetings, where she is to be seen at Commencements and Fourth of July celebrations and the home games of the Whitby University football team and the dedication of new science laboratories and the ground-breaking ceremonies for housing projects with real toilets for colored folk.”

  “Cut it out, Jean!” Rudolph said harshly.

  “Really, I think I’d better go,” Gretchen said. “I’ll call you in …”

  “Sister of his Honor the Mayor, what’s your rush to leave?” Jean said. “Who knows, one day he may need your vote. Stay and we’ll have a nice cosy little family drink. Maybe if you play your cards right, he may even marry you. Stay and listen. It may be in … instructive.” She stumbled on the word. “How to be an appendage, in a hundred easy lessons. I’m having visiting cards printed up. Mrs. Rudolph Jordache, ex-career girl, now in the appendage business. One of the ten most hopeful appendages in the United States. Parasitism and hypocrisy a specialty. Courses given in appendaging.” She giggled. “Any true-blue American girl guaranteed a diploma.”

  Rudolph didn’t try to stop Gretchen as she went out of the room and into the hallway, leaving him standing in his raincoat, the hammer in his hand, staring down at his drunken wife.

  The elevator door opened directly into the apartment and Gretchen had to wait in the hallway and she heard Jean say, in a childish, aggrieved voice, “People are always taking away my hammers,” before the elevator door opened and she could flee.

  When she got back to the Algonquin she called Evans’s hotel, but there was no answer from his apartment. She left a message with the operator that Mrs. Burke had not left for the weekend and could be reached all night at her hotel. Then she took a hot bath and changed her clothes and went down to the hotel dining room and had dinner.

  Rudolph called at nine the next morning. She was alone. Evans hadn’t called. Rudolph said that Jean had gone to sleep after Gretchen had left and had been contrite and ashamed when she woke up and was all right now and they were going to Whitby after all and they’d wait for Gretchen in the apartment.

  “You’re sure you don’t think it’s wiser to spend the day alone with her?” Gretchen asked.

  “It’s better when we’re not alone,” Rudolph said. “You left your bag here, in case you think you’ve lost it.”

  “I remember,” Gretchen said. “I’ll be up at your place by ten.”

  As she dressed she puzzled over the scene the night before and remembered Jean’s less violent, but almost equally strange behavior at other times. Now it all added up. She had managed to hide it from Gretchen until now, because Gretchen hadn’t seen her all that often. But it was plain now—Jean was an alcoholic. Gretchen wondered if Rudolph realized it, and what he was going to do about it.

  By a quarter to ten Evans hadn’t called, and Gretchen went down in the elevator and into the sun of Forty-fourth Street, a slender, tall woman, with fine legs, her hair soft and black, her skin unblemished and pale, her tweed suit and jersey blouse exactly right for a gracious country weekend. Only the Ban the Bomb button, worn like a brooch on the well-tailored lapel, might indicate to the passerby that not everything was as it seemed on that sunny American spring morning of 1966.

  The debris of the cameras had been cleared away from the living room. Rudolph and Jean were listening to a Mozart piano concerto on the radio when Gretchen came in. Rudolph seemed unruffled and although Jean was pale and a little shaky when she stood up to kiss Gretchen hello, she, too, seemed to have recovered from the night before. She gave Gretchen a quick glance, that perhaps asked for pity and understanding, but after that, in her normal, quick, low-timbred voice, with a hint of gaiety that didn’t seem forced, she said, “Gretchen, don’t you look smashing in that suit. And tell me where I can get one of those buttons. The color goes with my eyes.”

  “Yes,” Rudolph said. “I’m sure it’ll make a big hit the next time we have to go down to Washington.” But his voice was tender and he laughed, relaxed.

  Jean held his hand, like a child on an outing with a father, as they went downstairs and waited for the man from the garage to bring the car. Her hair was washed and shone chestnut brown, and she had it tied in back with a bow and she was wearing a very short skirt. Her legs, without stockings, were lovely, slender, straight, and already tanned. As usual, she looked no more than eighteen.

  While they were waiting for the car, Rudolph said to Gretchen, “I called my secretary and told her to get in touch with Billy and tell him we were expecting him for lunch at our place.”

  “Thank you, Rudy,” Gretchen said. She hadn’t seen Billy in so long that for their first meeting it would be much better if there were others around.

  When the car came, the two women sat in front with Rudolph. He turned on the radio. Mozart, unworried and spring-like, accompanied them as far as the Bronx.

  They drove through dogwood and tulips and skirted fields where men and boys were playing baseball. Mozart gave way to Loesser on the radio, and Ray Bolger sang, irresistibly, “Once in love with Amy, Always in love with Amy,” and Jean sang along with the radio, in a low, true, sweet voice. They all remembered Bolger in the show and how much pleasure he had given them. By the time they reached the farmhouse in Whitby, where the first twilight-colored lilacs were budding in the garden, the night before was almost as if it had never happened. Almost.

  Enid, now two, blonde and round, was waiting for them. She leaped at her mother and they embraced and kissed each other again and again. Rudolph carried Gretchen’s bag as he and Gretchen went up the stairs to the guest room. The room was crisp and sparkling, full of flowers.

  Rudolph put her bag down and said, “I think you have everything you need.”

  “Rudy,” Gretchen said, keeping her voice low, “we ought to skip drinks today.”

  “Why?” He sounded surprised.

  “You mustn’t tempt her. Jean. Even if she doesn’t take any herself—seeing others drink …”

  “Oh,” Rudolph said negligently, “I wouldn’t worry about that. She was just a little upset last night …”

  “She’s an alcoholic, Rudy,” Gretchen said gently.

  Rudolph made a dismissive, light gesture. “You’re being melodramatic,” he said. “It’s not like you. Every once in a while she goes on a little bender, that’s all. Even as you
and I.”

  “Not even as you and I,” Gretchen said. “She shouldn’t touch one drop. Not even a sip of beer. And as much as possible, she should be kept away from people who drink. Rudy, I know. Hollywood is full of women like her. In the beginning stages, like her, and in later stages, horrible stages, the way she’s liable to be. You’ve got to protect her.”

  “Nobody can say I don’t protect her.” There was a thin edge of anger in his voice.

  “Rudy, lock up every bottle of liquor in this house,” Gretchen said.

  “Calm yourself,” Rudolph said. “This isn’t Hollywood.”

  The phone was ringing downstairs and then Jean called up and said, “Gretchen, it’s Billy, for you. Down here.”

  “Please listen to me,” Gretchen said.

  “Go talk to your son,” Rudolph said coldly.

  On the phone, Billy’s voice was very grown-up. “Hello, Mother. It’s wonderful that you could come up.” He had begun calling her Mother when Evans had appeared on the scene. Before that it had been Mummy. She had thought it childish for a boy as big and as old as he, but now, on the phone, she longed for the Mummy. “Say, I’m awfully sorry,” Billy said. “Will you make my excuses to Rudolph? He invited me to come to lunch, but there’s a softball game on here at one o’clock and I’m pitching, so I’m afraid I’ll have to ask for a raincheck.”

  “Yes,” Gretchen said. “I’ll make your excuses. When will I see you?”

  “Well, it’s a little difficult to say.” Billy sounded honestly perplexed. “There’s a kind of giant beer-fest after the game at one of the houses and …”

  “Where’re you playing?” Gretchen said. “I’ll come down and watch you. We can visit between the innings.”

  “Now you sound sore.”

  “I’m not sore, as you put it. Where’re you playing?”

  “There’s a whole bunch of fields on the east side of the campus,” Billy said. “You can’t miss it.”

  “Good-bye, Billy,” Gretchen said, and hung up. She went out of the hall where the phone was and into the living room. Jean was on the couch, cradling Enid and rocking her back and forth. Enid was making small cooing noises. Rudolph was shaking up Daiquiris.

  “My son sends his regrets,” Gretchen said. “He has weighty affairs that will detain him all afternoon. He cannot lunch.”

  “That’s too bad,” Rudolph said. But his mouth hardened for a moment. He poured the cocktails for himself and Gretchen. Jean, occupied with her child, said she was not drinking.

  After lunch, Gretchen borrowed the car and drove to the Whitby University campus. She had been there before but now she was struck afresh by the quiet, countrified beauty of the place, with its homely old buildings spread out haphazardly on acres of green, its wandering graveled walks, the tall oaks and elms. Because it was Saturday afternoon there were few students about and the campus dozed in a peaceful sunny trance. It was a place to look back upon, she thought, an image for later nostalgia. If a university was a place that prepared young people for life, these peaceful lawns, these unpretentious welcoming halls and classrooms might be found wanting. The life Whitby’s graduates would have to face in the last third of the twentieth century was almost certainly not going to be anything like this.

  There were three desultory baseball games in progress on the playing fields. The most desultory, in which almost half the players were girls, was the one in which Billy was playing. The girl who was in field had a book with her. She sat on the grass reading it and only looked up and ran after a ball when her teammates shouted at her. The game must have been going on for some time, because as Gretchen came up behind the first-base line there was a mild argument between the first-baseman and some of the members of the opposing team who were sprawled on the grass awaiting their turn at bat, about whether the score was nineteen to sixteen or eighteen to fifteen. It could hardly have made any difference to anyone whether or not Billy had played.

  Dressed in fringed blue jeans stained with bleach, and a gray T-shirt, Billy was pitching, just lobbing it up to the girls, but throwing the ball hard to the boys when they came to bat. Billy didn’t see Gretchen immediately and she watched him, tall and moving lazily and gracefully, his hair too long over the face that was a beautiful, improved version, sensual, strong, dissatisfied, of Willie Abbott’s face, the forehead as broad and high, the eyes deeper set and darker, the nose longer, with tense, wide nostrils, a single asymmetrical dimple in the right cheek when he smiled, his teeth pure, youthful white.

  If only he will live up to his face, Gretchen thought, as her son tossed the ball up to a pretty, chubby girl, who swung and missed and cried, in mock despair, “I’m hopeless!”

  It was the third out of the inning and Billy saw Gretchen standing behind first base and came over to her and said, “Hi, Mother,” and kissed her. There was a little crinkle of amusement around his eyes as he glanced at the Ban the Bomb button. “I told you you’d find us without trouble.”

  “I hope I’m not interfering,” she said. The wrong tone, she knew. Love me, I’m your mother.

  “No, of course not,” he said. “Say, kids,” he called, “somebody bat for me. I have a visitor. I’ll see you all later at the house.” He didn’t introduce her to anyone. “Why don’t we take a little walk? I’ll show you around.”

  “Rudolph and Jean were disappointed you couldn’t come for lunch,” Gretchen said, as they walked away from the game. Wrong tone again.

  “Were they?” Billy said evenly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Rudolph says he’s invited you over again and again and you never come.”

  Billy shrugged. “You know how it is,” he said. “Something’s always coming up.”

  “I’d feel better if you went there once in awhile,” Gretchen said.

  “I’ll go. Sometime. We can discuss the generation gap. Or how everybody on the campus smokes pot. His newspaper’s great on those subjects.”

  “Do you smoke pot?”

  “Mother, darling, come into the twentieth century.”

  “Don’t condescend to me,” she said sharply.

  “It’s a nice day,” he said. “I haven’t seen you for a long time. Let’s not argue. That building over there is the dormitory where I lived when I was a freshman.”

  “Was your girl there in that game?” He had written her that he was interested in a girl in one of his classes.

  “No. Her mother and father are here for the weekend and she has to pretend I don’t exist. Her father can’t stand me and I can’t stand him. I’m an immoral, depraving influence, her father says. He’s Neanderthal.”

  “Have you got a good word to say for anybody?”

  “Sure. Albert Camus. But he’s dead. That reminds me. How’s that other poet, Evans Kinsella?”

  “He’s alive,” Gretchen said.

  “That’s great news,” said Billy. “That’s really sensational news.”

  If Colin hadn’t died he wouldn’t be like this, Gretchen thought. He would be completely different. An absent-minded, busy man gets behind the wheel of a car and hits a tree and the impact spreads and spreads, never stopping, through the generations.

  “Do you ever come down to New York?” she asked.

  “Once in awhile.”

  “If you’ll let me know, the next time you’re coming,” she said, “I’ll get tickets for a show. Bring your girl, if you want. I’d like to meet her.”

  “She’s nothing much,” Billy said.

  “Anyway, let me know.”

  “Sure.”

  “How are you doing in your work?” she asked.

  Billy made a face.

  “Rudolph says you’re not doing very well. He says there’s a chance that you’ll be dropped from school.”

  “Being Mayor of this burg must be an easy job,” Billy said, “if he has time to check up on how many classes I cut a semester.”

  “If you get kicked out, you’ll be drafted. Do you want that?”

  “Who cares?” Bill
y said. “The Army can’t be more boring than most of the courses around here.”

  “Do you ever think about me?” Immensely wrong. Classically wrong. But she had said it. “How do you think I’d feel if you were sent to Viet Nam?”

  “Men fight and women weep,” Billy said. “Why should you and I be different?”

  “Do you do anything about trying to change things? About stopping the war, for example? A lot of students all over the country are working day and night to …”

  “Kooks,” Billy said. “Wasting their time. The war’s too good a racket for too many big. shots. What do they care what a few spastic kids do? If you want, I’ll take your button and wear it. Big deal. The Pentagon will quake when they hear that Billy Abbott is protesting against the bomb.”

  “Billy,” Gretchen stopped walking and faced him, “are you interested in anything?”

  “Not really,” he said calmly. “Is there something wrong with that?”

  “All I hope,” Gretchen said, “is that it’s a pose. A silly, adolescent pose.”

  “It’s not a pose,” he said. “And I’m not an adolescent, in case you haven’t noticed. I’m a big, grown man and I think everything stinks. If I were you, I’d forget about me for awhile. If it’s any hardship to you to send me the money to keep me in school, don’t send it. If you don’t like the way I am and you’re blaming yourself for the way I turned out, maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not. I’m sorry to have to talk this way, but there’s one thing I know I don’t want to be and that’s a hypocrite. I think you’ll be happier if you don’t have to worry about me, so you go back to my dear Uncle Rudolph and to your dear Evans Kinsella and I’ll go back to my ball game.” He turned and strode away, along the path toward the playing fields.

  Gretchen watched him until he was just a small blue-and-gray figure in the distance, then walked slowly, heavily, toward where she had parked Rudolph’s car.