Yale lay on the bed beside Anne. He grinned at Cynthia. "Don't look so smug," he said. "You're next. Just as soon as you finish with Adar. Do you know what Cindar told me last night?" he asked Anne. "She said that she couldn't help but be a little jealous of you. After all you have given me a son, and she has brought nothing to our house except a baby girl who belongs to some other man." Yale chuckled. "I'm going to start following you two around. You must be listening to those soap operas on the radio. Where else could you pick up such hearts-and-flowers dialogue?"
Cynthia had finished nursing Adar. She put her back in her crib. Then she pattered swiftly across the room and landed with a thud on Yale's chest. She bit his shoulder. He yelled with pain.
"There. I told you not to tell Anne," Cynthia said. Crouching back on his stomach, she plucked a few hairs out of his chest. "The trouble with this marriage is that no one has any secrets!"
"That's the only thing that makes it possible! And you know it. No secrets . . ." Yale said. He tried to grab her around the neck and pull her forward, on top of him, but she ducked out of his grasp.
Whenever Cynthia or Anne raised any question about their living together Yale started the formula which they all repeated with mock seriousness.
"Are you happy, Cindar?"
Cynthia smiled. "You're the best thing on the horizon so far!"
"Are you happy, Anne?"
Anne giggled. "I haven't received any other offers yet."
"Are you happy, Yale?" they chorused.
"It could be worse." He groaned. "I could have three women!"
They both grabbed him and looked at him ferociously. "You better not try it, chum!"
The three of them lay on the bed, listening to the put-put sounds of a power lawn mower. While everyone was resting or getting dressed for the cookout, Ralph Weeks was evidently mowing the west lawn. Silently, they watched the early evening shadows gather in the corners of the room. Yale liked the twilight part of the day. He luxuriated in the warmth and femininity that Anne and Cynthia had created in their huge bedroom. The light French provincial furniture, he thought, blended surprisingly well with Martha Weeks' canopied bed. Yale knew that Cynthia and Anne were reluctant to get dressed and face the evening trying to entertain a sullen Clara.
After her dunking Clara had come out of the pool sobbing and furious. She had grabbed her robe, and had run back to the house. Sam had followed her. Their departure put an uncomfortable edge on the afternoon.
Sarah and Harry Cohen decided that since it was nearly four o'clock they had better leave. With the impending strike at the Marratt plant Harry admitted that he had a lot of loose ends to tie together.
"I wanted to talk with you a little more about it," Harry said quietly to Yale when he was sure that Barbara couldn't hear him. "But when your sister came in I thought we better get off the subject. Your father may or may not know. Chances are he has a pretty good idea . . . but there's no sense of tipping him off if he doesn't." Harry had smiled. "I'm sorry about things piling up on you like this . . . but there's no way I can stop now."
Yale told him that there was no relationship between the publication of the book and the strike.
"Well, you know your father . . ." Harry said. "Barbara will tell him that I was here . . . obviously, a friend . . . and then he'll read the book or see the publicity on it and zowie . . ." As he left Harry told him he hoped that Clara wouldn't create a mess.
"Anne and Cynthia will just have to disregard what she said." Harry shrugged. "You're going to find out, Yale, that people won't let you live your life without interference. I have no opinions on your marriage, but I think you are sitting on a bomb, and lighting matches too close to the fuse."
Barbara and Bob Coleman left a few minutes later. When she was dressed again and bidding good-bye, Barbara said to Yale, "You think you're quite a man with the women, don't you, chum? If you want some sisterly advice . . . if I were you I'd confine myself to the more pliable type. You'll never get to first base with Clara."
Yale knew that Barbara probably would report her experiences to Pat and Liz in detail. He guessed that she was probably pleased with the fiasco that Clara had created.
Peoples McGroaty asked Yale how long Sam and Clara were staying. Yale told him they would be with them at least until Wednesday. Peoples shook his head. He told Yale that Clara was trouble. "Wouldn't it be better if she and Sam stayed in town at a hotel, or one of the new motels on the New York road?"
Yale disagreed. "Clara is all right, Peoples. She's like most people in the world who live strictly by their emotions. Running a newspaper . . . you should know . . . it's much easier to hate what you don't understand than to make the mental effort to understand." Yale smiled. "Don't worry, we'll straighten her out."
Peoples told Barbara, while Yale listened, that Yale worried him. "His idealism frightens me. It would be a bit sticky and unbelievable if it weren't so intense. He reminds me a lot of Mat Chilling except that Mat was passive by comparison. Yale has such a terrible sense of mission. He holds up a bright mirror and we are bewildered to look into it and see our own cowardice."
Yale rubbed his toes against Cynthia's, and then against Anne's ankles. "Are we all ashamed to see Clara again?" he asked them. He stared into the shadowed canopy of the bed.
Cynthia answered first. "I'm not ashamed, Yale, and I don't think Anne is. Whether it is wrong or right, morally, for us to live together, doesn't bother me. I'm convinced that for us it is the best solution. What does frighten me is that you seem so determined to make us a public spectacle. If our lives were very private, we might get away with it. This way I think we are heading for trouble."
Yale disagreed. "Not a public spectacle, Cindar . . . but not hiding and living in fear either."
"Well, anyway, neither you nor Anne makes any attempt at concealment. I think you are both too brash. I feel the way you both do, but I don't believe in advertising our love. You are too trusting of people's reactions. Even the people you have invited here Sundays have different ideas than we have. I talked with Barbara before she went home. She had fun . . . but she was shocked . . . being naked . . . what she calls our bigamy . . . just wait until she reads Spoken in My Manner . . ." Cynthia whistled. "And just wait until your father reads it and gets Barbara's report.
"Cindar is right," Anne said. She leaned on her elbow so that she could look at both of them. "In the next few months Challenge may be poking into a hornets' nest. When you start questioning the customs that people live by . . . when you laugh at the 'sacred cows' . . . you are stirring up an emotional brew that can explode all over the place." She paused and looked at Yale and Cynthia fondly. "I'm not afraid, and I don't really think that you are, Cindar. During the spring when we were rewriting Mat's book, you were as wild and passionate with your theories as any bearded Bolshevik. Now that some of your ideas are going to show up in print I'm afraid you won't be able to deny them."
Cynthia grinned. "I guess I'm a sneaky radical . . . before our marriage I just thought my ideas, or said them in a low voice to Mat when he didn't seem to be listening seriously." Cynthia was on her elbow talking across Yale's face directly to Anne. Yale ran his fingers across their dangling breasts. They both jumped.
"You cut that out!" Anne warned him. "Or you'll end up in the trouble that Cynthia and I have been promising you! She lay on her stomach. "What is really bothering me, Yale, is Harry Cohen. It's very bad timing. Does he really have to call the strike at the Marratt plant Wednesday?"
"It's too late, now. This is the first time that Harry has managed to get an affirmative strike vote from the employees." Yale reviewed the labor problems at Marratt Corporation for them. "He's been trying to organize Marratt for nearly eight years. Pat and he have played checkers with the employees in the plant. Pat has his stooges. Harry has his. They usually each have a pretty good idea what the other is up to. Finally, during the war, Harry won the elections with a clear majority. They had hired so many new people to replace those
who were drafted that the old loyalties disappeared. It's been the same all over the country. . . .
"But Harry hasn't gained much. Pat has been able to ignore his demands because he has been careful to keep the company in a position where he would have a good chance of breaking the strike, and maybe the union as well. Pat has tried to have sufficient inventories to last six to eight months. He has a Strike Day program to get the stuff to his distributors and brokers that is practically impregnable. In the past it meant that Cohen would be tackling a long strike. His headquarters would never okay that.
"Right now, Harry thinks the time is ripe. The demand has been so great that the plant is working practically around the clock. Inventories are way down. On the other hand, three or four thousand people have been laid off at the Latham Shipyards in the past year. The city has plenty of unemployed. Pat might try to employ a whole new crew. He'd warn those who didn't come back that they would be out of a job permanently. This could be Pat's golden opportunity to break the union. But Harry can't stop now. It's a gamble. The existence of the union depends on Harry getting better wages for them. He's in between the devil, Pat . . . and the deep blue sea . . . no union at all. Still, if it became an extended strike, Pat could lose millions of dollars."
Anne sighed. "Doesn't it bother you, Yale, that you know what is going to happen, and you haven't told Pat?"
"It's not a question of loyalties. Harry is my friend, but he didn't have to tell me his plans. He naturally assumes that I won't tell Pat. Oh, I know . . . you want to say that blood is thicker than water. But that's a cliché that really doesn't mean anything. Each situation contains its own challenge, if we are to prove the value of what Challenge is trying to do we must sit above the fray, and offer judgment based on the soundest principles we can devise."
"I wish I didn't have such an imagination," Anne said. "I can see your father bewildered, contemplating the ruins around him, betrayed by his son. . . ." Anne's eyes were open wide and liquid with the sincerity of her emotion. "For Challenge, to Pat, will be a betrayal . . . he must have loved you, Yale . . . he must have had high hopes for you. . . ."
"That was the trouble . . . high hopes. . . ." It's all right to hope generally for someone, but when you try to impose your specific wishes, desires, ambitions on another person . . . it doesn't always work out, It smacks of despotism." Yale ran his fingers lightly along the separation in Anne's buttocks, and slowly up her back. She shivered pleasantly.
"You've tried to impose your high hopes on us," Cynthia said, grinning at him. "The truth is if you would admit it . . . that you are pretty much a despot yourself."
Yale chuckled. "There never was a despot who could tyrannize two women!" He touched his fingers on the curve of Cynthia's stomach almost perceptibly.
"He's asking for trouble, Anne."
"I think you're right, Cindar."
"What's going on between you two?" Yale demanded. "What are all these innuendoes?" He sat up on the bed and looked at them curiously. Then, as they both touched him, he realized what they meant.
He blushed. "Oh, no . . . you don't!"
When Yale, Anne, and Cynthia walked onto the back patio, Weeks looked sarcastically at his watch. He turned back to the outdoor fireplace and continued to flip the sizzling hamburgers and hot dogs. "I told you to just have patience," Weeks said grimly to Sam Higgins. "You've got to get accustomed to the three of them. Eventually, they get hungry. . . . I know one thing: they're going to have to hire a cook pretty quick. I'm getting a phobia against making my own meals."
"Ooooh you!" Cynthia said. She pushed Weeks away from the grill.
"You're an old buzzard," Anne protested hotly to Weeks. "This is the first time in a month you've come close to making a meal . . . even breakfast."
"What in hell have the three of you been doing?" Sam demanded suspiciously. "I've showered, shaved, shampooed . . ." Sam skipped the first "s" that belonged to the alliteration, but Cynthia and Anne had evidently heard it from Yale. They laughed. "I've been sitting down here an hour with Agatha," Sam continued. "Jesus, I can't figure out how you manage it . . . think of it . . . two women. . . ." Sam watched Yale preparing drinks at the portable bar for Anne, Cynthia, and himself. "Come on, Yale tell Agatha and me . . . what's the secret?" He grinned craftily. "You can start by telling us what the three of you have been doing for the last two and a half hours!"
Yale heard Aunt Agatha chuckle. He winked at her, and then said to Sam, "Did you ever play chess?"
Sam admitted that he had.
"Well, we've developed a new game. It's not in any of the books. You have to be somewhat of a genius to win at it. It's played singlehanded against two players who are in conspiracy against you."
Cynthia, who was helping Anne load hot dogs and hamburgers into their buns, started to choke with laughter. Anne grinned and patted her solicitously on her back.
Yale smirked at them. "Well, the trouble with this game is that you suddenly find you're up against two queens who can put your king in check with the greatest of ease . . . your opponents have a thorough grasp of the play . . . they know that the king can only make one move at a time. . . ." Yale handed Sam, who was looking very puzzled, a hot dog. "Here, without regard to its phallic qualities, put some of Pat Marratt's piccalilli on it." He chuckled. "See, the Marratts add spice to your life literally and figuratively."
"Where's Clara?" Cynthia asked. As she spoke, Clara, wearing a print skirt with a detachable halter, came out on the patio. "Speak of the devil," Clara said, trying to appear lighthearted, "I was in your library, Yale. God . . . it's fantastic! How many books have you?"
"About eight thousand, I guess. Contributions from several different sources. Mat Chilling's books are all there . . . over four thousand of them. Cynthia had collected four or five hundred of her own. Anne remembered her husband Ricky's books. We had them trucked in from Ohio . . . more than a thousand. I must have had a couple of thousand. Bob Coleman thought we had gone crazy . . . first private library he ever designed. It's a mess . . . a lot of duplicates. Anne and Cynthia are going to straighten it out one of these days. . . ."
"That's what he thinks," Anne said. She handed Clara a drink. "He has so many projects for us we both would have to live two lifetimes to accomplish them."
Clara took the drink dubiously. "After this afternoon, I don't know whether I should drink any more." She looked at them all, and said bravely, "I was a bitch. I'm really sorry." Clara sat down on a wicker porch chair and she started to cry.
"Come, come!" Aunt Agatha said coolly. "You're a big girl now, Clara!"
Clara shook her head. "No, I'm not," she said bitterly. "I'm a little scared kid. I just don't understand any of this stuff that you think is so adult." She sighed and patted her skirt. I feel better now that we all have clothes on. At least, I'm not embarrassed to look at everyone."
"Why don't you forget it, Clara?" Sam asked. "Just calm down."
"I'm calm, Sam. Calm enough to know that what Yale is doing is no worse than what you are doing."
Sam looked at her, surprised. He anticipated what she was going to say. "Let's not expose any dirty linen here, Clara."
"You're the one who made our lives filthy," Clara said, bitterly. "I'll never forget the day that I saw the two of you . . . you and that cheap tramp who was your secretary . . . sitting in the cocktail lounge of the Savoy-Plaza . . . the both of you looking gooey-eyed at each other. I wanted to vomit!"
Sam looked helplessly at Yale, Cynthia, and Anne who were sitting in a semi-circle around a redwood table, eating while they listened to Clara. Cynthia looked sympathetic, but Anne's face had an amused smile.
Aunt Agatha, who had been reading the financial section of the Sunday Times , put the paper down and eyed Clara speculatively. Finally she shrugged and said to Yale, "Well, there's the other side of the coin." She laughed and took the drink that Weeks handed to her, confirming that it was a Scotch on the rocks. "On one side, modern bigamy . . . marriage with occasional sol
o flights with someone else, and on the other side, down-to-earth bigamy à la Brigham Young. Take your pick." She sipped her Scotch appreciatively. "If you were nearer my age, Ralph, I'd ask you to marry me. These young people should be taught that there's more to marriage than sex."
Ralph wagged his head. "I'm only eleven years younger than you are, Agatha, but I'd never marry you for companionship, if that's what you mean!" He stroked his goatee. "You look pretty chipper to me . . . even if you are eighty . . . if you'd agree to some old-fashioned cuddling I might change my mind."
Agatha snorted, but everyone could see that she was delighted.
Sam was relieved at the dexterous way Agatha had changed the conversation. Clara was wiping her eyes. She had evidently decided not to discuss her marital problems further.
"I've been here all day, Yale," Sam said. "You've got to bring me up to date. Have you heard from Paul Downing? We've got to make up our minds fast on what to do with the 'short-sellers.' The quicker we clean this up . . . the better."
"Wait a second, Sam," Yale said. "I want to ask Clara a question." Yale turned to her. "Do you love Sam, Clara?"
"Yale! Let well enough alone!" Cynthia said nervously.
"It's all right, Cynthia," Clara said. She looked at Yale sardonically. "Yale is just using the Challenge technique on me. I'm not dumb, you know, Yale. I graduated from Wellesley." Clara looked at Sam silently before she answered. "We haven't slept together since April. . . ." We just live together. I'm not so modern as some of my friends."
"Supposing you had never seen Sam with this other woman, Clara?" Yale asked. "Your life would be pretty much the same. Sam must still find you quite attractive. . . ."
The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 54