The New Yorker Stories

by Callaghan, Morley; Callaghan, Barry;

  “Jeff, is Bill home?” she asked.

  “He ought to be home any minute, Eva. I thought he was with you.”

  “He was, but he left me, and I thought he’d be here.”

  “Sit down and wait for him,” Jeff said.

  When she had been sitting down a little while and they were talking, Jeff found himself trying to look at her as Mike had looked at the girl in the green hat in the restaurant, looking at the way she held her head, at her legs, at her eyes – with such a strange, shrewd glance that she became uneasy and began to smooth her skirt down over her legs.

  “She knew what I was thinking,” Jeff thought, smiling and cynical, and he tried to say with his eyes, I know a lot more about you than I used to know. I’ll bet if I put my arms around you, you’d snuggle up against me.

  “What’s the matter with you tonight?” Eva said uneasily.

  Startled, Jeff said, “Nothing. Nothing is the matter with me.”

  “I guess I’m restless. I can’t sit still. I think I’ll be going,” she said, and with her face flushed, she got up and went out before he could think of anything to say that might keep her there.

  When she had gone, Jeff, remembering the distress in her eyes when she’d first come in, grew ashamed of the stupid, leering way he had looked at her. “I’ve driven her away. Thinking of Mike made me act like a fool.” He hurried to the open window and he could see her pacing up and down, waiting.

  He stayed at the window, watching till he saw his brother coming. Eva ran up to him, and they stopped under the light and began to talk earnestly. Then Bill took her by the arm very firmly and they started to walk toward the corner, but then they turned and came back and stood talking beneath the window.

  In the murmur of their voices Jeff knew from the tone that his brother was apologetic. Then the voices rose a little and seemed to be lifted up to him, and there was a desperate pleading in the snatch of words, an eloquent sound Jeff had never heard in a girl’s voice before. “It’s all right. I wish you’d understand. I’m not worrying and I’ll never, never hold it against you.” She stopped suddenly and grabbed at Bill’s arm. Then she let him go and hurried along the street, while Bill stood still, looking after her.

  When Bill came in, Jeff said, “Eva was in here waiting for you.”

  Throwing his hat on a chair, Bill walked aimlessly toward the bedroom. “I know she was here. I ran into her outside.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “She was worked up about something, all right.”

  In Bill’s eyes there was the same distress Jeff had seen on the face of Eva. He was accustomed to having his older brother dominate him, even bully him a little. Bill seemed years older than Jeff because his hair had got so thin. Now the worry, the wonder, and fright showing in Bill’s eyes made Jeff feel helpless. “Eva thinks she’s going away, but I’m not going to let her,” Bill said. “I’m going to marry her even if we have to all live here together.”

  “Doesn’t she want to marry you?”

  “She keeps saying it’s her fault, and I didn’t intend to marry her, and now she’s put me in a hole at a time when we can’t do anything about it. She wants to go away for a while till everything’s all right.” Then Bill, looking straight ahead, said quietly, “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Eva.”

  Jeff could still see Eva clutching at his brother’s arm on the street – but not in the way Jessie had clutched at his own arm – and he said hesitantly, “I’ve got a girl too. I wouldn’t want to get in the jam you’re in.”

  “Nobody does. There’s no use talking about it,” Bill said, and he went into the bedroom and Jeff knew that Bill was quietly fearing for Eva, longing to protect her. Jeff began to feel all his brother’s wretchedness and grew timid. If he went back to Jessie, it might get for them like it was for Bill and Eva now.

  He sat and worried about his brother for a long time. Then he knew suddenly that he was no longer even thinking of his brother; without noticing it, he had begun to dream of the way Jessie had held him and the way she was going to whisper to him tomorrow night at her place when it was very late. He could see her lifting her ardent face up to him.

  Realizing that neither Mike’s wisdom nor his brother’s anguish could teach him anything and standing at the open window, he looked out over the lighted streets where he had walked a little while ago, looking toward Jessie’s place, stirred with a longing for more and more of whatever she would be able to give him. It had started now for them and it would keep going on. And then he was filled with awe, for it seemed like the beginning of a voyage out, with not much he had learned on this night to guide him.

  THE BRIDE

  That last night at the hotel, Eleanor, standing in front of the bureau mirror, was smiling at herself with her warm soft eyes as she put on her black hat with the rose veil. She had been married only six days. She was such a gentle, quiet girl, with her slender ankles, her dainty hands, and the fine high bridge on her nose, that everybody who knew her thought she ought to have married a doctor or a lawyer with a good practice who could have given her some security.

  Eleanor was waiting for her husband to come in and take her out to the theatre. Since she had never worn a veil with a hat before, she kept hurrying seriously from the bureau to the bathroom mirror, peering at herself and fretting and feeling quite sure that Walter’s eyes would light up with helpless admiration as soon as he saw her. “Then we’ll rush out to the show and rush back and get some sleep and get up early,” she thought. In the morning they were going third-class on the boat to Europe. Everything was taking place so rapidly. They were alone and together, they were actually married, and there was a kind of sweet, uneasy pleasure in letting each small new experience astonish and sweep her from one day into another without letting her stop to grow timid. “I just love this little veil. It’s perfect, it’s stunning,” she thought.

  Walter, coming into the room, called out, “Are you ready, Eleanor?” As she glanced at her pretty face in the mirror, she said, “I’m all ready. I won’t keep you a minute,” and watched with placid assurance for him to take one long, admiring look at her before they hurried out together. He came slowly into the bathroom, hardly seeing her. There was a dreamy, pleased expression in his eyes. Walter was a lazy-moving young man of middle height whose face kept folding in warm smiles. He was carrying a newspaper opened at a particular page. In a most casual manner, to conceal his own deep satisfaction, he held out the paper and said, “Look at this, Eleanor. There’s a little piece here about my winning the scholarship.”

  “Isn’t that lovely,” she said. “Is it a big piece? Let me see.” She pushed her veil back from her eyes.

  As he handed her the paper, he seemed rather bored, so she just glanced once at the article to see his name and the space devoted to him and then she smiled and said, “That’s splendid, isn’t it, dear?” Eleanor still thought they were in a hurry to go out and that he wouldn’t want her to delay and read the paper. “I’m ready, darling,” she said, hoping he would notice her little black veil.

  But he frowned and there was a sullen expression on his face. His blue eyes got bright with bewildered indignation and he blurted out, “Do you mean to say you won’t take time to read that little bit there?”

  “I thought we were in a hurry, that’s all,” she said, but she faltered and felt disturbed beyond all reason. “I mean I thought we could read it when we came home. You told me to be sure and he ready.”

  “But imagine your being able to go out without reading it when you know it all means so much to me. Just imagine.”

  “I’ll read it,” she said. “Give it to me.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said, “I know you look at my work differently than I do. What’s everything to me is so often nothing to you. Come on, we’ll be late.”

  “But I said I’d read it,” she cried, snatching the paper.

  “Go ahead, then. Read it out
of duty.” He sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I can’t understand you. If you’re not really interested, why are you going off to Europe on a wild-goose chase? We’ll have hardly any money for two, barely enough to live on. If we go broke, you’ll probably want me to quit and come back and get a job.”

  They were in the bedroom now and she sat down by the window to try to read the piece in the paper, but the printed letters kept dancing up and down and her veil kept dropping in front of her eyes. She was hurt, yet she knew she had hurt him, too. “Why didn’t I read it when he first handed it to me?” she thought. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  Walter was saying moodily, “Come on, let’s go, Eleanor.”

  “If you feel the way you say, I don’t want to go out with you,” she said. “If you talk like that about me, I won’t go to the show.” But as she spoke, she pleaded with her eyes, wanting him to apologize and comfort her and say he had been wrong.

  “Come on,” he said irritably. “It’s just a little thing. Forget it.”

  “You don’t think it such a little thing or you wouldn’t still be so nasty, so I won’t go with you while you feel that way,” she said resentfully.

  “All right, don’t,” he said, blunt and angry. “I can’t help it if I feel that way.” He flung himself on the bed and tried to show by his inert indifference that he was a reasonable, good-tempered fellow who was interested mainly in humouring his wife. They were both silent. Then Walter began to feel miserable and more and more bewildered. In the months before the marriage, their relationship had seemed so simple, but already he had begun to feel a pulling and straining between them over very little things that was bewildering because it hurt so much. As he looked at Eleanor sitting forlornly by the window, he could not stand this separation and he felt his whole being drifting toward her. “What really matters deeply to her?” he asked himself. He thought of the hours she had listened to him talking and had seemed so animated by anything that stirred him at all. “I don’t know why this has to happen,” he said mildly. “I’m not going to sit here saying nothing. The whole thing is of no importance. I’m going downstairs to the lobby.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said stubbornly.

  When he had gone, she tried to behave like a sensible woman who was prepared to enjoy a quiet evening by herself. She took off her coat and hat, put on a negligée, got herself an apple, and lay down on the bed to read. The window in the room looked across at another wing of the hotel, and laughter drifting across from those lighted open windows began to make her feel restless and lonesome. Very slowly she nibbled at her apple, staring at one spot on the printed page and trying to understand how Walter could speak with so much bitterness about a simple matter of having his name mentioned in the paper, and as she frowned there grew in her a dull, heavy fear of all the trifling matters for disagreement that might arise and grow big and sharp enough to separate them. She felt even worse because her fear was so mixed up with her ache of love for him. Her mother had said, “Eleanor, you’ve only known the man a year. It’s very silly to get married now. You’ll never have anything ahead. Just because the boy has a chance to go to Europe for a year, he wants to take you with him.” Within her grew an increasing dread of all the days ahead, days sure to be full of such abrupt, surprising disagreements . . . in the morning they were going far away to a strange country where she would have no friends if she should find herself alone. Even in the hotel room, where she could hear the noise of laughter from open windows, she became so afraid of being alone that she felt helpless; she began to cry.

  She was still crying when Walter came in. He had made up his mind to come sauntering into the room smiling with tolerant good nature to conceal his awkwardness, so he got confused when he saw her and rushed across the room with a white, worried face, saying, “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and she kept crying.

  “Can’t I do anything?” he said, caressing her head.

  “No, I guess I’m just lonesome, that’s all. Can’t I cry if I want to?”

  “Why are you so lonesome?”

  “I wish I were home,” she said. “I don’t want to go so far away.”

  “You’re afraid of how things will turn out,” he said angrily.

  “Maybe I’m afraid. I don’t know.”

  She lay with her black curled hair against the clean white pillow and heard him walking up and down, up and down, and at last she stopped crying.

  “We’re very silly,” he said finally. “I’m ashamed. To make it worse, there was nothing to it at all. But it’s my fault. Please forgive me, Eleanor.”

  “All right, Walter,” she said willingly. “Let’s forget about it. Kiss me. It’s just as well we’re going to bed early, when we’re sailing in the morning.“

  He kissed her with grave tenderness, and then he said softly, almost to himself, “We ought to feel so happy tonight. Sailing in the morning, with so much to look forward to.” He turned once to see her smiling at him. He smiled himself, then walked away restlessly, for he could not look contented, and he sat down by the window with his chin cupped in his hand.

  His aloof dejection puzzled Eleanor, and after watching him for some time, she said, “What’s the matter with you now, WaIter?”

  “Nothing. I feel fine.”

  “You can’t feel fine while you look so unhappy,” she said, trying to tease him. “Look at me and tell me what you’re thinking about. Give me three guesses.”

  With a bashful grin, Walter shook his head, trying to appear offhand, then he said impetuously, “Did you read the piece in the paper, Eleanor? Why don’t you look at it now and see what you think about it.”

  “You said you don’t care what I think,” she answered, still teasing him with her smile.

  “You know I care, don’t go on like that,” he said.

  She continued to shake her head firmly while he coaxed her, and as he pleaded and looked dejected, she could hardly help laughing. The more he coaxed, the more it delighted her.

  “All right, then, Eleanor, don’t do it,” he said humbly, and at that moment, while he spoke with such humility, she realized fully how necessary her enthusiasm was to him. She realized that there could be no pleasure even in this simple matter for him unless he shared it with her, and she was filled with a warmth and joy that came from seeing how inevitably he was pulled toward her. She smiled and closed her eyes. She could hear the city street sounds far below. In the early morning they would be hurrying to the harbour, rushing to the boat. Again she grew timid. But she felt herself thrust so buoyantly into their life together that she sat bolt upright, breathless.

  THE CHISELER

  Old Poppa Tabb was never really cut out to be a manager for a fighter. He seemed too short and too fat, although he’d only got soft around the waist during the last year as Billy got a lot of work in the small clubs, fighting at the flyweight limit. If it hadn’t been for his old man, Billy would have been a chesty little bum standing at night on street corners spitting after cops when they passed. The old man and Billy were both the same size – five foot two in their bare feet – only the old man weighed one hundred and thirty-five pounds and Billy one hundred and twelve.

  Poppa Tabb had always wanted his son to amount to something and didn’t like the stories he heard about his son being chased by policemen. It hurt him when Billy was sent down for three months for tripping a cop and putting the boots to him. So he thought his son might want to be a fighter and he made an arrangement with a man named Smooth Cassidy, who was very experienced with young fighters, to act as Billy’s trainer and handler, and he himself held the contract as the manager. After Billy started fighting in the small clubs, Poppa Tabb bought two white sweaters with “Billy Tabb” on the back in black letters, one for himself and one for Smooth Cassidy. It was at this time that Poppa Tabb began to get a little fat around the waist. He used to sit over in the sunlight by the door of the fire hall and tell the firemen about Billy. He us
ed to sit there and talk about “me and Billy,” and have a warm glowing feeling down deep inside.

  Late at night he used to wait for Billy to come home from drinking parties with fast white women. He waited, walking up and down the narrow hall of their flat, and he shook his head and imagined that Billy had gotten into an accident. When Billy came in and started to take off his shoes, Poppa Tabb, sitting opposite him, was so worried he said: “I don’t want you strolling your stuff so late, Billy.”

  Billy looked at him. Standing up and coming closer, he said to his old man: “You tryin’ to get on me?”

  “No, only I know what’s good for you, son.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I know what’s good for me. Maybe I know you ain’t so good for me.”

  “There some things you got to do, Billy.”

  Billy raised his fist. “You want something? You want some of this?”

  “You don’t go hitting me, Billy.”

  “Say you want some and I smack you. Or get off me.”

  After that, when Billy came in late Poppa Tabb just looked at his bright sharp eyes and smelled the cologne on his clothes and couldn’t say anything to him. He only wished that Billy would tell him everything. He wanted to share the exciting times of his life and have the same feeling, talking to him, that he got when he held up the water pail and handed the sponge to Smooth Cassidy when he was ringside.

  Billy did so well in the small clubs that bigger promoters offered him work. But they always talked business with Smooth Cassidy, and Poppa Tabb felt they were trying to leave him out. Just before Billy fought Frankie Genaro, the flyweight champion, who was willing to fight almost anyone in town because the purses for flyweights were so small, Poppa Tabb heard stories that Dick Hallam, who liked owning pieces of fighters, was getting interested in Billy and taking him out to parties. At nights now Billy hardly ever talked to his old man, but still expected him to wait on him like a servant.