by James Purdy
“Have you heard from home lately?” Carla wandered afield a bit. Her eyes had dried and her mouth was set more in the way it had been when she was his wife.
“Aunt Tryphena died last month, in Grand Rapids,” he told her.
“She was your favorite aunt, wasn’t she?” Carla moved now from the mahogany stool to a small stuffed armchair.
“Next to Aunt Harriet, yes she was,” he reflected, putting down the pages of the Tribune. “Of course I didn’t have the money to go to her funeral,” he said and looked accusingly nowhere in particular.
“Oh, dear,” she sighed, “I’m sorry.” She spoke as if his missing the funeral was connected with another of her shortcomings.
In the long silence which now followed, she got up and touched the mantelpiece and her finger came away covered with the black dust of many months.
“Well, since you’re here unasked and unexpected, there’s the little problem of where to sleep you.” He hesitated. He counted. “I don’t suppose you want to sleep with Clayton, in the big bed in the back room,” he scolded at the inconvenience of it all, “so I guess we’ll bring him out here and sleep him with me on the davenport.”
“You’re not in love with this Clayton, are you, Ace?” Carla kept back the tears. She was still very jealous of her former husband.
“Oh, when he first moved in we were a bit soft on one another, I’ll admit,” he sneered. “I’ve been too busy on these”—he struck the pages of the Tribune with open palm—“perhaps always to know where my affections tend, and besides my genius interests Clayton as much as my person.”
She dried a tear on the sleeve of her sweater. “It’s all my fault, Ace.” She bowed her head.
“You bet your goddam life it is!” He began rolling himself a cigarette from a little gray bag of tobacco. “Don’t you expect any nice little old forgiveness. Jesus and me don’t agree on adulterous women, remember.”
“I missed you, Ace, darling, every minute I was gone, say what you will. In fact, I thought only of you the entire time I was away,” Carla spoke in whispers, her genuine way of speaking, even though it sounded like a talking-picture star of the day.
Her confession set him to musing, but he managed after a moment to say: “What you experienced was guilt, then, not nostalgia for me. You’re too big a sissy even to enjoy adultery.”
He now turned sideways from her and began writing large high sprawling letters on the newsprint so that headlines covered headlines.
Carla had stood up again much in the manner of a schoolgirl who wishes to recite before her turn.
“I feel like the hay,” Ace said to his cat, ignoring Carla. “Scintilla,” he called to the cat, and when she leaped into his lap, he kissed her whiskers. “Feel like the hay, Scintilla.”
“Guess Scintilla is the only thing you love,” Carla remarked blankly.
“Carla.” Ace now turned his attention to her, employing a kind of schoolteacher lecture voice her own stance had perhaps invoked. “Now you’re back, you’ll notice some of the regulations are changed. You’re back, dearest, let’s say, under new house rules. You’re here strictly as a breadwinner, not anybody’s wife.”
“I was afraid it would be this way, Ace.” She did try to restrain her tears so she would not anger him more. “But I’m willing and ready to accept your terms.” Imploring a little, she added: “But, Ace, you don’t seem to know why I did come back.”
“Don’t I?” Ace responded icily.
“No, Ace, you don’t, and I guess your not knowing why I came back is the reason I left you in the first place.”
“Well, do tell.” He laughed.
“Will you let me tell you why I came back?” She spoke to him from half a room away.
He scraped some mud off his instep from the bad November weather.
“I came back because I love you, Ace,” she said, and a choking suppressed sob punctuated the silence after her remark.
“Do tell, Scintilla,” he spoke to the cat as he put it on the floor. “Well, that’s your story of course, Carla. Keep in mind the new regulations just the same, if you do decide to stay. Breadwin or get out,” he said, removing his clothes for bed.
From the next room where she too was undressing for bed, Carla exclaimed: “Good God, you haven’t changed, Ace!” In a low voice, to herself: “And neither have I!” She dried her tears. “I’ve opened the gates myself and walked right back to the penitentiary,” she muttered. “Well, I’ve been here before, and I can’t say I’m unready or unprepared. Worried to death maybe, but not unready.”
“In lieu of a nightcap, Carla,” Eustace mumbled, massaging his writing-hand under the quilt, “I can tell you right now that if you thought it was hard living with me before, you’ll find it damned harder now you’re back. Frankly, I didn’t expect you to come back, but I’m a little like that mad Jinni rescued from the bottle in the Arabian Nights—now you’ve come at last but too late to uncork me, I feel this time I’ll have to make my rescuer pay. . . . So we’ll have none of your dramatic balcony scenes. You’re back, Carla love, to take pot luck, you’ve got nothing that appeals to me this time around, and I don’t consider you my wife, owing to you walked out on me, and let me repeat, you’re here on sufferance . . .”
“As breadwinner, dear, I understand,” she chirped.
“While you were off on your adultery trek, I got this severe crush on a Cuban boxer name of Pete Jimenez. Went to all his matches. Though he’s Cuban, I’m sure he has Indian blood, and I’m crazy about Indians, as you probably recollect. I followed him around in the street until he finally took notice of me. Can you imagine then—he invited me up to his room.”
Carla began to cry, because boys were one of Ace’s failings. In the old days she had never allowed him to tell her about his pickups, at least not in detail, and she must have realized now this would be a subject she would be regaled with indefinitely and with frequency.
“I was so overcome by his physical presence,” Eustace went on, “that all I could do when I got to his room was sit in a cramped position on the floor and look at him. He likes to be looked at, so it pleased both of us. Then his brother come in, who is almost a dead-ringer for Pete except he is blind in one eye, and he served us with some kind of a milk drink I guess boxers have to take when in training. They invited me back. Well, any way, even if I never take advantage of it, Pete Jimenez is sure a beauty.”
Carla went on crying, which tickled Eustace.
“Why don’t you tell me how your book of poetry is coming along?” she managed to say through her paroxysms of weeping. “Or do you only have time now for love!”
“If you had ever developed your powers of observation, you’d see how much progress I made even this evening, while you were making a dramatic comeback.”
“You mean that scrawling you do on old newspapers!” She spoke with the vigor of the old Carla.
“If you observed anything at all,” Eustace told her, “you would see by the way I put that piece of charcoal to paper the progress and advancement I’m making . . . But so far as ‘love’ is concerned, since you brought the word up,” he continued, “I’ve been hearing that from people ever since I can remember. Some asshole comes into a room wearing pants or a skirt as the case may be, and says, ‘Ace, I love you, I love you, Ace,’ and then they pour me the poisoned cup, urging, ‘Drink this, Ace, it will do you so much good,’ and of course you know me, can’t refuse a gift, and I take a sip and say, ‘But, lover, this foaming potion is poison,’ and they answer back, ‘You know you don’t think that for a minute,’ and you know what, Carla, old girl, I don’t think it for that minute, and they’re right. They know me, I’m game for poison and it does me all the good I can get from it. So I always say to my poisoner, ‘All right, give me some then on account of I’m game that way,’ and they go ahead and give me it.”
“Ace, oh Ace, for Christ’s own sake, stop, or I’ll put on my coat and sleep in the alley.”
“Suit yourself.�
� He toned down his voice just the same.
After a creepy silence, Carla’s voice came out with: “Describe Clayton Harms to me.”
“That’s tough to do, lover,” he said. “Really tough. I’d just as soon describe one of Mrs. Roosevelt’s coalminers for you.”
Carla mumbled, scolded.
“Clayton Harms is a sweet boy who has to be told what to do or he’s apt to pee on the geraniums and put the eggs in the toilet bowl for breakfast. You tell him everything he’s to do in the morning, and damned if he don’t do most of it. He forgets a few things so you can get to scold him for it at night, because he ain’t happy unless he’s scolded. Or give him a flick of the whip. I’ve had to whip him several times for not bringing in enough groceries.”
“But you little realize money’s so hard to find,” Carla protested feebly.
“Nobody asked Clayton Harms to come live with me. One night not long ago he come in late-late, with no groceries, nothing, liquor on his breath. I said, looking at the eight-day clock, ‘Clayton, where is Daddy’s supper?’ and he just stood there, blinked, and acted as if turned to stone. ‘What kind of liquor is that on your breath, Clay?’ I asked, and he wouldn’t answer me. ‘Expensive, I bet,’ I said, and then I ordered him to take off his belt. Oh, how he blubbered, but all in all he was relieved by hearing a more reasonable command than he’d expected. When he had got his belt off, I reached for it like I was all ready to strap him good and then when he was waiting eyes shut to get strapped I spit hard as I could in his face . . . ‘That is imported gin on your breath, you fourflusher,’ I laughed, and he broke down then and promised me he’d change if I let him stay on.”
Just then the door opened, and in came Clayton Harms.
He was a giant of a man, with heavy-lidded large hazel eyes, apple-red cheeks, and a speaking voice almost that of a child.
“I could hear you talking out loud to yourself all down the length of the hall,” Clayton addressed Eustace, after switching on the lamp and studying his host’s face carefully.
“Guess again, sharp ears.” Eustace smiled wryly and then he raised his hand briefly to call attention to sobs emanating from the bedroom.
“Hear it?” Eustace went on, languid. “It’s her, my wife come back, she’s in bed bawling . . . I don’t know whether we’ll keep her or not. Depends on how many provisions and things she brings in,”—he raised his voice on the last phrase—“on account of you’re getting mighty nondependable and un-providing. Clay, you’re all just liquor-breath and promises to do better.”
Clayton Harms kneeled down in front of the davenport on which Ace was reclining and said, “Ace, you wrote her to come back, didn’t you? Didn’t you, Ace!”
“I wrote you to come back, hear that, Carla?” Eustace called in to her.
“Why is she back then?” Clayton Harms wanted to know, getting up from the floor and straightening out the crease in his trousers at the knee.
“I doubt old Carla could tell you herself. Claims it’s love,” Ace said in a low voice.
“Claims it’s love?” Clayton expressed puzzlement.
“Yes, she claims so,” Ace said. “Aren’t you going to give me my good-evening hug, Clay?” Ace gazed up at the latecomer.
Clayton hugged him bashfully, briefly.
“I don’t see why she comes back when we was living all right here without her. Besides she’s lost her legal rights,” Clayton said.
“Go in there and meet her since we’re all under the same damned roof. You can say howdy to her and then forget about her.”
Clayton went into the small bedroom where the former Mrs. Chisholm was crying hard now while daubing on her cold cream makeup, and said, “Howdy, Mrs. Chisholm.”
“My God, you’re a skyscraper,” Carla exclaimed.
“Yes, he’s tall, thank God,” Ace said. “And he looks so average, despite his height. We’d make a nice couple in the summer down on the rocks by the lake.”
When Clayton had returned to the front room, they heard Carla speak for their benefit. “To think he never missed me a bit. Why was I picked to fall in love with somebody who rejects me?”
“Well, it was you run out on him, Mrs. Chisholm,” Clayton Harms spoke up, slipping off his high shoes.
“And what good did running off do, I ask you?” Carla took up the question. “He never cared for me here or gone, and he’s been rubbing it in all evening how I don’t mean as much to him as one of Scintilla’s whiskers.”
“Well, that’s Ace for you, ma’am,” Clayton let down his suspenders and dropped his trousers. “You either go with him or you don’t, and I guess you and I was meant to go with him, Mrs. Chisholm.”
“I guess so, Mr. Harms.” Carla’s voice slowed with sleep. “Well, nice to have met you . . . Hope you rest comfortable.”
“He’ll rest the way he always rests—like a log pile, without you wishing the Japanese Sandman on him,” Ace yelled at his wife.
Clayton slapped his bare thigh and laughed at Ace’s ire, but his laugh unlike his speaking voice was deep, almost bass, and shook the room.
Things quieted down then a bit as if each one was rehearsing what should be said next, when Ace’s voice boomed: “Who’ll cook my breakfast in the morning?”
“I will,” both Clayton Harms and Carla Chisholm shouted.
“Guess I’ll have to decide on who tomorrow,” Ace said. He turned toward the wall, as Clayton hopped in bed next to him and gave him a generous goodnight kiss on the neck.
“Kiss me louder,” Ace said. “I want Carla to hear what strong mouth muscles you have. No, louder still! . . . How about that, Carla? That’s the kind of kissing I’ve been treated to while you were in Kansas City committing adultery.”
2
Yawning from above the fan of his urine spraying into the bowl, Ace was already beginning his morning exercises, the practice of which must in part have accounted for his wiry body—he had to keep at the acme for his coming summer appearance on the rocks facing Lake Michigan. As he sucked in his abdomen for the thirtieth time, and contracted his biceps, he could hear Clayton and Carla arguing together while they stood over the gas stove.
Wiping his hands free of tapwater by running them through his thatch of black straight hair, Ace walked out into the dining alcove and sat down for breakfast. After eating the scrambled eggs cooked by Clayton and drinking chicory prepared by Carla, Ace addressed his wife without looking at her.
“I’m having my Greek lesson in the front room at eleven o’clock, so either you stay in the kitchen or better go out. Point is for you to be inconspicuous and unheard. My teacher is even less fond of girls than me.”
“Ancient or modern Greek?” Carla spoke with bright strained interest.
“Your memory must have gone down the drain with your good looks in Kansas City. Did you ever know me to be interested in anything modern, Clay?” Ace addressed his friend as the salesman reassembled the davenport from its nighttime into its daytime shape.
“My teacher is a young genius of sixteen or seventeen summers,” Ace informed Carla. “Came from way down south in the state, tiny crossroads of a place. But he knows everything. I mean everything. Where he got his brains and knowledge in a crossroads—well, the universe is mysterious. And he is celestially good-looking, too good-looking for real. Until lately, Clay and I were keeping him, more or less, in food. His grant at the university ran out, and he threatens he’ll go on relief. Will lie about his age, as you have to be twenty-one to get handouts that way.”
“And how far are you in your study of ancient Greek?” Carla asked with bowed head.
“Oh, isn’t someone witty after her long train trip from the West,” Ace said.
“Eustace, Eustace!” Carla broke down then, and kneeling on the floor in front of him, she clasped his thighs. As Clayton Harms described the whole scene next day to his paid-up customers, she let out such an infernal hollering that the Irish streetcar conductor on the floor below pounded on the ceiling with a du
st-mop handle and yelled:
“Quiet up there, you rotten degenerates, or I’ll have the law on you this A.M.!”
Clayton shouted through the cracks in the floor that he was coming down in one half second and break every bone in the conductor’s body, but just then the doorbell rang and Ace jumped up and shouted joyfully:
“That’s Rat himself. I could tell his ring in hell or on the ocean’s floor.”
Carla rose from her kneeling position in confusion, not knowing who or what Rat was, or that he was identical with Amos Ratcliffe. She did not even know that no one knew why he was called Rat, except perhaps the name was part of his contradictory character. Everyone said he was too good-looking for an American boy, and yet few failed to learn quickly that he possessed vivid musculature and a hard fist, and nobody made a mistake with him twice. Amos had knocked Clayton Harms down the first time they met, owing to a comment of Clayton’s which did not set well with him and which he did not allow as complimentary. Eustace himself, as a matter of fact, was in mortal fear of him. Nobody could be sure on meeting Amos whether he was queer or not, because he was so fierce to approach and those who did so uninvited were injured.
On his entrance, Rat gave Carla Chisholm much the same impression reported by his own Greek teacher back home, a youthful doctor who once described Rat in the words, “The sun at noon—if you do not look away, you run the risk of going blind.”
Rat was wearing a large piece of court-plaster across one temple. Ace, after deciding at first it was better not to inquire about it, changed his mind and asked why.
“A fight,” Rat replied, puzzled at the disingenuousness of his questioner. Eustace knew the plaster had not been there when Amos was in the alley the night before, and he concluded that Daniel Haws and Rat had had one of their fights.
Carla tiptoed to the door of the room and, almost unaware, stood attentively gazing at the boy.
“Crawl out of the wall somewhere?” Rat inquired. “Whoever you are.”