Eustace Chisholm and the Works

by James Purdy

  Daniel Haws, too weak to turn, his mouth still stained from his exertions, stood rigid while Amos Ratcliffe, his own mouth level with his, kissed him deliberately and then, with still more deliberate grave ceremony, wiped his landlord’s lips with a cotton handkerchief.

  “Leave me be now, Amos, for Christ’s sake,” Daniel muttered, and his knees buckling, he fell dead weight to the floor.

  9

  “

  Even if you’re only yesterday’s queen, come in,” Eustace Chisholm greeted Maureen, his voice rising and falling between impatience to hear the latest tidings, and general stony dissatisfaction with his own present lot. “Set yourself down, but keep away from where I’ve just been replastering the wall. It caved in on us yesterday night.”

  Maureen sat down in mock obedience a comfortable distance from the fresh plaster, against the old deeply cracked and peeling portion of wall. About two weeks had passed since Maureen’s operation, an event pretty well gone over by her friends and enemies so that her appearance now “back in circulation” caused hardly a stir of interest.

  “You look older, Maureen,” Eustace pointed out, “as you might be expected to, but you’re somehow more attractive than ever before, so watch out . . . Yes,” he added, looking narrowly at her, “you’ve developed a certain air of mystery like old Sphinx Garbo manages to give off.”

  When younger, Maureen had, as a matter of fact, imagined she resembled the Swedish star, except that Maureen had great firm bouncing breasts. Nonetheless Eustace’s comment, rare though any compliment was for him, gave her no pleasure.

  “I hear,” Eustace went on, blowing out the sweetish smoke of a black Cuban cigarette, and ostentatiously not offering her one, “I hear everywhere that the nigger obstetrician considered Amos the father of your unborn child.”

  “You hear too good,” Maureen scolded faintly.

  Hugging her knees with her hands, she mumbled, “If you aren’t going to ask me then, Ace, I suppose I’ll have to tell you why I really came.”

  Eustace pricked up his ears then for he couldn’t stand secrets.

  “All right, Maureen,” he chided, “spill it.”

  “Well, holy ghost,” she said, “somebody is starving to death and too bashful to say boo.” She indicated the hallway with a jerk of her head.

  Ace went outside, where Amos was standing meekly, and took him by the arm and led him into the room.

  “You’ve come, lovers, at a pokey-poor time for handouts,” Ace began moodily. “I mean you’ve picked the worst hellhole minute in my life to ask me to put on an apron and cook for you two. However . . .”

  He spoke in such genuine unhappiness both his visitors showed concern.

  “Don’t sit there and tell me you haven’t heard my bad news,” he inveighed. “No, I can see by your faces, you haven’t.”

  He stamped out his cubeb on the sole of his shoe.

  “Clayton Harms threatened to clear out of here last night after throwing a bookcase at Carla, which I think he meant undoubtedly for me,” Eustace told them. “Hence the plaster over there. Yes, Clay said he’ll leave me behind if I don’t watch my P’s and Q’s. He give me a dressing down the likes of which I’ve never heard of before let alone received. Nobody’s seen anybody like him since the Indians. He’s a maniac when he thinks he’s being eased out. Can’t take jealousy. I wouldn’t be surprised he’s discovered floating in the Chicago River one day . . . Anyhow, looks as though romance may be over for me for this winter anyhow, and I’ll be settlin’ down with Carla to rock-bottom matrimony . . .”

  Maureen and Amos muttered perfunctory words of condolence.

  “All right, so much for busted romance!” Eustace jumped up, tightened his belt, making an effort, his visitors felt, to look as much like the usual Ace as possible. “Follow me on out to the kitchen shelf and we’ll see what I can round up for you.”

  Amos helped Maureen to her feet and they trailed after Ace through the catacomb-like hallway, nearly stepping on Scintilla, who spat lethargically at them.

  “That cat hates all visitors,” Ace informed them.

  In the kitchen their host studied the labels on two cans of bean soup, and finally took these down and opened them.

  “My grocery bill is colossal because of dropper-ins like you two,” he confided. “At least Maureen can’t use the old excuse any more that she’s eating for two. But you, Rat, I thought your dream-daddy boarded you . . . Matter of fact I just made a fried sandwich about an hour ago for a young painter name of Al Hall. Hadn’t eaten in forty-two days, he claimed. Thank Jesus Carla is working again. I had it out with her this morning. ‘I’m losing Clayton Harms’s love,’ I said, ‘because you returned from your adultery-tour and either you get a decent job and buckle down to business or back you go to Kansas City. I married you so I could have a life of my own, and if you’re going to act like any man’s American wife and mother, by God I’ll smoke you out . . .’ She calmed down then and promised to get down to business . . . And another thing I got off my chest—” Eustace stirred the bean soup as vigorously as if it were cement—“I told her, ‘Carla, it’s not enough you bring us in a decent living, I want you to act glad you’re doing what you’re doing. I’m the creative one and all the onus is on me to be great. You’re the one of whom all that’s asked is a bit of oil on the machinery. Kindly do it with a little more enthusiasm. Take off that gray mask that has been you so long and let’s see some sunshine and gaiety . . .’ She promised me she’d turn over a new leaf then.”

  Maureen all at once began weeping hard.

  “Cripes, what’s come over her?” Eustace turned to Amos.

  “She has these crying jags now every so often, Ace,” Amos mumbled, squinting at Maureen.

  Drying her face with a man’s bandanna, Maureen managed a giggle, after her own surprising display of feeling, started to speak, could not, then finally got out in one breath:

  “My body didn’t want to give up Daniel’s baby . . . You can put that on your newspaper, Ace.”

  “That’s about the straightest thing you ever said, Maureen.” Eustace shrugged. He turned the gas down, then off, under the agate saucepan in which the bean soup had been cooking. He put a tarnished tablespoon in the mixture and tasted.

  “Sample this,” he handed the spoon to Amos, “and be sure to tell me how good it is.”

  AT NIGHTFALL, HIS guests gone, Eustace sat on the dilapidated Catholic Salvage davenport where he had slept for nearly six months with Clayton Harms, and lighted another cubeb. He felt he might go ahead and bawl like Maureen O’Dell if he didn’t snap out of it. His foot suddenly kicked something from under the davenport. Looking down he saw some sort of notebook; picking it up he recognized Clayton’s old collection receipts-book. From it emanated Clayton’s characteristic odor, which Ace once described as a cross between nasturtiums and gasoline. He picked out the stub of a pencil within its pages, held it tight, and wrote:

  “According to Rat, she lay on a kitchen table, looking like a chicken fallen from a barbecue spit while a black hand went in with a ladle and scraped her womb dry. Her mother reads Science and Health, don’t know her daughter is a whore & walks through shadow of death, and not even Maureen saw the offspring of her body but her lover’s love did, with wide-open blue eyes . . .”

  10

  Helpless under the punishment which rained down on both of them, Amos turned to—in the landlord’s sullen words—“dating” Reuben Masterson. Though Daniel knew that the “whore” Maureen and the “retired queen” Eustace were behind it all, the looks of bitterness he now exchanged with Amos showed that he felt it was all due to their bad luck, which had been with him and Amos from the beginning.

  It had begun “for real” one day when the hall telephone rang—a rare event in those days. “Who calls us,” asked Daniel, “but wrong numbers and collectors?” Having taken the receiver off the hook and listened, Daniel took it away from his ear, held it against his chest, waited, then still out of breath, c
alled:

  “Amos, it’s the millionaire juice-head for you.”

  Closing his eyes while the boy talked and made arrangements where to meet, Daniel steadied himself, knowing in advance he would tell Amos to go.

  “You need money desperate, so see him,” Daniel heard his own words advising Rat, after the boy had come from the phone and explained Masterson was waiting to take him out.

  Expecting something definite from Daniel, a defiant “no” or a blow from his fists, the landlord’s “go” was the last of crushed hopes and disappointments for Amos, who stood now, his eyes beginning to fill.

  “I’d rather stay, Daniel.” Amos forced the words out.

  “And go down the rat hole?” Daniel managed a grin.

  “Tell me not to, and I won’t.”

  Daniel had heard Amos’s final words from somewhere down the black hallway. When the street door had closed on him, Daniel muttered aloud the question that had to await his own answer: “What if the department store heir decides to keep the goods sent out to him on approval?”

  He looked at his fingernails, chewed to the quick.

  He walked around the kitchen, pigeon-toed, pulled his ears down with his thumb and index finger, and talked cascades to himself.

  Daniel thought of the army then. The word “re-enlistment” came over him like a wave of sea water. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. His excitement became so intense he had an erection.

  AMOS HAD NOT told Daniel it was in Maureen O’Dell’s studio that Reuben Masterson was waiting to see him. He had also not bothered to mention that Maureen too had spoken to him on the phone and “patted herself on the back” for having arranged the meeting between millionaire and pauper. Both Maureen and Reuben sounded pretty liquored up.

  A light powdery snow was beginning to fall. Several times, Amos stopped on the wet pavement, and looked back at his room. Its wretched torn green blinds, absence of curtains, filthy window panes—all to him were as radiant and precious as the lights of the celestial city. He could not restrain himself and finally, leaning against a lamp post—the same one Daniel Haws had leaned against the night he visited Eustace alone—he wept tears as bitter as gall. Nobody but Daniel could have helped to ease his grief, and he knew that Daniel was the last person who would ever help in the one necessary way by admitting his love.

  By the time he got to Maureen’s, both the “painter-woman” (as she was known among her friends), and the “millionaire juice-head” (so known among enemies), were in a state of high inebriation.

  An array of young men’s clothing, brand new, still in their store wrappings, draped over Maureen’s bed, immediately caught Amos’s eye as he entered.

  “Damned if he didn’t look right away at his surprise!” Maureen cackled, kissing Amos hard on the mouth. He was somewhat astonished to see that she had on a new gown, an expensive-looking ruby-colored necklace, and false eyelashes.

  Reuben Masterson made a concerted attempt to act sober, and was extending his hand toward Amos, in his most formal manner, stuttering, “So nice to see you again,” when Maureen roared:

  “Oh you two fellows have got to kiss now. We can’t have this fancy stand-offish front-family formality here, Reubie, for crying out loud!”

  “Oh, Maureen,” Reuben protested with weak grumpiness, “don’t be so bossy!”

  “Bossy! Why, kiddy, I’m only trying to live up to my part of the bargain of bringing you two together.” She pretended hurt. “You didn’t take my talk about us getting married seriously did you? . . . I proposed to Reuben just before you walked in.” Maureen winked at Amos with her new lashes.

  Refusing to allow Reuben’s or Amos’s backwardness to squelch her, she pushed the two of them together, and they managed to exchange a few dry kisses during which time Amos’s eyes strayed again to Maureen’s bed where the new clothes were arrayed.

  “We should have put them duds in the next room, so Amos could keep his mind on getting acquainted,” Maureen pouted. She fingered her new necklace. “Everybody have a drink!” Maureen shouted. “What’s yours, lamby?” she turned to Amos. “Reubie and I are downing our usual straight gin and lemon peel.”

  “Guess a little bourbon, Maureen.”

  “Say, you don’t sound enthusiastic, angel,” Maureen chided. “What’s wrong with your eyes? You get bouncy now! Who do you think I arranged this little get-together for! Me? Hell no, didn’t you just hear old Reubie turned me down in marriage, though he knows I could introduce him to a million good-looking boys like you.”

  “Well, Maureen, that’s where you’re dead wrong, if you’ll allow me to say so,” Reuben spoke up. “Amos’s looks alone make him one in a million, but there’s a lot more to him than looks, if I know anything about human nature.”

  “Do tell,” Maureen snapped. “Well, have it your own way, Reubie, because after all it’s your party, and I’m only the caterer.” Maureen could not conceal her growing bad temper. “Supposing then,” she motioned to the clothing on her bed, “Amos starts putting on the glad rags you bought him. On account of,” she laughed nastily, “his ass has never known anything glad on it before . . .”

  “Maureen, if this is all some cruddy joke of yours,” Amos chided, riled, while his eye rested on the clothing without real curiosity or desire. “Say now, honestly, whose clothes are they?” he wondered blankly.

  Both Reuben and Maureen laughed.

  “Well, they ain’t mine, love,” Maureen cooed, and she picked up the bourbon bottle and refilled Amos’s glass.

  “Now sometime between sips, kewpie,” she went on to Amos, “may I suggest, to get this party so that it bounces just a little bit—I didn’t exactly plan a prayer meeting—you start takin’ off your old duds, Rat, all of ’em, and while we put ’em aside to burn, you step into the brand new things . . . We’ll help you into them, if need be,” she added when the boy did not budge.

  “Oh let him change in the next room, Maureen,” Reuben spoke up, and he walked over to the bed, and picked up the underwear.

  “Who the hell introduced you guys to one another? I mean really introduced you. I’m not talking now about you two’s meeting at old Daniel’s fuck-roost, when you were all so pie-eyed you didn’t know who put what up who!”

  Amos and Reuben exchanged looks of amusement mixed with pitying contempt for Maureen.

  “I said strip!” Maureen yelled.

  “It’s all right,” Reuben handed Amos the underwear, with fingers trembling. “We’ll close our eyes while you put these on,” he added.

  Amos took the underwear and laid it on a chair near him. As if to plunge into an icy pool, he swiftly took off all his old clothes, and too determined to get it all over with, failed to observe that Maureen and Reuben did not keep their promise not to look.

  “It brings back to me somehow our visit to old Beaufort Vance, but why, search me!” Maureen appealed to Amos who, as she finished speaking, was naked as a robin, and the center of all eyes.

  “Get a load of that complexion,” Maureen nudged Reuben. “And that cute rosy little pecker. That’s a pecker for the boys to go for, strictly not for girls like me . . .”

  Without warning, she had leaned down and kissed it. Rising up, she pushed Reuben toward Amos.

  “Maureen!” Reuben protested faintly, with his air of what she called front-family etiquette.

  “Maureen is right,” she warned Reuben. “This is my party for you, you dummy, and so everybody got to do like me! That’s an order.”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Masterson,” Amos, waxen, echoed Reuben’s own earlier reassuring phrase to him.

  “Now step into that thirty-dollar underwear, for Christ’s sake,” Maureen exhorted in a tone so astringent that Amos gaped at her.

  Although Reuben had just poured himself another double shot of gin, he seemed both more sober and considerably shaken. Putting down his glass, he held the trousers of the new dark blue suit for Amos to step into.

  Not liking the drift things
were taking, Maureen stepped over to her portable phonograph and turned on a Fats Waller record very loud. When she came back to her party guests, Reuben was just helping Amos into his jacket.

  “Well, who do we have here?” Maureen exclaimed, genuinely surprised.

  Indeed nobody recognized Amos any longer, not even Amos. His friends urged him to look at himself in a large cracked antique mirror which Maureen kept at the far end of her room, and he gazed without belief at the person reflected there, much as if the unknown mirrored youth might suddenly step out and confront him.

  “Talk about comin’ into your own,” Maureen cried, beside herself. “Reubie, you’ll never marry me now, will you?” She broke into angry laughter. “You’ve turned that little ragamuffin into a fairy prince! Christ, let me look away from him or I might damage my retina!”

  She kissed Amos, however, carefully on his cheek and ear.

  “Honey, you’re still about as clean as a chimney-sweep. I bet you haven’t scraped the wax out of your ears since you left your home town. And them fingernails . . . We ought to scrub our pickups, you and me, Reubie, before we apparel them so rich. Baby,” she turned again to Amos, “now you’ve come into your kingdom, remember dear old Maureen who first introduced you to the upper crust. Boy did I cut myself out when I brought you two together!”

  As she said this, Maureen reeled forward, and both Reuben and Amos hastened to catch her before she fell to the floor. They helped her to a chair. She sat back for some time, then speaking like a ventriloquist in a very deep voice, she said:

  “You two fellows get out of here and let a lady be private by herself, why don’t you. Anyhow party’s over . . .”

  Placing a hand-stitched quilt over her, Reuben motioned for Amos to follow him into the adjoining room.

  Standing by one of the merry-go-round horses, Reuben, more than formal now, nearly funereal, began talking at length to an inattentive Amos.

  For one thing, whether owing to the generous shots of bourbon or the shock of seeing himself in new clothes in the tall mirror, Amos had a sense of tenuous diminishing reality, added to which was the heartache over Daniel. But he did hear phrases, as unconvincing or meaningless as all the rest of the evening, coming from Reuben Masterson’s mouth when it was not occupied in kissing. It seemed, according to Reuben, that he was head-over-heels in love with Amos.