by James Purdy
“You love him, that’s all you’re saying. What I want to try to explain now is Mother. She’s really my Grandmother. My mother and father both died when I was an infant. My wife died about two years ago—she’d been ill for so long, and my Grandmother—my Mother as I call her—has been nagging me to remarry. I won’t minimize the problem, Amos.”
“I bet I’m in for a warm welcome from her then,” Amos said.
“You’ve got to come with me, Amos. I can’t live without you, now there’s been this between us. I don’t know what it is that’s happened. I don’t know what you are. But you’re everything for me. Have been ever since I set eyes on you at Daniel’s that evening . . . And I could understand even then how somebody like Daniel, who isn’t even queer, going off his rocker over you.”
Amos covered his eyes.
“Amos,” Reuben went on, scarcely conscious of what he said or indeed where he was, “you’re larger than life. You came from a crossroads, Ace told me. He’s wrong. You came straight from the hand of Creation . . . Let me tell you again—I could drink you in goblets.” He let his head fall over Amos’s sex.
“Yeah, you got the love bug for sure, Reuben.” Amos lay back, his mouth slightly swollen under Reuben’s kisses, a dazed lack of concentration in his eyes.
“You’ve got to come and live with me,” Reuben now cried out. “Hang Mother. I’ll die without this now. Tell me, Amos, you’ll come.”
Once he had calmed himself again, lighting a cigarette, Reuben inquired: “Do you know what Ace Chisholm advised me to do?”
“Cut my balls off, I suppose.”
“He advised that if I couldn’t make it with you, I should marry Maureen.”
Amos scarcely seemed surprised, and this disappointed Reuben.
“You don’t care what I do, do you, Amos?”
“Well, what do you want out of me, Reuben, outside of teaching me how to tremble in front of your matriarch?”
“I told you I wanted you.”
“’Fraid you can’t marry me, Reuben. And I don’t think your Mother-Grandmother would find me a fetching bride.”
“Just tell me you’ll come out there and live with me.”
“I’ll come, Reuben, I said I’d come. It’s you keeps warning me I can’t come maybe.”
“And you’ll stay with me always, promise?” Reuben held the boy to him so tightly it pained.
“I’ll stay as long as it lasts,” Amos told him.
Walking around the room now, Reuben gave off a kind of soliloquy. “Ace Chisholm can’t speak without wounding one’s sensibilities. He talks to me as if I were nobody, an idiot. My name and position mean nothing to him. In a way I like that. He’s sincere that way. Have you heard the names he gives President Roosevelt? I never heard anybody called such names, not even by my black Republican relatives. He calls you a whore and worse, of course. Do you know what he said to Maureen, who laughed over it? He told her, ‘Marry your queer millionaire. You’ll be rich and he’ll fill his house with boys from other men’s stables. You’ll be the wife of the queen, about as important as a eunuch in a harem. You’ll be the fifth leg on a fine old chair. You’ll turn to adultery and your millionaire faggot won’t care, and he’ll end up taking your conquests to bed with him . . . , Yet he told Maureen it’s the only marriage that is thinkable for her.”
“Holy gee, you memorized it, Reuben!”
“Amos, Amos, come with me tonight. Do you hear?”
The boy nodded, and waited for the feel of Reuben’s mouth on his flesh.
14
During the years Reuben had lived with his grandmother as a nonpaying guest in the thirty-room country American mansion overlooking Lake Michigan, safely isolated in the suburbs (he had moved in at her plea that the depression had more than halved their income, they must save on expenses, and furthermore she needed a man about the house), the old lady had chafed and fumed because he was not producing for them an heir. He, on the other hand, counted this period of time as his most carefree, almost his happiest, because his wife Letty’s illness while enabling him to take advantage of the safe respectablity of being married and earning him the sympathy of all who knew him, permitted him at the same time to indulge in all the pleasures forbidden his married friends, without risk of outright criticism, especially his friendship with handsome young men.
While young Mrs. Masterson had lingered on, the old lady’s constant cry was, “Why can’t Letty go? Haven’t we doctored enough!” and after her funeral, before she was hardly cold in the ground, she began with her new nagging, “When, Reuben, for God’s sake will you marry and produce a grandson for me!”
Amos’s coming therefore could only be regarded by her as a senseless and irritating postponement of her hopes and plans and a kind of deliberate dereliction of duty on Reuben’s part.
The senior Mrs. Masterson’s influence on Reuben was so incalculable that he never, in fact, began to be aware of its full extent. Obsessed as she had always been by money and social position, she drilled into her grandson from his babyhood that he had a “name,” that he belonged to a “front family,” and that he would have to live up to it. It was name more than character that counted, and character, he deduced from her teaching, itself was subsumed under name, and from this idea he was never able to escape.
“So then we are to be made happy by the arrival of your young friend—what did you say his name was?” Mrs. Masterson suddenly opened the door on the crisis itself, with no attempt to disguise her loftiness and bitter lack of compliance.
“A good Saxon surname,” she nodded on hearing Reuben repeat Amos Ratcliffe.
Having once been a poor girl herself before her marriage, the elder Mrs. Masterson not only detested poverty in others, but feared and distrusted the poor. Of course she had been the first to agree with Reuben, who had used her own line of reasoning, that those with name and position should help those who had neither. “The poor, my dear grandson,” she never tired of pointing out, “are hardly ever worth the powder to blow them up with. But we can’t allow them to stand milling about and breaking the plate-glass, can we?” In this one respect she agreed with the otherwise “deplorable” Roosevelts: crumbs can and shall keep back the ranks of the paupers.
One evening in March the meeting between the two important people in Reuben’s life took place. As Amos came through the interminably long hall, accompanied by Reuben, on their way to the dining-room (Reuben had arrived as usual late), Mrs. Masterson, from her position at head of the table, was able to observe the boy approach. His undeniable good looks struck her immediately, but what held her eye even more was an undeniable something else, far beyond the “marks of poverty” which she expected in any case to see. She could only reflect in her astonishment that the boy advancing to meet her wore a look of expectation of unnamable horror.
She felt an irresistible wish to touch, even to pet the young man, and at the same time an overmastering urge to order him from the house. Yet had there been no Reuben at that moment—such was the strange confused tumult of feeling which came over her—she would have certainly made him her heir. Somewhat aghast at this unprecedented rush of impressions and feelings, Mrs. Masterson came to herself only when she heard Reuben’s voice, impatient at having had to repeat himself several times (he mistook her failure to reply as due to her deafness).
“Well, you’re late, even for you, my dear Reuben,” the grandmother cried in her deep voice, starting from her own reverie. She permitted Reuben to kiss her on her cheek, and then, unaccountably, took Amos’s hand before her grandson’s own introduction, “Mother, this is young Mr. Ratcliffe about whom I’ve told you so much.”
“Then, Reuben,” she replied, not having taken her eyes off the boy, “I can see that as usual you’ve told me nothing at all.”
“I SUPPOSE HE is to be my albatross,” Mrs. Masterson told Reuben, to his considerable astonishment, the morning after Amos’s arrival at Sampford Court.
Reuben, who was waiting for the �
�long talk about everything” she had insisted on, jumped slightly on her choice of metaphor.
“For one thing,” she went on at his look of surprise, “your Amos is capable of winning hearts . . . But there isn’t time for him in my heart or yours, Reuben. Time’s run out for both of us . . . We can’t devote ourselves to charm and beauty. When they go or our hearts change, what do we have in their place?” She seemed to be speaking suddenly to herself.
Snatching some papers from her desk, she then discussed certain matters of business, a bad investment or two her “ass” broker had made for her, and then without warning she flew at the target again by shouting in the manner of a deaf person: “What in strictest fact do you know of him? Who were his parents, why is he through school at such an early age, and why should you be attracted to one so young, so entirely out of your circle, our circle, our way of life . . . Are you so desperate for companionship?” She could not keep down the note of alarm. “And why do you not contemplate, at least, marriage? I’m waiting for answers, Reuben!”
“As usual,” Reuben sat down at the furthest end of the room, “you’ve asked me enough questions for us to be in conference for a month of Sundays.”
“I have the time for it, if you do.” She put down a heavy gold bracelet, which had come loose as she had waved her arm at him. She folded her ancient veined hands one over the other, and an immense stone on a middle finger shone fitfully in the morning light.
“Of course,” she continued, “he is a charming boy, a personable boy. Good manners too. And I gather from the faces of the other guests he must have said some acceptable things while at table . . . He was sober too, while you were in your usual evening condition.
“But,” she cried, interrupting him before he had time to utter a syllable in defense, “you can hardly have decided to fit your life around that of a boy with mere good looks who passes for clever at his studies.”
“Let’s say then I have, Mother.”
“It’s quite early in the morning for jokes.”
“I am in dead earnest.” Reuben rose and turned his back on her for a moment. The old lady sensed a new kind of strength in Reuben—this was not like his usual self.
“I had intended to take up the question of your drinking, but I see we’ll be closeted entirely with the problem of Mr. Ratcliffe!”
“Mother, I’m crowding forty years of age, and I shall drink if I choose. . . . As to Amos, well, if you would prefer me to leave your home, I’m prepared to do so.” He took the plunge. “But you said some years back, if you’ll recall, that you needed me at Sampford Court. Very well, I’m willing to stay with you and be needed, if I may fetch out Amos here to be needed by me!”
“So we’re to strike a bargain on that, are we?” she smiled. Something of her old small-town New England humor, Reuben supposed, came out then, but he was too out of sorts to be charmed or amused by it.
“What you’re saying in effect then is that all you care for is your own happiness, if one can call a prolonged infatuation happiness, and to blue hell with your responsibility to your name and fortune!”
Reuben snorted at her burst of ire.
“Mother, I don’t want to remarry, if that’s the subject you’re trying to force to discussion. And that’s final. Besides, I don’t care for women!”
“You told me you were very happy with Letty before she became an invalid.”
“Oh that’s all so long ago it seems it happened to another man. . . . I’m happier with Amos.”
“Amos, whatever he is, is not a woman.”
“That’s why I like him.”
“Yes, of course!” she cried, despair getting the better of her wrath. She tapped with her husband’s riding whip, which she now employed to press the button for calling the servants. “Very well, Reuben. But why can’t you hire him then as your valet or paid companion, instead of wining and dining him about town as if he was fresh down from Olympus, and drawing all eyes to you both. . . . He must cost you a pretty penny.”
“As a matter of fact, Amos costs me less in a month than some of the tiresome Social Register women of your choice do in an hour.”
“Certainly, Reuben, you know me better than to think I’d approve of a mere rich woman for your life . . . I’d approve of a girl of good family without a cent to her name, if she came along, and you know it. I even like that young person who paints, Miss O’Dell.” Here, unaccountably, Mrs. Masterson laughed heartily.
“Well, why don’t you bring Miss O’Dell to keep you company here, then,” Reuben said, going along with her mood, “and allow me to keep Amos?”
“I’m too old to hear nonsense about great matters, and since you’ve brought up the matter of your age, so are you.”
“I’m not going to give up Amos, for the simple reason I’ve found happiness with him.”
Reuben rose to leave, but she gave him such a terrible glance he sat down again.
“He’s a substitute then for a son, which you’ve never had!” she thundered.
“That’s just what he is not!” Reuben roared back at her.
“Then I don’t understand.” Mrs. Masterson now stood up, sniffed her camphor bottle, settled her shawl more loosely about her neck, and stiffly changed chairs.
“Well, dear Mother, I don’t intend to talk till understanding dawns on you: I value time nearly as much as you do, after all. But you’ve never tried to understand me. If you think I’m going to marry to follow your wishes, you’re vastly mistaken. The world has been coming alive for me again, and if necessary I can get on without any money from you. If you prefer your Presbyterian circle and wish me out of the house, say so. It’s you who’ve worried about the depression and expenses, and who spoke of loneliness and living only with servants, and so I moved in long ago, but if you’ve changed your tune and you don’t dread any longer all the things that bothered you before I came down here, say so, and I’ll depart.”
Mrs. Masterson, to his considerable astonishment, broke down. The hand with the flashing stone covered her eyes, and she emitted heavy groans, the first emotion of such kind Reuben had ever seen her betray. It was the beginning of her fall.
He did not try to comfort her. “Well, Mother,” he said severely when she had dried her tears.
“Reuben,” she tried to regain her voice and composure, “if you need him that much, then of course you must do as you feel you must. As to leaving Sampford Court, that is out of the question. You shan’t go a step. Of course I need you and of course you must stay . . . But,” she was almost herself again, “as to your throwing money about, that must not occur. You have no money except in stocks that pay now poor, if any, dividends. It is I who control our fortune and will until I go, and you owe it to yourself and all of us, to the country, to stay here and keep down expenses. We’re on the verge of some cataclysm, and we must stay together until the emergency is over. Thank God, you are too old to go to war this time, my dear boy.”
Mrs. Masterson, an avid reader of history, was then off on a discourse on the causes and consequences of the last “Great War” when Reuben, in a manner not usual with him, unceremoniously interrupted her:
“You’ve hinted about, Mother, that you’d like somewhat more information about Amos’s background than you’ve felt I cared to give you. Actually I know next to nothing, but you’d best be informed he is an illegitimate child.”
He stopped speaking then not so much to gauge the effect of his words as that suddenly the full weight of Amos’s confession concerning his own mother, came to him now in all its blinding meaning for the first time, and struck him into silence.
Mrs. Masterson sat gazing at him, calm and unmoved, when he came out of his reflections.
“Amos calls his mother only Cousin Ida,” Reuben stammered, blushing.
“You may rest assured,” he heard his grandmother’s voice, “that if you think I am going to conduct an inquisition on the poor boy, you show very little insight into, or appreciation of, my character or methods. I
’m surprised at you, Reuben. I bid you good morning . . .”
Reuben stood indecisive before her, but made no movement toward the door. She had already turned away from him to the papers on her desk, but looking up from her work after a bit, almost accidentally, and finding him still in her presence, she found it impossible not to add:
“My heart aches for you, Reuben. I wish you didn’t care so for this boy.”
The tears came to his eyes, and humiliatingly enough for him, she saw them, but there was now neither a look of reproach nor pity in her expression, and she accepted the kiss he bestowed on her cheek by pressing his hand briefly.
15
“
What, may I ask, are you reading this time at table?” Mrs. Masterson addressed Amos one chilly April evening when the two of them had sat down together again, without other company, at dinner.
Amos handed her the Greek text of Xenophon’s Banquet and allowed the old lady to satisfy her curiosity by leafing through a few of the pages. Quickly returning the book, she explained that she could now only stumble through her Greek, and shot a glance of troubled admiration at the boy. She had noted steady changes in him since his arrival, not so much owing to his now sizeable wardrobe, whose costliness made her wince, as perhaps because of his new regimen, daily baths, regular meals and uninterrupted slumber. She could only wonder if Cousin Ida herself would now recognize her son.
They owed their present strange communion with each other to a change no less startling in her grandson’s habits. Shortly after Amos’s coming, as if relieved by the unexpected fulfilment of his hopes, Reuben had begun absenting himself every few days, often staying overnight in town on one pretext or another. Left thus alone, Amos and Mrs. Masterson found it difficult, if not impossible, sometimes to hit on topics for conversation which would carry them through the meal. She quizzed him on his upbringing in Southern Illinois, for this topic genuinely interested her, but Amos’s pained reticence prevented her from going into it deeply, and finally, in resignation, she had allowed him to bring his book to the dining-room and even read as she talked interminably in his direction, while the servants whispered.