“Did she stop?” Rock said.
“My mother?” Sam said. “Hell no. She didn’t stop being unhappy and she didn’t stop playing. A half hour later she was back at the wheel. It turned out all right, though. It always does for Mama. She finally won it all back, and eleven dollars besides. Those eleven dollars—in silver—she keeps stacked in a pile on her dresser with the perfume bottles—about a hundred expensive perfume bottles she’s got, I guess—and looks at them all the time. She loves money, perfume, furs, and food.”
“And her son,” Rock said.
“No,” Sam said. “Her brother. I’d like her to take a look at the books sometime, though. I’ve made twice as much money in half as much time as Paul Key ever made for U.S. Pictures. I’ve got great plans for you, Rock. I’ve got two writers working on a story right now that is going to be perfect for you. Listen to this, Rock. A man does everything in the world for his mother. She turns around and nearly wrecks his life. So what happens? The man goes right on being a good son. At last she dies and everybody says the man would never have amounted to anything except for her. The man keeps the secret all his life. Do you like it, Rock?”
“It’s great,” Rock said.
“You’re not just saying that, are you?” Sam said.
“No,” Rock said. “It’s great, that’s all.”
“I want you to do the son,” Sam said.
“Yes,” Rock said.
“You’ve known me a long time,” Sam said. “You know the kind of man I really am. This one’s going to be a class picture. At the same time it’s going to make a lot of money, too. I’ve done everything but win the Academy Award. Well, now I’m going to do that, too, and you’re going to help me, Rock.”
Rock was thinking about his son and his daughter. He was remembering their voices on the telephone.
“Yes, I am,” he said. “Yes, I am, Sam.”
“Now, here’s an episode from the time when I was four years old,” Sam said. “I want to tell you a lot of these episodes. We’ll meet every day. We’ll drop in on the writers at least once a day and throw some of these episodes at them. Listen to this, Rock.”
Rock listened to Sam Schwartz, but all he could hear was his son saying, “How are you, Papa?” And his daughter saying, “Papa, oh Papa.”
He listened to Sam Schwartz and heard the voices of his children all through dinner and for an hour and a half afterwards. His eyes smiled the whole time, and just before they got up to go Sam said, “Rock, I knew you’d be excited about this story. I’ve never seen you so excited about a story.”
Rock drove Sam Schwartz to his mansion high up in the hills overlooking Hollywood, then turned around and drove back to Beverly Hills, knowing how a man lives in ignorance all his life, but at the same time is some sort of an angel, overweight or underweight, who is involved in the matter of the mother and the money.
It was after eleven when he reached his room. He sat down to wait for Eddie Lucas to telephone.
Every man is a good man in a bad world. No man changes the world. Every man himself changes from good to bad or from bad to good, back and forth, all his life, and then dies. But no matter how or why or when a man changes, he remains a good man in a bad world, as he himself knows. All his life a man fights death, and then at last loses the fight, always having known he would. Loneliness is every man’s portion, and failure. The man who seeks to escape from loneliness is a lunatic. The man who does not know that all is failure is a fool. The man who does not laugh at these things is a bore. But the lunatic is a good man, and so is the fool, and so is the bore, as each of them knows. Every man is innocent, and in the end a lonely lunatic, a lonely fool, or a lonely bore.
But there is meaning to a man. There is meaning to the life every man lives. It is a secret meaning, and pathetic were it not for the lies of art, for which every man must be grateful, as he himself knows. For the lies tell him to wait. They tell him to hang on. The lies wink and tell him he is the one, and a man winks back, and goes about his business.
Rock’s business was to sit and wait, and he attended to this business. He sat in the absurd room and waited. He knew he was not waiting for Eddie Lucas to telephone, although that was supposed to be what he was waiting for. He was waiting for anything, as he had waited on Saturday afternoons when he was a small boy, sitting in the big tree in the backyard of the house on Winery Street. He was waiting for time. He was waiting for the present to disengage itself from the past and from the future and come home. He was waiting for the figs to ripen, for wealth and importance and meaning to come to him, but most of all for love, which he waited for now in the absurd room, sitting on the writing table as if it were a branch of the fig tree.
He waited for love as if he were his seven-year-old son waiting for it. He remembered saying a year ago to his son’s mother while his son and daughter stood by, “Listen, Ann, nothing is more important in this life than a father and a mother and a son and a daughter together. We’re divorced. I haven’t seen you or the children in almost a year. Even so, there’s nothing anywhere for you or for me except these two, and the others we were going to have. You don’t want to go on with this affair with a married man, do you? I’m home. You come home, too. You don’t want to go on, do you? You can’t want to go on. Come home, Ann.” Rock saw his son turn and watch his mother’s face. “Come home, Ann,” Rock said, “because I love you.”
The boy waited at the end of the room for his mother to speak.
“But I don’t love you,” he heard his mother say.
“Are you sure, Ann?” Rock said.
“Yes, I’m sure,” the boy heard his mother say. “I don’t love you.”
The boy walked between the two of them to the window overlooking the street. On his way, moving slowly, he looked from one to the other. He stood at the window a moment, then walked back to his father and stood in front of him, looking into his eyes. He was trying not to give way. He laid himself down across his father’s knees. When Rock heard him stifling sobs he burst into laughter and hugged the boy. The boy’s mother, and his sister, ran to him.
“Why, what’s the matter, Haig?” Ann said. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m unhappy,” Haig said. “I’m unhappy.”
“Why?” Ann said. “Why are you unhappy?”
“Because you said you don’t love my father,” Haig said.
“Listen,” Rock said. “That’s not so at all. Your father and your mother weren’t speaking about themselves.”
“No,” Ann said. “They were speaking about some friends of theirs.”
Rock lifted the boy and handed him to his mother. The boy was deeply ashamed of having given way, and soon the father and the mother heard him laughing again. But he knew, Haig Vagramian knew, as every man knows. Your mother and your father—even your own mother and your own father cannot love one another. Then, how can others love one another? How can there be love? How can anything mean anything without love? How can anything be worth anything when your own mother and father cannot love one another?
When Eddie Lucas telephoned Rock said, “Tell me something about Marcy Miller, will you?”
“She’s no good,” Eddie said. “She’s a tramp.”
“How many kids has she got?” Rock said.
“Three, I think,” Eddie said. “They’re nearly grown up by now, though. What’s Marcy Miller got to do with anything, Rock?”
“I had a cousin, got killed in the war,” Rock said, “wanted to meet her. Everybody’s got something to do with everything, Eddie. If she’s got three kids, she’s got a lot to do with everything. Is she finished? Is that it? Has she had it? Did she have bad luck? Does she look bad? Is she drinking?”
“She’s still got something,” Eddie said. “But how long can any of them last? She’s nearly forty. I want to talk to you, Rock. It’s very important. How about Dirty Dan’s in a half hour?”
“Is that place still there?” Rock said.
“It’s got another name,” Eddie said, “bu
t I still call it Dirty Dan’s.”
“Who was Dan?” Rock said.
“Nobody ever knew,” Eddie said. “Half hour O.K.?”
“O.K.,” Rock said. “Give me her phone number, will you?”
He wrote the number on a sheet of hotel paper, then called her. They talked as people who don’t know one another very well and who are talking over the telephone talk and then Rock said, “How are your kids, Marcy? I remember you showed me pictures of them. How are they?”
“They’re just fine, Rock,” Marcy Miller said. “The oldest’s almost twenty, in the Marines. The other boy’s eighteen. He’s going into the Navy soon. The girl’s sixteen. Good God, my own kids, grown up already.”
“Marcy?” Rock said. “Come to Dirty Dan’s and have a drink with me.”
“No, Rock,” Marcy said. “I’ve gone to bed. You know, Rock, when you’re finished and don’t want to be, you’ve got to behave. I didn’t think you even remembered me. What made you call? Don’t tell me you had a yen for me back there in the old days?”
“Of course I did,” Rock said.
“You did?” Marcy said. “Why didn’t you let me know?”
“I couldn’t,” Rock said. “I couldn’t because I believe in marriages and families, even bad ones. I called to ask about your children, Marcy.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, it’s the truth.”
“I’ve had a rough time with them,” Marcy said, “but they’re O.K. now. Why don’t you come and have dinner with us next week?”
“I’d love to,” Rock said.
She gave him the address, the day and the hour, and then they said goodbye.
He went downstairs, got into his car, and drove to Dirty Dan’s on the Strip. He found Eddie Lucas at the same corner table, and sat down across from him, his back to the rest of the room.
“This time it’s about you, Rock,” Eddie said.
“I don’t mind hearing you talk about yourself,” Rock said. “Let’s have it.”
“Ann phoned this afternoon,” Eddie said. “It’s hard to believe I still have the same number, but I do. It’s even harder to believe she kept it, but she did. I never knew Ann well, Rock, but she remembers that I was the one who introduced you two to each other, so I guess that’s why she phoned.”
“I talked to her last night,” Rock said.
“She told me,” Eddie said. “She tried to reach you in San Francisco. She tried for hours. She didn’t think you’d be in Hollywood, but in case you were, and in case I ran into you somewhere—which I did, Rock—it was an accident—I could have taken the girl to any number of other places instead of Romanoff’s—would I talk to you? I told her I would. What did she want me to say? Well, she didn’t know. I told her I’d tell you that. The point is, Rock, she telephoned and asked me to speak to you, that’s all. So that’s what I’m doing.”
“Thanks,” Rock said.
“Don’t you think you two ought to go back together again?” Eddie said.
“No,” Rock said. “I want to. Maybe she wants to, too. I know the kids want us to. We can’t, though. I love her more than I love anybody else in the world, and she’s a liar and a crook. I’ll always love her more than I love anybody else in the world, and she’s a cheap, conniving, giddy, stupid girl. Bring me a girl who is all truth and virtue and beauty, and she’ll scare me to death. Why? Because this girl is the mother of my kids. I’ve got to love the mother of my kids because they love her. I talked to them last night, too. That’s why I’m down here. I can’t have them to live with me on a vineyard, or I’d have them there. I’d have her there with them, too, if a week of it wouldn’t drive her crazy, only it would. I’m down here to work. For money. I don’t like to work for money, but I’m going to try to do it. I’m a father, and I haven’t any choice any more, that’s all.”
“Don’t you think you ought to phone her and talk about it?” Eddie said.
“No,” Rock said. “She breaks my heart. Her lies break my heart. Her crookedness breaks my heart. They break my heart because I know she ought to be the truest woman of them all, the one we are all looking for. Look at this,” he said suddenly. “She gave it to me.” Rock examined an aluminum coin about the size of a half dollar, and remembered when and how he had gotten it. It was at the Amusement Center at 52nd and Broadway in New York, in September, 1942. Ann Ford asked him for a dime to put in the machine. He watched her work the machine, and then she handed him the coin. He now read, as he’d done a thousand times before, what she had stamped on the coin:
—I—LOVEA—YOU—ROCK—ANN—
Rock handed the coin to Eddie Lucas.
“The machine got every word right but LOVE,” Eddie said.
“Yes,” Rock said.
They finished their drinks and got up. Rock dropped Eddie Lucas off at his apartment, then began to drive back to Beverly Hills. On the way, though, he decided against it, and found his way to Highway 101. He put the top of the car down, and began to drive south. It was after three now, and the night was clear and cold. He drove along easily, not speeding, stopping at Oceanside for coffee, and again in San Diego.
He was on his way to Tia Juana when he saw the sun come up. He stopped the car on the side of the highway, got out, and watched the sun. He watched it until he could feel the heat coming from it. Then he got back into the car, turned it around, and began to drive back, altogether alone now, without wife, without son, without daughter, without home, without hope, but not yet altogether without humor, for he knew he had driven all night to the sun, as if the sun might be nearer a little farther south, to see it come up once more, and wink, for a man is nonsense all his life, as he himself knows. All his life a man knows, he knows, he knows forever and forever, but all he knows is, I am alone, I am unhappy, but I’ve still got my car, and I’ve still got my ten-cent coin that says I lovea you.
A Note on the Author
William Saroyan (1908–1981) was an internationally renowned Armenian American writer, playwright, and humanitarian. He achieved great popularity in the thirties, forties, and fifties through his hundreds of short stories, plays, novels, memoirs, and essays. In 1939, Saroyan was the first American writer to win both the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his play The Time of Your Life. He famously refused to accept the Pulitzer Prize on the grounds that “Commerce should not patronize art.” He died near his hometown of Fresno at the age of seventy-two.
Discover books by William Saroyan published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/WilliamSaroyan
Boys and Girls Together
Chance Meetings
The Laughing Matter
Rock Wagram
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book.
The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
First published in 1951 by Doubleday & Company
Copyright © 1951 William Saroyan
Used with permission of Stanford University
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eISBN: 9781448214754
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Rock Wagram Page 26