Collected Fiction

by Irwin Shaw

  “I hope the noise didn’t bother you,” the television writer said.

  “Not at all,” Strand said. “You’re coming along nicely, I must say, Mr. Crowell.”

  “You must have been listening while your wife was at the piano,” Crowell said gloomily. His tension did not seem to have lessened noticeably since a week ago Friday.

  Strand laughed. “I can tell the difference, Mr. Crowell.”

  “I bet you can,” Crowell said.

  “Mr. Crowell and I are going to have a cup of tea, Allen,” Leslie said. “Will you join us?”

  “Love to.”

  “I’ll just be a minute,” Leslie said. “The kettle’s on.” As she went into the kitchen Strand admired her slender figure, the curve of her neck, the blue skirt and white, schoolgirlish blouse she wore, her firm legs, her fair, soft resemblance to his eldest daughter.

  “Marvelous woman, that,” Crowell said. “The patience of an angel.”

  “Are you married, Mr. Crowell?”

  “Twice,” Crowell said darkly. “And I’m working on a third. I’m up to my ears in alimony.” He had a pudgy, tormented face, like a blighted peeled potato. Leslie had told Strand that the man wrote gags for situation comedies. From Crowell’s face, it seemed a harrowing profession. He paid twenty dollars a half hour for his lessons, twice a week, so the pain must have been well rewarded, especially since he went to an analyst five times a week. Modern American economy, Strand thought. One-liners, the couch, and alimony.

  “Some day,” Crowell was saying, “we must have a drink together and you can tell me how a man can stay married in this day and age.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Strand said lightly. “Luck. Sloth. A conservative distaste for change.”

  “Yeah,” Crowell said disbelievingly, pulling at the fingers of his pudgy hands. He glanced at the newspaper spread out on the table. “You can still stand to read the newspapers?” he said.

  “A vice,” Strand said.

  “They drive me up the wall.”

  “Sit down, sit down,” Leslie said, coming in from the kitchen carrying the tea things and a plate of cookies on a tray. She poured, her hand firm, a slight housewifely smile on her face, and passed the cookies. Crowell shook his head sadly. “On a diet,” he said. “Cholesterol, pressure. The lot.”

  Strand helped himself to a handful. He didn’t drink much and never had smoked but he had a sweet tooth. He hadn’t gained a pound since he was twenty and he noticed Crowell staring glumly at the small mound of biscuits on his saucer. Crowell would have liked milk with his tea but when he asked if it was skim milk and was told by Leslie that it wasn’t, drank his tea as it was, without sugar.

  Leslie, acting like a hostess, asked Crowell if he wouldn’t like to abandon Chopin for a while and try a little Mozart, but Crowell said he’d rather not, Mozart was too damn sure of himself for his taste.

  “He had a tragic end,” Leslie reminded him. “Very young.”

  “Tragic end or no tragic end,” Crowell said, “he always knew just where he was going. Chopin at least was melancholy.”

  Leslie sighed. “As you say, Mr. Crowell,” she said. “We’ll go on to the Waltz in E Flat Major next Tuesday.”

  “In my head,” Crowell volunteered, “I hear just the way it should come out. Only it never comes out that way.”

  “Practice,” Leslie said tactfully. She had a low, musical voice, like a soft minor chord on the piano. “It will come.”

  “Do you mean that, Mrs. Strand?” Crowell asked accusingly.

  Leslie hesitated. “No,” she said, then laughed.

  Strand laughed, too, chewing on a cookie, and finally Crowell laughed, too.

  When he had gone, Strand helped Leslie carry the tea things into the kitchen. He embraced her from behind while she was tying on an apron and kissed the back of her neck and put his hand on her breast. “You know what I’d like to do now?” he said.

  “Ssh,” Leslie said. “Jimmy’s in the house and he never knocks on doors.”

  “I didn’t say I’d do it. I just said I’d like to do it.”

  “There must be some reason you think you ought to flatter me today,” Leslie said, smiling. “Or else you’ve had an especially pleasant afternoon.”

  “A nice walk through the park. The sap is rising everywhere.” Strand released her. “I saw Caroline playing tennis.”

  “That girl,” Leslie said. “She’ll develop legs like a weight lifter.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be any danger so far.”

  “Who was Caroline playing with?” Leslie stirred a sauce that was simmering in a pan on the stove.

  “A new one,” Strand said. “Plays a nice game. But from what I could tell—well—a little too fine for my taste.”

  “I hope you didn’t give him your old-fashioned father-of-a-virgin stare.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?” Strand said, although he knew well enough. After more than twenty-three years of marriage they had yet to agree on standards of proper behavior, especially for the young. Leslie was invincibly open-minded and said of her husband, sometimes with amusement, sometimes without, that although there was only a seven-year difference in their ages, they were three generations apart.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Leslie said. “I’ve seen what you did with one look to some of Eleanor’s poor young men when she started having beaux. You turned them into stalagmites before they had a chance to say hello.”

  “They ought to have thanked me,” Strand said, enjoying the little argument. “I fitted them for the trials of their later lives. Do you remember the climate in your house when I first came around?”

  Leslie chuckled. “Polar,” she said. “One of the things I admired about you was that you didn’t seem to notice it at all. But then you were a grown man.”

  “Your father helped make me a grown man.”

  “Well,” Leslie said, “he did a good job of it.”

  “Thank you, my dear.” Strand bowed ironically.

  “Anyway, if Caroline wants to play tennis with somebody who can give her a decent game, who cares what he does when he’s not on the court? I think I know him. Did Caroline introduce him?”

  “Name of Stevie. She didn’t think it worthwhile to tell me his last name.”

  “Stevie. That’s it. He’s been here once or twice in the afternoon. A very nice boy.”

  Strand sighed. “If you had to battle with the kids I see five days a week, you might change your attitude a bit about the innocent young.”

  “You ought to ask for a transfer to a more civilized school,” Leslie said. “I’ve told you a thousand times.”

  “Tell that to the Board of Education,” Strand said, picking up another cookie. “As far as they’re concerned, there are no civilized schools. Anyway I like the challenge. Anybody can teach history at Saint Paul or Exeter.” He wasn’t quite sure that this was true, but it sounded convincing.

  “You let everybody take advantage of you,” Leslie said, stirring vigorously.

  Strand sighed again. This was an old story between them. “I bet,” he said, “the Duke of Wellington’s wife thought he let everybody take advantage of him.”

  Leslie laughed. “When you begin to throw historical figures at me,” she said, “I know I’ve lost the argument. Get out of my kitchen. I have to concentrate on dinner.”

  “It smells heavenly. What’re we having?”

  “Piccata of veal, pizzaiola. Leave me alone now. I have to think Italian.”

  As he went out the door, back into the dining room, Strand said, “The least we could do is prevail upon Jimmy not to open doors without knocking. Especially on weekends.”

  “He’s your son,” Leslie said. “Prevail.” She waved him away.

  Well, he thought as he sat down at the table and picked up the newspaper again, one thing is sure—we find plenty of things to talk about.

  He was reading when Jimmy sauntered in, barefooted, in jeans and sw
eatshirt, his thick curly black hair, a genetic throwback in the blond family, chopped off low on the nape of his neck. The nose, though, was undoubtedly his father’s. “Hi, Pops,” Jimmy said, collapsing into a chair, “how’re they treating you?”

  “I’m still standing,” Strand said. Jimmy was the only one of his children who called him Pops. He squinted a little at his son. “Which is more than I can say for you. Have you looked into a mirror recently?”

  “I’m above small vanities like that, Pops,” Jimmy said easily.

  “You look positively gaunt. People will think we never feed you. Have you eaten anything today?”

  “I only got up a couple of hours ago. I’ll do justice to Mom’s dinner.”

  “What time did you get in this morning?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “What difference does it make? Four, five. Who keeps track?”

  “Sometime, Jimmy,” Strand said, a touch of irony in his voice, “you must tell your old man what you find to do till five o’clock in the morning.”

  “I’m searching for the new sound, Pops,” Jimmy said. “I play or I listen to music.”

  “I understand they stop the music at Carnegie Hall well before five o’clock in the morning.”

  Jimmy laughed, scratched under the sweatshirt. “Carnegie Hall isn’t where it’s at this year. Haven’t you heard?”

  “You have purple rings under your eyes down to your shoulders.”

  “The girls love it,” Jimmy said complacently. “It makes me look like a haunted genius, one of them told me. Don’t you want me to look like a haunted genius?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Jimmy took a wrinkled pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket and lit up. Strand watched disapprovingly as Jimmy inhaled and blew the smoke out of his nostrils. He was the only one in the family who smoked.

  “Jimmy,” Strand asked, “do you ever read what scientists say about the relation between smoking and cancer?”

  “Do you ever read what the scientists say about atomic pollution?”

  Strand sighed, the third time since he’d come home that evening. “Okay,” he said resignedly. “You’re old enough to make your own decisions.” Jimmy was eighteen and made enough money at odd jobs he never explained so that he never had to ask Strand for any. He had finished high school, not disgracefully, a year ago, and had laughed when Strand had suggested college.

  “Tell me, Jimmy,” Strand said, “I’m curious—just what is this new sound you keep talking about?”

  “If I knew, Pops, I wouldn’t be searching for it,” Jimmy said airily.

  “Will you tell me when you find it?”

  “The sarcasm’s getting pretty heavy around here, isn’t it,” Jimmy said, but without rancor. “Okay, I’ll tell you. If and when.”

  Strand stood up. “I’m going to shower and change for dinner,” he said. “How about you?”

  “Oh, it’s Friday,” Jimmy said, standing. “Thanks for reminding me. Don’t worry, Pops.” He put his arm affectionately around Strand’s shoulder. “I’ll shine myself up.” He sniffed. “I see Mom’s still in her Italian period. I’d hang around here if it was only for the food.”

  “May I suggest a shave while you’re at it?”

  “Suggestion noted.” He squeezed Strand’s shoulder lightly. “I have a great idea—why don’t you go on my rounds with me some night? I’ll introduce you as one of the New Orleans pioneers of boogie-woogie. The girls’ll fall all over you.”

  Strand laughed, warmed by his son’s touch on his shoulder. “They’d never let you in again.”

  “Now,” Jimmy said seriously, “let me ask you a question. Do you ever look in a mirror?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Does it occur to you from time to time that you don’t look so good yourself?” His face was earnest now. “You look awfully tired, Pops.”

  “I feel all right,” Strand said shortly.

  “I have a few bucks I’ve saved,” Jimmy said. “After school’s over, what if I stake you and Mom to a couple of weeks on the beach somewhere?”

  “Thanks, Jimmy,” Strand said. “Hold on to your money. You’ll undoubtedly need it—and soon. Anyway, I like the city in the summertime.”

  “Okay.” Jimmy shrugged. “Have it your way. But if you change your mind…”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  “You’re a stubborn old dude.” Jimmy shook his head and dropped his arm from Strand’s shoulders and stubbed out his cigarette. “Have it your own way. And if you happen to find the new sound, come on in with it. The door’s always open for you.” He started toward the kitchen. “I’ve got to see just where that drooly smell is coming from.”

  When he went into the bathroom to take his shower Strand looked at himself in the mirror. Jimmy was right. He did look tired. There were bags under his eyes and the eyes themselves and the skin of his face looked faded. He fought the temptation to lie down and take a nap. If Leslie came in and found him dozing on the bed, she’d worry and ask him if he wasn’t feeling well, because he never napped in the afternoon. He didn’t want her telling him that he was overworked and ought to see a doctor. He stayed in the shower a long time and turned it on ice-cold at the end. As he started dressing for dinner he felt better even if the mirror didn’t show him looking any better. Fifty is no age to feel old, he told himself, even after a week’s work.

  When he went back to the dining room, Eleanor was setting the table. “Hi, baby,” he said, and kissed her. “How’re things?”

  “I’m rising like a rocket in the office hierarchy,” she said, putting napkins in place. “My boss says he expects me to be the first woman vice president of the company in ten years. He says that when we work together he forgets I’m a pretty girl. What do you think of that?”

  “I think he’s making a pass at you.”

  “Of course,” she said complacently. “With no luck. But I think he’s off by a couple of years. On the high side.”

  She worked as a computer systems analyst for a big conglomerate concern on Park Avenue. She had been a mathematics major and had taken computer courses in college and she was quick and had a confident and no-nonsense manner. She had been with the concern for only two years but was already entrusted to set up computer programs for all sorts of businesses and institutions in and out of New York. Her passion for her work was very much like Leslie’s devotion to music. Eleanor had tried to explain it to her father, who was fearful of the fate of ordinary humanity in an increasingly computerized and impersonal world. “It’s like producing order out of chaos by stretching your imagination and your talent to its limits. You go into a hospital, say, and you see duplications of work, human error, time being wasted that might cost lives—honest but faulty diagnoses that a machine can correct in a matter of seconds, doctors mired down hunting through records when they could be relieving pain—and presto, you set up a system and you have the pleasure of seeing everything fall into place, everything working, and you know it’s your doing. And it’s the same thing in a business. By the simplest of means you free poor, haunted clerks from thousands of hours of boredom. Contrary to what you believe, Dad, it makes humanity more human—not less.”

  Strand admired her eloquence and dedication but remained unconvinced, although he was happy that she was not content to be merely a pretty girl. She had gone away to college, working at summer jobs and tutoring during the school year to pay her way, and she now lived alone in a small apartment in the East Seventies. It had been a sad moment for Strand when she announced, the day she received her degree, that she no longer wanted to share the room in the family apartment with her kid sister. Neither Strand nor Leslie had objected; as they told each other, Eleanor was a capable, level-headed girl and could take care of herself and it was only normal for young people to strike out on their own. And as Eleanor had said, “It isn’t as though I’m going off to Lapland or Peru. I’ll be just across the park and when I’m in trouble I’ll scream so loud you’ll hear me right
across the reservoir.” Until now, she hadn’t screamed. When she got her job and told her father what her salary was, he congratulated her, a little ruefully, since, fresh out of college, she was making more than he was after twenty-seven years in the public school system.

  “I’m getting a three-week vacation this summer,” Eleanor said, starting to put a corkscrew into one of the two bottles of Chianti on the sideboard, “two weeks paid and one week unpaid and I want to go to someplace new. Have you any ideas, Dad?”

  “Ummn.” Strand pulled reflectively at his ear. “That depends. Are you going alone?”

  The cork came out with a pop and Eleanor put the bottle on the table. She turned and looked squarely at her father. “No,” she said flatly.

  “A young man, no doubt.”

  “No doubt.” She smiled.

  “What does he want to do?”

  “He’s not quite sure. He’s making noises about going to a Greek island and just lying on the beach and swimming.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad,” Strand said.

  “He promises there won’t be any computers or even a typewriter on the island. He says I’ll come back to my job with renewed zest.” Eleanor touched up a small bunch of flowers she had brought with her and put into a bowl in the middle of the table. “He’s been there before.” She smiled. “With another lady.”

  “He told you that?” Strand asked, trying to keep the tone of censure out of his voice.

  “He tells me everything,” she said. “He’s one of those.”

  “Different times,” Strand said, trying to make his voice light, “different whatever it is. In my time…” He stopped and grinned. “In my time, nothing. Do you tell him everything?”