Collected Fiction

by Irwin Shaw

  Strand suppressed a sigh. He had known that one day, not too far in the future, he would have to face this, but he had used the invalid’s prerogative of postponement.

  “I don’t suppose,” Hazen went on, “that a New York City high school disability pension would go very far, especially in these days of inflation.”

  “Subway fare,” Strand said.

  “Exactly. I hadn’t wanted to talk to you about this so soon, but there are other considerations…” He waved vaguely. “I have taken the liberty of talking to the headmaster of a small school in Connecticut about you. Dunberry. It’s about two hours from New York, north of New Haven. My father endowed the school handsomely both during his life and in his will. He had known at college the man who became its headmaster and admired him. The son is the present headmaster and is inclined to think kindly of whatever suggestions I happen to make. It’s a small school—just about four hundred boys—and run on old-fashioned lines, which I approve. It might be just the place for your friend Jesus Romero, too. You could keep an eye on him.”

  “You never forget anything, do you, Russell?” Strand said in honest admiration.

  Hazen shrugged the compliment off impatiently. “The classes are small and your work load would be moderate,” he said. “About twelve hours a week, at least the first term, the headmaster told me. And a comfortable old apartment comes with the job, which in these days is better than income—considerably better. And when I told the headmaster—Babcock is his name, by the way, an excellent fellow, I’m sure you’ll like him—about your wife, he said he has long been wanting to institute a music appreciation course and he was sure she would be most valuable. And the strain of living in a quiet little school town is infinitely less taxing than fighting the battle of New York. Am I tiring you?”

  “A little,” Strand admitted.

  “It’s just that there really isn’t much time to lose,” Hazen said apologetically. “The school session is just two months off and the faculty has to be confirmed. Another thing, Babcock will be visiting friends at Montauk next week and he could drop over and have a talk with you, which would save you a trip to Connecticut.”

  “It all sounds very promising,” Strand said wearily. “Of course, I’d have to discuss it with Leslie first.”

  “I’ve already told her about it,” Hazen said. “She approves wholeheartedly.”

  “She hasn’t said anything to me about it,” Strand said. “Or maybe she did and I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot of things these days, you know.”

  “That’ll change,” Hazen said confidently. “Anyway, she wanted me to talk to you about it first. She didn’t want to influence you unduly, she said.”

  Strand nodded. “Ever since I got out of the hospital she’s treated me as though I’m made out of old china.”

  Hazen laughed. “I noticed,” he said. “That will change, like everything else, as you grow stronger. Once you’re able to get out of bed and can walk around you’ll be surprised how different everything will look.”

  “I don’t want any more surprises, thank you,” Strand said.

  When Hazen left the room he allowed himself the luxury of the sigh that he had suppressed while the man was there. He would have to think about the rest of his life, Hazen had said. Among other things that meant money. Always and persistently—money. He had known that what was happening to him was expensive, but for the first time in more than thirty years he had not asked what anything cost. But soon the bill would be presented and it would have to be paid. He sighed again.

  He closed his eyes and dozed. When he awoke he remembered vaguely that Hazen had been in the room and had spoken about a school. But he didn’t remember the name of the school or where it was or the name of the man who was coming to interview him or if Hazen had mentioned anything about salary. He lay back and dozed again.

  The morning Dr. Caldwell said he could go downstairs he insisted upon dressing, although Leslie tried to convince him it would be easier just to put a robe on over his pajamas. “I will not have Russell Hazen’s terrace look like the front porch of an old folks’ home,” he said. He also shaved himself. It was the first time he had looked at himself in a mirror since the accident, as he described the event to himself. He was pale and very thin and his eyes looked enormous in the gaunt face, like two question marks in dark ink. While he was in bed, Mr. Ketley had shaved him every other day and he had been spared mirrors.

  Dressing, he moved slowly and carefully, sensing that the bones and arteries in the envelope of imperiled flesh were fragile. But he moved. Leslie clutched his arm as he went down the staircase, holding on to the banister, and Mr. Ketley walked backwards before him, as though afraid that he would suddenly pitch forward and would need to be caught.

  On the terrace in the warm sunlight he lay on the reclining chair, propped up on cushions, with a blanket over his knees, grateful for the sunshine and the breeze off the ocean. Everything looked and felt mint new to him, the small white clouds in the summer sky, the color of the sea, the air in his lungs. “You’re out of the woods,” Dr. Caldwell had told him. “If you take care of yourself.” Taking care of himself, Dr. Caldwell had explained, was not climbing the stairs more than once a day, eating wisely, refraining from alcohol, sex and anxiety, and, most important of all, not allowing himself to get excited. Strand had promised to take care of himself. “I will devote myself to getting a tan,” he told Caldwell, “and remaining unexcited.”

  Caroline said everybody commented on how brave he was. He did not ask who everybody was and did not feel either brave or cowardly.

  Lying there, with Leslie sitting beside him, holding his hand, he suddenly found that he had been interested only in himself for so many weeks. “Tell me everything,” he said to Leslie, “about everybody.” It was as though he had just returned from a long voyage to a place cut off from all outside communication. The Valley of the Shadow. Could it be reached by Western Union, satellite, the human voice? “First—you. What are you doing about your lessons?”

  “I’m taking care of them,” Leslie said evasively.

  “How?”

  “I’ve crammed them into one day a week,” she said. “It’s easy in the summer. So many people are out of town.”

  He nodded. “How’s the house?”

  “Fine,” Leslie said. “Mrs. Curtis dusts three times a week.”

  “Caroline?”

  Leslie hesitated. “She found out yesterday she’s been accepted in Arizona. She won’t go, she says, if you say no.”

  “I won’t say no,” Strand said.

  “She’s stopped playing tennis. She gave all her tennis clothes and her racquet to a girl friend.”

  “Why did she do that?”

  “She said she was tired of the game.” Leslie’s face was grave and she turned away from Strand as she spoke. “What I think is that she’s propitiating the gods.” Her voice was flat. “Giving up something she loves in exchange for something dearer…. Do you want me to go on?”

  “No.”

  They sat in silence for a while, Leslie’s hand in his. Each age to its own particular sacrifice, he thought. If he died, would his daughter ask for her pretty white shorts and cotton shirts and racquet back, disillusioned, no gods left? What atavistic piety had led her into this touching and ludicrous teenage denial? “And Jimmy?” he asked. If Jimmy had given up the guitar, how would the gods weigh it against the tennis racquet?

  “He’s in New York,” Leslie said. “He had an appointment to see Herb Solomon. Believe it or not, Jimmy was too shy to call Solomon himself and Russell made the date.”

  “Maybe we ought to put Russell on a yearly retainer as general manager of the whole family,” Strand said. “I wonder how we got along all these years without him.”

  “I’m glad to see you’re getting better,” Leslie said. “You’re recovering your sense of ingratitude.”

  “I’m grateful enough,” Strand said. He paused. “I suppose. You must thank him in m
y name for all of us. He cuts me off every time he thinks I’m on the verge of talking about it.”

  “I know,” Leslie said. “He won’t let you mention it. I tried once or twice. He was very brusque with me. I don’t know whether he was angry or embarrassed.”

  “Did he tell you he gave Conroy a thousand dollars and Linda Roberts a gold bracelet for pulling me out of the drink?”

  “No,” Leslie said, “but they did.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a curious way of compensating people who after all risked their lives to save a comparative stranger?”

  “A little,” Leslie admitted. “It’s his way. He’s a closed kind of man. He can’t show emotion, he can only act it. With money, favors…symbols.”

  “Still,” Strand said, “it makes me feel peculiar. Like something in an ad from the Lost and Found columns—Misplaced: One middle-aged schoolteacher, somewhere in the Atlantic. Reward offered if returned in passable condition.”

  “Don’t ever let him know that’s the way you feel about it. Generosity is his hobby, it helps offset what he feels about his work. We were talking about it the other night and he told me in a lawyer generosity is considered a weakness. It’s easy to see he couldn’t stand anybody’s thinking he was a weak man.”

  “He told me he’d spoken to you about that school thing,” Strand said, pleased that his memory was coming back. “He said you approved.”

  “More than that. I kissed him for it.”

  “There’s no need to go to extremes,” Strand said dryly.

  “It’s the perfect solution,” Leslie said. “For all of us.”

  “You love living in New York,” he said. “How do you think you’ll feel stuck in a small, sleepy town surrounded by four hundred or so adolescent boys?”

  “I’ll survive,” Leslie said. “Anyway, it’s not important. What’s important is keeping you alive and well. And New York is only a couple of hours away. I’ll manage.”

  “Maybe when that man comes to look me over…”

  “Mr. Babcock.”

  “Mr. Babcock. Maybe he’ll decide I’m not the right man for him.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I spoke to him on the phone and he’s overjoyed at the prospect of having you.”

  “Overjoyed,” Strand said. “There’s a word.”

  He sighed, looked around at the blue water of the pool, the immaculate bathing mats, the white dunes, the shining ocean. “We can’t stay here until school opens you know. It’s one thing to come here for a weekend and then for an emergency, but…”

  “He won’t let you mention that, either. I’ve talked to him about it, at least I’ve tried to talk to him…”

  “Well?”

  “I told him I’d take you back to the city as soon as you could be moved.”

  “Well?”

  “He asked me if I was trying to kill you,” Leslie said.

  “What a nuisance I’ve become.”

  “Hush,” Leslie said. “Of course, he was being melodramatic, but there’s no doubt it’s worlds better for you here. The Ketleys, the sea air. We don’t have any air conditioning at home and it’s sweltering in town. Russell says keeping you here is the least he could do for a man he nearly let drown practically in front of his eyes.”

  “He has a curious system of values,” Strand said.

  “Would that there were more like him,” Leslie said. “By the way, I’m almost sure it isn’t Linda Roberts.”

  “Linda Roberts what?”

  “The reputed mistress.”

  “Oh, that.” Another world. Other bodies. “Why not?”

  “He just takes care of her,” Leslie said. “And her money. He’s the executor of her husband’s will. Her husband left her a fortune, but Russell says that if she’d been abandoned to her own devices she wouldn’t have a penny left. She’s a soft touch for anyone with a hard luck story. He says she’s afflicted by leeches. He’s kept her from getting married twice to men who were after her money. He takes care of her because she has a good heart and because her husband was a close friend of Russell’s and she’s lonely. That’s why she talks so incessantly when she gets a chance, he says. More generosity. In his own style. With his time, his affection, everything.”

  “He is that,” Strand said. “But why would that prevent…?”

  “I saw him walking along the beach with Nellie Solomon.”

  “So?”

  “There’s a certain way a man and a woman can walk together when they think nobody is watching.”

  “Oh, come now, Leslie.”

  “He’s walked along the beach with me,” Leslie said, “and I’ve seen him walking along the beach with Linda Roberts and with Eleanor. I assure you there’s a difference. A great difference.”

  “You’re not gossiping, are you?” Strand asked, although he knew Leslie never gossiped.

  “It’s just an intuition,” Leslie said. “Don’t take it for divine revelation.”

  But he was sure she was right. He felt a twinge of envy for Russell Hazen and was disappointed in Nellie Solomon. The crosscurrents around a dinner table. He remembered Mrs. Solomon’s light pinch on his leg when Mrs. Roberts had made the remark about France.

  “Good for him,” Strand said. He wondered if Herbert Solomon was a complaisant man. He did not look the type. Strand wished everybody well. He remembered Judith Quinlan’s unopened letter and knew he, too, was guilty. The sexual revolution, with its lighthearted couplings, was for the young. He was involved in a sterner doctrine. He closed his eyes, feeling the heat of the sun on his lids, and they were quiet for a while.

  Another subject. “I’m sorry,” he said, “that I spoiled Eleanor’s vacation.”

  “Greece’ll still be there next year,” Leslie said.

  “Did she think I was going to die?” He spoke with his eyes still closed. “Is that why she stayed?”

  “I don’t know what she thought,” Leslie said. “She just wanted to stay. She’s back at work now. She didn’t take the extra week off. I think we’re going to have some important news from her soon.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like her telling us that she’s going to get married.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “The usual. Sad and glad. They’re a beautiful couple.”

  “Is that enough?”

  Leslie sighed. “We won’t know for perhaps twenty years.”

  “We were half a beautiful couple,” Strand said.

  Leslie laughed. “I called my parents to tell them about you and they sent their best wishes. My father said he thought you didn’t look like a healthy man even the first time he clapped eyes on you.”

  Strand chuckled weakly. “Palm Springs hasn’t changed him.”

  “He said it’s a wonder everybody in New York doesn’t have a heart attack. He says we ought to move to Palm Springs, it does miracles for hearts.”

  “Tell him I’ll move to Palm Springs the day he moves out.”

  “I see you’re getting better,” Leslie said lightly.

  “Anyway, I wasn’t in New York when it happened,” Strand said. “I was halfway to Portugal.”

  They were quiet again for a while, Strand still with his eyes closed. “Did you think I was going to die?”

  “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” said Leslie, “I couldn’t have borne it.”

  Herb Solomon came out onto the terrace, where Strand was lying. Strand was alone. Leslie was down the beach somewhere with Linda Roberts. Leslie was painting and Linda, he supposed, was talking. Leslie had had a birthday the week before and Hazen had surprised her with a gift of a portable, collapsible easel and an extravagant set of oil paints and brushes. Caroline was working at a veterinarian’s clinic in town, and Jimmy was staying in the city for a few days. Hazen was in New York, too. Solomon still looked like George Washington, even in cotton slacks and a polo shirt. He was carrying a big wooden board with something on it wrapped in
tinfoil. “Good morning,” he said. “I heard you now welcome visitors.”

  “The more the merrier,” Strand said. “Please sit down.” Solomon put the board on a table. “Nellie baked a loaf of bread for you,” he said, unwrapping the tinfoil. The loaf was huge and the crust was brown and it smelled delicious. “It’s still warm,” Solomon said. “She’s a great believer in home-baked bread. Unbleached flour, stone ground, that sort of thing. She says bread should be baked with love. She thought it might tempt your appetite.”

  “It does indeed,” Strand said, uncertain of what the protocol should be about accepting a loaf of bread from the husband of the woman who was reputed to be the mistress of one’s host. Busy hands, in the kitchen and elsewhere. “Thank your wife for me.” He reached over and broke off an end of the loaf and tasted it. It was as delicious as it looked and smelled. “Ummn,” he said. “Don’t you want some?” Bread and salt and complicity. The bonds of friendship.

  “I have to watch my weight,” Solomon said, seating himself. Other things, too, Strand thought, are to be watched. Solomon looked around him with approval. “You’re a lucky man, Allen,” he said.

  “You can say that again.”

  “I don’t mean being snatched from the briny. I mean being in a place like this to get over…. Well, you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “There’s nothing Russell Hazen wouldn’t do for a friend,” Solomon said. “The blood out of his veins. And I know. He’s been my lawyer for fifteen years. In the music business I’m something of a giant—but in real business, the sort Russell’s firm handles, I’m a pygmy. But he worries about me as though I’m A.T. and T. There’ve been a couple of times I’d have sunk with all hands on board if it hadn’t been for his advice. He’s not a happy man”—Solomon looked around him cautiously—“I suppose you’ve heard some of the stories?”

  “Some,” Strand said, not in the mood for stories.

  “He’s not a happy man, but he’s something rarer—he’s a good man. Good, but unlucky. Amazing, how often those things go together. I try to keep a sensible balance.” Solomon laughed, a deep, rumbling basso. “Russell’s afraid you’re not going to take care of yourself.” Suddenly, Solomon’s voice was serious. “He’s become very attached to you. Your whole family. With reason, I would say.”