Collected Fiction

by Irwin Shaw

  He opened her letter first. There was no mention of Romero. Caroline reported that she was having a great time, that she had been chosen as the queen for the Homecoming Game of the new basketball season, that she had made two intellectual friends, a girl who was majoring in philosophy and another who was certain to be the editor of the college literary magazine in her junior year, that the coach of the track team thought that if she applied herself she could beat out the girl who always came in first in the two twenty and that she had been invited to spend the Christmas holidays with a family in Beverly Hills but had declined because she couldn’t wait to see her Mummy and Daddy. She had also received a postcard of the Eiffel Tower in a letter from Mummy and thought it was most self-sacrificing of Daddy to spend all that time in dreary Dunberry alone while Mummy gallivanted in Paris. There were five crosses at the end of the letter, above her signature.

  There was a postscript, “Mummy wrote that we’re all invited to Mr. Hazen’s house in the Hamptons for Christmas and I decided that it was childish of me to tell you that I would never go there again. The past is the past and I’m none the worse for having been hit in the head by a dashboard there. In fact I’m much the better for it. Nobody would have dreamed of electing me Homecoming Queen if my nose hadn’t been busted.”

  Well, Strand thought, at least she knows how to stick to a story. It was too late now—if it hadn’t always been too late—to let her know that he knew it wasn’t a dashboard that had hit her.

  As he put the letter down, Strand remembered Mrs. Schiller saying that Caroline was a very popular name these days.

  He opened Leslie’s letter, saw it was a long one.

  Dearest,

  I have the most enormous news. You are now married to a wealthy woman. Comparatively speaking, of course. What’s happened is that I’ve sold the dune painting I started over Thanksgiving in the Hamptons. Linda was as good as her word and hung it in the show. It was the first one sold. It might have something to do with the fact that it was priced at only two thousand dollars ($2,000!!! It sounds like a lot more in francs) and all the rest started at five and went sky-high after that. I’ve also sold a water color that I did in a few hours in Mougins. Linda says she didn’t believe anyone could do something new with the Riviera as subject and somehow I managed it. Even more dazzling—the man who bought it is a painter himself, a well-known painter in France, and he’s invited me to his studio and told me that if I want to paint from live models there I could do so at the same time he’s working. Incredible, isn’t it? I feel like somebody’s maiden aunt who does embroidery in her spare time and is suddenly told she’s producing works of art. Linda says that if I go on in what she calls “my new style” (ha-ha) and work hard she’ll definitely give me a show in New York next year. I’ve been working on a big canvas of a courtyard I wandered into, only it doesn’t look like a courtyard on the canvas, it looks like a medieval dungeon. “Lit by an unearthly light, like Balthus, only American,” is the way Linda describes it, but you know how she exaggerates. I’ve never felt like this before. The brush seems to move by itself. It’s the most peculiar and wonderful feeling. Maybe it’s something in the air. Now I think I know why painters had to come to Paris sometime in their careers, the earlier the better. If I’d have come when I was eighteen, I don’t think I’d ever have touched the piano again.

  I’m on such a high, dear man, as though I’m soaring, that I hate to leave before I have to. Linda’s suggested that we stay on here longer than we planned and arrange to meet you at Kennedy the day you’re due at Russell’s. You have to pass the airport anyway on the way out and to tell you the truth, a little extra time away from Dunberry will fortify me for what I have to face when I get back.

  I know it sounds selfish, but it’s only a few days, and it’s not like Gauguin leaving his family to paint in the South Seas, is it? Of course, if you want me to come back sooner, just send me a cable.

  In the meantime, if you can do the family chores and get in touch with the kids and tell them where we can all assemble for the holidays, it will ease my mind.

  I hope you’re taking care of yourself and that you miss me as much as I miss you. Please let me know as soon as possible what you decide.

  Please don’t think that because I have the crazy idea that I have a chance to be a good painter I will turn into a bad wife. If I had to make the choice you know what it would be. I am no Gauguin.

  Give my blessing to the kids when you speak to them.

  Linda sends her love and I send you everything I have. Until the blessed holiday,

  Leslie

  Strand put the letter down slowly, trying to sort out his emotions. He recognized pride, jealousy, an obscure sense of loss among them. If she were willing to give up the music to which she had devoted her life what would be the next thing she would forgo? He would send her a cable of congratulations later, when he had time to compose a fittingly joyous message.

  He looked around him. The room suddenly seemed bleak, a seedy bachelor’s quarters. He certainly was not soaring.

  Absently, he tore open the third letter.

  Dear Mr. Strand,

  I am not going to tell you my name. I am the wife of an instructor in the biology department in the college which your daughter, Caroline, attends. I am the mother of two small children.

  He stopped reading for a moment. The handwriting was narrow and neat. Much could undoubtedly be discovered about the character of the woman who wrote it by an expert in graphology. He felt a little dizzy, sat down, still holding the letter. The handwriting was very small and he had been straining to read it. He fished for his glasses and put them on. The handwriting now loomed large. Ominously large.

  My husband has become infatuated with her. She is the flirt of the campus and the boys crowd around her like hungry animals. My husband has told me that if she’ll have him, he’ll leave me. They had arranged to go to California together over the Thanksgiving holiday, but at the last moment she went off with a boy on the football team. She flits from affair to affair, I am told, although the only one I can be sure of, because I have been told so by my husband, is the one with him. In other days she would have been thrown out of school after the first month. Times being what they are and educators having given up all pretense at discipline or the practice of decency, she is coddled and cosseted and most recently has been elected the queen of the basketball Homecoming Game. Up to now, she has promised my husband that she will finally make the trip with him to California during the Christmas season. I am reduced to the pitiful state of praying that once more she will jilt him. He is neglecting his work and ignoring me, except when we argue, and paying no attention to our children. He is on a small salary, since he is only an instructor, but I know he lavishes expensive gifts on her.

  I know that you, yourself, are a teacher and understand how easily a man’s career can be destroyed by professional neglect added to an open indiscretion. I understand, also, how when a girl lives away from home for the first time, the attentions of the male sex, especially when the girl is as young and pretty as your daughter, can turn her head, to her everlasting regret later on.

  I have no idea of what you know about your daughter’s behavior or how much you care about her future, but for her sake and mine and that of my family, I beg you to do whatever you can to make her realize how cruel and irresponsible she is being and restore my husband to the bosom of his family.

  The letter was unsigned.

  The bosom of his family. Strand read the line, with its biblical echo, over again. He thought of prairie churches, Sunday evening prayer meetings. He knew one thing the biology teacher didn’t know—he would be jilted for Christmas as he had been jilted for Thanksgiving. Compliments of the seasons.

  He opened his hand and the letter fluttered to the floor. Through sleet and snow and gloom of night, the daily bread of affliction is delivered to our door six times a week by the ever faithful United States Postal Service. Thank God for Sunday.r />
  A biology teacher, he thought. He, himself, had been a teacher of history and Leslie had been in his class, at Caroline’s age, demure and beautiful in the first row, and he had lusted after her. Was he to feel guilty? At least he had waited a decent year after she had been graduated and had called at her family’s apartment with the intention of marriage. But the biology teacher, too, no doubt intended marriage.

  What could be said to his daughter? And who could say it? Not her father, he thought, never her father. Leslie? He guessed what Leslie would say—“She’s a big girl. Let her work out her own problems. We’ll only make it worse. I’m not going to sacrifice my relations with my daughter for the sake of a randy old fool of a hick biology teacher.” If he showed Leslie the letter, she probably would say anybody with a handwriting like that was bound to lose her husband.

  Eleanor? Eleanor would tell her, “Do what you want to do.” Eleanor had always done exactly that.

  Jimmy? Possibly. He was the closest in age to Caroline, moved in the currents of the same generation, was protective of his sister. But with his thrice-married thirty-five-year-old singer, Caroline would probably laugh at him if he brought up the subject of morality. Still, Jimmy was worth a try.

  Strand finished his drink. It did not help the dry rasping of his throat or the hot thrust of pain in his lungs. He stood up and went over to the phone and dialed Dr. Prinz’s number in New York. Dr. Prinz said it was about time he called. He would see him at eleven Saturday morning. He would have to get the early train.

  Then he called Jimmy’s number in New York. For once, Jimmy was in.

  “Jimmy,” Strand said, “I have to be in New York Saturday morning. Can we have lunch? I have some things to talk to you about.”

  “Oh, Dad,” Jimmy said, “I’m sorry. I have to leave for Los Angeles Saturday morning. Business. I’d love to see you. Can you come down for dinner Friday night?”

  Sons by appointment only, Strand thought. “I’m through with my last class at three o’clock on Friday,” he said. “I can get into New York by six o’clock. Fine. I’ll have to stay over, though. I have a checkup with the doctor on Saturday morning.”

  “Anything wrong?” Jimmy immediately sounded anxious.

  “No. It’s routine.” Strand felt a cough collecting in his throat and controlled it. “Can you get me into a hotel?”

  “The Westbury is near me. It’s on Madison Avenue, around 70th Street. I’ll book you in there.”

  “It sounds expensive.” He had once had drinks in the bar of the hotel with Leslie on an afternoon when they had been at the Whitney Museum nearby. It had been too luxurious for him. The other people at the bar were the same sort as the guests at the parties Hazen had taken them to in the Hamptons.

  “No matter,” Jimmy said airily. “My treat.”

  “I can stay at some cheaper place.”

  “Forget it, Pops. I’m in the chips.”

  Nineteen years old, Strand thought, and in the chips. When he was nineteen he had stayed at the YMCA. “Well,” he said, “if it won’t break you.”

  “I’ll reserve the bridal suite.”

  “The bride’s in Paris,” Strand said. “Save your money.”

  Jimmy laughed. “I know she’s in Paris. She sent me a postcard. The Mona Lisa, at the Louvre. I guess she wanted to remind me that she’s my mother. And that not all art was produced by electric guitars. I’ll pick you up at the hotel.”

  He sounds at least thirty years old, Strand thought as he hung up. He went into the kitchen and fixed himself another drink. If one drink was good for him, perhaps two would be twice as good.

  The French restaurant Jimmy took him to was quietly elegant, gleaming with snowy tablecloths and large arrangements of cut flowers. The headwaiter fawned over Jimmy and bowed politely when Jimmy introduced Strand as his father, although Strand thought he detected a momentary flicker of disapproval in the man’s eyes. Beside Jimmy, lean and immaculate in a dark suit, narrow at the waist, which looked as though it had been made in Italy, Strand was conscious of his impressed old tweed jacket, the loose fit of his collar, his baggy flannels, as the head-waiter led them to a table. When he looked at the prices on the menu he was aghast. He had been aghast, too, when he asked the room clerk at the Westbury the price of the room that had been reserved for him.

  “Your son’s taking care of it,” the clerk had said.

  “I know,” Strand had said testily. The trip down to the city had been uncomfortable. The train was crowded and overheated and the only seat he could find was in the smoking car and the man next to him smoked cigarette after cigarette and only looked at Strand curiously when Strand had a coughing fit. “I know my son’s taking care of it,” Strand said to the clerk. “I just would like to know what it costs.”

  The clerk told him and Strand groaned inwardly, thinking, My son will also be the youngest bankrupt in the United States in one year.

  When Jimmy appeared a half hour later, Strand hadn’t chided him about his extravagance. In fact, he hadn’t had the time to talk to him about anything. “We’re late,” Jimmy had said, after saying “Pops, you look great. Joan’s expecting us for a drink. It’s just around the corner. She wants to meet you.”

  “What for?” Strand asked sourly, annoyed at Jimmy’s tardiness. He took it for granted that Joan was the name of Jimmy’s thirty-five-year-old mistress or whatever she was.

  “Maybe she wants to see the oak from which the acorn was dropped.”

  “Is the lady having dinner with us?” With her at the table he could hardly bring up the subject of Caroline and her biology teacher.

  “No,” Jimmy said, hurrying him out of the hotel. “Just a drink. She has to pack for the trip tomorrow.”

  “Trip? Where is she going?” Strand asked, although he knew.

  “California,” Jimmy said nonchalantly. “With me. She hates to travel alone. She can’t cope.”

  When he was introduced to Joan Dyer in her gaudy, all-white apartment twenty-two stories high, with a view of the East River, Strand thought she looked like a lady who could cope with anything, including fire, flood, famine and finance. She was a tall, skinny woman with no breasts and enormous wild dark eyes, heavily accented with purple eye shadow. She was barefooted, with yellowish, splayed toes, and was wearing gauzy black pajamas through which Strand could see the pinkish glow of bikini underpants. She didn’t shake the hand that he extended to her but said, in a deep, powerful, almost masculine voice, “Do you mind if I kiss the father?” and embraced him and kissed his cheek. He was enveloped in a wave of heavy perfume. Whatever he ate for dinner would have to be highly seasoned to compete with the fumes that clung to his clothes. He knew, too, that he would have to wipe off the purplish lipstick before he went anywhere else. This was all at the door, which Joan Dyer opened herself. When she led them into the enormous living room, Strand saw that Solomon was standing there, next to the chair from which he had risen to greet them. “Hello, Allen,” Solomon said. “Jimmy.” There was a cold edge to his voice when he said “Jimmy.” It did not escape Strand. “Well,” Solomon said, “I’ve had my say, Joan. You’ll both regret what you’re doing.”

  The woman waved a languid, disdainful hand at him. Her nails, long and predatory, were painted purple, too. “Herbie,” she said, “you’re beginning to bore me.”

  Solomon shrugged. His face was deeply tanned and his hair looked almost white over the deep color of his forehead. Strand would have liked to ask him where he found sun in New York in December, but the expression on his face was not conducive to idle conversation. And Jimmy’s face, too, had a stubborn look to it that Strand had become accustomed to by the time Jimmy was eight.

  “Allen,” Solomon said, his voice gentle and friendly now, “if you’re staying in town can we have lunch tomorrow?”

  “I’d like that very much,” Strand said.

  “Sardi’s,” Solomon said. “One o’clock. It’s right near my office. West 44th Street.”

  “I kn
ow where it is.”

  “I’ll reserve a table.” Solomon left without looking at Joan Dyer or Jimmy and without saying good-bye.

  “Ships that pass in the night,” Joan Dyer said as they heard the distant closing of the front door. She smiled a purple smile at Strand. “And now, can I give you a drink? I must warn you, though—it’s carrot and celery cocktail juice. I refuse to poison my guests with alcohol and cigarettes.”

  “Thank you, I’m not thirsty,” Strand said, somehow reassured about his son’s companion, who, because of her profession, he had automatically supposed was addicted to marijuana, at the very least. A woman addicted to carrot juice could hardly be considered a danger to a young man like Jimmy.

  “Do sit down,” Joan Dyer said. “I want to take a good look at you. Jimmy’s spoken so much about you. You’ve raised a marvelous son,” she said as Strand sat down, sinking almost to the floor on the soft low white couch and wondering if he was going to need help to get up off it. “In our profession the young men are usually runaway children, immature, resentful of their parents, misunderstood talents. It’s a breath of fresh air to see you two together. I mean it, Mr. Strand.”

  “Joan,” Jimmy said, with authority, “why don’t you cut the bullshit?”

  The woman gave Jimmy a baleful stare, then smiled her dark smile at Strand and went on as though Jimmy had not interrupted. “From the look of you, Mr. Strand, Jimmy must have gotten his intelligence, his sense of personality, from you. From the moment I saw him I had a feeling of serene trust, a feeling that finally I had found the man—a child in years, perhaps, but a man, nonetheless, whom I could depend upon, whose judgment in both personal and professional matters was intuitively right. What I’ve just said will explain the unfortunate little scene you’ve just witnessed between Herbie and us. I’m sure Jimmy will fill you in on the details. And, now, if you’ll forgive me, I must finish my packing. It’s the crack of dawn tomorrow and to the airport, so please don’t keep my dear Jimmy up too late tonight, Mr. Strand. And I do hope that you will come out and visit us in California soon with your beautiful wife, whose photograph Jimmy has shown me. What a lucky family. I was a waif, tossed around from relative to careless relative, so I can appreciate a family…”