“Do you want me to go?” she whispered at last.
Joan appeared to smile. “Not yet.”
“Oh, Joan, isn’t it terrible?” Lee exclaimed in sudden shame. “Here I should be consoling you, and I’m the one who’s asking for help!”
“Why not? I don’t have to do anything.”
“You’re really reconciled to dying?” When Lee had spoken, she could hardly believe that she had been so crude, but Joan’s eyes showed no resentment. She was obviously beyond any power that Lee might have to create doubt or confusion. Her voice took on a note of amused speculation.
“I’m like poor Lucy in that poem of Wordsworth’s,” she murmured, her eyes still closed. “I’m rolling round and round, with rocks and stones and trees.”
“I see. It’s wonderful!” Lee had lost the last shred of the superiority of the living. “But how has Tony helped you?”
Joan opened her eyes and looked at Lee with more focus now. “It was that Sunday. When you came to Long Island. Tony convinced me that he was unhappier than I was.”
“And that did it?”
“Well, don’t you see, if he was unhappier than I was, he had to be in hell. And if there was a hell, didn’t there have to be a heaven?”
“For you, you mean?”
“Oh, and for Tony, too. He wouldn’t have to stay in hell. It was the sign I’d been looking for. Like that chalice in the Cloisters. A sign that something else existed.”
“And that was enough?”
Again there was a trace of a smile on Joan’s lips. “It was enough for me. I’ve grown humble.”
This time she seemed really to go to sleep. Lee rose and stood at the end of the bed.
“You are humble,” she half-whispered. “I think I envy you.”
“You needn’t.” Lee heard what she thought was almost a chuckle from the bed. “There’s nothing that’s going to happen to me that isn’t going to happen to you.”
Was it really a new, a redeemed Joan Conway talking? Or was it the old Joan Conway, with a greater ego than ever, the Joan Conway who had to have everything better than anyone else’s, who would help herself, like a barbaric czarina, to as many slices of Lee’s husband as she wished? The Joan who now demanded heaven as her birthright? But Lee was not to find out, for the trained nurse came in now and indicated with a severe little smile and a sharp nod that the visit was over.
5
On the last day of the defense’s case in United States v. Lassatta et al. Max watched Tony’s final appearance in the witness chair. It varied little from his others. He was patient, courteous, relentless in his consistency. Lanigan’s small bag of tricks was emptied, refilled and emptied again before this unmovable witness. But Max’s reaction was now different from what it had been. He was not bitter or angry or even afraid.
He had been careful to avoid Tony. Even in court recesses he had turned away from the latter’s friendly smiles. If betrayal were a laughing matter to Tony, it was not so to him. Both he and Tony had betrayed and been betrayed, and he was not so superficial or so macabre as to want to pick the white bones of friendship out of the ashes of that grate. And now he had awakened to the sudden discovery that love and hate seemed all at once to have expired and that he could watch Tony testify without the least apparent emotion. The man in the witness chair struck him as simply futile. Was that the secret of the great Tony? That he was a bit of an ass?
The day was bitterly cold outside, but the heat in the courtroom was high, and Max, who loved to be warm, stirred luxuriously under his sweater and jacket. He felt a torpor spreading through his limbs and body that made him think of his conscious spirit as detached from the flesh, as if he were a kind of Ariel watching, unseen, the watchers in that terrible courtroom. The idea of his future, which up until then had been little better than a nightmare, seemed almost agreeable, almost pleasantly exciting. It had been arranged that he should work in a liquor store in Panama City under the name of Howard Lamb. He would have an apartment only a block from where he worked, near a beach. Max knew a little Spanish, and he now had a vision of a life of sunbathing in a town of white stucco and red roofs by a sapphire sea. All right, suppose this were euphoric. What was wrong with euphoria? Particularly in his case. Might not Panama be a heaven attained without dying, a paradise with all the desperate pressures of his old life removed? He would not even be able to contemplate making a success of business there, for success would destroy the anonymity that was the very point of his new life. Howard Lamb would not have to be anything. He would not even have to be a man. He could pick up his harp and wander, caroling, through the golden streets of the new Jerusalem!
And he could make new friends. Max’s mind raced ahead now. He could have love affairs. He could implement all his dirtiest thoughts. He could lie on a beach, naked in the mild breeze, with his arm around the neck of a dark Panamanian boy. He could…
There was a rustle of rising about him as the court recessed. Max jumped up with sudden energy and strode out to the corridor to smoke. Then he started in fear as somebody touched his elbow, but he relaxed when he saw it was a woman. It took him several seconds to realize that it was Lee Lowder.
“What’s wrong, Max? Don’t you know me?”
He continued to stare at her. Her face was oddly expressionless. “I didn’t think you’d still speak to me.”
Lee’s blank gaze conveyed her indifference. “After all that’s happened to us, there can’t be any more enemies.”
“Only survivors?”
“Have we survived?”
“I heard you were going to divorce Tony.”
“Wouldn’t it be wise?”
“Oh, when a ship is sinking…” He shrugged.
“One shouldn’t mind being called a rat?” she finished for him.
“Why should you be called any name but the one you pick? I’m going to take a new one.”
She nodded. “I see. You can do that. And Joan can die. And I can become Mrs. Bogardus. So there’ll be nobody left but Tony.”
“He asked for it. His whole life has been a bungle. Going from one hack to another in quest of his soul. When did he think of us?”
“How you say that! As if you were some god sneering down at a poor fool of a human being.”
“I don’t sneer at Tony. I don’t even pity him. I see him. That’s all. He made the wrong choice. He made the wrong choice and destroyed us all.”
“Did he destroy himself?”
“Ah, I was waiting for that!” Max cried with sudden bitterness. “The final argument of Tony’s woman! That Tony, for all his faults, for all his blundering, has still that spark of life that is worth all our carcasses! You’ll go back to him, Lee. Mark my words. You’ll go back to him.”
“And that will be such a mistake?”
“Oh, Lee.” Max threw up his hands. “You and Tony and your consciences. Look what you’ve brought me to. And you never even really liked me, either of you. You both resented my trying to make Tony a great man. Tony didn’t want to be one, and you wanted him to owe it all to you.”
“Ah, I have you now!” Lee exclaimed. “You’re not a god, after all. Your Olympian detachment is a phony. You hate us, Max. Admit it!”
“Hate you and Tony?”
“No. You hate us women!”
Max turned away from her, quivering in disgust. “I rather think I do,” he muttered. As he walked into the courtroom and caught Lassatta’s eye, instantly averted, all his panic returned. Even Panama did not seem so far away now. He thought he was going to burst into tears. Damn Lee!
6
Tony sat in the courtroom on a bench by himself waiting for Judge Fenton to enter. The talking voices around him seemed to come from outside the imagined shell of immunity that encased him. He had seen Lee, looking very small and still in the back of the room. They had nodded, but he had not spoken to her. Eldon’s secretary had told him that she wanted to wait till after the sentencing when the guard would take him back to the office.
The rustle around him of rising people and the distant drone of the clerk announced the arrival of the Judge.
“In United States against Lassatta, Menzies et al., I shall proceed to sentencing. Will the defendant Anthony Lowder step forward?”
Tony approached the bench. The Judge’s friendly brown face, the face of the fellow lawyer, the fellow committeeman—for he and Tony had once served on the same committee of the City Bar Association—the face of a paradise excluding Lucifer, of a warm, happy nursery closing its door to a forlorn but wicked child, grew long and stern and detached. Yet the voice was not hostile. It was merely dry.
“I have done much thinking on your case, Lowder. It has been a most distressing one to the bar. That you, an attorney of good reputation, a candidate for high public office and the holder of a sensitive government post, should take a bribe to betray your trust is a sorry fact that will feed the venom of those who claim today that our whole system is rotten to the core. On the other hand, I take into consideration your openness and candor in this trial and your complete cooperation with the prosecution. Because of the negative nature of your crime I have been led to believe that a conviction of the defendants would have been vastly more difficult without this cooperation. I sentence you to one year in a federal penitentiary.”
Tony stepped back and started to follow the guard from the chamber. The Judge was already proceeding to his next calendar item. As Tony passed Lassatta the latter reached out and caught his arm. Tony leaned down.
“I am sorry about your kid.”
Tony returned his stare. “Are you?”
“You think I had anything to do with it? Forget it. We’re not that sort.”
“But there are things you do that are just as bad.”
Lassatta’s face became inscrutable. “Look, Lowder, I just wanted to say I was sorry about your kid.”
“I don’t want your sympathy.”
Lassatta’s whisper became almost inaudible. “You could do with it, you know.”
Tony shrugged and straightened up. “You don’t understand. I’m beyond all that. Way beyond.”
In Jack’s office, after the guard had closed the door, Tony and Lee looked at each other for several moments. His first reflection was that she must have lost five pounds. Certainly, she looked that many years older.
“You hair hasn’t gone gray,” he observed. “I’m surprised.”
“I haven’t dyed it, either.”
“It was good of you to come to my sentencing. I assume it wasn’t to gloat.”
“Eric wanted me to.”
“How is Eric?”
“He’s making out. He wants to go back to school.”
“And Isabel?”
“She’s gone back. She’s staying with Mother and Daddy. Do you think it’s safe?”
“I think it’s the only way. I think life’s going to be hard enough without their running scared.”
“I agree”.
He knew that there had to be resentment behind such impassivity, but he decided it would be better to leave it until she chose to bring it out.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” she asked. “After you get out? Mr. Eldon thinks it may be soon.”
“Can I come home?”
“You mean to the apartment?”
“Where else?”
“To me and the children?” Her tone seemed startled. “Where else?”
She was silent for a moment. “Yes, if you want.”
“Would you want?”
“I don’t think that matters.” Her brown eyes were leaden. “What matters is the children. And I think, all things considered, it might be better if you did come back.”
“Good. We’re agreed on that, too.”
“But what will you do? For a job, I mean. I’m told you can’t practice law.”
“Jack Eldon has offered me a position in his family’s company. They sell office equipment. I’d be a salesman. On the road most of the time. Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany. I guess I’d better take it.”
“He certainly takes care of his witnesses.”
“He takes care of this one. Jack’s become a real friend. I guess that’s something I’m going to need.”
“Oh, you.” She shrugged. “You and your charm. You’ll get by.”
He ignored this. “It was the travel side of the job that attracted me. I thought my being away part of the time might lessen the strain at home. Having Daddy back is going to be a bit embarrassing at first.”
“I see you have it all figured out.”
“I’ve had time.”
“But can you face the future with any hope, Tony?” she asked, with something like exasperation now in her tone. “Can you face it with any enthusiasm?”
“Yes. Because I’ll have a job to do.”
“You’ll like being a salesman?”
“I might, but I didn’t mean that. I meant the big job. The job of trying to save Eric from bitterness. And Isabel from self-pity. And you.” He paused and then gave her a fixed, deliberate smile. “And you,” he repeated softly. “From despair.”
The small yellow spark in her irises might have been curiosity. “It’s quite a challenge, isn’t it? Perhaps you’ll even enjoy it.”
“I’ll try to. I’ll need every weapon I’ve got.”
“What a commentary on life!” Lee walked to the window, as if propelled by a sudden surge of impatience. “That the only way to give it any meaning is to make a mess so you can clean it up.” Her voice shook now as she seemed to address an imagined audience. “Are you bored with life? Do you find it ugly and futile? No problem. Get a heaping garbage can, trundle it into your front parlor and kick it over. Then you’ll have a job that will save your soul. Surely there must be a God to have thought up a system like that.”
“I know it sounds ridiculous. But in my plight I must put up with the ridiculous.”
“And what about me?” she cried at last in passion, turning back to him. “What do we do about me? What if I can’t learn to love you again?”
“That, I’m afraid, is your problem.”
“Do you love me?”
“Certainly.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“Don’t, then.” He realized all at once how exhausted he was. The strain of the sentencing had been greater than he had been aware, and Lee’s emotional persistence was trying. “I can’t be always interfering between you and your rationalizations. That was one of the things wrong with the old Tony. Interfering between people and their favorite punishments.”
“Joan’s dead, you know.”
“Yes. I’m glad it’s over.”
“Do you think her cancer was a favorite punishment?”
“Who knows?”
“Oh, don’t be so damn above it all!” Lee stamped on the floor. “You don’t care about Joan or about me. You look placidly down from the peak of your great self-knowledge.”
“I’m tired, Lee.”
“So am I! Tell me just one thing, and I’ll go. Do you really think God spoke to you that Sunday at Joan’s? Do you really believe he leaned down from heaven to communicate personally with Tony Lowder?”
He watched her in silence until some of the petulance had drained out of her expression. “I’ve thought a lot about it, but I haven’t any real clue. It seemed to come from outside of me.”
“Seemed.”
“Well, of course, seemed. I can’t know, can I? But I don’t think it was only the product of my psyche, if that’s what you’re getting at. I think that I was somehow in tune—or out of tune—with chords that were not in me. And that’s all. That’s really all. It was a purely negative experience. It has not been repeated. There has been no corresponding visitation urging me to do anything or believe in anything. All I know is that I took a bribe and went to hell. But that has to be enough to build a life on.”
“Will it be?”
“I think it will be.”
Lee suddenly sobbed. “I don’
t know what to think of you!”
“Try to love me.”
“But you’re a monster!”
“Try to love a monster, then.”
“Can one?”
“Please, Lee. I suddenly feel absolutely pooped. I guess I can’t take any more of this. Later on, maybe. Why don’t you go now?”
But she sat down at Jack’s desk and covered her face. “Just tell me this,” she begged. “If I do learn to love you again, will there be only me? No Joans, I mean?”
He closed his eyes. The exhaustion was complete. “You didn’t mind Joan that much. Your trouble is that you’re jealous of God.”
“Oh, Tony! Don’t be so … horrible!”
“But you are. You must take consolation in the fact that he may not exist. Or that I may not believe in him. Don’t worry. I may not.”
She got to her feet, cold, rebuffed. “Shall I see you before you go to the penitentiary? Mr. Eldon says I may.”
“Of course.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow, if you want.”
“Tony, help me I” she cried.
“I will, darling. Tomorrow.”
She turned at this and almost ran from the room. Tony sighed in relief. Now he could sit down, as he yearned to do. But the moment he was seated, he seemed to revive. He looked about Jack’s bare chamber and thought of his own apartment and the living room in the evening. He saw Eric with a black patch over his eye, working on a problem in an algebra book. He saw Isabel, stouter, chewing gum, listening to a radio crooner. He saw Lee doing nothing. Just sitting there, moody, disconsolate, waiting for him. What else could she be waiting for? What else could any of them be waiting for? And the realization that they might not have to wait in vain filled him suddenly with a happiness that made him jump up and cry aloud. Happy? Surely Lee was right. He was a monster. But monsters could still be men.
I Come as a Theif Page 19