The room was filled suddenly with strident music that George had learned to call “hot.”
“Turn it down lower, Bill,” I said. “It goes right through my ears.”
Bill turned it lower, swinging his shoulders rhythmically. “I’ll shut it off in a minute,” he said. “That boy Bingo certainly can give.”
He turned the radio down lower so that the music became very faint.
“Even as low as that,” Bill said, “he still pulls.”
“Bill,” I said, “I didn’t mean to talk about Kay and me. It must have sounded as though I were preaching to you.”
“Oh, that,” Bill said. “It sounded fine. Wait a minute. I’m thinking of something.”
Bill began pacing up and down softly in front of my bed.
“‘Please keep me happy,’” he said softly. “No, that isn’t right. How’s this one? ‘I want to stay married.’”
“How do you mean, Bill?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
“A series,” Bill said, “when we get through with Bingo. That little squirt will try to up us another thousand on his next contract. ‘I want to stay married’—a series of fifteen minute skits at six o’clock, just when the woman’s serving supper—problems of married life—music, a voice—‘I want to stay married’—more voices ‘I want to stay married.’ Then in it comes—‘Fifteen minutes in the Coza Theater, May and Tom in their daily drama of married life.’ It isn’t new, but it has something.”
“You mean, you’re thinking of having that every night?”
“Every other night so they’ll wait for it,” Bill said. “A good marital quarrel always gets them. ‘I want to stay married’—the voice of America, from Maine to California.”
Bill began pacing the floor again, rubbing his hands slowly over the back of his head. The music was all around him.
“Bill,” I said.
“‘I want to stay married,’” Bill said softly. “Yes, what is it, Harry?”
It must have been the music that made me think of it—the music and a world I never knew.
“Bill,” I said, “last spring Marvin Myles called me up. She’s married. Someone in our class named Ransome. Did you ever know him? I didn’t.”
Suddenly I wanted to talk about her, but Bill kept on pacing.
“Oh, yes,” Bill said, “I remember now. She told me she’d called you.”
“Bill,” I said, “do you think she’s happy?”
“Who?” Bill said. “Marvin? It’s all coming Marvin’s way.”
“Ransome? I can’t remember him,” I said.
I had been thinking about it a good deal and wondering what he must be like and where Marvin had met him.
“Oh,” Bill said, “John Ransome? There isn’t any reason why you should have remembered him. He’s one of those rich boys with a complex about being rich. Marvin’s pretty good with John.”
“But what’s he like?” I asked.
“What’s he like?” Bill repeated. “He’s a straight. He wouldn’t wear a rogue shirt, for instance. Wait a minute. I never thought of it that way. Ransome—why Ransome’s something like you.”
It gave me a feeling which I could not analyze, with the music of the Bingo orchestra and with Bill standing there, holding his glass, his face shiny and red with sunburn. I wanted him to go on, but instead he seemed to have forgotten all about it. He had turned on the radio louder.
“Wait,” he said. “Larry’s coming in with the plug. I want to hear it. There it goes.”
The music had died down and I heard the announcer’s voice.
“And so goes Billy Bingo’s music in the Coza hour,” he was saying, “subtle, soft and penetrating like the foam of Coza Soap, scintillating like Coza Bath Salts. On it goes.”
“I wish you’d shut that off, Bill,” I said.
I was not feeling as strong as I had when Bill came in or I should have got up and thrown that radio out the window. There was nothing about any of it that was real—not the Bingo orchestra or Bill or Marvin Myles or that man she had married who was just like me.
Bill turned the radio down again.
Kay was standing in the doorway looking at Bill, smiling. I was afraid that she would be cross about my having had a drink, but instead she looked happy.
“Swing music always makes Harry nervous,” she said. “Turn it off, Bill. How many highballs have you had?”
“It’s just the sunburn,” Bill said. “You ask Harry.”
I saw Kay glance at the whisky bottle the way she sometimes did, and I knew that she was estimating just how much Bill had taken and I was afraid it might make her cross, but instead it only seemed to amuse her.
“We’ve got to be getting dressed,” Kay said. “It’s late. We’re going to the Club for dinner, and then we’re going to dance.”
“I hope we dance for a long time,” Bill said. “That’s fine with me.”
“As long as you don’t get tight,” Kay said.
“You’ve always liked dancing with her, haven’t you, Bill?” I asked.
“Go on, Bill,” Kay said. “Hurry and get dressed.”
“All right,” said Bill. “I’ll be seeing you, Harry. I hope you’re a whole lot better in the morning.”
He waved his hand and walked into the hall, but even when the door was closed it seemed to me that Kay and I were not alone. That swing music was still coming faintly from the radio.
“Kay,” I said, “would you mind turning that thing off?”
“Why, yes, of course,” Kay said. “Ellen’s bringing you up an eggnog and some toast.” When she turned off the radio the whole room seemed suddenly stunningly silent. I must have been awfully tired, because I was glad that Bill was gone.
I could hear Kay singing while the water was running in the bathtub. It often surprised me how she liked to go to any sort of party. She always seemed to keep the illusion that something interesting and exciting would happen at a party. Now I could hear her splashing in the tub, and now I could hear her stepping out of it.
“The hot water’s awfully rusty,” Kay called. “It’s beginning to look like tea.”
My mind was getting away from Bill. I had noticed the same thing about the water.
“Next year,” I answered, “we’ll put in copper piping.”
“Harry,” Kay called back, “has anyone checked the oil in the Packard? It made a funny noise.”
I began to reconstruct the Packard in my mind.
“That must be one of the tappets,” I said. “What are you laughing at? What’s so funny about a tappet?”
“It’s just that you have the queerest names for all sorts of things,” Kay said, “that no one else knows anything about.”
Kay opened the bathroom door and came out, still rubbing her face with her towel. She had on her shorts. Her legs and arms and shoulders were tanned and all the rest of her was white.
“You look as if part of you had been in that water and as if part of you hadn’t,” I said.
Kay examined herself in the mirror.
“That’s true,” she said. “It does look sort of queer. I hadn’t thought of that.”
As a matter of fact, Kay did not look queer. She looked lithe and straight, and having the children had never hurt her figure. She made me think of a young girl, just getting ready for a party.
“It doesn’t,” I said. “It ought to, but it doesn’t.”
Kay was opening and closing her bureau drawers.
“Where the devil are my stockings?” she said. “Oh, here they are.”
She sat on the edge of her bed and began pulling them on carefully.
“If they get a run in them I’m going to scream,” she said. Then she went over to the bureau and began combing her hair and said that the salt air made it look terrible, but it did not look terrible.
“What do you think I’d better wear?” she asked.
“The dress with stripes,” I said, “that makes you look like a stick of candy.”
“No,” she said. “I’ll wear the green one and the green slippers.” She pulled the green dress from the closet and began tossing it over her head.
“Look here,” I asked, “aren’t you going to wear a girdle or a slip or anything?”
“Not with this dress,” Kay said. “I don’t need them with it.”
“I just thought you might be cold or something,” I said.
“You know what it’s like,” Kay answered, “when you get in there dancing.” She was looking for her lipstick in the bureau drawer. I could see her in the mirror, pursing her lips and moving her head from side to side. I remembered how plain she used to be when she was seventeen but ever since then she had kept on looking better. She began humming a tune and looking for her green bag in the upper bureau drawer.
“Kay,” I said, “I’ve been talking to Bill.”
She stopped humming and I could hear the breeze rustling the chintz curtains.
“What do you mean,” she asked, “you were talking to Bill?”
“It was sort of silly of me,” I said, “I don’t know how I got started, but I was telling him that you and I had been happy. I don’t know why I thought of it, but when I saw Bill—”
“Happy?” Kay repeated. “Why, Harry—”
“I mean,” I said, “when you add it all up, all the things we’ve been through together.”
Kay turned around and looked in the bureau drawer again.
“I don’t know why it is,” she said, “you say the smuggest things sometimes. Here comes Ellen with your eggnog. Ellen’s going to move me into the spare room, so I won’t wake you up.”
Kay bent over and kissed my forehead.
As Ellen opened the door I could hear George and Gladys laughing in the hall and I could hear Bill telling them some sort of story.
“Good night,” Kay said. “Bill’s downstairs waiting.”
XXIX
What Did I Do Wrong?
By noon the next day I managed to get downstairs, but I was too weak to be good for anything. That was the way it was all the week end. When we had guests for Sunday lunch I could not eat any of the food and I had to go upstairs to rest afterwards. Though I tried to be as amusing as I could about what had happened to me, I hated it because I could not do anything for Bill and because I was afraid that Kay would get very tired entertaining him steadily for two or three days. When Kay told me that she did not really mind it, I thought at first she was just being nice about it and trying to make up in every way she could for my being sick, but when I saw that they really enjoyed each other and that neither of them seemed to get tired of the other, I began to like the week end. I never saw Bill nicer. It made me secretly glad that his marriage had broken up, because he was more a part of the family than he had ever been before, more like the old days. I told him that he must come up from New York whenever he had a chance, whenever he felt worried or lonely, and Bill said he would. Of course we were all very old friends, but we seemed to be discovering all over again how valuable and how really splendid that friendship was. We knew each other so well that we had all sorts of little jokes that old friends have, and Bill could see exactly what there was about me that half-exasperated and half-amused Kay. They would laugh when I began to explain about the tappets on the car, for instance, and somehow it did not annoy me at all. We had all sorts of jokes that would not have been amusing to anyone else. I remember that Bill told me that I looked as though I had been through a good deal.
“You mean I look as though a good deal had been through me,” I said.
That was the sort of thing that I should never have said in any other company, but between Bill and Kay and me it was definitely funny and we kept laughing about it a long time afterwards. It only goes to show that we really were having a good time.
It would have been hard to imagine two sorts of lives as completely diverse as Bill’s on one side and Kay’s and mine on the other. I used to tell Kay, and Kay agreed with me, that I could not possibly have led Bill’s life, but it did not mean that I did not admire it. Sometimes I had felt, particularly after Bill had married Elise Megg, who was after all a very important singer, that he considered Kay and me an effort, although Bill and Elise always told us to be sure to call them up the very first thing whenever we came to New York. And now all at once, all of that constraint was gone completely.
In the times when Kay was ordering the meals or seeing about the children Bill really made me feel that he liked to listen to my ideas. He was keen and lucid about the war and about the political and business situation. It was like going out into the world myself to hear him talk and he gave me some very good lists of books and magazines.
I tried to make Bill stay on for a week because the change had done him so much good, and he and Kay had been going around to so many places while I had to be quiet in the house that we had not nearly talked things out. I kept waiting for an opportunity to ask more about Marvin Myles, but somehow the chance had never come. He had to get back to New York, he said, because he had a hundred things to do, but he wanted Kay and me to come down to see him and to see the town.
Usually when a guest left after a visit, no matter how much I liked him, I always had a guilty sense of relief. It would mean that life settled down again without any additional effort and planning, but Bill had fitted in so well that there had been no effort. I was awfully sorry to have him go and Kay was awfully sorry. His train would leave the Junction at half-past eight, so we had an early supper, just the three of us without the children. We had cocktails and we had champagne because Bill was going.
“I’ve had a swell time,” Bill said. “I can’t begin to tell you what it means to me to know I still have friends.”
“Why, Bill,” I said, “you have hundreds of friends—hundreds in New York that we don’t know.”
“It isn’t the same,” Bill said. “Not real friends—just table-hoppers.”
“What are table-hoppers?” I asked.
I wanted to change the subject. I did not want the last few minutes to seem sad. Bill grinned at Kay.
“We’ve got to take him around more,” he said, “so he can see some table-hoppers.”
“Kay doesn’t know what table-hoppers are either,” I said. I knew she didn’t, but she looked annoyed.
“Harry,” Kay said, “Bill’s finished his champagne. I wish you wouldn’t always keep holding back. There’s another bottle in the icebox. Go and get it and hurry up. Bill’s got to go.”
I hadn’t the slightest idea of “holding back” on the champagne. I would have given Bill all the champagne in the house and I wanted him to know it, but I did not want him to think that Kay and I were always arguing. I went out into the pantry for another bottle and got the wire off and worked out the cork. When I got back to the dining room Bill must have been telling Kay again what a good time he had had, because they were both sitting saying nothing. Whatever it was that Bill had said, it made Kay look awfully sad.
“Come on,” I said. “This isn’t a funeral. Bill’s coming back, aren’t you, Bill?”
Bill straightened his shoulders and smiled.
“There never was anyone whiter than you, Harry,” he said. “I mean it.”
I began filling up the glasses.
“Are your bags all packed, Bill?” I asked.
“Of course his bags are packed,” Kay said. “Don’t ask such silly questions.”
Bill was still there, drinking his champagne, but the house seemed quieter already, and gloomier, the more we tried to talk.
“Well, I’ll go and bring Bill’s bags down,” I said.
“No, you won’t,” Bill said. “You’re not feeling well enough.”
“I’m feeling fine,” I said. “Just when you’re leaving I’m cured.”
“Let him get them if he wants to, Bill,” Kay said.
Bill’s two pigskin bags were in the guest room and I lugged them to the front door. The exertion took more out of me than I thought it would, although the bag
s were not heavy. I stood for a minute getting my breath back, looking out of the open door at the driveway. The Packard was outside already. It was a starlight night, very clear and almost cold. Kay and Bill were still in the dining room. I had not heard either of them speak, but something made me think again that Bill had been speaking. I wished that they would cheer up. After all, Bill was only going to New York.
“There’s forty minutes to get to the Junction,” I said. “We’d better get going, Bill.”
Kay pushed back her chair and stood up.
“I’ll just get my coat,” she said. “I’ll drive Bill over.”
“Oh, no, Kay,” I said. “I’d like to drive.”
Kay shook her head.
“It’s been enough your being sick once, Harry. You stay right here.”
“Then let’s all go,” I said. “You can drive if you want to, Kay.”
“Now, Harry,” she looked the way she always did when she considered I was being stubborn, “I wish you’d try to do what the doctor wants.”
“But it’s only going over to the Junction, Kay,” I said.
Bill slapped me on the shoulder.
“Listen, boy,” he said, “you’ve been pretty sick. You just stay right here.”
“All right,” I said. “I just don’t like Kay driving back alone at night.”
“Darling,” Kay said, “half-past eight isn’t really night. You haven’t read the morning papers and you haven’t been over the bills. We’d better start along, Bill. I’ll just get my coat.”
While we waited for her the house seemed quieter than ever. Bill and I began talking about Pullmans. I told him that they switched the cars all over the place and Bill said he knew it, but he always slept well on a train. Then Kay came running down the stairs with her brown polo coat over her arm.
“Harry,” she asked, “where is Bitsey?”
“He must be in the kitchen,” I said. “He generally is at mealtime.”
“Well, see where he is, will you?” Kay asked. “Come on, Bill.”
“So long, Bill,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”
“That’s right,” Bill said. “I’ll see you soon.”
H. M. Pulham, Esquire Page 34