“But if that’s the way she wants it, Kate, why should it change anything between us?”
“Because it does. Because it’s like having her right here in the room with us. And every time we’re together she’ll be there with us. Don’t you see how that changes things?”
“You’re making a ghost out of her to frighten yourself with, Kate.”
She shrugged ruefully. “I suppose all ghosts are just figments of conscience when you come down to it, Harry, but they’re still messy things to have standing around leering at you.”
“Then what do you want to do?” I demanded. “Say good-by, and call it quits?”
For that instant I took a mean pleasure in the way the color drained from her face, and then I was furious with myself. “Kate,” I said, “I didn’t mean it!”
She shook her head. “I had it coming to me, Harry.”
“Don’t talk like a fool.”
“I haven’t been talking like a fool, Harry, I’ve been talking like Lucille. The way I’ve been acting up now, the way I’ve been prodding you all along to settle things with her because I wasn’t satisfied with what I had, it’s so much what Lucille would do if she were in my place that I’m ashamed of myself.”
“Do you think you’ve been wrong in wanting to get things straightened out? Do you think you’re to blame because I made an unholy mess out of them?”
“Don’t you understand, Harry? It’s not a case of right or wrong, or who’s to blame, or anything like that. Maybe there’s a little bit of Lucille in all women, Harry. Something that makes them poke and prod their men into decisions they never wanted to make, and then act as if it were the man’s fault if things don’t turn out right. That’s what I’ve been doing all along. That’s why I’m ashamed of myself.”
“You’re not being honest with yourself, Kate.”
“Oh, yes, I am. I’m being so honest it hurts. All I could see was that absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder, that there were times when I couldn’t even think of how your face looked or what your voice sounded like. Then I’d get scared, and the old Lucille would come out in me. I suppose that’s when it comes out in any woman. When she gets scared because there’s some damn man to torture herself about.”
I took her in my arms and could feel the rigidity flowing from her. “Look,” I said, “you’re making me dizzy, arguing back and forth with yourself like that.”
She turned up her face toward mine. “You do look cross-eyed,” she commented. “But, darling, I can’t say I blame you for that after what you’ve been through.”
“Cross-eyed or not,” I said, “I know what I want.”
“It won’t be any good with a mess of broken ribs,” she said, but when I released her she pulled me close again and held my arms tight. “Harry,” she said fiercely, “you won’t ever talk like that again, will you?”
“About what?”
“About calling it quits,” she said impatiently. “About saying good-by. About anything like that.”
“You know I didn’t mean it, Kate. But I was frightened, too. It was just a way of grabbing you and shaking you by the shoulders.”
“Then next time, grab and shake. But no more talk like that. You swear?”
“I swear,” I said, and was about to kiss her when a piping little voice broke in from the doorway.
“Miss Ballou!” it said, as we both whirled to face it, and I know my face must have been as red as Kate’s just then. “Miss Ballou, I have something to say to you!”
She was a tiny old lady as gray and fragile as a pinch of ashes, but she stood there like a figure of avenging justice.
Kate caught her breath. “Yes, Miss Frazee?”
“There is an atrocious odor of paint coming from this room, Miss Ballou, and it is making my sister and me quite ill. Would you mind doing something about it?”
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Miss Frazee. I had forgotten the door was open. I’ll close it now.”
“Do,” said the old lady sternly. “And I should like to suggest that you keep it closed in the face of certain exhibitions which respectable tenants of the house might not choose to witness.”
She inarched off across the hallway like a grenadier after that parting shot, and Kate closed the door and leaned against it helplessly.
“Isn’t she wonderful, Harry? Right out of Henry James, line for line.”
I was still numb from the surprise. “Talk about scared,” I said, and then pulled myself up short.
Kate looked at me, no longer smiling. “I know, Harry,” she said evenly. “I suppose we both had the same idea the instant she started talking. Lucille is here, and all hell is going to break loose. That’s about it, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s about it.”
She played with the ring on her finger for a long while, and then spoke suddenly. “Lucille Ayres,” she said. “Mrs. Damocles.”
“I don’t give a damn about that, Kate,” I said angrily. “We’re going to hold on to what we have, and nobody’s going to take it from us. I’ll work out something; sooner or later I’ll think of something, but meanwhile let’s make the best of it. That’s all I ask, Kate.”
She traced a finger back and forth over the emerald in an infinite series of patterns. “That’s all we can do, Harry. But it’s not going to be easy. Believe me, darling, it’s not going to be easy at all.”
She was right, of course. No situation can ever remain static; it may move one way or another, but move it must under all the blind pressure put on it. We are all like dominoes, I think, set up on end next to each other so that some huge, cynical finger can flick the first one over and send the whole row toppling. Call it God or Devil or Fate or Nature or whatever you will, that finger is always there to set us up only to knock us over again, and you can no more escape it than any domino can march out of the line to be off somewhere by itself.
It came inexorably as the spring turning into summer. The shadow of Lucille grew longer and longer over me, and while she never showed by the flicker of an eye what she thought of my comings and goings, there was no escaping the fact that she knew of them, that she must think something of them. And my meetings with Kate became marked with tensions and undercurrents that more and more often turned them into pure misery. If at any of these times Kate had abruptly said, “For God’s sake, Harry, now let’s call it quits,” I wouldn’t have been surprised. I would have been stubborn about it, or angry, I suppose, but not surprised. And if I had been the one to say it I think she would have had the same reactions.
But, as it turned out, Lucille also had something to say, and being Lucille she said it promptly.
CHAPTER SIX
She spoke to me in the bedroom, and all the while we were talking there I was aware of some waltz music playing on Dick’s phonograph in his room at the end of the hall. Not the kind of Strauss waltz I was familiar with, but something which sounded as if the composer had elaborated on it and tortured it out of shape. The music rose and fell, and when it was loud we raised our voices over it, and when it was soft we spoke under it, and there was a moment when I had the feeling that all our speaking didn’t really mean anything, couldn’t mean anything, but was no more than a grotesque counterpoint to that music.
“I warned you about what her going with Matthew Chaves could lead to, Harry.”
“You mean she’s going to marry him? She told you that?”
“As far as she’s concerned it’s just a matter of naming the time and place. And I’m supposed to be grateful that she even bothered to tell me about it.”
“Why not?” I said. “What was there to stop her from eloping and sending us a card from Niagara Falls?”
“Maybe the fact that she’d be eloping with somebody who couldn’t even afford to buy a ticket to Niagara Falls. Somebody who’d just as lief set himself up in your house, eat at your table, and let his wife work for him in case there’s any little things his heart desires. Does that make any sense to you, Harry?”
“Does it matter what my opinion is in all this, Lucille? Especially,” I remarked dryly, “when you seem to know so much more about what Matt has and wants than I possibly could.”
She smirked. “But not according to your daughter, Harry. Not a bit of it. If you should ask your daughter, you know Matthew Chaves very well, and you think he’s a very fine young man. In case you didn’t know that about yourself just ask Bettina sometime, and she’ll tell you.”
“I don’t have to ask her anything, Lucille. I do know Matt, and I don’t think Bettina’s making any mistake in marrying him. And if I thought she was there still isn’t a thing in the world I could do about it.”
“Yes you could. You could do plenty.”
I silently cursed that way she had of seizing only on what you said that could be bent her way.
“Why would I want to do anything?” I demanded.
“Because you could save her a lot of misery, Harry. I don’t want her making the same mistake I did.”
I could feel the taste that left, as if I had bitten into a rotten piece of fruit.
“Maybe Matt won’t turn out to be as bad a bargain as I am,” I said.
She flared up at that. “Being sarcastic doesn’t change anything, Harry! You and I both know what’s going on right now, and maybe if Bettina knew too it would change her mind about how good your high and mighty opinions are. It doesn’t take any brains to know that opinions are worth just as much as the one they’re coming from, does it, Harry?”
“Lucille,” I said slowly, “you hate Bettina’s thinking anything of my opinions, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, “if they’re going to push her into making a mess of her life, I do.”
“Enough to torment her by telling her about Kate and me.”
“Enough to tell her that her father and her fine young man have a lot more in common than she ever dreamed—a fancy lady who moved right next door where she could be near enough to have them take turns warming her bed for her!”
The words racketed around the room, dinned obscenely in my ears, and all the while that interminable waltz poured down the hallway as if in tune with them.
“In other words,” I finally said, “you’ll try a little blackmail. Either I go to Bettina with my instructions, or you go to her with your story.”
“I don’t expect you to go to Bettina, Harry.”
I looked at her, bewildered and furious. “Then what in God’s name is this all about!”
“I want you to talk to him. I want you to tell him once and for all to go away. I don’t care how you do it as long as he doesn’t show his face around here any more. Once he’s gone she’ll forget about him soon enough.”
She said this with a terrible urgency, twisting her hands together and speaking as if she were stretched on a rack and the words were being dragged from her sentence by sentence. Her feelings were all on the surface then, and it was a weakness in me that I could understand them and be brought close to sharing them, because it gave her all the advantage. Lucille never knew that kind of weakness. In her one-dimensional world where everything was neatly labeled with the appropriate tags you only had to respond in the required manner to the tags; you didn’t try to enter into someone else’s feelings, or see the world through his eyes.
“Now look,” I said, “Matt isn’t any child. If I start playing the heavy father what makes you think he’d even listen to me?”
“He will. He has to.”
“But what if he doesn’t?”
She was very pale. “Then it would only be because you didn’t really care, Harry. And if that’s the way you want it I’ll put it to you straight. I’m going to that Ballou woman and settle things between you two. If there’s no other way to bring you to your right mind and make you see how you have to act as a father I’ll do it that way. You’re not entitled to have your cake and eat it, too; no one in the world is entitled to that. If you don’t care to show consideration to your daughter you’ll show it to me, and that’s all there is to it.”
The sheer hypocrisy of this was breath-taking. “To drag Kate Ballou into this …!” I started to say, but she cut me off shrilly.
“Don’t you go playing the righteous one, Harry Ayres!” she cried. “Don’t you carry on as if I was wronging you! I’m the one that has the right to talk. How do you think it feels every time I look outside and see that house next door? Or see her walking down the street bold as brass laughing at me inside? Do you think there’s any pleasure in my life with that filth under my nose?”
Check and mate. That was all I could think of then, that I had been the one who was going to play the moves like a chess game, and it had been a losing game all the way. Conscience is too much of a handicap; it fills a man with fear and pity and self-contempt, and leaves him as exposed as a shellfish without its shell.
I looked at Lucille, and it suddenly struck me that the music Dick had been playing must have come to a stop while she was speaking. Everything had come nicely to a climax together. All that was left were moves of desperation, and the first had to be that talk with Matt, whether on Lucille’s terms or my own or Mart’s I still didn’t know, but, I thought drearily, it would more than likely be on Lucille’s.
On Saturday evenings he worked a late shift on the ferry, and the idea of sitting and waiting for him to show up—which he might not—was a grim one. The only thing to do, as I saw it, was to drive down to the ferry and meet him there. My car was alone in the garage looking a little more respectable than it could against the Cadillac’s magnificence, and I backed out so recklessly that I almost ran down Dick, who was coming across the driveway. He yelled, and I stamped down on the brake almost simultaneously, and then he moved back and leaned against the side door of the house looking like the image of death.
“Dick,” I said quickly, “are you hurt?”
He shook his head.
“Are you sure?”
I could see his chest rising and falling as he tried to catch his breath. Then he nodded. “I’m all right, father,” he said. “Honest, I am.”
“For God’s sake, boy, watch yourself,” I told him, and thought as I turned the car into the street, that was all that had to happen. Some accident to Dick would just round out the picture, and all that would be left then was to run the car down to the river and into it and settle my troubles once and for all.
It didn’t help to think of those troubles, one by one, either, as I drove along. The best thing to do, I decided, was simply to improvise as I had to. It was impossible to think of anything logical to tell Matt, anything that came to my mind seemed more likely to make him laugh than sympathize, and I was hardly in the mood for laughter then.
But all my forebodings proved pointless, because when I got down to the ferry slip the ferry was there, but Matt was not. There was another deck hand on duty, a tall, thin boy with an Adam’s apple.
“Matt?” he said. “He took off about ten minutes ago when the boat came in, so I’m holdin’ down the rest of his trick. We fixed it so next Saturday night when I’m supposed to go on he takes over for me all night. Nothin’ wrong with that, is there?”
“No,” I said, “I only wanted to know where I could find him.”
The boy smirked. “Dunno,” he said, “but if you catch up with the best lookin’ redhead and the classiest car you ever laid eyes on you’ll probably find him right along.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this redhead comes over on the last trip, and all the way over she’s arguin’ with him, she’ll give him a lift back to town, she’s got somethin’ important to talk to him about, and so on. And after he fixes up the deal with me, off they go.” The boy shook his head. “That Matt. I don’t even know where to look to get myself somethin’ that don’t have two heads, but all he got to do is whistle, and the best-lookin’ women you ever did see throw theirselves all over him. There’s a little school teacher comes down here sometimes ….”
“Thanks,” I s
aid, and left him standing there with a quarter in his hand, and a surprised look on his face. I went back to the car, and sat for a long while in the darkness, watching the river and the ferry moving out across it, and the wake of foam behind the boat like a ferment of soapsuds. It made a long white scar on the water, and looking at it was pleasantly hypnotic. Then I shook myself from the spell and started the car. Matt was with Kate or with Bettina, and I certainly had no intention of telling him what I had to before either of them.
On an impulse, instead of turning the car into Jackson Avenue, which was the shortest way to Nicholas Street, I continued along Ferry Street, which wound through the old section of town to Five Corners. I pulled up in front of Jay’s Bar and Grille there, and went in. I don’t know why I did this, I could have gone into any of the first-class bars in the Plaza if I had really wanted a drink, or, for that matter, could have gone to my own pantry at home.
I think I was driven by a sort of wistful casting back, a search for an earlier and pleasanter time when my small world was built secure as a castle, and there was no confusion or hating. Five Corners then was a prim and proper neighborhood, and Jay’s Saloon was a prim and proper stronghold in the middle of it. It was cool and dark and very clean, and an admirable background for Jay himself, a dignified little gentleman who always looked as if he had been freshly starched.
My father spent a good deal of his time there, but on Saturday afternoons during the warm weather I was allowed to go along, too, and I would sit alone at a small table in the corner in a mood of prolonged ecstasy nursing a cold bottle of pop while he stood at the bar discussing affairs of note with a half dozen of the town’s leading lights. Outside, the sunlight would flicker dazzlingly along the hood of our touring car parked at the door, but inside there was a cool aura of well-being that lay as thick as smoke in the room.
I was fourteen years old the day that Prohibition came into being, and I went along with my father to Jay’s that day. Later, I heard stories about the carousals that went on in some of the other saloons in town the same afternoon, but Jay’s remained unchanged up to the last minute. The conversation was quiet and sober, each drink was properly paid for, and the only difference was that as we left Jay came around the bar to shake hands with each of us.
The Key to Nicholas Street Page 11