by Irwin Shaw
The dream had been a simple one. In it, somehow, his sister Elizabeth had died, and he had, in a resigned and hopeless way, followed the coffin to the cemetery and watched with dry eyes as it was lowered into the ground, and then he had returned home. And somehow, in the dream, it had all happened on May 14th. The date had been absolutely clear and definite and had given the dream a real, tragic sense that it might not otherwise have had. When he woke, he tried to figure out why May 14th, an obscure day five months in the future, had been chosen so relentlessly and specifically by his dreaming mind, but it was no use. There were no birthdays in his family in May, no anniversaries, and nothing in particular had ever happened to him or anyone he knew on that day. He had laughed a little, sleepily, to himself, gently touched Alice’s bare shoulder in the bed beside him, and had risen and gone to work, in the sensible, everyday atmosphere of drafting boards and blueprints, without saying a word then or later to her or anyone else about the dream.
And then—laughing at the way his five-year-old daughter had sleepily and carelessly said good-bye when he had left the apartment, standing there with the noise of engines filling the fresh April evening air, kissing his sister Elizabeth good-bye—the dream came back. Elizabeth was as rosy and sturdy as ever, a cheerful, pretty girl who looked as though she had just come triumphantly off a tennis court or from a swimming meet, and if there was any touch of doom hanging over her, it was very well hidden.
“Bring me back Cary Grant,” Elizabeth said as she brushed his cheek.
“Of course,” Roy said.
“I now leave you two to say a fond farewell,” Elizabeth said. “Alice, give him his last-minute instructions. Tell him to behave himself.”
“I’ve already briefed him for this mission,” Alice said. “No girls. No more than three Martinis before dinner. Telephone me and report twice weekly. Get on the plane and get home the minute the job is done.”
“Two weeks,” Roy said. “I swear I’ll be back in two weeks.”
“Don’t have too good a time.” Alice was smiling but on the verge of tears, as she always was every time he went anyplace without her, even overnight to Washington.
“I won’t,” Roy said. “I promise to be miserable.”
“Good enough.” Alice laughed.
“No old telephone numbers secreted on your person?” Elizabeth asked.
“No.” There had been a period in Roy’s life, just before he married Alice, when he had been quite lively, and during the war some of his friends had come back from Europe with lurid and highly fictionized tales of wild times in Paris and London, and to the women of his family he seemed more dashing and unstable than was the fact.
“God,” he said, “it’ll be a relief getting away from this female board of directors for a few days.”
He and Alice went up to the gate.
“Take care of yourself, darling,” Alice said softly.
“Don’t worry.” He kissed her.
“I hate this,” Alice said, holding onto him. “We’re always saying good-bye. This is the last time. From now on, no matter where you go, I’m going with you.”
“All right.” Roy smiled down at her.
“Even if you only go to Yankee Stadium.”
“Couldn’t be more pleased.” He held her tightly for a moment, dear and familiar and forlorn, left behind this way. Then he walked out to the plane. He turned as he started to climb into it, and waved. Alice and Elizabeth waved back, and he noticed again how much alike they looked, standing together, like two sisters in a pretty family, both of them blond and fair, trim, with little tricks of movement and holding themselves that were almost identical.
He turned and went into the plane, and a moment later the door was shut behind him and the plane started rolling toward the end of the runway.
Ten days later, over the phone between Los Angeles and New York, Roy told Alice she would have to come West. “Munson says it’s going to take six months,” Roy said, “and he’s promised me a place to live, and you are hereby invited.”
“Thanks,” Alice said. “Tell Munson I would like to kick him in the teeth.”
“Can’t be helped, baby,” Roy said. “Commerce above all. You know.”
“Why couldn’t he have told you before you went out? Then you could’ve helped me close up the apartment and we could’ve gone out together.”
“He didn’t know before I came out,” Roy said patiently. “The world is very confused these days.”
“I would like to kick him in the teeth.”
“O.K.” Roy grinned. “You come out and tell him yourself. When do you arrive? Tomorrow?”
“There’s one thing you’ve got to learn, Roy,” Alice said. “I am not a troop movement. You can’t say, ‘Civilian Alice Gaynor will report three thousand miles from here at 4 P.M. tomorrow,’ and expect it to happen.”
“O.K., you’re not a troop movement. When?”
Alice chuckled. “You sound nice and anxious.”
“I am nice and anxious.”
“That’s good.”
“When?”
“Well”—Alice hesitated thoughtfully—“I have to get Sally out of school, I have to send some things to storage, I have to rent the apartment, I have to get plane reservations—”
“When?”
“Two weeks,” Alice said, “if I can get the reservations all right. Can you wait?”
“No,” Roy said.
“Neither can I.” They both laughed. “Have you been very gay out there?”
Roy recognized the tentative, inquiring tone and sighed to himself. “Dull as mud,” he said. “I stay in in the evenings and read. I’ve read six books and I’m halfway through General Marshall’s report on the conduct of the war.”
“There was one evening you didn’t read.” Alice’s voice was careful and purposely light.
“All right,” Roy said flatly. “Let’s hear it.”
“Monica came in from the Coast Tuesday and she called me. She said she saw you with a beautiful girl at a fancy restaurant.”
“If there was any justice,” Roy said, “they would drop Monica on Bikini Atoll.”
“She had long black hair, Monica said.”
“She was absolutely right,” Roy said. “The girl had long black hair.”
“Don’t shout. I can hear perfectly well.”
“What Monica neglected to say was that it was Charlie Lewis’s wife—”
“She said you were alone.”
“—and Charlie Lewis was twenty feet away, in the men’s room.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. Maybe he was in the ladies’ room.”
“It may be funny to you, but with your history—”
“I will match my history with any husband’s,” Roy said.
“I hate your sense of humor on this subject.” Alice’s voice began to tremble a little, and Roy relented.
“Listen, baby,” he said softly. “Get out here quick. Quick as you can. Then we can stop this nonsense.”
“I’m sorry.” Alice’s voice was soft and repentant. “It’s just that we’ve been away from each other for so long in these last few years. I’m foolish and jittery. Who’s paying for this call?”
“The company.”
“That’s good.” Alice chuckled. “I’d hate to fight on our own money. Do you love me?”
“Get out here quick.”
“Do you consider that an answer to my question?”
“Yes.”
“O.K.,” Alice said. “So do I. Good-bye, darling. See you soon.”
“Kiss Sally for me,” said Roy.
“I will. Good-bye.”
Roy hung up. First he shook his head a little wearily, remembering the argument; then he smiled, remembering the end of the conversation. He got up from his chair and went over to the calendar on the desk, to try to figure what day he could expect his wife and child.
The telegram came three days later: “RESERVATIONS ON 2 O’CLOCK FLIGHT MAY 14. W
ILL ARRIVE BURBANK AT 10 P.M. YOUR TIME. PLEASE SHAVE. LOVE, ALICE.”
Roy grinned as he reread the telegram, then became conscious of a sensation of uneasiness that refused to be crystallized or pinned down. He walked around all that day with that undefined sense of trouble, and it wasn’t until he was dozing off to sleep that night that it suddenly became clear to him. He woke and got out of bed and read the telegram again. May 14th. He kept the lamp on and lit a cigarette and sat up in the narrow bed in the impersonal hotel room and slowly allowed the thing to take control.
He had never been a superstitious man, or even a religious man, and he had always laughed at his mother, who had a fund of dreams and predictions and omens of good and evil at her command. Alice had one or two superstitious habits—like not talking about anything that she wanted to have happen, because she was sure it wouldn’t happen if it were mentioned or hoped for too much—but he had always scorned them, too. During the war, when every magazine assured the world that there were no atheists in foxholes, he had never prayed, even in the most gloomy and dangerous times. He had never, in all his adult life, done anything as a result of superstition or premonition. He looked around him at his efficiently furnished, bright, twentieth-century room and felt foolish to be awake now in the heel of the night, chasing phantoms and echoing warnings and scraps of old dreams through the sensible channels of his engineer’s mind.
The dream, of course, had been explicit. His sister was to die on May 14th. But dreams never were what they seemed to be, and Elizabeth and Alice looked so much alike, and they were always together and such good friends.… He knew enough about dreams to understand that it would be a simple transference in that shadowy, whimsical world—a wife for a sister, a sister for a wife. And now, of all the days in the year, his wife and child had picked May 14th to fly the three thousand miles over the rivers and mountains of the continent from New York to California.
He put out the light much later, with nothing decided, and tried to sleep. He stared up at the dark ceiling, listening to the occasional swift swhoosh of a car on the street outside, hurrying home through the waning night. For a man who didn’t believe in Fate, he thought, who saw the world in terms of simple cause and effect; who felt that no act was inevitable, that what was going to happen tomorrow or the next second was in no place determined and was everlastingly variable; who felt that no man’s death or burial place was fixed, that no event was recorded in any future book, that the human race got hints or warnings from no supernatural source—this was a ludicrous and profitless way to spend a night. For a man who walked under ladders, cheerfully broke mirrors, never had his palm read or his fortune told from cards, he felt that he was behaving idiotically, and yet he couldn’t sleep.
In the morning he called New York.
“Alice,” he said, “I want you to come by train.”
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“I’m afraid of the plane.” He heard her laugh incredulously over the phone. “I’m afraid of the plane,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Don’t be silly,” Alice said. “They haven’t had an accident with that plane yet, and they won’t start now.”
“Even so—”
“And I’m not going to try to keep Sally amused for three days in a roomette,” Alice said. “It would take me the whole summer to recover.”
“Please,” Roy said.
“And I couldn’t get train reservations for weeks,” Alice said, “and the apartment’s rented and everything. What’s come over you?” Her voice sounded suspicious and wary.
“Nothing,” Roy said. “It’s just that I’m worried about flying.”
“Good God!” Alice said. “You’ve flown two hundred thousand miles in all sorts of contraptions.”
“I know,” Roy said. “That’s why I’m worried.”
“Are you drunk?” Alice asked.
“Alice, darling,” Roy sighed. “It’s eight o’clock in the morning out here.”
“Well, you sound queer.”
“I’ve been up all night, worrying.”
“Well, stop worrying. I’ll see you on the fourteenth. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes.”
“This is a very strange telephone call, I must say.”
“I’m sorry.”
They talked for a moment more, but quite coldly, and Roy hung up feeling dissatisfied and defeated.
He called again two days later and tried once more.
“Don’t ask any questions,” he said. “Just do this for me, and I’ll explain when you get out here. If you want to come on the plane, that’s all right, but don’t come on the fourteenth. Come on the fifteenth or sixteenth or seventeenth. Any other day. But not on the fourteenth.”
“Roy,” Alice said, “you’ve got me terribly worried. What’s come over you? I’ve asked Elizabeth and she says that this doesn’t sound like you at all.”
“How is she?” Roy asked.
“Elizabeth is fine. She tells me to ignore you and come out as scheduled.”
“Tell her to mind her own damned business.” Roy had been working hard and sleeping badly and his voice was raw and nervous, and Alice reacted to it.
“I think I know what’s going on,” she said coldly. “Monica told me there’s a big party at the Condons’ on the fourteenth, and you’ve probably promised to take someone else, and a wife would be a big handicap—”
“Oh, God, will you stop that!” Roy shouted into the phone.
“I haven’t been married to you for seven years for nothing,” Alice said. “I’m not blind.”
“Come out today!” Roy shouted. “Come out tomorrow! Come out the thirteenth! Only not the fourteenth!”
“You know as well as I do that if I give up my reservations, I won’t get another until June. If you don’t want to see me any more, tell me. You don’t have to go through all this rigmarole.”
“Alice, darling,” Roy pleaded, “I assure you I want to see you.”
“Well, then, stop this nonsense or tell me what it’s all about.”
“Alice, it’s this way,” he began, resolved to tell her, no matter how much of an idiot it made him feel, but there was a click on the wire and then three thousand miles of whispering silence. By the time he got Alice back on the phone, ten minutes later, he felt too ridiculous, felt that he could not live with himself or his wife if he at this late date exposed himself as a silly, undependable man with a brain gone soft and nervous and irresponsible after all the sane, dependable years.
“I haven’t anything else to say,” he told Alice when the operator finally made the connection, “except that I love you very much and I couldn’t bear it if anything ever happened to you.”
He heard Alice crying softly at the other end of the wire. “We have to be together soon,” she said. “This is awful. And please don’t call me any more, Roy, darling. You’re acting so strangely, and after I talk to you, the most miserable ideas grab hold of me. Will it be all right when I get out there?”
“It’ll be wonderful, darling,” Roy said.
“And you’ll never go away without me again? Never?”
“Never.” He could close his eyes and see her crouched like a little girl over the phone in the bedroom of their quiet, pleasant home, both her hands on the instrument, her pretty, clever face screwed up with grief and longing, and it was hard to say anything more. “Good night,” he said. “Be careful.”
He hung up and stared wildly at the blank wall on the other side of the room, knowing he wouldn’t sleep again that night.
There was an early fog on the morning of May 14th, and Roy stared at it, hot-eyed and lightheaded from lack of sleep, and went out and walked along the quiet, gray streets, with only police cars and milk-delivery carts disturbing the soft, thick dawn.
California, he thought; it’s always foggy in the morning, fog is general in California before eight, and it’s a different time and a different weather on the coast of the Atlantic, and her plane isn’t
due to leave for hours yet.
It must be the war, he thought. This would never have happened to me before the war. I thought I came out all right, but maybe I was overconfident. All the cemeteries, with the young men tucked away in the sand and spring grass, and the old ladies in black lace dresses dying on the next street in London in the air raids. A man’s imagination was bound to take a morbid turn, finally. I must take hold of myself, he told himself reasonably. I’m the man who always felt sane, balanced, healthy in all situations, who always scorned mediums and table tappers, priests and psychoanalysts.
The fog was beginning to lift, and he stopped to stare at the distant smudge of mountains that stood guard over the eastern approaches of the city. Planes had to come in steeply over them and circle the city and land from the westward side. A strip of blue appeared above the mountains and widened and widened, and the fog melted away in wisps among the ugly, fat palm trees that lined the street, and soon the sun was shining on the dewy lawns, and the sky looked clear and blue from Beverly Hills to Scotland.
He went back to his hotel and lay down without even taking his shoes off. Some time later he woke up. Vaguely, in the moment before waking, there was a confusion of planes going down in puffs of smoke, like the newsreel of an air battle, and Sally’s voice over it, regretfully saying, as she always did at bedtime, “Do I really have to go to sleep now? I’m terribly wide-awake.”
He looked at the clock. It was one-forty in New York. They were at the airport now, and the big plane was waiting on the field, with the mechanics fiddling on it and the men checking the gas tanks. The hell with it, he thought. I don’t care how foolish I seem.
He picked up the phone. “La Guardia Field, New York,” he said.