by John Harvey
She stiffened into another silence, which lasted until they were home and slipping into bed, where Edward kept his distance, his eyes wide open in the dark. ‘Do you have anything to say?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He’s your brother, but it’s not like you owe him anything.’
‘He pays me well for the work I do for him.’
‘He should, you’re a good accountant. You have a future. He’s never going to be anything but a slumlord.’
‘You don’t know Jack,’ he wanted to say but kept quiet. He knew the Jack she didn’t, the Jack who had looked out for him and never let anyone bully him. Now he was out of Jack’s hands and in Marion’s.
Marion said, ‘What day is this?’
‘Thursday.’
‘If you want intercourse, I don’t mind.’
Among Hungarian refugees trickling into Haverhill and occupying tenements owned by Jack were a plumber, an electrician and a clever handyman, each a godsend. Jack hired them at rates advantageous to him, paid them under the table and began buying more properties. The bank liked the way he did business and readily financed him. At the same time he began investing in electronics companies, especially those started along Route l28 by MIT grads.
At the Whittier bar Chuckie said, ‘Whatcha doin’, Jacko, buying up all of Haverhill?’
Someone else said, ‘What d’you think of the Russkies flyin’ Sputniks over our heads? Ike should shoot ’em down.’
‘We do that,’ Jack said, ‘you guys might be fighting World War Two all over again.’
‘Hey, I’d do it, they raised me in rank.’
Chuckie said, ‘You still got a gal in Germany waitin’ for you, Jacko?’
‘I guess you could say that,’ Jack said. ‘She’s on hold.’
His letters to Gretchen were fragments and hers were less frequent. At the start of the new year she wrote, ‘I feel naked. Writing is so personal, the mind exposing its wiring. How long have you been gone, Jack? Long enough to be a ghost?’
‘I’m not a ghost,’ he wrote back. ‘Give me a little more time.’
In April she wrote, ‘Time mocks us. The Swiss knew that when they added a cuckoo to the clock.’ He chose to read little into that. Elsewhere in the letter she wrote, ‘We desperately want to believe in the Cartesian split. It doubles our value.’ He didn’t know what the hell she was talking about and didn’t ask.
He almost skipped the postscript, then glanced at it. ‘How much of the world is womb? All of it, do you suppose?’ He wondered whether she was herself.
He did not hear from her again until late August. ‘My mother died Tuesday. The funeral was yesterday. Seeing her off, I realised death is the ultimate privacy. There was no way I could talk to her. I wonder, Jack, do the dead know they’re gone?’
He immediately arranged for a transatlantic call. Two hours later he heard her voice and said, ‘Why didn’t you call me? I’d have flown right over.’
‘I didn’t see the need. I knew a long time ago you were never coming back.’
‘Come here,’ he said after a moment. ‘Come to the States. Please, Gretchen.’
‘I think it’s too late for anything like that, don’t you?’
‘It doesn’t have to be. Is there something you’re not telling me?’
‘What would that be, Jack?’
‘I don’t know.’ He was frustrated. ‘What’s the problem?’
She was silent for so long he was uncertain she was still on the line. Then she spoke. ‘Me, Jack. I’m the problem.’
He didn’t understand and wasn’t sure he wanted to. He told her he’d get back to her and he meant to. But he never did.
Jack joined the Rotary Club, lunched at Lomazzo’s with people from city hall and accompanied a Haverhill delegation to Boston to shake hands with presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. He bet his brother, a Nixon supporter, fifty dollars that Kennedy would win. Close with money and cautious by nature, Edward lowered the bet to twenty-five.
At this time Jack began buying dilapidated downtown properties at auction, which Edward considered unwise speculation. A few years later President Kennedy was dead and Jack reported sizeable profits from properties taken over by the Haverhill Redevelopment Authority.
‘Okay, you were right, I was wrong,’ Edward said. Part of the breakfast crowd, they were in a booth in the Presto Diner, below the railway bridge. The 7.20 to Boston rumbled overhead. ‘Unless you knew something I didn’t.’
Jack blew smoke from a Pall Mall. ‘When you hang around the right people, you hear things.’
Edward batted away the smoke. ‘That your secret?’
‘Little bit more to it than that, kid.’
‘Do me a favor, Jack. Don’t call me kid any more. Marion doesn’t like it. Tell the truth, I don’t either.’
‘Right. Sorry. You’re a man of means.’
Edward had on a new suit, one that now fit him. Rich food had extended his waistline. With Jack’s backing and in a building Jack owned, he had left the bank and opened an accounting office.
Jack snuffed out his cigarette.
Edward exaggerated a cough. ‘Thank God.’ Then he said, ‘Why can’t you and Marion be friends?’
‘Beats the hell out of me. Better ask her.’
‘Maybe if you made the effort. If you were a little polite instead of always trying to get a rise out of her.’
‘When she puts on that long face and looks down her nose at me, what am I supposed to do? Genuflect? That’s your job, kid.’
The waitress freshened Jack’s coffee. He plucked up the morning paper, which had lain unread near his elbow. Weeks had passed since Dallas, but Kennedy still dominated the news.
Sudden tears in his eyes, Jack tossed the paper aside. ‘I wish you had won the bet. Then he’d still be alive.’
‘I never felt the way you did about him,’ Edward said sullenly. ‘He was not a good president.’
‘He had style. Style, kid. That’s what he had.’
‘So did Dad. But that didn’t make him a good husband, did it?’
‘Didn’t make him a bad one. I was closer to Dad than you were, so maybe I knew him better.’
‘And maybe you didn’t know him at all. Mom told me things she never told you, the stuff he put her through. You want to hear some of it?’
‘What’s done is done.’
Edward was almost smiling. ‘You never wanted to know. That’s because you were his son, I was hers. Why don’t you admit Dad got what he deserved?’
‘Keep your voice down. Don’t embarrass us.’
‘You’re just like him. You’re all show, and you think you’re the cat’s miaow. Marion read you in a minute.’
Jack motioned for the check.
Edward’s smile was perceptible. ‘You still pretending you don’t know who killed him?’
‘I guess I always knew that,’ Jack said quietly. ‘What I don’t know is whether you helped her.’
‘I’ll let you guess about that.’ Edward reached for the check. ‘This is on me.’
At Marion’s urging, Edward bought a house on a residential street abutting Bradford Junior College, and Marion joined the Young Women’s Republican Club of Greater Haverhill, faithfully attended the luncheon meetings and chaired one of the more visible committees. Her schedule was full. She took tennis lessons, participated in a new kind of exercise called aerobics and attended a book discussion group.
‘You open a book, you open a door. Consider that a word to the wise, Edward.’
Edward worked twelve hours a day, more during tax time. He had added to his staff, moved to a larger office in his brother’s building and was annoyed when Jack began charging him rent, which Marion maintained was a move to get back at her. She believed she was the cause of the brothers’ unexpected coolness toward each other.
In the evening Edward stretched out to watch TV. His favorite programs, during which he usually dozed off, were Andy Griffith, Hogan’s Heroes an
d Bewitched. Marion occasionally watched the news, though she angrily shut it off when footage showed hippies and the like protesting the war in South-east Asia, some by torching the American flag.
When tax season was over, Edward reluctantly consented to a short vacation. They flew to Aruba, checked into an extravagant hotel, feasted on ocean delicacies in one of the three dining rooms and spent hours on the beach, where they sipped alcoholic fruit drinks and took in the sunstruck sights, which included mature women with bare breasts. Edward was shocked.
‘Don’t be so provincial,’ Marion murmured from behind outsize sunglasses. She was reading The Valley of the Dolls, a finger poised at the edge of the page.
‘I’m trying not to look,’ he said.
‘Look all you want. Just don’t gawk.’
‘You’d think they’d be embarrassed.’
‘They’re European.’
Edward squinted. ‘How do you know?’
‘They don’t worry about carrying an extra pound. And they don’t shave under their arms.’
‘I don’t find that attractive.’
Putting the book aside, she glanced at him. ‘You’d better rub more stuff on. You’re starting to burn again.’
‘I hate the smell of the stuff.’
‘Do it anyway.’
He squirted lotion from a flask, applied it to the top of his hot shoulders and dropped back to doze off. Marion stretched her legs, her lengthy body well-oiled, her navel a minnow afloat in sweat. In passing, a French-speaking couple smiled appraisingly, which enlarged her sense of herself. A while later she and a muscular man with a close beard stared fully at each other in a shared moment of sensuality. Had Edward not been there, she’d have chatted with him.
Waking, Edward rubbed his eyes, glanced over at her and was aghast. ‘What have you done?’ In a panic, he searched here, there, for the top of her bathing suit. ‘Where is it?’ he demanded.
‘Edward, relax!’
‘How long has it been off?’
‘Five minutes? Ten? What difference does it make?’
‘For me, please. Cover up.’
‘Do you see something wrong with them?’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘What is the point?’
‘You’re not European.’
She slipped a hand behind her head, giving herself more relevance. Stubble shadowed her underarm. ‘Pretend I am.’
‘You’re my wife.’
‘Pretend I’m not,’ she said with a smile and retrieved the top of her bathing suit.
‘Thank God,’ he murmured.
She was glad he didn’t follow her down to the wet sand, where she stood somewhat majestically to welcome any eyes that might be on her. The gentle lap of waves gave her the sensation of someone breathing on her ankles. At home she fancied herself an artificial flower waiting to be real, but here the fancy was fact. She returned to Edward.
‘What were you doing?’ he asked.
‘Getting my feet kissed.’ She reached for her robe and tote bag. ‘Shall we?’
During the short walk back to the hotel Edward was sullen, as if his honor had been sorely tested and his dignity lessened, but in their room he turned contrite. ‘Marion, I’m sorry. I guess I just don’t understand what was going on back there.’
‘You should’ve been proud, not humiliated.’ She stood with her robe open. ‘Look at me, Edward. I’m in great shape, the best I’ll ever be in. Why shouldn’t I show off?’
With a half-nod, he sort of agreed.
She shucked her robe and both pieces of her bathing suit and posed. ‘So what do you think, Edward?’
He shivered. ‘You know what I think.’
‘Then let’s.’
‘Now? We’re all greasy.’
‘So what?’
On the bed, fully engaged, slipping and sliding, she was all squishy arms and legs, while he, all frantic thrust and thump, tried to dig in, maintain a balance, lengthen his presence. At one point he pitched to one side. ‘Stay with it,’ she urged as he tried hard not to flounder. ‘Go faster,’ she commanded.
Instead he paused. ‘Are you pretending I’m somebody else?’ he asked.
‘Do you mind?’
‘Is it Jack?’
‘He should be so lucky.’
With new resolve, he reasserted himself and held his place with the aid of her determined leg lock. Resuming his pace, he soon quickened it into what became a race where the winner would receive roses and kisses everywhere. In the fantasy he outdistanced all others, even himself.
Two days later they returned to Haverhill, Marion with a glorious tan, Edward with a sunburn, for which he consulted a doctor, who told him he should have known better and would have to suffer through it.
The telephone rang Sunday morning and woke Jack West and the young woman beside him. He reached over her, picked up the receiver and instantly recognised the voice on the other end. ‘Gretchen!’ he said. She wasn’t calling from Germany but from New York. ‘What are you doing in the States?’
The young woman slid out of bed, found something to slip on and with a look of understanding left the room.
Jack spoke into the phone. ‘Is something wrong? . . . I can’t hear you . . . Yes, of course I can. The Algonquin? I’ll catch a shuttle out of Boston . . . Gretchen, this is a wonderful surprise . . . What? Yes. See you in a few hours.’
The young woman lay in the embrace of hot bathwater. Looking in on her, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You know I don’t demand anything from you.’
He knelt by the tub and sponged her shoulders. ‘It’s someone I knew a long time ago.’
She looked up with near-sighted blue eyes. ‘You don’t have to explain. I’ll be out of the tub in a minute.’
He rose. ‘I’ll make it up to you, Sally.’
‘You don’t owe me a thing.’
Recklessly weaving in and out of lanes on Route lA, he sped to Logan in record time. Inside the terminal he strode toward the ticket booth as if he were back in the army with a sergeant’s Hup! Hup! keeping him in step. No delays. A shuttle got him to LaGuardia within the hour and a taxi delivered him to the Algonquin. The desk clerk rang Gretchen’s room. Jack expected to go up, but she came down, stepping from the elevator with her hair shorter than he remembered, her face thinner, her whole appearance altered in some subtle way that disquieted him.
‘Gretchen.’
He wanted to kiss her but managed only to brush her cheek when she moved her head. Suddenly he felt like a stranger.
‘Hello, Jack.’
In the oak-paneled lounge, warm with voices, they sat in cushiony chairs at a small table.
She smiled. ‘You haven’t changed much. Still the handsome American.’
‘It’s been too long,’ he said, and she seemed to nod. A waiter brought drinks, cognac for her, bourbon for him, which he needed. ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’
‘What would that be, Jack?’
‘Maybe you’ll tell me.’
She tasted the cognac. ‘I always wanted to see the Algonquin. I’m a fan of Dorothy Parker.’
The name meant nothing to him. He said, ‘Are you ill?’
She glanced toward other tables, as if seeking faces of celebrities, interesting candidates available. A man whose gaunt good looks emanated an introspective air. An elegantly dressed woman who seemed a careful copy of an actress long dead.
‘How bad?’ Jack asked.
‘How bad does it have to be?’
‘You’re not telling me anything. Am I supposed to guess?’
‘That would be asking too much. I have something to show you.’ She extracted a small photograph from her bag, passed it over and watched his expression slowly tighten. ‘Is there any doubt?’ she asked.
‘How old is she?’
‘Do the arithmetic.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t want you marrying me for only that reason and I knew you would h
ave.’
He held on to the photo. It was precious and his now, and he continued to stare at it.
‘Actually she’s all you, isn’t she, Jack? Physically, damn little of me.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Elsa. After my mother.’
Jack snared the waiter’s eye. He wanted another bourbon and was silent until it arrived. ‘Why did you wait till now to tell me?’
‘I want you to acknowledge she’s yours and I want you to adopt her. A lawyer here in the city has the papers for you to sign. Your State Department has made it possible.’
‘The State Department, that’s pretty high level. What’s going on, Gretchen?’
She smiled ruefully. ‘After you left, your intelligence people pulled me in. They knew about the black-marketing and held it over me. We both could’ve been prosecuted, but they gave me an option. While working for my government I went back on the payroll with yours.’
‘You’re a spy?’
‘What’s the harm? We’re all on the same side against Communism, except Uncle Sam is paranoid and trusts nobody.’
He continued to stare at the photo, somewhat in wonder.
‘I’ve never hidden you from her, Jack. She has a picture of you in your soldier suit and she’s always known that some day she’d meet you.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Private school. Switzerland.’
‘When do I sign the papers?’
She touched his hand. ‘Tomorrow at ten.’
They moved from the lounge to the dining room for early dinner, though neither seemed particularly hungry. Gretchen drank table wine with her Dover sole, which she didn’t finish.
Jack scarcely touched his filet mignon but consumed another bourbon. The waiter asked if everything was satisfactory, and Jack nodded and ordered coffee. To Gretchen, he said, ‘Are you in any danger?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘Then it’s your health.’
She shrugged. ‘Nobody talks about cancer. So why should I?’
He was slow to speak. ‘Incurable?’
‘That’s what they say. I can’t give you the exact day or week, Jack, but I’m told I don’t have long.’
He was shaking. When the coffee arrived, he wanted to order another bourbon, but Gretchen whispered, ‘Please. Don’t.’