by Packer, Vin
“That’s perfectly true,” said Arthur Summers.
“I just can’t drink it.”
“How are things at King & Clary, Robert?” Arthur asked. So it went — so it went. Robert heard himself answering questions, asking them — exclaiming, remarking — all the while his thoughts teased him with suggestive impulses, dallied around the fringes of the crisis, and cried for control. The waitress arrived with the drinks, and Robert noticed that the piano player was sitting down now; he pitied himself immensely, imagining how the music would compound the pain in his head. In the rear pocket of his trousers he was aware of the bulge of Harvey Plangman’s wallet.
Margaret said, “Edith, are you positive you won’t have a brandy?”
“Oh no, thank you. I have to drive to an auction in Chalfont tomorrow, and Daddy’s going into New York.”
“You Said That,” Robert’s head screamed. He smiled at Edith.
“The Sautersly auction,” she smiled back.
“Well, cheers!” Margaret held up her martini. “No, wait,” she said. “Robert’s had such rotten luck on the way out — there’s an old Irish toast. You know, Robert, remember it? Why don’t we cheer ourselves up; you say that toast, hmm?”
Robert held up his glass. He recited the toast, feigning a tone of mild gaiety. In the mirror behind Margaret he could see his face, he could see it framed in the black lines of newsprint — EMBEZZLER CAUGHT!? … EMBEZZLER AT LARGE!? … “May the wind always be at your back!” he recited to his reflection, “May you always take the right turn in the road! May God take a liking to you, but not too soon.”
Edith Summers was making squeaks of delight, and Arthur murmured, “very good,” “very good,” while the glasses clinked and separated. Then Robert heard Margaret saying, “What’s the matter, Robert?”
He had been sitting there holding his glass, without drinking from it. He had been stopped in his thoughts, at the point in the toast where he had wished that one always take the right turn in the road. As clearly as when he had seen it earlier that day, Robert saw in his mind’s eye the run-down, squat, two-story gray shingle house on Route 22 out of Somerville. Just for an instant he saw it, and in that microscopic space of time, he saw himself turning the broken mailbox right side up, straightening it on its post.
“A penny for them?” said Edith Summers.
Robert forced a smile. “I was just dreaming,” he said.
He sipped the martini; the piano player began a very saccharine rendition of “Look To The Rainbow,” and a petite red headed girl standing at the piano sang along with the music.
• • •
After the Summers left, Robert ordered escargots for Margaret and himself, and a bottle of cold Mersault. Margaret was very quiet, a sign she was carefully selecting the right words for a serious discussion with Robert. She was quiet and she was playing with her wedding ring, all the signs Robert needed to warn him that Margaret was thinking about them. Robert’s headache was nearly anesthetized by the gin now, but he was not up to one of their discussions, and he tried to head it off. He started a conversation about the dinner party Margaret had planned for next week, pleased with his ability to carry it off so well. He found himself talking with ease about the food and other practical details. Maybe it would all work out. The letter to Margaret went from the table on which it had been spread out, back into the envelope; now, still sealed, it was being slipped down the slit of a mailbox. Tomorrow morning, just in case, Robert would go down to the box for their mail.
Normally Margaret could talk and talk about the arrangements. for a party; about the seating arrangements, about the provisions for shelter in case of rain, if they were having a largeish (Margaret’s word) crowd, about whether or not to hire Kenneth to serve drinks (he was quick and polite, but took home bags of food at the end) or Mrs. Johnston (who took nothing home but the great quantity of liquor she sneaked throughout an evening, each drink making her a bit nastier). Margaret, Robert soon learned, was disinterested even in the party now. She had something to say to Robert, and she began the moment the waitress poured the Mersault.
“Robert, is it that you think Clary is testing you with this Baker assignment?”
“No, it was always in the offing.”
“You’re just acting so strangely. I’ve been thinking about that remark you made ever since we left Somerville. It’s almost as though you were looking for some sort of security.”
“Margaret, I said I loved you because I just happened to feel like it. What’s wrong with telling your wife you love her?”
“I agree, it’s certainly in order. But what made you think of it at that particular moment?”
“I don’t even remember now. I don’t even remember what we were discussing.”
“I was just saying that I thought we’d go back to round butter balls.”
“Maybe I wasn’t listening carefully. I was probably daydreaming.”
“Well, Robert, it isn’t like you to daydream — and then come up with a remark like that. It isn’t like you.” “Oh, Margaret, I don’t know.”
“I’m not picking on you, dear. I’m worried. Then this business of losing your coat. The anxiety over that coat! I watched your face while we drove from Lambertville. It isn’t like you.”
“You know me pretty well, don’t you?”
“Of course, dear. That’s why I’m so concerned.”
“The wine has been over-chilled,” said Robert.
His voice seemed to come from a very long way off. Some horrible bore had said those words. He could see the whole thing, see himself sitting at a table saying the wine was over-chilled, while an odd collection of floating figures hovered above, smiling — smirking? Bud Wilde, holding his battered hat with the weather stains on the band — the window washer with his checkered cap and his big button — and then, someone else — an owlish look to his countenance — the firm jaw and the large ears. He winked at Robert Bowser. “It won’t be long now, pal,” he promised.
“I know it is,” Margaret was saying. “No one ever chills wine anymore. They simply keep it in the icebox. Robert, I’m worried about you.”
“I’m sorry. I have a headache tonight.”
“Maybe instead of the party, we should go to Nassau when you get back. I’d love to take mother too. We all need a vacation.”
“Margaret, just don’t worry. There’s nothing to worry about. There’s nothing at all to worry about.” The words came from some cavern in his mind, sweet and sure, plain and perfectly logical. Even Robert was comforted by them. He said, “Things always work out. It’s very simple.”
Margaret looked immensely relieved. “Yes,” she smiled. “I must be a little on edge myself. You know, Robert, I want you to be a vice-president very badly. It’s important for you, and high time. I’m afraid I get a little tense myself, I want it so badly for you.”
“Of course you do. I’m sorry if I didn’t appreciate …”
“No, I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s every bit as important to me as it is to you.”
“There now, feel better?” Robert said, pouring some of the Mersault into her glass.
“Much, much better. But you were acting strangely, you know. I know you better than you know yourself, Robert.”
“Yes, perhaps you do.”
“Of course I do, dear!”
They worked on their escargots for awhile. Robert did not trust himself to look closely at her until some moments had passed, though he wanted to. He almost believed he would see a complete stranger. Earlier, he had felt that, but when he looked, she was as familiar as his own face. He waited a bit, then he did look closely at her. There was the same sense of estrangement that there had been before, and the same feeling as before, that he must be going to miss her, mustn’t he? She was what he knew. Yes, he could predict her — when she would light a cigarette and when she wouldn’t — the vein that throbbed near her temple when she was tired — the way, after love-making, she always asked him to check to see
if the front yard light were out (as though the abandonment of physical intercourse had made them abandoned in other ways, so abandoned the front yard light might burn all night) — her reaction to this person, that news story, his moods — all the predictable things one person learns about another in over twenty-one years. And yet — yet it was all on the surface, the same as her knowledge of him was. If things worked according to plan, Monday morning she would know a great deal more about him than he would ever know about her. He sat there looking at his wife, and wondering: did she too, at some point in an evening, remember something that was inexplicably secret, some part of her experience that she held inside her — a face, a voice, some piece of a day that would come back to her, and momentarily seduce her interest — so that she too would be left with the cocktail glass held in a toast, her mind gone to some other place, her spirit bewildered by the incident; even tantalized or afraid? Could it be even now, that she was sitting opposite Robert wondering the very same thing about him?
“I think I figured it out,” Margaret said then.
“Figured what out?”
“Do you remember that we decided to have dinner out before I got on the subject of round butter balls? Remember?” “I guess go.”
“I think you were pleased, Robert. Do you know that it’s been a very long time since we’ve been alone together? We’ve always had Mother with us.”
“Quite right.”
“Now, you won’t admit it, but I think Mother irritates you at times. No, I really think so, Robert.”
“Well — it’s a possibility.”
“Of course it is! We should try to be by ourselves occasionally. We’ll make a point to,” Margaret said gaily. “All right, dear?”
“All right, Margaret.”
“That’s what was behind that remark!” said Margaret.
EIGHT
“So I said, now listen, I am not the maid, for your information. I said, ‘This is Mother Franklin!’”
“Robert,” Margaret said, “perhaps it was someone calling about your coat.”
“Yes, I was thinking that myself.”
“He called five times. I counted. Five times. I said, ‘If you would simply leave your name, Mr. Bowser will call you when he gets in.’ I said, ‘This is Mother Franklin, not the maid.’”
• • •
The three of them were standing in the kitchen. Margaret was heating milk for Mother Franklin’s Ovaltine, while Robert got down the package of marshmallows. Mother Franklin was wearing one of Margaret’s Hawaiian muumuus, instead of her own nightgown, and Margaret’s tangerine nylon tricot robe, with the satin buttons and satin piping. She knew Margaret disliked having her wear her clothes. If she were left alone in the house for very long, she took it out on Margaret this way. If Margaret were to buy Mother Franklin a Hawaiian muumuu of her own, or a tangerine robe, Mother Franklin would only insist that the styles were too young for her, and refuse to wear them. Mother Franklin was a short, wiry, white-haired old woman who seemed to shrink a little more every day. When she wore sweaters — and she often did, with skirts and saddle shoes and bobby socks — the sweaters hung as though they were put over a clothes hanger. Yet this wizened old woman’s tiny body contained an iron will, and a stubbornness and nerve that made Robert often wish he could simply step down on hard, with his foot, the same way one killed a persistent and pesty bumblebee. He and Margaret had come home to find Mother Franklin in a nervous rage over the telephone calls. The least little thing could set her off; this time, she was positive that the caller did not believe she was trustworthy enough for him to leave a message. The fact was, Mother Franklin often forgot telephone messages. Robert was sure that somewhere in the back of her mind was the fantasy that Robert and Margaret had told their friends never to leave a message with Mother Franklin when they called, since she was not reliable. She ranted on about the kind of people who telephone without giving their name, and whined to Margaret that she needed some hot chocolate to help her sleep. Her white hair was rolled around large wire curlers, and she was barefoot; her toenails were painted with Margaret’s red nail polish.
“Did he say he’d call back?” Robert asked her.
“He did not!”
“Well, I hope you told him we’d be in soon?”
“I told him nothing! I said, ‘This is Mother Franklin and not the maid.’”
“It must have been about the coat,” said Margaret. “Here, Robert,” handing him the Ovaltine, “would you put a marshmallow in that for Mother?”
Robert took the cup and dropped the marshmallow in it. “And he didn’t say anything else, hmm, Mother Franklin? He just asked for me?”
Mother Franklin shrieked, “Don’t stir it! I don’t like my marshmallow stirred in! I like it to float on top!”
“Mother, don’t shout, please!” Margaret said.
“Why did he have to stir it?” Mother Franklin complained. “He knows I like it floating on top! Now, it’s all mixed in the way I hate it!”
Robert left the cup on the kitchen table and walked out of the room. Behind him he heard Margaret shushing his mother-in-law, heard her purring about Robert’s Winston-Salem assignment, about the likelihood of Robert’s vice-presidency. “We’ll all go to Nassau for a vacation, to celebrate!” he heard Margaret say, and Mother Franklin said, “The hospital’s where I’m going! My cramps are back again, and the pains down my legs, Margaret.”
• • •
In the front room (Margaret always called it the solarium) Robert walked across to his desk. He took Plangman’s wallet from his back pocket and placed it in the top drawer. He paused then, looking down at the wallet. He had not searched it thoroughly; there was a letter in the money compartment which he had not examined, and he had not gone into the wallet’s side pockets. Robert leaned across his desk and snapped on his drafting lamp. He sank into the softness of his green-cushioned desk chair and placed the wallet in front of him. From the hallway he could hear the sounds of Margaret and Mother Franklin going upstairs to bed.
The right side pocket of the wallet contained air mail stamps and a Trojan, a matchbook (empty) from the Brown Derby in California, and a page torn from a magazine of some sort, with four verses to a song called “Kappa Pi Pinning Serenade.” From the left side pocket of the wallet, Robert removed a folded piece of stationery headed COLUMBIA BUSINESS-SECRETARIAL SCHOOL, COLUMBIA, MISSOURI.
“My darling, dearest, adorable, big, beautiful — ” and then an obscenity. Robert stopped at the obscenity. He put the piece of paper aside. He did not refold it and put it back in the left side compartment, but brushed it to the edge of his desk blotter. An uncomfortable feeling came over him — a feeling that this Plangman fellow would not be a very pleasant person to know. He flipped the shields to the driver’s license; the Missouri license contained no birthdate, no identifying physical characteristics. Then from the money compartment, he took out the letter. He opened it and read it.
Dear Harvey, Of course I would like to see you if you are coming East. Mais oui!
When he came to the part about the “grizzly bear” who wanted to take the writer to Chez Odette for dinner, his heart jumped. He grabbed the envelope and read the return address. Cutler — Sugan Road — New Hope, Pennsylvania. The name was not familiar. He reached across his desk for the phone book. There was a listing for a Hayden Cutler on Sugan Road. VOlunteer 2-5408.
Uncle Avery is a vice-president of Stowe Chemical.
He sat there, his thoughts ricocheting back and forth. Plangman sounded like a young man. Although there were no fraternities where Robert had gone to college, Kappa Pi was as famous a fraternity as Sigma Chi. Was Plangman a college boy, possibly working his way through college (which would explain the Woolworth employee’s card)? If he were a college boy, wouldn’t there be a better chance that Robert’s letter to Margaret would go unread? Robert felt that was true. He should simply pick up the phone and call the Volunteer number — explain that he had lost his coat, that there had
been a mix-up, that he had Plangman’s coat. He knew Stowe Chemical; it was a big and very substantial organization. Robert felt as though his coat and his wallet with the letter were in good hands — restrained hands. He picked up the telephone and dialed the number. He waited through eleven rings, then dropped the arm back in its craddle. For a moment he sat there. The palms of his hands were wet and warm; he could feel the perspiration soak his shirt. Finally, he reached for the other letter — the note — whatever it was. He leaned back and read it. “My darling, dearest, adorable, big, beautiful — ”
• • •
The letter was filled with obscenities. In the lewdest language Robert had ever read anywhere, outside of outright pornography, it cajoled, reminisced, promised, begged, and grieved. Clearly, it was not pornography. Gertrude, its writer, had no salacious intent. It was quite simply a love letter, a glorious and foul celebration of the most intimate method of communication between a man and a woman. It was wholly without subterfuge. It was blatant, screaming, weeping, puling, singing. While Robert read it, and while he sat there after he had read it, his entire being was swept with something akin to longing — not a longing for the flesh, or for the touch or sound or sight of anyone he knew; it was more like a homesickness suffered by some orphan who had no particulars with which to fill the framework of the feeling. He thought of the few letters Margaret had written to him, and of his to Margaret. He saw himself in a sudden, distilled, rapid pageant of his years — Robert Bowser — languid and divinable, a cog of ostensible conformity, bloodless and healthy as fresh white snow. Only in the Big Gamble was he different — and again the thought occurred to him that the game controlled him — even in that way, he was a cog.
Certain ideas of his rang out in his thoughts, the everyday ideas that he had always thought of as his facade — that he now suspected were simply his way of life, and would be, despite the coup. With each idea, there was a scene he could see himself in — standing in a haberdashery now, discarding the ties that were too flashy (never give a clue to the bright thread of recklessness, not even in a tie), and now in a restaurant studying the wine list (no, Hermitage Blanc is wrong with squab; better a Bordeaux), now at King & Clary’s (“In my investigation, sir, the company’s major capital project is a potash mine and plant in Saskatchewan, operated by a subsidiary. The plant is …”), and now in bed with Margaret, embraced by her, the ritual familiar and precise, waiting for the last low moan of ecstasy(?) before it was time for him to deliver himself, the apogee of control, partner in their antiseptic joy.