by Purdy, James
Leah Goldberg explained that she had been there only by sheer accident. Irving having got the day off and driven her over to the supermarket to buy staples for the coming week-end, when they were expecting house guests. Leah had, of course, tried to comfort Cynthia, but the latter seemed hardly to recognize her.
“Cabot, you poor fellow!” Leah Goldberg cried, wishing to impart sympathy, but with accusation, reproach, indignation and blame on her sun-tanned face. She explained that she wished to pick up some of Cynthia’s clothes to take to the hospital.
“Help yourself, old girl,” Cabot walked in the direction of the liquor cabinet.
Peering around impishly at Leah, who was continuing to stare at him, he said, “That was the one thing that kid loved—duds!”
“Haven’t you had enough to drink already?” Leah cautioned him, as he poured himself a shot from a bottle he had taken from the cabinet.
“I’m never drunk,” Cabot said, which was near the truth.
Mistaking his wish to drink for deep grief, Leah had come up close to him in order to give comfort, and Cabot had absentmindedly taken her hand. He did not release it.
“Cynthia kept herself locked in there,” Cabot nodded toward his wife’s bedroom. “Couldn’t even get a look in at her through the keyhole.”
“You must be calm,” Leah told him, not daring to try to release her own hand from his grasp, seeing with unease that far from being upset he was perfectly calm.
“You understand, Cabot dear, what I’ve been telling you,” Leah Goldberg went on, her hand held stiff and trembling in its trap. “Cynthia had the complete thing, you understand, a real breakdown. She was shopping for you, at the time, poor dear—for food, that is,” she added nervously. Leah now got her hand free and dried her eyes with some of Cynthia’s own tissues.
In the guise of comforting her, Cabot patted her arm, and then energetically pressed his mouth to her hair. A somewhat strong odor, mixed with a kind of brilliantine whose perfume was unfamiliar to him, stimulated his nostrils. He pushed Leah securely against the back wall so that she now faced the Wall Street panorama across the river.
“Cabot!” she cried, feeling something in their combined posture that puzzled her.
But his face and expression, as it had in the case of the young woman in the branch library, began to work its effect on Leah Goldberg. Her mind became hazy, she muttered something about poor Cynthia again, then suddenly gave an incongruous titter, while at the same time, she seemed unconscious that he had opened her blouse and taken off her bra.
Leah was completely silent when he pressed himself gently but relentlessly into her, as standing they both pressed their combined weight against the wall. She had the helpless expression of a woman who has fallen under a slowly moving car, and watches studiously as the wheels go over her body. She felt Cabot’s panting and his intense joy of relief, and coming fulfillment, as he worked himself into her, with a kind of charitable and selfless exertion about him like one remedying some mental discomfort of her own. Her mouth fell against his thick soft hair, and her spittle, suddenly released as if from a well, flowed freely and ran down the front of his face to his own mouth.
Then collapsing under her confusion and her terror, Cabot, with the cry of relief still stuck in his throat, extricated himself slowly from her body, carried her methodically to an easy chair, and then gave her tumbler after tumbler of tap water.
As they sat together, his head over the general situation of her mons Veneris, with Leah weeping somewhat convulsively at first and then regularly and quietly, Cabot gently massaged her nipples.
CYNTHIA’S CONFINEMENT IN a mental institution paved the way for Cabot’s successful return to Wall Street more than any other event could have. His playing the role of a youthful Orpheus around the office prevented anybody’s “reviewing” his future for a while.
“Warby,” as Cabot Wright recalled in one of his long police-tape interviews, “like nearly any American you could hit by spitting from a high building, was a congenital sentimentalist. The thought of Cynthia going mad made him all gooey and got him out of my hair for a while.”
The day before Cabot’s second tragedy, he and Mr. Warburton were seated in one of the old man’s favorite restaurants, on Fulton Street, an oaken-panelled place as big as four barns, with private rooms upstairs and downstairs. They were in one of the private rooms now, and Warburton was pouring Wild Turkey down his throat almost as fast as he could gulp it. “Cynthia will come out of it, she’s that kind of a girl,” he assured his General Partner. “Will fight her way back. Determined chin, if I ever saw one.
“Laddie,” Mr. Warburton now got down to business, “we’re going to put you in charge of Monthly Reports.”
Cabot’s face fell, to use one of Mr. Warburton’s own favorite ways of describing the reaction of his colleagues, and of course, it was a facial expression never to assume in the old broker’s presence. But when he remembered what Cabot had been through, he forgave his having allowed his face to fall.
“Wonderful training for a chap like you,” Mr. Warburton was in full and loud enthusiasm. At a look of uncertainty from Cabot, he elaborated: “Monthly Reports are a damned serious phase of our work. Be great to have you on them.”
A few months back, Cabot had told Warburton he would resign rather than be in charge of Monthly Reports. “It’s a stenographer’s work,” he had shouted then at the end of that interview. “Am I a frigging typist?” And though Mr. Warburton had cautioned him then about exploding in his presence, Cabot had been firm: “I’ll be goddamned if I do your Monthly Reports.”
And even now, with all his great fatherly interest in Cynthia’s going off her rocker, both Mr. Warburton and Cabot appeared to be hearing again their row of a few months past, as if on play-back tape, and at that moment they might have posed for an advertisement for dictation machines.
“Agreed then, my boy!” the old broker vociferated over his Ramon Allones cigar.
Cabot said nothing, and did not even go pale. Later he wondered what would have happened if he had repeated his earlier tantrum, and refused to write Monthly Reports. This time, drinking his French cognac, sinking into the rich leather of his chair, with the soothing ubiquitous oak-panelling behind him, he could only say yes of course to Monthly Reports.
Mr. Warburton had immediately slapped him on the back, spilling a long ash, and crying, “That’s the ticket, boy!”
Cabot had smiled faintly and Mr. Warburton, wanting to say something assuring, had then stumbled for words, the sure sign of an even more unfavorable attitude toward Cabot than before his General Partner had taken the enforced vacation.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Cabot had helped the old man. “You’re thinking, ‘The son of a bitch still looks tired.’”
Mr. Warburton had turned purple with laughter, then stroking the back of his head, said gravely, “Well, who wouldn’t, laddie, in your shoes? Good God, with your better-half in a mental home!”
A FEW DAYS later, summoned unexpectedly to Mr. Warburton’s presence, Cabot fully expected to be fired once and for all. Instead Mr. Warburton had some black crepe on his arm. Cabot was already rehearsing his “speech of relief” at hearing the news of his dismissal, though he thought the touch of mourning was a bit much even for Warby.
Warburton began: “It is my melancholy duty to inform you that the first great tragedy of manhood has happened to you, my boy.”
Cabot heard the sentence and thought it applied to his dismissal. Sitting in a swivel chair, looking out the window over glass buildings and old brown church steeples, sweat again began to seep through his cotton undershirt, and though his body suffered, he knew he couldn’t care less. In fact at that moment he believed he would have been indifferent if he had been told the thermonuclear bomb was being counted down to go off. There had been so many threats, warnings, auguries, coming catastrophes, ends and beginnings of ends, cataclysms and Armageddons. What could you do but not care?
At that moment Mr. W
. put his hand on Cabot’s shoulder, and the latter of course jumped slightly. “Now, now,” Mr. Warburton was patting him. “It’s your parents,” he almost whispered. “Your Mom and Dad, Cabby…” He removed his hands from Cabot’s shoulders to wipe his glasses, for tears were coming from his creased eyelids. “You couldn’t have picked a finer pair of people, let me tell you, to grow up with.”
“What’s their problem?” Cabot finally said from behind a linen handkerchief with which he was drying his neck.
Mr. Warburton did not appear to take in Cabot’s inquiry, for he was continuing with his announcement:
“While pleasure-cruising in the troubled waters of the Caribbean, my boy, an incendiary bomb fell on their yacht, setting it afire immediately and sinking it. Your parents, Cabot, perished instantly. There is no doubt on that score. Hope is idle. However, they did not suffer. I can reassure you on that…” He brought out a crumpled telegram from his vest pocket, and prompted himself. “Now, as your father’s solicitor and also the executor of both your parents’ estates…”
“My foster parents, Mr. Warburton,” Cabot said in a loud voice.
When Mr. Warburton merely popped his eyes at him, Cabot went on: “You knew I was supposititious. Think we discussed it once.”
“I’m aware of your origins, sir,” Mr. Warburton cried with passion, for he felt that any interruption at a moment like this, and with regard to an announcement such as he was making, was not only inexcusable but in appalling bad taste.
“Who my real parents were,” Cabot was going blithely on, “well, as they say in the funny papers, you search me.” He laughed quickly and then tightened his mouth.
“In the funny papers,” Mr. Warburton repeated, and then studied Cabot with serious scrutiny for, as he knew, great grief sometimes masks itself in incoherent remarks just before the bereaved one collapses. He therefore placed his arm again on Cabot’s shoulder.
Shifting under Mr. Warburton’s pressure which was meant to comfort, Cabot placed his hand now under his undershirt, working to stop a twin rivulet of sweat which had begun to race unevenly over his pectorals, one stream of which was racing down toward his abdomen.
Mr. Warburton on observing this behavior immediately rang his buzzer, and Sue of Short Hills responded.
“Brandy,” Mr. Warburton said to her.
“I’m not surprised the news has unhinged you, my lad,” Mr. Warburton now spoke in quiet and uneasy tones to his General Partner. “After all, it’s your second blow in a very short period of time. And your most acute. We can always marry again in this country, but where are we going to find parents once we lose them? Grieve openly, my boy, don’t hold it in. Grieve.” He patted Cabot’s shoulder briefly again.
Going back to his desk, however, Mr. Warburton repeated aloud to himself: “In the funny papers! By God, what do you make of that for a remark.”
Addressing Cabot, then, in a loud business-like voice, he went on: “My boy, you realize now that you are a wealthy man in your own right. Easy street and that kind of thing.” He cleared his throat.
Sue of Short Hills reentered with the decanter of brandy, which Mr. Warburton took pontifically, waving her out of the room.
He poured Cabot a drink, got ice from a nearby container, and handed him the brandy on the rocks. He made no offer to help himself, as he had had a snort a short time before.
Cabot drank thirstily, while getting out the words: “Just the same, Mr. Warburton, I’d like to have a chance with those Monthly Reports…”
The old man looked at him appraisingly, cautiously.
“I mean, what would I do without work?” Cabot proceeded. “I can’t just walk the Brooklyn Bridge and back, with no excuse for doing so, can I?”
Mr. Warburton showed his involuntary respect for the newly crested millionaire by changing his mind and pouring himself a brandy.
“My wife in the nut-hatch, my parents killed in the revolutionary Caribbean,” Cabot faced him threateningly. “By God, you owe me those Monthly Reports!” He was close enough now to see the older man’s dentures. “How about it, Warby?”
Mr. Warburton winced when he heard so young a man call him by nickname, but he overlooked this also in light of what had happened. He smirked, however, perhaps under the sting of the lack of reverence, squared his shoulders and advanced to the window in General MacArthur strides.
“Holocaust as it is,” the old tycoon orated, “almost Biblical in its conclusiveness—” He could not go on, and wheeling around from the window to face Cabot, he blurted out, “But you’re rich as Croesus!”
He studied Cabot’s face, but evidently saw nothing on it which informed him of anything.
“Tell you what I’d like to suggest,” Mr. Warburton approached the bereaved man again, putting his arm around him. “I’d like you to take the day off, and I’d like you to have luncheon tomorrow with my wife Gilda. You’ve heard things about Gilda, of course you have. Discount them. She’s frail in health. You know, she doesn’t see many people. Kind of a hermit of late. But take the day off. A woman’s sympathy and kindness are what you need as of now. I won’t accompany you tomorrow. But I think Gilda’s the ticket. Just step out of my office a moment, will you, while I phone her and have the arrangements made certain. Will you please, laddie?” Cabot was amazed at this suggestion of Mr. Warburton. Only the very top brass were allowed to meet his wife. Cabot knew he was really “in.”
Before he was able to do much in the way of drying his chest and arms of the bath of perspiration he had inflicted upon himself, Mr. Warburton himself popped into the lavatory and informed Cabot that Gilda would be more than delighted to have luncheon next day. Then as Cabot adjusted his clothing, Mr. Warburton put his arm around him again and patted him with mechanical rapidity on the ass. “Keep the old spinal column straight,” he told the bereaved. There were no longer tears in the old man’s eyes, and the hard vague look of the hyena was back.
“And if you feel so disposed, God damn it,” he finished, “call me Warby from now on.”
“Thank you, Mr. Warburton, I will,” Cabot replied.
11
LUNCHING WITH GILDA
The succession of incredible, though (to Cabot) uninteresting events, that made him all at once orphan, widower, newly re-employed, rich, respectable and criminal, did not overwhelm him in the least. They made him want to go on doing as he pleased.
He sat in his four-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment and peeped out the windows with a pair of Army surplus binoculars at the historical panorama anchored in the waters of the rivers Hudson and East. He could still smell the perfume from Cynthia’s clothes. Just before she had lost her reason, she had gone clever and begun using men’s colognes, which had been the style in her day. He giggled as he savored that last phrase, in her day.
He decided to phone the institution where Cynthia was safely immured, and inquire about her. “Condition satisfactory,” a voice, obviously recorded, informed him. He then asked the voice what condition satisfactory meant, and the voice repeated the single word, satisfactory. No visitors was still the watchword. It reminded him that in his own office when his secretary was said to be not at her desk, one knew she was in the pee-parlor making up or something. His wife Cynthia was crazy as a bat in hell but her condition was going to be satisfactory, he would be told, until she died of old age.
Cabot listened to the phone ring every so often. Sometimes he answered it in a disguised voice, again he did not. After all, in his new character of orphan-widower, rich-office clerk, arrived-criminal, he didn’t exactly see the point of answering. What could anybody tell him now, after all?
GILDA WARBURTON HAD been drinking, Cabot realized, immediately she had opened the door of Mr. Warburton’s house on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park.
Looking at his hostess, under the chandelier of the hallway, he remembered having seen her at a charity ball with Cynthia earlier that year, a woman of indeterminate age, much younger than her spouse, with a popular wig o
f the hour, a breast alight with jewels, flashing in cadence with bracelets of gold and platinum, and a stale dank gin breath.
“The wife of the great broker!” Cabot wanted to exclaim as she ushered him to a chair. “Where are your servants?” he was about to inquire, surprised by the lonesome silence of the mansion.
She had already anticipated his question, and was giving her popular lecture on how, in the current of the present, she had got rid of her European servants (though they were loves) and had engaged colored personnel. The latter had brought her deep satisfaction and peace, had given her, as an American, and through their character as Americans, a closer touch with the realities of the present. Furthermore, this new relationship between employer and servant had revived for her her wonderful Alabama childhood, when she had known oh so many marvelous marvelous Negroes. She shaded her eyes with her palm.
“I feel deeply close to this wonderful new awakening nation within us,” Gilda continued. “Our sterling colored friends,” she looked away at the flicker in Cabot’s eye, “noble people with a grand tomorrow… Brady and Anna (she named her personnel) are slow, but they’re gold.”
Gilda finished her speech as she gave the signal for Cabot to march with her into a huge anteroom. Still leading the way, she ushered him into a cavernous parlor, where he slouched into a creamy gold divan.
“But here while I talk about new nations and tomorrow, dear young Cabot,” Gilda raised her voice, “your own loss, poor boy! What can tomorrow mean in the face of such a terrible sorrow?”
She placed her index and middle finger over her frown marks, perhaps in prayer.
“You knew there were two, I gather,” Cabot remarked, moistening his upper lip.
Gilda turned her head briefly in his direction. “Two?” she said. “Ah, yes, two parents,” she seemed to echo, for her left ear, if not turned just right, often missed a crucial word or so.
“Two losses,” he corrected. “Cynthia went off her rocker last week, as I informed Warby,” Cabot remarked in a voice adjusted for deafness, while he looked about to see if there might be drinks cached away nearby. “She went just a short time before the explosion took off Mom and Dad.”