Sweet Smell of Success

by Ernest Lehman

  He stayed silent, allowing her to storm through many familiar accusations. Then he said, “I think it would be wise to let him come in and discuss the situation with me, Mrs. Pearson.”

  “I certainly will not!” she cried. “You know very well you can twist him any way you want.”

  He spoke as calmly as he could. “I have no thought other than what is best for his own development as a human being.”

  “I know what’s best for him! I don’t need the likes of you to tell me!”

  “Are you sure you’re not more concerned about yourself than about Donald?” It was more than he had meant to say.

  “See here, Dr. Trask!” Self-blinding anger rushed in to protect her. “If you want to know what I really think of you … the whole damned lot of you—!”

  “I’m afraid there isn’t time now, Mrs. Pearson,” he said, without anger, “and I don’t think it fair to Donald to discuss his case with you any further. I shall have to say good-by now.”

  “All right!” she cried. “All … right!” Her phone crashed noisily in his ear.

  Replacing the receiver in its cradle, he thought for a moment of the eight months of bitter struggle with Donald Pearson and the slow spiral of progress, and somehow—perhaps because everything today was colored by her departure—it all seemed to be tied up with Paula. Behind every Donald wasn’t there always a Mrs. Pearson, ready to heal his anxiety with a Band-Aid and purge him of swallowed resentment with an Ex-Lax. And for every Paula, unsure of her ability to be cherished, wasn’t there always a Phillip Sebastian, ready to drown out the sound of her self-doubts with the noisy ardor of the professional lover?

  He became aware, once again, of the girl on the couch. She had turned her head and was looking up at him questioningly.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Elizabeth,” he said, speaking gently—far, far too gently. “It couldn’t be helped.”

  She flushed at the unexpected kindness in his voice. “Oh, that’s all right,” she said, smiling her quick, bird-like smile to let him know that the anger within her did not exist, to deny the bitterness of this latest proof that she shared him with others. Someday she would learn how to be angry with him, and eventually with others. But now all she could do was lie back and stare up at the ceiling again. “Let me see … I think what I was saying was …”

  “We’ve only a minute or two left,” he said, closing the notebook in his lap. “Maybe we’d better let it go until tomorrow. I’ll make up the time to you.”

  “Oh, that’s perfectly all right.” She sprang from the couch quickly to show him that she did not want to lie there, safe and secure, for the rest of her life. But she moved to the door slowly, as though waiting for some thing comfortable to happen, something like the sound of his voice using her name or telling her not to worry, that everything would be all right in the end.

  He turned his back to her and put her casebook away in the filing cabinet with the others, feeling her standing there behind him, hand on knob, waiting for some meaningless, reassuring word that she could take with her as a token of a friendship which did not exist.

  “See you tomorrow,” she offered hopefully.

  But he remained with his back to her, without answering, until finally he heard the door close. He had used her first name, that was enough … perhaps too much. It was so difficult not to love the weak, so hard not to hate the arrogant. They never stopped trying to suck him into their tortured patterns where he could do them no good, and it was only his steadfast resolve to stay clear that could save them. They must beat against him over and over again until the patterns were shattered on the hard granite of his detachment.

  Paula had given it other labels—not “detachment.”

  “You’re too level-headed, Arthur,” she had cried hotly that evening which was memorable now only because it had been the first of many. “Too damned sensible about everything.”

  He recalled lighting his pipe slowly and wondering if, instead of giving her time to cool off, he wasn’t really infuriating her even more.

  “I never thought there was such a thing as being too sensible, dear,” he said finally. “Most people seem to regard it as a highly desirable character trait, if you can call it that.”

  “Yes? Well, in the man you love it’s sometimes not too attractive.” She ran her hand nervously through her hair. “Good God, aren’t you ever going to do or say the wrong thing? Can’t you ever raise your voice in anger, or cry out in sorrow?”

  He knew that she was thinking of poor little Kathy’s death. His grief had been brief, but sufficient unto him. It had almost, in fact, undone him. But to Paula his eyes had not been bottomless wells of despair, and that had shaken her. To be weak and helpless was to be human. To be strong was to be frightening. So be it, amen.

  He smiled at her. “What’s this all about, honey? Surely you’re not complaining merely because I don’t fly off the handle as easily and as regularly as some of our friends? It isn’t that I don’t beat you that’s bothering you?”

  “Oh, Arthur …” She moved to the sofa impulsively and rested her head on his shoulder. “Do you love me?”

  He looked at her. “Now what brought that on?”

  “Never mind. Just tell me.” She sat up straight, and he saw that her eyes were moist as she gazed at him. “Do you love me?”

  He stared back at her for a moment. “Of course I love you,” he said evenly. “I’ve loved you for every moment of the nine years that we’ve been together, and I think everything I’ve ever done should have showed you how much I cared for you. Still, there seems to be that need for you to ask.”

  “Well,” she said, “you don’t tell me very often.”

  “Are verbal assurances all that mean anything to you?”

  She drew away from him. “There you go again, talking to me as though I were one of your patients.”

  He looked away without answering, for he knew then that she had brought him artfully to the edge of a useless quarrel, and he did not intend to be drawn over the precipice.

  The truth was something that she, like all of them, yes, like Donald and Elizabeth and Justin and all the rest, would have to find for themselves. He could never do more than try to show the way, no matter how frantically they tugged at him. Paula would always find food for the doubts that seemed so necessary to her, until that day when she managed to arrive at her own belief, or disbelief, in their marriage, independently, with out the shove she was trying to extort from him …

  The clatter of an ashcan on the street below brought him back sharply to the quiet chamber. It was eleven o’clock now, and as he fumbled in the file drawer for the spiral notebook that imprisoned the inner life of Justin Keppler, he was not sure that he wasn’t stalling for time, waiting for the phone to ring.

  “Hello, Arthur? Are you alone? Can you talk?” Excited, feminine, lovable.

  “Yes, Paula.” Firm, but not unfriendly.

  “I didn’t go, darling, I didn’t go! I got as far as the station but I’m home now and I’m never going to leave. You were so right, dear. Everything you did and didn’t do, everything you said and left unsaid was so right. I understand now … being the way you are is you, Arthur. It’s what makes you so strong for those who need your help.”

  “I’m terribly happy about all this.” Pleased, but not triumphant.

  “Haven’t you noticed something different? I didn’t ask you whether you were glad. I know you are. You didn’t even have to tell me. I know that you love me, just as I know that I love you. Don’t ask me why I’m so sure now, because I don’t know why. It seemed to come upon me all of a sudden.”

  “Magic.”

  “Try to catch the express tonight, darling, will you, even if you have to stand. I can’t wait to feel your arms around me again and your cheek scratching mine. Will you please tell me how a woman can love a man’s five-o’clock shadow so much? Is there anything in your books that explains that?”

  “A common perversion.”

&n
bsp; “Back to work, doctor. S.O.S. Save our souls. And oh, Arthur …”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “You won’t have to be angry with me for all this. I promise that I won’t demand it of you. I’ll never demand anger of you again. Good-by for now, darling. Hurry home.”

  But the phone didn’t ring.

  What was it Hamilton called daydreams—”the B-pictures of the mind?”

  He busied himself straightening the pillow on the couch and patting the cushions.

  But the phone didn’t ring.

  So he went to the door that led to the secluded waiting-room and opened it.

  Justin Keppler, solemn-faced Justin Keppler, looked up at him from the book he had been studying and said gruffly, “Good morning.”

  Trask nodded.

  He watched Keppler slap the book shut and slide it back into the bookcase among the other medical volumes, and he knew that Keppler had come early again, to continue his hungry, fruitless search through the pages of books for those easy, magical words that would resolve all his torments as if by a miracle.

  Stepping into the office, Keppler threw a wary, disdainful glance at the couch and sat down in the leather chair facing Trask’s more spacious one, saying, “How are you today?” in a voice that loudly sought attention.

  Trask gazed at Keppler without expression. He settled himself deeply in the clubchair. He opened the notebook and uncapped his fountain pen. He crossed his legs and waited.

  The heavy-set features darkened in a scowl. “I said good morning and asked you how you are. Don’t you ever say good morning? Is that too much to expect of you?”

  Trask regarded him for a moment, then spoke quietly. “I’m sure you don’t believe that the purpose of your coming here is to observe the amenities and inquire about the state of my health.”

  Keppler flushed. “Half of the time I wonder what is my purpose in coming here. You treat me as though you think—”

  “You’re not using the couch today?” Trask inquired.

  “No,” Keppler said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t choose to. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Are you sure it’s that simple?”

  “No, I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything. You’re the one who’s so sure of everything. According to you I’m just a—”

  “Shall we begin?” Trask suggested.

  “Don’t change the subject. Every time I start to say something that doesn’t suit your convenience you cut me short.”

  “Let’s hear what you did with yourself yesterday,” Trask said.

  “I don’t want to talk about what I did yesterday. What’s that going to do for me? I keep telling you what I do and say on the outside, and it’s always wrong. I’m always doing the wrong thing. If you know so much more about everything than I do, why don’t you just tell me what to do and I’ll go out and do it and then I’ll be all right?” His voice rose defiantly. “You wouldn’t like that, though, would you? You wouldn’t have anything to criticize me for. You couldn’t sit there like God Almighty. Go ahead—why don’t you tell me what to do?”

  Trask watched him closely as the precious minutes on the desk-clock ticked away, watched him fumble to light a cigarette with shaking hands and waited for him once again, as he had waited for him so many times in so many months, to come to the realization that he would never be able to get Trask to hate him as someone else once had, no matter how desperately he tried.

  Tell me what to do!

  Somewhere outside, a plane droned across the city. It could be hers … not now, but later … westward bound.

  Tell me what to do!

  She was standing there in the archway of the breakfast room in the red quilted robe, lovely with her early morning loveliness but bewildered as she watched him bolting down his scrambled eggs and coffee.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything, Arthur?”

  “Like what?” He glanced hurriedly at his wristwatch.

  “Aren’t you even going to tell me … to tell me not to go?” It was as though she could not bring herself to believe that he could be rushing off this morning to catch the train to the city, like any other morning.

  “Your bags are packed, aren’t they?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got your plane ticket, haven’t you? You’ve closed out your account at the bank, haven’t you?”

  “You know I have.”

  “That would seem to indicate that you want to go, then, wouldn’t it?”

  “Can’t you look at me when you talk!” she cried out. “Must you keep on eating—?”

  “I’m a little later than usual this morning,” he said.

  “You want me to go, don’t you? You’re glad. You’re … you’re …” She came toward him. “Well, say something!”

  Tell me what to do! Lead me—whether it is where I want to be led or not—just lead me!

  He got up quickly from the table. “Good-by, Paula.” He held her in his arms for a moment and kissed her, so briefly. “Whatever you do, be happy.”

  Then he hurried to the door.

  “Arthur!”

  He dared not look back.

  “Arthur!”

  The drone of the plane faded, blending into the faint hum of traffic and the sound of Justin Keppler angrily exhaling cigarette smoke a few feet away from him.

  “Let’s hear what’s been going on with you?” he said again to Keppler.

  “Well …” Keppler stared down at his hands sullenly. “All right … but I still think—”

  “Yes. I know,” he said, waiting as Keppler ground his cigarette into the ashtray beside his chair and tugged uneasily at the knot of his tie. He waited, and then finally the words began to flow, cautiously at first, and filled with camouflage. But soon Keppler was losing himself in the dramatic events of the previous day, acting out all the roles as he thought they had been played by others, investing spoken and unspoken words with meanings he was sure they had been meant to convey. And when Trask would interrupt him from time to time to separate the real from the imagined and to examine more closely some of the phantoms he was creating out of his past, Keppler fought back, trying to reduce unanswerable truths to the confusion of a brawl.

  The minutes slipped by swiftly, unnoticed in the struggle.

  Keppler grew louder. It was as though, if he could not penetrate the granite wall of his opponent with his persistent jabbing, he would at least penetrate the glass-brick wall of the chamber with the clamor of his voice. The ringing telephone sounded twice before it finally brought silence to the room.

  “Well, answer the damned thing,” Keppler snapped, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.

  Trask took the phone from the table. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing that in a way he wasn’t. Sometimes you could be saved by the bell, just when you felt yourself weakening and ready to meet blow with foolish blow. “Dr. Trask speaking.”

  “Hello … Dr. Trask?”

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  “This is Donald. Donald Pearson.” After eight months, still believing himself too insignificant to be recognized by voice or by first name alone.

  “Where are you?”

  “In … in a drugstore. A phone booth. Fifty-sixth and … and …”

  “What’s up?”

  Silence. Panic. Trapped in a phone booth by a direct question.

  “What is it?” Trask said.

  “Well, I … I didn’t know if …”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.”

  “… If … that is … you’re not expecting me, are you?”

  He glanced at the clock. Eleven-forty. “You come in at noon on Tuesdays, don’t you? Today is Tuesday, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but … but didn’t you speak to my mother?”

  “She called,” Trask said evenly. “Yes.”

  “Well she …” He finally got it out. “She doesn’t want me to see you anymore.”

  “And how do
you feel about it?”

  “She doesn’t think I …” The voice trailed to a whisper.

  “Can you speak louder?” You’re getting further and further away, Donald. You’re almost gone from me.

  “She doesn’t think … I mean, she thinks it’s not doing me any good and I should spend my money on something that might help me.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, I … she says a long cruise, maybe to South America. The rest would do me good, she says. A change of scenery. She thinks I should leave right away.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “Well … no …”

  “Who with?”

  “Well … she thinks the salt air might be good for her sinus.”

  “I see,” he said, staring across the room at Keppler’s left hand twisting the ashtray with rhythmic, compulsive movements, his impatiently jiggling right foot timing the beat like a silent metronome.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  “Yes. I’m here,” Trask said.

  “Well, what do you think? What should I do?”

  You know very well you can twist him any way you want. You’re the one who is ruining my child, Dr. Trask …

  “That’s up to you,” he said.

  “But … but that doesn’t help me!” the voice cried frantically. “Is that all you have to say?”

  Was that all? Oh, no. He could say: Please don’t trade me in for a cruise and rob me of eight months of my life’s work. Please stay with me and let me try to save you from spending the rest of your life as a door mat in a world of people with dirty shoes. Please don’t quit now, not today of all days …

  “What do you think I should do?” the boy was pleading.

  And he heard himself answering, “I’m afraid I feel you’ve reached the point where you’re perfectly capable of making your own decisions.”