Orrie's Story

by Thomas Berger

  “I’m all right, Joey. I just want to get it over with. Then I’ll catch the next bus out and sleep on the ride back.”

  Becker was taking his own pee now and spoke towards the wall. “Gonna make a life of it down South?” He was not as surprised as he should have been. “Like that part of the world, do you?”

  “I’ve got a fine woman there,” said Augie. “Maybe when the dust settles and we’re married and all, we’ll visit back here sometime.” This would never happen, and Becker knew it.

  “I’m real happy for you,” said Joe. “You need anything, any time, you count on me.” He looked Augie up and down. “You make a fine-looking soldier. Remember when we were too young to go to the First World War and fight Heinies in the trenches and all? So you wait twenty years and go then, and you weren’t exactly a kid any more. Damn it, Augie, I sure take my hat off to you.”

  Augie realized that Becker too was feeling the effects of the alcohol. “You really going back to work now? What’U the boss say?”

  Becker smiled. Augie could remember how he lost that tooth. “I’m the boss now. Skillman sold out to me a couple years back.”

  Augie was human enough to feel envy here, despite the old affection for Joe just renewed. Becker was altogether self-made. He obviously had a knack for business.

  “You know what that means,” Becker went on. “I work twice as hard as anybody on the payroll.”

  Augie hated the memory of when he had last been an employer. That was the trouble with old friends: with the best will in the world, they could not help making unpleasant references. Rinsing his hands in the washbowl, he looked at a mirror image of his face for the first time since the day before. He badly needed a shave. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked Becker. “I look like a gangster, for God’s sake.” Most of this growth of beard seemed to have occurred only in recent hours. He had hot felt that much when he splashed water on his face at the seven-thirty breakfast stop made by the bus.

  Becker used the washstand. “It ain’t that bad, light-complected like you are.”

  Augie also itched at his back. “I could use a shower,” said he. “I been in these same clothes for a day and a half now.” His civilian clothing was in the suitcase. The uniform could be dispensed with, once everybody had seen it.

  Becker again offered the facilities at his house, but again Augie declined with thanks.

  “That’s the last thing I’ll ask of her,” he told his old friend. “A bath. I guess I’ve got that much coming.”

  “Let me run you up there,” said Becker.

  Augie had got a lift out from the city bus terminal with a patriotic man who liked to help G.I.s. He intended to hire the local taxi for what remained of his journey, only another half a mile. Becker, who had done so well in life, probably had a car Augie could not have afforded. Therefore he declined the ride too.

  Back in the bar, he shook hands all around without revealing to anyone else that this would be his final appearance on the premises. Joe Becker could provide that information at his convenience.

  As Herm returned the valise, Augie told him, indicating the painted sheet across the mirror, that he could take the sign down now.

  “Naw,” said Herm, grinning with the discolored tooth that was next to another of gold. “It looks nice, jazzes up the old place. I’ll leave it for a while and then save it for you when I take it down.”

  “I want you to know how much I appreciated this party,” said Augie, leaning over to shake hands.

  All the fellows were standing and, like him, ready to depart. Most of them worked. Some of those not on a night shift might drop back in the evening, and Molly and Gladys might return, though maybe not, for even nursing one drink for hours cost something.

  Had Augie not gone off to war he would undoubtedly have been of the common run of this group, like Rickie Wicks, and not have joined Becker in success. By now the bar and the occasion had become desolating.

  Toting the suitcase, he left the Idle Hour and walked towards the taxi office down in the next block, staring into the windows he passed, ready to wave at those on the other side, should they recognize him in the uniform he would soon take off, after one of the shortest military careers a man could have had.

  But no one he could identify seemed to be looking back, not even Sal the barber, still working his scissors though he had already been old when Augie, a high-school freshman, had got his first crewcut. Perhaps advanced age was the reason why Sal though returning his stare did not recognize him now. Had the barber done so, Augie would have entered the shop and got a shave there and not arrived at his old home with a face full of stubble. All his life he had managed to do that which would only increase the contempt that had ever been the principal emotion felt for him by the woman he had married. But then there was some question as to what he could have done that would not have had the same effect. After all, so far as she knew, he was a war hero.

  But to Esther, opening the screen door, it was as if he had never gone away: he could see that the first time he had met her eyes in four years. To pursue her respect had been absolutely futile. Immediately he was conscious of the fraudulent of the uniform and ribbons, as he had not been when they were being admired at the bar, where they were no less false, where in fact the display was more immoral, for some of those fellows had relatives and friends who had been genuine casualties.

  “Sorry,” said he to his wife, who had come only after prolonged ringing of the doorbell; he had not felt it right that he enter the premises without permission. “I didn’t get a chance to shave.” She remained silent and glanced at the suitcase. “Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “I’m not staying.”

  Esther moved back from the doorway, and he stepped over the threshold into the front hall. He followed her to a different living room from that he remembered, but whether the furniture was new or had merely been rearranged, he could not have said. Esther however looked like exactly the same woman of four years earlier. He even recognized the housecoat, which had apparently remained in mint condition, as if it had been put away when he left and not worn again until this moment.

  Wouldn’t she ever speak? He was too proud to ask. “Look, Esther.” He stood in the middle of the room, not even lowering the suitcase. “I’m not here to make any trouble. I’ll see the kids and leave. Your lawyer can handle the rest of it. Everything’s yours. I’m sorry there isn’t more.”

  Her expression went from disdain through amazement into something that had he not known her he might have called fear. “Lawyer?”

  “I’ve given this a lot of thought. It wouldn’t make much sense after all we’ve been through to go back as before, would it?”

  She stared at him. “You’re talking about a divorce?”

  At last he began to feel more in control, at least of himself. What was so remarkable in the thought of divorce, when for so many years she had despised her husband and, since long before he went away, had been fucking his cousin? He put the valise down.

  “Come on, you’re not all of a sudden going to pretend you want me back?” He smiled; there was no reason why he should not be friendly. “Let’s start off with a clean slate.”

  She had continued to stare at him. “You’re drunk.”

  “No. No, I am not.”

  “You’re drunk,” she insisted, but now, amazing him, grinned. This was an expression at odds with her raven-black hair and strong mouth. She was handsome when her face was in repose and could even appear maternal if smiling at Orrie, but her grin, rarely seen, looked almost foolish without connoting a hint of good will.

  He changed the subject, looking at his watch, and asked, “Ellie’s due home soon—?” He touched his whiskers. “Maybe I have time to spruce up a little?”

  “Take it easy,” Esther said, grinning. It occurred to him that she might be drunk. “Have a seat.”

  He sat down at one end of the sofa, which seemed to have a new cover. “The boys at the Idle Hour threw me a little welcome-home par
ty, including lunch.”

  “I knew you were drunk,” Esther said. “Remember I know you, even though you’ve been gone all this while, and I know what liquor does to you.” Her grin was now a kind of simper.

  “I’m nowhere near drunk,” said Augie. “I’m aware of what I’m saying. You get a lawyer and make it all my fault, desertion or whatever. I won’t contest it. Furthermore, I’ll pay for your lawyer. Is that fair enough?”

  Esther moved slowly to the overstuffed chair that faced his end of the couch and sank into it. She crossed her legs. The skirt of the housecoat fell away, embarrassing him.

  She asked, “How about more hair of the dog? There’s a bottle in the kitchen.”

  “No, thanks.” She was not taking him seriously. Perhaps he should have expected that, instead of so easily assuming that his new self would be immediately apparent to those who had counted on abusing the old one forever. “When does Ellie get home from school?”

  “Lots of time yet,” said Esther.

  “I can’t get over Orrie being old enough for college.” He had learned that only on the occasion of the recent telephone call. He lacked the courage to mention the missing Gena.

  Esther had uncrossed her legs and left her knees just far enough apart so that someone directly opposite her could hardly avoid noticing. Augie was revolted by the display. As yet he had had nothing from his fiancée but lukewarm kisses. Cassie was not a sensual young woman. Now and again throughout the years he had had his genital needs met by whores, but fear of disease and an utter lack of the personal in such connections made that almost as unsatisfying as masturbation. One thing he could say of Esther: even after he was aware of her flagrant infidelity, he had almost never been impotent with her. And she had never given him reason to believe that her disdain for him in his other husbandly functions extended to his performance in bed. Perhaps she was insatiable, and if so he did not really condemn her though it might be perverse of him. He could not have revealed this truth to anybody, including his conscious self, but was well aware of it in that part of the soul that is never taken aback by any erotic phenomenon.

  “So,” she said, smirking. “Nobody gets a divorce just to be alone. You bring back some captured German girl?”

  At last he found the nerve to do what he should have done long since and stated a few details about Cassie.

  “She’s just a kid,” said Esther. “You’re robbing the cradle.” Her lips were twitching, but he was not sure what that could mean.

  “She’s very religious,” Augie said quickly, stiffly, in an effort to head off any assumption that his want was for young flesh.

  “I’m sure,” said Esther. “So you want to marry her?”

  It was as awkward as he had anticipated to talk of the subject with this woman to whom he had been legally married for going on twenty years.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You haven’t got her pregnant?”

  “I’ve never been to bed with her. Neither has anybody else.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Esther threw her head back and guffawed.

  Augie was furious, but mostly with himself. He had given Esther every advantage over him. It was as if he had never gone to war, proved himself as a man, come home a hero! That he had not actually done these things was beside the point. It was terrible to realize that his wife would have been quite as disdainful of him had he been a genuine combat, veteran.

  “Let’s be polite. I’m not going to say anything against Erie.”

  She bridled. “He saved your skin.”

  “Yes, and I happen to know he didn’t lose any money when he took the store off my hands and terminated it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That he managed to find a good many more assets than liabilities.”

  She had returned to her habitual sneer. “What do you think has been keeping us going these four years around here? Those shitty little checks you send?”

  Augie was now very sorry that he had come back. He could have done what was required by mail, through a lawyer, and passed up the chance to strut at the Idle Hour. Cassie knew nothing of his existing wife and family, but in her superstitious way she had worried about his trip North, had seen in a characteristic dream that he would come to some grief there and never return to her. He loved her for such apprehensions: never had his existence been so valuable to another human being.

  He stood up. “This was a mistake. I should have stayed away.”

  She rose and came to him. In high-heeled mules she seemed taller than he: he had forgotten that, unless she had grown in four years. She was somewhat fleshier but not unattractively so. She had been the most voluptuously built teenager in town: a pound more, breasts an inch larger, she would have gone over the line, he had then believed. But in fact she did put on weight once they were married; yet owing to the concomitant increase in height, had gone from being the kind of girl who at thirteen was ample enough to evoke the whistles and catcalls of passing male youth (and the leers of their elders) to a statuesque woman.

  “Don’t go away mad,” Esther said now, her voice falling off on the last word, her eyelids lowering as if of their own heaviness. She was almost touching him with her luxurious body, and had to step back two inches to make room in which to raise her hand and run an index finger, with a nail conspicuously too long and colored maroon, across his ribbons.

  “So you really were good as a soldier.” She raised her dark eyes. “Did you kill a lot of them?”

  He could remember the answer to a similar question he himself had put when buying the uniform from Captain Delaney, the debt-ridden officer who had earned the ribbons: “It’s hard to tell, at the usual range.” The captain had gone on to explain that, at least in the sectors in which he had seen action, hand-to-hand fighting was much rarer than you would think from motion pictures. But Augie suspected that Esther would not be impressed by the modest truth.

  “It’s not something I like to talk about. It’s not nice and neat, like the movies.”

  “Nothing is,” said Esther, looking intently at him.

  At this moment he lost everything he had gained in four years, and of course she saw that immediately.

  “Go take a quick bath,” she said, and made a gesture as if pushing him slightly though not making actual contact. “I’ll wait for you in our bedroom. We’ve got lots of time. She stays late at school today.”

  Augie found the bathroom to be what it had always been, small and without cross ventilation. And without a shower, which is what he really wanted, being in no mood to lie back and soak, then scrub…

  Esther burst in without warning. “You’ll need this. It’s a warm day.” She turned on the electric fan on the shelf above the end of the tub; its wire went to the female plug that had replaced the bulb in the old-fashioned wall sconce that was supposed to supply light to the alcove.

  He was embarrassed though having as yet removed nothing but the officer’s tunic, which he had hung on the corner of the linen-closet door.

  She quickly left, but her intrusion had broken his rhythm. He now could not evade a horrified reflection on what he was doing. He was no longer as drunk in the mind as he had been only a few instants before, but, absurdly, his physical coordination now began to fail. He almost fell into the tub as, trying to balance one leg at a time, he struggled with his trousers. Apparently no one noticed that the uniform was not an exact fit. The jacket was a size larger than his, and the pants, of the same heavy, beautiful twill, though buff as opposed to the dark olive of the tunic, were slightly too long, touching the ground at the heel of the plain brown shoes he had had to buy separately, Captain Delaney not having had boots to spare.

  He would bathe and shave and change into the civilian clothes from the suitcase he had brought along to the bathroom. But it was clear that he must leave immediately thereafter, even if it meant not having seen Ellie. He could not conspire with Esther in his further unmanning. He began to run water into the tub.
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br />   4

  Outside the bathroom door Esther was listening to the water filling the tub in which her husband was to be electrocuted, when who should appear at the top of stairs, frightening her for an instant, but E.G. Luckily the same water noise that had deafened her to his coming would have obscured the event from Augie.

  She rushed to him, pressed his elbow, whispered and pointed, and led him downstairs and back to the kitchen, where, though now distant from their intended prey, she continued to speak in an urgent undertone.

  “How did I know when he’d get here?”

  E.G. was snarling. “Why’d you let him start the bath already? I told you to wait till Ellie got home!”

  “He was ready to leave. He wants a divorce! He’s got a girl he wants to marry.”

  This information did not have the visible effect she anticipated. E.G. simply stared at his watch. “Here I am: my alibi is gone now.”

  In the kitchen they were directly under the bathroom, and the running water was more audible there than in the upstairs hallway. That the tub took a while to fill, what with the constricted flow through the corroded old pipes and faucets, was no longer to be deplored. Esther hated this house. Augie had lost the home she loved: for that alone he deserved punishment. But whether she could impose it upon him was another matter.

  She touched E.G.’s wrist. “I don’t think I can do it. I thought I could when it was only planning, but I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. It’s only hitting the wall. There’s no blood, no mess. He won’t even get hurt. We’ve been all over that.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  He slapped her face so violently that she felt the single blow as a series, each more savage than the last. For a moment of horror she assumed he would go on striking her till she was dead.

  But in fact the single blow had not been repeated: she was aware of that truth all the while she rushed towards doom in fantasy. It gave her a perverse satisfaction to believe that, so ready to murder someone of his own blood, E.G. was capable of equivalent treachery towards her, to whom he lacked any but an emotional connection.