ONE

It is hard to tell which is the worse experience—hurling yourself blindly at an unlocked door so that you fall through it flat on your face, or hurling yourself at it and finding that it is made of such tough material and barred so tightly that you only bounce back from it with a bloody nose.

I had both those experiences at that disastrous reunion. I threw myself at the door marked Iobacchoi, which turned out to be open, and the brothers picked me up and brushed my jacket off and straightened my tie and patted my back comfortingly; and I threw myself against the door marked Marian Claiborne and wound up with a bloody nose. In both cases I was being the Daniel Egan of yore. In both cases I damn well got what was coming to me.

I went to the reunion with the simple and straightforward and utterly childish idea of showing off Barbara before the shades of my past and especially before Marian. Once and for all, I told myself, I was going to get rid of this lump in my craw, and here was the perfect means of doing it. What I had not allowed for—and that was the childish part of it—was the nature of those shades I meant to impress, and, even more important, the passage of six years of time. During those six years I had endlessly chewed over my bitter memories, reducing them after a while to a fine, unrecognizable pulp which, however, managed to retain all its original bitterness. The trouble was that no one else at the reunion seemed to have been doing the same thing. What they had been doing was getting involved with careers, wives, children, mortgages, and parking problems. What they came to the reunion for was to escape all this for a brief session, and to get a nostalgic breath of that happy time when a man’s main worry was whether he’d have time for coffee before his nine o’clock class.

Above all, what they had been cultivating over the years was good manners. They were bathed in it, every one of them, the way a fine watch is bathed in oil before being sealed together. Their manners were as delicate and transparent as that oil, almost imperceptible to touch, taste, sight, and smell, but always keeping the works ticking away smoothly and accurately. And, perhaps like the oil, those manners were commercially produced, an essential product in that executive world where a man is gauged not so much by what he does as by how well the men around him like the way he does it. But whatever their cause, their effect was to defeat me. The brothers removed the chip from my shoulder, not by knocking it off, not by lifting it off gently, but by simply suggesting that it was never there in the first place.

A perfect example of that was the way the subject of Ben Gennaro was handled. It was inevitable among the various groups I joined in conversational play that Ben’s name should slip out. He was, after all, not only the conversation piece of Iobacchoi itself, but even of the men from other fraternities who drifted in to renew auld acquaintance. Of all the University’s heroes for my generation he was the shining light, the nonpareil, and my presence there could not make anyone forget it, much as they all might have liked to while I was nearby.

But watching them handle this problem I had to admire them. Someone would unthinkingly say, “Do you remember Ben Gennaro in that Princeton game?” and there would be no embarrassed hush at the realization that I was standing there, no surreptitious nudges and frowns as cues to change the subject, but someone else would say casually, “Yes, and things have sure changed since then. What do you suppose was wrong with the team last fall?” and with that the conversational ship would be safely away from dangerous waters and out in calm seas again.

It was different with Marian Claiborne. Oh, much different. I came face to face with her at the worst possible time anyhow. Separated from Barbara, watching her from a distance as she made her conquests, I dared myself to go up those stairs and enter the room Ben and I had shared. Dared myself to walk into that room and get it over with, see with my own eyes that the dead past had buried the dead, know that the slate was washed clean by time if by nothing else.

I got to the top of the stairs and I froze there. The corridor to the door was empty and silent waiting for me to walk it. The door was closed waiting for me to open it, and I stood frozen like a man who faces the long corridor to the electric chair. I knew with absolute conviction that if I opened that bedroom door the body of Ben Gennaro would be lying stretched out on the bed near the window, that it would slowly sit up and face me with sightless eyes and say, “Hey, Danny, take a look at this Shakespeare assignment, will you?” and I would be helpless before it. I knew at the same time that this could not be, that it was a nightmare, a false vision, a matter of the nerves taking command of the intellect, but there was nothing the intellect could do about it. I had the sweating horrors, astonished that I did, but suffering them in their worst form. I never needed Barbara more than I did then. Her touch was the warm, living present releasing me from the cold, dead past; it allowed me, at least, to turn and go down those stairs away from the horror, and it was at that perilous moment that I came face to face with the Claibornes. And it was then, for the first time in my life, that I saw how much Marian resembled Ben. So much so that she might have been, not merely his sister, but his small, beautiful twin.

She was still beautiful. A little thinner, perhaps, a little more sleek, but if she could stand the test of being close to Barbara without having her light dimmed, it meant that the passing years had been very kind. The difference between her and Barbara was a qualitative one: she glittered where Barbara glowed, and that is a difference of kind, not degree. And she still had the impact on me that she had always had from the first time I had ever seen her. Lorna Doone come to life but now the lady of the manor. It was inevitable that that book with its warped, red-stained pages should come to my mind then. I thought of it, and I had a good look at myself as the romantic bungler in the sensible world, the callous-handed clown who had bogged down in a romantic slough six years before while the rest of the show passed him by. Never look back, said an eminent philosopher and baseball pitcher named Satchel Paige; something may be gaining on you. Well, I looked back anyhow, and I saw that nothing was gaining on me because it had all gone by. I was all by myself out there in the middle of nowhere, having proven nothing by my gallant stand except that when some people get a proper kick in the teeth from the hero they worship and the girl they love they will pull up short in the traces like badly bred horses with more sensitivity than stamina. I had been proving something for six years, and all I had to show for it was Barbara. And I did not even have her completely.

So I faced Marian with anger at what she and her brother and her husband had done to me, and with despair at myself for having allowed it to be done, and with bewilderment as to what I myself could do about it, now that I saw all this with some clarity. Then the well-oiled manners went to work. I did not approach her, it was she and Claiborne who approached me, who made the introductions, who took, each of them, the proper victim to work on, Barbara for him, me for Marian, a brief restoration to me of my ancient rights so that Claiborne could enjoy his present ones.

We were alone, Marian and I, we talked, we were close together, and her scent reminded me of the scent in my childhood room when her letters would arrive to be opened behind a locked door. Yes, she said, the family was well as far as she knew. No, she hardly ever visited Maartenskill, it was such a long trip. And then the anger took over completely in me, uncalled for, impolitic, and genuine, because of all the past that I had been forced to abandon, the part that hurt the most to give up had been the Gennaros of Maartenskill and their home and their affection, and here was this fine, sleek woman who had abandoned all that gladly and willingly, erasing from her life the people who loved her best.

I said: “It isn’t that much of a trip home. You never worried about traveling far and fast when you were running around in those cars your father gave you.”

Marian smiled Ben’s little smile at me. “Would you mind doing me a favor?” she said sweetly. “Please try not to be tiresome.”

Call a man anything. Call him liar or thief or murderer. But do not, for God’s sake, call him tiresome.

“I’ll do you that favor,” I said. “It was just that I couldn’t help remembering how Aldo used to call you the queen of the Gennaros. Under the circumstances, don’t you think a little noblesse oblige is in order?”

“And don’t you think,” said Marian, “that my family is quite capable of handling its own affairs? They also happen to know something that you probably don’t. Noel is in the State Department now. He’s doing well for himself, he’ll do better, and my job is to help him in that. It doesn’t leave much time for personal interests. And if you don’t understand what I mean, you don’t know very much about life in the State Department.”

“No, but I’m glad to learn. I’ve always been curious to get a peek behind the curtain. How do you help him?”

“Oh, by seeing to it that the right people are our guests, and by making sure that today’s guests are tomorrow’s friends. If this sounds terribly trifling in the face of our national problems, you really ought to come out of dreamland and look around. It happens to be the way that public careers are made.”

“Public careers such as what? Don’t tell me that Noel’s going to be our next Secretary of State.”

There was no jarring her loose from that cool and sweet-scented poise. “No,” she said, “he won’t be the next Secretary or the one after that. But some day he will be an ambassador.”

“At the Court of St. James, naturally.”

“Not at first. Eventually he may be.”

From the way she said it I knew that only a reckless gambler would bet against its being made to happen. Noel Claiborne would be a winner because that was what she wanted. She and Ben had always gotten what they wanted.

“And speaking of families,” she said, because what she wanted now was to pay me off in kind, “I hear that you’ve cut yourself off completely from yours. You’re being terribly unkind to them, aren’t you? I see Peg now and then when I’m in New York, and she seems to miss you a great deal.”

“I’m sorry about that. I don’t have to tell you that I’ve got good reasons for going my own way. However, ingratitude isn’t one of them.”

“As it is in my case? Of course not. Your reason would be more like that pretty thing you brought along here. She’s really very attractive, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said, and from her tone I knew that the venom was flowing freely now.

“And isn’t it remarkable how much she’s like all those girls Ben used to go for? You know the ones I mean, don’t you? So terribly young and exotic. So ripe and ready. And married, too. It’s so much safer when they’re married. So much more fun for everybody.”

It was Barbara who had left me open to that. All afternoon she had blithely played the role I had asked her to play, being my devoted wife. Then when introductions to the Claibornes were being made—the Claibornes, of all people—she had willfully and unpredictably let the cat out of the bag. I couldn’t blame her for it, anyone can become bored with a juvenile deceit after a while, but this particular cat let loose had sharper and more painful claws than she could have imagined.

“Yes,” I said to Marian, “it can be more fun. Not only because they’re married, but because you know they’re not out for the main chance when they’re with you. It’s a refreshing experience. It’s different from some I’ve had.”

“Such as the unfortunate one with me?”

“Such as that one. But I’m surprised you sound so bitter about it. After all, we’re each like Ben in our own way: I in the kind of women I like, you in gunning for the main chance. Put us together and we’d make a pretty fair Ben between us, don’t you think?”

“No,” she said, “I don’t. Not for a minute, much as you’d like to think so yourself. My God, you haven’t changed at all, have you? Still the big moralist, the apostle of righteousness, the kind of fool who actually got himself to believe that there was something noble about being a common laborer. It’s incredible that anyone in this day and age could reek with such righteousness. And, since your pretty friend isn’t here to be offended by it, I don’t mind telling you that it’s sickening to have you moralizing all over the place while you’re getting ready to go to bed with her. If you think back you’ll remember that Ben was no hypocrite about his little affairs. He didn’t preach sermons during the day and then sleep with someone else’s wife at night. He didn’t try to have the best of both worlds. As an admirer of his tastes, you ought to follow his example to the limit sometimes. Either put on a cassock, Mr. Egan, or get off your high horse.”

“And you think that would be his opinion, too?”

“Take my word for it, it would be.”

I said: “The night he died—have you ever wondered what we were fighting about that night?”

“Will you please keep your voice down? Do you want everybody to hear this?”

“All right, I’ll keep my voice down. But you haven’t answered the question. Haven’t you wondered what that fight was about? Do you have any idea what it might have been about?”

“No, I don’t. And I don’t see why it would matter one way or the other. All I ever wondered was where you got the courage to fight with him about anything. You never stood up to him before in your life.”

“That’s right. Because he never guessed before what little sister and I had been doing up in the old hayloft. Not to mention the maid’s room right in his own home.”

From the look on her face Ben’s ghost might have been standing there before her.

“Guessed?” she said sharply, and then hearing the word ring out over all the noise in that crowded lobby, she clapped her hand to her mouth. When she removed it, her face was fixed in tranquillity again. Pale but emotionless, it was the mask of the hostess at the ambassadorial function. But I learned then that a voice lowered to a whisper can still have a penetrating fury. “He never guessed,” she said. “He was told. You told him, didn’t you?”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t. It happened to come out while he was moralizing all over the place.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that he was telling me how much he appreciated my being Sir Galahad, how much he admired my chivalrous ways. He said that he entrusted you to my tender care when he went into the Air Force because he was afraid you and I would wind up in the hay together, and he was, in his own cute way, making me stand guard over myself. And that was when he guessed what really did happen. He couldn’t help it, the way it must have been written all over me, and he was already on his way to your hotel room to drag you out of bed and face you with it when I stopped him. Yes, like a damned fool, I argued with him, lied about it, did everything I could to stop him. For all his talk about sending you to a convent, do you know what would really have happened if he got the truth out of you?”

“He would have killed you.”

“No, people like Ben don’t go around killing anybody. It isn’t practical, it isn’t what the main chance leads to. What would have happened is that you and I would have been married the next day. Married and liking it.”

“Why? Because he told us to? Do you think I was as afraid of him as you were?”

“It had nothing to do with being afraid. It had to do with knowing who the boss was, who the man in charge was, just the way your whole family knew it, and Noel Claiborne knew it, and everyone else who was ever close to Ben knew it. He was in charge, do you understand? He was always in charge. He always intended to be. That’s why he picked me out as the smiling bridegroom, because then he could run both our lives for us with half the trouble. And that’s why you were glad of it when he died—”

“That’s monstrous!”

“It’s the truth and you know it. You were glad when he died, because for the first time in your life you could be your own woman. And that’s why you wore such deep mourning and went to church every day—because you were ashamed of how glad you were.”

“I see,” Marian said tensely. “One way of getting rid of your own shame at letting him die is to pin it on someone else, and I’m the right one for it. You’re in a bad state if you have to go that far to make peace with yourself. You have no idea what a bad state you’re in. I’d advise a psychiatrist for a case like yours.”

“Oh, why the hell don’t you face the truth for this one time in your life? You know how Ben despised Noel. Do you think you’d ever have a chance to play the ambassador’s wife if Ben were alive today?”

“Aren’t you confusing yourself with Noel when you ask that? I never remember Noel’s being a spiritless pup always ready to lick Ben’s hand.”

I had hurled myself at her, I had my bloody nose, and it was the misery of knowing it that made me use the most unfair weapon I could in a final blow. It was a weapon delivered into my hand by fate, because over her shoulder I could see Claiborne and Barbara coming through the doorway into the lobby, and she couldn’t.

“I can’t deny that,” I told her. “If Noel had any vice, it was no more than a roving eye for the ladies. My ladies especially. And I don’t suppose he’s changed any, has he? What do you want to bet that when he shows up again he’ll have an arm tight around my latest one. Valor has always been the better part of his discretion, hasn’t it?”

She was quick at getting meanings, Marian Claiborne, and she knew her husband. She turned and saw what I had been looking at, and that moment was all the triumph I could claim in my war against the shades of my past.

And I knew then that it wasn’t enough.