SEVEN

It was Ethel Waterhouse who woke me late the next morning, and when I bestirred myself to answer her knock on the door and her cry of “Telephone call, Mr. Egan,” which could be heard clear to the waterfront, I found that every part of me was shot full of aches and pains. I got out of bed with great care, pulled on a robe, and opened the door.

“Call from whom?” I said with a grammar and diction my uncle would have applauded, and my landlady said, “Don’t mind if I come in, do you?” and came in, her cigarette holder cocked at a jaunty angle, a pair of newspapers under her arm, the Times I had delivered to me every morning and her tabloid. She pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her blobby nose with her thumb and surveyed me closely. “You look all right,” she said, and she made it sound like an accusation.

“Why shouldn’t I?” I said. “Who called me?”

“Only you got black and blue on your shoulders there. You ought to take a nice hot shower for that. And put a towel down on that floor when you do. There’s leak blisters on the ceiling downstairs, and it’s coming from right up here. It was Mrs. Thwaite called.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Thwaite. She said it was your sister.”

Then I realized that, of course, it was my sister, but it was the first time I had ever heard her spoken of by her married name, or had even thought of her by that name.

“What did she want?” I said.

“She wanted to talk to you, and I told her you’d call back. I guess she saw about you in the papers. Here, take a look.” She spread the newspapers out on the bed and bent over them to join me in reading the history I had made. “I don’t know why you did it though,” she said. “I would have let the old bum kill himself twenty times over.”

I had not made much history. In the tabloid the story about the Karen Voorhees was on page five along with a picture of Mrs. Pereira. The photographers had not waited in vain; her expression when they recorded it was almost as gratifying as her husband’s had been when unveiled to me. And in the story itself I was only a paragraph after During the efforts to—. I was an even smaller paragraph in the Times after In the course of—and the sole difference between the two stories was that the tabloid saw Avery as workman run amok while the Times viewed him as crazed shipyard employee. Neither of them said anything about the cause of Avery’s fit which was something I comprehended only too well. For that matter, even a case-hardened reporter who got an unexpected look at Pereira’s face would readily understand why a half-drunken, addled specimen like Avery would go overboard at the sight of it. It was all that anyone flirting with the d.t.’s would need to finish him off.

I returned her paper to my landlady, and she said, “You can keep it if you want. Maybe you’d like to cut out that clipping and save it.”

“No, that’s all right. Does Barbara know about this?”

“Are you kidding? We been the busy little beavers here all morning over it. They had a cop here to talk with her about it, and a lady from the hospital, and the insurance man—”

“Insurance man? What for?”

“The yard sent him. And you’ll never guess what. They gave her three hundred dollars for signing a paper that she won’t make any claims against them. I told her not to do it, but she did it anyhow. The way I see it, anybody wants to give you money to sign a paper, you get a lawyer first and you’ll get a lot more. But you know how she is, she’s like a big baby. I guess she figured that trading the old buzzard in for three hundred dollars is a bargain, no matter what. Do you have to pull that window shade down all the way? Let it up a little bit and then you won’t bust the spring in the roller again. Those rollers cost money.”

“Sure they do. Is Barbara in her room now?”

“No, she went out. I think she went shopping downtown, and from the look in her eye that money ain’t going to last long. Well, what do kids know about money? Anyhow, she’ll be back soon enough. We’re going over to the hospital in a taxi so she can sign some papers about keeping him there. Of course, it’s got to be a taxi. I told her I could get her there by subway just fine, but she’s only looking for ways to spend every cent she can.”

I said: “You can stop worrying about it. I’ll drive her over there myself.”

Ethel’s face sagged with disappointment. “You’ll never make it back to work on time. She’s got to be at the hospital at one o’clock.”

“I’ll make it on time. When did you plan to leave?”

“Half past twelve. But it’s no trouble for me. I don’t mind going along one bit.”

“That’s nice of you, but I’ll take care of it. When Barbara comes in tell her I’ll be ready at twelve thirty.”

“If that’s what you want,” Ethel said, and flounced out with ponderous disapproval. But I knew she would faithfully give the message to Barbara. She lived behind the curtains of her front window, followed everyone’s comings and goings, and meddled in them avidly. Not that she didn’t mean well, as Joe Guion had once remarked about her, because she sure as hell didn’t. Her trouble was that she was of the wrong nationality. From my uncle Charles’ description of his youthful days in Paris, Ethel should have been a Parisienne concierge named Germaine. It was her bad luck that Brooklyn wasn’t Paris.

At twelve thirty I left my room just as Barbara was coming out of hers. It was the first time we were together since the past Sunday morning, and while I was prepared for her bruises it shocked me to see the extent of them. Behind the dark glasses one eye was still swollen and half shut, the cheek below it puffy and discolored, and the corner of her mouth drawn out of shape. When I looked at all that I wondered again, as I had a dozen times since awakening, about the wild, uncalled-for impulse that led me to save Avery’s worthless life. It was a mystery to me, that impulse, now more so than ever.

Barbara put her hand to her cheek and said, “Don’t,” and I forced myself to turn my eyes away from the damages.

I said: “Ethel told you about my driving you to the hospital, didn’t she?”

“Yes, but you don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

She looked at my bandaged hand. “Can you drive with your hand like that?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it. The doctor took a splinter out of it, and he wanted to show what an artist he was.”

“It must have been some splinter.”

“Well, call it a small piece of lumber. Come on, no use hanging around talking. We might as well be on our way.”

She was silent during the ride, sitting beside me with her eyes fixed straight ahead. Only once did she break the silence, and that was to suddenly say, “I don’t have to see him, do I?” and when I said, “No, not if you don’t want to,” she nodded and went back to her own thoughts.

I knew my way around Brooklyn well enough by now to easily find the general location of the hospital, but, as it turned out, Brooklyn State Hospital where mental cases were treated was only one of a whole city of hospitals behind a seemingly endless iron fence, and I made a couple of false landings before I finally hit the right building. Then I idled my time away in an arena-sized waiting room while Barbara was led off by a clerk to an office. It was a sad waiting room, not so much because of its dreary institutional look as because of the people waiting in it. Negroes and Puerto Ricans were in a majority, but everyone there had the same look about him as he sat on those hard benches. A hunched-forward look, elbows resting on knees and hands clasped. A look of resignation which said, Yes, I know, Jack. It’s tough to be a human being, it’s hard to be Homo sapiens, but what can you do when it’s the only game in town?

One of the figures there was familiar. Gaunt, white-haired, dressed neatly in a jacket and tie, peering at me through thick glasses. I went over to Samuel Fisher and we shook hands. There was no longer any reason not to.

“I suppose you saw it in the papers,” I said.

“Yes, early this morning. I’ve been waiting since then to see him and I’m still tangled in red tape. If they got rid of some of this clerical help and hired more doctors and nurses they’d do better for themselves.” He looked at my hand. “You weren’t hurt badly, I hope.”

“No, it’s just a scratch. I was lucky.”

“Very lucky. I’m glad of that. After I spoke to you the other day I was sure I had failed completely to make my point. It was a comfort to find that I hadn’t.”

There was something breathtaking about such self-assurance. I said: “I hate to deprive you of your comfort, but I’m afraid your arguments had nothing to do with the case. They never entered my mind when I grabbed him.”

“They didn’t have to. They must have been there all along. The properly dutiful man doesn’t have to call on his sense of duty every step he takes. He acts in a godly manner with total unselfconsciousness.”

“Well, it’s nice to be called godly, but don’t you think that it’s the human instinct to save a man’s life if you can?”

“Yes. That is the God in man. It shows especially when love is not part of the act. That’s what I was trying to tell you, and what I was afraid you failed to understand.”

I said: “You seem determined to drag God into this. Suppose I let Avery fall? After all, I had every right to, didn’t I, considering what he is and the risk I was taking for him. In that case, would you say that it was Satan guiding me?”

“I’ve already told you that there is no such thing as Satan, Mr. Egan. There is only the absence of God which leaves the mortal flesh weak and afraid.”

“Which just about covers most of humanity.”

“It may, but that is not our concern. Sooner or later, every man is tested on earth so that he may be judged in heaven. And the test is only of performance, not of the motives for it. After all, said Augustine, what matters the motive if the deed is good.” Fisher nodded at the institutional walls around us. “And you can rest assured that your deed was good, even though Michael did come to this in the end.”

“Would he think so?”

“It doesn’t matter what he would think. Life itself is the only thing with meaning. No man has the right to make himself meaningless. That is the ultimate blasphemy.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “If I loved someone who wound up in here—”

“Mr. Egan,” Fisher cut in sharply, “do you think I have any more love for Michael than you do?”

“That was my impression.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” he said with flat finality, and since it was clear from his tone that he would just as soon drop the whole subject of Avery I let it drop and we talked of other things. In truth, as Fisher would have pointed out had I raised the question, it was not his duty to either talk about Avery or love him; it was his duty to visit him in his sickness, and he was doing it. There was something admirable in that attitude, if for no other reason than that it was stripped of all cant and hypocrisy. And while it was an attitude which might seem to me cold and forbidding, that could be because I was used to living neck deep in our warm, oozy, national morass of cant and hypocrisy, and was not quite prepared to meet the cold, forbidding Puritan bedrock long buried out of sight under it.

When Barbara reappeared in the waiting room I didn’t bother to introduce her to Fisher, but said good-bye to him, said, yes, I would visit him again sometime and bring my friend with me, and led her out of the building. This was not rudeness on my part—my manners can be as good as the next one’s when the occasion calls for it—but I could hardly see Barbara’s stubbing her toe on the Puritan bedrock at this particular time, and, possibly, hearing the clarion call to duty. Women are not always averse to martyring themselves for their husbands, especially husbands who are suddenly and totally dependent on them, and it was not part of my plan that Barbara should fall into this trap or even come near it. That was the last thing I wanted.

When we were settled in the car and on our way I said to her, “How did it go?”

“All right.”

“Did you sign the papers?”

“Yes.”

“What were they about?”

“About putting him on charity. They asked me what money I had, and I said only some of the insurance money, so they put him on charity.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all. But they said he won’t ever come out of there. He’s very sick. That’s what they kept saying—sick. I know they mean crazy. Why don’t they come right out and say it, if that’s what they mean?”

“Because they’re being polite,” I said, and that was all that passed between us until we were home and I asked her on the stairway if she wanted me to come into her room and talk to her awhile. She looked as if she needed something to get her out of her mood. She seemed to be as remote from everything going on around her as a sleepwalker.

“No,” she said, “I’d rather be by myself.”

“All right, but if you want to talk things over I’ll leave my door open. I don’t have to go on the job for an hour yet.”

I went into my room and sat down on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette with great deliberation. I had a lot to think over; I didn’t want any of that thinking affected by the tension I was under or the excitement rising in me. Questions of practical moment had to be faced at last. Questions of how one arranges an anulment, when does it take effect. Of how soon Barbara would be ready to talk over arrangements with me. Of what expenditures arise in marriage, and what income there would be to meet them. A whole series of earthy questions that had to be considered, while all the time I found my thoughts returning only to my immediate paradisaic situation, examining it, savoring it.

Then this is what happened.

Barbara came into my room still wearing the dark glasses. In one hand she carried a large cardboard box tied around with string. In the other she carried a brand-new suitcase, a handsome piece of lightweight luggage which almost matched the new summer suit she was wearing, a suit I had never seen her wear before. Her very high-heeled shoes were also new. On her hands she wore new, white lace cotton gloves. Over her arm hung a shining new, white plastic handbag. On her head was a new and unfamiliar summer hat, the whisper of a hat, made of a small twist of cloth and some veiling. And when I saw her I said immediately, inwardly, grotesquely out of my past experience, My God, do they always have to put on a costume for the big act!

She set the cardboard box and the suitcase on the floor and opened the suitcase. It was almost empty; obviously, whatever she used to wear for Avery was not fit to go into it. She opened my closet door, took out the dresses and shoes from the closet, and thrust them into the suitcase. She was careless about this. She was careless about most of her possessions, but that, I had known all along, was something that would be easily remedied by the School for Wives I was running.

When she turned to the dresser and started tossing her cosmetics, the unnecessary aids to her beauty, on top of the dresses I said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Away.”

“Where to?”

“That’s not your business.”

She remained serene and untouched, she kept tightening the caps on lipstick cases, checking others to see if they were empty, tossing the chosen ones into the suitcase. I stayed where I was. I had the feeling that any move I made would put her to flight the way it would a doe warily visiting a drinking hole. The weapons I must use were argument, persuasion, appeal, and they came to my mind only as the most dreadful clichés, the stale phrases made to blight every such scene as this. Under no conditions, I told myself, must I use them. At least that much of my self-respect could be salvaged.

But we belong to each other.

Don’t you think you owe me a little more than this?

You can’t do this to me.

Ah, but she could. In fact, she was doing it while I watched.

“Are you going home?” I asked politely. “I mean, back to Florida?”

“I wouldn’t ever go there. I hate it there.”

“Well, don’t make a mystery of it. You can tell me where you’re going. I’m not trying to stop you, am I?”

“Oh, if you must know, I’m going to Indiana.”

“Indiana? Who do you know in Indiana?”

“Nobody.”

“All right, we’ve cleared up that much. You’re going to Indiana, but you don’t know anybody there. You’re just going to see the scenery. After all, everybody says there’s nothing like Indiana in the summer.”

“Well, if you don’t believe me,” she said. She stopped packing the suitcase, opened the handbag, and thrust an envelope at me. Bus tickets were in it, the complicated string of them that led, city by city, away from me to some place called Fairmount, Indiana. She let me look my fill at the tickets, then took them from me, carefully fitted them into the envelope, and put it back into the handbag. “I don’t really know anybody there,” she said. “I just have to go there. And I can’t tell you about it, because you’ll only make fun of me.”

“No, I won’t, Barbara. I’m not in the mood for fun.”

“I’m sorry about that, Egan. Honest to God, I am. But it’s not my fault, is it? I tried to tell you all along how it was.”

“Is that what you were trying to tell me? I got a different message altogether.”

“Because you wanted to. I guess you can’t help it, Egan, because that’s the way you are. You’re always telling somebody what you want, and then you think that’s what she wants, too, but it isn’t. Like getting married. I don’t want to get married to you. I’m married already, and that’s enough.”

“Oh,” I said, “then it’s what happened at the motel, wasn’t it? But I told you about that. I tried to explain to you—”

“You did explain. You did it ten times over, so please don’t do it now, Egan. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Was it that bad?”

“I told you I don’t want to talk about it. Anyhow, if you think that’s why I’m going away, it’s not.”

“Then why are you going? And why to some place like Fairmount, Indiana? You can tell me, Barbara. I swear I won’t make fun of you.”

“Oh, all right. It’s because that’s where Jimmy Dean is. You know about him, don’t you?”

“No,” I said. And then I said incredulously, “You mean the actor? The one who was killed a couple of years ago?”

“Yes. That’s where he’s buried, and I have to go and see it. Don’t look at me like that, Egan. You just don’t know how it is.”

But I did. And now I knew what I had cost her in that motel. She had been a Vestal Virgin dedicated to her moldering god, and I had spoiled that for her. The dedication was still there, but not the virgin. What was left now was an outsider, a member of a necrophiliac fan club traveling under false colors. So does each of us betray our god, one way or the other, whether it is Jimmy Dean or Ben Gennaro or whatever savage idol Michael Avery worshiped. The one God that seemed invulnerable to betrayal was Samuel Fisher’s, because He welcomed it. That takes real omniscience.

I said to Barbara: “Will you come back here afterward? Should I wait for you?”

She seemed grateful that I made no more of her revelation than that. “No,” she said, “I’m not coming back.” Then, emboldened to complete frankness, she confided, “I’m going to Hollywood afterward. I mean, from Indiana.”

“To be an actress?”

“Maybe. Do you think I could be?”

“It’s a big gamble.”

“I know, but I’d like to try. It wouldn’t hurt to try, would it?”

“Look,” I said, “you try anything you want, as long as it’s not illegal, immoral, or fattening. Don’t let anybody talk you out of it.”

“That’s how I feel,” she said, and she smiled at me, the smile lopsided on her swollen lips. “You know, Egan, you’re really an awful nice guy.”

“Not as much as you think. I ought to drive you over to the bus terminal, but I won’t. I don’t feel I’m quite up to it. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, that’s all right.”

She picked up the suitcase and the cardboard box and went to the door. She hesitated there and then turned to me, giving me my last look at that bruised, innocent face alight with the glory of her mission.

“Well,” she said, “so long, Egan.”

I heard her go step by step down the stairway, the suitcase bumping the wall at the landings. Each flight down, the footsteps were a little fainter, the sound of the suitcase a little farther away. From the hallway on the ground floor I could hear no sound at all.

Click went the door, and she was gone.