7

The opening scene, the earliest part, was vivid enough. It was the end, the weeks they had spent in the apartment on Capitol Avenue, that was the hardest to remember. He moved his mind back into this shadowy area of disjointed greetings and good-byes, trying to isolate the scenes, establish the sequence. Sitting by the rock in the warm sun, holding the cool yellow drink in his hand, he tried to put things together, one by one.

First there was that night, that first time, in the borrowed apartment on Sixty-eighth Street, when her love had seemed almost terrifyingly urgent. “Hallelujah!” she had cried, and afterwards, as he held her in his arms, she had sobbed long, deep, grateful sobs. And then, that December night in the motel outside Reno, after they had been married for the first time, then it had been wonderful, too, with no hint of what was to come later. The next day they had driven south, intending to go to Las Vegas, but they had changed their minds and driven to Yosemite instead.

He remembered Yosemite. How many days had it been? Less than a week, but it had been their one true honeymoon. The other one, the longer one, that they called their honeymoon, had been a different story. Somewhere, he thought, between those days at Yosemite and the trip to the West Indies, then home to the apartment, everything had changed.

He remembered Yosemite Valley covered with snow, cold and jewel-like, the tall cliffs rising abruptly from the valley floor, frozen waterfalls sparkling in the sun. He remembered Inspiration Point, Mirror Lake—poetic names—and the huge old Ahwanee Hotel, where they had sat, with their shoes off, in front of the fire. They had taken long walks in the snow every afternoon, and once, when a swift flurry of snow descended, it had blinded them and they had stood very still in the centre of it. He had been able to see only her eyes. Laughing, thinking that they were lost for ever in the snowstorm, he had pulled his heavy coat around her and they sank down together in the snow. “We’re invisible,” Helen had whispered, and he had kissed her with the snow blowing in her hair. The snow continued to fall. Later, she said, “If the Donner party had done this, they wouldn’t have died crossing the Sierras. They could have kissed each other warm. Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Neither am I. Isn’t this a wonderful way to freeze to death?”

And they laughed as they pictured how they would look if a rescue party should happen to stumble upon them. (“I shall insist they put us in a single stretcher,” Helen said.) After a while, the snow stopped, and they stood up and walked back to the hotel, cold now, and wet, but happy.

In the mornings they slept late. “Isn’t it marvellous to think that no one knows where we are?” Helen said. They had no idea, during this time, that on either side of them, in California and Connecticut, plans were spinning out, arrangements were being made for a dignified wedding, a dignified honeymoon, a dignified life. The Keefe and Warren families were busily deciding how to deal with their erring children, figuring ways to make the best out of a bad situation.

In the evenings, they ate dinner in the big high-ceilinged dining-room and went to bed early. “No two people deserve to be as happy as we are,” Helen had said, and the words echoed now, prophetically.

But it had to end. They couldn’t stay in Yosemite Valley for ever; they had to go back to face whatever had to be faced with their families. On the last afternoon, walking in the snow, they talked’ about it.

“Well, we’re big enough, aren’t we?” Helen said. “We can stand right up to them—and tell them. Tell them how much we love each other, the things we plan to do. We can convince them, can’t we, that we’re old enough to know what we’re doing?”

“It won’t be easy,” Jimmy said. “Remember how they acted on the phone. They still think of us as children.”

“It will be easy if we just stand side by side and refuse to be cowed by them!”

“I ought to warn you about my family,” Jimmy said.

“What about them?”

“Well, it’s hard to explain. They’re Yankees—they don’t make mistakes. At least they don’t admit to making mistakes. There’s only one member of the Keefe family who ever made a mistake—and that was the end of her.”

“Who was that?”

“My Cousin Harriet—my father’s brother’s daughter. Her picture has been turned against the wall!”

“What in the world did she do?”

Jimmy laughed. “Promise you’ll never tell a soul? Everybody knows about it, of course, but it’s just never mentioned. She married a cop.”

Helen was silent. “What did they do?” she asked, after a moment.

“They were noble. They’re always noble! They tried to reason with her, and when she wouldn’t be reasoned with, they cut her off.”

“Cut her off?”

“Yes. Severed relations. Pretended she was never born. Oh, my mother tried—she had them to dinner once, Harriet and her policeman. I remember the only thing she said about him.”

“What was that?”

“She said, ‘I imagine he looks quite natural in his uniform!’”

“Ah—”

“You see, that’s the way they are. No mistakes tolerated. They have misfortunes, of course, like when somebody gets bumped out of Yale. Things happen that inconvenience them. But when those things happen, it’s a sort of challenge. To see if they can turn the misfortune into an advantage. Do you see what I mean? Right now, they may be terribly distressed about you and me. We didn’t get married the Keefe way. They’ll have to figure out a way to make it a good thing.”

“You mean,” Helen said slowly, “that you marrying me is like—Harriet, marrying a policeman?”

“Oh, no, it’s not that bad.” Jimmy took her hand. “They’ll like you. But they’ll have to go through this ‘working-things-out’ process first. They’ll have to get together, like a grand jury—all of them, all the cousins and uncles and aunts—and work it out. The next step will probably be a party. You’ll have to be introduced to Somerville. Mother will have a tea for you, and you’ll have to shake hands with Aunt Marian and Aunt Celeste and the Hartford cousins and the upstate cousins and my Great-aunt Kathleen, whose name—don’t laugh—is Mrs. W. W. Doubleday …”

Helen giggled softly. “I do want to meet Mrs. W. W. Doubleday,” she said.

“You will.” He smiled at her. “You’ll meet all of them. I’m afraid you’ll sort of have to go along with it.”

“Why?” she asked suddenly.

“Because”—Jimmy laughed—“because they never make mistakes. They haven’t made a mistake for four generations. That’s why.” He swung her hand in his and they started back to the hotel.

That night, after dinner, instead of going directly upstairs, Jimmy suggested that they go into the bar for a drink. Helen had hesitated at first, but when Jimmy urged her, she consented. After all, he said, they were leaving in the morning to go back and face the music. He needed something, a drink, to strengthen him for that ordeal. Sitting in the bar, which was decorated to resemble a Western mining town, they talked about it some more. He tried again to explain about his father, who lived by rules laid down by his own father, and by his grandfather before that. And about his mother, Melise, who fancied herself a free agent, but who had lived long enough with the unwritten family laws to obey them always, and about Turner Ames, the lawyer, who counselled James Keefe, Sen., on everything, and about Miss Maitland, his father’s secretary, who understood the intricacies of the Keefe family operation far better than Jimmy’s mother did.

“But we’re ourselves,” Helen had said. “We can make our own rules, can’t we? Do we have to abide by theirs?”

“We can lead our own lives,” Jimmy said. “But we can’t fly in their faces too much. We ran off and got married—we broke a rule there. But we can’t do that sort of thing often. That’s all I mean.” He smiled at her, but her face remained worried.

“Can we live where we want?” she asked.

“Of course—as long as we can convince them that it’s the right place for us to live.”

“But why do we have to convince them?”

“Why should we antagonize them?”

“I don’t mean antagonize them,” Helen said. She stopped then, and smiled. “I don’t know what I mean,” she said. “I guess I just don’t want anyone to interfere with us, darling.”

“Don’t forget that I’m an only child …”

“Does that make a lot of difference?”

“Yes. It does, to them.” Then he told her what he had somehow not wanted to tell her before, though he had known that he must tell her some time. He had been trained to speak of wealth with modesty, or not at all. The richer you were, the poorer you pretended to be. It was known as “treating money tastefully.” If you could afford to buy a Cadillac, you bought a Ford, because it was more economical on gasoline. “There’s quite a bit of money involved,” he said slowly.

“Oh?”

“Yes. We can ignore it for a while. But some day, I suppose, it will pull us back.”

“Back to where?”

“Back to Somerville—where it is.” He sipped his drink thoughtfully.

“Is it—that much?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know—”

“A million dollars?”

“More than that, I think.”

“Two million?”

“Well,” he said, “of course I really don’t know. But when my grandfather died, the figure they printed in the paper was four and a half million.… That was in 1946.”

“Oh, my God,” she said. “That’s a lot. And it’s all—all going to be yours some day?”

“I’m the only child, you see …”

She was silent. “Oh, dear!” she said finally. “It scares me! It terrifies me. I wish you hadn’t told me.”

“Let’s have another drink.”

“No, no …”

“Come on. I’m sorry I told you if it worries you.”

“You have a drink. I’ll wait.”

“All right.” He signalled the waiter.

“I’m beginning to see what you mean,” Helen said later. “I suppose they’ll think I’m a gold digger …”

“No, they won’t. Not when they see how nice you are.”

“Harriet’s policeman,” she said. “Is that what they thought about him? That he was a conniver?”

“Well—”

“They did?”

“I guess some of the family thought that.”

“But she was—as you put it—‘cut off.’”

“Yes.”

“Poor Harriet,” she sighed. “Poor policeman!” She smiled a weary smile. “I feel I know them both so well already. Especially him. He and I are in the same boat.”

“Now, don’t say things like that. It’s not true.”

“If they don’t like me—”

“They will,” he said. “Of course they will! Darling, you’re the most wonderful girl in the world.”

“Am I?”

“Yes,” he said. “And do you know what I love most about you?”

“What?”

“It’s—well, it’s your niceness. You’re so different from any girl I’ve ever known. You’ve got this wonderful thing—this niceness. It’s everywhere—all about you, like a very nice perfume.”

“I love you, too,” she said softly.

He smiled broadly. “Then cheer up,” he said. “Have another drink, quick. Let’s have a party.”

“Let’s go upstairs now—”

“One more—”

“All right.”

It was always with the third drink that his spirits rose. That night in Yosemite, drinking the third drink, he began talking gaily, confidently, about the future. “I only told you about the money to explain why they take a proprietary interest in what I do,” he said. “And to explain why they’ll take the same kind of interest in you. Which you mustn’t mind. They’re really quite nice people when you get to know them. Dad’s a little Solomon Sobersides sometimes, but he’s a good sport. But don’t get the wrong idea,” he said earnestly. “Don’t think that I’m just going to sit around all my life and wait for that money. I want to get a job of my own and make my own way. I’ve got to—in order to prove to myself that I can. Do you see? That’s why I married you.”

“And I’ll help you all I can,” she said softly. And then, as he lifted his glass and drained it, she said, in a breathless voice, “Please don’t have another drink!”

“Why not?” he said lightly. “Clears my head. Makes me see stars in your eyes.”

“My eyes don’t have stars!”

“Yes, they do,” he said, holding his face close to hers. “They do, they do! There’s the Pleiades, Electra, Merope … the Southern Cross …”

“Please, Jimmy.”

“‘Please, Jimmy,’” he mimicked. “Just one more. So I can see the whole damn’ Milky Way …”

Much later, when they got up to leave, he knew he was a little tight. But he felt extravagant and courageous. Helen seemed nervous and withdrawn, and he laughed at her and circled her waist with his arm. When they got to their room, he closed the door, and pulled her to him quickly and roughly in the darkness. For the first time, she drew away from him. He reached for her again. “Please. No,” she whispered.

“Helen—”

“Please, Jimmy—I’m afraid.”

“Of the money? Forget about that.”

“Not that!”

“Of me?” He held her tightly, laughing softly, searching for her mouth with his lips. Finally, she seemed to submit to him, let him kiss her and pull her down beside him on the bed. “Isn’t this better than a snowdrift?” he asked her.

Then, all at once, she had cried out sharply. She gripped his shoulders hard with her fingers and began to sob. He held her as her whole body shook violently against him.

“What’s the matter?” he had asked her. “Darling, what’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer him. He turned on the light then and sat there, stroking her hair. “Please, darling,” he said. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you, Helen?”

“I don’t know!” she cried.

“Please tell me what it is.”

He stood up and lighted two cigarettes. He gave one to Helen and sat down again, in the chair, while she lay, huddled forlornly on the bed, still sobbing and holding the lighted cigarette in one trembling hand. “What is it?” he asked again. “What’s happened?”

“I saw a ghost,” she sobbed. “Forgive me. I saw a ghost …”

“What do you mean?”

“A boy,” she said. “A boy I knew.”

Then she told him. She had known a boy at Cal—she wouldn’t tell Jimmy his name. She had been in love with him. At least, she had thought so then. They had been unofficially engaged—he had given her his fraternity pin. To celebrate, they had gone to a dance—a big dance at the Mount Diablo Country Club. He had got quite drunk, and afterwards they had gone for a drive in his car. She had worn a blue scarf around her head, and they had driven, very fast, through the night in the open car. All at once, in the quiet hills above Alameda, he had stopped the car, opened the door, pulled her from the seat into the darkness, held the blue scarf tight around her throat, and raped her.

No one had suspected anything. He brought her back to the Pi Phi house and let her out at the door. She got out of the car, went up the steps, into the house, and went to bed. For nearly a week, she went to her classes as usual. He did not call; she did not see him again. Then, one morning, she didn’t wake up. Her room-mate became alarmed and called the house-mother; the house-mother called a doctor. The night before, quietly, automatically, after brushing her teeth and putting her hair in pin curls, Helen had swallowed twenty sleeping-pills, one by one. Helen’s mother had rushed over to Berkeley from the valley; when Helen recovered, she refused to give her mother any explanation. Her mother took her out of college, and, because she seemed anxious and preoccupied, decided that Helen had been studying too hard. Mrs. Warren wrote an indignant letter to the dean of women, complaining that the courses were too rigorous. Then she planned pleasant things for Helen to do—things that would get Helen’s mind off school. It had been Mrs. Warren’s idea for Helen to take a trip to New York. It was on that trip that she had met Jimmy.

Helen tried to explain it to him. “I don’t know what happened,” she said desperately. “All of a sudden, for a moment, my mind went back! Suddenly it wasn’t you any more. It was him! It was that night! It was like a vision, it was so real. I know you’re not like that—”

He didn’t answer her, but sat there, smoking. “I’ve never told anyone but you,” she said. “Please forgive me.” And then she said urgently, “It will be all right, won’t it? It won’t happen again, will it? Will it, Jimmy? Will you help me, Jimmy? It won’t happen—if you help me!”

She held out her hand, and he took it, feeling a small shiver run through her arm. She lay back and closed her eyes. How young we both are! Jimmy thought suddenly. Helen was only twenty-one; he was not much older. The hotel room all at once seemed immense and empty, strangely impersonal, and a great tug of loneliness gripped him—loneliness, homesickness, a feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar place. Of being a little boy again, lost, frightened, running down a dark street, and being faced with the task of caring for another lost and frightened human being. Ashamed, he recognized the little-boy urge—to run away and leave her there.

But he sat there, holding her hand, smoking, knowing that if he got back into bed he would be unable to sleep. Knowing nothing else.

Claire and Blazer were clambering across the rocks. “I’m the king of the castle!” Claire chanted. “And you’re the dirty rascal!” She stood on tiptoe on top of the first boulder that began the giant stepping-stones into the lake. “Dethrone me if you dare!”

Blazer climbed after her. At the top, he tussled with her a moment before she leaped to the next rock. He followed her, and, as she tried to leap to the third, she landed short of it, in the water, and began swimming and splashing and screaming. Blazer dived in after her.

Jimmy sat on the shore, his back against the rock, watching them. “Come on in!” they called. “It’s wonderful!”

Jimmy gestured to his glass. “I’m having too much fun sitting here getting tight,” he said.

“Lush!” Claire called.

The sun shone down brilliantly and caught every splash they made, reflected and pounded the glittering reflections back against the trees and rocks, and into his eyes. His eyes glistened; he felt warm, hazy. He sipped his drink. This made remembering pleasant, remote and effortless. He could watch the scenes as they flashed before him, like slides from a magic lantern, without involvement. He and Helen moved quaintly, curiously, figures in a faraway pantomime. He remembered driving back to Rio Linda in the rented car, becoming aware for the first time of the flat, broad Central Valley, brown now and winter-burned.

“I’m afraid my family’s house won’t be very grand by your standards,” Helen had said as they entered the little valley town.

“What difference does that make?” he asked her.

“I’m worried,” she said, “about what your family might think—if they came out here.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said.

The Warrens’ house was a two-story white colonial, but built, in the manner of many California houses, on a narrow lot so that the houses on either side of it pressed their windows close against it. In the back, Mrs. Warren had a patio and garden surrounded by a high ivy-covered fence. From the living-room, through the french windows, Jimmy had seen tubs of winter-blooming camellias.

The Warrens greeted them affectionately, if a little distractedly. There was a great deal of nervous laughter as Walker Warren showed Jimmy the front-yard sprinkler system he had recently installed, and explained that he planned a similar system for the back yard. Mr. Warren was a small, friendly man with smiling blue eyes behind rimless glasses. He was in the hardware business. He owned the largest hardware store in Rio Linda, and also two smaller stores in neighbouring towns. It was quite a coincidence, he thought, because he had stocked Keefe hinges, bolts, and valves ever since he had started the business. “You make a good product,” he told Jimmy. “They’re good sellers. I never thought I’d meet the man that made them, though.”

“Oh, it’s not me, sir,” Jimmy said. “It’s just the family.”

“But you’ll go into the business, won’t you?”

“Well—perhaps,” Jimmy said.

Then Mrs. Warren, a slim, handsome woman with blue-grey hair, took Jimmy by the arm and led him through the garden, pointing out beds that would soon blossom with tulips, lilies, and tea roses. “I always wanted a summer wedding for Helen,” she said, “so that we could have it here—in the garden. But”—she smiled—“I’m sure this will work out for the best.” Then Mrs. Warren looked at him. “I’m putting you both in the guest room,” she said, and she laughed nervously. “After all, you are married!”

That night a special-delivery arrived from Jimmy’s mother. It was full of elaborate plans. She was sorry, she said, if she had been a little bitchy on the telephone. It was only that it was such a shock, such a blow, so sudden. Could he really blame her? However, it was too late now to worry about things like that. They were working things out. Daddy and Turner Ames had been busy on it; the Warren family, she thought, were being most co-operative. She and Jimmy’s father were flying to California in a week for the “nice” wedding.

Everything would be lovely, she was sure, and just to show him there were no hard feelings, she was buying Jimmy and Helen a honeymoon trip to the Caribbean. She enclosed the itinerary. She had made all the reservations, bought all the tickets, supplied the fat booklet of hotel coupons. She had planned the date of the trip so that it would allow Jimmy and Helen a visit with the family in Somerville. Finally, she had enclosed a cheque, signed in her firm, round hand, “Melise Kimball Keefe,” for a thousand dollars.

That night, in the Warrens’ pink and white guest room, Jimmy told Helen about it. Helen had not liked the idea of the trip. After all, she pointed out, they had decided to stay in California—for a while, at least. Jimmy was going to find a job. They were going to find a place to live. It seemed silly to fly back to New York just to take Melise’s trip. But Jimmy wanted to go. He thought it might be good for Helen, and also he knew his mother. He knew she wanted the Caribbean honeymoon because she had been cheated, like Mrs. Warren, out of a proper marriage.

But the difference was that Melise Keefe could afford to do something about it. If she could not have an Eastern marriage with her friends present, a marriage with crew-cut Eastern ushers, Eastern bridesmaids, and an Eastern bride, she would have a satisfactory, if not perfect, social substitute with the glamorous six weeks’ trip to the West Indies. If she could not have a wedding with a reception held in a huge tent on a high terrace overlooking Long Island Sound or the Connecticut River, with champagne, red-jacketed waiters, an orchestra imported from New York, she would have the next best thing.

Besides, Jimmy argued, since his mother was paying for it all, why should they refuse? Why shouldn’t they have the trip? It had been their first quarrel, although it had been conducted in whispers and had ended with Helen saying, “Quiet! Quiet! They’re in the next room—they’ll hear us!”

He remembered his parents’ arrival. He remembered his father, chatting with forced geniality to Walker Warren about the hardware business. He remembered his mother, murmuring, “Charming … charming,” as Mrs. Warren showed her through the house and garden. And, the night before the wedding, he remembered going alone to his parents’ suite at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco—summoned there on the pretext of going over some business papers with his father. His mother had greeted him at the door in a long pale-blue robe; they had had cocktails sent to the room.

“This is the craziest business,” Jimmy had laughed. “Getting married all over again. Are Helen and I supposed to act like a blushing bride and bridegroom to-morrow?”

“Well, well,” his father had said, “you know how women are. Your mother wanted it this way, Jim. I guess she just didn’t think you’d be really married if you weren’t married in a church.” He winked at Melise.

“I don’t think it’s crazy at all,” Melise said. “It’s the only nice way to do it. Thank heavens Mrs. Warren agrees with me.” She sat down and arranged her long skirt about her feet. “Of course,” she said, sipping her martini, “I suppose you and Helen have been—living together—all along.” She shook her head. “Goodness, how could you help it—in that house?”

“What do you mean, Mother?” he asked her.

“I mean—well, there’s hardly enough room in it for you to have had separate bedrooms!”

“That’s a little unkind, Mother,” he had said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I mean it. Honestly, Jimmy, couldn’t you have looked into things a little bit before you took this step? Really, when I first saw the way they lived—well, it was the kind of house where I was afraid to ask where the bathroom was! For fear there wouldn’t be any!”

“Now, Mellie—” Mr. Keefe said.

“Mother, that’s not fair. You’re not that much of a snob, are you?”

“I’m sorry. I guess I am!”

“I think the Warrens are very nice,” Jimmy said. “They’ve been very kind to me. I love Helen, and—well, I think her parents are very nice!”

“Oh, they’re nice,” Melise said wearily. “They’re very nice! I just don’t like them, that’s all. I’m sorry, but I don’t! I’ve said it, and I never intend to say it again, but there it is. I don’t like them.”

Jimmy remembered sitting, flushed and angry, as his mother sat opposite him, silently sipping her martini.

He remembered the wedding and the reception afterwards in the Warrens’ house. He remembered his mother inspecting the wedding present that Mrs. Warren had displayed in her dining room. “I suppose you’ll need lots of things like this,” his mother had said, looking at a set of copper-bottomed pans that a cousin of Helen’s had sent. And, a few moments later, “Goodness, what will you ever do with this?” she had asked, pointing to an enormous silver epergne which had been sent by Jimmy’s Great-aunt Kathleen. “Oh!” Melise had said, accepting a glass. “I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted California champagne.” She sipped it. “It’s delicious!” she had said. But Jimmy had noticed that she never took another sip throughout the whole reception, but carried the full glass with her, lifting it to her lips without drinking whenever toasts were proposed. And Helen noticed it, too.

Just before they were to leave, Helen had come to him and whispered, “Please—I don’t want to go to New York! I don’t want to take that trip. Couldn’t we sneak away for a trip by ourselves?”

“Oh, I’m afraid it’s too late to change plans now,” he had said. And that night they had boarded the plane for New York—for a week at the Plaza while the senior Keefes motored to Santa Barbara for a week of golf.

Remembering it now, Jimmy wondered if it had been the conflict between his mother and Helen that had been responsible for the unhappiness that came later. Certainly there had been a conflict; he had been aware of it, and yet, at the time, he had tried to push it far back in his mind. In New York, they had found theatre tickets waiting for them, paid for by Melise. Melise had paid for the hotel, including a substantial deposit for room service. When his mother and father returned from California, Melise had spent two days with Helen, shopping in the city, buying Helen dresses, charging them to her account. He remembered Helen, in their room, unwrapping a box that had arrived from Bergdorf-Goodman containing a short black evening-dress. Helen had thrown the dress across the bed. “I hate it!” she had cried.

“Why didn’t you tell her you didn’t like it?” Jimmy asked.

“How could I? She made me try it on. She said, ‘It looks pretty on you’—and told the girl to wrap it up! Jimmy, I can’t take much more of this!”

“She’s only trying to be kind,” Jimmy said.

“She’s not! She’s not at all. Do you know what she’s doing? She’s trying to embarrass me. She’s trying to prove that I’m a gold digger!”

“That’s not true—”

“It is! Jimmy, please let’s go back to California. Don’t make me go through Somerville with her!”

“Helen, we’ve got to. I told you we’d have to go through this sort of thing, didn’t I? Can’t you put up with it for a few more days? In a few more days we’ll be on our own—off to the West Indies—”

“We’ll never be on our own—not as long as she’s around!”

“Helen,” he said softly, “I know she has faults. But she’s still my mother!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said.

They had gone to Somerville, and Melise had given a huge party for them. Although it was winter, dozens of Chinese lanterns had been strung from the branches of the trees in front of the big white house. Inside, an orchestra had been hired for dancing, and extra servants. And friends and relatives had begun arriving from all over the East. Jimmy remembered standing in the doorway with Helen, watching as cars appeared in the drive, passed slowly under the porte-cochère, and stopped. Coloured chauffeurs hopped out, opening doors for new arrivals. In the winter night, under the great globes of light that glowed beneath the porte-cochère, the long black cars from Detroit seemed to have a special sparkle and a special shine. And the couples, too, seemed glittery as they emerged from the cars, the jewelled wrists of ladies catching the garish lights of the paper lanterns in the trees. The whole effect of Melise’s party was queerly exotic, and, to Jimmy, moving trance-like through it with Helen at his side, wearing the black dress Melise had bought for her at Bergdorf’s, the party, and the people, and the things that happened seemed unreal. And yet he felt he should make it seem real to Helen. He wanted to say to her, “See, this is what our life will be like, this is what my life has been like, this is what we must some day return to. See how everything is? See my grandmother’s crystal—there are twenty dozen of those champagne glasses, bought in France. See that painting of my mother and father? It was painted, after they were married, in the summer-house of my Grandmother Kimball’s place in Sachem’s Head.” He had wanted to explain to Helen that, somehow, the scene, the graceful people moving in it, had a certain significance to him, and a meaning, since it was part of his past, a part of the tradition and the pattern that had shaped him, good or bad, for what he was. He wanted her to understand it, to feel it as he felt it. But every time he looked at her, and began to tell her, her face seemed closed to him, her eyes to withdraw from his. “Everything is very pretty,” she said.

And his mother had been very little help. He remembered her airy remarks, floating out over the room. “This is French champagne,” she had said to Helen once. “Do you like it as well as your California kind?” And then, to a group of guests, she had said, “Isn’t she pretty? It was such fun shopping with her. She came totally unprepared for our New England winters.” And, when someone remarked to Helen that she was wearing a pretty dress, Melise had interjected, “Yes, isn’t it? It was a little present from me!”

At one point, one of his Hartford cousins had cornered Helen. “Did you see any shows while you were in New York?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Helen answered.

“What ones, dear?”

“The ones that Mrs. Keefe picked out,” Helen said quietly.

The cousin hesitated. “Well,” she said, “you must have enjoyed them. Mellie has excellent taste.”

But the last scene that evening had been the worst. It had happened after the last guests had left, and the four of them—Jimmy, Helen, and his mother and father—were standing at the foot of the stairs, saying good night.

Melise took Helen’s hand. “I hope you won’t mind making your bed to-morrow morning,” Melise said. “It’s Sunday, and I have no maid until six o’clock. But then,” she said, smiling, “I imagine you’re used to making your own bed, aren’t you?”

“I’m used to it,” Helen said. And then she said, “I’m surprised you have no maid on Sundays, Mrs. Keefe. I should think, with four million dollars, you could afford one!” She turned and ran up the stairs.

“Well!” Melise gasped. “Well!”

“Why don’t you leave her alone, Mother?” Jimmy asked angrily. “Do you have to keep picking on her?”

“She’s got a lot to learn, that’s all I can say!”

“Come to bed, Mellie,” Jimmy’s father said.

Jimmy turned and followed Helen up the stairs. In the darkness of their bedroom, he found her huddled on top of the covers, still in the black dress. “Helen,” he whispered. “Helen, don’t pay any attention to her! It will be all right when we get away by ourselves—”

“No, no—” she cried.

“Please, Helen—” He tried to lift her shoulders.

“Don’t touch me!” she sobbed. “Don’t! Don’t touch me!”

He had gone downstairs again, to the library, and, as the last servant cleared the after-party disarray of heaping ash-trays and empty glasses, he sat with the whisky decanter, splashing the brown liquor over dissolving ice-cubes in a glass, and drinking it down. Much later, he became conscious of a shape in the doorway and looked up. His mother stood there, in a green satin robe, her hair in curlers. She came and knelt on the floor beside him, resting her cheek on his black-trousered knee. “I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “I’m a bitch, I know. It’s just that I had dreamed of so much more for you, Jimmy! So much more! Forgive me!”

They had talked for a while. But he had been very drunk. He could not remember now whether he had forgiven her or not. He could only think of Helen saying, “Don’t touch me!” and pushing him away.

He had promised her that when they got to Nassau, the first stop on their Caribbean trip, things would be better. But they had not been. In Nassau, he tried to recapture the slim dark-haired girl who had said, “Hallelujah!” and who had fallen, laughing, with him into the snow at Yosemite, but she eluded him. He remembered watching her coming across the palm-fringed terrace of their hotel towards him, a small figure in a red cotton dress, a white lace mantilla about her shoulders, her short hair combed smoothly back, her chin lifted, her face and arms brown from the sun. An immense, aching longing had filled him; it was as though her very inaccessibility made him love her more. What was it that made him love her? he wondered. At first, he had thought it was a freshness, a simplicity, an ingenuous niceness about her—so different from the brittle girls, the somewhat haggard girls, the house-party girls he had always known. But now it seemed to be more than that. There was something child-like and woundable in her face, in the tilt of her chin. Loving her, he wanted to hold her and shield her, and yet, at the same time, he felt he needed her to shield and protect him from something in himself.

She sat down beside him on the terrace and said, “Shall we go inside for dinner?”

“So early? Oh, no, it’s much too much fun out here.”

He had ordered another drink.

Then, a little later: “Jimmy—shall we go in now?”

“Oh, no—not yet. I think I’d like another drink.”

When, at last, they had gone in, they had had a swift, terrible quarrel in the dining-room.

In the morning, they lay on the beach. “Why don’t you ever say anything?” he asked her. “Why do you look at me that way? Don’t you realize that I’m your husband?”

Resistlessly, she let him stroke her toe with his finger.

“We talked last night,” she said. “You said a great deal.”

He withdrew his hand. “What’s the matter with us?” he asked.

“I’m married to a man who’s becoming an alcoholic at twenty-three!” she said. “It’s true. You are!”

He stood up abruptly, picking up his towel. “Do you realize why?” he said softly and coldly. “Do you?”

“I know you blame it on me!”

“Because I’m married to a woman who gives me nothing—or next to nothing! Who makes me feel dirty and ashamed. Can you understand how I might feel? You say I’m becoming an alcoholic. Instead of admitting that there’s something wrong with you, you say there’s something wrong with me.”

“Oh, my God!”

He looked at her. She was crying. “And now what?” she asked. “You must know that this can’t last. We’ll end up like pieces of kelp or rockweed, drifting—to and fro. Drifting in your family’s money! Drifting in drink! I wish I’d died in California! I wish I could die now, in the sea! I wrote your name in the sand to-day. The tide came in and washed it away … and I wrote it again, wondering how I would feel, and the tide came again. And I couldn’t feel anything! Not anything!” She stood up, pressing her bare arms tight against her sides, her fists clenched, her head bowed.

“Sit down,” he said. “Just sit down, Helen, please.”

She was sobbing uncontrollably. “Is there something wrong with me? Is there?”

Faces were turned towards them now, from beneath several umbrellas.

“Please, Helen,” he whispered. “Please sit down. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I can’t! I can’t!”

But she did sit down, and, gradually, her sobs stopped. He sat down beside her and tried talking to her; they talked, in little spurts, for a while—a series of apologies followed by accusations and accusations followed by apologies. That afternoon they had flown to Montego Bay.

So many hotels. So many long, carpeted corridors. So many islands. It was hard for him, now, to remember them all in their proper sequence. St. Thomas, St. Croix, Martinique, Antigua—the islands clouded into one. With a strange, purposeful malice, he drank too much in every one of them. Love, when it came, was brief and terrible; it was almost better when it was blurred with alcohol, and the remorse afterwards could die in swirling sleep. He remembered one evening, at one of the hotels, he had walked out in fury and left her in their room. He had stood for a while, smoking, looking around the deserted lobby of the hotel. He remembered seeing a chameleon scurrying across the white stone floor—the chameleon, pale as death, the colour of his thoughts. On a blue floor—he remembered thinking—the chameleon would turn blue. On green, green. He wondered, idly, what it would do on varicoloured tile. Would it die trying to match its background?

He went out on to the terrace and down the walk to the pool. It was very late, and there was a moon, reflecting on the still surface of the water. The hotel and the music from the dance floor were far away, and, after looking around, he suddenly stripped off his clothes and stood naked in the moonlight. When he dived in, silently, and the dark cold water was all around him, there was a kind of release from everything. It was as though the water, pressing all around him, kept all the other things out, pressed him into one burning, living entity that swam one length, then back, then half another length without coming up for air, the way he had swum at college. He swam slowly back to the edge of the pool then, and resting one of his forearms, looking into the blackness of the hibiscus and bougainvillaea, he saw her emerge suddenly from the shrubbery and stand. She had changed her clothes. She wore Bermuda shorts and a suède jacket, and she stood there with her hands in her pockets, a slim, lonely figure, looking at the ground. He was struck with the thought that somehow she had known where to find him. She had come straight to the pool. Happy or not, their minds were wedded. One could not move without the other knowing or caring. He leaped out of the water and ran to her, naked and shivering. “Helen!” he said. “Helen, for God’s sake, I love you. I love you. Let’s begin again.”

“Let’s go inside,” she whispered. “Hurry! Take me inside. Let me try!”

Later, in the room, she had whispered, “Darling! Oh, my darling!”

“Was it me then?” he asked her. “Was it me?”

“Oh, it’s you now—”

“What do you mean? Was it him again—even for a minute?”

“Yes,” she said, and she began to cry softly. “But it’s you now! That’s all that matters now—it’s you now!”

Then, angrily, he had said, “What are you trying to do? Turn me into him?”

“Oh, no, no, no—”

“Into a damn’ rapist? For Christ’s sake, are you?”

“Oh, Jimmy—please! No! Please!”

When he woke in the morning, she had already gone down to the beach. Looking around the room, he had seen a slip of paper propped against his hairbrushes on the dresser. It was a note, written on hotel stationery:

DEAREST DARLING,

Is it because I am such a naughty girl, I wonder, or is it because you are such a naughty boy that somehow we can never seem to cope with things like Somerville or last night—and I cry, or one of us says an unkind thing, and both of us are hurt immeasurably? I thought when I left college I had been hurt by a boy for the last time, but now sometimes the boy is my husband, whom I love of course. It is so hard to explain. And yet writing a letter is easier than talking somehow. Do you understand? I want us to live with dignity and grace. I know what you think—that I am a frigid woman—but all I can say is that I am a woman and all women are different. You are different from that other boy, I must believe this … if I stop believing this, it will be both of our faults!

So will you be kind and tolerant of me when I digress (sp?) and will you try to think of me sometimes as a person who needs to be helped a little? Just once in a blue moon?

Once in a blue moon you do …

Remember that morning before we were married for that silly second time when we sat pasting newspaper clippings of the wedding in our scrapbook, that morning in Rio Linda? You read them aloud in a funny voice and we laughed? Or Yosemite. I am glad we are going home soon. When we get home, I will buy another scrapbook and we will sit and paste in it all day and not even have one tiny drink! I will try to be better, I promise. But you must promise too

I love you,

HELEN

Claire and Blazer came out of the water. Blazer was in his trunks, but Claire was in blue jeans, sweater, and sneakers, all of which clung to her wetly. Her hair was plastered back across her head, and she looked more like a little boy than anything else. “Are you still drinking those martinis?” she asked gaily. “Really, I think you’d be ashamed of yourself. Remember, we have to climb back to the lift this afternoon.”

“Look at this mountain,” he said. “Look how far we’ve come to get up here.” He gestured vastly around him. “Do you realize—a hundred years or so ago—Indians roamed all over these hills with bows and arrows? The Indians probably called this place Laughing Water. The young braves brought their maidens here in the moonlight and courted them with feathers and stone beads, and performed fantastic leaping feats here on the rocks, to show off. Can’t you see them? Standing on that farthest rock? Shaking their headdresses?” He paused. “Do you realize that as we sit here, civilization is pushing on—that some day this lake will be drained, and the last arrowhead will be extracted, and the mountains will be flattened to make the earth turn faster?” He looked up and his eyes fogged. The outer branches of the fir trees caught the sun and glittered. “Some day, all these trees will be trimmed with Christmas ornaments,” he said.

She looked up. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Blazer, did you hear that? Why can’t you say things like that, darling?” She smiled at Jimmy. “Ah, Jimmy, you’re wonderful!” she said. “Though loaded, you’re wonderful.”

“I wish it could be for ever.”

“Here? For ever? Oh, no, I’d get bored. So would you. We couldn’t stand anything as peaceful as this for ever.”

He looked at her. Blazer had gone back into the water. “I want to apologize for last night,” he said. “For whatever part of it was my fault, I want to apologize.”

“Jimmy, please—”

“I do. For my part—”

“What makes you think it was your fault?”

“Some of it must have been.”

“You underestimate me.”

“There must have been something that I said or did—”

“You’ve always underestimated me,” she said. “Everyone has. No one knows the many things little Claire is capable of.” She looked at him, smiling a small, defiant smile.

He flushed. “Well, I’m sorry, anyway.”

“Don’t be absurd. Is that why you’re getting drunk?”

“One reason.”

“And the other reason is—Helen, I suppose?”

“Perhaps.”

“Oh, Jimmy,” she said earnestly. “What are you trying to do to yourself? What are you trying to prove? Let me talk to Helen. You’re a nice boy, Jimmy! Why do you try to convince yourself you’re a bastard?”

“I’m not—”

“Will you let me talk to Helen?”

“No.”

“All right.” She turned and walked quickly away, towards Blazer.

Jimmy sat there. He felt stunned. He felt he couldn’t get up. The last drink stirred within him.

Helen. Was it possible that in some odd, involuted way Helen had wanted him to ruin himself? No, that was not fair. They had flown home, first to New York, then on to San Francisco. Jimmy had started looking for a job and had found the one in Sacramento. They had moved into the apartment on Capitol Avenue. He had kept his promise; for several weeks, he had nothing to drink, and—though it was hard to remember—perhaps things had got a little better. But then he had broken it—broken it deliberately, in anger and despair.

It was a warm Sunday in May. The Warrens had driven up from Rio Linda for dinner. Mrs. Warren had been enthusiastic about the apartment, and, as Jimmy remembered it, it had looked rather pretty, with bowls of fresh flowers on the tables and the windows open, a soft breeze blowing in. Helen had worked busily in the kitchen, fixing a turkey. He remembered her standing in front of the stove, frowning slightly, tiny beads of perspiration along her upper lip and a damp lock of brown hair falling across her forehead. The mood had been cosy and domestic, and Jimmy had fixed old-fashioneds for Mr. and Mrs. Warren and a gin-and-tonic for Helen. He had sipped a Coca-Cola. After dinner, Helen’s father had kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the sofa. (“Goodness, Walker, do you need to make yourself that much at home? What will Jimmy think!” Mrs. Warren had said. “Can’t a man be comfortable?” Mr. Warren had replied.) Jimmy and his father-in-law had talked for a while about the hardware business, and Mr. Warren had asked Jimmy several questions about the organizational set-up of the Keefe Company—a subject that Jimmy did not know too much about. Mr. Warren was still puzzled as to why Jimmy hadn’t gone into his father’s business. “I should think there’d be quite a future for you there,” he said.

“I guess I don’t want to do it, because it would be the easiest thing, sir,” Jimmy said. “I mean, it seems a little lazy. And if I ever did go into the business, I’d be trapped there—it would be almost impossible to leave. I guess I just want to see whether I can do something on my own—see if I’ve got it in me.”

“Well, I think that’s very admirable,” Mr. Warren said. But he did not look convinced.

They talked a while longer and suddenly Mr. Warren fell asleep. Jimmy sat opposite him, uncomfortably watching the older man’s heavy breathing. Mrs. Warren came in from the kitchen, where she had been helping Helen with the dishes. “Walker!” she cried. “Walker! Wake up! Goodness me, is that any way to behave on our first visit here?” Mr. Warren sat up and rubbed his eyes. He smiled. “I guess Helen’s dinner was just too good for me,” he said. “Well, I guess we’d better be starting back, Arlene.”

There were pleasant good-byes, promises to do it again soon, handshakes and kisses. They left and Jimmy and Helen were alone again. Helen sat on the sofa, her face troubled.

“Well, that was a lot of fun,” Jimmy said easily.

“Was it?” she asked.

“Sure. We were just like—like old married people, weren’t we?”

“I suppose we impressed them that way,” Helen said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we put on a good act. You especially—”

“I wasn’t acting, Helen.”

“What do you mean? Do you mean to say you enjoyed it? Well,” she said defensively, “they’re my parents and I love them very much! They mean—everything in the world to me! I don’t care how dull you think they are.”

“I don’t think they’re dull—”

“Of course you do! I saw you—talking to Daddy—wishing you were somewhere else—a thousand miles, three thousand miles away from here! Back at one of your elegant Connecticut parties! Drinking French champagne!”

“Helen, that just isn’t true.”

“Of course it is!” She stood up. “Oh, why did you marry somebody like me! What in the world did you see in me?”

“Listen,” he said, “you’re absolutely wrong. Helen, I want to be married. Married! Like—like your mother and father. I want things to be homey and comfortable and friendly. I don’t insist on everything being expensive and exciting. That’s why I married you.”

“That’s what you thought you wanted, perhaps,” she said bitterly. “But now that you have it—now that you see what it’s like—you’re bored to death! I know it.”

“Well,” he said finally, “what did I do wrong? What should I have done? Wasn’t I nice to them?”

“Oh, you were nice! You’re always nice, but I could tell that you were dying of boredom inside. When Daddy talked to you—”

“For Christ’s sake, what was I supposed to do?”

“Do? Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know.” She put her face in her hands.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

“I mean, you were superior!” she said, looking at him. “Superior—and snooty and condescending—and stuffy! Calling my father ‘sir’ all the time—and did you see how my mother acted? All in a dither—nervous—trying to match your so-called Eastern polish! You made both of them feel uncomfortable!”

Suddenly he was angry. “Uncomfortable!” he said. “I made them feel uncomfortable? Your old man didn’t look so damned uncomfortable when he pulled off his shoes and lay down and started to snore!”

“You see, you see?” she said. “Just as I said!”

“You’re right,” he said, standing up. “I was bored to the ears. Bored to the God-damned ears, sitting around listening to a lot of dull, middle-class platitudinous crap!”

Helen sat down hard in the chair and Jimmy marched into the kitchen and poured himself a drink from the whisky bottle. He stood there, drinking his drink, his hand shaking. He wished he hadn’t said that. It was not just the harshness of the remark that disturbed him. It was the fact that he wasn’t sure whether he had meant it or not. He just did not know. Once upon a time, he had thought he knew what he wanted. He was no longer sure.

The days went on. It was as though some mutually destructive force compelled them now, drove them on, forced them to continue hurting one another. They were on a road by then that carried them down, wound them under, and it was too late to stop, to let it end; they hurtled along it, faster and faster. It was no longer possible to tell whether anyone meant anything that was said; the sudden, unkind remarks were always a mixture of truth and gratuitous cruelty.

As summer approached, the apartment was often oppressively hot. It was difficult to keep cool. In the Central Valley of California, hot days and nights can continue, relentlessly, from April. They slept under pink linen sheets—wedding presents from the East, from Mosse’s, with gigantic pink K’s monogrammed on them—but soon threw them off and slept naked, perspiring. Jimmy bought an electric floor fan. It was the only real purchase he made for the apartment. Its whirring breeze lulled them to sleep.

Sometimes they went out, to a movie or to dinner. Sometimes they stayed out late, sitting in an air-cooled bar, drinking, talking, trying somehow to figure things out. The last act of the play had begun; it was too late to alter the scenes that had gone before, the churning months between the hushed, snow-covered valley of Yosemite and the apartment in Sacramento.

Returning to the apartment, late at night, was hard. For no reason, the light switch was across the room. They groped towards it together, forgetting where the furniture was placed, suddenly finding a chair, set like a trap to spring on moving prey. A whisper: “Did you put this here?”

Angrily: “No, it wasn’t I—”

And then, perhaps later: “Darling—”

“Yes?”

“Would you—?”

“What?”

“Oh, never mind …”

One night, after playing tennis poorly in the park, they sat up very late with three bottles of red wine, talking, feeling that they must talk, feeling that somehow, by talking, they could pin it down, clarify and spread out on the table everything that had gone wrong. Helen had a phrase. “We are emotionally unsuited for each others,” she had said.

“Why won’t you see a doctor?” he asked her.

“What kind of doctor?”

“Someone—a psychiatrist—who knows about these things.”

“You still think that, don’t you?”

“What?”

“That I’m crazy …”

“No,” he said hopelessly. “But it isn’t getting any better—don’t you see?”

“If you had helped!” she said.

“How could I help?”

“Ah—” She reached for the wine bottle. “Does drinking make you forget?” she asked. “Is that what it’s supposed to do? It doesn’t work for me.”

“It makes me remember,” he said.

“What? What is there to remember? Quarrels … scenes …”

“Don’t you remember those first few days—when we were all by ourselves in Yosemite? My God, Helen, I’d never been so happy as I was then! But then it changed, all at once.”

“You were a different person in Yosemite,” she said. “In the beginning. Then you frightened me.”

“What do you mean, I frightened you?”

She looked at him steadily. “You frighten me often,” she said. “You frighten me right now.”

He turned away from her angrily. “You’re right. I do think you’re crazy!”

“You frighten me when you drink.”

“And why do you think I drink? Because of you!”

“Is everything my fault?” She stood up with tears in her eyes. She went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, brushing her hair. He followed her. “What about that night?” he asked. “By the pool—do you remember that? We were happy for a while. We can be happy, can’t we?”

“Such a waste!” she said.

“What?”

“The honeymoon. How much do you suppose that honeymoon cost? Three thousand dollars? Just so that we could go from island to island, drinking and torturing ourselves …”

“But we’re in our own apartment now. I’ve got a job, we’re settled—or we should be! Why do we have to keep harking back to that honeymoon?”

She didn’t answer him, but stood there, brushing fiercely, counting the brush strokes silently, under her breath.

“You should be grateful that there’s money,” he said.

“Not when it’s helped to do this to us—”

“Look,” he said, “I don’t want to rely on the money. I want to do things on my own. I’ve told you that. That’s why we’re here, in Sacramento, and not back with the Keefe Company making hinges and staples! I want to be independent of that—”

“I know, I know …”

“Do you love me?” he asked her.

She stopped brushing and leaned forward, resting her forehead on the mirror. “Yes,” she said.

“Then can’t we be happy?”

“I want to be! I do want to be!”

“Then—” He put his hand on her arm.

“Then give me time!” she sobbed. “Give me time to forget things, and help me. Be considerate and patient, and help me!”

“I try,” he said gently. “But there’s some sort of curtain between us now. Something’s stopping us—”

She bowed her head further, letting her forehead slide down along the cool glass. “Please … please don’t talk to me any more. Please just leave me alone.”

He went back into the kitchen and poured himself another drink. It was like all their quarrels—aimless, oblique, beginning nowhere, ending nowhere.

Later, she came into the kitchen in her robe. “Do you mind if I drive home to-morrow for the day?” she asked him. “I’ll drive you to work. Then go on in the car.”

It was a short drive to Helen’s home, forty miles down the valley. “All right,” he said. With her short brown hair loose, in her light cotton robe, her tanned face and small body had a frail, sculptured look. She stood there, swaying a little—the way a few drinks always made her do—and smiled at him with a strange apologetic smile. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“No. Why do you want to go?”

She looked away from him. “I want to think. I want to go home and think things out.”

“Sure.”

He took a cigarette from his pack and reached for the kitchen lighter.

“Be careful of that lighter,” she said. “It throws out sparks.”

“I know.”

He smoked his cigarette, then put it out and followed her to bed. After he had switched out the light, he pulled the pink sheet tight around his throat. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

He huddled there, afraid to move, afraid that moving the slightest inch would start the shivering, the trembling he felt inside him. When, much later, he did move, the trembling started, but by that time Helen was asleep.

The next morning, she had driven to Rio Linda, but that evening she did not come back. Around seven, the telephone rang. “Jimmy?” she said. “I’m still here. Daddy’s sick. We’re a little worried. Would you mind if I spent the night?”

“No,” he said, “that’s all right.”

He had suspected that she was not telling the truth, but the next day, at his office, she had telephoned him again. “Daddy’s much worse … he’s had an internal hæmorrhage. The doctor’s terribly worried. Jimmy—I’m afraid he’s going to die!”

“Would you like me to come down?” he asked.

“Could you? Could you come down to-night on the bus?”

“All right.”

That night when he arrived at the Warrens’ house in Rio Linda, Helen met him at the door. “He’s upstairs,” she said. “Go up and see him.”

Mr. Warren lay in bed in the half-darkened room. He was not a large man, but in the big bed he seemed even smaller, shrunken. In sleep, his face was fallen and old. Mrs. Warren sat beside him with a pile of yellow knitting in her lap. “Hello, Jimmy,” she whispered. She reached up and brushed his cheek with her lips. “He’s still asleep … he had a pill.”

“What is it?” he asked her.

“It’s a duodenal ulcer. Dr. Manger says he must have been suffering from it for years. They’re afraid to operate—his heart. Poor Walker! He never mentioned anything to me.”

Mr. Warren opened his eyes once, closed them, then opened them again.

Jimmy took his heavy, veined hand. “Hello, sir,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Me?” Mr. Warren said. “I’m feeling fine, just fine. Did somebody tell you I wasn’t? It’s just these women—Helen and her mother—trying to make an invalid out of me.”

“Don’t let ’em do it, sir.” Jimmy smiled.

“Yes,” Mr. Warren said. “It’s tough to live in a houseful of women. Was that the way your house was, Jim?”

“Well, there was my dad, sir—”

“Oh, yes. Do I sound fuzzy? I’m running a little temperature. Your dad’s a fine fellow, Jimmy, a smart man—”

“Thank you, sir.”

Mr. Warren closed his eyes. “Arlene!” he said. “Arlene! Are the children in?”

Mrs. Warren rose and stood beside him. “Yes, Walker, everything’s fine.”

“It’s going to rain—”

“There, there, you’re just having a dream.”

Mr. Warren opened his eyes once more and looked at Jimmy. “I’ll be up and around to-morrow, wait and see,” he said. “Just running a temperature, that’s all.”

Mrs. Warren placed her hand on his forehead. “Hush, Walker,” she said. “You need rest … lots of rest. Go back to sleep.”

When Jimmy got downstairs, he found Helen curled on the sofa, weeping. She was close to hysteria. “He’s going to die!” she sobbed. “He’s going to die! I know he’s going to die!”

“Don’t talk like that,” he said gently. “He’s not going to die. He said he feels fine now …”

“Don’t you know him? He says he feels fine—but he’s in terrible pain. Oh, oh, oh! He’s going to die! Daddy’s going to die!”

“Please, Helen,” he said. “You mustn’t think that—”

She turned to him angrily. Her face was white and streaked with tears. “He is going to die!” she screamed. “Can’t you understand that? Don’t you have any feeling? Don’t you even care?”

Later, he had gone for a walk. He walked aimlessly, up and down the lighted streets of Rio Linda. Finally, he went into a bar and had a drink. When he got back to the house and opened the door, Helen stood at the head of the stairs. Her face was expressionless as she started down. “Well,” she said, “he’s dead.”

He couldn’t believe her. “That’s not true—”

She ran down the stairs and across the hall to where he stood and slapped him. “What do you mean, it’s not true?” she cried. “Of course it’s true! He’s dead! And where were you? Getting drunk!”

Mrs. Warren hurried down the stairs after her. Helen turned to her mother. “He says I’m lying! He says Daddy isn’t dead!” She turned away from him and ran into the living-room.

“What?” Mrs. Warren said. “What do you mean, you dreadful, dreadful boy?” Her pale eyes blazed at him. “I suppose, in your house, death is nothing! Well, in our house, it’s not like that! My husband is dead. Now get out of my house! Go back where you came from! Get out of my house, you drunken wastrel!”

The little doctor came running down the stairs, carrying his bag. “Arlene,” he said. “Now, Arlene! Be brave. He’s out of his pain now, Arlene.” He put his arm around Mrs. Warren’s shaking shoulders and led her through the house, out into the garden.

Jimmy stayed in Rio Linda for the funeral. Afterwards, he and Helen drove back to Sacramento. They drove in silence.

Once he turned to her and said, “Would you like to take a trip? Go away somewhere for a few days?”

“To the Caribbean? Take another honeymoon?” she asked bitterly. “No, thank you.”

It was about a week after the funeral. Jimmy went out alone to a small neighbourhood bar a few blocks from the apartment, and had several drinks in rapid succession. Had he known then? Had he planned it that way, engineered the end himself? Perhaps. He rolled the bartender for another drink, won, and drank it. He remembered looking up at the Pepsi-Cola girl on the poster behind the bar—“Refreshing, but not filling,” she said. He lifted his glass and drank to her. Someone, with a soft, stubby pencil, had indicated more explicit features on her body. “Here’s to the girl who refreshes without filling,” Jimmy said.

The bartender winked. “I could sure fill her up,” he said.

Jimmy picked up the dice, dropped them in the can, and shook it. “Call it,” he said.

“Odd.”

“Even.” The dice spun across the bar again. “Looks like this is my lucky night,” Jimmy said.

When he got back to the apartment, Helen was standing in the bathroom brushing her hair. (Why was it, in every picture of her, she was brushing her hair—her short brown hair standing out about her head, snapping with electricity under the brush, lifting to meet the brush like a dark cloud of smoke?) She was wearing a full skirt and a light peasant blouse.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello.”

He went to her and put his arm around her waist. “Here’s to the girl who refreshes without filling—but the trouble is she’s never willing,” he said.

She stiffened. “Please let go,” she said.

“Miss Pepsi-Cola—” He tried to kiss her.

“Let go!”

“Helen, please …”

She looked up at him. “Are you going to rape me?”

“Helen, for Christ’s sake—”

“Are you? Just like him?”

“For God’s sake, will you stop comparing me to him! I’m your husband!”

She tried to pull away. “No! You are him!”

“Shut up,” he said. “Shut up, damn you!”

“Yes!” Her eyes were filled with terror. “Oh, help!” she cried. “Help!”

“Listen to me!”

She began pounding his chest with her clenched fists. “Let me go!” she screamed. “Hurting—oh, help!”

His arm slid up her back, and, as she twisted, struggling to get away from him, his fingers caught in the double strand of pearls at her throat. The beads snapped, fell, scattered and rolled across the tile.

His arms went limp. She turned and ran out, through the living-room and out the door. In the mirror was only his own face.

He remembered lying in bed in the darkened apartment, waiting for her. It was after midnight. Finally, he heard the key. The door opened and he saw her, framed in the light, her wide skirt swirling around her. Then the door closed. Saying nothing, she stepped towards him, and when she reached the bed, she looked at him, and, gradually, in the darkness, he made out the shape of her head, though her face was obscured.

“Are you awake?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m going home to-morrow.”

“For good?”

“Yes.”

Some sort of searchlight turned on his brain for a moment then, came out of a cloud, swirled in the protoplasm, and dissolved in darkness. “For a while,” he said, trying to make his voice steady, “I thought you were going to stay for ever. Is the honeymoon over?”

“Yes.”

She sat in one of the chairs and lighted a cigarette. Her hand, holding the match, trembled. “I’ve talked to Mother on the phone,” she said. “We had a long talk. About everything. She wants me to come home.”

“All right.”

They sat in silence, on opposite sides of the room, Helen smoking, he sitting cross-legged on the bed, watching her. Intermittently, as she drew on her cigarette, her small, sculptured face was lighted with a yellow glow. Somewhere in the night then, he remembered, there had been a scream of tyres and brakes on the street outside, and a wild peal of laughter from a car, then the loud roar of the hot-rod engine. In the beat, the pause, that followed, he thought: I must think only of thunder, only of nothing. Or home. I could think of home.

Blazer stood over him in his dripping trunks and shook his wet hair. “Are you drunk, Keefe-o?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jimmy said. “I’m afraid so.”

Claire said, “Oh, Jimmy! What are we going to do? We’ve got to get back.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know how to sober him up,” Blazer said.

“How?”

“Like this.”

Blazer lifted his gun out of his knapsack. “This revolver is one of the best little weapons made,” he said. He aimed it across the water. “Now listen to this!” He pulled the trigger.

Distractedly, in the disorder of echoing and re-echoing that occurred, Jimmy wondered if they had all been killed. For in the hollow of the mountains, the report refused to die.

They stood there—for with the sudden sound he had jumped to his feet—the three of them, like statues, marooned, fogged in by noise. The silence, shattered, lay about them like pieces of broken crockery. A ripple developed across the lake, expanded, sank, and disappeared. Another echo came, pounded, and came again. In Jimmy’s head, everything seemed to rock. The trees seemed to shake their branches, their Christmas ornaments tossed off.

Claire’s eyes were filled with tears. “Oh, Blazer!” she cried. “Why did you have to do that? Why did you?”

Jimmy tried to say something. “Well,” he said finally, “that does it.”

He knelt and was sick.