Nine

They had been good years, those Army years, their little rented house in Sacramento. It had been a house almost exactly like every other house on the street (identical in floor plan, but painted a different colour), and above all the houses tall television antennas marched in monotonous formation towards the horizon. In summer, matching lawn-sprinklers twirled in matching rhythm over the squares of grass and sets of paired yews that each front yard contained.

But the house had had a certain distinction to them—for a while, at least. It had been their house, with its own special personality—the gas heater in the hall that hummed in the night, the front porch that slanted imperceptibly towards the house so that, in the rainy winter months, little eddies of water poured under the front door and had to be staunched with rags, the window-frames that rattled when trucks went by on the street. But it had seemed like fun, their first house with its rented furniture, rented dishes, and rented pots and pans. And because it was clearly temporary, it was, as Anne often said, “like camping out.” And they had made assets of the house’s shortcomings, and because the house was temporary, they never troubled to fix anything. If there was anything, as far as Hugh was aware, that bothered Anne at all during this whole time, it was that he was not an officer.

Still, as he had reminded her, he was lucky to have been accepted by the Army at all.

After college, and after he had become engaged to Anne, he had wanted to go to journalism school. There had been a family discussion about that.

“Darling,” his mother had said, “I just don’t think journalism is the right field for you.”

“But it’s what I want to do,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I know, and I’m sure it’s a terribly exciting and rewarding field. But—”

“But what?”

“But it’s a terribly fast-paced field, Hugh. Well, it’s running around, here and there, meeting deadlines, all that sort of thing. It’s an exhausting field that requires endless energy and stamina, and—Hugh, I hate to keep harping on your health, but I just don’t think you’re cut out for it. Physically.”

He had become very angry with her then. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” he had said. “Physically! Physically! I’m so god-damned sick and tired of hearing what I can and can’t do physically. What am I cut out for, physically? Aren’t I cut out for anything? I’m not in a wheel-chair. I’m not on crutches or in braces. What do you want me to do with my life? Swim in the summer, sit under sun-lamps in winter, and do my damn’ little setting-up exercises twice a day? You’re working it out so I can’t do anything else. Everybody—all my friends—Joe, and all the rest, they’re all going off to the Army or the Navy or the Air Force, and I can’t do any of that—physically. So here I’m going to sit, is that it? For God’s sake, Sandy, I’ve got to do something!”

She had looked at him. They had been sitting on the terrace and now she stood up. “Please don’t be angry with me,” she had said. And she had gone into the house.

A little later she had come out again and walked across the terrace to him. “Hugh,” she said, “you feel badly, don’t you—and ashamed—that all your friends are going into the service now, for this Korean thing, and you can’t. That distresses you, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does.”

“Well,” she had said softly, “something might be arranged.”

“What do you mean? What might be arranged?”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “If you were to go into the service, it wouldn’t be a combat position. It couldn’t be that. They probably wouldn’t be able to send you out of the country; you wouldn’t see any action. You’d have to accept that part.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what would happen if you went into the service. You wouldn’t join the Army and see the world. But on the other hand, there would be things you could do—things that would interest you, and things, in a way, that would teach you. I’m thinking of Public Information work, for example. That’s the sort of thing that would interest you. It would be like newspaper work, in a way—though less hectic, I should think. And I should think that if you had a chance to do something like that, it might help you decide whether this is the sort of work you’d really like to do. The time in the service would be put to good use. It would give you experience—and time to decide.”

“Well, I can’t get in, so there’s no point talking about it,” he said.

“I told you that something might be arranged,” she said. “You could marry Anne now, and not wait. She could go with you, wherever it happened to be. I don’t want to tie you down here, you see. You’re wrong about that. I want you to be a man and to be able to do—just as much as possible—what the other men your age are doing.”

“What sort of thing could you arrange?” he asked her.

“Hugh,” she said, smiling, “would you be terribly shocked if I told you that it is arranged? If you want it, that is, it’s yours.”

“How in hell did you do that?” he asked her.

She laughed a little breathless laugh. “I did it just now,” she said. “On the telephone.”

“But how?”

“Darling,” she said, “I’ve always believed in going right to the top. It was one of Papa’s mottoes, you know—go right to the top. To hell with the lackeys! And Papa was right. It’s so much quicker and simpler when you go right to the top. It eliminates all that dreary red tape.”

“Who did you go to?”

“To the top, darling. To the Pentagon. To General Isham—I met him when he was just a colonel, under Roosevelt. I’ve just talked to him. He sends you his best regards.”

He shook his head back and forth in bewilderment. She reached out and touched his hand—a swift, nervous, and excited gesture. “Hugh, will you please tell me one thing, right now?” she said. “Will you please tell me, right this minute, that I, Sandy Carey, your grey-haired mother, am a rather remarkable woman? Will you please say that? Because, don’t you think—don’t you think really I must be? Because do you realise what I’ve just done? I’ve just picked up the telephone and called the Pentagon! I’ll tell you a secret. I had no idea whether the general would remember me. But I thought: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Another of your grandfather’s brilliant mottoes! And, as it happened, he did remember me! And the switchboard put me through to him instantly! I know what he thought at first, of course. He thought: Here’s another woman with a draft-dodging son. I was so proud to be able to tell him that it wasn’t that—that I had a son who wanted to serve his country, despite his limitations! He was so pleased to hear that, and I was proud to be able to tell him that it was true—proud of you. Now, Hugh, won’t you say that you’re a little impressed with me? Won’t you say that, in some ways, I’m a really astonishing woman?” She put her hand in the crook of his arm and they walked back across the terrace together.

Whimsically, Anne had christened the little house in Sacramento “Rosemede Acres.” And once, several years after they had moved out of it, they had taken a trip to California together and Hugh, on an impulse, had suggested that they drive from San Francisco to Sacramento just to see Rosemede Acres again. They had made the trip, though Anne had not really wanted to go, and when they reached the sub-division where they had lived they found that it had grown enormously since they had left, that it extended itself now over many miles of arid valley, and now contained an elaborate shopping centre, a drive-in movie theatre, restaurants, a roller-skating rink, and a Bowl-a-Torium. The sub-division had been named Fruitridge Manor, though of course it was not on a ridge nor did it contain anything approximating a manor or a fruit tree. And, though they had driven for a long time among the maze of streets that stretched with puzzling sameness everywhere, they could not find Rosemede Acres, and even the residents of the area, mowing their lawns with their power mowers, whom they stopped to ask for directions, seemed not to have even heard of their old street. It had been a very hot afternoon and Anne, looking cross and wilted beside him in the front seat of the car, had said, “For God’s sake, Hugh, will you give up this silly wild-goose chase? We’re not going to find it, and I want to get back to the Fairmont and take a bath.”

“Was it up here?” he had asked her, stopping at an intersection. “Was it up this street? Does this look familiar?”

“Nothing looks familiar,” she said. “Let’s get back to the hotel. I want to take a cool bath with salts and have a cocktail.”

“But it seems a shame to come all this way and not even see the place,” he had said. “Let’s try this street.”

“Hugh,” she had said firmly, “no. I want to get back, I said. This place is depressing.”

So he had headed the car back towards the main highway. “Poor little Rosemede Acres,” he had said. “I really wanted to see it.”

“Well, I didn’t,” she said. “The whole place is too depressing and ugly.”

“But it wasn’t like that when we lived here, was it?” he said. “It was fun while we lived here, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t remember that it was such fun,” she said.

“Oh, it was fun, though,” he said. “Don’t you remember? We had good times here—remember? With all the friends we made here, all the Army friends, and all the things we did?”

“It was ghastly,” she said. “It was all ghastly.”

But he hadn’t remembered it as being ghastly. And, as they drove back to San Francisco, it made him sad to think that he had not been able to find their little house, and it made him even sadder to think that Anne did not remember those years the way he did.

He had come home for lunch every day from the base in those days, and it had been fun to come home for lunch. And the friends they had made, the Army friends, and the neighbours who moved in and out of the little rented houses around them, had been come-and-go friends. The friendships had all had an air of casual impermanence about them and, as such, it hadn’t much mattered what anyone did or said. They had all been migratory, temporary people—on their way to or from some other place or station. Some of the people they had liked better than others, but it hadn’t mattered, really. Even people they hadn’t liked very much could be tolerated because it was all so temporary. Life moved in a pattern of flux and change, and you didn’t have to apply the same standards to friends that you did when you settled in some permanent place. And if someone got drunk at a party and made a pass at your wife—well, they’d be moving out next month.

They had talked, of course, with some of their friends about getting together again when they were all out of the Army, but they hadn’t really meant it. “Come and see us when you’re in Duluth,” the friends would say as they left, and moved away. “If you ever get to Salt Lake City, be sure to look us up …” “If you ever get to Boise …” And Hugh and Anne had promised them that they would, yes; they would look them up when they got there, even though they had known that they would probably never be getting to Duluth, or to Boise, or to Salt Lake City, and that had been all right. Everyone had understood. It was better to pretend that the farewells, like their friendships in Sacramento, were temporary. For a while, after getting out of the Army, Christmas cards had fluttered back and forth across the country once a year, but eventually even these had stopped, and they had now forgotten nearly all these people’s names. But in the Army, forming brief and vivid friendships with people you knew you would almost certainly never see again—people you knew you would perhaps not even want to meet under ordinary circumstances—had been part of the fun. At least Hugh had thought so. For the first time in his life he had felt a part of things, a part of the male world. But this was hard for Anne to understand.

Once, not long ago, when Hugh had been standing on a street corner in New York, hailing a taxi, a young man had walked up to Hugh and looked at him familiarly. “Don’t I know you from some place?” the man had asked.

“Well,” Hugh had said, groping in his mind to recall the man’s name, “you look familiar too. I’m Hugh Carey.”

“Why, yes,” the man said. “Hugh Carey. Of course. Well, I’m George Walters.”

“Sure,” Hugh had said. “George Walters. How are you, George?” But it was clear that neither man could quite place the other.

“Was it the Army?” Hugh asked. “Sacramento?”

“Oh, sure,” the man said, smiling. “That was it. Good old Sacramento.”

“Well, what are you doing these days?” Hugh asked.

“Back working for the telephone company.”

“Well. Good enough. Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too,” Walters had said. And then, “Well, don’t let me keep you—your cab’s waiting. I just thought I recognised you from some place.”

“Well, so long, George,” Hugh had said. “Take care.”

“Yes, so long. Take care yourself.”

They shook hands and Hugh got into his taxi. He had gone several blocks before he remembered that George and—was it Sally?—Walters had been two of their closest friends when they had been living in Sacramento.

Before leaving the Army, Hugh had got to thinking about the people who had meant anything to them during the entire three years, who had entered their lives with any kind of continuity. There were only a few of these people: Dorothy, the clerk at the dry-cleaning place who had always sewed buttons on his uniforms free, as she did for all servicemen, and who had refused to accept a Christmas gratuity he had offered her, saying, “No, I won’t take it. Go out and spend it on a good time for yourself”; and Mr. Watson, the postman, who had always stopped at the house for coffee; and Henry, the milkman; and the man whose name was just J.D., who collected their garbage, and who was sending a son through Stanford University—people like that. There were just a handful of them and, on one of their last days in Rosemede Acres, he had said to Anne, “Do you know what I’d like to do? I’d like to give a little party here—a little farewell party for us, and a thank-you party for some other people. And I’d like to invite all the people like Dorothy, and Mr. Watson, and Henry, and J.D. The people we’ve known steadily through the whole three years, and who’ve always been nice to us. Just a little party for them. Do you think they’d like that?”

And Anne had looked at him for a moment and then said, “Well, I do hope you’re joking, Hugh.” And when he had told her that he was not, that he was really serious about it, and had been thinking about people like that—people they liked and would truly never see again—she had laughed and said, “Well, now I know you’re joking. But it isn’t a very funny joke, Hugh—really.”

And so they had not given any farewell party, and they had left Rosemede Acres for New York without any good-byes or ceremony.

They had gone first to spend a few days with Anne’s parents at their apartments at 820 Fifth Avenue, and it had been winter, and Anne had been very excited and happy about getting home. “Oh, thank God that’s over!” she had said. “Thank God we’re out of the provinces, and back in civilisation again!” And she had spread out a little handful of white envelopes and cards on the coffee table and said, “Just look at the invitations, darling! Cocktail parties, dinner parties, the Assemblies, the Junior League Ball—everyone’s simply dying to see us.”

“I’m all tuckered out,” Anne’s mother had said, “because I’ve been acting as Anne’s social secretary ever since word got around you two were coming home. Everyone’s been telephoning. Call Edith Simmons, Annie dear.”

“But it was fun, though, while it lasted, wasn’t it?” he had asked Anne.

“Oh, of course it was fun, darling,” she had said. “But thank God the fun is over. Three years is long enough for fun and games, darling. It was like camping out.”

“But it was fun,” he had kept insisting. “Wasn’t it?”

“I said it was fun. It was our honeymoon. But all of life can’t be fun, darling. After all, the honeymoon is over.”

That evening, after dinner with her family, Anne’s father, Burton Cromwell, had taken Hugh into the library of the big apartment and offered him a cigar and a glass of armagnac.

“Well, Hugh, old man,” Burton Cromwell had said, “what’s your next step? What’re you going to do now?”

“Well, I haven’t quite decided yet, Father C.,” Hugh had said.

“Well, we can’t wait too long, can we?” his father-in-law had said. “Can’t sit around on our tail doing nothing, can we?”

“Oh, no,” Hugh had said. “No, I have no intention of sitting around on my tail.”

“Well, that’s good. That’s good. Can’t sit around on our tail. You’ll be looking for something down on the Street, I suppose.”

“I just haven’t decided yet, Father C.,” Hugh had said.

“Well, you’ll be staying in New York, of course.”

“Yes,” Hugh said, “probably.”

“Well, there’s no other place to go, is there? After all, everything is here. All your and Anne’s friends are here. All your connections are here. Your roots are here, so to speak, so you’d better stay in New York.”

“It’s funny,” Hugh said, “but I got rather fond of small-town life when I was in the Army.”

“Well, you can have your small-town life if you go away for the summer,” her father had said. “We like small-town life ourselves, and that’s why we always go away. We get small-town life in Locust Valley every summer. Yes, you’d better stay in New York, Hugh.”

“I’m pretty sure we will,” Hugh had said.

“Well, don’t be pretty sure,” Anne’s father had said. “Get out. Start pounding the pavements.”

“Oh, I’ll get out pretty soon,” Hugh said.

“That’s right. You’ve got responsibilities now, son. Got to take care of Anne, you know.”

“I know that,” he said. “I’m going to take care of Anne.”

“She’s a pretty precious commodity. Had any offers yet?”

“Not yet,” Hugh said.

“No? No offers yet?”

“Well, that’s not quite true. Before we left California I had an offer—for something out there with a newspaper.”

“With a newspaper? A newspaper out there?”

“That’s right, Father C.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be interested in anything like that, now, would you?”

“As a matter of fact,” Hugh said, “I was. I was quite interested. But Anne, of course, wanted to come back here. And so—”

“Well, that’s right,” Mr. Cromwell had said. “You wouldn’t be interested in anything like that.”

Anne had burst in on them then, her fair face pink with happiness. She plunked herself down in a chair. “I’ve simply been on the phone constantly!” she cried. “Five more invitations! Absolutely everybody in town wants to see us! Oh, it’s so marvellous to be home.” And she had begun counting off the invitations. “The Simmonses want us for cocktails Thursday. The Wrens want us for dinner Saturday. The Scofields are having a great big thing at the River Club next Saturday.…”

Hugh had gone to bed early that night, and Anne had stayed up to talk some more with her mother and father. As he lay unable to sleep in the strange bed in the unfamiliar New York room, he could hear Anne’s voice from her parents’ bedroom as she talked to them, telling them about all the plans, all the invitations.

He had heard her father’s voice interrupting her. “But you’ve got to get Hugh out pounding the pavements, honeybun. After all, he can’t sit around for ever, doing nothing.”

“But this is his first night home, Daddy,” she said.

“It isn’t too early to start. The early bird, you know. It isn’t too early for him to start right in to-morrow morning pounding the pavements. He’s got to look after you, honeybun, and he’s got to settle down.” There was a pause, and Hugh heard Burton Cromwell say, “And it’s time you settled down to give him a son and heir, honeybun.”

“Oh, Annie’s going to do that, aren’t you, Annie?” her mother said.

“Oh, we’re trying to do that,” he heard Anne say. “Trying and trying.”

“Well, good enough. Good enough,” Burton Cromwell said with a soft chuckle. “Got to give your mother and me a little grandson, you know.”

“Oh, I know all that, Daddy!” Anne had said.

“But first things first. Got to get Hugh out pounding the pavements.”

“I wish you wouldn’t keep talking about pounding the pavements, Daddy,” Anne had said.

“Why not? He’s got to—”

“Yes, but don’t forget—Hugh can’t pound the pavements like other people, Daddy.”

“Why not, for God’s sake?”

“Well, he’s—he’s handicapped, Daddy,” he had heard her say. “He can’t pound pavements. He doesn’t even like to dance very much.”

“Just a figure of speech,” her father said. “It was just a figure of speech, honeybun.”

“Yes, but perhaps it was an unfortunate one, Burton,” Anne’s mother had said.

“If he can’t pound pavements, he can at least use the telephone, can’t he? He’s not too handicapped to pick up the telephone, is he?”

“No, of course he isn’t, Daddy.”

“Don’t scold Annie, Burton,” her mother had said.

“Who’s scolding? I’m just saying that he ought to—”

“He will, Daddy. He will,” she had said.

There had been another little silence, and then Hugh had heard Anne’s father say, “I’m sorry, honeybun, that I talked about pounding the pavements. I’d—well, I’d forgotten about his deformity, as you say. But you know, honeybun, it’s a funny thing, and I’d tell it right to Hugh’s face if he were in the room. I mean that—well, your mother and I have often said this among ourselves. When we first met Hugh, we noticed that he was—you know, lame. But honestly, after we’ve got to know him—well, we neither one of us hardly ever notice it at all. I mean it’s a thing you sort of grow used to with Hugh, and before you know it you’ve forgotten it, and you just don’t notice it at all.”

They had gone next to Connecticut to spend a few weeks with his family; his mother had wanted that. And for a while, there had been little family dinners for four, which had been pleasant enough, and sometimes his Aunt Reba had dropped in and, once or twice, Pansy had come down for the week-end, bringing a friend or room-mate from school. It had seemed relaxed, but actually there was a restlessness in the air, a sense that the serious business of life ought to be beginning, but had not yet begun. Anne had been irritable and impatient about little things, and, during the days, Hugh had taken long walks by himself in the woods behind the house. And when—quite out of the blue—his old friend Joe Wallace had telephoned with his extraordinary offer, and when Hugh had accepted it, a feeling of relief was expressed on everyone’s face. “You see?” he had said to Anne. “The Good Lord provides.”

“Oh, I’m so happy!” she had said. “I’m so proud of you, Hugh.”

He had smiled at her. “The Good Lord provides for his poor handicapped ones,” he had said.

“Oh, Hugh,” she had said. “You mustn’t talk like that. You’re not handicapped. I’ve never thought of you that way, and you mustn’t think of yourself that way, either.”

And when they had moved to New York and were settled in their new apartment, and he had started working very hard with Joe Wallace, he had overheard one other conversation. Anne had always been very close to her father. And one evening, coming home from work, he had walked into the apartment, using his key, and had heard her in the living-room talking on the telephone.

“He’s always busy-busy-busy, Daddy,” she was saying. “Every night he brings home a briefcase full of work from the office, and all he’ll talk about is the business—the business this, and the business that. Oh, of course I’m glad he’s busy, Daddy, and I know it’s a good job—but really. Does the business need to take all his time? Everybody wants to see us, and we haven’t been able to see anybody. He’s always too busy with something from the office, something about the business. Nobody can be that busy! And do you know what I think, Daddy? I think he’s making excuses. I think he just doesn’t want me to see my friends. Because I think he’s just jealous of my friends, Daddy, and he just doesn’t want me to see them.…”

He had stepped quietly out of the apartment again and closed the door. He had waited in the hallway, listening to the steely slither of the elevator cables growing louder, and then fainter, as the cars rose and then descended again. He waited for a full ten minutes, checking the time on his watch, before attempting to enter the apartment again, giving her time to finish her call, thinking that the serious business of life had begun in earnest and that the honeymoon, as Anne had so truly commented, was over.