“Money troubles?”
But McGuinn apparently made out all right. His brothers owned property
in Brooklyn near Coney, and cut him in regularly on rent from two of
the houses. He had paid an income tax last year.
“Any children?” Bemrose prompted.
McGuinn whipped out a cellophane-covered snapshot of Georgie, Jr.,
drooling on a bib. The youngster seemed to be rolling up his daily
weight gain.
“A youngster like that ought to keep you together.” Bemrose blew some
dust off the cellophane and handed the picture back to McGuinn.
“We just don’t jell-jell,” McGuinn explained. “I’m a-always asking for
night work because it’s no good-good going home.”
“Why? Doesn’t your wife make you a nice home?”
“She’s a swell-swell cook,” McGuinn admitted. “She keeps the house
clean, and she irons my shirts-shirts, but we don’t j-jell. We ain’t
the right combi-combination.”
“And you want a divorce?” Arthur asked.
“I was think-thinking of it.”
A red light held them up, and Bemrose leaned back, his eyes half
closed. “Go easy on this divorce proposition,” he said. “Better make
sure you want one. You have a nice home, nice kid, and your wife’s not
chasing other men. What are you looking for--excitement?”
“I saw a guy pull-pull a hold-up a block from here,” McGuinn
volunteered.
“That’s the point,” Bemrose said. “You can see all the hold-ups,
murders, street brawls, knifings, and race riots you want for
excitement. If things get dull in this neighborhood, you can drive up
to Seventh Avenue.”
“Maybe I should be satis-satisfied,” McGuinn conceded. “She’s a
sweet-sweet kid, but you know. Blah!” He threw out his underlip in
disgust.
“Supposing you do live on milk and crackers at home. You can order
steak when you go out,” Bemrose told him.
“I guess you’re right, boss. I know it ain’t easy to get un-unhitched.”
“Ain’t always good sense,” Bemrose echoed. He handed McGuinn a
twenty-five cent tip, but the driver shook his head.
“Figure they pay you more than two-two bits for advice,” he said. “I
got off cheap. Call you in the morning, boss, about the t-ticket. Watch
your head with them crutches.”
While they waited for someone to answer the doorbell, Larry said,
“You did all right. I didn’t know you could do such a job of selling
marriage. You sounded like an old hand.”
“What the hell? By the time that guys pays for a divorce and finds
himself a floozy-- What’s he going to get that’s any better?”
Lucy opened the door, and if Bemrose had wanted to present his new
client, McGuinn, with an argument for marriage, he couldn’t have
found a better example than Mrs. Bemrose in a sheer dark blue dress
with sleeves that showed the creamy white of her upper arms. There
had been changes in Lucy these past months, Larry decided. Having
something to do, someone to look after had given her an animated look
of accomplishment.
As if to demonstrate her new security, she kissed Arthur full on the
lips before she stepped aside to let them into the house. He slid his
crutches onto a hall chair, and Larry spontaneously kissed her, too,
wanting to for the first time he could remember, somehow warmed by her
new awareness. He invited himself to stay for a drink before Lucy had
a chance to tell him about the Martinis that were mixed and waiting
upstairs.
She asked to hear the details of their visit to the doctor’s. Larry
debated how much of the truth he should tell her. So far the doctor
had remained fairly noncommittal in his talks with her. Larry himself
went out of his way to report signs of progress in Bemrose which he
noted at the office. The day Arthur walked twenty feet to the water
cooler without crutches, Larry phoned her at once. She’d be encouraged
to fuss more over Arthur’s comfort, Larry felt, if she thought he were
improving. Her optimism would be communicated to Arthur.
Recently Larry had begun to wonder whether this somewhat unrealistic
optimism might someday react unfavorably. Lucy might reproach him for
his lack of candor someday when she found out that Arthur really hadn’t
improved. He had learned to use his crutches with greater skill, and
he was more resigned to his condition, but the nerve sheaths had not
healed. Larry had considered easing Lucy into the facts, gently while
he reported what the doctor had said, but in this pleasant room, on an
unruffled summer day, with Bemrose apparently contented and reconciled,
Larry decided to continue the deception until some marked change in
Arthur necessitated greater frankness.
“Did the doctor really think he was better?” Her gray eyes widened.
“He’s doing fine.” Larry studied the stem of his cocktail glass. “The
doctor expects him to have a remission any time now.”
The old anxiety, when she worried about Arthur’s dislike of the
Daughertys, shadowed her forehead.
“That’s nothing bad. His symptoms will disappear. That’s what it
means.” Larry laughed deep and low.
“Oh.” Slowly the concern thawed from her face. “That’s wonderful. Do
you hear, Arthur? The doctor says you’ll be well.”
Instantly Larry regretted having extended her hopes. He might have
let things ride along, saying that the doctor had found Arthur about
the same. Actually he had been discouraged that Bemrose’s walking had
not improved at a faster rate. The doctor told Larry privately today
that he might decide to try typhoid shots or sodium cacodylate if there
weren’t a change soon.
“Aren’t you happy about it, Arthur? Isn’t it wonderful?” Lucy asked
eagerly.
“I’m very happy,” he said quietly.
Larry had as little faith in Bemrose’s seeming contentment as in
today’s summer weather. First, second, and last Arthur was a realist,
and if he thought protest would benefit his condition, he’d demonstrate
noisily. Since quiet and placidity seemed indicated, he remained calm.
While he was insecure and helpless, Arthur would behave and be docile
around Lucy. The change in him was probably opportunist, the way a
small boy behaves when he has to. Larry would have liked to believe
that the transformation went deeper. A major illness _might_ have that
effect on some men, but he couldn’t convince himself that Bemrose had
gone through any fundamental change.
The upstairs telephone jangled noisily, and Bemrose’s calm left him as
he picked up the receiver and talked to Davis Shore. Larry saw puckers
of concern gather in his chin.
“Anything wrong?” he asked when Arthur hung up.
“How can I tell?” Bemrose’s hand shook as he fingered a crease in his
trousers. “He wants to see me tomorrow morning about that appeal, the
one that has been up for months, since long before I went into service.
I can’t understand why he’s in a hurry. Court has recessed.”
“What time are you seeing him in the morning?”
“Eight a.m.”
“Oh, Arthur--” Lucy put out her hand in a frightened stab at authority,
but the unfamiliar power conferred by his helplessness soon drifted
through her fingers. “You’re supposed to sleep until eight. The doctor
told us----”
“Does Shore know you’ve been sick?” Larry asked.
“Who doesn’t know?” Bemrose asked with unexpected bitterness. Or
self-pity.
“Everyone understands, and everyone is sympathetic,” Lucy protested.
“You could have asked Mr. Shore to make it later. He would have
understood.”
Larry tried to warn her. “That’s all right. I’ll pick Arthur up in the
morning.”
With synthetic brightness, she changed her tack. “You haven’t told me
how you like working at the office, Larry.”
“Is anyone supposed to like working?”
She hesitated a moment before her laugh caught on. It lapped at the
ceiling and flowed in ripples toward the wall.
“We’ll make a decent lawyer out of him if he gives us time,” Bemrose
said.
“I have to take that, too,” Larry objected. “It isn’t enough that I see
his bills are paid and he stays out of jail.”
“Does he order you around?” Lucy asked, taking up Larry’s line of abuse.
“He orders everyone around. That poor Miss Thompson. Have you ever
_seen_ Miss Thompson?” He covered his eyes.
“She looks very intelligent,” Lucy said.
“Intelligence isn’t what I admire in women. I like women who keep their
brains out of their faces.”
“I gave her money a year ago to buy herself a new hat. Did she ever buy
it?” Bemrose asked.
“What she needs is one of those schools that give you a new
personality,” Larry insisted.
“Maybe just a trip to the beauty parlor regularly,” Lucy suggested.
“Beauty’s too much to expect,” Larry insisted. “A
less-than-ugly-parlor.”
Bemrose shook with quiet laughter. “She’s been around so long,” he said
helplessly. “I never bothered to look. I never took the time.”
“He must be a busy man,” Larry said to Lucy. “I’d just as soon look at
the lawyer who used to share my office, and he never won any beauty
prize. Did I ever tell you about Moe? He was this big--” Larry measured
his shoulder. “And he used to get a cold water permanent for the hair
growing out of his ears.”
“Oh, Larry--” Lucy laughed and the threat of Davis Shore’s phone call
was forgotten for the moment.
In a little while, when Larry felt they were both all right, he got up
to go. He had walked as far as the stairway when Bemrose called after
him, “Don’t break your neck to get here in the morning. I have a hunch
Shore isn’t going to keep the appointment.”
_Chapter 18_
Arthur invited the poker crowd to play at his house on a hot Saturday
night in July. It was the first time the boys had visited him at
Eighty-second Street. The game was set up in the dining room where
Cy O’Malley, Tremont, Dick Reber, Hagerty, Chuck Adams, Paul Schmid,
Lucy’s Uncle Ed, and Jack Michaels, a friend of Ed’s, were hard at
play. Bemrose, who sat in the game for a while, was taking it easy now,
stretched out on a sofa in the air-conditioned living room, visiting
with Larry and with Edna Michaels.
The Michaels were new friends whom Marge and Ed Daugherty had brought
around recently. Edna came from Albany and reminded Bemrose that they
used to walk home from school together. Once he might have shied off
Edna because she came from Albany, but ever since his illness, he
seemed to want to talk about the old days. Maybe this recollection of
his childhood relieved Arthur, or maybe it was just that he liked Edna.
Tonight Larry noted that Edna sat with one foot twisted under her in a
defiance of comfort which seemed to pattern her life. She had left home
at sixteen when her mother forbade her to squander a week’s salary on
a red straw hat. Edna bought the hat, bummed a ride to New York, and
as rapidly as nature’s lethargic process would permit, gave birth to a
girl and boy by different men, unencumbered by marriage. She supported
the children working as Jack Michaels’ secretary, learned the textile
business from him, and when she became indispensable during and after
business hours, he married her. That was ten years ago, and there
had been another son by Jack who amiably transferred his name to the
preceding anonymous offspring.
An unretouched white that streaked Edna’s dark hair was the only index
to these rather severe episodes. Larry noted that she had retained her
plump cheeks, unlined lips, and firm, single chin, but not by taking
care of herself, he knew. In the milieu of lava around Edna, things
exploded, seethed, boiled, erupted, or went dramatically flat. The
source of eruption was always Edna herself who, even on days that ran
smoothly, had a trick of inflating phases, moods, and chance incidents
into “problems.” Edna’s ’teen age children did not merely refuse to
wash or dress neatly, but “went through adolescence” with all the
farce and tragedy she could inject into the inevitable transition. Her
servants were not drab recruits from Harlem’s wage-earning thousands,
but “types,” meriting the bold master stroke of a Hemingway. Instead
of going through an early menopause aided by sound therapy, Edna
manufactured enough adrenalin, thyroid, and estrogens to swing her
giddily over the troughs of depression which bogged down other women.
Since Jack Michaels had rescued her from major catastrophe, she had
constantly been in minor trouble, synthesized, Larry decided, for the
pleasure Edna had in telling about it.
Arthur bought aisle seats to Edna’s performances. He was encouraging
her now to tell Larry a story she had excavated earlier in the week
about the Albany days. Bemrose’s head lay back on the sofa as he
laughingly recalled the details.
“Tell him about the time your brother Micky tied fifty knots in the
sheets my mother hung up in the yard. Tell him what she did,” he urged.
“Clapped his ears and said his father must be a crook and his mother a
whore to have such a kid.” Edna fluttered her eyelids in a false show
of refinement.
“That was my mother all right. Her language upset my father’s sense
of what was decent and proper. He was furious the time she rented an
apartment over a garage. Do you remember that place?”
Edna nodded. “There was nothing wrong with it. It had steam heat.”
“It didn’t have a street address. My father worried what to tell people
when they came to visit us. ‘We can’t tell them we live _between_
number one forty-five and one forty-six,’ he’d say.”
“Couldn’t you tell them one forty-five and a half?” Larry asked.
“My mother wasn’t bothered for a minute. The rent was cheap, and it was
the first steam-heated place we’d ever lived in. The entire two years
we stayed there my father refused to invite anyone to the house.”
“People couldn’t stay away from your mother. They came anyway.” Edna
talked rapidly with teeth that worked up and down like a cutting edge.
“My mother always said she’d bust if she couldn’t tell Mrs. Bemrose her
troubles.”
“She never went to school past the third grade, but all sorts of people
used to ask her advice,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “The high school
principal scared most of us. He was a quiet scared little man himself,
a history teacher who lived in the time of Alexander the Great. He
hated administrative work, and cut interviews short with the students
so he could get back to his research. My mother went to see him about a
college scholarship for me, and he kept her in his office for three and
a half hours.” Arthur shrugged. “I still don’t know what they talked
about, but I remember mother invited him to have coffee with us above
the garage, and my father almost died of shame.”
Bemrose bent over and rubbed his legs which were stretched lifelessly
on the sofa. “She insists they talked about children. He probably
wanted her advice on how to run the school.” His voice, low and
rhythmic when he was relaxed like this, gave Larry as much pleasure as
a good performance at the theater. “A Mrs. Allen, one of the society
women in town, took a shine to mother when she came to talk to her once
about a neighborhood settlement house. Every month after that mother
was invited for coffee at the Allens’ big place near the country club.”
“I never saw the inside of a nice house until I moved away,” Edna
Michaels said. “Until I was seventeen, I never knew people had dining
rooms.”
“You think _you_ were poor,” Arthur protested. “I still can’t spend
fifteen cents for a shine without feeling guilty. Do you know how many
miles I used to walk to save fifteen cents?”
He had always tried to walk away from it, Larry decided, by excelling
at college, by pushing and stretching his talent in practice, and by
overdoing for others.
“Do you remember the time you shined my dad’s shoes with the wrong
polish?” Edna asked.
Lucy and Marge, who had been busy in the dining room serving drinks,
came over to empty the ash trays. Arthur made room for Lucy on the sofa
next to him. “Go on, Edna, I’d like Lucy to hear.”
“You usually came around on Saturdays to sell dad a shine,” Edna
reminded him. “I think you charged three cents, but most of the time he
didn’t have that much on him. This Saturday he was flush and told you
to go ahead. The kitchen was dark, and you shined his brown shoes with
black polish. Boy, was he mad when he found out! He sent me right over
the next morning to get you.”
Delighted, Arthur pressed Lucy’s hand. “I’ll never forget that Sunday.
It was way below zero, and the garage pipes were frozen solid.”
“Dad threatened to sue you if you didn’t pay for the shoes,” Edna said.
“Hell, they were probably his only pair. They laced up high and must
have cost him five dollars. It took me about a year, but I paid him
back, didn’t I? Ten cents a week. I used to have nightmares about going
to jail.”
“Kids always worry about things like that,” Edna added. “Once I knocked
against a stove at a hardware store, and something crashed. I was sure
the stove was broken, and I’d be locked up if the storekeeper found me.
I ran out of the place scared, and for years wouldn’t walk near the
block.”
“You don’t think your old man was mean enough to have me put in jail?”
Arthur asked.
“He was mean enough, all right.”
“Mine was the sweetest, the mildest--” Bemrose looked thoughtful.
“I didn’t know him well, not even as well as I knew the high school
principal. As a kid I didn’t try to understand him, I took him for
granted. Most of his life he was broke, and when he finally got hold of
some money, he gave it away. A distant cousin looked me up not long ago
and said my father had given him the money to finish medical school. He
has a good practice now, and wanted to repay the family.”
“What’s his name? The doctor’s?” Marge said. The cross-hatching showed
clearly under her eyes, and her mouth set tightly.
“Feeling nauseous?” Lucy picked up Marge’s hand which fell limply to
her lap again.
Bemrose looked at Marge and reached for his crutches. He hobbled to the
phone, balancing carefully on the telephone stool. Tremont Friendly
called to him from the dining room to take a hand in the game, but
Arthur went on dialing. “Ask him to do it as a special favor for Mr.
Bemrose,” he told the operator.
On his way back to the sofa, Bemrose touched Marge’s cheek
affectionately. “Make yourself comfortable upstairs,” he said. “The
doctor will be over. I left word with the messenger service to reach
him.”
“Why didn’t you let me phone for you?” Larry protested.
A few minutes later chairs shifted in the dining room, and Ed Daugherty
wandered in with Jack Michaels. He glanced around nervously and asked
for Marge.
“Upstairs resting,” Arthur told him. “What’s the matter? Is the game
breaking up?”
“We’re sitting out a round or two,” Ed explained. “She hasn’t one of
her migraines, has she?” he asked anxiously.
“I think Lucy said her stomach’s upset,” Arthur told him, and Edna
nodded.
“She shouldn’t have had the shrimp salad,” Ed pulled gravely at his
pipe. “She can’t take care of seafood, and she’s always ordering it.
She’s allergic to shrimp.”
“Remember the Saturday we thumbed a ride out to the lake?” Edna broke
in.
“Your brother was sent to bring us back,” Arthur assisted her.
“Can’t you two stop rehashing old times?” Ed sounded irritable. “What’s
going to happen, Arthur? Are we or aren’t we going to open a second
front? We seem to be taking our time.”
A second front. Less than a year ago he thought we should stay out
altogether, Larry reflected. The hindsighters always were good at
making a big noise, as if to cover up their wrong guesses.
“The Army’s not paying me to think any more,” Arthur said.
“You read the papers, don’t you?” Ed snapped. “All this dillydallying!
Troops sitting over in England and Ireland twiddling their thumbs.”
Their guns, Larry silently corrected.
“There’s no reason why we should be pushed into anything until we’re
thoroughly prepared,” Arthur said. “There’s no percentage in losing the
few trained men we have.”
Some of the poker players trooped in from the dining room and gathered
around Arthur.
“How about a little aggravation?” Cy O’Malley nodded toward the card
table.
“You seem to be doing all right without me. Maybe Larry would like to
sit in.”
“The host should be in the game,” Tremont reminded him.
“Ask Emil Post,” Chuck said, kidding Terry. “Come on, Arthur, you’ll
never get another chance to play with us in a swell, air-cooled dump
like this. Wait until Danny hears about the uptown competition.”
“Where’s Lucy?” Cy O’Malley looked around.
“She went upstairs with my wife,” Ed replied. “My wife’s allergic to
seafood, and she ordered shrimp----”
“Tell Lucy to come down so I can make love to her.” Cy went to the
dining room to find his highball, and on his way back called up the
stairs. “Hey, Beautiful, come on down, I want to make love to you.”
Arthur laughed and turned to Edna Michaels. “My pals.”
Cy called to the others. “Time is money. What are we waiting for?” He
settled on the arm of Edna’s chair and offered her a drink out of his
glass. “Have you been here all evening?” Helplessly he addressed the
others. “Why do we have to play poker when there are beautiful women
around?”
Tremont lingered behind. “Sure you won’t join us, Arthur?”
“Not just now. The doctor’s coming over, and I’d have to quit anyway.”
“I’m sorry.” Terry looked concerned. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Thanks, but I’m feeling all right. He’s not coming to see me.”
Terry puckered his lips old-maidishly. “It’s sweet of you to have us
up, Arthur. You know how much we all appreciate it, and we want to
thank Mrs. Bemrose for going to the trouble----”
Cy whooped from the dining room, “Sandwiches!” and rushed in with a
plate of food. “Found them covered up on the sideboard.”
“Maybe Mrs. Bemrose wanted to save them for later,” Terry protested.
“Uhnnufu.” Cy stuffed his mouth with sliced ham and rye bread.
Swallowing, he said, “Danny can take lessons from Mrs. Beautiful,” and
started back to the dining room, the plate tilted precariously.
From the doorway he turned around and winked at Edna.
Waving to him she said to Arthur, “They’re quite a gang.”
“The last few years I lost track of what really went on with any of
them. I got too busy.” He turned to Larry for confirmation. “Larry
tried to brief me. He was always telling me not to swap old friends
for new clients, but a fellow gets--” Bemrose faltered. “A fellow gets
caught up,” he finished.
“They feel swell about your inviting them. Reber and Hagerty told me it
was the best session we’ve had since college,” Larry said.
“They’re good boys.”
Bemrose took an envelope out of his pocket and drew the diagram of a
parlor problem in geometry which had to do with burning a hole in a
carpet, and by one strategic cut, piecing the carpet into a standard
size rug. “They’re right on the ball,” he said, preoccupied. “More than
can be said for the clients. When the boys heard I was sick, they all
wanted to know what they could do, but the clients, particularly the
ones I thought were my friends----”
“Marge and Ed have been mighty attentive,” Larry reminded him.
“My own family couldn’t have done more. If I had a family that acted
like one,” Arthur explained to Edna. “Not that I blame the folks. I
lost touch with them, too, except for mailing a check home every month.”
“Has your mother been down since you’re sick?” Edna asked.
“My sister, Helen, still has t.b., and mother had to go to the
mountains with her,” Bemrose explained.
“Give me her address, I’d like to write to her.”
Bemrose started Jack Michaels and Ed Daugherty on the rug problem and
they worked silently with pencil and paper while he napped and Larry
sat quietly with Edna, hearing the slap of poker chips from the next
room.
When the doorbell rang, Lucy called down to Larry. The servants were
out for the evening. Lucy had purposely let them go out so the boys
would feel more at home.
The doctor, a harassed man with blotchy complexion and inflated cheeks,
asked anxiously at the door, “Did Mr. Bemrose have an accident?”
“No, he’s fine,” Larry assured him. “It’s Mrs. Bemrose’s aunt. She took
sick suddenly.”
“A neurological case?”
“You’d better talk to Mr. Bemrose before you go up.”
Larry returned to the next room and tapped Arthur’s shoulder. Bemrose
instinctively reached for his crutches when he awakened, the way a
myopic feels for his eyeglasses in the morning.
Larry pointed toward the hallway and whispered the message to Arthur,
trying not to attract Ed’s attention.
“I’ll go up with him,” Arthur volunteered.
“Talk to him in the hall. I’ll take him up.”
“No, I want to.” Stubbornly Bemrose swung to the door and greeted the
doctor whom he invited to follow him.
“Let me,” Larry offered.