Текст книги "Rich Man, Poor Man"

Автор книги: Irwin Shaw

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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

Chapter 7

I

“My dear son,” he read, in the round schoolgirlish handwriting, “your brother Rudolph was good enough to provide me with your address in New York City and I am taking the opportunity to get in touch with my lost boy after all these years.”

Oh, Christ, he thought, another county heard from. He had just come in and had found the letter waiting for him on the table in the hallway. He heard Teresa clanging pots in the kitchen and the kid making gobbling sounds.

“I’m home,” he called and went into the living room and sat down on the couch, pushing a toy fire engine out of the way. He sat there, on the orange-satin couch Teresa had insisted upon buying, holding the letter dangling from his hand, trying to decide whether or not to throw it away then and there.

Teresa came in, in an apron, a little sweat glistening on her make-up, the kid crawling after her.

“You got a letter,” she said. She was not very friendly these days, ever since she had heard about his going to England and leaving her behind.

“Yeah.”

“It’s a woman’s handwriting.”

“It’s from my mother, for Christ’s sake.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Look.” He shoved the letter under her nose.

She squinted to read. She was very nearsighted but refused to wear glasses. “It’s awful young handwriting for a mother,” she said, retreating reluctantly. “A mother, now. Your family is growing in leaps and bounds.”

She went back to the kitchen, picking up the kid, who was squalling that he wanted to stay where he was.

To spite Teresa, Thomas decided to read the letter and see what the old bitch had to say.

“Rudolph described the circumstances of your meeting”—he read—“and I must say I was more than a little shocked at your choice of a profession. Although I shouldn’t be surprised, considering your father’s nature and the example he set you with that dreadful punching bag hanging out in the back yard all the time. Still, it’s an honest living, I suppose, and your brother says you seem to have settled down with a wife and a child and I hope you are happy.

“Rudolph did not describe your wife to me, but I hope that your family life is happier than your father’s and mine. I don’t know whether Rudolph mentioned it to you but your father just vanished one fine night, with the cat.

“I am not well and I have the feeling my days are numbered. I would like to come to New York City and see my son and my new grandson, but traveling is very difficult for me. If Rudolph saw fit to buy an automobile instead of the motorcycle he charges around town on perhaps I could manage the trip. He might even be able to drive me to church one Sunday, so I could begin to make up for the years of paganism your father forced me to endure. But I guess I shouldn’t complain. Rudolph has been very kind and takes good care of me and has got me a television set which makes the long days bearable. He seems to be so busy on his own projects that he barely comes home to sleep. From what I can tell, especially from the way he dresses, he is doing quite well. But he was always a good dresser and always managed to have money in his pocket.

“I cannot honestly say that I would like to see the entire family reunited, as I have crossed your sister from my heart, for good and sufficient reason, but seeing my two sons together again would bring tears of joy to my eyes.

“I was always too tired and overworked and struggling to meet your father’s drunken demands to show the love I felt for you, but maybe now, in my last days, we can have peace between us.

“I gathered from Rudolph’s tone that you were not very friendly with him. Perhaps you have your reasons. He has turned into a cold man although a thoughtful one. If you do not wish to see him, I could let you know when he is out of the house, which happens more and more often, for days on end, and you and I could visit with each other undisturbed. Kiss my grandson for me. Your loving Mother.”

Holy God, he thought, voices from the tomb.

He sat there, holding the letter, staring into space, not hearing his wife scolding the kid in the kitchen, thinking of the years over the bakery, years when he had been more thoroughly exiled although he lived in the same house than when he had been sent away and told never to show his face again. Maybe he would go to visit the old lady, listen to the complaints, so late in coming, about her beloved Rudolph, her fair-haired boy.

He would borrow a car from Schultzy and ride her over to church, that’s what he would do. Let the whole goddamn family see how wrong they were about him.

II

Mr. McKenna went out of the hotel room, aldermanic, benign, ex-cop on pension now pursuing private crime, having taken the report from a neat, black-seal briefcase and laid it on Rudolph’s desk. “I am quite certain this will provide all the information you need about the individual in question,” Mr. McKenna had said, kindly, plump, rubbing his bald head, his sober, gray-felt hat, neatly rimmed, on the desk beside him. “Actually, the investigation was comparatively simple, and unusually short for such complete results.” There had been a note of regret in Mr. McKenna’s voice at Willie’s artless simplicity, which had required so little time, so little professional guile to investigate. “I think the wife will find that any competent lawyer can get her a divorce with no difficulty under the laws of the State of New York dealing with adultery. She is very clearly the injured party, very clearly indeed.”

Rudolph looked at the neatly typed report with distaste. Tapping telephone wires, it seemed, was as easy as buying a loaf of bread. For five dollars, hotel clerks would allow you to attach a microphone to a wall. Secretaries would fish out torn love letters from waste baskets and piece them together carefully for the price of a dinner. Old girls, now rejected, would quote chapter and verse. Police files were open, secret testimony before committees was available, nothing was unpleasant enough to be disbelieved. Communication, despite what poets were saying at the moment, was rife.

He picked up the phone and asked for Gretchen’s number. He listened as the operator dialed. The busy signal, that snarling sound, came over the wire. He hung up and went over to the window and parted the curtains and looked out. The afternoon was cold and gray. Down below pedestrians leaned against the wind, hurrying for shelter, collars up. It was an ex-policeman’s kind of day.

He went back to the phone, asked for Gretchen’s number again. Once more, he heard the busy signal. He slammed down the instrument, annoyed. He wanted to get this miserable business over with as quickly as possible. He had spoken to a lawyer friend, without mentioning names, and the lawyer friend had advised him that the injured party should move out of the communal habitation with the child before bringing any action, unless there was some way of keeping the husband out of the apartment completely from that moment on. Under no conditions should the injured party sleep one night more under the same roof with the defendant-to-be.

Before he called Willie and confronted him with the detective’s report, he had to tell Gretchen this and tell her also that he intended to speak to Willie immediately.

But again the phone rang busy. The injured party was having a chatty afternoon. With whom was she talking—Johnny Heath, quiet, bland lover, constant guest, or one of the other ten men she had said she no longer wanted to sleep with? The easiest lay in New York. Sister mine.

He looked at his watch. Five minutes to four. Willie would undoubtedly be back in his office by now, happily dozing off the pre-lunch martinis.

Rudolph picked up the phone and called Willie’s number. Two secretaries in Willie’s office wafted him along, disembodied sweet voices, electric with public relations charm. “Hi, Merchant Prince,” Willie said, when he came on the line. “To what do I owe the honor?” It was a three-martini voice this afternoon.

“Willie,” Rudolph said, “you have to come over here to my hotel right away.”

“Listen, kid, I’m sort of tied up here and …”

“Willie, I warn you, you’d better come over here this minute.”

“Okay,” Willie said, his voice subdued. “Order me a drink.”

Drinkless, Willie sat in the chair the ex-policeman had used earlier, and carefully read the report. Rudolph stood at the window, looking out. He heard the rustle of paper as Willie put the report down.

“Well,” Willie said, “it seems I’ve been a very busy little boy. What are you going to do with this now?” He tapped the report.

Rudolph reached over and picked up the clipped-together sheets of paper and tore them into small pieces and dropped the pieces into the wastebasket.

“What does that mean?” Willie asked.

“It means that I can’t go through with it,” Rudolph said. “Nobody’s going to see it and nobody’s going to know about it. If your wife wants a divorce, she’ll have to figure out another way to get it.”

“Oh,” Willie said. “It was Gretchen’s idea?”

“Not exactly. She said she wanted to get away from you, but she wanted to keep the kid, and I offered to help.”

“Blood is thicker than marriage. Is that it?”

“Something like that. Only not my blood. This time.”

“You came awfully close to being a shit, Merchant Prince,” Willie said, “didn’t you?”

“So I did.”

“Does my beloved wife know you have this on me?”

“No. And she’s not going to.”

“In days to come,” Willie said, “I shall sing the praises of my shining brother-in-law. Look, I shall tell my son, look closely at your noble uncle and you will be able to discern the shimmer of his halo. Christ, there must be one drink somewhere in this hotel.”

Rudolph brought out the bottle. With all his jokes, if ever a man looked as though he needed a drink, it was Willie at this moment. He drank off half of the glass. “Who’s picking up the tab for the research?” he asked.

“I am.”

“What does it come to?”

“Five hundred and fifty dollars.”

“You should’ve come to me,” Willie said. “I’d’ve given you the information for half the price. Do you want me to pay you back?”

“Forget it,” Rudolph said. “I never gave you a wedding present. Consider this my wedding present.”

“Better than a silver platter. I thank you, brother-in-law. Is there more in that bottle?”

Rudolph poured. “You’d better keep sober,” he said. “You’re going to have some serious conversation ahead of you.”

“Yeah.” Willie nodded. “It was a sorrowful day for everybody when I bought your sister a bottle of champagne at the Algonquin bar.” He smiled wanly. “I loved her that afternoon and I love her now and there I am in the trash basket.” He gestured to where the shreds of the detective’s report lay scattered in the tin bucket, decorated with a hunting print, riders with bright-red coats. “Do you know what love is?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.” Willie stood up. “Well, I’ll leave you. Thanks for an interesting half hour.”

He went out without offering to shake hands.

III

He was incredulous when he came to the house. He looked again at the piece of paper Rudolph had given him to make sure that he was at the right address. Still over a store. And in a neighborhood that was hardly any better than the old one in Port Philip. Seeing Rudolph in that fancy room at the Hotel Warwick and hearing him talk you’d think that he was just rolling in dough. Well, if he was, he wasn’t wasting any of it on rent.

Maybe he just kept the old lady in this joint and had a rich pad for himself in some other part of town. He wouldn’t put it past the bastard.

Thomas went into the dingy vestibule, saw the name Jordache printed next to a bell, rang. He waited, but the buzzer remained silent. He had called and told his mother he was coming to visit today, and she said she’d be home. He couldn’t make it on a Sunday, because when he suggested it to Teresa, she’d started to cry. Sunday was her day, she wept, and she wasn’t going to be done out of it by an old hag who hadn’t even bothered to send a card when her grandson was born. So they’d left the kid with a sister of Teresa’s up in the Bronx and they’d gone to a movie on Broadway and had dinner at Toots Shor’s, where a sportswriter recognized Thomas, which made Teresa’s day for her and maybe it was worth the twenty bucks the dinner had cost.

Thomas pushed the bell again. Still, there was no response. Probably, Thomas thought bitterly, at the last minute Rudolph called and said he wanted his mother to come down to New York and shine his shoes or something, and she’d rushed off, falling all over herself with joy.

He started to turn away, half relieved that he didn’t have to face her. It hadn’t been such a hot idea to begin with. Let sleeping mothers lie. He was just about out of the door when he heard the buzzer. He went back, opened the door and went up the steps.

The door opened at the first floor landing and there she was, looking a hundred years old. She took a couple of steps toward him and he understood why he had had to wait for the buzzer. The way she walked it must take her five minutes to cross the room. She was crying already and had her arms outstretched to embrace him.

“My son, my son,” she cried, as her arms, thin sticks, went around him. “I thought I’d never see your face again.”

There was a strong smell of toilet water. He kissed her wet cheek gently, wondering what he felt.

Clinging to his arm, she led him into the apartment. The living room was tiny and dark and he recognized the furniture from the apartment on Vanderhoff Street. It had been old and worn-out then. Now it was practically in ruins. Through an open door he could look into an adjoining room and see a desk, a single bed, books everywhere.

If he can afford to buy all those books, Thomas thought, he sure can afford to buy some new furniture.

“Sit down, sit down,” she said excitedly, guiding him to the one threadbare easy chair. “What a wonderful day.” Her voice was thin, made reedy by years of complaint. Her legs were swollen, shapeless, and she wore wide, soft, invalid’s shoes, like a cripple. She moved as though she had been broken a long time ago in an accident. “You look splendid. Absolutely splendid.” He remembered those words she used, out of Gone With the Wind. “I was afraid my little boy’s face would be all battered, but you’ve turned out handsomely. You resemble my side of the family, that’s plain to see, Irish. Not like the other two.” She moved in a slow awkward flutter before him as he sat stiffly in the chair. She was wearing a flowered dress that blew loosely about her thin body. Her thick legs stuck out below her skirt like an error in engineering, another woman’s limbs. “That’s a lovely gray suit,” she said, touching his sleeve. “A gentleman’s suit. I was afraid you’d still be in a sweater.” She laughed gaily, his childhood already a romance. “Ah, I knew Fate couldn’t be so unkind,” she said, “not letting me see my child’s face before I die. Now let me see my grandson’s face. You must have a picture. I’m sure you carry one in your wallet, like all, proud fathers.”

Thomas took out a picture of his child.

“What’s his name?” his mother asked.

“Wesley,” Thomas said.

“Wesley Pease,” his mother said. “It’s a fine name.”

Thomas didn’t bother to remind her that the boy’s name was Wesley Jordache, nor did he tell her that he had fought Teresa for a week to try to get her to settle for a less fancy name. But Teresa had wept and carried on and he’d given in.

His mother stared at the photograph, her eyes dampening. She kissed the snapshot. “Dear little beautiful thing,” she said.

Thomas didn’t remember her ever kissing him as a child.

“You must take me to see him,” she said.

“Sure.”

“Soon.”

“When I come back from England,” he said.

“England! We’ve just found each other again and you’re leaving for the other side of the earth!”

“It’s only for a couple of weeks.”

“You must be doing very well,” she said, “to be able to afford vacations like that.”

“I have a job to do there,” he said. He was reluctant to use the word fight. “They pay my way.” He didn’t want her to get the idea that he was rich, which he wasn’t, by a long shot. In the Jordache family, it was safer to cry poverty. One woman grabbing at every cent that came into the house was enough for one family.

“I hope you’re saving your money,” she said. “In your profession …”

“Sure,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.” He looked around him. “It’s a cinch Rudy’s saving his money.”

“Oh,” she said. “The apartment. It’s not very grand, is it? But I can’t complain. Rudy pays for a woman to come in and clean every day and do the shopping for me the days I can’t make the stairs. And he says he’s looking for a bigger place. On the ground floor somewhere, so it’ll be easier for me, without steps. He doesn’t talk to me much about his work, but there was an article last month in the paper all about how he was one of the up-and-coming young businessmen in town, so I suppose he’s doing well enough. But he’s right to be thrifty. Money was the tragedy of the family. It made an old woman of me before my time.” She sighed, self-pitying. “Your father was demented on the subject. I couldn’t get ten dollars from him for the barest necessities of life without a pitched battle every time. When you’re in England you might make some confidential inquiries, find out if anyone has seen him there. He’s liable to be anyplace, that man. After all, he was European, and it would be the most natural thing in the world for him to go back there to hide out.”

Off her rocker, he thought. Poor old lady. Rudy hadn’t prepared him for this. But he said, “I’ll ask around when I get over there.”

“You’re a good boy,” she said. “I always knew deep down that you were essentially a good boy, but swayed by bad companions. If I had had the time to be a proper mother to my family, I could have saved you from so much trouble. You must be strict with your son. Loving, but strict. Is you wife a good mother to him?”

“She’s okay,” he said. He preferred not to talk about Teresa. He looked at his watch. The conversation and the dark apartment were depressing him. “Look,” he said, “it’s nearly one o’clock. Why don’t I take you out to lunch? I have a car downstairs.”

“Lunch? In a restaurant. Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely,” she said, girlishly. “My big strong son taking his old mother out to lunch.”

“We’ll go to the best place in town,” he said.

On his way home, driving Schultzy’s car down toward New York late in the afternoon, he thought about the day, wondering if he would ever make the trip again.

The image of his mother formed in adolescence, that of a scolding, perpetually disapproving hard woman, fanatically devoted to one son, to the detriment of another, was now replaced by that of a harmless and pitiful old lady, pathetically lonely, pleased by the slightest attention, and anxious to be loved.

At lunch he had offered her a cocktail and she had grown a little tipsy, had giggled and said, “Oh, I do feel naughty.” After lunch he had driven her around town and was surprised to see that most of it was entirely unknown to her. She had lived there for years, but had seen practically nothing of it, not even the university from which her son had been graduated. “I had no idea it was such a beautiful place,” she kept saying over and over again, as they passed through neighborhoods where comfortable, large houses were set among trees and wintry lawns. And when they passed Calderwood’s, she said, “I had no idea it was so big. You know, I’ve never been in there. And to think that Rudy practically runs it!”

He had parked the car and had walked slowly with her along the ground floor and insisted upon buying her a suede handbag for fifteen dollars. She had had the salesgirl wrap up her old bag and carried the new one proudly over her arm as they left the store.

She had talked a great deal in the course of the afternoon, telling him for the first time about her life in the orphanage (“I was the brightest girl in the class. They gave me a prize when I left.”), about working as a waitress, being ashamed of being illegitimate, about going to night school in Buffalo to improve herself, about not ever letting a man even kiss her until she married Axel Jordache, about only weighing ninety-two pounds on the day of her wedding, about how beautiful Port Philip was the day she and Axel came down to inspect the bakery, about the white excursion boat going by up the river, with the band playing waltzes on the deck, about how nice the neighborhood was when they first came there and her dream of starting a cosy little restaurant, about her hopes for her family.…

When he took her back to the apartment she asked him if she could have the photograph of his son to frame and put on the table in her bedroom and when he gave it to her, she hobbled into her room and came back with a photograph of herself, yellowed with age, taken when she was nineteen, in a long, white dress, slender, grave, beautiful. “Here,” she said, “I want you to have this.”

She watched silently as he put it carefully in his wallet in the same place that he had kept his son’s picture.

“You know,” she said, “I feel closer to you somehow than to anybody in the whole world. We’re the same kind of people. We’re simple. Not like your sister and your brother. I love Rudy, I suppose, and I should, but I don’t understand him. And sometimes I’m just afraid of him. While you …” She laughed. “Such a big, strong young man, a man who makes his living with his fists.… But I feel so at home with you, almost as though we were the same age, almost as though I had a brother. And today … today was so wonderful. I’m a prisoner who has just come out from behind the walls.”

He kissed her and held her and she clutched at him briefly.

“Do you know,” she said, “I haven’t smoked a single cigarette since you arrived.”

He drove down slowly through the dusk, thinking about the afternoon. He came to a roadhouse and went in and sat at the empty bar and had a whiskey. He took out his wallet and stared at the young girl who had turned into his mother. He was glad he had come to see her. Perhaps her favor wasn’t worth much, but in the long race for that meager trophy he had finally won. Alone in the quiet bar he enjoyed an unaccustomed tranquillity. For an hour, at least, he was at peace. Today, there was one less person in the world that he had to hate.