The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three Page 23

  “Frank will drive you to the station whenever you’re ready,” she said.

  When they got to the house Greg got out of the car first, and he said eagerly, “Let me carry him, Mona.”

  “No, I’ll carry him. You’ll wake him,” she whispered.

  “Wouldn’t it be all right . . .” He intended to say, “Wouldn’t it be all right to wake him just to say good-bye?” but he fumbled, from wanting it so much, and he said instead, “. . . all right just to carry him to the house?”

  “Sh, sh, sh,” Mona said. Mike’s head was moving on her shoulder and he was wetting his red lips with the tip of his tongue. This was while they were going toward the house. Greg kept watching Mike, hardly knowing what to hope for, but anxious for something that would destroy the desolation within him. Once he even coughed, just at the door, and cleared his throat noisily, but there was nothing more for him than that one restless move of Mike’s head.

  When Greg was ready to leave, he stood at the door with Mona. He wanted to go, to hurry, but he felt such emptiness in going. He wanted to shake hands heartily with Mona, to look at her directly, but his words came slow and groping, “Good-bye Mona. You were good to let me come.”

  “Good-bye Greg,” she said, smiling and calm. “You come any time you want to come.”

  “I will,” he said, trying hard to conceal the dragging emptiness inside him. There was one awkward moment, then he turned and was walking to the automobile; and then he heard Mona speaking in her mother voice, “Did we wake you up, Mike? You still look half asleep.” Looking back, Greg saw Mike pushing past his mother standing in front of her, and he was staring after him.

  “Where are you going, Mister?” Mike called.

  “Back to the city, Mike.”

  “Good-bye, Mister,” Mike called, and he went running toward Greg. Grinning broadly, Greg bent down and caught him in his arms and lifted him high over his shoulders, shaking him and making him laugh again before putting him down. Then he kissed him with a quick eagerness and went on to the car, where Frank was waiting and watching. But before Greg could get into the car, Mike ran up to him again, only this time he stopped short a few feet away, with a puzzled, shy, wondering look on his face, feeling that someone he liked a lot and had felt very close to immediately was leaving him for some reason he did not understand.

  This look on Mike’s face brought a surge of joy to Greg, and he looked back a long time, half-smiling, wanting so much to believe that the feeling in the boy’s eyes came from the same kind of longing that had been in his own heart when he had felt compelled to return to him. This one look, making them both feel there might have been much love between them, was something like what he had waited for when he had watched Mike sleeping.

  Greg was smiling when he did finally get into the car. He waved cheerfully at Mona. He sat down beside Frank and looked at him in a direct, friendly way. He almost wished Frank could forgive him for being a professional man who had done well in the last two years. But he couldn’t help saying almost triumphantly as the car started, “You certainly have to admit he’s a fine boy.”

  It Had to Be Done

  In the drive out to the country that night to get the suits Chris had left at Mrs. Mumford’s place, he kept telling Catherine she shouldn’t have come. He was only going because he needed the suits. It didn’t matter whether or not Mrs. Mumford only wanted him to be wearing something she had once bought for him. “She knows I’m going to marry you,” he said.

  “That’s why I should meet her. Then maybe she’ll believe it,” Catherine said. “You’re not ashamed of me.”

  They were crossing the Delaware and driving through the soft rolling hills, and it seemed to Catherine that they never would be able to stop talking about Mrs. Mumford. He had met Mrs. Mumford five years ago when he was broke and wanted to be an architect, and she was rich and believed in his talent. She had so much enthusiasm he had thought he might be in love with her, even if she was five years older. She got him one job, then another, then had him quit the jobs and go to Europe with her to study. There never was a chance for him to worry about anything. But when he woke up and found she wanted to marry him and had taken charge of his life, he hated himself for getting into it and left her. But she kept track of him and still kept trying to look after him. When she heard he was with Catherine she wrote him that maybe a girl like Catherine, whom he had met at a dance and who worked in a department store, would be good for him for a while. Then she asked him why he didn’t come out and get the suits he had left at her place: she said she knew he needed them.

  They had turned off the highway and were going up the side road past the little lighted store, and then Chris stopped the car. “Here we are,” he said.

  “I’ll go up with you, Chris.”

  “I know,” he said, getting out of the car. “But it can’t do any good, see. I’ll only be gone twenty minutes.”

  “But she’ll wonder why you didn’t bring me.”

  “She’d certainly be surprised if I did,” he said, pulling his bag out of the back seat.

  “That’s just it,” she said eagerly. “She’s sure you would not, no matter how often you write her that we love each other.”

  “Look, honey,” he said, patting her arm. “I don’t want to make a visit out of this. I want to get out quick, isn’t that right? I’ll only be gone twenty minutes.” Then he kissed her and went on up the slope, swinging the bag, and his shadow got longer in the moonlight and broke over the car.

  When he was out of sight she got out of the car and stood in the road looking around nervously. She had her hands deep in the pockets of her belted coat, and she pulled off her little blue hat and shook her long-bobbed fair hair. She was twenty-one, fifteen years younger than Mrs. Mumford, and as she stood looking back at the light in the little store and then at the way the moonlight touched the stone fences as they curved up over the meadowland on Mrs. Mumford’s property, she felt like a timid child. She was thinking that as soon as Chris opened the door Mrs. Mumford would say, “Why, darling, where’s your girl?” and no matter what excuse he made she would know that he was ashamed to bring her.

  In spite of herself she started to go up the road after Chris, but when she got to the little rippling stone-banked creek she grew afraid. She could go no farther. Staring at the big white house and the lighted windows and the dark high hill behind it, she sat down weakly in the grass. When a cowbell tinkled in some nearby pasture and she heard the swishing sound of the cow moving in the grass and then settling down again by a fence, she felt suddenly lost in a country that belonged to a rich woman, a country where Chris had lived, and that was so beautiful and peaceful that surely as he walked up the road he would be remembering how he had wanted to hear all these little sounds again. Maybe he was remembering and hearing these sounds every time Mrs. Mumford wrote him offering to loan him money and giving him advice about little things and wishing him great happiness like a very noble woman.

  “Oh, Chris, we’ve had such good times. You’ve said you felt free for the first time in your life,” she was whispering to herself, looking up at the house. He had got a job in an architect’s office. He seemed to feel like a kid with her. He said he wanted to work and make something out of himself. He said that she would never understand what it was to have someone own your life and smother you and never give you a chance to be yourself. She was trying hard to remember these things, but if he was ashamed of her, then nothing she had given him was good. While he felt that he did not want Mrs. Mumford to see her, he could never really belong to her.

  As she got up and began to go slowly toward the house she was frightened. She felt she had to do it, and the loud beating of her heart could not stop her. At the door she faltered, then she rapped weakly. “I was waiting,” she said to the maid. “Mrs. Mumford will know me.” Then she went into the old white colonial living room, trying to smile and walk lazily.

  Chris and Mrs. Mumford were standing together at the long pine ta
ble. The open bag was on the table, and Chris was packing his suits in it. As Catherine came in they both turned, startled. Mrs. Mumford was a large handsome woman with jet-black hair drawn back tight from her bold and vivid face, and the white part in her hair was shining in the light. If Chris had only smiled naturally, or come to her to welcome her she would have felt immense relief, but his face reddened as Mrs. Mumford stared at Catherine, then turned, wondering, to him.

  “It got chilly outside,” Catherine said. “I thought I might as well come in.”

  “You’re Catherine, aren’t you?” Mrs. Mumford said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why, Chris,” she said, “you said you came alone.”

  “I didn’t want to stay more than a minute,” he explained awkwardly. “It wasn’t like a visit, see. I mean, I knew you’d want us to stay.” But out of the corner of his eye he glanced at Catherine savagely and she felt panicky.

  “Please sit down,” Mrs. Mumford said, and she smiled and nodded sympathetically, and it was terrible for both of them because she made them feel that she understood their embarrassment and only wanted to help them. So Catherine sat down by herself with her toes close together. After that one appraising glance, Mrs. Mumford turned away and tried to help Chris with the straps on the bag. His hands were pawing at the lock. His head was down and his ears were red as he fumbled with it. “If only you both had come for the evening we could have had such a lovely chat,” Mrs. Mumford was saying. It seemed to Catherine, praying that Chris hurry, that the woman was mocking her. Beneath Mrs. Mumford’s simple calmness she felt a vast assurance and aggressiveness that terrified her. If Mrs. Mumford had offered her suddenly to take a walk around the house, she felt she would get up meekly and do it. She began to long to find something within herself that Mrs. Mumford would see she could never touch.

  Chris was still having trouble getting the edges of the bag together, and as he bent over the bag, muttering, Mrs. Mumford bent over, too, to help him. Their heads were close together. “What’s the trouble?” she asked. “Let me try.”

  She jammed the edges together suddenly when Chris had his finger against the edge of the metal lock. “Ouch. Damn it, my finger!” he said.

  “Why, it’s your nail,” she said. “Oh, dear. That’s terrible. Let me see it.” She took his hand and lifted it close to her face. “It’s bleeding.”

  “It’s nothing. It doesn’t hurt at all,” he said uneasily.

  “It’ll turn black. I’ll get some ointment. Maybe I should put a piece of cloth around it.” And suddenly she seemed to enfold him. Her face lit up with energetic warmth. She seemed to be ministering to someone she possessed. It was only a little thing, but Catherine stood up, frightened. It seemed to her that if she let Mrs. Mumford do one thing more for Chris he could never really belong to her.

  “Why don’t you leave him alone?” she whispered.

  “Why, his finger’s hurt,” Mrs. Mumford said, startled.

  “That isn’t it,” Catherine said breathlessly, as she took a step toward Mrs. Mumford.

  “Catherine, please—” Chris begged her.

  “It’s just a little thing, I know,” Catherine went on doggedly.

  “What’s the matter with her, Chris?” Mrs. Mumford asked.

  “This is the matter,” Catherine blurted out, white-faced. “Somebody’s got to tell you. Why don’t you leave him alone? Leave him alone. You don’t own people. Stop trying to boss him around.”

  But the contempt she saw in Mrs. Mumford’s eyes suddenly silenced her. She turned helplessly to Chris.

  “I’m sorry,” he was saying to Mrs. Mumford. “I didn’t want this to happen.”

  “I understand, Chris,” she said calmly.

  But she kept looking at Catherine. Her long appraising look made Catherine feel she had to hurt her. “Come on, Chris,” she said. “Come on, let’s go. The lady doesn’t think much of me.”

  Then her heart was pounding wildly and she didn’t care what she did. And she swung her coat back and put her hand on her hip, showing the fine curve of her breast and her slimness and her young body. As she moved she swaggered a little, swaying her hips, her eyes mocking Mrs. Mumford and seeming to say, “Go on, take a look at me. You haven’t got everything.”

  But Mrs. Mumford only turned to Chris, trying to get him to look at her. He was staring at Catherine, pain and surprise in his eyes. Then the shame and humiliation Catherine had been dreading ever since she came there flooded through her. She looked scared.

  “Don’t you think you made a mistake?” Mrs. Mumford said, turning to Chris.

  “The mistake I made was in coming here,” he shouted at her. And he swung away from her and grabbed the handle of the open bag and jerked it off the table. It flopped open and the suits spilled out on the floor. Then he and Mrs. Mumford looked down at the suits. “She’s right,” he said to her. “And you remember it.”

  Hoisting the empty bag under his arm he grabbed Catherine by the shoulder and pushed her toward the door, and he kept pulling her out and down the path of light from the opened door.

  “I’m sorry, Chris. I’m sorry,” she began to sob. “I acted like a cheap little chippie,” she wept. “I didn’t want to. I guess I had to.”

  “I told you to stay out and you didn’t,” he said. He was rushing her down the road and she could hardly keep up to him. “Maybe you should stay with her. Maybe she’s right. You shouldn’t be with me,” she said. Her face kept turning to him, pleading, apologetic and ashamed. “That’s it.” Without stopping, he turned, stricken, as if scared she was going to deny him suddenly everything that had built his life up. His hand tightened on her arm. She felt a furtive leap of joy; they were going down the road faster, and he seemed to be holding her to him tighter than ever before.

  The Homing Pigeon

  When the fifth day passed and still his father, the doctor, didn’t return to Frenchtown, Dick started out looking for him. He went over to Charlie’s barbershop and sprawled in the chair. He was seventeen, big for his age, and he looked at the barber a long time with a serious, worried face before he spoke to him.

  “How do you want it, same as usual — use the scissors at the sides?” Charlie asked, taking the scissors off the glass ledge.

  “I don’t want a haircut, I just want to ask you something.”

  “Go ahead, Dick.”

  “You know my old man hasn’t shown up yet.”

  “That’s bad, that’s bad, that’s getting worse.”

  “You know he stayed away before, and I figured you’d know where he was.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. You’re the only one around here that knows he gets drunk.”

  As he took off his glasses and began wiping them with the hem of his white coat, the barber started to splutter, “I didn’t think you’d be worrying much about the doctor, Dick.

  I mean the two of you don’t get along very well — everybody knows that. There’s things you’ve got to make allowances for. When a man’s wife dies it upsets the swing of his life a little, don’t you see?”

  The doctor’s son took an envelope from his pocket, showing it to the barber. On the back of the envelope there was a Twenty-eighth Street, New York address.

  “Do you think he might be at this address?” he asked. “Have you been there with him?”

  “Now, now, Dick. I wouldn’t go there looking for him.”

  “Would he be there?”

  “I’d let him look after himself if I were you, Dick. He’ll come home when he’s ready,” the barber said.

  The doctor’s son went out and along the street to the garage where Williams’ truck was waiting, and he yelled up to the driver. “Are you going right to New York, Bert?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Looking for your old man?”

  Dick was a little ashamed and only said, “It’s time I had a look at the big town, isn’t it?”

  But when he was sitting o
n the big high seat with Bert Williams, the round-faced, rosy-cheeked grocery boy who had grown up in the town with him, and the truck was swinging around the bends in the road in the late afternoon and swinging them close together, he found himself talking eagerly about his father.

  It was true he and his old man had never got along very well — they just didn’t seem to have any affection for each other, but there were times when he thought his father missed his affection; little things he said, ways he had of looking at him; and he himself was often puzzled and felt maybe their natures were just antipathetic. A few months ago, when his mother died, it got worse between them. Perhaps she had been all that held them together — held them with her soft gentle way and the little bits of encouragement she was always giving him to be friendly with the old man. She had made him feel that he simply had to like his father and that his love for her even was spoiled and no good unless he was willing to share it with his father. “There’s just the two of us in the house now, and I got the idea today that’s maybe one reason why he stays away. He’s got an idea I’ve no use for him. What do you think? Maybe he’d like it if he saw I really wanted him back. We might start being good friends. What do you think?” he asked.

  “It’s very likely,” Bert replied. “I always liked him.”

  “I figure my mother would certainly want me to dig him up no matter where he is,” said Dick, and he lay back on the seat with his eyes half closed, watching the darkness creep over the low Jersey hills and thinking of the way his mother used to laugh. He had always felt that it was a secret between them that he knew she wanted most to be a gay, carefree, laughing woman, because she was always grave and polite when his father and other people were around the house.

  Soon they were crossing the flatlands of Jersey, then crossing the great bridge and going through the tunnel, and as he looked at the lights of the city he felt an indescribable elation, a puzzled breathlessness, and exclaimed, “Gee, why do I feel like this?”