The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three Page 24

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, it just seems pretty exciting to be going into the town,” he said. “Maybe it’s because I’m doing the right thing and I feel good about it.”

  “I thought you said you’d been here often.”

  “No, not at night, just a few times when I was a kid with my mother,” he said.

  He got off the truck at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street and Bert yelled, “Here’s hoping you find your old man, kid.”

  “I’ll find him,” replied Dick.

  “Sure you got the address?”

  “I know it by heart.”

  “Supposing you don’t find him, or he don’t want to see you?”

  “I got a couple of bucks, Bert. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Okay, lots of luck,” yelled Bert, and the engine roared and he was gone and Dick was left there with his heart beating heavily as he looked up Seventh Avenue toward the rash of fire in the sky over Times Square.

  There were four apartments in the house on Twenty-eighth Street, and when he stood in the dimly lit hall he was in a panic. He began to wish he hadn’t come. The woman in the lower apartment said, “Dr. Harvey? No, I don’t know no Dr. Harvey.” On the second floor a man in his shirt-sleeves with his collar off, said, “You got the wrong number, son.” He began to hope that he actually had the wrong number; he didn’t want to find his father there. On the third floor a plump, red-faced, blond woman in a green dressing gown opened the door and said, “Dr. Harvey? Who wants him?”

  “I do.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m his son.”

  The woman hesitated, and half turning her head looked back into the room, and Dick knew his father was there. He was terribly disappointed. In Frenchtown everybody respected him and he was a good country doctor. But this soft, blowsy-looking woman with the mouth that was heavy and cruel in spite of the way she laughed so easily, half closed the door, and looking at him a long time, grinned and said, “He isn’t here.”

  “I know he’s here.”

  “Look,” she said, tapping his arm as though he were a little kid. “You go home, and if I see him I’ll tell him you were looking for him. See what I mean?” Her face was soft and smiling as she whispered, but her hard eyes were worried. He hated the way she was trying to tell him she knew what was good for him.

  “I’m going to talk to him,” he said, pushing her away.

  “Hey, stopping pushing me!”

  “Leave me alone, that’s all,” he said.

  With one hand on her hip she stepped back and screwed up her eyes and made him feel young and unimportant by the way she sized him up. Unsmiling, she said, almost to herself, “I’ve heard about you.” The knowing way she said it made him feel sure she not only knew all about him but about his family, his mother, the way they lived. His resentment against his father mounted as he strode past her into the apartment that smelled of beer, food and cheap perfume.

  On a round table there were glasses and a trayful of cigarette butts. A bedroom door was open. He took a couple of steps toward the bedroom, and then stood still, suddenly afraid. The woman watched thoughtfully.

  “Is he in there?”

  “It’s your party,” she said, shrugging.

  “Who’s that, Tony, who’s there?” his father called.

  “A kid who says you’re his old man,” she called, and laughing in a soft, indolent, mocking way, she sat down lazily and linked her plump arms behind her head.

  “This is going to be fun,” she said.

  There was the sound of the creaking of bedsprings, of feet hitting the floor, and Dr. Harvey came slowly into the room. He was a big, powerful man. His collar was undone, his short, tightly clipped, stiff gray hair was tousled and the big veins on the side of his head were blue and swollen against the ashen color of his face. He stumbled a little, then he stiffened when he saw his son, and his hand went out to the doorpost for support. He was still a little drunk, and when he saw Dick staring at him in a kind of desolate wonder, he shook his head and lurched toward him.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “Where did you come from?”

  “I’ve been worried. I wanted you to come home.”

  “Missing me, eh? Look, Tony, he missed me. You didn’t think anybody would miss me.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been worrying,” Dick said.

  Rubbing his hands across his face, the doctor sat down, wanting to appear calm and reasonable. Then he turned to Tony and smiled cynically, “Why does he want to spy on me, Tony?”

  Shrugging, she said, “Why don’t you give the kid a break? Maybe he means what he said.”

  An idiotic laugh that made his face suddenly red came from the doctor, and then he couldn’t stop laughing. His head just kept dropping down to the table as if his neck were too weak to support it, then he would jerk it back and the crazy laughter kept pouring out of him. Dick felt sick with shame. He had never before seen his father like this.

  “Shut up, shut up,” the big blond woman said. “Stop that crazy laughing or get out of here. Do you want all the neighbors in?”

  “You’ve done this to him. Leave him alone,” Dick said to her.

  “I ought to throw the both of you out of here,” she said. “What’s the matter with me?”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” the doctor said. “Why did he come here? He doesn’t like me. He never did.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of just you.”

  “You bet your life you weren’t. There, didn’t I tell you, Tony?”

  “I was thinking of Mother.”

  “What about her?”

  “How do you think she would feel if she saw you here like this?”

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “Here. With her,” he said, nodding at Tony.

  “He doesn’t like me, George,” she said, laughing. “Your wife wouldn’t like me, he says.”

  “Come on and get dressed,” Dick said, and he tried to take his father under the arm, but his father pushed him away heavily.

  “Take your hands off me,” he said. “You know what your mother would say? Nothing, absolutely nothing. What do you think of that? So don’t lecture me. Leave me alone. I always left you alone, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t care what you think about me,” Dick said, and then he said desperately to Tony, “Why don’t you help me to get him out?”

  “I don’t think he wants to get out,” she said, and she grabbed the doctor by the shoulder, gave him a couple of stiff slaps on the forehead and shook him.

  But the sight of his father, a respectable man, an educated man, a man who could walk down the street with great dignity on Sunday afternoons, letting himself be pushed around by a cheap, blowsy woman enraged Dick, and he cried out, “You ought to be ashamed! Why don’t you get up and come home? Wherever she is now, she’s ashamed of you and I am, too. ”

  “Ashamed of me?” the doctor shouted, and he jumped up and shoved Dick toward the door. “Neither she nor you have any right to be ashamed of me, so don’t come around here insulting my friends.”

  “I’m ashamed because you’re my father, that’s all,” Dick whispered.

  “My God, listen to him,” the father cried.

  “That’s the only reason,” Dick said, refusing to budge.

  “Is it, eh?” the doctor said savagely. “Beat it, beat it, do you hear? I’m not your father.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You heard me,” the doctor said, glaring at him. Then the puzzled wonder in the boy’s eyes made him turn away.

  Like a bewildered child, Dick rubbed his hands over his face, and while they watched him and he tried to smile his eyes grew full of terror. He looked hopelessly at Tony, wanting her to say something to him. When she didn’t speak he pleaded with her softly, “He doesn’t know what he’s saying, does he?”

  “He’s craz
y,” she said. “He’s been like that for days.” The doctor was walking up and down rubbing his forearms as if they were cold and mumbling, “She’s dead now. You can’t say I said anything while she was alive. It’s better for him to know. There never was any good feeling lost between us.” While he was walking up and down mumbling this jus-tification to himself, Dick grabbed him by the arm and cried, “You’re crazy, you’re a crazy fool,” shouting in a young wild voice. Then he looked around helplessly and whispered to the doctor, who looked scared now.

  “Would you mind telling me something?”

  “I don’t mind, Dick. You know I don’t mind,” the doctor said. “It just burst out, see? I didn’t mean to say it. I thought maybe you’d felt it for years. I didn’t think it would hit you like it did.”

  “Who’s my father?”

  “Don’t keep at it. Don’t keep at me.”

  “I’ve got to know.”

  “A man named Page.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “Around here. I think he’s dead now. Cut it out. Let it rest, can’t you?”

  “Where was I born?”

  “Around here. What’s the use of getting into it?”

  “He’s right. Come on, son,” the big blond woman said, and she took Dick by the arm in a comforting way and led him out to the hall. “You shouldn’t pay no attention,” she said. “He talks a little crazier every day and most of the time he takes it out on me. You just happened to be around.”

  But Dick was so bewildered he began to go down the stairs without answering; down, down slowly, as if there was nothing in the world for him but the terror of the sound of his own footfalls, and the feeling of descending into the dark, further and further away from his own life.

  “Son, hey, son!” the woman was calling to him from the top of the stairs. She was leaning over the banister, worried, her dressing gown flopping open, and when he looked up, white-faced, she yelled down, “Go home and forget it. I’ll send him home.”

  “I’m not going back there,” he said simply.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Outside, the wind struck his face and he began to feel alive again. He went slowly along the street and stood a while by the lamppost in the corner looking at the glow of the lights high over Times Square. Every time a man passed he stared at his face. He stared at each passing face as if searching for some sign of recognition, something that would pull him into place and time and life again. “My father and mother lived here. My mother used to be happy when she lived here with my father,” he kept saying over and over. “And I was born here and maybe a part of such happiness.”

  He started to walk along the street, feeling that he would walk all night, that all the past, all the future was here for him, that he must let the sights, the sounds, the smell of the place seep into him, and maybe as he walked he would feel again that eagerness he had felt coming along the highway when he saw the sweep of the lights and felt as if he had been away for a long time and was coming home.

  We Just Had to Be Alone

  Mrs. Buhay had had two husbands, had worked in restaurants, hotel dining rooms and at racetracks, and at fifty-two she was the manager of a cafeteria. She had become stout and florid. Her hair was tinted a light brown, her neckline wrinkled, and she had very pale shrewd eyes. She used to say with a hearty laugh that she had had a very sporty life. But because she made people feel that she saw through them, she had no real friends and she lived alone in her apartment.

  That summer she got a letter from a girlhood friend, Betty Holmes, who lived at a whistle stop about a hundred and fifty miles south west. Mrs. Holmes wrote that she was broke and dying of tuberculosis and that she wanted her eighteen-year-old daughter, Alca, to get on in the world better than she had herself, and she asked Mrs. Buhay if Alca, who was coming to the city, could live with her until she felt at home enough so she could look after herself.

  Alca was a small-town girl with not much schooling but she was quick and intelligent, fond of music, had thick natural-blond hair with brown eyes and a lovely rounded figure. Mrs. Buhay liked her. She bought her a white linen suit and got her a job in a music store selling records. By September she realized that until Alca had come she had been unbearably lonely at night in the apartment.

  Every evening she used to wait for Alca to come home so they could have a cup of coffee together before going to bed. Alca would get into her pyjamas and Mrs. Buhay would put on her gaudy blue dressing gown and they would sit in the kitchen joking with each other. Alca, who wasn’t at all shy, liked listening to Mrs. Buhay’s salty stories, and Mrs. Buhay, touched by her eagerness, her prettiness and her softness, often wanted to put her arms around her protectively.

  She tried to teach her everything she knew. She told her about her own life in big hotels in many cities. She told her about clothes and how to handle customers in the store and she talked about men, too, with a coarse good-natured smiling contempt. Her plump elbows were on the table, her dressing gown flopped open and showed her great bosom and she nodded wisely at Alca.

  “You’re pretty, Alca, honey. You’ve got it. But even a blind shoeshine boy knows when a girl’s got it and it makes her a mark. But the guy doesn’t live who isn’t an open book.” Chuckling and winking she leaned across the table and patted Alca’s shoulder, her own blue eyes suddenly hard and her mouth turning down at the corners.

  “Look after No. 1, Alca,” she said. “Never give anything away. This week I want you to open a bank account and no matter what happens it should be your secret love.” Alca’s respect for the big shrewd woman showed in her eyes and she knew there was nothing Mrs. Buhay wouldn’t do for her. They were very different and they loved each other.

  One night Alca told Mrs. Buhay about a young man named Tom Prince who had come into the music store to buy some classical records. She had never met anyone with such nice manners, she said. It was wonderful the way he had made her feel she was a very dignified person.

  The glow in Alca’s eyes and the pleasure in her voice worried Mrs. Buhay. “Look here, honey, don’t let the first guy you meet knock you over,” she said.

  The next night Alca didn’t come home till midnight. Tom Prince had taken her to dinner and then a movie and she had found out all about him. He had finished a course in commercial art and was taking a job in an advertising agency. Alca couldn’t stop talking about him. Even after they had had their coffee she stood at her bedroom door remembering bright little jokes Tom had made and trying them out on Mrs. Buhay.

  “Okay, a very entertaining guy,” Mrs. Buhay said, putting her arm around her affectionately. “I remember the first guy who ever made a pass at me. I thought he looked wonderful because he wore shoes and pants. Let’s see this guy up close.” Alca laughed and said she would bring him home tomorrow night.

  Mrs. Buhay was in her bedroom when she heard them at the door. When Alca called, “Mrs. Buhay,” she followed them into the living room. They were both out of breath from running up the stairs and laughing and Alca had on her smart white linen suit. “Mrs. Buhay,” she said softly, “this is Tom Prince.”

  “How are you, Tom?” Mrs. Buhay said heartily as she put out her hand. “I’ve heard all about you.” She was surprised because he was good-looking, well-dressed, with an assured and cultivated manner and she wished she had dressed up a little more. With an easy smile he said he knew all about her too.

  “I’ll get some coffee and some biscuits,” Alca said, and with her eyes she told Mrs. Buhay that she wanted to give her a chance to have a talk with Tom and get a good impression of him because she valued her judgement so very much.

  “Sit down, Tom,” Mrs. Buhay said, and she sat down and smoothed her dress. She soon got him talking amiably about his work. She had a lot of experience with men that had started when she was sixteen and working at the carnival lunch counter. In the beginning she had got the worst of it, but only in the beginning until she had learned to
size a man up.

  There were things about Tom that made her uneasy. Her blunt straightforward questions seemed to amuse him. He had a soft-voiced politeness and well-proportioned hands and he used very little slang. He wore grey slacks and a light-grey jacket with a blue check and as he leaned back on the sofa he was so much at home that he made her feel a bit clumsy and ill at ease. She began to take on an air of refinement and hated herself for doing it.

  When Alca came in with the tray Mrs. Buhay sat back and listened to them and it seemed to her that Alca didn’t even talk his language.

  “I’ll take those dishes into the kitchen,” she said, so they could be alone together, and she put the cups and saucers on the tray and went out to the kitchen.

  When she was washing the dishes Alca came into the kitchen and took her arm. “How do you like him?” she whispered.

  “He’s quite a guy,” Mrs. Buhay admitted.

  “He certainly is. Oh, I’m so glad you like him.”

  “Look, Alca,” she said, one hand on her hip as she smiled wisely. “That fellow’s a very intelligent young man.”

  “You bet he is, Mrs. Buhay.”

  “And well-educated, too.”

  “Yes, he went to college,” she said proudly.

  “Where does he live, Alca?”

  “He’s got a room of his own.”

  “And he’d like you to see it, I suppose?”

  “He hasn’t said anything about it.”

  “He will. And don’t you go there, Alca. If I were in your place I’d watch that I wasn’t alone with him too much.”

  “But I like being alone with him. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Alca, Alca,” Mrs. Buhay said indulgently. “What do you think that fellow’s up to with you? Ask yourself that.”

  “He likes me. We like each other.”

  “Sure you do. But a guy like that, Alca, intelligent and educated, and with that look in his eyes. What’s he up to with you, do you think?”

  “I told you, he likes me,” Alca said, and she was hurt because she trusted Mrs. Buhay’s judgement. She blushed, feeling somehow belittled and she tried to hide it by turning away and picking up one of the dried cups and staring at the pink floral pattern on the rim. “Okay,” she said, and she walked out of the kitchen.