Boys and Girls Together (16 page)

‘I
thought
something funny was going on,' the woman laughed.

‘Now wait a minute. Let's not be glad about this. It's disgraceful. It's pathetic. It's something to accept quickly and forget. It's something humiliating that nobody but you and I know about. It scares me, as if I'd won
sixty
thousand dollars. It might have been sixty, at that, I mean. It's absurd. It's ridiculous. I used to bet two
thousand
across the board, all the time.
Well, I won this money betting two hundred across. Suppose when I'd telephoned I'd just said two thousand across from force of habit instead of two hundred? Leo would have taken the bet as quickly as he took the bet for two hundred. It's all the same, except that I might have won ten times as much, and I don't want to be bothered about it any more. I want to put the six thousand in the bank and see if you and I can get along and be decent human beings.'

‘If only you'd said two thousand,' the woman said.

‘Of course I should have said two thousand, but I didn't because I was scared to death. It would have been just as much trouble trying to borrow six thousand as to borrow six hundred, and you know what it does to me to try to borrow—from anybody. I wasn't going to tell you for a while. I thought I'd just keep up with you and Lucretia and Leander and Oscar and Alice and every now and then glance at the entries and phone a bet and maybe after a few days have thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty thousand dollars, but you know it's fantasy, it's murderous fantasy, it makes a fool of a man. Sure I should have said two thousand, but if that horse had run out of the money, who's to say I wouldn't have picked another and bet him two thousand, too, and if that one had run out of the money, too, who's to say, drinking all the time, knowing I'd know the outcome in the next fifteen minutes, I wouldn't have picked another horse and bet him two thousand, too? And who's to say that that horse
wouldn't have run out of the money, too? And there I'd be. I'd have eighteen thousand dollars to pay in the morning, or at the latest the day after. Well, I don't want to think about it any more. I want to think about other things. I want to eat half a dozen scrambled eggs and go to bed and forget all about it. And you've got to help me. Do you understand?'

‘O.K.,' the woman said.

She got out of bed and put something on and went to the kitchen. There was nothing in the refrigerator, so she said, ‘Let's both go down and have a look at the kids while we're there.'

They had a look at the kids, the woman said a few words to Marta, and then they took up everything they wanted. The woman made an omelet of eight eggs and some herbs, and they sat down and ate the eggs with toast and coffee and crisp bacon.

Then the man went to his bed and went to sleep, but it was all horses and money, winning and losing, and in his sleep that part of his mind which never slept said, ‘Forget it, for the love of God.' But he couldn't forget it. Rosey crying the way her mother cried wouldn't let him forget it, Johnny flinging himself at him because he had beat Johnny's mother wouldn't let him forget it, the woman screaming wouldn't let him forget it, and he said to himself, ‘Pray to God, tell Him to forget it, turn it over to God, He can forget anything, turn it over to Him, let Him have it, let Him have all of it.'

Then, at last he seemed to forget it, for he was in an old place, maybe it was near the Euphrates, and Johnny was glad there and Rosey moved about in the light there and the woman came to him there and did not bawl and she said, ‘I love our life, I love it because it's the life everybody's for ever wanting to live for ever and we're living it for ever right now.' His heart rejoiced, then, and he rested.

He slept, dreaming of good things out of which to make good things, of the making of them, of talk between a man and his woman, of loving anger between them, of chivalry between a man and his son, the son chivalrous and forgiving, of tenderness between a man and his daughter.

When he awoke, he awoke slowly and peacefully, believing it must be evening, but it was only six in the morning. He had slept two hours. He got out of bed to wander around the house, but his leg, now that he had relaxed at last, was gimpy again.

If he stayed keyed-up one leg or the other went gimpy. If he relaxed, the same thing happened. He was getting old, that's all. Thirty-nine was a number of
years at that, but the gimp had entered his body when he had been only thirty. It had startled him then, for he had not been prepared to acknowledge that he was getting old. He had not believed it was possible for him not to be tireless if he chose to be and he had always chosen to be. The pain was past anything he had ever imagined he might know: and it was all the more amazing in that there was no accounting for it.

He lifted his chair from the work-table in the living-room and placed it at the window. He sat there and looked out at the street and the sky. It was a depressing place all right: all fog, all grey, all moist and cold. But where could you go? New York stank, too. There was something the matter with every place, but people lived everywhere just the same. The place didn't matter. The outskirts of Dublin might be a good place to go for a year or two. Oslo seemed like a pretty good place to stay in for a while. But a lot of people in Dublin and Oslo probably believed it would be fine if they could move to San Francisco.

He was relaxed now. He could think clearly. Two hours of deep sleep had simultaneously refreshed him and brought the gimp out of hiding, warning him to slow down. They'd find a nanny again. They'd take a long time about it and find a good one. She'd live in, downstairs, they'd live up. He'd work every day, slowly and easily, taking his time, without anxiety, without a schedule, without any thought of success or profit. He'd start work some time between eight
and ten and stop some time between four and six. Then they would go for a long walk, or for a drive, or to dinner, or to the theatre. They'd get to bed around midnight. They'd be relaxed, they'd get over thinking of living in terms of now, this instant. They'd take things easy and not ask so much of themselves. They'd get out of the hair of the kids, and get them out of their hair.

The buying of the house had always been right. It was two whole houses, each small, it was true, but still two separate houses, each with its own bath, kitchen, front door, and outside hall: each well furnished, carpeted, draped, easy to keep up. The gate at the entrance locked out the street any time they liked. It was a good house, a little like a ship pushing through fog, but a good house all the same, the sea not far off, to be seen from the back rooms and front. The seagulls always flying around weren't so bad, either.

He couldn't imagine why they oughtn't to be able to live a good life in the house, why they had always wanted to get out of it. It was narrow, hugged on both sides by similar houses, and it was mainly up, had little depth, but everything was there: the hall, the living-room with the fireplace, the front bedroom, the kitchen with dining space, the back steps, the big basement for the car and storage. The back bedroom where the kids slept downstairs and the one where he was supposed to work but no longer did because it was too small. It was a fine house.

He heard the woman call out in the first stages of panic: ‘Darling? Where are you?'

‘Here. I'm sitting at the window in the living-room.'

‘Why? What's the matter?'

‘Woke up.'

‘For God's sake, come to bed. I've been lying here awake, scared to death and listening to everything.'

The man went to his bed and sat down.

‘Well, can't you put something on? It's freezing cold.'

‘I don't feel cold.'

‘What's the matter? Why can't you sleep?'

‘I slept beautifully, but then I woke up and wanted to walk around, only my leg's out of whack again, so I sat down at the window. What did you wake up for?'

‘I always know when you're not in your bed. I feel it in my sleep. It scares me and I wake up. You were gone for more than a year, and there was always that empty bed beside me for so long. When you came back I guess I never got used to it. What's the matter?'

‘I feel fine. I thought I'd be sleeping until evening, but there it is. I woke up.'

‘Aren't you going back to bed?'

‘Not just yet. I always liked this hour. I used to get up at daybreak. Of course, it would be after sleep, not like this, but I still like this hour. Everything's new and clean and mournful but with a decent resignation
about it, the resignation of a man who's got work to do and is on his way to it.'

‘Are you mournful?'

‘I'm thinking about the impersonal
general
mournfulness. The quietude of the city at daybreak. Of course I'm mournful. So are you, so is Johnny, so is Rosey.'

‘I'm
not
mournful. I'm mad because you won't get us out of this awful house, that's all.'

‘Can't. Would if I could, but can't. But suppose I could, where could we go that wouldn't be
some
sort of a place with
some
sort of peculiarity of its own that would not appeal to us? Places are pretty much the same, and I think you ought to get it out of your head that this house is awful. It's not. It's a fine house. I looked at the whole thing a few minutes ago. People get the notion they've got to go somewhere when something else is the matter. Don't let anything be the matter any more. You'll enjoy life better.'

‘I wish it were that easy.'

‘Why not make it easy?'

‘How?'

‘Just notice the place with willing eyes. We've got two whole houses in one brand-new building, a fine yard, a big basement and garage, all paid for, two kitchens, two baths, two fireplaces, paintings by good painters hanging on the walls, books all over, a piano, an organ, radios, phonographs. It's in California, which is my home. It's in San Francisco where I've
lived the better part of my life. It's in a row of identical houses inhabited by retired Army officers of low rank, department-store clerks, bank tellers, and other people of that sort, but what's the difference? We've got money enough for a year. It
could
be a year of peace and work and fun, and now and then a drive to Reno for two or three days.'

‘I feel awful out here. I feel lonely and lost out here. I know that sounds silly because my husband's here, my kids are here, but it's so. I don't know why. Do you want to know what I've been dreaming? That we'd sold this house and gone to New York. Why couldn't we just do that? We could get a lot more for the house than we paid for it. We could sell it furnished, get rid of everything, go to New York, rent a new apartment, furnish it, start all over.'

‘Well, I don't want to go to New York, but let me think about it.'

‘We could do it.'

‘Let me think about it. I don't want you to feel lost and lonely.'

‘All
your
people are here. None of mine.'

‘We never see them. We've seen them only when you've insisted on it.'

‘Well, you hate my family and I hate yours, that's all.'

‘Yes, we do, but I've always worked best out here, and I think this is a better place for the kids than New York is, but let me think about it. I wish I didn't have
to think about it, but let me think about it. I've just begun to feel relaxed, but I don't want you to feel lost and lonely. It isn't worth it. Nothing is.'

‘I don't mean right away. It would take a month or so to sell the place. It would take time to find a place in New York. Listen, it's half past nine in New York now. Shall I telephone that real-estate company we were in touch with when we lived in Long Island that winter?'

‘O.K. See what they've got.'

The man fetched the telephone with the long cord from the hall and handed it to the woman who was soon speaking to the woman she dealt with in that real-estate company in New York. The woman talked a long time while the man wandered around the house.

‘They've got some wonderful places,' she said.

‘How much are they?'

‘Well, the least expensive one is ten thousand a year.'

‘That's too much. If we got twenty-five thousand for this house furnished, we'd have thirty-one thousand. The debts that have to be paid right away amount to around twenty thousand. That leaves eleven. By the time we are ready to go we will have spent at least a thousand or two but call it a thousand. That leaves ten. To furnish the new place on the instalment plan would cost at least four or five thousand right away and at least five hundred a month for a couple of years. That leaves five thousand. The rent
alone is almost a thousand a month. It's tiresome as all hell and I wish to God it weren't, but what it comes to is that we've got to postpone moving for a while. In the meantime we've just got to make this place work. Do you agree that we would be making a mistake to try to move now?'

‘I guess so,' the woman said. ‘Damn those dirty high rents. Why can't they have wonderful apartments for fifty dollars a month?'

‘What's the ten-thousand-a-year apartment like?'

‘Well, to be perfectly honest, it's not much larger than just one of these flats. The rents are so high in New York. I wish I hadn't telephoned. What are we going to do?'

‘I'm going back to sleep,' the man said. ‘It makes me sleepy to think about it. I'm not going to ask you to like it out here any more because you can't.'

He got back in his bed.

‘I'm not going to ask you any more to try to like it. We'll get out of here. We'll go somewhere. If we can't go to New York, we'll go somewhere else that you like. Anywhere. You go back to sleep too. Forget all about it. We'll do it. We'll leave here as soon as possible.'

The burden was home again, the anxiety was back, the tenseness, the deep troubling, all the things that nagged.