Look at the Birdie (6 page)

And do you know how many people tried to save that check?

One.

Me.

I pulled it out of the coffee, dried it off, while Elsie Strang Morgan and her husband sat back, didn’t care what happened to it. That check, that ticket to a life of ease and luxury, might as well have been a chance on a turkey raffle, for all they cared.

“Here—” I said, and I handed it to the husband. “Better put this in a safe place.”

He folded his hands, wouldn’t take it. “Here,” he said.

I handed it to her. She wouldn’t take it, either. “Give it to
your favorite charity,” she said. “It won’t buy anything I want.”

“What
do
you want, Elsie?” her husband asked her.

“I want things the way they were,” she said, clouding up, “the way they never can be again. I want to be a dumb, shy, sweet little housewife again. I want to be the wife of a struggling high school teacher again. I want to love my neighbors again, and I want my neighbors to love me again—and I want to be tickled silly by dumb things like sunshine and a drop in the price of hamburger and a three-dollar-a-week raise for my husband.” She pointed out the window. “It’s spring out there,” she said, “and I’m sure every woman in the world but me is glad.”

And then she told me about her book. And while she talked she went to a window and looked out at all that useless springtime.

“It’s about a very worldly, virile man from New York City,” she said, “who comes to a small town in Vermont to teach.”

“Me,” said her husband. “She changed my name from Lawrence Morgan to Lance Magnum, so nobody could possibly recognize me—and then she proceeded to describe me right down to the scar on the bridge of my nose.” He went to the icebox for another quart of beer. “She worked on this thing in secret, understand. I had no idea she’d ever written anything more complicated than a cake recipe until the six author’s copies of the book came from the publisher. I came home from work one day, and there they were, stacked on that kitchen table there—six copies of
Hypocrites’ Junction
by—good God in Heaven!—Elsie Strang Morgan!” He took a long pull from the beer bottle, banged the bottle down.
“And there were candies all around the stack,” he said, “and on the top was one perfect red red rose.”

“This man in the book,” said Elsie Strang Morgan, looking out the window, “falls in love with a simple country girl who has been out of Hypocrites’ Junction just once in her life—when she was a junior in high school, and the whole junior class went to Washington, D.C., at cherry blossom time.”

“That’s you,” said her husband.

“That’s me—that
was
me,” she said. “And when my husband married me, he found out I was so innocent and shy that he couldn’t stand it.”

“In the book?” I said.

“In life, in the book?” said her husband. “There’s no difference. You know who the villain is in the book?”

“No,” I said.

“A greedy banker named Walker Williams,” he said. “And do you know who, in real life, is the President of the Crocker’s Falls Savings Bank?”

“Nope,” I said.

“A greedy banker named William Walker,” he said. “Holy smokes,” he said, “my wife should be working for the Central Intelligence Agency, making up new, unbreakable codes!”

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, but she sounded way past being sorry to me. Her marriage was over. Everything was over.

“I suppose I should be sore at the school board for firing me,” said her husband, “but who could really blame them? All four members were in the book, big as life. But even if they weren’t in the book, how could they let a famous lover, a ruthless woman awakener like me, continue to instruct the
young?” He went to his wife, came up behind her. “Elsie Strang Morgan,” he said, “what on earth possessed you?”

And here was her reply:

“You did,” she said very quietly. “You,” she said.

“Think of what I was before I loved you. I couldn’t have written a word in that book, because the ideas simply weren’t in my head. Oh, I knew grubby little secrets about Crocker’s Falls, but I didn’t think about them much. They didn’t seem so bad.”

She faced him. “And then you, the great Lance Magnum, came to town, swept me off my feet. And you found me shy about this, hopelessly old-fashioned about that, hypocritical about something else. So, for the love of you, I changed,” she said.

“You told me to stop being afraid of looking life in the face,” she said, “so I stopped being afraid. You told me to see my friends and neighbors for what they really were—ignorant, provincial, greedy, mean—so I saw them for what they were.

“You told me,” that woman said to her husband, “not to be shy and modest about love, but to be frank and proud about it—to shout about it from the housetops.

“So I did,” she said.

“And I wrote a book to tell you how much I loved you,” she said, “and to show you how much I’d learned, how much you’d taught me.

“I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for you to say one small thing that would indicate that you knew,” said Elsie Strang Morgan, “that the book was as much yours as mine. I was the mother. You were the father. And the book, God help it, was our first child.”

• • •

I left after that big scene.

I would have liked to hear what Lance Magnum said about the terrible child he’d fathered by a simple country girl, but he told me I’d better go.

When I got outside, I found a mechanic putting a new battery in the Chevrolet. And I realized that the famous love affair between Lance and Celeste might end right then and there, if either one of them could jump in a car and drive away.

So I told the mechanic there’d been a mistake, told him we didn’t want the battery after all.

I’m glad I did, because when I went back two days later, Elsie Strang Morgan and her husband were still together, cooing at each other like doves, and they signed an order for storm windows and doors all around. I couldn’t sell them bathtub enclosures because they hadn’t had plumbing put in yet—but they did have a Rolls-Royce.

While I was measuring up the windows on the house, Elsie Strang Morgan’s husband brought me out a glass of beer. He was all dressed up now in a new suit, and he’d shaved.

“I guess you admitted the baby was yours,” I said.

“If I didn’t,” he said, “I’d be the biggest hypocrite in Hypocrites’ Junction,” he said. “What kind of a man is it who’ll father a baby and then not love it and call it his own?”

Now I hear she’s got a new book out, and I’m scared to look at it. From all I hear, the leading character is a storm window salesman. He goes around measuring people’s windows—and the book’s about what he sees inside.

Ed Luby worked as a bodyguard for Al Capone once. And then he went into bootlegging on his own, made a lot of money at it. When the prohibition era ended, Ed Luby went back to his hometown, the old mill town of Ilium. He bought several businesses. One was a restaurant, which he called Ed Luby’s Steak House. It was a very good restaurant. It had a brass knocker on its red front door.

At seven o’clock the other night, Harve and Claire Elliot banged on the door with the brass knocker—because the red door was locked. They had come from a city thirty miles away. It was their fourteenth wedding anniversary. They would be celebrating their anniversary at Luby’s for the fourteenth time.

Harve and Claire Elliot had a lot of kids and a lot of love, and not much money. But once a year they really splurged. They got all dolled up, took twenty dollars out of the sugar bowl, drove over to Ed Luby’s Steak House, and carried on like King Farouk and his latest girlfriend.

There were lights on in Luby’s, and there was music inside. And there were plenty of cars in the parking lot—all a good deal newer than what Harve and Claire arrived in. Their car was an old station wagon whose wood was beginning to rot.

The restaurant was obviously in business, but the red front door wouldn’t budge. Harve banged away some more with the knocker, and the door suddenly swung open. Ed Luby himself opened it. He was vicious old man, absolutely bald, short and heavy, built like a .45-caliber slug.

He was furious. “What in hell you trying to do—drive the members nuts?” he said in a grackle voice.

“What?” said Harve.

Luby swore. He looked at the knocker. “That thing comes down right now,” he said. “All the dumb things—a knocker on the door.” He turned to the big thug who lurked behind him. “Take the knocker down right now,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” said the thug. He went to look for a screwdriver.

“Mr. Luby?” said Harve, puzzled, polite. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” said Luby. “I’m the one who oughta be asking what’s going on.” He still looked at the knocker rather than at Harve and Claire. “What’s the big idea?” he said. “Halloween or something? Tonight’s the night people put on funny costumes and go knock on private doors till the people inside go nuts?”

The crack about funny costumes was obviously meant to hit Claire Elliot squarely—and it did. Claire was vulnerable—not because she looked funny, but because she had made the dress she wore, because her fur coat was borrowed. Claire looked marvelous, as a matter of fact, looked marvelous to anyone with an eye for beauty, beauty that had been touched by life. Claire was still slender, affectionate, tremendously optimistic. What time and work and worry had done to her was to make her look, permanently, the least bit tired.

Harve Elliot didn’t react very fast to Luby’s crack. The anniversary mood was still upon Harve. All anxieties, all expectations of meanness were still suspended. Harve wasn’t going to pay any attention to anything but pleasure. He simply wanted to get inside, where the music and the food and the good drinks were.

“The door was stuck,” said Harve. “I’m sorry, Mr. Luby. The door was stuck.”

“Wasn’t stuck,” said Luby. “Door was
locked.”

“You—you’re closed?” said Harve gropingly.

“It’s a private club now,” said Luby. “Members all got a key. You got a key?”

“No,” said Harve. “How—how do we get one?”

“Fill out a application, pay a hundred dollars, wait and see what the membership committee says,” said Luby. “Takes two weeks—sometimes a month.”

“A hundred dollars!” said Harve.

“I don’t think this is the kind of place you folks would be happy at,” said Luby.

“We’ve been coming here for our anniversary for fourteen years,” said Harve, and he felt himself turning red.

“Yeah—I know,” said Luby. “I remember you real well.”

“You do?” said Harve hopefully.

Luby turned really nasty now. “Yeah, big shot,” he said to Harve, “you tipped me a quarter once. Me—Luby—I own the joint, and one time you slip me a big, fat quarter. Pal, I’ll never forget you for that.”

Luby made an impatient sweeping motion with his stubby hand. “You two mind stepping out of the way?” he said to Harve and Claire. “You’re blocking the door. A couple of members are trying to get in.”

Harve and Claire stepped back humbly.

The two members whose way they had been blocking now advanced on the door grandly. They were man and wife, middle-aged—porky, complacent, their faces as undistinguished as two cheap pies. The man wore new dinner clothes. The woman was a caterpillar in a pea green evening gown and dark, oily mink.

“Evening, Judge,” said Luby. “Evening, Mrs. Wampler.”

Judge Wampler held a golden key in his hand. “I don’t get to use this?” he said.

“Happen to have the door open for some minor repairs,” said Luby.

“I see,” said the judge.

“Taking the knocker down,” said Luby. “Folks come up here, won’t believe it’s a private club, drive the members nuts banging on the door.”

The judge and his lady glanced at Harve and Claire with queasy scorn. “We aren’t the first to arrive, are we?” said the judge.

“Police chief’s been here an hour,” said Luby. “Doc Waldron, Kate, Charley, the mayor—the whole gang’s in there.”

“Good,” said the judge, and he and his lady went in.

The thug, Ed Luby’s bodyguard, came back with a screwdriver. “These people still giving you a hard time, Ed?” he said. He didn’t wait for an answer. He bellied up to Harve. “Go on—beat it, Junior,” he said.

“Come on, Harve—let’s get out of here,” said Claire. She was close to tears.

“That’s right—beat it,” said Luby. “What you want is something like the Sunrise Diner. Get a good hamburger
steak dinner there for a dollar and a half. All the coffee you can drink on the house. Leave a quarter under your plate. They’ll think you’re Diamond Jim Brady.”

Harve and Claire Elliot got back into their old station wagon. Harve was so bitter and humiliated that he didn’t dare to drive for a minute or two. He made claws of his shaking hands, wanted to choke Ed Luby and his bodyguard to death.

One of the subjects Harve covered in profane, broken sentences was the twenty-five-cent tip he had once given Luby. “Fourteen years ago—our first anniversary,” said Harve. “That’s when I handed that miserable b——a quarter! And he never forgot!”

“He’s got a right to make it a club, if he wants to,” said Claire emptily.