Player Piano (24 page)

“Then why did you?”

“I told you: so we could both get the feel of the world as a whole, not just our side of the river. So we could see what our way of life has done to the lives of others.”

Anita was on top of the situation now, having successfully attacked and confused Paul, and having found that she wasn’t being baited or punished. “They all look perfectly well fed to me.”

“But they’ve had the spiritual stuffing knocked out of them by people like my father, like Kroner and Baer and Shepherd, like us.”

“They couldn’t have been too well stuffed in the first place, or they wouldn’t be here.”

Paul was mad, and the delicate mechanism that kept
him from hurting her stripped its gears. “Here, but for the grace of God, go you!”

“Paul!” She burst into tears. “That’s not fair,” she said brokenly. “Not at all fair. I don’t know why you had to say that.”

“It isn’t fair for you to cry.”

“You’re cruel, that’s what you are—just plain cruel. If you wanted to hurt me, congratulate yourself. You certainly did.” She blew her nose. “I must have had something these people don’t, or you wouldn’t have married me.”

“Oligomenorrhea,” he said.

She blinked. “What’s that?”

“Oligomenorrhea—that’s what you had that these others don’t. Means delayed menstrual period.”

“How on earth did you ever learn a word like that?”

“I looked it up a month after we were married, and it etched itself on the inside of my skull.”

“Oh.” She turned crimson. “You’ve said enough, quite enough,” she said bitterly. “If you won’t drive me home, I’ll walk.”

Paul started the car, abused the gears with savage satisfaction, and drove back across the bridge, toward the north side of the river.

When they’d reached the mid-point of the bridge, he was still warmed and excited by the sudden fight with Anita. By the time they were under the guns of the Ilium Works, rationality and remorse were setting in.

The fight had been a complete surprise. Never had they gone at it so poisonously. More surprising, Paul had been the vicious one, and Anita had been little more than a victim. Confusedly he tried to remember the events that had led up to the fight. His memory was no help.

And how completely fruitless and destructive the fight had been! In the heat of a bad instant he had said what he knew would hurt her most, would, by extension, make her hate him most. And he hadn’t wanted to do that. God knows
he hadn’t. And here he was with his cheery and careful plans for starting a new life with her shot to hell.

They were passing the golf course now. In minutes they’d be home.

“ Anita—”

By way of an answer, she turned on the car radio and impatiently twiddled the dials, waiting for the volume to come up, presumably to drown him out. The radio hadn’t worked for years.

“Anita—listen. I love you more than anybody on earth. Good God but I’m sorry about what we said to each other.”

“I didn’t say anything to you like what you said to me.”

“I could cut my tongue out for having said those things.”

“Don’t use any of our good kitchen knives.”

“It was a freak.”

“So am I, apparently. You passed our driveway.”

“I meant to. I have a surprise for you. Then you’ll see how much I really love you—how insignificant that stupid fight was.”

“I’ve had quite enough surprises tonight, thank you. Turn around, please. I’m worn out.”

“This surprise cost eight thousand, Anita. Still want to turn around?”

“Think I can be bought, do you?” she said angrily, but her expression was softening, answering her own question. “What on earth could it be? Really? Eight thousand dollars?”

Paul relaxed, settling back in his seat to enjoy the ride. “You don’t belong in Homestead, sweetheart.”

“Oh, hell—maybe I do.”

“No, no. You’ve got something the tests and machines will never be able to measure: you’re artistic. That’s one of the tragedies of our times, that no machine has ever been built that can recognize that quality, appreciate it, foster it, sympathize with it.”

“It is,” said Anita sadly. “It is, it is.”

“I love you, Anita.”

“I love
you
, Paul.”

“Look! A deer!” Paul flicked on his bright lights to illuminate the animal, and recognized the captain of the Green Team, still jogging, but now in an advanced state of exhaustion. Shepherd’s legs flailed about weakly and disjointedly, and his feet struck the pavement with loud, limp slaps. There was no recognition in his eyes this time, and he floundered on heedlessly.

“With every step he hammers another nail into my coffin,” said Paul, lighting a fresh cigarette from the one he had just finished.

Ten minutes later he stopped the car, went around to Anita’s side, and affectionately offered his arm. “The latch-string is out, darling, for a whole new and happier life for the two of us.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll see.” He led her to the front door of the low little house through a dark, fragrant tunnel roofed and walled by lilacs. He took her hand and placed it on the latchstring. “Pull.”

She tugged gingerly. The latch inside clattered free, and the door swung open. “Oh! Ohhhh—Paul!”

“Ours. This belongs to Paul and Anita.”

She walked in slowly, her head back, her nostrils wide. “I feel like crying, it’s so darling.”

Hastily, Paul checked the preparations for the tricky hours ahead, and was delighted. Mr. Haycox, probably in an orgy of masochism, had scrubbed every surface. Gone were the soot and dust, leaving only the clean, soft, glowing patina of age over everything—the pewter on the mantel, the cherry case of the grandfather clock, the black ironware on the hearth, the walnut stock and silver inlays of the long rifle on the wall, the tin potbellies of the kerosene lamps, the warm, worn maple of the chairs…. And on a table in the center of the room, looking archaic, too, in the soft light, were two
glasses, a pitcher, a bottle of gin, a bottle of vermouth, and a bucket of ice. And beside these were two glasses of whole, fresh milk from the farm, fresh hard-boiled eggs from the farm, fresh peas from the farm, and fresh fried chicken from the farm.

As Paul mixed the drinks, Anita went about the room sighing happily, touching everything lovingly. “Is it really ours?”

“As of yesterday. I signed the final papers. Do you really feel at home here?”

She dropped into a chair before the fireplace and took the glass he handed her. “Can’t you tell? Don’t I radiate how I feel?” She laughed quietly. “He wants to know if I like it. It’s priceless, you brilliant darling, and you got it for eight thousand dollars! Aren’t you smart!”

“Happy anniversary, Anita.”

“I want a stronger word than happy.”

“Ecstatic anniversary, Anita.”

“Ecstatic anniversary to you, Paul. I love you. Lord, how I love you!”

“I love you.” He had never loved her so much.

“Do you realize, darling, that that grandfather clock alone is worth almost a thousand dollars?”

Paul felt terribly clever. It was fantastic how well things were turning out. Anita’s contentment with the place was genuine, and the process of weaning her from one house to another, from one way of life to another, seemed, in a miraculous few minutes, to have been almost completed. “This
is
your kind of surroundings, isn’t it.”

“You know it is.”

“Did you know the clock had wooden works? Think of it? Every part whittled out of wood.”

“Don’t worry about it. That’s easily remedied.”

“Hmm?”

“We can get an electric movement put in.”

“But the whole charm—”

She was in a transport of creativity now, and didn’t hear him. “You see—with the pendulum gone, an electrostatic dust precipitator would fit right in the lower part of the case.”

“Oh.”

“And you know where I’d put it?”

He looked around the room and saw no spot for it other than where it was. “That niche there seems ideal.”

“In the front hall! Can’t you just see it there?”

“There is no front hall,” he said in puzzlement. The front door opened right into the living room.

“Our
front hall, silly.”

“But, Anita—”

“And that spice cabinet on the wall—wouldn’t it be darling with some of the drawers sticking out, and with philodendron growing from them? I know just the spot in the guest room.”

“Swell.”

“And these priceless rafters, Paul! This means we can have rough-hewn beams in our living room, too. Not just in the kitchen, but the living room, too! And I’ll eat your classification card if that dry-sink won’t take our television set.”

“I was looking forward to eating it myself,” said Paul quietly.

“And these wide-board floors: you can imagine what they’ll do for the rumpus room.”

“What did the rumpus room ever do for me?” said Paul grimly.

“What did you say?”

“I said, what did the rumpus room ever do for me?”

“Oh. I see.” She laughed perfunctorily and, her eyes bright, she searched for more plunder.

“Anita—”

“Yes? Oh! What a delightful Cape Cod lighter.”

“Listen to me for just a minute.”

“Certainly, darling.”

“I bought this place for us to live in.”

“You mean just the way it is?”

“Exactly. It can’t be changed.”

“You mean we can’t take any of these things out?”

“No. But we can move ourselves in.”

“This is another one of your jokes. Don’t tease me, darling. I’m having such a good time.”

“I’m not teasing! This is the life I want. This is where I want to live it.”

“It’s so dark, I can’t see by your face whether you’re serious or not. Turn on the lights.”

“No lights.”

“No electricity?”

“Only what’s in your hair.”

“How do they run the furnace?”

“No furnace.”

“And the stove?”

“Firewood. And the refrigerator is a cold spring.”

“How perfectly hideous!”

“I’m serious, Anita. I want us to live here.”

“We’d die in six months.”

“The Haycox family lived here for generations.”

“You
are
playful tonight, aren’t you? Just so straight-faced and everything, keeping your joke alive. Come here and kiss me, you sweet clown.”

“We’re going to spend the night here, and tomorrow I’m going to do the chores. Will you give it a try, anyway?”

“And I’ll be a good old fat farm Mama, and get breakfast on the wood stove—coffee, home-grown eggs and cream, home-baked biscuits drowned in homemade butter and jam.”

“Would you?”

“I’d drown in butter and jam first.”

“You could learn to love this life.”

“I couldn’t, and you know it.”

His temper was rising again, in response to bitter disappointment,
as it had done an hour before
in
Homestead. And again he was looking for something short of a slap in her face that would shock humility into her. The sentence that came out had been ready for a long time. He spoke it now, not because now was the right time, but because it packed a punch.

“It doesn’t matter what you think,” he said evenly. “I’ve made up my mind to quit my job and live here. Do you understand? I’m going to quit.”

She folded her arms across her chest, as though fighting a chill, and rocked in silence for a few moments. “I thought maybe that was coming,” she said at last. “I thought maybe that was what you were up to. I’d hoped it wasn’t, Paul. I’d prayed it wasn’t. But—well, here we are, and you’ve said it.” She lit a cigarette, smoked it in shallow, tasteless puffs, and blew the smoke through her nose. “Shepherd said you would.”

“He said I was about to quit?”

“No. He said you were a quitter.” She sighed heavily. “He knows you better than I do, apparently.”

“God knows it’d be easy enough to stick with the system, and keep going right on up. It’s getting out that takes nerve.”

“But why quit, if it’s so easy to stick with it?”

“Didn’t you hear anything I said in Homestead? That’s why I took you there, so you’d get the feel of things.”

“That silly business about Katharine Finch and Shepherd?”

“No, no—God no. About how people like us have taken all the self-respect from all the others.”

“You said you felt like a horse’s ass. I remember that.”

“Don’t you, sometimes?”

“What an idea!”

“Your conscience, dammit—doesn’t it ever bother you?”

“Why should it? I’ve never done anything dishonest.”

“Let me put it another way: do you agree things are a mess?”

“Between us?”

“Everywhere! The world!” She could be appallingly nearsighted. Whenever possible, she liked to reduce any generalization to terms of herself and persons she knew intimately. “Homestead, for instance.”

“What else could we possibly give the people that they haven’t got?”

“There! You made my point for me. You said, what else could
we
give
them
, as though everything in the world were ours to give or withhold.”

“Somebody’s got to take responsibility, and that’s just the way it is when somebody does.”

“That’s just it: things haven’t always been that way. It’s new, and it’s people like us who’ve brought it about. Hell, everybody used to have some personal skill or willingness to work or something he could trade for what he wanted. Now that the machines have taken over, it’s quite somebody who has anything to offer. All most people can do is hope to be given something.”

“If someone has brains,” said Anita firmly, “he can still get to the top. That’s the American way, Paul, and it hasn’t changed.” She looked at him appraisingly. “Brains and nerve, Paul.”

“And blinders.” The punch was gone from his voice, and he felt drugged, a drowsiness from a little too much to drink, from scrambling over a series of emotional peaks and pits, from utter frustration.

Anita caught the strap of his overalls and pulled him down to kiss him. Paul yielded stiffly.

“Ohhhhhhh,” she chided, “you’re
such
a little boy sometimes.” She pulled him down again, this time making sure he kissed her on the lips. “You stop worrying, now, you hear?” she whispered in his ear.