Point of No Return (24 page)

“John,” his mother said, “you know what I mean, but perhaps he didn't notice. Here he comes. He's bringing us some tea.”

“Oh, there you are,” Mr. Lovell called. “I've been looking for you everywhere.”

“Why, thanks, Laurence,” John Gray said. “You keep that cup and stay with Esther. I'll get some.”

“Why don't think of it, John,” Mr. Lovell said. “It's a pleasure. Here.”

“Well, thanks, Laurence,” John Gray said. “It just goes to show I'm always right. I was just telling Esther if we came out here we'd get some tea.”

The locusts in the elm trees were scraping out sad high notes which rose and fell in the still air, making a sound which Charles always associated with a hot summer afternoon in Clyde. More ladies, all holding teacups, were appearing on the lawn.

“Here they come,” John Gray said. “Here's your public, Esther.”

Then Charles saw Miss Lovell, and Jessica in her patent leather slippers and white socks, and Mr. Lovell saw them too.

“Why, Jessie darling,” Mr. Lovell said, and he knelt on the grass and threw his arms around her. “How's my little girl?”

It did not seem right that Mr. Lovell should make such an abandoned gesture of affection right on the lawn of the Historical Society, and it made Charles feel sorry for Jessica because of what people might say. No one, however, seemed to feel it was in bad taste. Instead of being embarrassed, everyone stood watching the little scene with understanding sympathy.

“Isn't it sweet?” Charles heard someone say. “It's as pretty as a picture.”

“Pa,” Jessica said, “can't we go home now, please?”

“Yes,” Mr. Lovell answered, “in just a few minutes, Jessie.”

2

A Place for Everything

The way to learn about Clyde was to be brought up there. One learned who the Lovells were imperceptibly by a word here and there, and one grew up knowing that the Lovells could say what they wanted and do what they wanted and that they would always be right no matter what they said or did. One learned that there was a living plan in Clyde, without ever learning exactly what the plan was, for it kept growing as one grew, starting with Spruce Street and one's own back yard and spreading up to Johnson Street and down to Dock Street.

Everyone had a place in that plan and everyone instinctively seemed to know where he belonged. Its completeness reminded Charles of what his Aunt Jane said once when she was arranging the flat silver in the sideboard of her dining room—everything in its place and a place for everything. The Irish, for instance, had their place, and so had the French-Canadians and the new immigrants, like the Italians and the Poles, who naturally belonged close to the Wright-Sherwin factory and the shoeshops. There was a place for the North Enders, too. They lived in the North End and went to the North End Congregational Church and even if they lived in other parts of Clyde they were still North Enders.

The same sorts of people, he learned, usually lived in the same sections of Clyde; but you began to learn quite early, without ever knowing how, that certain people who lived on Johnson Street were not Johnson Street people, and hence, because you knew, their living on Johnson Street did not disturb the plan. For example, the Stanleys lived on Johnson Street. They had bought the old Holt house, and it was still called the Holt house though the Stanleys lived in it. Mr. Stanley, everyone knew, was richer than the Lovells or the Thomases or old Miss Sarah Hewitt. You could tell this from his new greenhouse and from the number of men who worked on the garden and the lawns; and Mr. Stanley had a Cadillac automobile, driven by old Arthur Stevens, who had worked for the Holts and whose brother was a clam digger. Yet the Stanleys' prosperity was without the same face value as that of others. They lived on Johnson Street but they did not belong there.

You came to understand that the Holts, who had sold their house to the Stanleys and had moved to the North End, still belonged on Johnson Street. Miss Sarah Hewitt's house needed painting and Mr. Fogarty, who worked for her and for the Lovells too, only gave her one day a week, but Miss Sarah Hewitt belonged on Johnson Street. The same was true with the Lovells. They had always been on Johnson Street. You understood that Mr. Lovell was not very rich but his money somehow had the dignity of age. You heard it spoken of as the Lovell money. He was a director of the Dock Street Savings Bank and a trustee of the West India Insurance Company, which were both partially founded on Lovell money. He was a trustee of the public library, also partially founded on Lovell money. You came to understand that Mr. Stanley could do more generous things because he was richer, and anyone who was richer could do these things of course, but his contribution did not have the same value as a Lovell or a Hewitt contribution. You seemed to know these things implicitly.

The same was true with Spruce Street. The Grays belonged on Spruce Street and so, too, did the Masons, who lived next door; but when Vincent Sullivan, who was in the contracting business and who had the contract for the addition to the Wright-Sherwin plant, bought the house on the corner of Spruce and Chestnut, he still did not belong on Spruce Street. Everyone knew that Mr. Sullivan's father had been the Lovells' gardener and that Mr. Sullivan had driven a truck for the Bronson Shoeshop until he had invested his father's savings in the old livery stable on South Street. You could not get away from your past in Clyde and few wanted to get away from it, perhaps because it was not worth trying.

There were no secrets in a town like Clyde and so, of course, everyone knew all about the Grays. Everyone knew that John Gray was harder to place than some people because he was different from other people, and Charles must have always been aware of that unspoken difference. No matter what his father did or said, he had a right to be different because he was the Judge's son. He had always been a wild boy and had given the Judge a hard time, but everyone knew Johnny Gray. They could remember the time when Johnny Gray had a fight with Martin Donovan and when he stole a trolley car out of the carbarn and drove it down to the beach with a lot of boys from high school. It had been hard for the Judge to clear that one up, but everyone knew Johnny Gray. He was not lazy, but he never stuck to anything. He and Laurence Lovell had started out in Harvard together and they might have been friends but he didn't even bother to go with the right people. Still, Miss Hewitt always had a kind word for him and so had the Thomases.

It was all right for Johnny Gray, though it would not have been for Virgil Mason or Melville Summers, to join the Pine Tree Fire Company and to help man the Pine Tree machine at firemen's musters and to play poker at the Pine Tree firehouse, because everyone understood that he was different. He had been a wild boy but he was bright and he could have done anything he wanted if only he had put his mind on it. If only he had kept interested, he could have been a college professor or a lawyer. The trouble was, he was the only boy and the baby of the family and he had always been made too much of. Everything was too easy for Johnny Gray. He did not have to work hard, like other people, to get his learning. He could have gone through Harvard just as well as Laurence Lovell or Ralph Thomas. He was not a bad boy. He never got into a college-boy scrape, but he had not liked it there and after a year and a half the Judge had taken him out.

The Grays had always been solid people, not shipowners or warehouse owners like the old Johnson Street people, but solid people, and the Judge owned stock in the Crawford Mill. When Johnny Gray was tired of Harvard, it was natural for the Judge to put him in the mill and wait for him to settle down. It looked as if he would do it, too, when he began calling on Esther Marchby, old Dr. Marchby's daughter, and the Marchbys were good solid people, too. He was not getting on fast in the mill, but given time he would settle down. Yet perhaps the Judge himself was never sure. He had tied up Johnny Gray's share of the mill stock in trust when he died, though he let the girls own theirs outright. It was hard to fool the Judge.

Everyone knew who you were and what you were in Clyde and there was no need to guess. You always said kind things about everyone in the family and hastily dusted away discrepancies, but nothing was ever hidden because you could not help what other people said. Gossip always became in time a sort of mythology and lay before every inhabitant of Clyde like a long shadow on a summer afternoon. A word here, a word there, an embarrassed silence, a snatch of overheard conversation, an overelaborate explanation, an amusing anecdote—all those things finally could not help but make a picture. Everyone knew about John Gray, and so did Charles. Charles must have known when he was very young that John Gray was unstable, but he never could get to the bottom of this instability. When he tried to admire his father, even when he was a little boy, there was a gap somewhere, a total blank. The truth was, he often thought, that his father had been too busy with his own ideas, too involved with conflicting impulses, to have anything much left to give. John Gray was always too wrapped up in himself to have time for any of the children.

It was not the fashion in Clyde for parents to discuss each other before their children, but it was possible to hear bits of talk.

“It never does any good to nag John,” he heard his Aunt Jane say once. “Father always said so.”

“I never do nag at John,” his mother answered. “I wouldn't dream of doing it.”

“You mustn't ever let him see you're disappointed,” his Aunt Jane said. “It's just as bad as nagging and it only makes him sullen.”

“I'm not disappointed,” his mother said. “I don't see why you say I am.”

“Well, I never could have married anyone like John,” his Aunt Jane said. “I couldn't have stood it.”

“Well, I can stand it, Jane,” his mother said, and she laughed in an exasperated way. “Maybe I like excitement, and you wait, John will do something someday. You wait, we'll all be surprised. I know he's planning to do something. Of course they don't understand him at the mill.”

“What's he planning to do?” his Aunt Jane asked. “Whatever it is, don't encourage him.”

“Why, I haven't any idea,” his mother answered, and then she laughed again. “And if he never does do anything, Jane, I shan't mind. I love him just the way he is.”

His father was the type of person whom women always loved. His mother was right, too, when Charles came to think of it later. John Gray finally did do something, and everyone was very much surprised.

Charles could at any rate start with a sense of having belonged somewhere. He had, at least, something from which he could revolt, and no one could very well revolt from anything as plastic as life in Sycamore Park. Bill would never see anyone like Miss Sarah Hewitt because Miss Sarahs simply did not exist in Sycamore Parks, or if they did they must have been pushed into corners where no one saw them. There never were elder statesmen, dominating the local scene. Active old ladies of eighty like Miss Sarah only seemed to flourish in towns like Clyde where climate, local biological selection, struggle for survival, and local respect rendered them indestructible. If personality were only strong enough, Clyde was the place for it. There would never be a base in Bill's background, Charles often thought, such as there had been in his own. The impermanence of a New York suburb with its shifting population of unrooted communities, with order that existed only on the surface, was as hard for a boy to grasp as it was for him to explain. He had been luckier than Bill in that in Clyde there had been so much to be accepted without argument.

One morning at about half past nine a few days after the meeting of the Historical Society, Mrs. Garrity, who was now Miss Sarah Hewitt's housekeeper and who had been in the Hewitt household ever since she had come to Clyde as a young girl from Ireland, pulled the glass knob of the front doorbell. The bell's tinkle in the front hall interrupted Dorothea's piano practice.

“You go, Charley,” Dorothea said. “Someone's at the front door.”

“Why don't you go?” Charles asked, and Dorothea tossed her head.

“Because you're not doing anything. You never do do anything.”

Charles had been on the point of doing something. He had just made up his mind to see what Jack Mason was doing and to persuade him to go over to the Meaders' and see what the Meaders were doing and to find out if they couldn't go somewhere and do something together.

“You're not doing anything either,” Charles said. “You're just drumming on that old piano.”

“You go to the door,” said Dorothea, “or I'll tell Mother,” and then before Charles could move she began telling Mother. “Mother,” she called, “Charley won't answer the doorbell. Should Charley or I answer the doorbell?”

Charles heard his mother's quick steps on the floor above them and he moved slowly into the front hall.

“You needn't start yelling,” he called as he turned the brass knob of the front door. “I was going anyway.”

Mrs. Garrity was standing on the doorstep, bareheaded, in her gingham dress but without her apron. She looked at him coolly but with kindness through her glasses.

“Young man, is your mother in?” she asked.

There was no need to answer. His mother was hurrying down the stairs.

“Why, good morning, Mrs. Garrity,” she said.

She did not call her Ellen because only people who lived on Johnson Street would have dreamed of calling Mrs. Garrity Ellen.

“Good morning, Miss Esther,” Mrs. Garrity said, and she stepped deliberately into the hall and glanced critically at the oblong mirror and at the steel engraving of Franklin at the court of Louis the Sixteenth and then at the colored print of the Clyde waterfront. “Miss Sarah sent me to wish you good morning.” By calling his mother Miss Esther, Mrs. Garrity was obviously accepting her as a friend of Miss Sarah's—not just a calling acquaintance.