The Collected Stories of William Humphrey (20 page)

“Like the flu looks maybe,” she diagnosed. “Just like
mein
Helmut exactly when he came down mit flu.”

Mr. Grogan snorted, thinking how much more than flu he would have to have to look at all like her Helmut.

Miss Hinkle, terrified that she might catch sight of a bedpan, squealed, “Elsa, smells here like in Germany in the epidemic, ain't it?”

“Hush, Hedvig, no,” shooshed Mrs. Schlegelin, her nose climbing up her face, and Miss Hinkle sniggered.

And they said other things, even after Mr. Grogan slowly flourished from the drawer of his nightstand two abandoned wads of chewing gum—really two waxen cotton plugs—and screwed them into his ears.

A tactic he had developed some time back. Mr. Grogan disliked using it, it made for all sorts of trouble, but was surely called for now. Wax-treated cotton they were, soft, easily got in, and they set like cement. Twenty-five cents a month bought a private little world all his own. Herself resented the price. With a display of thrift and resourcefulness, she bought a roll of cotton big enough for quilting, a tin of tallow, and made her own. She looked to be troubled with his voice for even longer than he ever hoped. For a while it piqued him. Now he simply had to laugh. One of many examples it became of her racial penny-wiseness—because he could make himself heard to her with but the tiniest elevation of his ordinary tone, while she had to shout herself hoarse.

You could not insult them. They left, but not before they were ready. But they might have spent the night for all of Emmett Grogan. He was sealed in, with smiles rising up like bubbles in new wine. But try as he might there was no convincing himself that this solitude was at all what he wanted. He was lonely in there. And he feared that these last two were not the last by any means. A long list of Mrs. Grogan's acquaintances rolled across his mind, the two down in the kitchen being welcome compared to some. He uncorked one ear and a dull whistle of Plattdeutsch rushed in.

Mr. Grogan gave himself a shake to unstick a joint or two, threw the covers back and carefully watched himself get up, afraid of leaving something behind. Sadly he wrenched himself out of his nightgown. Once in his pants he knew how much he had shrunk. Breaking up, he could see it in the mirror. But it was never a clear glass, and the light poorly, and moreover it was a man had spent a day in bed. Lying there that way the flesh slid of its own weight off the bones in front and would take time to get properly rearranged. He would know in McLeary's tavern. Someone would be sure to remark, “Grogan, you're not looking yourself”—which he was bound to admit, that is, not looking
himself
, meaning that a slight change in a ruddy face was enough for decent well-meant concern that never for a minute overstated the case.

Down the steps stealthily went Mr. Grogan that his wife would not hear the labor it cost him, his eyes steady on the landing where he planned a rest, but as he reached it his wife brought her guests from the kitchen to see them out the front door. From somewhere he dug up the energy to trot briskly by.

“Don't wait supper on me,” he flung at her without so much as a glance over his shoulder. And his little spurt of exertion turned out to be the very thing he had been needing. He knew all along it was.

Housewives were indoors, children in school, dogs in kennels, Ireland still in the Atlantic and Germany in ruins and Emmett Grogan was in the street. Natural phenomena all. There was a list to his step that passed for a swagger as he crashed the door at McLeary's. The place was deserted. McLeary hung over a scratch sheet at the far end of the bar and he tucked it grudgingly away while Mr. Grogan ascended a stool. Somebody had surely pickled McLeary as a foetus, but he had kept growing, had been lately discovered, spilled out and set going. Little half-opened eyes were getting a start in his squashed face, he was adenoidal, potbellied, but to Mr. Grogan he looked good.

“Leave the bottle?” he asked after pouring a shot, to which Mr. Grogan nodded carelessly. McLeary went back immediately to his scratch sheet. Mr. Grogan tamped another down, and felt his insides warm and expand. He got down from his stool, looked annoyed with the sunlight at his end of the counter, and moved with his bottle down nearer McLeary.

“Something else, Mr. Grogan?”

“No. No, nothing further, thank you, McLeary. This will do it if anything will, I suppose.”

“Something amiss, Mr. Grogan?”

“Ah, nothing serious, you understand. Nasty little bit of a cold.”

“Ah, yes. Too bad. There's an epidemic, so I understand.”

That was conserving your sympathy, spreading it pretty thin. Starting on another tack, he asked, “Where could everybody be this fine day?”

“Not here,” McLeary observed sourly.

“What can it be, do you suppose?”

McLeary shrugged; he was unable to imagine a counter-attraction so strong.

Grogan pushed away his bottle. “And I'll be having a beer to help that on its way, if you please, McLeary.” He was determined to stick it out until some friend came in. But he had had whiskey enough and more, and he always did get a guilty feeling sitting empty-handed in a bar.

To go home again would have robbed the venture of all its worth. But he did not like to think of it as a venture. He would like to feel he could go home when he pleased, for after all he had done nothing unusual—got well, got up. No point to be proved to anybody. All too subtle for her, however. She would get the idea he hadn't been able to stand on his feet any longer. She would have something there, too, but his unsteadiness came from good healthy rye whiskey.

Grogan, a voice pulled him down by the ear, you're not feeling well and you know it. Naturally, he replied, I've been sick, what do you expect. You're sick and getting sicker. No, drunk and getting drunker. Mr. Grogan decided to take his stomach out for an airing. Would drop in later when some of his friends were sure to be there before going home to supper. McLeary would solemnly not let them out until Emmett Grogan had seen them.

It was fast getting dark and the night air settling down. Five steps Mr. Grogan took and sobered so suddenly it was like bumping into himself around a corner. He had better get home, he decided quickly. If he could make it, he added soon. With one block he was apprehensive, two and he was scared, three had him terrified. Something had him by the throat, no air was getting in, he was turning hot and cold, his joints were rusting fast. Holy Mary, Mother of God. Holy Mary, I'm not ready. His mind cleared long enough to wish this on his wife—take her, Lord, she's mean.

Mr. Grogan lurched up the steps of his house and found the door locked. It wasn't possible. Could she have gone out, thinking he might collapse? He fumbled in all his pockets at once, could not find his key, tried them systematically. No key. He wanted just to slump down on those stones and die crying. Maybe the back door was open, if only he could hold out that long. When finally he shoved it in she was sipping tea at the kitchen table and looked up as if she was seeing a ghost. That was when he really got scared. She was not shamming, probably never had been.

“Well, Mr. Big,” she brogued, “I hope you enjoyed yourself.”

“Oh,” he managed to groan, leaning on the table edge, “sick. Terrible sick.”

Mrs. Grogan drained her tea, picked a leaf off her tongue.

“Hah!” she snorted. “You? Grogan, the Iron Man? You've never been sick a day in your life. Told me so yourself many a time.”

“Oh, I'm dying, woman. You were right. I admit it. I'm a sick man. A dying man. I admit it. Do you hear? What more do you want for your pleasure?”

“Get on with you, Grogan. Sober up. I've no time to be bothered with you.”

Mr. Grogan licked his lips. They were hot and crinkly. “Will you just help me up the stairs a bit?” he whispered.

“Now don't let me have to tell you again, get out of my kitchen and leave me to my business. You're well enough to swill with the pigs at McLeary's, you're well enough to bring me up a scuttle of coal from the cellar.”

Mr. Grogan turned and dragged himself out in an agony of terror and pain. He crawled up the steps, pulling himself with rubbery hands, and into his room. He struggled out of his overcoat and shoes, laid his cap on the table and crawled under the covers as the phone began ringing.

“Hello,” she said. “Who? Oh, Mr. Duffy, is it? Young Mr. Duffy,” and she raised her voice to a shout. “Well, yes, he was a little under the weather earlier in the day, one of the same old complaints. No, no we didn't. I always just look after him myself. Serious? Well, you ought to know Grogan well enough for that. Bring yourself out on a night like this? For what? Why, he's just come in from McLeary's where he spent the whole afternoon. I'm surprised you didn't see him.”

The Last Husband

I

O
UR HONEYMOON
was over one bright warm Monday in late November when Janice drove me down to catch the 8:02 and I became a commuter.

There was a fine invigorating pinch in the air and standing on the station platform with my new wife and new brief case and my unpunched commutation ticket, I was conscious of looking like a young man of whom a lot was expected and who expected a lot of himself, and I did not care who saw. I did not need to care, I soon began to feel, for no one noticed me.

They did notice when Janice kissed me good-by. I was the only man whose wife kissed him, and I waited with Janice to be the last on the train. Then I saw why no other man got a kiss—nearly all their women got on the train with them; they were going to work, too. Janice was almost the only person left on the platform as the train pulled out.

Needless to say, while honeymooning we had been content not to know anyone in Cressett. But now we were eager to meet people. It was not by chance that we had come to make our home among them, for while not everyone in Cressett was an advertising artist like me, enough of them did things similar to give the place a name. But though people in the streets had smiled and some had said hello, they smiled more as if they were afraid they knew you and said hello as if they feared perhaps they ought to know you. I'd had to admit to myself that I'd not seen a really friendly face, and after walking down the aisle of the train that morning, down that double row of grumpy, unrested faces—the few, that is, that were visible, for most of them were protected by newspapers—my hopes of seeing one were at their lowest.

Then I encountered the smile of Edward Gavin. He was sitting by the window beneath which Janice stood to wave to me. He was not the only man my age, but he was the only one who looked as if he felt himself to be. It was when I asked if I might share his seat that he gave me his smile. Such politeness as mine, or perhaps it was my desire to share a seat with anyone, apparently confirmed my innocence, for several people turned and smiled. But my man's smile was a friendly smile.

He nodded toward Janice and asked, “Married long?”

“Two months,” I said.

He spared me the pleasantries. In fact, after telling me his name he said nothing. I told about myself, pausing often to let him say something, but he didn't, and finally, growing ashamed of my egotism, I said, “Married yourself?”

“Twenty years,” he said wearily.

I smiled. But I was at that stage of my own when to hear a man joke about his marriage was not funny to me. “It doesn't seem to have hurt you,” I could not help saying.

To my surprise he got to his feet. The train was slowing for Webster's Bridge, the first stop after Cressett. That was where this man Edward Gavin got off, having commuted just three miles.

Being the last stop on the line, barely within commuting distance, Cressett was the starting point for the morning train, the 8:02. The coach was empty when we came in and each man and woman took a seat to himself, like a herd of milch cows trained to go to their separate stalls. Oh, I noticed pairs who sat together daily, but I noticed also that after a grunt or two they settled down to as deep a silence as those who sat alone until their seats were shared by strangers getting on at stops down the line; indeed, I decided that those pairs had agreed to sit together just to keep each from having to sit with anyone he disliked even more. And so for me the coach came soon to have the atmosphere of an elevator ride prolonged for nearly two hours. The evening train, which had a lounge car and which set out from Grand Central loaded full of people going home from work, promised to be more sociable. But I learned quickly that if anything can make a person more ill-tempered than having to go to work in the morning, it's having to go home in the evening, and so the occasional gusts of sociability from the gin rummy games on the evening train only intensified the general incivility.

I found myself thinking again of the man Gavin's smile. I looked out for him and saw that he sat regularly with no one but that he did not seem to resent it quite so much as others if someone sat with him. He lived in Webster's Bridge, I knew now, having seen him board the train there every morning since the first, so when we stopped there one morning, the seat next to me being empty, of course, I invited him with a look to take it. He seemed to recognize me with something other than pleasure; in response to my look he frowned deeply, and he took a seat up the aisle.

Coming home that night, as we drew up the line, I left my seat and worked my way up to the head coach. Edward Gavin was there. The sight of him then was something of a shock. Slumped in his seat, abandoned to his exhaustion, he resembled nothing so much as an elder brother of the man I had seen before. But when he saw me he drew himself together and his smile performed the most amazing transformation on his face, as when a photographic print lies in the developer and the washed-out features of a face suddenly collect themselves into life. I forgave him completely his unfriendliness of the morning. Tell yourself there's nothing personal in it, that anyone else could do just as much—still it does something to you, makes you feel good, to have your approach bring that much change to a person's face.