The Deceivers (7 page)

In 1937, two months before Carl graduated, Bill Garrett had gone back into business for himself, in a very small way.

Bill sat on the bed and packed his pipe and said, “Like I’ve been writing you, it looks like we can make this thing go. It won’t take too damn long to get out of the business of building chicken coops and repairing roofs. I’ve got a good lease and a truck that will run, and I’ve got back some of the boys who worked for me before.”

Carl had been standing at the window. “I … I don’t want to take a chance on it, Dad.”

“What the hell do you mean, son? Good God, I’ve got the know-how. You can take all the paper work off my back.”

“I don’t want to help build something up and lose it all over again.”

“But don’t you see, you’re working for yourself. We own the business. We can spit in any man’s eye. It’ll be mighty lean going for a while. I won’t deny that.”

“How about Marian?”

“What about Marian?”

“It’ll be so lean, Dad, that there won’t be a prayer of sending her to college.”

“It isn’t so important for girls. She’s a pretty kid, son. She’ll be married before too long. She’s eighteen.”

“I just can’t see it. I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But I’ve been making these plans how we …”

“Dad, you can handle it yourself. You did before.”

“I can damn well sure handle it myself! But I figured you’d be able to see …”

“Maybe I want something with more security. Maybe I
want
to be an employee. Maybe I don’t have the temperament to have my neck stuck out.”

“You sound like you don’t have any guts, like you don’t want to take a chance. The bigger the chance you take, the bigger the money when you win. Didn’t you learn that much in this place?”

“Yes.”

“I like the way the future looks, Carl. I can smell money ahead. The world’s stirring again. I want to specialize in home construction. Build ’em fast and cheap and honest. There’s a hell of a shortage, boy. Things have been at a standstill too long.”

‘I’m truly sorry, Dad, but I’ve given it a lot of thought. I’ll just be another mouth for the business to feed. And if I do it my way, I can help Marian. She’s willing I should help her.”

“When did you talk to her about this?”

“We’ve been writing.”

Bill Garrett crossed the room and knocked his pipe out into a tin waste basket, noisily. He sighed. “Well, I can’t force you. If I’d been able to pay the freight on this fancy education, I guess I’d have some kind of a claim. But you got the scholarship, and you worked for the rest of it. Where are you going to try to get a job?”

“I’ve got one. I was interviewed here at the school six weeks ago. I got the firm offer ten days ago and I accepted it. I’m going with the Carrier Corporation in Syracuse, New
York. The pay is okay and I’ll keep my expenses down.”

Bill Garrett shook his head and smiled in a sad way. “The little frog in a great big puddle, boy. Punch the clock and draw your pay. But if you’ve got to have it that way, I better just shut up and go along with it. But I’ve got a hunch you’re going to be mighty, mighty sorry one day.”

So he had gone to work for Carrier in July. Marian worked all summer and entered Columbia in the fall. And Bill Garrett fought doggedly and well to keep the tiny new firm from foundering. Carl sensed that his mother approved of his decision, but such was the quality of loyalty of Betty Garrett that she would never give voice to her approval. She had accepted the loss of the company and their home with gallantry. She loved Bill Garrett. It was, perhaps, that simple.

Carl met Joan Browning at two o’clock in the morning of a January Sunday in 1940 when the thermometer was down to eight below zero.

By then he had worked for Carrier for over two years. As far as he could find out, he was doing well. He had received two raises in pay. He lived in a furnished room on West Addams Street not far from Syracuse University. Marian had ceased to be as much of a drain because she had found a job, and also because Bill Garrett, doing slightly better, insisted on helping out too. So, for fifty dollars down, Carl had bought a black 1936 Ford tudor in good condition.

During the past year he had become friendly with a young couple named Dick and Deedee Hightmann. Dick was an engineer at Brown-Lipe-Chapin. They owned a house out near Jamesville, southeast of the city, an old farmhouse. Carl went out often. They were comfortable to be with, and very much in love. They had decided that marriage was such a fine institution that it was a shame that Carl was not a participant. Deedee was tireless in her attempts at matchmaking.

On this occasion, the Hightmanns had thrown a party for a house guest, a girl named Miriam something who had been Deedee’s roommate in school, and who, according to Deedee, was fabulously attractive. Three other couples were invited, and Carl was lined up to be the date of the fabulous Miriam.

She had turned out to be fabulously attractive, as advertised, and, within an hour of the time the party started, fabulously drunk. Her pretty mouth wandered all over her
face and her pretty eyes were glazed. Not long after she had ceased being comprehensible, she attempted a rather distressing strip tease, and was bundled off to bed by the Hightmanns. Deedee said, sorrowfully, “She never used to be like that.” From then on the party was fun.

Carl left a little before two to drive back to the city. It was an exceptionally clear night, crackling cold, with the stars high and a remote moon making the snow banks on either side of the road gleam. He felt slightly fuzzy from the drinks he had had, so he drove slowly and fixed the window so that the frigid air blew against his face.

As was his habit when driving back from the Hightmanns’, he took a small county road from Jamesville over to DeWitt where he could turn left on Route 5 and head into the city.

He was not over a mile from Jamesville when he saw, far ahead, a figure walking on the right hand side of the road, next to snow banks half as high as she was. As he came closer he saw that the girl was bareheaded. She wore a pale formal dress and a small wrap. She carried an evening purse and her high-heeled slippers. She did not turn or make any gesture when he drove by her. He stopped forty feet beyond her and reached over and rolled the right window down.

When she was even with the car he said, “Hello!”

She walked on, chin high. He started up and drove slowly beside her. His tires creaked on the snow. He saw that she was a very pretty girl.

“Look, you’ll freeze your feet.”

No glance or answer.

“Miss, I assure you I am perfectly harmless. It’s below zero. Do you want to lose your toes?”

The steady walk continued.

“My name is Carl Garrett and I work at Carrier and I’m on my way home after a party in Jamesville. I’ve got a heater in here I paid eleven dollars for and it throws off a lot of heat. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

The steady pace slowed. She stopped and turned and looked in at him. “A lot of heat?” she asked, and her teeth chattered.

“More than you can stand when you turn it on high.”

She opened the door and slid in quickly and rolled the window up. He closed the window on his side. She hugged herself, teeth chattering, shuddering all over so that he could feel the vibration in the car. With the slender shoes and the
evening purse she had erected a fragile barricade on the seat between them.

“S-S-Syracuse,” she said.

By the time they reached DeWitt she had stopped shuddering and chattering, and the heat inside the car had released the frozen fragrance of her perfume.

“What happened?” he asked. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you, all right. I’ll tell you.”

Anger burned behind her words. He found out that her name was Joan Browning. She had graduated from Syracuse the previous June. She worked in an insurance office in the city. On this Saturday night she had gone back to a formal dance at her sorority on the campus with a boy she had been dating. They had left the dance and driven out into the country and parked and had quarreled bitterly and violently. She didn’t say what about. She had gotten out into the cold, expecting him to plead with her to get back into the car. But instead he had driven off. That had made her so angry that when he came back five minutes later, looking for her, she had hidden. When he had given up, perhaps assuming she had been picked up, she had started walking. It was almost impossible to walk on the packed snow in high heels. She had soon taken them off. She was looking for a house where she could phone a cab to come out and get her. But the houses were dark. He was the second car that had come along. The first one had nearly run her down.

“But if you hid from him, it isn’t his fault you’re walking.”

“He drove away, didn’t he?” she said grimly.

“How are your feet?”

“They feel terrible. They hurt like fire.”

“Good sign.”

“You wouldn’t say that if they were your feet.”

“We should stop and rub snow on them.”

“Thank you very much. No.”

“Look, Miss Joan Browning, I’m not the guy who drove away. I’m the guy giving you a ride.”

“I’m very grateful for the ride and I’ll try not to be so cross. But I’m still mad. I’m … I’m damn mad.”

She told him the address. She shared an apartment with two other girls in a big old frame house on Genesee Street. After he stopped in front, near a street light, she put her shoes on. As she was putting them on, he went around the
car and opened the door for her. She got out and he could see that she wasn’t tall, even in the high heels, and she was wonderfully pretty, and her smile was good.

“I’m getting over being mad now,” she said. “Thanks an awful lot.”

“I was glad I could help.”

They said good night and she started up the walk. “Joan,” he said. She stopped and turned. “Look, maybe I could stop by tomorrow afternoon, just to see if … you’re all right. About three.”

“I’m perfectly all right.”

“But if I don’t know, I’ll worry.”

“Well …”

“I can make it any time you say.”

“Then … three will be okay … Carl.”

By the end of the following week they were spending every possible moment together. She would wait for him after she got out of work, and he would be along fifteen minutes later. And there came to be a dozen of “their” places. Drugstores. Sandwich shops. They sat and talked for uncounted hours. Never before had he been as eloquent, or his mind as agile and perceptive. Never before had there been so many things to talk about, so many that it seemed they could never cover them, not even in a lifetime. Sometimes he was uncomfortably aware that he was doing most of the talking, but she seemed pleased to have him.

He did learn that she was the only daughter of a doctor, a widower and general practitioner who practiced in Watertown, New York. She was twenty-three and had a brother, Walt, ten years older, an Annapolis graduate then on sea duty on a light cruiser. The other child, a young son, had died as an infant.

Her eyes were brown, her nose snubbed, her mouth generous. Her brown hair was particularly fine and silky. She was five feet five and weighed a hundred and twenty pounds, and he could almost span her waist with his hands. She was ripely, glowingly, abundantly mature. They sat in small quiet places in the heart of the upstate winter, and they looked into each other’s eyes until there was nothing at all in the world but their awareness of each other. And they talked. And talked. And talked.

She learned about Lois back in Youngstown, and Marie and Christy in Philadelphia, and immediately despised all
of them as avidly as he hated the two boys she told him about.

After three weeks had passed they knew that it was love and they knew that it had never happened this way before to anybody else, and they knew that it was a miracle that would last forever, and they both accepted the inevitability that, had they not met on that January night, they would have met very soon in any case because it was inevitable, you see. But it was especially nice to meet the way they had. And how did you meet your wife, Mr. Garrett? Oh, I picked her up on the highway one night. It was very delicious.

In late February he drove up to Watertown with her and met Dr. Browning. He was a gruff and busy man who appeared to bully his housekeeper, his nurse, his dog and his daughter. But all of them seemed quite unaware of being bullied.

He said, “Wedding in June, eh? Rhymes with moon and spoon and very damn soon. Sure you kids know which end is up? I imagine I’ll have to endure having it here. But why you want to go batting around Canada on a combination two-week vacation and honeymoon, I’ll never know.” He winked at Carl. “Me, I’d rent a cabin in a pine woods and stock it up with food and stay right there. Fewer distractions.” And he slapped Joan’s rounded rear with a gusto that made her yelp, then kissed her forehead gently and said, “Time you were married, Joanie. Time to put all that female equipment to work at its proper function. Life is function, and any man looking at you would know damn well you can’t function at your best adding up insurance premiums.”

“Father!” she said, red-faced.

“This one doesn’t look as if he’s ever had enough to eat, but from the way he looks at you, girl, your marriage might last a couple or three years. Too bad Walt can’t come join the festivities.”

And on a much more harrowing weekend in March, after having prepared them by letter, Carl drove Joan down to Youngstown, arriving at ten on Saturday night. His parents took to Joan immediately. Bill bragged about how much better things were going in the construction game. He had acquired a plot of land and he was mortgaging every resource to put up a half dozen speculative houses. He talked largely, but he looked worn and weary. They left at noon on Sunday and arrived in Syracuse late and exhausted.

Spring came on an April day and after that, whenever
they could, they drove out into the country. Later, after they started having picnics, they found a special place, a stream flowing through a narrow curving valley where there were grassy banks. The isolation and privacy of the little valley complicated the problem they had set for themselves. They had agreed, with a certain solemnity, to wait until they were married to consummate their love. They agreed, in a most sophisticated way, that it was actually only a symbol, but at least it was one way of proving to each other that they were people of character and restraint. But as the spring became more florid, the grasses more heated, the sun more languorous, the agreement became increasingly difficult. She was not a sensuous woman, but she was lusty and hearty and primitive in her needs, and her responses to his every touch were almost instantaneous. They took increasing liberties, aware of the tantalizingly narrow path they walked, but telling each other that so long as the ultimate was not accomplished, they were living up to their sacred agreement. When he would slide his hand under her clothing to cup her breast, large and warm and firm, the erectile nipple would rise to hardness against his palm and her breath would become bellows and furnace.