The Plot (3 page)

Louis would have been shocked had he known what she was thinking. He imagined she was trying to forgive Jamey his rudeness … he was himself trying, on the basis that Jamey was a great artist, that he was an old man, that he was simply an unpleasantly barking, snarling, yipping dog who never bit. Louis attributed his own thoughts to Ethel and was very sorry for her.

Jamey put his dessert spoon down on the plate under the Venetian-glass sherbet dish and ran his forefinger around the glass, getting the last trace of the coffee soufflé, which he then popped into his mouth. “I permit myself only half the ordinary portion,” he told Louis, “but I am entitled to every calorie of that.” He dipped his hands into the fingerbowl that had been set by his place, and waggled his fingers, enjoying the warm, verbena-scented water. “Now that we have had our dinner, dear boy, will you, over the coffee, tell us about yourself?” He held his dripping hand over the fingerbowl. “You hesitate?”

“Yes. I hesitate.”

Jamey tenderly enfolded his damp fingers in his gleaming napkin. “May I tell you why, dear boy? You hesitate because you are taking this as a lit'ry examination. Am I correct?”

Louis' upper lip lifted to one side, then he smiled, turning his face toward Jamey, keeping his face away from Ethel. “Sure. I guess so.”

“Don't word it, dear boy. Let me make my own pictures. Bare facts, bare facts!”

“The facts are bare. The picture isn't decorative. Listen, don't think I pity myself; I'm better off than a lot of others, but it's been rugged.”

“Rugged! Dear boy, you must not permit your vocabulary to be cluttered up with horrid and passé words like ‘rugged.'”

“O.K. It hasn't been upholstered.”

“Remember you are talking to old Jamey; what
hasn't
he seen?”

“I guess you've seen what I've lived, worse, probably, but, if you'll excuse me, you haven't lived it.” Now I'm talking like him.

“And what do you know about what I have lived, dear boy?”

“Everyone knows about you. Everyone knows your father was a rich man. Everyone knows your mother was a famous essayist. I've seen pictures of the mansion you grew up in; it was right that you should want to become a writer.”

Jamey frowned, then giggled. “Physiological parentage doesn't guarantee anything, dear boy, or else——Or else it would have been my solemn duty, if not, perhaps, my pleasure, to populate the world with junior Vaughns!”

Ethel's quick glance said that Louis had better be careful, that Louis had gone almost too far, that Jamey disliked giving his parents credit for his talent. Louis fought down his desire to continue along this line and took a deep breath. “Of course I know that a family tree doesn't guarantee genius. I only said it was right for you to want to write and wrong for me to. My father certainly did his best to beat it out of me. My story is old-hat. We lived in the slums which are standard. You can fill those in easily. I got my schooling by working after school. I read your books in the public library. I was in the Army. You know all about that, it's not fresh material, is it?”

“Dear boy,” Jamey said. “Such violence! But, no, it isn't.”

“No,” Louis repeated, not looking at Ethel, feeling how she stared at him, “it isn't. The only difference between me and the other underprivileged kids is that I'm here now.” He drank the little cup of strong, thick coffee in one gulp, and, noticing that Jamey was sipping, sipping, looked rather embarrassed as he set his cup down.

“No. The difference, dear boy, is in your early appreciation of a master, your intimate understanding of that master, or else you wouldn't be here now. Go on with your story.”

“My father is a drunkard, my mother—well, my father is a drunkard but a very good-looking man.”

“You resemble him, dear boy?”

“I look like him.”

“You most certainly do not appear fond of your father.”

“I'm not,” Louis said. He reviewed the decisive scene, the domestic neotragedy on St. Nicholas Avenue censoring it, censoring the old man's finding the manuscript that had taken two years to write. He censored the old man's drunken swearing, the saliva trickling out of his loose, drunken mouth, the drunken fury with which he pounded on the cheap paper, saying that this was why Louis had taken any old job since he'd been demobilized, this was what was keeping Louis from getting anywhere, kept him doling out his miserable pay so his father had to work like a dog, so his father couldn't take a drink without everyone acting like he was starving them. He censored his father's lifting the stove lid and his mother's scream. He censored the thin, trembling legs his mother stood on, getting out of her bed. He censored his desire to go for the old man, and his mother's arms around him, clinging. “Don't, Louis, don't, Louis.” He censored her running to the stove and trying pull the smoking papers out of it. He censored the blow of the old man's hand on her face. “You think of him. You don't think of me. You think of him.” He censored the inutterable sound of his mother's fall to the floor, bone on wood it sounded like because there was so little left of her, censored the flame crunching at the paper, the stove lid coming down. Louis heard his own voice: “No, I'm not fond of him, Mr. Vaughn.” He mimicked the prissy word “fond.” “As a matter of fact, I left home so I wouldn't kill him.”

Jamey's spoon clattered. He stared at Louis, blinking. “You left home so you would not kill your father? So did Oedipus, dear boy! When Oedipus was born, a soothsayer predicted that he would kill the king, his father, so his father sent him off to be liquidated. This was not infanticide, you understand, simply self-protection. However, because of foolish compassion, this doomed boy was saved and brought up by another family. When he did grow to manhood and learned that he was fated to kill his father, being an honorable man, just like you, dear boy, he ran away from home.”

“And on the road he met a stranger and fought and killed him, and this turned out to be Oedipus' old man, so the curse was fulfilled. I know. If you think I'm fated to kill you, Mr. Vaughn, you better send me packing.”

Jamey shrugged. “Where such things are, what mortal shall boast any more that he can ward the arrows of the gods from his life? You will stay the day, dear boy? What time is it, Ethel?”

“Four, Jamey.” She sounded very tired, as if she had been running; she sounded used up.

“Four. At my age one cannot sleep long, torpid stretches, dear Louis, so I arise very early in the morning, and, from four to six in the afternoon, I nap. Perhaps Ethel will show you the grounds or take the punt on the river. Study the alligators, dear boy, study their ways, and, at six, we will meet again.”

William Reas held Jamey's chair for him and stood at attention while Jamey, his white monk's robe swaying, walked slowly out of the room. William Reas pushed a rubber-wheeled three-tiered table into the room and piled the remaining dishes on it, stuffing the cloth and napkins into a white bag. In four minutes, the room was in perfect order and Louis and Ethel were alone in it.

Louis said, “I don't get it. Oracles, warnings, Oedipus, why did he let me get past the gate?”

“I'm sure Jamey thinks he can outwit his fate. He thinks he can outwit anything. Things always happen the way Jamey wants them to.”

“Magic? He waves his hand and food appears. He claps his hand—all traces of it disappear. I suppose he will wave his wand and I will disappear at the stroke of midnight.”

“If Jamey wants you to disappear. Do you want to take a nap, Mr. Daignot?”

“Because he naps, you mean? Because he naps I nap? Don't you think you're going a little too far?”

Her tongue flicked out. “The spiritual son might wish to emulate the father.”

Louis smiled. “Well, maybe I am his spiritual son, but I'm not his Siamese twin. I don't want to nap. How about calling me Louis?”

“Louis. Jamey had a tennis court built when he built this cottage. He hasn't ever used it, but Joseph Reas keeps it in shape. It has a canvas canopy for when the sun is too strong. If we are quiet——”

“O.K.”

“Come on, then. Would you want to change?”

“Into what?” Crossing his hands, he pulled the basque shirt up over his head; underneath it, his skin was smooth and brown. “Now I'm changed. What's the matter? Is something the matter, Ethel?” Her face had turned red, the tip of her ear, even, had turned red.

But she merely turned and stumbled clumsily out of the room. She wasn't Jamey; she couldn't say, “
Comme tu es beau!
” She was fully aware, besides, that she had better not say it. “Nothing,” she said. “I must change.”

Louis thought he had embarrassed Ethel; behind her, he balled his shirt and threw it as hard as he could at the far wall. When it fell on the floor, he went to it and kicked it viciously, then put it on again. Louis wanted to follow after Ethel, to tell her not to bother changing her clothes, but he didn't know the layout of the house and didn't want to be noisy. He had to wait until Ethel returned, wearing a white cotton tennis dress that, completely simple, ending just below her knees, suited her sturdy body, her fine big legs. Louis nodded at Ethel. “You look swell in that outfit, but I'm afraid—Instead of going in for dramatics, I should have told you. I can't play tennis. I can't ride a horse. I can't swim. I can't play golf. Name any other sport, I can't do it.”

“You can write,” she said.

“How do you know I can write?”

“From that letter, from the criticism.”

“Not that letter, pal, that four-letter word! What you found from that letter' is that I can appreciate Mr. Vaughn, that's all. How do you know I can write? No one else thinks I can. Do you know I've never made a single sale? Not one? Ever?”

“You can write,” she said stubbornly. She was clutching two tennis rackets, which she now laid on the table, stretching her hand to Louis. “Let's go on the river.” She lowered her voice. “I'll punt and you can talk.”

“I've done enough talking, thanks. I'm sick to death of talking. Sitting in some bar making a bottle of beer last an evening, and yaketa, yaketa!”

“Then let me talk,” she said. “I haven't done enough talking. I haven't talked to anyone for six years.” Her tongue flicked out greedily. “Please let me talk.”

He followed her through the still cool house, out into the sun, down the smooth cement path to the river, which path Jamey had ordered built so that he, in his chair with the electric motor, could, without effort, roll himself down the ramp from the door to his favorite spots. The punt was moored to a small cement dock. From underneath the gunwale, Ethel pulled out a large, floppy hat. “I'll need this.” She smiled. “And it will hide my face from you.”

“Why?”

“I want to hide my face from you. I am ashamed after everything Jamey said at dinner.”

“I know. I wanted to——” Because of his mother, because his father had mocked at his mother, he had had all he could do to keep from telling Mr. Vaughn off. Ethel was a symbol now. With his sarcasm, Jamey had turned her into a symbol for Louis. She was his mother, now. It would take a good deal to make him realize the real woman; to him she was no longer a woman.

“You're kind,” Ethel said. There were tears in her voice. Her throat worked. “Don't be kind. I'm not used to it.”

“Poor Ethel,” Louis said gently. Poor Mother.

She smiled at him gratefully, then turned her head and changed the subject. “It is beautiful here, isn't it?”

“Probably. I am sick of all the beauty in the world that isn't mine.”

She waited while he settled himself in the boat and then pushed off with the punting pole. “None of the beauty is mine, either.”

“How long have you been here?” Poor Ethel.

“Since Jamey had the cottage built. Six years.”

“Six years.” Being insulted, used, lonely. “How did you get here, Ethel?”

Punting down the river, which wound, which widened, which twisted, on whose shores willows bent and live oaks dripped Spanish moss, Ethel talked. She told her story very simply, as if she no longer felt the emotions that went with it, giving Louis additional reasons for feeling that she was much older than she really was. She had been born Ethel Parton, born in New Hampshire, “Not quite as poor as you were, Louis, but closer to poverty than Jamey. Close enough to it to know that even Jamey—Close enough to know I haven't known it. But we're agreed that Jamey talking of poverty is beyond his depth, aren't we?”

We. The two of us, united. “We are.”

“My family wanted me to be a writer, Louis. Unlike you, I was encouraged to read.” She laughed. “In my case they should have encouraged some sensible frivolity! I was ye complete bookworm, and when I crawled out from between the covers of books, nothing happened to me except becoming Jamey's secretary. I planned that. I plotted that. I found out who his secretary was. I ate lunch where she ate lunch. I flattered her from twelve to one o'clock, six days a week.” She laughed again. “I didn't precisely make her quit Jamey, but I talked her into being above herself, unwilling to take being Jamey's secretary.”

“Which—even if you're not above yourself—is something to take.”

“Yes, which is something.” She was grateful to him, an emotion she had not counted on, and it made her more awkward than ever, affecting even the muscles of her mouth, so that her speech was impeded. “I was able to talk myself into the job because where his work was concerned, nobody could fool Jamey. I never made a mistake, typing. I never lost or added a syllable or a comma. I got the job and I've kept it. You heard Jamey. I can't write, but I know writing. I know it.

“My husband, Lem, knew I knew. I met him in New York, in a cafeteria, one night. He was poor, too, Louis. He was poor and thin and blond. It's cheap to say that Lem had that unearthly handsomeness that can't last, but that's just what he had. Lem wanted to write, too. Lem had the itch.”