The Tight White Collar (24 page)

“That's something you'll have to answer for yourself, David,” the doctor had replied to David's awkward, embarrassed question. “But if that's what it is, for God's sake don't try to turn it into something else. Face it, admit it, and then perhaps we can begin to do something about it. A good psychiatrist could help you.”

It was really comical, David thought later, the way he had always pictured psychiatrists as being short and rather plump with beards like Sigmund Freud's and interesting foreign accents. The one to whom he had gone had been nothing like his mental image. He had the rather improbable name of Henry Smith and he was large and jovial to a degree that seemed almost farcical to David. It seemed to David that Dr. Smith was bent on establishing a buddy-buddy relationship right from the start.

“Strong, I don't believe that your, —er, idiosyncrasies have a physical causation which makes you one of the lucky ones. If they had, I wouldn't be able to help you. No. It's my opinion that you were forced into the paths of homosexuality as a child and that means we're going to have to dig, dig, dig. So come on now, start at the beginning if you can and let's have it all.”

A few weeks later, Dr. Smith said, “That mother of yours must have been a pip! There are some women, Strong, who should be sterilized before puberty. It seems to me that your mother was one of them. How you must have hated her!”

“But I never hated my mother,” objected David. “She was the soul of goodness. She was saintly, I tell you. I can never even begin to tell you what she had to put up with from my father.”

“Saintly or not,” said Dr. Smith, “she certainly managed to do a fine job of turning you against women for all time whether you'll admit that or not.”

“For all time?” asked David.

“Unfortunately, it usually works out that way,” said the doctor. “But don't worry. There are many ways in which we can help you to adjust to your problem.”

That night, David decided that he would not go back to Dr. Henry Smith and with the decision he felt almost peaceful. He went to sleep almost at once and he dreamed of Millie.

“What's your last name?” he asked her in his dream. “I don't believe I've ever heard it?”

But Millie would not answer his question. She turned and ran a few steps away from him and when she finally spoke her voice was high and shrill with outrage.

“What are you anyway?” screamed Millie, and even the next morning it seemed to David that she had been much too substantial and her voice far too real for her to have been nothing but a dream and he had the eerie feeling that she had somehow actually been in the same room with him. “Just what are you anyway?” screamed Millie. “A goddamn fairy? I don't make a pass at a guy only to have him puke all over the goddamn place. That's what you are, a stinkin', goddamn fairy. I oughta call a cop!”

David woke. He sat up, frightened, trembling and covered with sweat with the sickness hard-fisted in his stomach. He turned on all the lights but of course his studio was empty, and his eyes fell on the water color that Martin Mallory had done for him many years ago in Paris.

Martin hadn't called him vile names, remembered David with something almost like gratitude. In his way, Martin had been kind.

“It's nothing to be ashamed of, David,” Martin had said. “What we have is exactly the same kind of love a man has for a woman except unfortunately for us we both happen to be men.”

“You're crazy!” David had cried. “And you're dirty and perverted and evil.”

Looking down at the quiet Cooper Station street, David remembered his flight from Paris and the months in New York that followed. He had played the piano at a great number of small, badly-lit bars and he remembered the high-voiced men who had peopled those places. He remembered the languid glances, the pancake make-up and the soft-tipped fingers that had reached out on many occasions to stroke his arm or his cheek, and for a time he had almost managed to acquire a feeling of belonging, of having found his place in the world at last. But one evening, a couple of tourists had come in to the bar where he was working. The man had a paunch and wore a blue striped suit and the woman had a new permanent wave and wore a violently pink hat.

The man had ordered drinks, after insisting on seeing the bottle and then he turned to his companion.

“Well, Elsie,” he said, loud enough for David to hear, “you always wanted to see one of these pansy beds and here you are.”

“Gee, Al,” said Pink Hat, “I never really believed there was guys like this, not really I didn't. I thought they was just guys that people told jokes about, you know? My God.”

The two of them sat there for a long time, getting even drunker than they had been when they came in and staring around and nudging each other with a great deal of giggling. Pink Hat's hat was tilted slightly and a few wisps of hair had begun to trail across one cheek when she finally pinched Blue Suit playfully and indicated David with a nod of her head.

“Say, mister,” she called to David. “What're you doin' in here?”

David ignored her but his fingers trembled as he tried to find the keys to his next number.

“Say, mister,” called Pink Hat and her words slurred a little. “You don't really look like one.”

Every head in the place was turned toward her and David felt his stomach begin to quiver.

“Say, mister. Are you really one of them fairies?” asked Pink Hat and her companion was convulsed with laughter at the look on David's face.

“Come on, Elsie,” he roared. “He ain't gonna answer you. Let's go someplace else. The perfume in here is beginnin' to make me feel sick.”

The room was quiet for a long, stretched-out moment after the two had gone, but at last the bartender came up to David. He put one arm around his shoulders and said, “Don't you care, Davy. They were just stupid, drunken boors and I never should have served them in the first place.”

“No, you shouldn't,” mumbled David and ran quickly toward the men's room.

But even while he was throwing up, David thought of Blue Suit and Pink Hat. Drunken, stupid boors they might be, but no one outside was ever going to look at them with curiosity, amazement and disgust. Because Blue Suit and Pink Hat had the great gift of normalcy. Perhaps they sneaked around and fornicated in the back seat of Blue Suit's car, but still the world would look upon them as normal, as infinitely to be preferred to people like David Strong. There was no safety, no security, even in the tight, closed little world of the bar outside because at any time its walls could be invaded by outsiders who felt no pity but only contempt.

David Strong turned away slowly from his window and the beautiful still scene outside. He walked directly into his bathroom and reached carefully into the medicine cabinet. Even in the dark, his fingers found the small bottle of sleeping capsules. He filled a glass with water and he did not trip or spill a single drop as he went back to bed. He swallowed every capsule in the bottle carefully and slowly and washed each one down his throat with a mouthful of water.

Even now, at the end, I've chosen the woman's way, he thought. Pity I don't own a gun. I could have done a real bang-up masculine job of this.

He lay flat on the bed and pulled the sheet up to his chin.

Thou shalt not kill, Mother? he asked silently. Not even oneself does that mean? Does it, Mother?

He turned his head and looked toward the windows where the wide-open draperies moved gently in the winter cold.

But, Mother, he argued silently, wouldn't you rather have me dead than living the kind of life I'd have to live? Wouldn't you? You wouldn't want me to go through life with people pointing fingers at me, would you ? You wouldn't want them pointing stubby, dirty-knuckled fingers at me and laughing and whispering and making vulgar little jokes, would you, Mother? And what if I got caught? Why, it'd be worse for me than it was for Chris and Lisa Pappas and you wouldn't want that, would you? And I'd get caught, don't worry about that. Everyone knows already. Doris Palmer'd call a special meeting and everyone in town would denounce me, just like they did Pappas. There's no place to hide in Cooper Station, Mother. No place at all. Lisa Pappas found that out. Everyone knew about her and Anthony Cooper and they talked and laughed and denounced her. You wouldn't want that to happen to me, would you, Mother? I'd have to leave town, run away, and it wouldn't do any good. It would happen all over again somewhere else. Mother? Are you listening to me?

The room was filled with a pale, golden light which grew dimmer and softer even as David watched. He smiled sleepily and watched the room turn from gold to a soft rose color and all around the edges of the rose he could see a border of deep, velvety blue-black that was softer looking than anything he had ever imagined.

I used to wonder what it would be like to be dead, he thought, and soon, now, I'll know. I wonder if God will look as stern and forbidding as he does in the pictures that men have made of him.

No, Lord, said David and thought he was speaking aloud, I haven't sinned in killing myself. In Your Prayer, You gave me the words Yourself. Lead us not into temptation, You said, but deliver us from evil. Martin was evil. So was Mark. And I allowed myself to be led into temptation. So now I've delivered myself from evil. Please be kind to me now and make Mother be kind. Don't let her scold me. Even if no one else is kind, You should be able to be kind. Be kind. Be kind . . .

At nine o'clock the next morning, Valerie Rutgers walked out of her front door and stood on the walk that led to the street. She looked up and down and all around with an interested kind of curiosity. Not, she told herself, that she expected to see anything different from what she saw every morning but still, you could never tell. She shivered in the cold and looked at the snow-covered landscape, but it seemed to her that there was a trace of softening in the sky this morning. About time, too, she said to herself. Almost March and that meant spring should be right around the corner. Not that March was spring-like by any matter or means, but it did mean that warmer days were on the way. Well, she supposed, the good Lord must have had His reasons for sticking March in the calendar. Probably to get folks to look after their gardens and start the spring cleaning and all. Goodness! There went the quarter-past bell up at the high school. What was she thinking of, dillydallying around in the front yard when she should be getting the wash started. Ought to be a good drying day today. Good day for doing sheets. They might freeze right up to the line at first, but it was going to warm up later in the day and they'd thaw out in good shape. She'd best get right upstairs and get the sheets off Mr. Strong's bed. She'd do his first.

Valerie Rutgers went up to the tower room and unlocked David's room with her own key. She saw, at once, that he was still in bed.

“Mr. Strong!” she called, shocked. In all the time David had lived in her house, she had never known him to be late for school once. “My word,” said Valerie. “Wake up, Mr. Strong. It's way after nine and you're late as it is.”

She reached out a tentative hand to shake his shoulder and her fingertips had no more than grazed his skin before she knew that he was dead and started screaming.

Within minutes the deserted street in front of Valerie's house was filled with people. Some of them burst into the house and followed Valerie's screams to the tower.

“Get the doctor!” shouted someone.

“Call the hospital!”

“Get the sheriff!”

Jess Cameron was called and in a few minutes he was running up the stairs to David's studio.

Please, God, prayed Jess. Don't let me be too late.

“I just touched him, Jess,” said Valerie, “and I knew right off he was dead. Cold as a mackerel and stiff as a board.” She sat down on one of David's chairs and burst into tears. “He was a good man,” she sobbed. “Never bothered anybody in his whole life.”

“Val, you get downstairs and have one of the women make a pot of coffee,” said Jess. “Quickly, now.”

But Jess knew that it was useless and he gave instructions to Valerie Rutgers only to get her out of the room. He, too, had barely touched David and had known, but he went through all the motions of making sure. He saw the empty bottle with its neatly typed label on the table next to David's bed.

“One capsule at bedtime,” read the label. “Dr. Cameron. Not to be refilled. The Cooper Station Pharmacy.”

“I put the coffee on, Jess,” said Valerie Rutgers, coming back into the room.

“Good,” said Jess. “I need it now, for myself. It's too late for David. He's dead. Took an overdose of sleeping pills.”

Downstairs, in her kitchen, Valerie poured coffee.

“But what did he want to go and do a thing like that for?” she asked, already her horror replaced by her incurable curiosity. “He was such a nice fellow. Neat as a pin. Never left a mess around the way some do. And he had a good job at the school and all. What'd he want to go and kill himself for?”

Jess lowered his head and stirred sugar into his coffee. Half-forgotten words flowed into his mind, words which, at one time, he had been sure that he'd never forget, so impressed had he been with their beauty.

And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad . . .

His mind stopped and he could not remember the next phrase.

“He had ulcers, Val,” he said. “A bad case of ulcers. I guess he knew he was never going to get better.”

Margery and Nathaniel Cooper were quiet as their big car carried them almost silently along the highway leading south away from Cooper Station. It was winter. A cold, heavy northern New England winter and the shoulders of the road were piled high with snow. On top, the drifts were like diamonds on ermine, shining against soft, white depth but where the sides dipped down toward the road there were shadows, pale-blue and insubstantial-looking so that even when you looked at them in broad daylight, you thought of evening. It was cold with the special coldness of February that cuts through the warmest fur like a sharp razor blade going through flesh and the sun shed no warmth at all. It only blinded you when you looked too long at the whiteness all around you.

Nathaniel Cooper's car was a long, black Buick sedan. The Coopers had driven long, black Buick sedans ever since Nate could remember, for Ferguson Cooper had been of the opinion that Cadillacs were only for gangsters and rich people from New York who came north for the summer. Until recently, Nate had never considered changing the pattern but now he thought longingly of himself and Margery in a pale-blue convertible driving somewhere with the top down along a tree-shaded road where it was warm.

Soon, perhaps, he thought. Perhaps very soon.

Margery's left hand rested lightly against Nate's thigh as he drove and her head was thrown back against the seat cushions. It was the way she had used to sit in a car with him before they were married. Nate covered her hand with his and pressed it gently against his thigh.

“Are you sure you feel up to going down there today, darling?” he asked. “We could always turn around and go home if you want.”

“I have to go, Nate,” she said. “Somehow I have to keep assuring myself that she's all right and that she's happy.”

“Are you happy, Margery?” he asked gently.

“Almost, dear,” she replied and smiled at him. “Almost. Just give me a little longer.”

His big hand ruffled her short hair as he pulled her head down onto his shoulder.

“All the time in the world,” he said.

But Nate was frightened at the day ahead of them for he remembered the desperate cry that had come from Margery on the night after they had left Robin, for the first time, at St. Jude's home.

“I can't stand it!” Margery had cried. “We were wrong to do this thing. Take me to her, Nate. Take me now.”

“Please, dear,” Nate had said. “Try. Try it this way for only a month and if you're still so unhappy then we'll go down and bring her home.”

“I can't do it, Nate. Please don't ask me. I can't stand it.”

His voice had mingled with those of Jess Cameron and Virgie as they tried to console her.

“Margery, dear.”

“Margery, Margery.”

“Miz Marg'ry, honey.”

Jess had warned Nate of the way it would be right from the beginning.

“The feelings of guilt attendant on placing a child in an institution are staggering, Nate,” Jess had said. “And it's going to be harder for Margery than it'll be for you because this has been her decision. You're going to need all the patience in the world, Nate. More than all the patience in the world.”

Nate glanced down at his wife as she leaned against him now. The window on her side of the car was open an inch or two and her hair blew in little wisps across her cheek. She lifted her hand lazily to brush them away.

She's getting well, thought Nate hopefully. It's going to take time, but I know she's going to be well soon. Then we'll go away together. Somewhere warm and quiet. Haiti? he wondered and then smiled at himself. He knew nothing whatever about Haiti except that the name of its capital had always fascinated him. Port-au-Prince. It was a name that he could feel on his tongue. A place he could almost touch and feel and smell just by saying the name to himself. When Nate said Port-au-Prince to himself he thought of heavy, red blossoms trailing lazily down over an old stone wall while somewhere in the background someone played a guitar as he and Margery dozed in the hot sun. He was weary of the cold and tired of fighting the implacable winters of northern New England, and never again would he be able to live through the chill, rainy days of autumn without feeling fear.

He thought of that chill, rainy day of autumn when he had been paralyzed with terror at the thought that Margery was never going to be well again. He would never forget that day, though she seemed to be all right now, thanks to Jess.

Nor the time, several days later, when Jess Cameron had spoken to him.

“We're not going to waste time,” said the doctor. “Margery's going to get well but first she's going to have to make the decision about Robin.”

“Do we have to talk to her about it now?” asked Nate. “She seems to be doing so well that I'm afraid of the least little thing that might upset her.”

“It has to be done,” said Jess. “And I don't like it any better than you do. But she can't live the rest of her life in this state of suspended animation. I've got her shot full of tranquilizers now, but I can't keep her on them forever.”

“No,” said Nate and sighed. “I know you can't. But, Jess, I'm afraid to even mention Robin to her.”

“We'll have to tread carefully,” said Jess. “We've got to make her believe that the decision to send Robin away is her own and not some trick that we're trying to put over on her.”

Nate poured himself a drink. “I admit it,” he said. “I'm a coward. You talk to her, Jess. Later, when I'm alone with her, I'll back you up. But I can't face her with it now.”

Margery was sitting up in bed. Her face was thin and white, but there was a softness to her eyes now that had not been there before. Jess sat down on the rose-colored chair next to the bed and Virgie brought him his inevitable cup of coffee.

“Margery,” he said at last, “do you have any idea what's happened to you?”

Margery tried to laugh. “I guess I just get lazy, Jess,” she said. “I wanted a few weeks off just lying around and getting fat.”

“You were all tired out,” Jess said. “And you're still tired. I don't mean just plain, ordinary tired, either. I mean totally exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally. You need to rest. To sleep late every morning, to stop thinking and feeling, to lie in the sun and to stop running up and down stairs.”

“And what about Robin?” asked Margery. “What's going to become of her if I allow myself to become a bedridden invalid?”

“What happens to Robin is entirely up to you, Margery,” said Jess. “I can't make up your mind for you on that score. But I can give you the facts.”

“But Jess, I'm better now. Why, in a few days I'll be up and around as good as new.”

“No you won't, Margery,” said Jess. “Some people are equipped to cope with a situation like yours, but you aren't.”

“What are you talking about, Jess?” demanded Margery. “Don't talk in riddles with me.”

Jess finished his coffee and lit a fresh cigarette. He looked at her for a long time.

“Margery,” he said at last, “unless you separate yourself from Robin, you will risk everything of value in your life, and in the end you'll risk your sanity and your life itself. You'll endanger any future children that you might be lucky enough to have, and you'll endanger Nate more than you have already. And you'll give Robin an increasingly neurotic mother until you reach the point of where you'll not only be unable to care for her but for yourself as well.”

When he finished speaking there was no sound in the room at all, and then Margery pulled a Kleenex from a box and sponged at her wet face.

“I understand you, Jess,” she said. “What you're saying is what you've said all along for years. You want me to put Robin away in an institution.”

“For everybody's sake, Margery, including Robin's, yes. If you get sick again you may not be as lucky the next time.”

Margery thought for a long time while she brushed futilely at her tears with the back of her hand.

“Jess, I could never send Robin to that place that your friend runs.”

“Dr. Alter is a good man,” objected Jess. “He has a fine reputation.”

“I know it, Jess,” she said. “But he tries too hard. He just doesn't give up. I saw him and his school and I know. He spends years and years trying to teach one thing to one child as if he were in some horrible contest. I couldn't stand to think of Robin with her little face all covered with sweat and tears of effort in her eyes, trying, trying, trying to learn something that's never going to be of any use to her.”

Margery put her face into her hands and wept and Jess went to the windows and stood looking down at the sodden garden.

“There's a place I know of,” he said when Margery quieted a little, “where you could leave Robin with absolute confidence that she'd receive all the loving care she could use.”

“She gets that here,” cried Margery. “Who else could give her what she gets from me?”

“This place is a home for retarded children and for children like Robin, called St. Jude's,” said Jess. “It's a Catholic institution.”

“Catholic!” cried Margery.

Jess turned to her and smiled. “Yes, Catholic,” he said. “Not everybody in the world is a Congregationalist, you know.”

Margery smiled back and took the cigarette Jess extended toward her.

“I know,” she said. “I guess I was just thinking of all the Coopers who'd take a shotgun to you at the idea of Robin being cared for by Papists.”

“And you're right about Dr. Alter,” continued Jess. “He's a determined man all right. He's sure, he
knows
that children like Robin can be taught, and he bends all his will and energy toward teaching them. At St. Jude's though, the Sisters don't know whether the children can be taught or not but they have one belief that's even more firmly rooted in them than Dr. Alter's is in him. They know that the spirit of God is in every child and they treat every child accordingly.”

Margery leaned back against her pillows and the time of her thinking now was long and painful. When she sighed and straightened up at last, the sigh came from deep within her and left her feeling heavy and Jess wondered if perhaps this wasn't the first real sigh that Margery had allowed herself in years.

“I tried, didn't I, Jess, to look after Robin the best I knew how?” she asked, but she did not wait for him to answer. “I know I did and yet she remained the same. You warned me, Jess, way back when we brought her home from the hospital that it'd be like this, but I had to try it my way.”

“I know, Margery,” said Jess. “I don't think you'd ever have been satisfied if you hadn't tried.”

“But it didn't do any good,” she said. “No good at all. Perhaps it's time now to try it your way. If Nate doesn't mind, I'm willing.”

“Will you give it a fair try, Margery?” asked Jess. “Even if you're miserable at first, will you wait and give it a real try?”

“Yes,” said Margery. “I'll give it a real try.”

Jess had arranged things swiftly and skillfully. Three days after his talk with Margery, Nathaniel took his daughter to St. Jude's Home for Children. He watched the Sisters, dressed in their heavy black robes with starched ruffs of white around their throats and stiff white fans of linen framing their faces. The robes of the Sisters were belted with thick, silk cord and from each cord there dangled a black rosary and a heavy silver cross. Nathaniel had never heard women move so noiselessly. Robin went to one of the Sisters without a backward glance at her father. She took the nun's hand and rubbed her cheek against the dark robe and smiled. Within an hour Nathaniel was on his way home alone.

He felt almost foolishly lighthearted as he drove into the garage and he thought, guiltily, that even the old house looked different. Lighter, somehow, and not quite like the heavy old brick pile that it was. Margery was waiting for him, her eyes gazing anxiously from the living room window.

“Darling, it's going to be all right,” said Nate as he came in and took her in his arms. “It's a wonderful place.”

“Really?” she asked, wanting to believe. “Really and truly, Nate?”

“Yes, darling, really and truly. I saw a lot of children today and every single one looked happy and well cared for and loved.”

Later, Jess telephoned Nate. “How did it go?” he asked.

“Fine,” replied Nate. “And Margery's fine, too. Come on over and have dinner with us.”

“Thanks,” said Jess. “I'll do that and I'll come armed with several topics of conversation, none of them to do with children.”

“Good,” said Nate. “We'll have a good evening together.”

But it was not a good evening. When dinner was over and the three of them were having coffee, Margery began to cry.

“It's no good, Nate,” she wept. “I feel as if someone had cut a piece right out of me. You'll have to go to get her and bring her home. Right now.”

“Darling,” said Nate. “You promised to give it a fair try. We can't leave Robin somewhere for a few hours and then go yank her home again. She'll be happy, dear. I promise you.”

“But I'll never be happy again, Nate,” cried Margery. “We were wrong to do this thing. I can't stand it.”

Virgie came and led Margery upstairs. She crooned softly and patted Margery.

“Don't you worry yourself none, honey,” said Virgie. “Things gonna be fine. Every thin' gonna work out jes jim-dandy in a little while.”

Nathaniel Cooper sighed.

“It's not going to work, Jess,” he said. “She'll kill herself worrying about Robin.”

“Time, Nate,” said Jess. “Give her time. You can't take a child out of a mother's life without leaving a space soon filled with tears of guilt and regret. All we can do is hope that time will take care of the space and fill it with something else.”