The Tight White Collar (8 page)

“Papp, kin we play tamorra?”

Chris put a hand on the boy's arm. “Sure, Kevin,” he said. “You be very good tonight when you go back to the ward and we'll all play again tomorrow.”

As Chris drove toward Cooper's Mills he thought of them all. The ones who stammered and drooled, the others who wanted to stand right next to his elbow every single minute as if seeking a kind of warmth or friendship, the ones who forgot, sometimes, and wet themselves and the ones who fought and broke things and masturbated in the back of the classroom.

I
can't
stay, he cried silently as if in silent apology to all those who had learned to trust him. I have to think of myself and Lisa and the kids, and the state school is a dead end. I can't get stuck here. I mustn't. There's too much to do.

Doris Delaney Palmer did not believe in wasting time. All her life, whenever she had wanted anything, she had fixed an unmoving eye on her ultimate goal and had proceeded toward it until her purpose was accomplished. Now her desire was to keep Lisa and Chris Pappas out of Cooper Station and she went about this the way she had always done everything else; quickly, finally and thoroughly. On the day after the Town Guardians' meeting at which Chris Pappas had been engaged to teach at the high school, Doris went to see her attorney, Richard Strickland, and asked him to draw up a formal petition of protest against the young schoolteacher. Richard Strickland was shocked and disturbed.

“Just what do you expect to accomplish with this?” he asked.

“I'm going to get it signed,” replied Doris.

Richard Strickland's eyes narrowed a little. “How come you've got the axe out for Christopher Pappas?” he asked.

“I do not have the axe out, as you put it, for anyone,” protested Doris. “It is simply that I have a responsibility to the parents and children of Cooper Station and I fully intend to see that that responsibility is fulfilled.”

“Doris, I've been your lawyer for fifteen years and I think that during that time I've always given you fairly good advice. Now I'm advising you to leave this thing the hell alone. Pappas has a valid contract signed by the majority of the Guardians and the petition you want me to draw up won't change a thing!”

Doris's hands trembled a little with an outrage she tried to keep hidden.

“Pappas was elected by Nathaniel Cooper who has never had a thought in his head that didn't concern either his mills or his idiot child and by Jim Sheppard who should never have been elected as a Guardian in the first place. I'm the only one of three who thinks of the welfare of our children and, as I pointed out to you, I fully intend to do a good job of it.”

“There are a few other things you're forgetting,” said Strickland. “Pappas was graduated with honors from the state university and he was so successful at his first teaching job that another town offered him a three-hundred-dollar raise for their school.”

“Pappas also walked out on that job,” said Doris with heavy sarcasm. “He is also a foreigner from Cooper's Mills and is married to a girl who was three months' pregnant before the wedding.”

Richard Strickland sighed. “Two mistakes, Doris,” he said. “Should anyone hold two mistakes against a man for the rest of his life?”

“Mistakes are one thing,” said Doris. “Irresponsibility is something else again. Cooper Station is a nice, clean town full of respectable people. We certainly don't need people of the Pappas's ilk here and especially we don't need a man like that teaching our children! There must be some way to stop this outrage.”

“Well,” Richard Strickland sighed again, “you could try to get a petition for a referendum. I don't recall that it's ever been done but twenty-five percent of the voting population of the town can petition for a referendum in which the townspeople could overrule any specific action of the Town Board of Guardians. It all goes back to the day when all the affairs of the town were decided at town meetings. Seems nobody was willing to give up the idea entirely that the townspeople should control their own affairs.”

“Then draw up a petition for a referendum,” Doris said.

“Listen here, Doris,” said the lawyer, “most people don't want to get mixed up with anything like this. You'll never get enough people to sign it. Why don't you just forget the whole thing.”

“I have no intention of forgetting anything,” said Doris and then smiled a little. “I don't imagine the citizens of this town will be unwilling to sign the petition when I finish talking with each and every one of them.”

“All right,” Strickland said, “I'll have it for you tomorrow. I just hope you know what you're doing.”

“I know precisely what I'm doing,” said Doris and marched out of his office.

Next day, Richard Strickland met Jess Cameron on Benjamin Street.

“Seen Doris?” he asked the doctor.

“No,” replied Jess. “Should I?”

“You'll have to hang on to your hat when you do,” said Strickland. “She's on the warpath again.”

If there's one thing Richard loves more than the law, thought Jess, who was very tired, it's a cliché.

“Which warpath is it this time?” he asked aloud.

“She's got a petition for a referendum that she's going to circulate around town,” replied Richard.

“A referendum for what?” asked the doctor.

“She wants the townspeople to reverse the decision of the Guardians to hire that new schoolteacher they approved the other night, Pappas.”

Jess felt himself tighten with anger. “But Doris can't—” he began and then checked himself quickly.

“Doris can't what?” asked Strickland curiously.

“She can't possibly be so inhuman as to try to keep a man from making a living for himself and his family.”

The lawyer shrugged. “She doesn't care if he makes a living,” he said, “she just doesn't want him making it here in Cooper Station.”

“I see,” said Jess.

“Well, I don't,” replied Strickland. “But you know Doris once she gets set on something. Remember the time she didn't want that Jew fellow opening a clothing store here? You notice he never did get into town.”

“I remember,” said Jess. “But that time nobody bothered to fight her. Maybe this time she's bitten off more than she can chew.”

“I doubt it like hell,” said the lawyer. “I've known Doris for years and she's always managed to get what she goes after.”

“Well, she'll never get my signature on her damned petition,” said Jess. “I'm a little tired of Doris wearing her respectability like a mink coat.”

“Well, I suppose she's entitled,” said Strickland. “Doris has always been a good woman with the interests of the town at heart ever since she moved here.”

Like hell, Jess wanted to say as he watched the lawyer climb into his car and drive away. He remembered a story his father had told him about Doris Delaney Palmer and he wondered now as he had then about the woman.

If the truth were known, he thought, I don't imagine that Doris could afford to talk about anyone else in the world.

Jess was even more correct than he imagined. If the whole truth had been known, Doris would never have been able to live in Cooper Station in the first place.

Doris Delaney was born in Belfast, Ireland. By the time she was fifteen years old she had a pair of full, pointed breasts, a tiny waist and a set of well-flared hips. She had also learned to read and she knew that she was never going to be satisfied with being a housemaid for a wealthy Irish family. Getting to the United States was one of the first goals Doris set for herself and it took her three years to save and borrow enough money for a steerage-class passage. When she was eighteen she landed in New York, sure that everything good that the United States had to offer would soon be hers. Doris had the lovely dark hair, the clear blue eyes of the Irish and a brogue that was as thick as good carpeting. Within two days she had secured a position as chambermaid with a wealthy family named Justine who owned a town house on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Doris learned her new duties quickly and well and within a month, Mrs. Justine promoted her from the upstairs of the house to the main floor.

“You are a good girl, Doris,” said Mrs. Justine, “and a smart and pretty one. I shall teach you your new duties myself so that you'll never be able to use the excuse that you've forgotten anything important. You will have to serve tea on our at-home days and you'll have charge of the front door on Tarkington's day out. You must be neat and well groomed at all times and Doris, with that brogue of yours, I'd rather you spoke as little as possible. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Doris and thought, How I hate you, you fat bitch. “I understand.”

Mrs. Justine nodded in satisfaction. “Just smile that pretty smile of yours,” she said. “That is all that will be necessary.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Doris and smiled.

Doris wore a black uniform with a little white apron which she tied tightly around her little waist and a narrow starched ruffle on her black hair. Her lips were naturally red and her cheeks pink and when Mrs. Justine had lady callers they always commented on Doris's looks.

“Oh, she'll do,” said Mrs. Justine deprecatingly.

“And she's so quiet and well trained,” said the ladies.

“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Justine modestly. “I trained her myself.”

Doris smiled sweetly at all the ladies and kept her eyes demurely downcast, but she listened to every word and every inflection and at night, in her room, she sat on the edge of her bed and repeated what she had heard until the sound of Ireland began to erase itself from her voice.

When the Justines had gentlemen callers, the men never said much to Doris. They just looked, and more than once Doris had to brush away a searching hand as she made her way from the butler's pantry to the drawing room. But she learned to do it in such a way that the gentlemen were never insulted. Her smile and her gentle, repulsing hand seemed to say, “But sir, I am nothing but a lowly housemaid. If I weren't, things might be different, but I have to think of my job.” The gentlemen always seemed to understand.

The Justines had three children, two girls named Pamela and Patricia, ages fifteen and seventeen, and a son, George, who went to Princeton. The girls, however, went to school in New York and lived at home and Doris copied their talk and their mannerisms and when no one was about she sneaked into their rooms and tried on their clothes. In the end, of course, she got caught. George Justine, home from school for the weekend, found Doris in Patricia's room, wearing one of Patricia's good dresses and posing in front of Patricia's full-length mirror.

“What have we here, my pretty maid?” he demanded as he came up behind her.

Doris whirled. “I didn't think anyone was home,” she said weakly.

“A lucky thing for you they aren't,” replied George sternly, “or you'd be out on the streets bag and baggage.”

Doris sized him up shrewdly and decided against playing the frightened housemaid.

“I suppose you're going to tell,” she said boldly. “Well, go ahead. I won't have any trouble finding another family to work for.”

“Oh ho,” said George. “You won't, will you? You think it would be easy to go somewhere else without a reference from my mother?”

Doris looked up at him. “I'll be my own reference,” she told him.

“You are a saucy one, aren't you?” said George. “And I imagine that you think you're quite special and very attractive besides, don't you?”

“I'm just as attractive as some of those girls with skimmed milk complexions that I've seen you bring here,” said Doris.

“You little hellion!” said George and laughed as he pulled her into his arms.

Doris kicked him in the shins. “Just because I work here don't think that you own me,” she told him angrily.

George held onto his shin. “Well, I'll be damned,” he said.

“So now you can go tell your mother,” said Doris. “I don't care. But anyone who wants a kiss from me has to ask me.”

George laughed again. “All right,” he said, “I'm a reasonable man. May I have the pleasure of kissing you, Your Highness?”

“Not until after I get out of this dress,” said Doris. “Now turn your back.”

George did so at once, but Doris made sure that she was in a position where all George had to do to look at her was to raise his eyes and look into the mirror that faced him from the opposite side of the room. She let him see part of one leg and the tops of her breasts as she struggled back into her uniform and when she told him that it was all right for him to turn around she saw that the back of his neck was pink and that he was breathing rapidly. He reached for her at once.

“Not in here,” she said. “Someone might come in.”

“Nobody's going to come in,” replied George. “You promised.”

“I never did. But I will anyway. I have to dust the library in a few minutes. You come in there as if you were looking for a book and then I will.”

George dropped his arms reluctantly. “All right,” he said. “I'll come down in a few minutes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure.”

Doris smiled up at him and her lips were very red and moist looking.

“Please hurry,” she said.

“Oh, I will,” said George more breathless than ever. “I sure will, Doris.”

But by the time he entered the library, George had calmed himself to the point where he could take Doris in his arms quietly and expertly as befitted a Princeton man. He kissed her on the mouth without bumping her nose or doing anything else awkward and Doris never moved.

“Is that how they teach you to kiss at that fancy school of yours?” she asked him.

“I've kissed some of the finest girls in New York,” George said. “And I've never had any complaints.”

“Humph,” said Doris and turned away from him.

“I suppose you know plenty about kissing,” said George following her about the room as she dusted.

“More than you do,” she said.

“All right then, show me.”

She put down her duster at once and put her arms around his neck. Her breasts pressed into his chest and she moved gently against him and then he felt her tongue against his teeth.

“My God!” he whispered when it was over. “My God!”

“And I've never been to Princeton,” said Doris. “I learned everything I know from books.”

“There aren't any books that teach you things like that,” said George, still unable to control his breathing.