The Winter of Our Discontent (24 page)

“What you mean no, if I say yes?”

“I won’t need it, Alfio. I’d take it if I needed to, but I don’t need it.”

He sighed deeply.

The afternoon wasn’t as busy as the morning, but it wasn’t light either. There’s always a slack time between three and four— usually twenty minutes to half an hour, I don’t know why. Then it picks up again, but that’s people going home from work and wives whomping up a last-ditch dinner.

In the slack period Mr. Baker came in. He waited, regarding the cheese and sausage in the cold chamber, until the store was clear of two customers, both sloppy shoppers, the kind who don’t know what they want, the kind who pick up and put down, hoping that something will jump into their arms and demand to be bought.

At last the shoppers were finished and gone.

“Ethan,” he said, “did you know Mary drew out a thousand dollars?”

“Yes, sir. She told me she was going to.”

“Do you know what she wants it for?”

“Sure, sir. She’s been talking about it for months. You know how women are. The furniture gets a little worn, but just the minute they decide to get new, the old stuff is just impossible.”

“Don’t you think it’s foolish to spend it now on that kind of stuff? I told you yesterday there was going to be an opening.”

“It’s her money, sir.”

“I wasn’t talking about gambling, Ethan. I was talking about sure-fire investment. I believe with that thousand she could get her furniture in a year and still have a thousand.”

“Mr. Baker, I can’t very well forbid her to spend her own money.”

“Couldn’t you persuade her, couldn’t you reason with her?”

“It never occurred to me.”

“That sounds like your father, Ethan. That sounds wishy-washy. If I’m going to help you get on your feet I can’t have you wishy-washy.”

“Well, sir.”

“And it isn’t like she was going to spend it locally. No, she’s going to wander around the discount houses and pay cash. There’s no telling what she’ll pick up. Local man might charge more but he’d be here if she got a lemon. You should put your foot down, Ethan. Try to get her to redeposit it! Or you tell her to put the money in my hands. She’ll never regret it.”

“It’s money her brother left her, sir.”

“I know that. I tried to reason with her when she drew it. She just turned blue-eyed vague—said she wanted to look around. Can’t she look around without a thousand dollars in her pocket? You ought to know better, if she doesn’t.”

“I guess I’m out of practice, Mr. Baker. We haven’t had any money since we were married.”

“Well, you’d better learn and learn quick or you won’t have any very long. The spending habit is like a dope with some women.”

“Mary hasn’t had a chance to develop the habit, sir.”

“Well, she will. Just let her taste blood and she’ll turn killer.”

“Mr. Baker, I don’t think you mean that.”

“I do too.”

“There’s never been a more careful wife with money. She’s had to be.”

For some reason he had worked up a storm. “It’s you I’m disappointed in, Ethan. If you’re going to get any place you’ve got to be the boss in your own house. You could hold off new furniture another little while.”

“I could, but she can’t.” The thought came to me that maybe bankers develop X-ray eyes for money, that maybe he could see the envelope through my clothes. “I’ll try to reason with her, Mr. Baker.”

“If she hasn’t spent it already. Is she home now?”

“She said she was going to get a bus to Ridgehampton.”

“Good God! There goes a thousand bucks.”

“Well, she still has some capital.”

“That’s not the point. Your only entrance is money.”

“Money gets money,” I said softly.

“That’s right. Lose sight of that and you’re a gone goose, a clerk for the rest of your life.”

“I’m sorry it happened.”

“Well, you better lay down the law.”

“Women are funny, sir. Maybe your talking about making money yesterday gave her the idea it was easy to get.”

“Well, you disabuse her, because without it you can’t get any.”

“Would you like a cold Coke, sir?”

“Yes, I would.”

He couldn’t drink it out of the bottle. I had to open a package of paper picnic cups, but it cooled him a little. He muttered like retreating thunder.

Two Negro ladies from the crossing came in and he had to swallow his Coke and his rage. “You talk to her,” he said savagely and he strode out and crossed the street to go home. I wondered if he was mad because he was suspicious, but I didn’t think so. No, I think he was mad because he felt he’d lost his habit of command. You can get furious at someone who doesn’t take your advice.

The Negro ladies were pleasant. There’s a community of colored at the crossing, very nice people. They don’t trade with us much because they have their own store, only now and then they do some comparative shopping to see if their racial loyalty isn’t costing them too much. They did more pricing than buying and I understand why—pretty women, too, such long, straight, slender legs. It’s a wonder what a lack of malnutrition in childhood can do for the human body, or the human spirit, for that matter.

Just before closing time I telephoned Mary. “Pigeon-flake, I’m going to be a little late.”

“Don’t forget we’re having dinner with Margie at the Foremaster.”

“I remember.”

“How late are you going to be?”

“Ten or fifteen minutes. I want to walk down and look at the dredger in the harbor.”

“Why?”

“I’m thinking of buying it.”

“Oh!”

“Want me to pick up some fish?”

“Well, if you see some nice flounder. That’s about all that’s running.”

“All right—I’m running.”

“Now don’t dawdle. You’ll have to bathe and change. The Foremaster, you know.”

“I won’t, my fair, my lovely. Mr. Baker gave me hell for letting you spend a thousand dollars.”

“Why, that old goat!”

“Mary—Mary! The walls have ears.”

“You tell him what he can do.”

“But he can’t. Besides, he thinks you’re a nitwit.”

“What?”

“And I’m a wishy-washy, a washy-wishy—a you know how I am.”

She was laughing her lovely trill, something that raises goose lumps of pleasure on my soul.

“Hurry home, darling,” she said. “Hurry home.” And how’s that for a man to have! When I hung up, I stood by the phone all weak and leaky and happy if there is such a condition. I tried to think how it had been before Mary, and I couldn’t remember, or how it would be without her, and I could not imagine it except that it would be a condition bordered in black. I guess everyone at some time or other writes his epitaph. Mine would be “Good-by Charley.”

The sun was below the western hills but a great powdery cloud scooped its light and threw it on the harbor and the breakwater and the sea beyond so that the whitecaps were pink as roses. The piles in the water by the city pier are triple logs iron-banded at the top and sloping like pylons to shear the winter ice. On top of each one a gull stood motionless, usually a male with white immaculate vest and clean gray wings. I wonder if each one owns his place and can sell or rent it at will.

A few fishing boats were in. I know all the fishermen, have known them all my life. And Mary was right. They only had flounder. I bought four nice ones from Joe Logan and stood by while he filleted them for me, his knife slipping along the spine as easily as it would through water. In the spring there is one sure subject—when will the weakfish come? We used to say, “When lilacs bloom the weakfish coome,” but you can’t depend on it. Seems to me that all my life the weaks have not arrived or have just left. And what beautiful fish they are when you get one, slender as trout, clean, silver as—silver. They smell good. Well, they weren’t running. Joe Logan hadn’t taken a single one.

“Me, I like blowfish,” Joe said. “Funny thing, when you call them blowfish nobody will touch them, but call them sea chicken and customers fight for them.”

“How’s your daughter, Joe?”

“Oh, she seems to get better and then she fades off. It’s killing me.”

“Too bad. I’m sorry.”

“If there was anything to do—”

“I know—poor kid. Here’s a bag. Just drop the flounders in it. Give her my love, Joe.”

He looked me long in the eyes as though he hoped to draw something out of me, some medicine. “I’ll do that, Eth,” he said. “I’ll tell her.”

Back of the breakwater the county dredger was working, its giant screw augering up mud and shells and the pumps pushing the junk through pipe on pontoons and flinging it behind the black-tarred bulkheads on the shore. Its running lights were on and its riding lights too and two red balls were hoisted to show that it was working. A pale cook in white cap and apron leaned his bare arms on the rail and looked down into the troubled water and occasionally he spat into the roil. The wind was inshore. It brought from the dredger the stink of mud and long-dead shells and tarnished weed together with the sweet smell of baking cinnamon in apple pie. The great auger turned with majesty, boring out the channel.

Then with a flash of pink the sails of a lithe yacht caught the afterglow and came about and lost the light. I wandered back and turned left past the new marina and the old yacht club and the American Legion Hall with brown-painted machine guns mounted beside its steps.

At the boatyard they were working late trying to get the stored craft painted and ready against the coming summer. The unusual cold of the early spring had set them back with the painting and varnishing.

I walked well past the boat works and then down through the weed-grown lot to the harbor’s edge and then slowly back toward Danny’s lean-to shack. And I whistled an old tune against his wishing me to.

And it seemed he did. His shack was empty but I knew as surely as if I saw him that Danny was lying hidden in the weeds, perhaps between the huge square timbers that were scattered about. And since I knew he would come back as soon as I was gone, I took the brown envelope from my pocket and propped it on his dirty bed and I went away, still whistling, except for one moment when I called softly, “Good-by, Danny. Good luck.” And I went on whistling back to the street and over to Porlock and past the great houses to Elm and so to my own—the Hawley house.

I found my Mary in the eye of a storm, quiet and slowly rotating herself with debris and great winds surging around her. She directed the devastation in her white nylon slip and slippers; her new-washed hair clustered on curlers on her head like a large litter of suckling sausages. I can’t remember when we had been out to dinner at a restaurant. We couldn’t afford it and had lost the habit. Mary’s wild excitement fluttered the children on the edges of her personal hurricane. She fed them, washed them, issued orders, rescinded orders. The ironing board was standing in the kitchen with my dear and valued clothing pressed and hanging on the backs of chairs. Mary would pause in her gallop to swipe the iron at a dress she was pressing. The children were almost too excited to eat, but they had their orders.

I have five suits called best—a good number for a grocery clerk to have. I fingered them on the chair backs. They were called Old Blue, Sweet George Brown, Dorian Gray, Burying Black, and Old Dobbin.

“Which one shall I wear, cuddles?”

“Cuddles? Oh! Well, it’s not formal and it’s Monday night. I’d say it would be Sweet George or Dorian, yes, Dorian, that’s formal enough without being formal.”

“And my polka-dot bow tie?”

“Of course.”

Ellen broke in. “Papa! You’re not going to wear a bow tie! You’re too old.”

“I am not. I’m young and gay and giddy.”

“You’ll be a laughing stork. I’m glad I’m not going.”

“I am too. Where do you get the idea that I’m an old stork?”

“Well you aren’t old, but you’re too old for a bow tie.”

“You’re a nasty little conformist.”

“Well, if you want to be a laughing stork.”

“That’s what I want to be. Mary, don’t you want me to be a laughing stork?”

“Let your father alone, he has to bathe. I laid a shirt out on the bed.”

Allen said, “I’m halfway through my I Love America essay.”

“That’s good, because come summer I’m going to put you to work.”

“Work?”

“In the store.”

“Oh!” He didn’t seem too enthusiastic.

Ellen gave an opening gasp but when she had our attention she didn’t say anything. Mary repeated the eighty-five things the children were to do and not to do while we were gone and I went upstairs for my tub.

I was tying my dear blue polka-dot, my only blue polka-dot tie when Ellen leaned in against the door. “It wouldn’t be so bad if you were younger,” she said with dreadful femininity.

“You’re going to give some happy husband a rough time, my dear.”

“Even the seniors in high school wouldn’t wear it.”

“Prime Minister Macmillan does.”

“That’s different. Daddy, is it cheating to copy something out of a book?”

“Explain!”

“Well, if a person, if I was writing my essay and I took stuff out of a book—how about that?”

“It would depend on how you did it.”

“Like you said—explain.”

“Don’t you mean ‘as I said’?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you put quotation marks around it and a footnote telling who wrote it, it could add dignity and authority. I guess half the writing in America is quotations if it isn’t anthologies. Now do you like my tie?”

“S’pose you didn’t put those marks. . . .”

“Then it would be stealing like any other kind of stealing. You didn’t do that, did you?”

“No.”

“Then what is your problem?”

“Could they put you in jail?”

“Might—if you got money for it. Don’t do it, my girl. Now what do you think about my tie?”