All That Is (30 page)

“The Statute of Frauds,” he explained, “dating all the way back requires a written contract for transfer of ownership. That’s your defense. We’ll cite the lack of writing. There was nothing written, correct?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“She’s living in the house now?”

“Yes.”

“Does she have a lease?”

“No. She’s … we live together.”

“You have a current relationship.”

“It’s not current.”

Bowman saw her again for the first time at the trial. She avoided looking at him. Her lawyer argued that she was the equitable owner of the house and that the outward appearance of the sale had in fact been a transaction designed for her benefit.

The jury, which had only been listening idly, seemed attentive when she rose to testify. She was tastefully dressed. She described her long search and how at last she had found a small house that she and her daughter could live in, and the express oral agreement with Bowman that the house would be hers. She was living in the house and paying the mortgage. Bowman felt an inexpressible contempt at her lies. He indicated it in a look he exchanged with his lawyer, who seemed unconcerned.

In the end, however, it became her word against his, and the jury decided in her favor. She was awarded title. The house was gone. Only afterwards did he learn that there was another man.

He felt himself stupid for not knowing, a fool, but there was something that was worse, the jealousy. It was agonizing to think of her with someone else, of someone else having her, her presence, the availability of her. Suddenly everything had fallen away. He had felt himself above other people, knowing more than they did, even pitying them. He was not related to other people—his life was another kind of life. He had invented it. He had dreamt himself up, running heedless into the surf at night as if he were a poet or beach boy in California, as if he were a madman, but there were the very real mornings, the world still asleep and she asleep beside him. He could stroke her arm, he could wake her if he liked. He felt sick with the memory of it. He was sick with all the memories. They had done things together that would make her look back one day and see that he was the one who truly mattered. That was a sentimental idea, the stuff of a woman’s novel. She would never look back. He knew that. He amounted to a few brief pages. Not even. He hated her, but what could he do?

“This may sound crazy,” he would say, “but I still want her. I can’t help it. I’ve never thought about killing anyone, but in that courtroom I could have killed her. She knew all along what she was doing, I never would have believed it.”

He was humiliated. It was a wound that would not heal. He could not stop examining it. He tried to think of what he had done wrong. He shouldn’t have agreed to her living in the country—she would have never met the other man. He shouldn’t have been so trusting with her. He shouldn’t have been such a slave to the pleasure she gave, though that would have been impossible, and she had cared nothing for him. He knew there would not be another. It would be better never to have met her, but what sense did that make? It had been the luckiest day of his life.

Eddins and Irene lived in the house in Piermont for several years after they were married, but she was unhappy in the house where there had been a drawer still filled with his former wife’s things that she finally made him get rid of. They moved back to the city, to an ordinary apartment in the Twenties near Gramercy Park decorated with her furniture from New Jersey. When Bowman went there for dinner she had dressed carefully but was wearing no makeup. Eddins brought him in.

“You remember Philip, darling.”

“Yes, of course,” she said a bit impatiently. “It’s nice to see you.”

The apartment was somehow a little gloomy. Their dog, a black Scottie, didn’t bother to sniff at him. They sat having a drink in the living room. Irene—it must have been unknowingly—asked Bowman about his house. It was near the ocean, wasn’t it?

“I don’t have that house now,” he said. “That was a while ago.”

“Oh, I see. I was going to say my ex-brother-in-law had a house down near the shore.”

“Yes, I like the ocean.”

“He liked to sail,” she said. “He had a boat. I remember it. I often went out on it, a number of times. The marina where he kept it was filled with boats. All kinds of them.”

She went on about her brother-in-law, Vince.

“Phil didn’t know him, darling.”

“Neither did you,” she said. “No need to say anything bad about him.”

He poured her a little more wine.

“All right,” she said. “Just a little. That’s enough.”

“Oh, it’s not very much. Let me at least fill your glass.”

“Not if you want dinner,” she said.

“It won’t hurt dinner.”

Irene said nothing.

“My daddy liked to drink,” Eddins said. “He used to say he was more interesting when he drank. My mother used to say, interesting to who?”

“Yes,” Irene said.

She went into the kitchen, leaving them to drink. Eddins was good company, rarely in a bad mood. When Irene came back in, she said that dinner would soon be ready if they were.

“Yes, we’re ready, darling. At home, you know, we used to call it supper. Dinner was midday or sometimes a little later.”

“Dinner or supper,” she said.

“No, it’s just a small distinction. Another distinction might be that you drink at supper.”

“We always called it dinner.”

“The Italians,” he said, “don’t call it dinner.”

“No?”

“They call it
cena
.”

“That’s not what we call it,” she said. “The main thing is, would you like to have it?”

“Yes, what are we having for dinner?”

“You’re calling it dinner now.”

“Only to please you. I’m actually calling it a draw.”

He smiled at her, as if in understanding. They went into the dining room where there was a table and four chairs and two rounded corner cabinets with plates displayed on their shelves. Irene brought in the soup. Eddins remarked,

“I read somewhere that in navy messes—I think this was on a carrier—they served sherry in the soup. Is that true? What savoir faire.”

“We didn’t have any sherry,” Bowman said.

“Do you ever think back to all that?”

“Oh, occasionally. It’s hard not to.”

“You were in the navy?” Irene said.

“Oh, long ago. During the war.”

“Darling, I thought you knew that,” Eddins said.

“No, how would I know that? My brother-in-law, the one who sails, was in the navy.”

“Vince,” Eddins said.

“What other brother-in-law do I have?”

“It’s just that he hasn’t come up for a while.”

Irene did not reply.

“Phil was also at Harvard,” Eddins said.

“Oh, come on, Neil,” Bowman said.

“He wrote the Hasty Pudding show.”

“No, no,” Bowman objected. “I didn’t write any pudding show.”

“I felt sure you had. That’s a disappointment. Have you ever heard of a writer named Edmund Berger?”

“I don’t think so. Did he write it?”

“He came in to see me. He’s written a couple of books, and he’s writing one now about the Kennedy assassination. Is anyone still interested in that, do you think?”

“Then why is he writing it?” Irene said.

“He has the real story. Kennedy was assassinated by three Cuban sharpshooters, one on the grassy knoll and two in the book depository. All witnesses agree on that. Cubans, I said? How do you know that? They have their names, he said. It was the CIA. How did Jack Ruby know when Oswald was going to be taken out of his cell? Jack Ruby! Who was he?”

“I don’t know. A police informant,” Bowman said.

“Perhaps, this fellow Berger says.”

“Why are we talking about this?” Irene said.

“Let’s assume for the moment that it’s as Berger says, and it wasn’t Oswald. Oswald repeatedly said he hadn’t shot Kennedy. Of course he’d deny it, but then why was it that the police interrogated him for six hours but there were no notes taken? That’s because the CIA destroyed them.”

“I think that all this has been pretty much gone over,” Bowman commented.

“Yes, but not all put together. The Reverend King.”

“What about the Reverend King?”

“There’s more there than meets the eye. Who shot him?” Eddins said—he was enjoying it. “They convicted someone, but who knows? The other day a shoeshine man on Lexington asked me if I really believed that the police weren’t behind it.”

“Why talk about this?” Irene said.

“I don’t know, but they seem to shoot all these people, Robert Kennedy, Huey Long.”

“Huey Long?”

“These are momentous acts. The dark curtain falls. All of life changes. When Huey Long was shot, I remember a shudder went through the entire south. Not a family that didn’t go to bed that night in fear. I remember that. The whole of the south.”

“Oh, Neil,” Irene cried.

“What, darling? Enough of that? I’m sorry.”

“All you do is talk, talk, talk.”

He pursed his lips slightly as if in consideration.

“You shrew,” he said.

She left the table. There was silence for a while. Eddins said,

“I’m going to have to walk the dog. Care to come with me?”

He was quiet in the elevator going down. On the street they didn’t walk far. They went into Farrell’s, a bar two blocks away, and stood having a drink near the door. The bartender knew Eddins.

“You know what I always imagined? Remember the
Thin Man
movies? I imagined sitting at the bar with my wife—not this kind of bar, something a little more on the swell side, there’s one further east—sitting and talking, nothing special, just about one thing or another, about someone who’s come in or where we might go later, the passing scene. She’s wearing nice clothes, a pretty dress. That’s another thing, isn’t it, how they dress. I like to dress up a little. Anyway we’re talking, kind of a pleasant hour. She has to go to the ladies’ room, and while she’s gone the bartender notices her empty glass and asks me if my wife would like another. Yes, I say. She comes back and doesn’t even notice it’s a new drink, just picks it up and takes a sip, anything happen while I was gone?”

Neil was good company still. He had a certain dying flair. He could
look at his life as a story—the real part was something he’d left behind, much of it in his boyhood and with Dena. Of Irene, he would say,

“We each have our territory.”

Farrell’s was dark and the television was on. The bar ran back the length of the room. They stood there, each with a foot on the rail. The dog sat quietly, looking at nothing.

“How old is he?” Bowman said.

“Ramsey? Eight. He’s actually Irene’s dog, but he likes me. When she walks him she drags him along. She won’t wait. He likes to take his time. If she’s getting ready to take him out, he just lies there. She has to call him. With me, he jumps up and goes right to the door. She doesn’t like that, but it’s not up to her. She just isn’t the one he likes. Anyway he’s not that young.”

He was inclined to say neither was he, but he felt as if he’d already said enough. He had to take Ramsey on his walk. He and Bowman said good night. Ramsey was hard to see in the darkness. He was square, more or less, and absolutely black. They liked him at the Chinese laundry. Lambsey, they called him. The week before, Eddins had gone up to Piermont to visit Dena’s grave, hers and Leon’s. The cemetery seemed empty, the long silence of it. He stood at the grave. She had been his wife, and he had seen them off on the train. He hadn’t brought flowers. He left and drove to the florist and came back with some. There was no need to pray for anything. He put flowers on each grave and laid the remaining ones on others around. He read the names on some of them, but there were none he recognized. He thought of some things that were just known to himself and Dena. He began to cry.

On the street in Piermont he happened to run into the old waitress from Sbordone’s. She was walking along with something in a brown paper bag in one hand, a narrow bag. Eddins stopped her.

“Veronica?” he said.

“Yes.”

“How’ve you been?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You remember me, don’t you? I used to come to Sbordone’s, my wife and I. Do you remember?”

“Yes, now I do.”

“She died. I finally moved away.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I remember.”

“Too bad the bar’s not open. I’d buy you a drink.”

“Well, I stopped drinking except at funerals.”

She touched the paper bag.

“This is just to have around in case somebody dies suddenly.”

“You know, you haven’t changed,” he said. “Do you mind my asking, are you married?”

“No,” she said. “I used to wish I was.”

“The same with me,” he said.

There was also Joanna, the fat girl, enormously fat with a wonderful personality who was a teller at the bank. She was good-natured, forthcoming, with a beautiful voice, but unmarried. No one would think of marrying her. She could speak French. She’d spent a year and a half in Quebec, studying. She impulsively joined a choir there the first week and he, this man, was in it. His name was Georges. He was older and had a girlfriend, but before long he dropped the girlfriend and took up with Joanna. She came back to the States, but he was a teacher and a Canadian, he couldn’t leave. He would come to New York on the weekend, two or three times a month. It went on for nine years. She was terribly happy and knew it would end, but she wanted it to last as long as it could and didn’t say anything. In the tenth year they got married. Someone told Eddins she was going to have a child.

She came into the restaurant alone and stood for a time at the bar continually searching for something in her bag. At last she found it, a cigarette. She put it between her lips. The slowness of her acts was somehow frightening. No one watched openly. To a man sitting there she said, “Pardon. May I have a light?”

She waited with some poise until he produced one and then walked forward to be seated. The restaurant was full but the headwaiter was able to put her at a small table near the front. There she ordered a bottle of wine. While waiting she carefully tapped the ash from her cigarette onto her plate.