Back STreet (49 page)

“I’ll be back before you can say Jack Robinson, Walter. Emma means a lot to me. I want to see her graduate.”

“Natural that you should.”

“In a way, I feel about going just like an old mother hen who doesn’t want to leave the chickies, but goodness alive, Walter, what is five days? Sometimes I don’t even see you in five days.”

“Five days is nothing, and you go ahead and make your plans. Just as well, anyway. We’re going to see plenty of each other in August, when we get to the Alps.”

“Oh, Walter—”

“Just as sure as fate, I’ve my heart set on it this time.”

“I don’t dare let my mind dwell on it, for fear it’s too good to be true.”

“Wait and see.”

“It’s sweet of you, Walter, to make it all right about my going to Emma. Sure you don’t mind?”

“Now, I’d be a fine one to mind, wouldn’t I?”

“You’ll miss me?”

“There’s the woman of it! Wants to be missed more than she wants to go.”

“We—nobody could ever have lived more of a home life than we do, Walter. That’s why I ask. You’re so dependent.”

“Never you mind. I’ll make out so well that you’ll be sorry you ever gave me the chance to try my wings.”

“Walter!”

“Can’t you take a joke?”

“Of course. You’re a dear. I feel right excited, Walter. She’s a darling girl. It will mean a lot to her.”

“That’s fine. Just you go.” Still, it seemed to her she detected the artificial plating to his voice, but for fear that her further probing might irritate, let it go at that.

“It’s all right with you, then—sure?”

“You heard me say so, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Walter.”

And so it was arranged, and a letter dispatched to Emma, and another filled with the pleasant miscellany of train schedules to Freda, whose letters were of dubiousness, because her new upper teeth, paid for by Ray, were such a bad fit.

“What are you taking a trunk for?” he asked her one evening. “One would think you were going on a trip around the world instead of an overnight ride.”

“Oh, Walter, I’ve made myself three new summer dresses, and there is one in there for Emma, and they are so crispy I hate to cram them into a suitcase.”

“Going out to make a killing, eh?”

She had been mixing him the soft drink of lime and almond-oil, and with the long spoon stirring the contents of a glass pitcher, just stood and looked at him, eyes wide.

“What a rotten thing to say.”

“There you go again! Can’t take a joke. The Lord certainly left out a sense of humor when he made women.”

She sat on his knee, stroking the groomed little gray imperial, which of late years he had cultivated to the nicety of a fine point.

“Walter, it isn’t that I can’t take a joke, it’s just that there are
some things so impossible to conceive, that it hurts even to hear them said.”

“I’m a dog,” he said, “and you’re too good for me,” and thereafter became his mood so tender, that he would not even let her rise to pour his drink, but with his head against her breast, dozed, relaxed there, and finally slept.

Fortunately, what happened occurred two days before her departure, so there was time to write and wire to both Oxford and Youngstown.

May had come in quite stickily that year, and, according to newspaper headlines, there were already heat prostrations; and beaches, a full four weeks before seasonal expectations, were doing a thriving business.

Because he had asked it, and because these days before her departure, a little heartsick in spite of herself, she had been more than usually indulgent in the matter of foods; there had been Wiener schnitzel for dinner, a dish greatly to his liking, but which she seldom prepared except at his request, because of the almost invariable unease he professed after eating it.

“What, Walter, darling! Another helping? You know who has to pay the piper.…”

Extremely sensitive, as he always was, to even the innuendo that his appetite could escape his control, it was not unusual for Ray to be driven to the extremity of pretending that what he asked was not in the house, when, more likely than not, it reposed in the refrigerator.

That night there had been red cabbage, too, which she could concoct with strips of bacon into a delicacy. “Walter, darling, I really shouldn’t have served that rich cheese torte after your insisting upon two helpings of the schnitzel and red cabbage. Let’s not have dessert, dear. I’ll give you a glass of port instead.”

“That’s right. Tell me what to do. You know how I enjoy it,” he said, cutting into the creamy surface of pale-yellow cake that appeared to have the lightness of soufflé.

“I didn’t mean it that way, dear.”

“That’s a delicious torte, Ray,” he said, through a mouthful.
“Have some.” It offended him to see her hold back. “What’s the matter? Getting the diet-craze of crazy women? You’re too much of a toothpick as it is. Here, let me give you a piece.”

“You’re sweet, Walter, but I’ve had so much …”

“To please me …”

“To please you,” she said, passing her plate and watching him pile it to match the indiscretion of his own.

After dinner, while she dragged away the table and he sat with his port and cigar, he began to fight his usual growing drowsiness, and with the pages of his address propped before him began to memorize.

“…  and I wonder if you realize, gentlemen, the gratification and sense of honor with which I rise to my feet to address an organization of this caliber—realizing as I do to what extent you, gentlemen, stand for the peak of civic and industrial stability—in the midst of a period of financial stabilization—”

“You skipped the ‘that reminds me’ opening anecdote, Walter!”

“So I did. So I did.… and speaking of caliber, reminds me—”

Suddenly it seemed to Ray that there was a cry from him sharp as the explosion of a cap-pistol, and, as she turned, he began to slump in his chair, clutching the front of his shirt between his writhing fingers.

As time and time again it came to her afterward in flashes of remembrance, it seemed to her that they were both remarkably quiet about it.

“Walter,” she whispered, and flew to him and let him lop across her shoulder.

“I can’t breathe,” he said, softly and thickly. “Air.”

She lurched him back to his chair as you would a bolster, tore open a window and rushed with a tumbler of water which she had snatched from the table.

“Drink this, Walter.”

He was gasping now, and the pallor of jade, and in evident pain, because his feet were twisting about each other and he kept clutching at his shirtfront.

“Walter. I’ll call a doctor.”

“No. No. No.”

Locked in the same fear that must have smitten him as he writhed, she kept smoothing back his hair and running her hand along the cold sweat of his forehead.

“Then lie down, sweetheart. Relax against me.”

“I can’t,” he said stiffly. “I wonder if I’m going to faint.”

“No, darling, you’re not. You’re just in pain and short of breath.”

“That’s it. I’ll be all right.”

“Could you drink a little water now?”

“No. Just let me lie quietly. I’ll be all right.”

Three of the small knickknack clocks which cluttered up the room began suddenly and with absurd prominence to tick roundly and out of time with one another. Between their tiny spans, it seemed to Ray, holding him there, watching his damp brow spring out in globules each time she wiped them away, that long eternities of this terrible waiting wheeled in between the seconds. If only she dared risk his excitement, or his anger, or his—fear, by calling a doctor. Between the eternities of those clock-ticks, she visualized, precisely as if it were held flaming against her tormented eyes, the headline: “Head of banking house of Friedlander-Kunz dies in woman’s apartment.”

It was as if she had shocked him out of an impending stupor, because he opened his eyes, not quite taking her in for the moment.

“Walter, I will get a doctor.”

“I’m all right,” he said, and tried to lift himself away from her shoulder.

“Drink this then, darling,” she said, and held the tumbler against his shuddering lips. He was sick then, and terribly humiliated, his fastidiousness offended. And she had to assume the high singsong voice of talking to a drowsy child.

“Now it’s all over and we’re well again, and it’s forgotten. So! There! Pillow under his head. There! Purple coverlet that Ray crocheted herself! There! Collar loosed and lampshade just right for no bad glare! There—better, darling?”

“I must have overdone today. Two directors’ meetings and then that trip out to Rosmersholm to see Richard play the polo semifinals. Too much—in heat—”

“—of course—”

“—had attacks like this before—pass off—”

“—of course—everybody has—”

“—terrible—”

“—all over now—”

“—must—eat more carefully—”

“—everybody should—”

“—wonderful woman, Ray—”

“—darling—”

“—wouldn’t have had it happen for the world—”

“—why not, dearest—here to share bad times—”

“—God knows you have—mostly—”

“—no—no—no—”

He began to whimper, for all the world like a child.

“Don’t leave me, Ray.”

“Why, of course I won’t, Walter.”

“I haven’t let on, but I wouldn’t be surprised—if that isn’t what has upset me. Of course, if your heart is set on going—”

“Why, silly darling—it’s worth everything that you want me here—”

“I need you so, Ray. Don’t leave me … don’t go to Oxford.”

“Oh, my darling …”

“Wire them you can’t come. Sick. Tell them anything.”

“Anything.”

“We’ll go to Switzerland, Ray, one of these days. You won’t be sorry.”

“Of course I won’t.”

“Sure you’re not disappointed?”

“On the contrary, I’m happy.”

“—couldn’t stand your going—”

Crouched there, smoothing his still-damp brow, she was working it all out in flashes. Emma should have the money the railroad fare would have cost. Just as well. The child would need a good
outfit to start teaching. It would have been nice going out, but—it was ineffably sweet being needed. How like a small boy he seemed, lying there pale and wanting her. Nothing in the world but an attack of out-and-out acute indigestion from overeating. Strange that she, the fancy one, should always be the one to be let in for the rather brutally plain facts of his life. It was as if, for Corinne, he had troubled to keep up an illusion. Not that she wanted illusion, here at the very core of his life where she belonged.…

“Sweet darling,” she said to him as he slept.

And even as he floated off, half hearing, his hand closed around her forefinger, holding on.

In June, Arnold, valiantly trying to emulate his big brother’s polo prowess, was thrown from a pony, and his ankle fractured in two places.

The redeeming side to this catastrophe, as voiced by Richard—whose attitude to his young brother, across the chasm of years that separated them, was a mixture of patronage and paternalism—was that, while it canceled all preparations for the western tour, it did throw Arnold back on the needed resort of spending the summer at school camp, tutoring in an arithmetic course, in which he was trailing.

So once more a default of summer plans, dismaying but not surprising! It had happened so often before, with what seemed by now a consistent perversity.

Corinne, with Arnold no longer able to take his western trip, was going to Aix with Walter, for the cure, which she declared gave her new life for a twelvemonth.

“It’s just as if some kind of fate were forever fixing summers for us the way we don’t want them, Walter.”

“Fact,” he said. “I’ve been banking on this summer being very different from the way it now looks it is going to be.”

The thought of the dreariness of the double precautions of the indoor life she must lead this time at Aix came flowing over her.

“Walter, you won’t get angry if I say something?”

“Am I as vicious as all that?”

“Now, Walter, you know that’s beside the point. Supposing this year I don’t go over, Walter. It’s hard under the conditions, being at a small place like Aix. I’ll stay home this trip.”

The old familiar look of hurt and personal affront came in a scowl between his eyes.

“I hadn’t realized before that a trip to Europe was a hardship. Of course, if you feel that way about it. Wouldn’t think of asking it.”

“Now, Walter, dear, please don’t go getting sarcastic. You know I didn’t mean it that way. I think it’s wonderful, of course. It’s the conditions I’m talking about. Walter, dear, have you ever thought what it means to be cooped up a prisoner in a small town like Aix, sometimes not seeing you for days, and afraid to go out, for fear?”

“Yes, naturally, but I’ve been fool enough to believe that it might be worth it.…”

“Why, Walter Saxel, honestly, I could spank you. Of course it is worth it, darling, and you know it … but …”

“I see. But it’s not worth it to you.”

“Honestly, dear, it is a talent with you to twist what I say into something I didn’t even dream of. I only meant …”

“I know what you only meant. And you may rest assured there is nothing I want less than to force you into anything against your will.”

In the end, propitiating, she had to plead her way slowly, a matter of hours, step-by-step, back into precisely the estate from which she had sought this summer to extricate herself.

“Walter, dearest, it isn’t that I don’t love to be near you, it is because I do so value it, that I can’t bear the thought of chancing—”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“But I’ve tried to explain.…”

“I know what you’ve tried to explain, and you’ve succeeded, too. It has always been one of my policies, in business and out—no unhappy, discontented people around me. The moment that happens—out!”

“Why, Walter, honestly you—you just make me feel as if I’m going crazy, trying to make you understand. I love Aix, dearest. I love being there just because you are there. I love being anywhere you are, even if I only see you one hour out of a month. I only meant …”

“Well then, just what did you mean?”