Clemmie (13 page)

“Looks okay. Why don’t you make a joint recommendation and I’ll sign it too?”

“No more questions? No bitching about the patch and pray policy? Not like you.”

“I repeat. One of those days.”

“Better not have too many. The new broom is starting to make sweeping motions.”

“I know. John, can you think of any real radical idea that’ll fix us up so we won’t go constantly nuts over all these subcontracts?”

“Sure. A nice fire. A nice hot one. If it started in paint storage, that ought to do it.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot, pal.”

When he got back to his own office, he shut the door, shoved his chair back so he could put his feet on the corner
of his desk, laced his hands across his stomach and tried to do some logical thinking. Style changes were the big headache. Short runs were another. Think big, the man said.

He sighed and shifted his position. He couldn’t stop thinking about last night. He was too damn old to get mixed up in Clemmie’s nonsense. It was all fine for some kid, playing that asinine game of hers and rescuing the fair drunken maiden from the biceps set. He’d been lucky with those two, luckier than he deserved to be.

I broke his hand by hitting him on the fist with my head. This Clemmie affair is too ripe, and too unpredictable. I’d better stop being an eager old goat and pull out of that. There’s an unhealthy flavor to it. And I am not going to be permitted to retain any dignity. Once the ring is firmly locked on my nose, all she has to do is tug the rope. A fine picture I made. Riding those dodge-em cars. Sulking on the merry-go-round. Drinking corn with kids.

He didn’t want to think about the rest of it, but his mind kept turning back to it, the way a child will persist at picking at a scabbed knee.

When he got her home she had been a rag doll, barely able to climb the stairs with his help before collapsing again. He couldn’t awaken her. So he had carried her to her bedroom, undressed her, hung up her clothing, and then, without premeditation, had taken his quick and angry use of her, punishing her for the humiliations of the evening and, on some primitive level, seizing the spoils he had won in battle, taking a bitter satisfaction in his knowledge that, though she moved in feeble response, there was not enough consciousness left for her to know who he was, or care. He used her the way they would have used her had they won, with a savage selfishness. Then he slept beside her.

When he awakened at five the sky was light. Her breath was stale, her long black hair across his throat, her arm across his chest, their bodies sweaty-moist where they touched. He eased away from her without awakening her, dressed, drank four glasses of water and walked the full seventeen blocks to his home. He made the bed with fresh linen, set the alarm for eight. He slept so deeply that when the alarm awakened him the incidents of the previous evening had become remote, like things that he
had imagined in delirium, so that he was not responsible for them.

It was easy, perhaps too easy, to make a most plausible analysis of what had happened to him. He knew that over the past years his emotional scale had narrowed. He had felt anger, joy, disgust, fear, contentment—but all in a minor key, blurred, softened, diluted by the very predictability of his stabilized and well organized life. He saw that in one way he had been like a sailing vessel that had been anchored in a safe harbor, after short years in the wild seas outside. He had ridden out those seas and found harbor and protection. The waves were still high outside, but by the time they reached him, rocking him in his refuge, they were muted, no longer dangerous.

Now he had foolishly left the harbor mouth, and he was shocked by the strength of the waves, by the unpredictable furies of emotions he had felt capable of surviving. The quiet years had made the vessel less seaworthy. The hull was bearded and barnacled, the rigging half-rotted, the compass unadjusted. These were the same choppy seas he had ridden out long ago, but now the safety margin was less, and he had lost confidence in his own seamanship.

Now it was time to run for the harbor.

He told himself that he was a sane and decent man, and this was an ugly affair, and now he would get out of it.

He was aware of another factor within himself. He had always been wary of strong emotions. There had been too much of that in his childhood. Too many scenes, too much violence.

His own mother had died when he was four. He had lived with an aunt for two years until his father married again, married a young and rather coarse and very erratic redheaded woman named Katherine. When Craig was eleven his father died of a heart ailment, leaving Katherine with Craig and the two younger children of that marriage. Fourteen months later, when the insurance money was nearly gone, Katherine married a man named Gochak, the resident manager of one of the middle-sized mines in the Scranton area, and began to have babies by him.

The frame house was too small for the size of the family. It was a tumultous marriage, full of violence and outrage
and quarrelings. Katherine throve on continual emotional crisis. Finally Craig achieved an immunity to the environment. He could no longer respond. He knew there was only one escape for him, one escape with honor. Rather than run away he stayed and achieved the second highest grades ever given at the high school, and, given a choice of scholarships, took one at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. Katherine and Gochak gave him a watch.

Katherine died while Craig was in college, died at fifty-one in the backyard when her heart, damaged from too much work, gave out while she was beating a rug in spring frenzy.

Craig got along well in college. He was desperately anxious to conform. And he was so anxious to forget his origins that he made for himself a fictional autobiography that came to be more real to him than the actuality. He went home for the last time when Katherine died, and sorted what he had left there, and took a few small things with him when he left. Pictures of his own parents, a few documents.

When he graduated in June of 1939 with a good record, he was offered several jobs in industry. He accepted the U. S. Automotive offer, went through their training program and then was placed on a permanent status at three hundred dollars a month at the Newark Drop Forge Division, as a production chaser. He had escaped.

He did not talk of his origins to anyone. The fictional autobiography was a better substitute. He even told Maura the false history first, but later, one night in the flat, she lay in darkness in the curve of his arm, and he talked to her for a long time and told her just how it was, and how it felt to be in a place where you did not belong, just because there was no other place to go.

And now, after all the years, he had come much too close to being seriously involved with a woman whose emotions were so raw and so quick and so flamboyant that she inevitably reminded him of Katherine. Clemmie lived with the same carelessness and hunger. And, like Katherine, she could goad and madden anybody who became emotionally involved with her.

Now he wanted to get back to quietness and stability, back to a placid place. In a sense she had cured his old
restlessness, but left him with shame and guilt. He felt as though she had marked him in a way that Maura would discern with her first look at him.

He would break away before any more damage was done. He had known of men ruined by an inexplicable infatuation. He had wondered how it could happen. Now he could sense how it could happen. But it would not happen to him.

Clemmie phoned him at the office at twenty minutes to five. Betty James was checking over a report with him when the call came in, and she scooped up the phone.

“Mr. Fitz’s office, Miss James speaking. Yes? Just a moment, please.” She covered the mouthpiece. “A Miss Bennet, Mr. Fitz.” Betty seemed to be looking at him oddly.

“I’ll take it. Hello?” He held the receiver close to his ear to let no sound escape.

“Craig? Oh, honey, I’m so abject and miserable and sorry and everything.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You sound frighteningly gruff, dearest. I
must
see you.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Clemmie. I’m all tied up.”

“I suspect the presence of pointed secretarial ears, darling. And I understand. I shouldn’t have called you there. Give me a ring as soon as you get out of that salt mine. I’ll be waiting right here.” She hung up.

Craig handed the phone to Betty and she put it back on the cradle. “Clementina Bennet?” she asked.

It startled him. “Why? Do you know her?”

“Gosh, no. But I know
of
her. Don’t you read the society pages?”

“Maura does. Is she in there often?”

“Not lately.” She changed her voice to a haughty tone, little finger crooked. “Miss Clementina Bennet, socialite daughter of George LaBarr Bennet, is hostess at Hunt Club Breakfast. Miss Bennet is shown modeling a Paris
original at the Pelton Club Charity Bazaar. Miss Clemmie Bennet returns from Nassau where she was a guest of Miss Cynthia Whosis, daughter of Lord and Lady Bluntwhistle. How did you get into the top levels, Craig?”

“I didn’t know I was. I—I met her at a friend’s house. The name didn’t mean anything. I guess she wants to do a public service by entertaining the lonely bachelor. Some kind of a dinner party.”

“You
ought
to go. I’d die to hear about it. Her father has a perfectly enormous place out in the Robinson Woods section. He’s very, very rich. It was inherited, I think. His mother was one of those financial wizards who always knew what to buy and when to buy it. Clemmie came into quite a bit of money of her own when she was twenty-one.”

“You certainly keep track.”

She sighed. “I guess so. Those people are sort of dream people. They don’t seem like us. I don’t see how they could possibly think the way we think. I mean—so much of our every day is taken up just—by the ways and means committee. You know?”

“Yes.”

“Where were we? Stock level, 718 D. Material on hand—complete. Percentage of order complete—86. Percentage shipped—78. Units in process—80,000 of a total of 110,000. Estimated date of final shipment—August 10th. Does that check?”

“Check.”

“Mr. Fitz?”

He looked up. “Yes, Betty?” He had never seen her look so wistful.

“Maybe I’m going to be out of line. You tell me. I mean you’re just as alone as I am right now. I thought maybe a Sunday picnic, with the kids. Mother likes a breather on Sundays. I can forget it ever happened, if you think it would be okay. And if you think I’m out of line, kindly forget I got brassy enough to ask.”

Had it not been for the phone call from Clemmie, he would have managed to say no in a way that would have saved her pride and retained her loyalty. “I think it would be fun, Betty. I’d like to do it.”

She stared at him. “I was positive you’d say no.”

“Want to retract?”

“Oh, no. Look, Mother is a little odd. She’s full of dire suspicions. She’ll want to see who I’m going out with. She knows your name and I’ve described you, but she’s never seen you. Could you, when you pick us up, let me call you something else? I mean she knows you’re married. You will? Good. The kids are really good kids. It won’t be a painful picnic. But if you want anything to drink, you better bring it. That’s another of Mother’s peculiarities.”

He was already regretting the impulse that had made him say yes. Betty was difficult enough to control as it was. After the picnic she would be harder than ever to restrain. She had a curious talent for continually enlarging her areas of decision and command.

“Let’s finish this up,” he said.

Bucky came in at five and made a final report. McCabe came in with a design for a welding jig. He and Betty finally finished the report at quarter of six and she said she would get the typist on it the first thing in the morning. He heard the clack-tock, clack-tock of her heels as she left the empty office. There would be a jolly Sunday picnic, and it would be interminable. But, in a sense, it would be refuge. There could be no duplication of the previous Sunday. Curious, he thought, how much and how little Betty had known about Clemmie Bennet. And he could imagine the awed horror, the disgusted fascination on Betty James’ face had she been able to see into Clemmie’s studio apartment the previous Sunday.

He wanted to stay and work on the idea he was supposed to present to Paul Ober on Friday morning. But it would perhaps be better to phone Clemmie and be firm with her, let her know it was finished. He left the office, walked a half block to a small cigar and candy store, a place of loungers and punch boards. The last person in the booth had left behind the stale aroma of cheap cigar.

“This is Craig, Clemmie. I was tied up. I don’t like you phoning me at the office.”

“So stern, Craig, So severe. I don’t blame you. I was a mess. No more corn. Ever. Gaaa. I don’t remember coming home or going to bed or anything. I vaguely remember a fight which you seemed to be winning. I can’t apologize over the phone. You come on the dead run, darling, so I can do a better job here.”

“Sorry. I accepted a dinner invitation.”

“Then leave as soon as you dare, dearest. I’ll be waiting for you. What a day, dearest! I’ve been pummeled by a masseuse, and I called on the sick, and I bought a very sexy dress all for you. It’s kind of a schizo dress, all prim in front, and in the back it is open all the way down to imminent disaster. And I am teetering on new red shoes. Please come as soon as you can.”

“I’m sorry, Clemmie. I don’t really think I’ll be able …”

“I’ll tell you what. If you think it will be too late, this will be an easier way. I’ve got a spare key and I’ll leave it on the right side of that little ridge over the shed door. On the right corner as you face the shed. And, my Fitzdarling, spend all of your stuffy evening thinking up the most interesting way of waking me up that you can devise.”

He started to object again, but realized he was talking to a dead line. He took out another dime, then changed his mind. She had no intention of listening to him, or permitting herself to believe that he wouldn’t stop by. She could wake up in the morning and be astounded.