First Papers (55 page)

He did not smoke. By the end of the first week, he had almost forgotten how to eat more than a mouthful of food, how to think, how to speak. He lay, concentrated on the vow not to smoke, on the knowing that he would not smoke, on the dream of comfort there had always been for him in the making of a cigarette, the lighting of it, the deep drawing down into himself of its mysterious nerve-feeding yield.

It was unwise, perhaps, his instant deathblow to his dependence on smoking, not conducive to the calm and placid existence prescribed for him. But he could not tolerate gradual change any longer. From the first moment the tearful Miriam Landau had peered into his eyes over a year ago to explain away her choice of Fehler, he had acceded to the hell of gradual change, in an unending sophistry of so-called patience and self-control and even dignity. It was enough.

It had been the darkest period he had yet known. It must be bad for Alexandra, for the children, but he could barely think of that now. All his first hope of remaking the structure of life, his first quick encouragement drawn from signing up for a lecture, a lesson, an article—all that first hope had fallen sick with him, and during this siege of pain and illness had thinned and weakened and drained away.

It was very bad. To be sick, to be old, to be squeezed out of the job you loved—it was bad. Perhaps too bad.

A
T
A
LDRICH
C
HEMICAL, ON
March first, an official memorandum informed all personnel: “Your company’s Number Two plant, now approaching completion, will manufacture commercial explosives, such as dynamite for blasting, powder for drilling, charges for tunnel and harbor work. Number One plant will continue on established lines.”

Garry read it and looked at Otto Ohrmann. He saw skepticism take command of Otto’s face and said, “Have you no faith in the mimeographed word?” Otto muttered something he did not catch, and Garry added, “Too obvious a dodge, hey?” He went to his locker, drew his unfinished morning paper from the pocket of his topcoat and turned to
Help Wanted Male.
At his side, Otto read along with him.

“We toss a coin,” Otto said, “if we both like the same one.”

Six days later, a Saturday, Garry said, “Thanks, Mr. Molloy,” and took his hat from the elongated window sill. Across the twenty-foot width of plate glass ran the legend, Synthex, Inc., presenting the back of its flowery cursive script to the office.

“Think of it as a starting point only, why don’t you?” James Molloy said. “I have this one other fellow to see on Monday and after that we’ll get in touch with you.”

“I’m doing that already,” Garry said pleasantly, though he was disappointed. “But it would be more of a cut than I expected, even as a starter. Anyway, thanks again.”

He left and went down into the warm drizzle and looked about him. Long Island City was a flat plain that might have been a hundred miles from New York, instead of just across the new bridge to Queens, and the only buildings that stood out above the ugly three-or four-story plateau of brick and concrete were the two ten-story factories making Sunshine Biscuits and Aeolian Pianos. The Synthex plant, modern as it was, was only four stories high, but it occupied an entire square block, and a billboard proclaimed its ownership of the adjacent property, used now as a parking area for two trucks and a few cars.

Before meeting Molloy, he had been interviewed by the head of their New Products Development department, who had shown him around the laboratories and the factory at large; it was a satisfying experience. Synthex was not as up-to-date as Aldrich, but it was equipped for extensive projects in the field of synthetic fibers and substances. One of their major goals, in the experimental division, was to achieve a composition as tough as the black Bakelite of telephones but in a wide range of pale colors, a predictable achievement but still in the future.

Garry had offered a minimum of explanation about his reasons for considering a change of jobs. Aldrich would soon concentrate on manufacturing in a field that did not interest him, he said; he wanted to stay in research. Artificial silks and allied products had become rather a specialty with him, so the Synthex ad had appealed to him.

Garry liked Mr. Molloy. He could be described as “a scrappy little Irishman,” except that he was six feet one or two. He was pugnacious and vigorous in the way he spoke, and he dismissed Aldrich by saying, “In the trade they say he’s got a good head.” It did not interest Molloy why an Aldrich chemist was looking for another job, and Garry was relieved; he had been uncertain whether Aldrich activities were still a business secret on the outside.

He glanced up again at the grey sky when he reached his car. The drizzle was little more than a pervasive mist, and in the west, across the river, there was a brightness that meant the March sunlight might soon break through. He obeyed an impulse, lowered the canvas top for the first time this year, and headed for the city.

Rushing the season, he thought. It won’t be official spring for two weeks. Thank the Lord this winter is over and done with at last; it’s been the longest one ever. The fifth year of marriage—is that it? Maybe this happens to most couples in the fifth year, especially if they don’t have children.

Recently he and Letty had been drifting along, like two becalmed sailboats separated by a small stretch of water, hailing each other easily enough when necessary, but most of the time intent, in a separate watchfulness, for the missing force to send them skimming along again.

The day after Christmas, she had decided to take a few days off from the shop and visit her family up in Maine, and he had spent New Year’s Eve alone for the first time since their marriage. Undressing alone, going to bed alone, he had had the strangest sense of recognition, as if he and the quality of aloneness were not strangers in truth, but good friends who had been separated for a while and now were rejoined.

The car was approaching Thirty-seventh Street, where he turned right if he were going to pick Letty up at the shop. He thought of taking her off for a drive in the early spring chill. It was only three o’clock, and Saturday afternoon was always too busy for her, but he drew in at the curb, fished a nickel from his pocket and went to a telephone.

“Oh, Gare, I wish I could,” she said. “But you just caught me in the middle of an appointment.”

“Can you let Mrs. R’s-and-T’s do it for you?”

“Would that I could,” she said airily, signaling that she couldn’t talk freely. “I’ll tell you about it at dinner, darling.”

“I have something to tell you too.”

He waited until they were alone before he told her about Molloy and Synthex. This waiting to speak was another new phase in their life, brought about by their having their first maid, a Frenchwoman named Blanche, who had once worked for the Harretts at Oyster Bay. Letty had hired her during the winter and the thirty dollars a month for her wages were well spent, now that Letty scarcely ever got home before seven, but Garry rather disliked having Blanche in the odd little extra room next to theirs.
Don’t worry about this little one, darling, I’ll make it into a cunning room for a baby.

Twice during the winter, Letty had made an appointment with Dr. Haslitt; she had broken each one. She was busier than ever. Recently she had ventured into a new side line, again abetted and endorsed by Cynthia Aldrich. “People are too timid to do a house, Letty, without an expert’s say-so, and the fees for interior decorators are tremendous.” Already it was clear Letty would succeed in this too. For the first time, Garry’s attitude toward the shop began to change; its increasing success and dazzle were becoming a rival to her longing or need for a baby.

“I did see the Synthex people today,” he said when Blanche had given them a final
“Bon soir.”

“Oh, Garry, you should have warned me.”

“I did. I showed you the ad and said I was going to see them.”

“I suppose you did.”

“Well, this afternoon I went.”

“Did you get a job?”

“They only pay thirty-five dollars to start. I said I’d think about it.” She looked distressed, and he didn’t think it was about the smaller amount of money.

“Actually being interviewed for another job,” she said. “If they hear about it at Aldrich, you could be fired. We’ve all been such
friends.”

It caught him unawares: if he quit he would overturn the applecart of their friendship. She was accusing him of ignoring what was important to her.
All you think of is what you want. All you think of is war, war, war.

“You really would take a job with this Molloy?” Letty asked. “If they come up a little bit?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I’d have to give Aldrich enough notice, and stay until they got a new man.”

“Oh, Garry,” she said, tears coming suddenly to her eyes. “We’ve been so happy this way.”

“We’ll be happy again, wherever I work,” he said roughly. He pushed away from the table and went to the fireplace where an unneeded small fire was dying out. It will get better, he thought, once it actually happens, like the time Dad came back from San Diego. She’ll line up with me, just the way she did then, a kind of family feeling. She knows as well as I do what’s shaping up at Aldrich and she knows I’d never have a hand in it.

Unconsciously he stretched out his hands before him. On the left was a two-inch scar, still livid, running from the base of his thumb in a jagged line to his middle knuckle, the result of an acid burn he had got in the laboratory, which had unaccountably festered until finally it had required minor surgery. Eventually, the surgeon assured him, the scar would turn white and scarcely show.

He stared at it now; he rather liked it as it was, red and angry-looking. It was like a possession to be valued, the credentials of a research chemist.

There was no further word from Molloy, and day by day Letty prayed that there would be none. After ten days or so, Garry said, “I guess he hired the guy he saw Monday,” and never spoke of Synthex again. She was not base enough to be glad he had lost out, but it was fortunate he would have more time to think, before he played ducks and drakes with his whole future.

Cynthia Aldrich herself talked of Garry’s future, not long after Mark had told her that Garry was “being difficult” around the lab, had given notice that he was looking for another job, and said openly that he had already had one interview which led nowhere, but that he was keeping an eye out elsewhere.

“You simply must dissuade him from making such a mistake,” Cynthia said gravely.

“I’ve tried to dissuade him.”

“A wife never knows when she gets her licks in, Letty, and you mustn’t give up. If you could have heard what Mark said about Garry’s future with the firm! To have him chuck all that away because of some idea about the wickedness of war! Everybody hates the wickedness of war, child, it’s inhuman to do anything else.”

Letty tried to think how best to tell Garry about Cynthia’s “warning,” but soon she gave up. Nothing would change him. Even those Ivarins weren’t the out-and-out pacifists he and his parents were. One night recently on a visit, Mr. Ivarin was shouting away at Garry and his father. In the blueprint, he yelled, pacifism was as wonderful an ideal as Christianity in
its
blueprint, but life was soon going to tear up the blueprints, no matter how wicked and foul war was. For the first time in her life Letty had liked the old man.

The wickedness of war. Now the news was all full of Mexico and our Navy bombing Veracruz, and about Ireland’s fight for Home Rule, and the Irish landing forty thousand rifles and half a million rounds of ammunition. She wasn’t sure whom they were to shoot or when, but it was all over the papers, and Hank and Cindy and Peter talked about it almost as much as Garry and Otto.

She even tried to read the papers every morning again, the way she did when she and Garry were still in love.

The words thwacked against the floor of her mind, and she thought, We still are, we still are.

It’s too big a risk, Alexandra thought. The third week in a row is too much to put off Stefan’s two pupils in New York. With the two in Barnett there had been no dilemma; from the start, she had given the lessons for him, and though they were disappointed at having a substitute, they showed understanding and even some awe at the idea of his lying ill right above their heads. Soon he would be permitted downstairs again, she had promised them, hoping she was not telling a flagrant lie.

If these two had accepted her in Stefan’s place, why shouldn’t the two in New York?

She went upstairs to his bedroom. By now, the pain had decreased enough so that he was taking no analgesics but he was not permitted out of bed for more than ten minutes at a time. His blood pressure had come down somewhat, and both doctors were encouraged. He never questioned his diet, and so far had not made one exception about smoking. He had lost weight and appeared exhausted, but both doctors assured her that he would regain strength when he became more mobile.

“It’s Nature’s automatic mechanism for safeguarding him,” Alexis said. “Using a minor collapse, to force a thoroughgoing recuperation. Don’t let him rush.”

Stefan showed no sign of rushing. He still lay inert for hours at a time, asking only for the papers, nearly always silent. Now when Alexandra came in, he showed neither interest nor concern about his postponed New York lessons.

“It’s too risky to skip a third week,” she said. “They might lose their determination.”

“I suppose so.”

“Let me try going in your place.”

“As you like.”

Despite his indifference, she went to New York, and was waiting in the Kesselbaum parlor when the pupil arrived. “My husband asked me to come,” she said, “and give the lesson for him tonight. I’m a teacher too.”

It was like a trick, but there was nothing shameful in it; in giving English lessons to any foreigner she was Stefan’s equal. She exerted herself to find amusing ways to explain a word or a point of grammar, even to praise the pupil enough to keep his spirits high. Only after the lesson was over did she say, “If my husband is still not well enough next week—the doctor says the jouncing of the trolley and the train could send him straight back to bed—if so, should I come once again in his place to give you your lesson?”