Gentleman's Agreement (18 page)

“I must stop by and tell McAnny how delighted I am,” Dohen interrupted. “Have you seen the opening spread, Mr. Green? Really a new talent. We were just talking about it. How would you characterize it, Bill?” He looked down at Jayson, and Jayson had to tilt his head back to meet his gaze. Fleetingly Phil hoped Jayson really didn’t mind any more being so short.

“It’s new and it’s right,” Jayson said dryly. “And you’ll have to wait to tell McAnny. He’s out in the Middle West on a special strike layout at G. M.”

Tingler looked at Phil, but the thickly ground lenses hid whatever comment his glance was designed to convey.

“Sort of a combination of Varga girl and Ingrid Bergman, that first illustration of Gracia,” Dohen said, and laughed in his enthusiasm. “That’s it. Bitch and saint. Hard enough to catch in writing, but
when
I saw that first oil. Tell that boy Herman I’m—fact, I’d really like to tell him personally.” He looked down to Jayson again. “Fix it up, Bill?”

“I’ll do that.” There was no promise in his voice. “Well, I’ll be getting back. So long.”

Phil moved off with him. Jayson didn’t like Dohen, and Tingler was bored with him. This distinguished-looking Richard Dohen, Phil knew, was one of the highest-paid serial writers in the magazine world. “What’s the new one about?” he asked Jayson.

“Well, the gimmick is this gorgeous dame is sitting there exactly ten years from the night her husband walked out to marry the second wife. Sudden impulse. She— Hell, don’t bother me, Phil.”

Phil grinned. But they were nearing his office, and all at once nothing mattered but Kathy. Embarrassment plucked at him. The adult thing would have been to telephone her as soon as he’d waked yesterday, gone to her, straightened this out. Dave would have waited for him without resentment.

There was a note propped against his telephone.
Miss Lacey called. E. W.
Underneath it the line,
Again at 11:10. Please call her.

Without sitting down he dialed the number.

I
’LL TRY AGAIN
at noon, Kathy was thinking. She moved away from the bedside table so that the phone would not persuade her into a third attempt. He’d ring back the moment he could. This was no crisis to justify asking Miss Wales to put the call through to him in the meeting.

She went firmly into the bathroom and weighed herself as if that had been her intention for many minutes. In a way it
was
a crisis. She’d known it when he left her; she’d known it when she’d fallen asleep; she’d known it all day yesterday when instinct cautioned her from telephoning him and telling him what she was going to do.

She glanced down at the revolving tape of the scale. Two pounds off. Worry it off; toss it off in your chivied sleep; eat it off from the heart. What
made
her go all skewered on this damn business when they talked about it, when they were not apart on it at all, in theory or in fact?

There was something mysterious in the process of quarreling. You said one wrong thing and then tried to justify it and said a further thing. That in turn needed explaining or defense. All the time you helplessly knew that if you could only step off the treadmill of dissension and start anew—but something held you where you were with demoniac persistence. Then it was too late. Emotions came in; his face showed disapproval and surprise; anger spat in you that he should misread your motives. Or pride reared up, and you’d be damned if you’d risk seeming abject and always at fault. The sense of crisis deepened, and your helplessness with it.

With Jane and Harry last night she’d been in no snarl at all. She’d been unequivocal, incisive. But he hadn’t been there to hear.

“You’re saying in effect,” she’d said, “that it’d be nice if he just wouldn’t embarrass any Jew haters you might have at the party.”

It was nice to remember that sentence. Why had she reserved such clarity for Jane and Harry when it was Phil she cared about?

With a start she saw she was still on the scale, staring down at it malevolently as if it were an insect she was steeling herself to squash. She went back to the bedroom. She was tired; her back was tired; her neck was tired. She wished he would get out of the meeting and call her. She glanced at her watch. Less than ten minutes had passed since her second try.

With Bill, when things went wrong, she’d never felt this dull ache or fear or whatever it was. There’d been a kind of remoteness instead. But in those days she’d always felt right on the issue they disagreed on. Twice now with Phil she’d known she was somehow in the wrong. She should resent him for making her feel so; that was supposed to be human nature. But it didn’t work that way. She just hurt. This frightened wonder about losing him was what hurt.

The drive to Darien had soothed her. She felt purposeful and clearheaded. But the string of cars parked in front of the snowy stretch of ground before the house warned her that her neat plan would not work. She’d forgotten the usual comings and goings of the suburban world on New Year’s afternoon. Inside, she knew there’d be no chance for a serious talk until much later. And as each couple arrived with some variation of hair-of-the-dog remarks, each with the satisfied look of one who coins a bright new witticism, she found herself exasperated and bored.

“Darling, I just heard the news. You’re getting married again. Who is he? What’s he like? When do we meet him?” Endlessly the questions had come. “What’s his name?” “What’s he do?”

He’s a writer. Phil Green. No, he writes as Schuyler Green. That’s right.
Smith’s
mostly for the last couple of years. Oh, thank you, I think he’s pretty bright myself.

Only when she’d got off alone did she even ask herself whether Phil would have expected her to say anything else. Suddenly she’d flimsily announced that she’d “forgotten to check up on things at the “house” and had gone off in desperation to the cottage which needed no checking at all. Unlocking the door, seeing the pleasant rooms as if she were Phil seeing them for the first time, the wide windows that would stream with yellow sunshine on a prettier day, the books and magazines left on end tables as if the place were really lived in—all of it had sent her off into happy planning of spring week ends there with him, and later the whole summer for all of them. And then the question, and with it the doubt, like a checkrein.

Of course he wouldn’t have expected her to say anything else. It would be imbecilic to say, “He’s a writer, he’s Jewish,” “His name is Phil Green, he’s Jewish,” “He writes as Schuyler Green, he’s Jewish.”

That
would be a sort of inverted proof that it did matter to her—or would if it were true. If Phil weren’t doing this thing, would it ever occur to her to mention his religion, or his agnosticism, which was much more interesting? “He’s a writer, he’s Episcopalian,” “His name is Phil Green, he’s an agnostic.” Surely it would be equally clumsy and absurd to say the other. Was that the only reason she hadn’t once mentioned it?

And when she’d told Bill Pawling about getting married, Bill’s “What’s he like?” had sent her on and on about Phil. But that one thing she hadn’t mentioned then, either.

“Oh, God, I get so mixed up.”

In the pleasant empty cottage, she said it half aloud. How could she, of all people, get so confused on these things? She’d been so clear always, she and all the other people she knew, like Jane and Uncle John and everybody else. They’d not think about things like antisemitism often, but when it did come up, there wasn’t any question that they loathed it and wanted to do something to stop it from growing. And yet now she was in the middle of a different place, where the thing became a personal thing—now everything she did or said was fuzzy.

Twice in so short a time things had gone awry between them. And both times she’d had that dull pull of fear. The checkrein again, tighter.

Now, remembering the cottage, and unconscious of the gesture, Kathy moved her head down and up and around in a swiveling motion. She sighed and reached for something to read. Under her stretching arm the telephone rang. She snatched the arm back as if it had touched hot metal. Then she took up the receiver.

“Kathy?”

“Oh, Phil, I wanted to call you last night, but it was midnight when I got back and—”

“Got back? Where from?”

“Jane’s. I went up to have it out with her. Oh, darling, has this been hell for you, too?”

“I haven’t exactly liked it.” His voice was stiff. “You mean you told her you couldn’t
persuade
me?”

“Oh, no. I found myself saying all the things you would have. Jane said, ‘Well, goodness, O.K.,’ as if she hadn’t asked it and started this awful business.” She swallowed. “Darling, don’t let’s do this any more—we
feel
the same underneath. Couldn’t we have lunch and talk?”

There was a pause. In his office, Phil remembered he was standing. He sat down. He hauled back his runaway feelings as if they were lively dogs on a leash. Suddenly he seemed unable to evaluate, even to remember clearly, the nuances that had seemed so tremendous. A hair-splitting nicety endowed them now, nothing more.

“But why the disappearing act?” He couldn’t help the tone of resentment. “I phoned you all evening and got pretty beat up about all the silence.”

“I just couldn’t phone till
after
I’d fixed everything. I drove out the minute I got up, but the place was full of people and I couldn’t get them alone till awfully late.”

She was hurrying explanations the way Tom sometimes did, so earnest in admission that it became incumbent on him to make it easier, to end it. Damn the inquisitor’s role he was always falling into. “Solemn” was a kind way to describe this testy stuffiness of his. He was being a purist, a fool—no girl like Kathy would put up with it forever.

“It
was
hell, darling,” he said. “I warned you I could be a solemn ass. If you love somebody, though— Hold it a second.” Miss Wales had opened the door.

“Captain Goldman’s on my line, Mr. Green,” she said. “Could you lunch with him?”

He raised a forefinger to her and spoke again to Kathy. “Dave’s here; he got in yesterday. He’s calling in about lunch. Should we—no, we’d better talk this out first.”

“Maybe it’s good
not
to hash it over any more for a while, Phil.” A brighter inflection warmed her voice. “Let’s do have Dave. I’m dying to meet him.”

He came back to the office in a bouncing energy. He went straight to the typewriter and began at once to “write forward” as he called it, instead of first rewriting parts of the last page or two—his usual priming device. For nearly two hours there was almost no break in the clack and clatter of the old-timer they’d given him. The needed word leaped forth, the sentences turned and shaped and smoothed on the lathe of his mind so quickly that his speeding middle fingers on the keys were like a secretary struggling to keep up with too-rapid dictation.

He lit a cigarette and stretched back. Then he saw another cigarette, freshly lighted also, tipped against the edge of the loaded ash tray. He smiled. It was another sign. When you wrote in this fierce concentration you didn’t know where you were, didn’t remember the gesture of a moment before, didn’t know what time was elapsing. You felt whole and good and damn lucky to be a writer. You couldn’t believe you’d ever again be caught in the sticky, faltering uncertainty, the fretfulness of doubt over progress, the ambivalence about the choice of a word, the point of attack, the transition to the next point. You were master, for the moment, of your element, and no man anywhere could contrive a life you would prefer to your own.

The door opened. He winked at Miss Wales and pointed to the sheets spread on the desk. He knew what she would say and wanted to forestall it.

“Nope, not ready for you yet.” He’d explained at the beginning that he would not be turning over each day’s rough draft for her professional typing, that indeed she’d not get any of it until the series was virtually complete. For a week she had accepted this odd ukase without remonstrance. Then she began to give daily signs that secretarial protocol was being outraged. Each time she saw new pages of manuscript, her itch to take charge of them became more apparent. She wanted to take those untidy pages and turn them into unmarred manuscript. Phil sympathized. But even if he were to turn over his draft without the title, the first sentences of the first paragraph of the first article would effectively end his role with her.

“I was born, as it happens, of an Episcopal father and an Episcopal mother, whose parents on both sides before them had been Episcopalians. But for the last eight weeks—”

No, she couldn’t see even that much for a while. While he was thinking, he automatically gathered the strewn sheets, slapped their edges against the desk, folded them in thirds, and stuck the thin wad into his pocket. He would take this new batch home, to join all the other pages. Not that he wouldn’t trust Miss Wales with his life, his cash, or sacred honor. But he would not trust her to enter the office when he was not there and resist even one quick glance at the top page. For in her place, he himself would certainly argue that anything to be published for three million readers need scarcely be treated as a secret.

“I wasn’t even going to suggest it, Mr. Green,” she said. “If you like to work that way, it’s all right.”

“Must seem like damn foolishness.”

“I just came in to tell you something about Jordan.”

He looked up, interested. “Let me just get these notes together. Only take a minute.”

Nothing Wales could say about Jordan could disturb this good feeling of satisfaction, of virtue in the old Latin sense. The meeting of Dave and Kathy had added fillip to his own joy at feeling close with her again. Never in any later stage of love could reconciliation seem so pervasive; as if each separate cell of body and brain knew harmony again. They’d had only the taxi ride to the restaurant alone, but that quick time had given her back to him. “Oh, Phil. I never pretended to be as clearheaded and strong about things as you.”

Between her and Dave, there’d been at once an easy, quick affection. She’d offered to help him search for the six-room apartment he’d need, and they’d all laughed when Dave wryly said, “One good thing about the housing shortage, Phil, nothing in it you can pick up for your series.” Over their coffee she’d impulsively said, “Come on up on Saturday, Dave, to this party my sister’s giving Phil and me.”