The Plot (9 page)

“You mean you're his heir?”

“I'm his literary heir. Oh, yes, I'm entitled, after his death, to any accruements from his body of work—which will mean, unless this autobiography is written, practically nothing. Beans. Jamey has milked just about every cent from every thing he's done. His making me his literary heir was his idea of a good joke on me.”

“That's kind of a dirty joke, Ethel.”

“It isn't the first, is it? It frightens me, Louis, because what will I do when Jamey dies? Oh, I have my savings, of course, but how long will they last? I'm not seventy-eight. I hope to live a long time after Jamey dies. I'm frightened that he's broken my spirit, Louis. You've seen what I've had to take. I'm afraid, having taken it for so long, I can't dish it out any more. Can I fight my way into another job? Can I satisfy any employer who wants me for something besides being the butt of his jokes?”

Louis could see that. “Poor Ethel.”

“Poor Ethel the day his will is read! I'm his literary heir, but Miss Alex. Wilcoxen inherits everything else.”

“Who is Miss Alex Wilcoxen?”

“Hasn't he mentioned Alex to you yet? His spiritual daughter, let's say? No, he wouldn't want you to know about her, you might be intrigued with the sound of her. She's the granddaughter of Jamey's dead friend who owned this place. The Wilcoxens built the plantation house and always owned it until Jamey took over, six years ago. It was a noble gesture, you see. Jamey buys the place, pays good money for it, keeps it up, builds the little house, and then turns it all back to his darling Alex. The beautiful tender flower of Southern aristocracy gets her ancestral estates back, with Jamey's Northern money to run it. No, he wouldn't play any joke on Alex. When you see her you'll know why. Ethel works like a dog, Alex smiles. Ethel gets the kicks, Alex gets everything else.”

Pity for Ethel, shame for what was being done to her, filled up, welled up in Louis from the spring that was always primed because of his own mother, his own father. This was not his mother, he knew that. He was aware that his mother could never have done what Ethel was suggesting, that his mother suffered and never retaliated, but he was helpless before this transference by which, each time he pitied Ethel, she became his mother and gratuitously, automatically, received his filial affection. In the light of this transference, he saw Ethel's scheme more kindly. It was, he saw, her only way to take care of herself. She had been flung off; she must look after herself. Her scheme would help her; it would not hurt Jamey.

Louis knew that two wrongs do not make a right, but in this instance it was two rights—and surely they did not make a wrong? The first right was Ethel's need; the second right was his completely innocent impulse to write this book, his feeling that—if Jamey didn't—he was the one to write it. Surely, if by substituting the pronoun “I” for the pronoun “he,” he could provide two hundred and fifty thousand dollars instead of one thousand, wouldn't he be a fool not to do it? “How could it hurt Jamey?” he asked himself, and did not answer it, substituting, “It can't hurt Jamey.” It couldn't hurt Jamey because Jamey, he told himself, would be dead. Dead. Jamey would be dead.

“Well, Louis? Well? Are you going to kick Ethel, too?”

“I don't know what I'm going to do; it will depend on Jamey. I'm going to ask Jamey whether he intends to do his autobiography.”

“I get it. You're going to give him a chance. Is he giving you a chance?”

“Nevertheless.”

“How many chances should he have? Don't you think I know you wrote a story of your own and gave him a chance with that?”

He had brought his story to Jamey. Jamey said, “What is it, dear boy? Be so good as to hand me that lap robe over there. Charlestonians are more prejudiced about their climate than Floridians. Thank you, dear boy.”

Louis had spread the robe over Jamey's withered legs. “Is this mink, Jamey?”

“Why not?” He had run his palm over the soft fur and smiled.

Louis had thought how much he wished he could give a thing like that to his mother. In his story, the woman lay on the thin lumpy mattress shivering under brown hairy blankets that gave weight without warmth. He said, “I have never touched mink before, that's all.”

“Delicious, isn't it? Now, read, please.”

“Instead of Spinoza, Jamey, I'd like to read you something else.”

“I assure you I plan our reading schedule——” He had opened his eyes and studied Louis' expression. “Ah, I understand, now! You wanted to read me something of your own.” He had chuckled. “If you could see your
face
, dear boy!”

Ethel broke into Louis' abstraction. “What did Jamey say when you read him your story? Did he give you a helping hand?”

Louis said, “No, he didn't.”

Jamey had commented, “Very nice.”

“Really? No kidding, Jamey?”

“Really. Now tear it up, dear boy.”

He had felt that Jamey wanted to hurt him, that he wanted the story destroyed because he had not been Jamey's spiritual son but Jamey's rival. Jamey had smiled benignly.

“Tear it up, dear boy! I would have all young writers tear up their first twenty stories.”

“You don't say? And what ‘would you have' young writers do while they are writing and tearing up?”

“Struggle. ‘Struggling young writers'—it's a cliché, dear boy! I would have them struggle.”

A struggle was a fight. Louis had thought: I can struggle. I can fight. The palms of his hands had been wet. He had dirtied the story manuscript with his sweating palms.

Ethel broke into his abstraction. “Chance number one was apparently turned down cold. So you stayed up all night and revised that story and brought it to him again. I happen to know you did, Louis, and what happened then?”

Jamey had tapped his mouth, pursed his lips, tapped his mouth, and then had spoken. “Better, better! Now, once again, dear boy;
encore une fois
.”

He had told Jamey he had no time for
encore une fois
. He had asked Jamey to send the story to a magazine with a personal note.

Jamey had tapped the side of his nose, shaking his head. “You must not be successful yet, dear boy. No.”

“Jamey, you don't understand why I must have some money now.”

“I don't wish to go into that.”

“I don't wish to go into that!” I don't wish to go into her pain, into her lips bitten so that when he had pressed his handkerchief to his mother's mouth, it had come away red. His sweating palms had clenched, and he had found himself holding them back, preventing himself from making the thin pale lips opposite stream blood also. He had said, “The fact that you don't wish to go into it doesn't change it.”

“I realize that, Louis.”

“You don't realize anything!”

Jamey held up his hand. “It is you who have not realized. This story is about your mother. You have not
realized
her. You believe that I have not permitted you to talk about your mother because her illness is unpleasant, but it is not only her illness that is unpleasant. I have been neglecting my duty to you, Louis. I should have talked about it.”

“I don't want to make conversation about my mother; that's not the idea.”

Jamey had ignored him. “Let me make you a wager, Louis. If I gave you money now and you went back to your mother with it, she would not leave your father.”

“You're nuts. You're nuts.”

“No. I am Jamey Vaughn. I never try to make people different from what they are. I do not try to change them. I write them. You have not written your mother; you have not realized her. You have not said of your mother that here is a woman who chooses to live with a drunkard who beats her—and who looks like you, Louis. You told me that: ‘My father is a drunkard, but a good-looking man.' Remember? You have not realized that your mother has been living the life she chose, dreadful as it was. If she wanted to change it, she could have changed it. If she did not want to be with your father now, she would not be with him. You have not accepted what you saw; your story did not stem from reality.”

Louis had been furious, incoherent. He had threatened the old man, but Jamey had gone on as if nothing could stop him. His voice had been indomitable. “That is one phase of the matter. There is another. You must learn whether this woman who is your mother actually enjoys the rivalry between her two beautiful men or whether it distresses her. If you find she enjoys it, then go back to her. If you find that she does not enjoy it and you want to make her happy, stay with Jamey and learn from Jamey.”

He had talked without benefit of “dear boy,” of facial contortion, or fanciful gesture, and Louis, staring at him, saw for the first time the Vaughn he had seen before he came here, the great writer, the man whose honesty had shocked two generations.

“I may talk to you this way, Louis, because I have never let down the hurdles of the gate so that I might jump more easily. It is my right, therefore, not to let them down for you, but if you want me to, I can help you, Louis. If you let me, I will help you as much as I can in the little time there is left.” For a little while, that had shaken Louis, that “little time,” but what did it mean, when you came right down to it? Jamey was an old man; all old men haven't much time. And, when you came right down to it, what did Jamey's help consist of: talk. Talk was cheap.

Ethel said, “Louis, last night when we were playing piquet, his mind wasn't on the game at all. He kept looking at you while you were reading. I saw how he looked at you, eating you up, as if he owned you, as if you were his, body and soul.”

Louis said, “He may think so, but he doesn't own me.” He knew what Ethel was trying to do. “Before I make up my mind, I intend to ask him whether he's going to do that autobiography.”

“Third chance?”

“They always get three chances in fairy tales, don't they?” And if they're three-time losers, what happens then? If Jamey passes up the third chance, what happens then?

Ethel, seeing Louis' somber face, changed the subject. “Talking of fairy tales, I'll lay you ten to one our little fairy-tale heroine will arrive any minute now.”

“Heroine? Oh, the heiress?”

“Alex, yes. By now, Maum Cloe will have sent for Alex, don't worry.”

“Because I'm here? Because Jamey wouldn't listen to Maum Cloe's warnings about me?”

“Don't be naïve, Louis. Why should the old witch worry over Jamey? No, it's because of Alex. Maum Cloe wants her beautiful Alex to get everything Jamey has; with you hanging around she must be getting nervous.”

Louis said, “I wish I had second sight.”

“She hasn't second sight, Louis. Maum Cloe has two spies to give her first sight. She's put a couple of spokes in my wheel, you know. Who do you think saw to it that Jamey discovered I don't live like a nun here? She knew it would offend Jamey when he discovered I wanted to do anything but worship him, so when her spies informed her that I—uh—go to town occasionally, she saw to it that Jamey knew, too.”

“You go to town? You——”

“Do I surprise you?” She thought of how much she could surprise Louis. She thought she had better not, and composed herself.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Every morning, at six o'clock, Jamey in his white monk's robe, the hood up over his head extending well over his face so that his rather high, squeaky voice seemed to come out of a well, stepped into his motor-propelled wheel chair, rolled down the ramp onto the path, and drove himself down the gentle curves to the particular spots he thought most beautiful. The day after Ethel had showed Louis the letter from Dwight Waterbury was humid, a heavy mist was just rising, and the Spanish moss, wreathed in mist, was even more ghostlike than usual; the palmettos seemed crowned by wigs of gray, frowzled hair. Louis, asking permission to come along, had received it.

Ethel saw the two of them returning from the river. Jamey, in the wheel chair, rolled up the ramp into the house and disappeared; Louis stayed outside the house. He moved about the grounds in a peculiarly blind way that showed Ethel that something had disturbed him. She came up to him and had to touch his arm so that he would be aware of her presence. She asked him whether he had taken the opportunity to ask Jamey about the autobiography. Louis nodded.

“He isn't going to write it himself, Ethel.” Jamey had asked him why he was up so early. Was he suspicious because Louis wasn't in the habit of accompanying him on his early-morning walks?

Jamey had said, “Come along then, my ten-o'clock scholar, but follow in back of my chair. I must be the first to deflower the virginity of the day.”

Old goat. “Certainly, Jamey.”

“You don't grudge Jamey his teeny-weeny residual virility? Ah, Louis, you must be a more generous rival! You have so much. I have so little.”

Rival, that's rich, that's rich. “I don't begrudge you anything.”

“Since you came here, Louis——”

“Look at the mist in the palmettos, Jamey.”

“Oh, but you do begrudge me my pleasure in you, dear boy! Naughty.” When he had come to the river, when the chair had come to the very edge, Jamey had put his brakes on and had sat up straighter. Louis had moved to his side, but he could not see the sharp little profile because it had been hidden under the white wool hood. Louis had not been able to see the bright old eyes, brighter for their wrinkled lids, for the lines under them, for their setting in the parched face in which they were the only freshness. He had wondered what the old man was doing, sitting so motionless. He had moved and bent, then discovered that Jamey's eyes were closed. “Are you asleep, Jamey?”

“Communing. ‘My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, is perennial and constant.'”