Point of No Return (19 page)

“Who's handsomer?” Christopher asked. “You're handsomer than Dunbarton. Look at him. Isn't Charley handsomer than Dunbarton?”

“What were you and Bea talking about?” Roger Blakesley asked. “Investments, Charley?”

“Come on and tell us everything,” Joe Swiss said. “The rumor is that you were talking about chastity.”

Charles did not like to think he was growing angry. He preferred to think that only an academic question of taste made him feel alone and aloof from all the group. Their faces looked alike, stupid, overweight and middle-aged, but at the same time it was all good clean fun.

“Slim,” he said, “give me a double Scotch, please.”

Then he saw that Roger was drinking ginger ale. He remembered that Molly had said that Roger had learned
never
to drink after dinner.

“Charley,” Mr. Forbush said, “have you got your name down for a new car?”

Charles said that he and Nancy were worrying along with the old Buick and that he felt it had better stuff in it than most of the new cars, and Joe Swiss said he was absolutely right. Mr. Swiss had a close, personal friend from Detroit who had told him a thing or two about those new cars, a thing or two that Chris DeMille and these other word artists never wrote into their advertisements. The truth was that a lot of stuff that was going into those new cars was junk, pure junk, and it was not all labor cost, though a lot of the trouble was sloppy labor. No one wanted to do a day's work any more, no matter what you paid him. Yet putting all that aside, look what was going into the new cars. All this rumor about plastics and new gadgets was turning out to be eyewash. Look at the paint jobs. Look at the so-called chromium finish that rusted overnight.

It was a conversation Charles had heard often before and everyone else must have heard it too, yet they all listened as if it were a new discovery. Charles himself sat listening without having to put his mind on it. Perhaps this was why so many people enjoyed these conversations. You knew what was coming next. It might be communism. It might be the advisability of pouring money down the European rat hole. At any rate, you did not have to think. All those ideas had worn comfortable grooves in your mind.

But then you had to buy a new car sometime, Mr. Forbush was saying, and what happened then? You went to a dealer, didn't you, and could you get a new car at the list price?—not any more than you could get a piece of porterhouse steak. They made you buy accessories, extra bumpers, radios, heaters. Everyone was listening in silent agreement. Mr. Forbush was having a hell of a time with that new car dealer. Somehow it was agreeable to hear the details of Mr. Forbush's suffering. It was a sort of universal cosmic grief and it was a long way from actual want—and in the end you did not really have to listen.

Charles found his mind moving off at a tangent. He saw Joe Swiss close his eyes and nod. He saw Chris DeMille making designs on the table with burned matches. They were all caught in a current that jostled them and interfered with normal existence. All anyone could do was to try to adjust his life within the limits of a constantly changing frame. That was the difficulty. Even the limits were continually changing.

The limits of happiness itself, Charles was thinking, were continually changing. You got somewhere and then you wanted to move somewhere else, to another, larger bar, to better, brighter company. Charles could still remember how pleased he had been when Mr. Forbush had asked him why he did not drop in sometimes and sit at the round table. It had meant that he had made good, that he was a part of a small group within a group. It had never occurred to him then that Mr. Forbush could be dull or Mr. Swiss either, or that they were older men whose thought processes had slowed until their minds ran in instinctive circles. He wondered if his own mind might be slowing also, because he did not give a continental damn what Mr. Forbush paid for a new car.

“Just wait, Bill,” Christopher DeMille was saying. “There's a Ford in your future like the Ford in your past.”

“I don't want a Ford,” Mr. Forbush was saying. “I'm not talking about a Ford.”

“It's only a figure of speech, Bill,” Christopher was answering.

“You know,” Roger Blakesley said, “in one way this talk is mighty interesting to me.”

“In what way?” Christopher DeMille asked. “It doesn't interest Joe Swiss.” Mr. Swiss was nodding, but he opened his eyes when his name was mentioned.

“It interests me,” Roger said, “because it just goes to show we're in the same boat. No matter what happens, we're still in the same boat.”

Charles moved uneasily in his hard oak armchair. Roger's voice was brisk and cheerful, full of sweet reason. Charles did not know why it should have annoyed him, except that it brought a disagreeable picture before him of himself and Roger in a small boat, each knowing that there was not room enough in it for two.

“You mean we've all got to pull together?” Charles asked.

“Now, Charley,” Roger said, “don't be bitter. If we're not in a boat, where are we?”

“I don't know where we are,” Charles said, “and neither does anybody else. But it doesn't do any good to oversimplify, Roger.”

“What?” Mr. Swiss asked, and he woke up again. “How do you mean we don't know where we are?”

Charles saw from the way they were all watching him that he had introduced a new idea at an unpropitious time. He shifted his position again in his hard oak chair. He had not intended to get into an argument with Roger.

“I think we're in a pretty good boat,” Roger said. “It rocks a little but it's the best boat in the world and I'm glad I'm aboard and I guess everyone else is.”

From the way everyone else was listening, he was sure that they must have heard something about the bank. He could think of no other reason for their fascinated, strained attention.

“That's right,” Charles said, “as long as we don't get tossed overboard. “Well, I've got to be getting along now. It's pretty late.”

He stood up and smiled and said good night and walked away through the open door of the bar and over the worn boards of the dimly lighted locker room. As he left he was aware of a silence behind him. As far as he could recall, he had said nothing unusual, and yet something must have been wrong or they would have started talking. In some way he had been a disturbing element back in the bar. They were not speaking. They were waiting carefully until his footsteps died away; and what would they be saying then? He did not know, and it did no good to tell himself that he did not care. He had not made good with his group. They were all like strangers to him. He had not fitted in.

It was now late enough so that no one would say they were leaving early, and it was early enough so that no one would say the Grays were always up late at parties. It was, in fact, the right psychological moment for going home, and Nancy was waiting for him, because, as Nancy often said, she had been a working girl herself. It did not take Nancy half a minute to get her wraps on, and she was even waiting at the steps of the club when he drove there from the parking space, instead of allowing herself to be drawn into conversation like other people's wives.

“Move over. I'll drive,” Nancy said.

All he had to do was to thank her and to feel pleased that she not only knew he was tired but cared about it. Probably she also knew that the combinations of his day had not turned out very well, but she would not ask questions. She would wait for him to tell her, because she knew he would, eventually—but then, what was there to tell? There was only a premonition. There was nothing to explain, because the disturbance was inside himself.

“These parties,” he said, “sometimes they're good and sometimes they're bad. Did you have a good time, Nance?”

“Well, yes,” she answered, “in a sort of long-term way.”

“How do you mean, a long-term way?”

“You know,” Nancy said. “It's what I've told you before. I like feeling we belong somewhere. You know it's what I've always wanted.”

“Well, so do I,” Charles said. “So does everyone.”

Nancy knew every turn on the road home, and she took each turn as unconsciously as a taxi driver.

“It isn't the same for a man,” she said. “He always belongs much more than a woman, up to a certain point. A woman just has to tag along. It's nice, when she likes tagging.”

“What did you do all day?” Charles asked.

“You always ask that. You don't have to.”

“I know I don't have to,” Charles said. “I just want to know.”

There was a slight pause before she answered.

“I've had a good day, but you wouldn't understand why. It's partly being a woman. I took the car to the Acme place and got the choke fixed. Do you notice the engine goes better?”

“That's right,” Charles said. “I notice now.”

“Then I went to the A & P and bought some corned beef. Then I left Bill's shoes at that place below the drugstore, that new Italian place.”

“I wonder why Italians always like to repair shoes,” Charles said.

“Then I left that book of yours at the lending library. Then I bought some soap. I still keep buying soap whenever I see it. Then I came back and did the breakfast dishes. Then the man came to fix the unit in the stove, and while he was doing it the men from Hanson's came to wax the floor in the living room. I had to be there to see that they put everything back right. Then I went upstairs and made the beds and counted the laundry. Then I went over and had lunch with Polly Martin and helped her run up some new curtains, because she's going to lend me her sewing machine. I don't know why Polly wants everything in chintz—curtains, dresses, everything. Then I came back and worked on the bills.”

“How were they?”

“They were terrible. There were two mistakes again on the Thaxter bill, always plus mistakes, never minus. I called him up about it, and then Bill and I glued the back of your old chair in the hall, and then I read to Evelyn for a while.”

“What did you read her?” Charles asked.

“You'd be surprised. I read her Plutarch. Then there was their supper, and the Martins called, and we all went over to the club. That's all. I knew it wouldn't sound like much if I tried to tell it, but it was a very nice day.”

“I'm glad you liked it,” Charles said, “but I don't see why.”

They had passed through the gates of Sycamore Park, up the blue gravel of their own short drive, and the car had stopped.

“I'll tell you why,” Nancy said. “Because I'm married to a damn nice man. That's the only possible reason I can think of. Now get out and open the garage door and don't jerk at it.”

That door had never worked well in wet weather. Charles opened it carefully and stood holding it so that it would not swing to while Nancy drove the car inside, close to the garden tools, and shut off the lights. Then she was beside him in the dark.

“And now you can give me a kiss,” she said.

9

A Fitting Place for the Enshrinement of Ancestral Relics

—
MALCOLM BRYANT

Only the light at the top of the stairs was lighted, but the switch was just beside the door. There was a smell of fresh floor wax from the living room, and a moist smell in the dining room from Nancy's potted plants.

“Charley,” Nancy said, “isn't it a lovely house?”

“Yes, it's a swell house,” Charles said. Nancy had taken off her evening wrap and was straightening her hair by the mirror.

“I know it's got outs about it,” Nancy said, “but don't forget one thing. You and I did this by ourselves, without any so-and-so to help us. I suppose you think it's a corny thing to say, but that's why it's a nice house.”

Of course, the appearance of any house depended on one's state of mind, and now he was feeling more cheerful.

“And now come in and look at the living room floor,” Nancy said. “Do you want a glass of milk before you go to bed?” The last thing he wanted was a glass of milk, but then Nancy had known that he had taken a drink after dinner.

The living room was always too neat for him ever to feel at home in it. The logs in the fireplace had a little paper fan beneath them, ready for a match, but the fire was too beautifully constructed for him to want to disturb the logs by lighting them, especially so late in the evening. Everything was dusted, every ornament on the tables was exactly where it should be. The picture of the ship above the mantelpiece, which had come from Clyde, had been cleaned and was bright with new varnish.

“I forgot to tell you,” Nancy said, “it came back today from Jacobson's.”

“They did a good job on it, didn't they?” Charles said, and he thought of that page in
Yankee Persepolis
about the lower-upper family. The picture had hung in a shabbier room in Clyde. Here it was stiffly formal, the central theme of a self-conscious decorative scheme.

“We ought to use this room more, shouldn't we?” Nancy said. “I wonder why we don't.”

“That's easy,” Charles said. “Because we're afraid of it.”

“Well, let's not be afraid of it,” Nancy said, and she lighted a cigarette. “Charley, take off your coat and sit down on the sofa.” Nancy kicked off her slippers. “Don't say we're afraid of this room. I don't like it.”

“Why not?” Charles asked.

“Because I don't like being afraid.”

She looked as though she were startled by her last words. She had a blank, embarrassed, provoked expression and she caught herself up quickly before he had a chance to answer.

“I don't mean that I'm afraid of anything. I only mean I don't like the idea. You know what I mean.”

Every word only made a top-heavy structure destined eventually for a clumsy fall. It was like the match game so popular before the war, that late evening pastime in which you laid a match over the mouth of the bottle and then your opponent laid one upon it, and so it went until there was a tower of matches rising in the air. The loser was the one who put on the last match and tipped it over. Nancy had put on the last match. The room was uncomfortable and strange in an entirely new way; and he seemed to see it, and Nancy too, through a lens that had suddenly come into focus. Charles found himself passing his hand over the stuff on the sofa, half aware of its softness and of its light color, which, Nancy had said, would show every spot, though admittedly it was just the right shade. Now that the truth was there, now that the thing was there in the living room—the thing of which neither of them had spoken—it was a relief, in a way.