I looked down over her shoulder at it. It was in a familiar hand. “Brad?” I asked. That meant Brad Rowan, Jr. He was in his first year at college and was gone just long enough for his letters to come once a week instead of every day.
She nodded.
I walked around the table to my place and sat down. “What’s he say?” I asked, lifting my glass of orange juice.
Her grey eyes looked up at me clearly from the letter. “He got through his exams with an eighty average. Maths was the only thing that gave him any trouble.”
I grinned at her. “That’s nothing to worry about. That would have bothered me too, if I had gone to college.” I finished the orange juice just as Sally, our maid, brought in my bacon and eggs.
Two things I especially liked. Eggs for breakfast and showers in the morning. Both were luxuries I hadn’t had when I was a kid. My old man pushed a hack in New York City for a living; he still did, despite his sixty-four years. We’d never had very much. The only thing he had let me do for him was buy him his own cab. He was a peculiar old guy in many ways. Wouldn’t come to live with us after Mamma passed away. “Wouldn’t feel right, away from the Third Avenue el,” he said.
It was more than that, though. He didn’t want to move away from Mamma. There would always be something of her around in that long railroad flat on Third Avenue. I knew how he felt, so we let it go at that.
“What else did the kid have to say?” I asked. Somehow I thought college boys were always supposed to be writing home for dough and I was secretly disappointed that Brad had never asked for any extra.
Now her eyes were troubled when she looked at me. She tapped the letter with a finger as she spoke. “At the bottom he said he was trying to shake a cold that he had for over a week since the exams but that he couldn’t seem to get rid of the cough.” Her voice was worried.
I smiled at her. “He’ll be okay,” I reassured her. “Write and tell him to go to a doctor out there.” “He won’t do it, Brad,” she protested. “You know how he is.”
“Sure,” I answered between mouthfuls. “All kids are like that. But a cold is nothing. He’ll shake it anyway. He’s a husky kid.”
Just then Jeanie came into the breakfast nook. As usual she was in a hurry. “You finished breakfast yet, Dad?” she asked.
I looked at her, smiling. Jeanie was my girl. She was the youngest. She was just like her mother, only spoiled. “Where’s the fire?” I asked. “I gotta have my coffee.”
“But, Dad, I’ll be late for school!” she protested.
I looked at her fondly. She was spoiled as hell and I’d done it all myself. “The buses were running all morning,” I told her. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”
She put her hand on my arm and kissed my cheek. There’s something about the kiss a sixteen-year- old gives her father. Sells like nothing else in the world. “But, gee, Dad,” she said, “you know how I like to go down to school with you.”
I grinned even though I knew she was conning me. I couldn’t help it. I liked it. “The only reason you wait for me is because I let you drive down,” I kidded her.
“Don’t forget that I like your new convertible too, Dad,” she sassed me, her brown eyes laughing. I looked over at Marge. She was watching us with a quiet smile on her lips. She knew what was
going on. “What am I gonna do with this girl?” I asked in pretended helplessness.
The quiet smile was still on her lips as she answered. “Too late to do what you should have done,” she laughed. “Now you might as well take her down.”
I emptied my coffee cup and got to my feet. “Okay,” I said.
Jean grinned up at me. “I’ll get your hat and coat, Dad.” I could hear her running out into the foyer. “Coming home early to-night, Brad?”
I turned back to Marge. “I dunno yet,” I answered. “I may get stuck with Chris on that Steel Institute deal, but I’m sure as hell gonna try.”
She got up and walked around the table towards me. I bent and kissed her cheek. It was soft and smooth. She turned her lips towards me. I kissed them. They tasted good.
“Don’t work too hard, mister,” she smiled softly.
“I won’t, ma’am,” I said. I heard the horn blowing out in front of the house. Jean had pulled the car out already. I turned and started for the door. Suddenly I stopped and looked back at her.
She was smiling after me.
I looked at her for a moment, and then I smiled. “You know, ma’am,” I said quickly, “if I were twenty years younger, I might marry up with you.”
OCTOBER was dying all around me as I went down the walk towards the car. I was almost sorry to see it going. It was my time of year. Some like it green, but I’d take the red and brown and gold of early fall any time. The colours did something for me. It made me feel rich, warm and alive.
I stopped beside the car and stared at Jeanie. She was smiling at me. “What are you doing with the top down?” I asked her, picking my topcoat up from the seat beside her and shrugging myself into it.
“Gee, Dad,” she protested quickly. “What’s a convertible if you don’t put the top down?”
“But, honey,” I said, clambering into the seat beside her. “It’s fall; the summer’s gone already.”
She put the car into gear and we were rolling down the driveway before she answered. Then her tone was matter-of-fact. It had all the patient tolerance of the very young for the very old. “Don’t be an old fuddy-duddy, Dad,” she said plainly.
I almost smiled to myself at that. I looked over at her. She was driving with that curious concentration of hers. I saw the pink tip of her tongue peeping out from her mouth as she swung out of the driveway into the street. The curve of the driveway always made her do that.
I felt the car pick up speed as she pressed down on the accelerator. I glanced over at the speedometer. We were hitting forty in less than a block and the needle was still climbing. “Use a light foot, honey,” I cautioned.
Her eyes glanced away from the road at me for a moment. They told me more than anything she could say. I even began to feel old. I shut up guiltily and looked at the road ahead.
In a few seconds I began to feel better. She was right. What good was a convertible if the top wasn’t down? There’s something about riding down a country road in the early fall with the open sky above you and the flaming colours all around.
Her voice took me by surprise. “What are you getting Mother for your anniversary, Dad?”
I looked at her. Her eyes were still on the road. I stumbled a little over my answer. I hadn’t thought about it. “I don’t know,” I confessed.
Her eyes flashed over me quickly. “Don’t you think you’d better decide?” she said practically in that way women have when talking about gifts. “It’s less than four weeks away.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I better think of something.” I had an idea. “Maybe you know what she’d like?”
She shook her head. “Uh-uh, not me. That’s your headache. I was just wondering.”
“What made you wonder?” I asked, suddenly curious about what went on in that pretty little head.
She stopped the car for a traffic light and looked over at me. “No special reason,” she smiled slowly. “I was just wondering if you were going to come home with the usual last-minute bouquet.”
I could feel my face flush. I hadn’t realized those young eyes could see so much. “I never really know what to get her.”
Her eyes were on my face. “You have absolutely no imagination, have you, Dad?” she asked.
I began to feel flustered. “Wait a minute, Jeanie,” I said. “I’m a pretty busy guy. I can’t think of everything. Besides, your Mother has everything she wants. What else can I get her?”
She put the car into gear again and we began to roll. “Sure, Dad,” she said, a certain dryness in her tone. “Mother has everything she wants. A new refrigerator, stove, washing machine.” Her eyes swung back to me. “Did you ever think of getting her something for herself? Something not quite so useful, but that she would get a kick out of having?”
I was beginning to feel desperate. She had something up her sleeve. “Like what, for instance?” “A mink coat, for instance,” she said quickly, her eyes on the road ahead.
I stared at her. “Is that what she wants?” I asked almost incredulously. “She always said she didn’t want a mink coat.”
“Daddy, you’re such a dope. What woman wouldn’t like a mink coat, no matter what they say?” She was laughing at me now. “Honest, I don’t know what Mother saw in you. You’re not the least bit romantic.”
In spite of myself I began to smile. For a moment I felt like asking her if she still thought the stork had brought her, but you just can’t talk like that to a sixteen-year-old who knows everything, even if she is your daughter. I spoke seriously. “You think I ought to get her a mink coat?”
She nodded her head as she came to a stop across the way from the school. “Then I’ll do it,” I said.
“You’re not really so bad, Dad,” she said, leaning against the door as she closed it.
I slid over behind the wheel and put my face very close to her. “Thanks,” I said solemnly. She kissed my cheek quickly. “Bye now, Dad.”
I got into the office about eleven. I was feeling pretty good. Don had told me that he would really do something special for her. He had her measurements from the Persian she had ordered last summer. I was sure he’d do all right. He’d better. Sixty-five hundred clams for a mink coat didn’t come off trees.
Mickey looked up at me as I came in. “Where have you been, boss?” she asked, taking my hat and coat. “Paul Remey’s been calling you from Washington all morning.”
“Shopping,” I said. I walked into my office. She followed me. I turned around. “What’s he want?” “He didn’t say,” she answered. “Only that he had to speak to you right away.”
“Call him back then,” I told her, sitting down behind my desk. The door closed behind her as I wondered what Paul wanted. I hoped everything was all right with him. You could never tell in a political job, though, no matter how good you were—even if you were a special Presidential assistant as Paul was.
I really liked the guy. If it weren’t for him I would never be where I was to-day. In a way he was responsible for it. It went all the way back to the early days of the war.
I had been enthusiastically rejected by all branches of the armed services and finally wound up in the publicity division of the War Production Board. That’s where I first met Paul. He was the chief in charge of a section devoted to building up the scrap drive and I was assigned to his office.
It was one of those things. Two guys cotton to each other right away. He had been a very successful businessman out West and sold out his business to come to Washington for a dollar a year. I had been working for a picture company and came to Washington because I heard the pickings were good and I had just been canned by the outfit I worked for.
He did a hell of a job, and he thought I did too. When the war ended he called me into his office. “What’re you going to do now, Brad?” he asked.
I remember shrugging my shoulders. “Look for a job, I guess,” I had answered. “Did you ever think about going into business for yourself?” he had asked.
I’d shrugged. “That’s a big-time operation,” I’d replied. “I can’t afford it. I ain’t got the dough.”
“I don’t mean that,” he had said. “I mean public relations. I happen to know a few businessmen who might be interested in the kind of help you can give them. You’d need only a small place to get started.”
I had looked down across his desk at him. “This is a press agent’s pipe dream,” I had said, sliding into the chair opposite him. “But keep on talking to me. Don’t stop.”
That was the beginning. It led to a small one-room office with Mickey, my secretary, then to the large offices we had now with more than twenty-five people working. Paul had many friends, and his friends had many friends.
The phone buzzer rang and I reached for the receiver. Mickey’s voice was in my ear. “Mr.
Remey’s on the phone, Brad.”
I pressed down the through button. “Hello, Paul,” I said. “How’re things?”
I could hear Paul’s warm chuckle, and then his favourite profanity. “They’ll never improve, Brad,” he finished.
“Don’t give up hope, boss,” I assured him. “You never can tell.”
He laughed again, then his voice came through the phone seriously. “I was wondering if you could do me a favour, Brad?”
“Anything, Paul,” I answered. “Just ask me.”
“It’s one of those charity things of Edith’s again,” he said.
Edith was his wife. A sweet woman, but she’d got a taste of the D.C. whirlpool and it went to her head. I had helped out on some of her projects before. It was one of those things you had to do but I didn’t mind as long as it was for Paul. He did enough for me. “Sure, Paul,” I said quickly. “I’ll be glad to. Just shoot me the dope.”
“I don’t know very much about it, Brad,” he answered. “All I know is that Edith told me to be sure and call you and tell you that a Mrs. Hortense E. Schuyler will be in to see you this afternoon and give you all the information,”
“Okay, Paul,” I said, scribbling down the name. “I’ll take care of things.”
“And Brad,” Paul said, “Edith cautioned me to tell you to be especially nice to the girl. She says it means a lot to her.”
I liked the way Edith used the word girl. Edith was in her middle fifties, and all her friends were girls to her. “Tell Edith not to worry,” I said. “I’ll give her the A treatment.”
He laughed. “Thanks, Brad. You know what these things mean to Edith.” “I know,” I answered. “You can count on me.”
We spoke a few more words and I hung up the phone. I looked down at the scratch paper. Hortense
E. Schuyler. All those dames in Washington had names like that. And they looked like it too. I pressed the buzzer.
Mickey came into the office, her pad and pencil in hand. “Let’s go to work,” I said. “You’ve wasted enough time around here this morning.”
IT was about four-thirty in the afternoon and Chris and I were just getting down to cost factors on institutional steel copy when the intercom’s buzz called me from the wall board. I walked quickly to my desk and flipped the switch.
“No calls, Mickey,” I said, annoyance in my voice. “I told you before.” I closed the switch and walked back to the wall-board. “So gimme the figures, Chris.”