Never Love a Stranger (17 page)

“Hello, Frankie,” he said. “Coming back?” “Yes,” I said.

He didn’t answer, just stood there watching a few minutes and then went out.

I opened up the dresser drawers and unpacked the suitcase. I then hung my suits in the closet and put my shoes there. In a few minutes I was finished. I snapped the bag shut and said to my uncle: “I’ll take it back home.”

“No,” he said, “keep it. You’ll need it when you come out to join us.”

We started back downstairs to Brother Bernhard’s office. My uncle had to sign some papers. He signed them and then we got up to go. He shook hands with Brother Bernhard.

“Don’t worry about Frankie, Mr. Cain,” Brother Bernhard said. “We’ll look after him all right.”

“I know you will,” my uncle said. “Frankie will be here tomorrow afternoon. He’s going to see us off at the train first and then he’ll come here.”

“What time?” asked Brother Bernhard.

“About three o’clock,” Uncle Morris said. “We leave about one.”

“I’ll expect him then. Well, sir, I hope you’ll be feeling better soon.” They shook hands again.

“I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, Francis,” Brother Bernhard said to me. “Yes, sir,” I said.

We left the room. We walked out, down the stairs, through the gymnasium, and into the street. Some kids were playing basketball in the gym. The old dump hadn’t changed a

bit.

We drove home just as silently as we had come.

It was the gloomiest evening we had ever spent at home. We went to bed early as we had to be up early.

In the morning the movers came. By ten-thirty the apartment was empty, and we all went down for breakfast. The only things they were taking with them were two valises for necessary changes. I went to Grand Central with them. There the train came in a little before twelve. We took the things aboard. It seemed as if only a few minutes had passed, but it was time for me to get off the train.

I kissed the little girls good-bye and gave them each a small box of candy I had bought for them.

“I’ll miss you, Frankie,” Irene, the older one, said, with arms around my neck.

“I’ll miss you, too,” I said, rumpling her hair with my hand. I turned to my uncle and held out my hand. We shook. “Good-bye, uncle. Good luck. I hope you feel better.”

He smiled, “So long, Frankie. Be a good boy. It won’t be too long.”

My aunt was next. She put her arms around me and kissed me. She was crying. “I wish you were coming with us, Frankie,” she said.

“I do, too,” I said. I felt like crying myself, but didn’t because I didn’t want them to feel bad. “Thanks for everything.”

“Oh! Frankie! Frankie!” she said, kissing me again, “don’t thank us. We love you and want you with us. I’ll miss you terribly.”

I didn’t know what to say. Just then the porter tapped me on the shoulder. “You’d better be getting off, sir. We’s about to start any minute.”

I nodded to him. My aunt let me go. I stood up and looked around at them. “Well,” I said, “so long.” I could feel the tears coming into my eyes, so I turned and got off the train.

I heard their good-byes in my ears as I walked down the platform to where their window was and waved at them. The Kids had their faces pressed against the glass. My uncle was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear through the closed window. The train started. My uncle opened the window. I ran along with it.

“Don’t worry, Frankie,” he shouted, “it won’t be so long.”

I was running fast by now to keep up with them. “No, it won’t,” I called back. “It won’t.

It won’t.”

I had reached the end of the platform, the train going into the tube. The last picture I had of them was waving at me and calling: “Good-bye, good-bye.” I was out of breath. For a minute I stood at the end of the platform, and then I turned and started back. I had never felt so alone in my life.

I got out into the bright sunlight and walked slowly across town. I reached the orphanage. For a little while I stood outside looking in. I shut my eyes and remembered my aunt kissing me good night. I remembered the pleasant little sounds and smells of home. The warming, somehow lovely, evenings we had spent together—me doing my homework, Uncle Morris reading the paper, Aunt Bertha marching the kids in to bed.

I looked again at the orphanage—the bleak, grey, drab building, the old, brown, brick

school next to it, the church on the corner, the hospital across the street. I remembered the gong calling us for meals, the carefully planned regularity of all our smallest actions, the preaching, lecturing, confining regulations. I hated the place. I wouldn’t go back. I wouldn’t.

I looked at my watch. It was two o’clock. I ran over to the bank. I took out my bank book. I went over to the stand and made out a withdrawal slip for two hundred dollars. I went over to the desk and got my money.

I took the subway down to Grand Central. I was going to take the next train to Tucson. As I got near the ticket window I thought that was the first place they would look for me. I was running away. I didn’t know where to go. I looked up at a sign. It said “Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.” There was a picture of a big, moon-faced, coloured porter grinning next to the words. I went over to the list of trains going out. There was a train going to Baltimore. It left at three-ten. I went over to the ticket window.

“Give me a ticket to Baltimore on the three-ten train,” I said.

Interlude

JANET

J
ANET
had listened to Martin speak through half-closed eyes. The soft, yellow glow of the candlelight cast quiet shadows on his face, and her mind was playing strange tricks upon her. The room had faded from her mind, and all the things she now held dear were yet to come.

It was Monday at school. She had just come into the building when a messenger was sent up to fetch her to Mrs. Scott’s office. She went downstairs wondering why she had been sent for. It might have been something she had forgotten to do. There was no one in the outer office, so she went directly inside.

Mrs. Scott was sitting at her desk. A strange man—a man she didn’t know—was seated in front of Mrs. Scott, and Marty and Jerry were standing near them. They looked up as she entered the room. Marty’s face was strained and white, and Jerry had a worried look about him.

“Brother Bernhard,” Mrs. Scott said, rising to her feet, “this is Janet Lindell, the young lady I was telling you about.” She turned and spoke directly to Janet. “Brother Bernhard is from St. Thérèse Orphanage.”

Janet smiled politely. “How do you do?”

Brother Bernhard got to his feet. He was a tall man, broad, with bushy, greyish black hair and eyebrows. His voice was deep and gruff. He spoke directly, a trifle sharply. “Ha’e ye seen or heard from Francis o’er the week-end?”

“Why, no,” she answered, surprised at the question. “Is anything the matter?”

Brother Bernhard sank to his seat dejectedly. Mrs. Scott answered her question. “Francis has apparently run away. As you know, he was to stay at the orphanage beginning Saturday. Saturday morning he accompanied his aunt and uncle to the station to see them off, and didn’t come back.”

She was bewildered. “Maybe he went with them,” she suggested.

Brother Bernhard shook his head. “We sent a telegraph to his uncle, and he isn’t with them.” His voice had a hurt note in it.

“Didn’t he say anything to any of you?” Mrs. Scott appealed to all of them. “Did he ever talk about going away, where he’d like to go?”

They didn’t answer. They had no answer. Suddenly Janet sat in a chair and began to weep.

Jerry came over to her. “Don’t cry, Janet. He’ll probably show up later. You know how he is—independent. Maybe there’s something he wants to work out by himself.”

“But he may be hurt or sick and no one knows who he is,” she sobbed.

Jerry’s hand found hers and held it tightly. “Don’t worry, Janet. He’ll be all right. I know him.”

She looked up through her tears at him. “Do you really think so?”

He nodded gravely. She saw something in his face and eyes that caused her to look at him again. She saw his brow was wrinkled with worry. But it wasn’t for Francis, it was for her. She saw his eyes were deep with pity. But it wasn’t for Francis, it was for her. She saw his face wrinkled with a new look of concern. She caught her breath sharply.

This was the first time she knew how Jerry felt about her. She began to weep again— sorry for Jerry, for Francis, for herself.

The room came back into focus. Martin was still talking, and, oddly enough, while her mind had been far away, she had heard and retained every word he had spoken. Martin took another drink of wine and continued to speak, and her mind went spinning off on another tangent.

She and Jerry had naturally drifted together after that. They never spoke very much about Francis after a while until that night, a few days before she and Jerry were married. They had had dinner at Jerry’s home with his parents. Jerry had just been admitted to the bar and was going to work in a few weeks at the district attorney’s office. They were sitting in front of the large open fireplace in the living-room, watching the logs crackle and blaze and throw off tiny little sparks. A long time had gone by and they hadn’t spoken

a word, just sat there, shoulders touching, fingers intertwined. “What are you thinking about, darling?” Jerry asked quietly.

She turned and looked at him gravely. The light from the fire was dancing on his face. “Nothing, I guess.”

He smiled. “You were so quiet I thought you had forgotten I was with you.”

“Jerry,” she half laughed, “how could you? It’s just that—that the day after tomorrow we’ll be married, and I guess a girl has a right to look back at her youth and say good-bye to it before she settles down into married life.”

“You’re sure, aren’t you?” he asked, a worried look on his face. “You haven’t any doubts?”

“Jerry, darling,” she leaned towards him and kissed him. “Silly! Of course I haven’t any doubts. I love you. I’m just a little moody, I guess.”

He put his arm around her shoulder and leaned her head on him. “Forgive me, sweet. I’m just being foolish. I love you so much I wouldn’t want you to be unhappy. Even if it meant….”

“Jerry, stop talking like that. I love you, we’re going to be married at St. Patrick’s the day after tomorrow at high noon, and we’re going to live happily ever after just like it says in fairy tales and movies.” She put her finger on his lips.

He bit it gently. “I was just thinking about Frankie. Funny, isn’t it? How your mind works, I mean.” He turned his head and looked at her. “You don’t see a fellow for years and suddenly he pops up in your mind as real as life. Once when I was away at school, a sailor came to the door and asked Robert if I was at home. Robert told him I wasn’t. I

didn’t know who it was; I didn’t know any sailors. Then I thought about it, and the more I thought about it the more I was convinced it was Frankie. But I didn’t say anything about it to anyone, not even Marty or you, because I was afraid—afraid if he came back I would lose you.”

Inside her, her heart was doing strange tricks. She felt a funny pain around it, and it suddenly began to beat very quickly. She spoke quietly, her voice ringing reproachfully in his ears. “Jerry, how could you do that! You know how worried his people were about him. I love you, not Frankie. What I felt for Frankie was puppy love, kid stuff, not at all the way I feel about you. You should have told someone.” And all the time inside her she was wondering. It was true the way she felt towards Frankie was not the way she felt about Jerry. But she loved Jerry. She was sure about that. Wasn’t she going to marry him?

“I know I was wrong, darling,” he said, his voice contentedly belying his words. “I felt like a heel, believe me, but I loved you—loved you ever since I first saw you, and I didn’t want to lose you.”

“You couldn’t lose me if you tried.” She smiled, and then added in mock seriousness and twirling an imaginary moustache; “Not when I’ve got you in me power, me fine young bucko!”

He laughed happily. “I love you, Janet.” “I love you, Jerry.”

And they were married at high noon at St. Patrick’s just as the invitations had said they would be.

With effort she forced her mind back to the present. Marty was saying: “He always was the guy I wanted to be, the same as when I was a kid.” He took another sip of wine and placed the glass back on the table.

Janet spoke quietly. “There was something about Frankie that was different and attracted people towards him. There was a tinge of adventure that seemed to cling to him, an air of devilry that attracted all the girls when I was young, myself included.” She gave Jerry a fond look and a smile. It was a long time ago and they could talk about it now.

“But there always was something that escaped you. A look in his eyes or on his face that would make you think sometimes he was laughing at you—at himself—or that he was having a great time playing with you and with life, and you never could be sure of what he thought—only what he wanted you to know. There was something in him that made me feel unsteady, not sure of what I felt, but always trying to find out how I felt.

“Yes,” she said, smiling at them both, “I think that was what it was. He kept you forever off balance, never giving you a chance to thrust back. The things that would hurt your feelings never seemed to hurt his. He was always the master of himself. He seemed always to be daring you to do something, then laughing at you if you did or didn’t. I don’t know. I guess you never could really figure him out. He had so many different sides to him, you never knew which side was the real one.

“And it didn’t seem to matter. You liked him just the same, and maybe it was the

challenge of his personality that got you.”

She looked at them both, and suddenly tears came into her eyes. She dabbed at them with a wispy, ineffective handkerchief. “I’m just a fool, I guess—a silly, sentimental fool— but I felt so happy to have you both with me. You can’t know how lonely I felt with everyone you know away—Jerry in Spain, you in France, and Ruth….” She dabbed at her eyes again. “Shall we have coffee in the living-room?”