The Plot (4 page)

“Who hasn't?” How she must have cherished that “unearthly” handsomeness, guarded it with her ugliness. And obviously she had been correct; it hadn't lasted.

“Who hasn't? Lem sent a story to Jamey. Jamey got lots of them, of course, but he never read them. He just had me send them all back explaining that he didn't have time. I took the time to criticize Lem's story, in the same cafeteria where we had first met. I balanced his story and I balanced his menu—he didn't even know the proper food to eat. I helped him as much as I could. I finagled Jamey into meeting him. Lem wasn't you, Louis; he didn't have what it takes, never.”

“I told you before, Ethel, you don't know what I have and what I don't have.”

She had been too obvious, instinctively she said what would bring his pity for her to the front again. “Well, I didn't know what Lem didn't have. I was in love with him.” She bit her lip. “He could take my editorial and dietary advice, but not me. After I had known Lem six months, he disappeared, and then, about six months later, he came back and we were married.” She smiled oddly, her mouth bunching to one side. “I was very proud, of course.”

She stopped talking. Louis could see, anyone could see, what was coming, but he had to ask. “And then?” He didn't want to look at her face; he looked into the water, dipped his hand into the cool water.

“Take your hand out of there! Alligators!” She shivered. “You heard what Jamey said—study their ways. Death is their way, somnolent, logy, apparently paying no attention to us, apparently asleep, and then—You can see why I can't write! Keep your hand out of there.”

Louis wiped his hand down his pants. “O.K. Go on with your story.”

“No more story. Lem committed suicide.”

“Jesus.” He put his hand on hers, pressed, lifted his hand. “Why?”

“He committed suicide. I don't want to talk about that.”

Her voice had become harsh and peremptory, but of course he could understand that. “I'm sorry.” Poor woman, poor unattractive awkward woman. Louis, as well as Jamey, noticed how lumpily she sat, how she set down her feet too far apart, but as always, and this had made trouble for Louis before, because he pitied her, he was immediately tied to her by the magic of pity, which, abracadabra, changed a woman into his mother, attached him to her by his mother's apron strings. As a writer, Louis was perceptively aware of the spell, but his perception of it did not undo the magic, did not destroy its power. Suicide was desertion, suicide was another blow in the face. Another woman injured by a man. “I'm very sorry, Ethel.”

“Poor Lem. You know, Lem thought Jamey was as wonderful as you think he is.”

“Wonderful? He's a wonderful writer.”

“Don't you think Jamey is wonderful, Louis?” He had slipped down and stretched out on the bottom of the punt. His feet in their worn brown moccasins were near Ethel; she could see his bare brown ankle, his calf where the jeans had pulled up. There were dark hairs on his leg. She wondered if the hair would be soft to the touch or wiry. Lem had been blond, with very little hair on his body. Effeminate. Budder wasn't effeminate. Budder was six feet two inches of man. Too much man? An overdose of masculinity, so that you threw up on it eventually? This man—this man—Her hand reached out toward Louis' calf, but she pulled it back in time. “Don't you think Jamey is wonderful?”

“Sure I think he's wonderful. I'm his humble admirer, sure.”

“Go on.”

“I have the greatest respect for his craftsmanship. What I know of technique, I've learned from him, but—”

Ethel leaned forward. “But?”

“But he's old. Seventy-nine? Well, it shows; he's dated. It shows even in his last two novels. Many things have happened since he was young. Freud, for instance; he knows nothing of Freud.” Louis frowned. “I don't mean that Vaughn isn't full of remarkable insights into the subconscious. He wouldn't be any good if he weren't, but it was the old kind of perception, the emotional, poetic perception. Freud said it himself, ‘The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious, what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.' Vaughn was bravely traveling in uncharted waters. He couldn't help that, the maps weren't made in his day. I want to write knowing where I am, knowing the name and nature of the reefs on which so many have foundered. I want to go further than Vaughn could because, with my maps, I won't need to be wrecked on the shoals. I can avoid them, not because I am better than he is, or will be as good, but simply because I'm younger in point of time.”

There was a pause then, “Listen to him!” Louis said, derisively.

“I am listening.”

“You heard, He is dated.”

“Jamey knows that.”

“I'm glad he does. Is that why he hasn't written anything else? Times have changed.” Louis laughed. “Boy, have times changed! Writers must change with their material. Sure I think he's wonderful, but I don't want to copy him, even if I can. I want to go on in my work, to advance, to make evolution. In Vaughn's day he was perfect, but if you did his kind of thing now, it would be a period piece.”

Ethel said slowly, “Editors don't think so. I can show you a whole folder of begging letters from editors. They'll pay five thousand for a new Vaughn short story.”

“Five thousand bucks?” Louis leaned over the side of the boat and spat into the water. “Say, I'm not blaming Mr. Vaughn, you understand.”

“Are you afraid I'll tell him you blame him?”

“Yes, I'm afraid you'll tell him.”

“Why should you care?”

Louis frowned. “I don't know. Maybe because I really think I'm his spiritual son and want to show respect. Maybe that's true.” He said it lightly, as if he were making a joke, but actually he had been deeply touched by what Jamey said, for certainly he had been aware of their spiritual kinship. True, he had just met Jamey, but he knew intimately every word Jamey had written, and that was knowing the best of Jamey. It was more than a young man meeting an old man, a young writer meeting an old writer. He was Jamey's son and Jamey was his father, and from this always complicated relationship the trouble came. If Louis had not felt this bond, nothing would have happened.

Ethel put her hand on the bare, brown ankle, lightly, tentatively. “If you're Jamey's son, you're his son and heir, aren't you?”

He wasn't aware that her hand lay on his ankle; his leg moved away from the touch, but only because he was so absorbed in what was behind her words that anything was a distraction. “You mean if I'm his son and heir and over twenty-one I'm ready to take title to his estate?”

“While Jamey is alive, they'll wait for his stories to fill their pages——”

“I guess so.” Louis pointed, speaking softly. “Now you've got
your
hand in the water.”

She pulled it out and rubbed it on her white dress. “I was so hot, all of a sudden. Tell me, tell
me
, Louis, why did you come here? Why did you really come?”

“To murder the old man, to do him in!” He laughed. “I told you. As per letter.” She was bending toward him, her lids drawn down, her eyes squinting with concern; she was his mother again, concerned about him, interested in all his whys.

“Why did you really come? Why did you really come?”

He reeled it off. “I am an ardent admirer of Mr. Vaughn. I read in
The New York Times
that he lived down here on a plantation. I came here to pay my respects, by thumb. I told you I was broke.”

“Did you want Jamey to give you——”

“No!” He stared at her, for the moment almost seeing her as she really was because his mother would never have made that mistake. His mother would have known his pride. Now he spoke rather coldly, exhibiting the firmness he possessed except for mother women. “If I want my birthright, I don't want charity. No, thanks. No. Since you ask so nicely, the reason I came is that I hope to sell an interview with Vaughn to a magazine. Interviews with Vaughn have been scarce; I thought they might pay me five hundred, maybe even up to seven hundred and fifty for it.”

“I see. You want to make money out of Jamey.”

“That's it.” He wondered what she thought he had come for. What
had
she thought? Because she had shocked him into cognizance of her, he could evaluate her rationally. What did
she
want, he could wonder. “Greedy, aren't I, dear girl!”

“You sound just like Jamey.”

“Of course I sound just like Jamey. I'm a mimic, no, not a verbal mimic so much, I'm a first-rate literary mimic. I can imitate literary styles.”

“Jamey's?” She pulled her hat down so that her face was hidden, but her voice was breathless, high.

“His better than anyone else's. I know it better. So what? What the hell, maybe they throw crumbs to the mockingbirds they have down here in South Carolina for doing imitations, but my being able to imitate Jamey isn't going to get me anything. An authorized interview will, though.” What had she thought he came here for?

“It won't get you a cent. If you tell Jamey that you came down here to get an interview, he'll throw you out so fast——”

“If he won't give me an interview, I don't care how fast he throws me out. What would I hang around for?”

“Hang around. Stay here.”

“I can't. Besides, what would I hang around for?” He would not admit, even to himself, his genuine desire to be near the old man whose work he admired so much. He would need, had he admitted this, to class himself with the hero-worshipers, with the bobby-soxers at stage doors, with the autograph hounds. He was ashamed of his emotional need of Jamey and pretended to himself, as well as to Ethel, that this trek to South Carolina was prompted by economic reasons only.

“Don't ask Jamey for an interview yet. Please take my advice.”

“When? I've got to get that interview. I've got to have some money.”

“Desperate? Like that?” Her nostrils pinched. “A girl?”

“Yes, a girl, a beautiful, out-of-this-world creature—almost out of this world, anyhow. Yes, I've got to buy her a five-hundred-buck corsage of orchids, or she won't ‘dine' with me at the Waldorf, and then my heart will be broken. Oh, yes, a girl! A gold digger who would leave her husband if I could support her, a woman who sticks with a man who has been brutal to her because of the bucks. I want to give her some of the things she never had. I want to earn things for her with my strong right arm.” He raised his arm in a salute. “I want her to leave home for me—and that's why I must have some money.”

“Louis—”

“She won't wait forever for me, you know. She'll walk out on me one of these days—for cancer! My God, Ethel, my mother has cancer. She will be dead in six months, eight months. I had to go, because as it was I made it harder for her. I couldn't live with her and my old man because she can't take me and the old man in one place. I shut up, I took him for her sake, but he didn't shut up.” Louis snorted. “He never did anything for her sake, and he wouldn't begin then. It tore her apart, so then I got this interview idea and came here.

“My God, I'm going to get something for her! I'm going to get her someone to do the work and a decent bed and a fluffy nightgown and satin bedroom slippers. I'm going to get her a silk negligee and a satin footstool, a breakfast tray with pink china and a red rose in a vase. She's going to have something soft before she dies!”

“Poor Louis, poor Louis!” She hid everything else she felt except the pity.

“Poor Louis?” He looked astonished. “I can wait for mine. She can't wait.” He pulled himself together. “I've got to get that interview because even I can sell it. Now you can see why I've got to get it.”

“Yes. But, Louis, he won't do it just because you ask him. You don't know Jamey. If you tell him about your mother, don't mention … what she has. He's terrified of illness. He doesn't want to hear about it. If you mention that, he'll just want you to get out of his sight. I know him so well, Louis. Wait for me to figure out a way. Watch me carefully, this evening; I'll give you the green light.”

Louis stared at her. “O.K. I'll wait until you give me the green light. You sound as if what you wanted to give me was Jamey's head on a platter!” He thought: Head on a platter?
Platter?

“What's the matter, Louis?”

“Nothing, not a thing.” Head on a platter? Got it, he decided. Head in a hatbox, got it!

“You look so peculiar.”

“I was just thinking.”

Night Must Fall
, that's it, he thought. Now, why did I think about that in the first place? There's always a reason. The old lady all alone in that lonely house in England, and—who?—Robert Montgomery coming there, buttering the old lady up. Dame? Dame May Whitty played the old lady. Is Dame May Whitty dead? In the picture she died, all right, in
Night Must Fall
Robert Montgomery, who had a head in a hatbox, murdered her. Robert Montgomery flattered her into thinking he was nuts about her. (Had there been talk in the picture of his being like her son or had he inserted that because Mr. Vaughn had called him his spiritual son? And why couldn't he, in his thoughts, refer to him as Jamey? Why the sudden, frightening formality?)

“You're certainly thinking hard, aren't you, Louis?”

The point was, the movie stuck with you all these years because the identification was a double one; you identified with the old lady, with the human frailty and stupidity that needed affection and praise so desperately that it trusted murderous flattery. You wanted to shout, “Look out, you old fool! Caution! Beware! He's going to murder you, you old fool!” And yet …

“You certainly are lost in thought,” Ethel said.