Laura Z. Hobson Read online

  Over the radio, the shouts, toots, whistles notched up in intensity.

  “Half a minute to go,” somebody in the room called out.

  Anne moved through the crowd to the wall switch. Unnoticed before, the two lighted candles on the mantel sprang alive as the other lights went out. At the piano somebody played the opening bars of Auld Lang Syne.

  “Corny,” Kathy whispered, but her eyes glistened. “Happy New Year, darling.”

  “Happy New Year.” They kissed. Around them wives kissed husbands, friends kissed friends. Corny. And curiously, stubbornly moving. The new year, the new hope, the peace, the stumbling effort of man. …

  “It’s a grand party, Phil,” Kathy said. “Anne’s awfully attractive, isn’t she?” They both looked toward Anne in her bright green.

  “She looks grand tonight.”

  “She certainly does,” Kathy said. “She likes you a lot.”

  He looked down at her, and she made a face. She said, smiling, “I’ll scratch her eyes out if she makes a play for you.”

  “You darling.” It delighted him that she should show possessiveness. Tonight was the first time, apart from their dinner last evening with the Minifys, that their relationship had become public. “My fiancé," Kathy had said twice when she introduced him to people she knew. The afternoon with Tom and the movies had slid by on silk. In three days they were going for the wedding license. He leaned down so he could whisper to her.

  “Let’s not stay around too long. You look pretty damn grand yourself.” She was in a long black dress held up by shoestrings.

  “In this? It’s four years old.”

  “And still sexy as hell.”

  They both laughed. Then. Kathy said quietly, “I wish Bill would get married this year, too.”

  “Bill?” It sounded stupid. “Oh, yes, Bill.”

  “Pawling,” she said. “My ex-husband. He dropped in today to say Happy New Year, and I told him about us. He was awfully effusive with good wishes. It made me sad for him.”

  He didn’t say anything. When somebody came up to Kathy just then, he was glad to have the subject changed.

  It was a good party, as Kathy had said, not merely good for lovers. This was what people could find in New York if they were fortunate, the good mixture of talent and interests and ideas. There were Joe Lieberman, the physicist; Jerry Torrence, the novelist, with his beautiful wife; Jascha Rimitov, the violinist, and his gifted wife, who was his accompanist. Lawyers, businessmen, a Congressman up from Washington, one of the younger men in the State Department, a publisher, and a minor actress. The faces in the room were various with many kinds of origin; the speech mingled the accents of Middle West, East, and West, of Europe and America. This, the fluid easy coming together of a dozen worlds, was the bonus life set aside for the luckier ones in the metropolises of the earth. The small city, the town and village, could not offer it. To Phil, grown in small cities and towns, it was as stimulating as the champagne—“Domestic, dears,” Anne had said—that he’d been drinking all evening.

  Here was a world where a man’s name, the shape of his nose, the religion he believed in or the religion he did not believe in—where none of it counted. Here was rugged individualism in its best sense, each man or woman a whole person, the sum of his worth and character left whole, no part subtracted by prejudice.

  He’d been pleased to see Lieberman there and went straight to him with, “Minify wanted to get us together. I’m Phil Green.”

  “He told me he did.”

  They shook hands. Only yesterday John had told Phil he’d talked to Lieberman about him. “I’m not as easy as you are, Phil, about sliding it into a sentence, but I got it across to him.”

  Lieberman was plump as well as short, middle-aged, with the face of a Jew in a Nazi cartoon, the beaked nose, the blue jowls, and the curling black hair. Phil saw all of it, and the fine candid eyes.

  “I’m writing a series for him on antisemitism.”

  “Pro or con?”

  Phil roared, and Lieberman’s eyes twinkled. He seemed pleased with himself, affectionate toward his quick retort, rewarded by Phil’s outburst as by a just reward.

  “And John thought we might hash over some ideas. I expect you’re pretty busy these days.”

  Lieberman shook his head in denial. “What sort of ideas?”

  “Palestine, for instance, Zionism—”

  “Which? Palestine as refuge or Zionism as a movement for a Jewish state?”

  “The confusion between the two, more than anything.”

  “Good. If we agree there’s confusion, we can talk. I can’t really talk to a positive Zionist any more than to a confirmed Communist—there is no language.”

  They talked on for a bit and agreed to meet soon.

  In the taxi uptown, Phil and Kathy discussed the party. She was voluble and gay, with excitement, with champagne. “I thought I’d die at some of the jokes she told,” she said, and laughed in reminiscence.

  Anne had revealed a gift for mimicry he’d only glimpsed when she’d imitated Bert, and for over an hour she’d regaled one corner of the room with story after story, most of them old ones refurbished with current build-ups and made newly engaging by her uncanny ear for dialect.

  “If McAnny told the same ones,” he said, “I’d have been puckered as a quince. Why the hell is it so different?”

  Kathy shook her head, and they went on in silence. It could be different. With Anne, and in that crowd, you could laugh at a joke about two priests or two Jews or two Negroes and hear no overtone of cruelty. Kathy and he had shouted over the chestnut about Mandy and the colored judge and again at the one about “Lord Chahmly-Chahmly” getting the wrong telephone connection.

  “So he gets this little old fellow in the Bronx, you know, long beard, black skullcap, and says, ‘I say, is Freddy Breck-ston theah?”

  “ ‘Who-o-o-? Who you vant?’

  “ ‘Breckston, old chap, Lord Harrowbridge Turnbridge Pethbright, y’know.’

  “ ‘Oi! Hev you got the wrung numbair!’ ”

  In the dim cab, Kathy heard him chuckle and said, “Phil?” He took her into his arms.

  “I’m just so damn happy,” he said, as if it explained anything.

  He stood looking down at her as she sat at one end of the sofa. Disbelief, acknowledgment warred through him. His mind strained for understanding, the ache of trying told him it was beyond his reach.

  “God, Kathy, we’re quarreling.”

  “I said we shouldn’t talk it out now. It’s nearly four, we had stuff to drink, we’re just worn out.” Her face was pale. Her dejected limpness was an accusation.

  “All right. Let’s quit it.” He stood up and began pacing the room.

  “I know I promised, Phil. I crossed my heart. No exceptions. And you were being reasonable to stretch it to Jane. But it just seems so silly to get her into a thing up there when it’s not true.”

  Women always talk in italics, he thought, when they know they’re wrong. She must see this is impossible. Aloud he said, “The whole goddam business just depends on my not making loopholes whenever it’s convenient, that’s all.”

  “She didn’t mean for you to deny it. Just not to bring it up.”

  He didn’t say anything. They’d been over this five times already since she’d unlocked the front door and said, “Oh, I forgot. Jane wants to throw a big party for us Saturday night.” She’d switched on only one lamp in the living room, made a comedy gesture of chucking off her short cape and letting it lie on the rug, and curled up against banked cushions with an unshielded yawn like a child. He’d sat near her, unsuspicious of danger, tired also, and unwilling to admit he ought to be on his way at once.

  “What’d she say when you told her?”

  “Oh, she thought it was the cleverest way to do research and that you must have a touch of the screwball in you to think it up.”

  “But she promised?”

  “I wouldn’t tell her till she did. And Harry,
too. Anyway, today when she phoned, she asked if you’d just skip the whole thing for the party and I said—”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘No, he won’t skip the whole thing for the party.’ ”

  “Why, Phil, I didn’t. I said I’d ask you.”

  He’d stood abruptly then.

  “Ask me?”

  “I’d never say yes without asking you.”

  “You mean I should?”

  She looked away. “You know those suburban crowds. Especially Darien and up there. It would just start a whole mess for Jane and Harry for nothing.”

  “And if it were a mess for something?”

  “But, Phil, you’re not. So—oh, you can be solemn about things. It’ll just ruin the party for Jane if she has problems at it.”

  “Why not just tell Jane to skip the party?”

  “Oh, Phil, that would look so queer—her only sister.”

  She made an impatient gesture. “If you were I’d manage, but—”

  “Thanks.”

  Again the look stood in her eyes. (“But, Phil, you’re not really, are you?”) The look he’d found excuses for—the mind plays funny tricks, you’re not Minify, I should have led you along. This time the look wasn’t caused by unpreparedness or misunderstanding. This time it was just there.

  Over and over, they’d gone at it, round and round. She couldn’t see it, and he couldn’t make her see it. He couldn’t see it, and she couldn't make him see it.

  “Nobody’s asking you to make loopholes where it counts,” she went on now. “At the office, or meeting people right there like at Anne’s tonight. But out there’s just an occasional visit, and if we use my house for next summer, and anyway, Jane and Harry—”

  “I thought you said they were so grand.”

  “They are. But they can’t help it if some of their friends—and they’d be saying ‘our future brother-in-law’ or maybe ‘our brother-in-law’ by then, and it would make such a—”

  “A thing. A mess. An inconvenience.”

  “Well, it would!”

  “Just for Jane and Harry? Or for you, too?”

  “Damn it, I’d be so tensed up I wouldn’t have any fun either. Heavens, if everything’s going to be tensed up and solemn all the time—”

  Her voice was hard. Her eyes avoided his. “If.” Suddenly he was unbearably tired. “I think I’d better go now,” he said.

  Outside, a misty cold hung over the still-wet streets. Numbly he walked down Park Avenue. The Christmas lights were dead on the long single line of trees down the center islands of earth. Taxis whooshed by on the puddled road, but he did not try to see whether they were vacant. He walked all the way.

  In the dim vestibule of his house the brass plate gleamed softly. He shoved his key into the door.

  On his pillow two yellow telegrams were placed where he could not miss them even if he undressed in the dark. He reached to the headboard lamp. They were both addressed to him. He tore one open.

  CONGRATULATIONS ON THE GRAND NEWS ABOUT YOU AND KATHY AND MY BEST TO HER. LET’S HEAR THE EXACT DATE. LOVE FROM ALL. BELLE.

  He ripped apart the second envelope. It was unsigned. It had been sent that evening from Brentwood, California.

  YIPPEE.

  He sat down on the bed and put his head down on his hands. The telegram from his sister Mary crackled slowly in his tightening fist.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THROUGH HIS SLEEP he heard the telephone ring. He woke sweating and heavy with the familiar weight of depression. For a second he was back in the dragging mornings of California years ago. The radiator spat steam from its leaky valve. It reoriented him; he’d forgotten to turn it off when he’d finally gone to bed. Back of the closed door Tom called, “It’s for you, Dad.” He sprang up.

  “Right there.”

  The door opened, and Tom said,

  “He asked for Lieutenant Green, not Mister. Gram said to wake you.”

  “He?” The heaviness hit again. “Who?”

  “Gee, I just said to wait. I answered it.”

  “O.K. Pretty late, isn’t it?” He glanced at his watch as he went into the living room. It was past noon. The last time he’d checked, it had been nearly eight. He picked up the receiver and offered it an inert “Hello.”

  “Phil, it’s Dave.”

  “Dave? Why, damn you! Where are you? When’d you get in?” He heard Dave laugh at the burst of pleasure in his own voice. “LaGuardia. Just now. I had a break and got assigned to a plane with my CO.”

  “Grab a cab. If you’re broke, hold him downstairs.”

  “Hell, I’m not broke. Boy, it’s good to be back.”

  “Well, come on. I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

  He showered and then carried a cup of black coffee into the bathroom. He sipped and then gulped it while he shaved. His eyes smarted, his eyelids were too small. Hangover. Only it wasn’t just hangover. He jerked away from remembering. That wound-up spring inside somewhere— that was depression in the clinical sense of the psychiatrist’s office. In the mirror his face looked sullen and dead.

  A pan clattered to the floor in the kitchen. He squinted as if sudden light instead of sound offended his nerves. He wished he could be alone in the house, with no noise, no talk, no questions about last night’s party.

  Dave was a break. Man’s talk it would be, of the army, the occupation, terminal leave, the old job or a new one. Good old Dave, thank God for Dave, Dave who didn’t know a damn thing about Kathy.

  “If things are going to be all tense and solemn all the time.”

  “Then what?” He should have said it at once. He should have made her finish the sentence, verbalize the threat implicit in the tone she used. “We’d better not get married after all.” That’s how she’d have ended it. He might as well have heard it, then, not let it hang in the air, a warning to behave, to be lighthearted about things. He had shrunk from hearing it, had gone wise with a soft wisdom and said he’d better leave now. He should have faced her. Told her. “Things will be tense and solemn plenty of the time,” he should have said. “I’m a guy that gets tense, see? I snarl up and I goddam well can’t help myself. I care about a thing and forget about other things. Damn it to hell, that’s the way I am. If you don’t want my kind of man, O.K., no harm done. Better now than later.”

  All those things he’d crumpled into a dignified silence while he made a dignified exit. Afraid to slug it out lest he lose her. You love a woman and you lose her—Christ, how do you stand it a second time? You don’t—you crawl into a shell and stifle. All the sentences addressed to her later were so fine and right, but they were spoken only in the safe room of his mind. And so this waking with fear, shame, depression—the clinical trio, the three sisters pursuing—

  He leaned down over the basin and slogged his face with the stinging cold of winter water as if he were beating himself.

  As he sat talking with Dave, a preference for male companionship beat through him, surly, superior. Women talked of parties, of family, of children and summer cottages and love. This with Dave was what a man needed, this bone and muscle for the mind instead of pale plump softness. This men’s talk was all in the hard clean outlines of battle, impossible bridges to be built under fire, the split of the atom, the greed of looting armies. Dave had begun in Italy and gone on through the whole business of D Day and the rest. He’d been wounded and mended and thrown back in. Women clawed softly at your manhood. War and work and the things you believed in gave it back to you. This gave it back to you, lounging in opposite chairs, taking the good short cuts men could take who’d been through the same things, fiddling through long drinks, arguing, differing or agreeing, but always tight on the tracks of reality.

  Separation and time had made him forget how much he liked Dave. He’d told Minify they weren’t especially close any more, yet when Dave had dumped his bag down and they’d stood there foolishly thumping each other on the shoulder, Phil had been
seized with the old excess of feeling he’d had as a kid for “my best friend.” Dave seemed taken by the same kind of upheaval, mixed in his case with the emotions of coming home at last. For him this was a homecoming by proxy, with Tom awestruck at his ribbons, Mrs. Green saying, “Well, Dave, why, Dave,” and the house all astir to give him food, make him comfortable.

  Phil found himself studying Dave’s face as they talked. He looked older, he seemed quieter. Was it just that three years had passed? Was it still the stamp of war and distance and loneliness, which would rub off soon under the caress of ordinary life? Or was Dave the holder of new knowledge which really aged and toughened the whole stuff of which his body and mind and understanding were compounded? He saw the thinning hair, the uneven groove between the eyebrows which showed clear now even when Dave wasn’t frowning; he saw, too, the ruddy outdoor skin and knew a fleeting envy for the top fitness that army living clamped hard to a man.

  “What’s this series?” Dave asked.

  “We’ll get to it later.” Inexplicably he wanted to put off talking of what he was doing. A shyness pervaded him, as if he might seem to Dave like a kid caught playing at a man’s game. They went back to their discussion of Dave’s plans. He was going to move his family East as Phil had done and was going to stay on now for part of his terminal leave to look over the ground. He’d already had letters from his old boss assuring him that a good job could be arranged with one of several Eastern firms, but the housing shortage might defeat him, if it was as serious as the papers reported. Phil listened and replied. Yet now, submerged but insistent, the series was fingering his mind again. He looked at the expressive face opposite him with new attention while a silent question nuzzled him back to his endless research.

  Does Dave look Jewish?

  Yes, he supposed he did, now that he asked it. He simply could not remember that he had ever thought the thing before in all the years they’d known each other. Where was it, this Jewishness? Dave topped six feet as he did, a little heavier, with no fat but of a bigger bone. His nose was short, stubby even, no hint of hook or curve. Hair and eyes were brown, lighter than his own and, where the unshaved stubble caught the last glint of sunlight from the window behind him, tinged with red blond. Yet if you thought, you’d know this man was Jewish. It was there somewhere. In the indented arcs of the nostrils? In the turn of his lips? In the quiet eyes? It was such a damn strong good face.