Galveston (25 page)

I kept thinking he'd come into the kitchen, but he did not, so finally I walked into the parlor to get him. “Supper's ready—” I began, then stopped. He was sitting down in a chair facing the window, holding a glass of madeira.

“Charles, you shouldn't drink that on an empty stomach. Come eat. Your dinner's been ready an hour.”

“I'll be along. Just let me sit here alone for a while.”

It had grown dark in the room, but when I started to light a lamp he stopped me.

“Had a rough day?”

“The roughest.”

“Who was that man? What did he want?”

He looked up as though puzzled by the question. “Oh, just someone with campaign business. Was Pete coming by tonight?”

“Later on, I think.”

“Good. I need to talk with him.”

“If you don't hurry up and eat, you won't have time before he gets here.”

“Put it away. I'm not hungry.”

Charles and Pete were in the study for over an hour that night, and I will confess to having passed in front of the doors several times with a keen ear. Oddly, I could hear nothing but the soft rhythm of Charles's voice. Usually Pete did most of the talking, his words barreling through the door as though meant for everyone in the household. But tonight Pete was listening. After their conversation, he left without telling me good-by, and this departure from the usual was what alerted me something odd was going on.

Charles returned to his study and shut the doors. He'd said scarcely two words to me since coming in that evening, and by now I was overcome with curiosity as to what was bothering him.

I knocked on the door softly.

“Come in,” he said, as though he expected me.

I opened the door slightly and looked in. He was seated behind his desk, looking pensively into an open drawer where he kept a small handgun. The desk was so scattered with papers, the shelves and tables around him piled so high with books and folders, he looked like a newspaper editor who's just realized he missed a deadline.

“Darling, what's the matter? Are you ill?”

“In a way,” he replied, and slowly shoved the drawer in.

“Look at me, Charles. What's happened? Something at the office? Something to do with that man who came by?”

“Sit down. I want to talk to you.” When he lifted his head and looked across at me, his face was pale. “Claire, I don't know how to tell you this except to put it plainly, though I wish there were some other way.

“I'm not going to run for mayor.”

“Not going to run? But why? At this stage, when you're almost a cinch to win—even the
News
predicts—”

“The price is too high. I can't do it, that's all.”

“Price too high?” I repeated. My head was spinning. He might just as well have taken the pistol from the drawer and shot a hole through my hand.

“I don't expect you to understand; just believe there are many reasons. I know you're disappointed, and I'm sorry for that … more than you could know.”

“Disappointed? You don't know the meaning of the word! You simply can't back out now. Pete won't stand for it.
I
won't stand for it.”

“Pete's been good enough to see my position. I was expecting at least that much from you.”

“But you talked an hour to Pete and you must have told him why. You expect me to accept a decree, with no explanation.” My words drifted across to him as wind across a desert. I took another tack: “And what about your high-minded ideas for making Galveston into a great metropolis? I thought you were such a dedicated man. What about that?”

I'd hit home finally. He made no reply, but looked down at the clutter of engineers' reports on water supply and speech notes. “Claire, please sit down and keep your voice down. We must talk this out calmly.”

“Is it Rubin and the church?”

“That's part of it; part of what made me see what I'm in for.”

“But people will forget this election. They'll come back to St. Christopher's in time. Not everybody in this town works for the Wharf Company or has to cater to it for one reason or another. Surely its power can't be that far-reaching.”

“Oh, it is far-reaching all right, believe me. But whether or not that was the case, I've realized something about myself: I don't want to run for public office, don't want to go into public service. I've allowed myself to be manipulated by people generous enough to have confidence in my ability, and I've been convinced that I'm capable of it—even that I want to do it. It was a terrific mistake. Better to learn now than to go on with this thing.”

“But what's Pete going to do? The election isn't a month off.”

“We're going to ask Lucien to run in my place, although, just between us, I doubt he will. But if so, I'm going to try to throw my supporters his way.”

“But what will people think? That doesn't make any sense to me. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't make any sense.”

“We'll make a statement as to my health. We'll say that my physician has urged me to drop out of the campaign.”

“Are you really ill, Charles? Have you been seeing a doctor without my knowing? You do look pale. Go on, tell me if that's the truth.”

“No, it isn't. But it is no one's business. Believe me, dear, it's best that it end like this. The whole thing is making me sick. It's such a filthy game and I hate it. I hate it, and won't go through with it.”

I knew then he was bent on this course, that no amount of pleading would change his mind. I began to think of all the plans I'd secretly harbored over the months: grand plans that would take us so much further than Galveston politics. Now I would scarcely be able to face anyone in town.

“Will you stay on with Pete?”

“No, we've discussed that. After a few weeks I'll go back into private practice, where I should have stayed in the first place, because going with him was my first mistake, or, at least, one of them.”

“All very neat and tidy, isn't it?”

“Darling, I know how you must feel. I'll try and make it up to you. We'll travel—anywhere you want to go. We'll move from here if you want—maybe it would even be better in the long run—not to Grady, of course, but anywhere else you'd like. Maybe to Houston—”

“I don't want to travel. I don't want to move. I don't want to look at you anymore. For the first time in our marriage, I could see some promise you might really
be
somebody, might go somewhere, and now this.

“I've known you to be many things, but never a blundering fool. To give up just when victory is at hand because some nonsense about self-revelation comes over you, even when you know how much this race means to me … When I think of the years I've wasted, staying with you, bound by a sense of duty. Oh, I should never have come here to Galveston. Would to God I'd have had the good sense to leave you after Charlie died!”

“But I thought you liked it here. I thought coming here helped you to get over the loss of our son.”

“By God, he was Damon Becker's son, not yours!” I shouted, then caught my breath and brought my hand to my lips.

I shall never forget the icy stare he returned to me. Then in a moment he looked past me and said with a hollow voice, “The door. Someone's at the door.”

“Charles, I—”

“The door, Claire. Just get the door, please.”

I walked out of the study, down the hall, and to the front door as though in a dream. I couldn't think or reason, couldn't believe what had just taken place. I opened the door. It was Rubin. It bothered me he would be coming to the front door, and I kept trying to form the words to ask him why he didn't come to the back. I must have stared at him wide-eyed. He'd been speaking to me and I hadn't heard him.

“Claire, don't stand there like a blinkard. What's the matter with you?” He was literally shaking me by the shoulders. “I'm trying to tell you it's Janet. The baby is coming. I've got to go and fetch the doctor. Can you go over? Tell Charles to go after Mrs. McCambridge.”

He let go of me, hurried down the front steps, and boarded his rig pulled up out front.

Chapter
7

It was deadly cold that night, and although I've already managed to forget part of the sequence of events which took place in Janet's dimly lit room, there are some things I shall never forget: the way she looked as she lay in the bed, writhing in pain and gripping the brass rungs above her head, limp hair hanging in cords around her shoulders, her swollen body moving in spasms, and her oft-suppressed cries as the contractions took hold.

She looked at me in her pathetic, helpless way, but I could scarcely bear to be in the room, much less speak to her soothingly. She was in the second stage when I arrived, but I couldn't get my thoughts together as to what was to be done for her, and could only pace back and forth in front of the window, praying that soon the doctor and Mrs. McCambridge would show up.

The feeling I had in the pit of my stomach when I saw Rubin's rig pulling up but no sign of Charles and the midwife was like the slow turning of a dull knife. Mrs. McCambridge lived only blocks away. She and Charles should have returned long before Rubin. Then I recall Janet screaming, “Oh, God, hurry, the baby is coming now!” I turned from the window and pulled up the sheet which covered her. The bed was soaked. The dome-shaped head had begun to push itself from between her outstretched legs. The stench will always stay with me. Why did it smell so?

Doctor Arnold burst into the room. He is a huge man, bigger than Rubin. He stalked across to her bed, and apparently seeing I was going to be of no help, ordered me to wait outside, and sent Rubin down to get hot water. “And bring more light into this room! My God, you can hardly see your hand in front of you!”

I walked out into the hall and watched down the stairs for the appearance of Charles and the midwife.

It wasn't long before Janet's travail was over. The sound of a slap and a cry of indignation from the infant came shortly after I'd left the room. Another moment, two, an eternity. Then Doctor Arnold was shouting for me to get back in there. “I don't know where that confounded midwife is,” he said. “You'll have to take care of the child. I've got to see to the mother.” He'd grabbed a white cloth off the dresser, and roughly wrapped the infant in it and thrust it toward me. “Take him into the bathroom and clean him up. I've got some ointment here in my bag.” He put his hand on the bottle and pulled it out. “Surely you know how to wash the baby.”

I took him then and held him close to my breast, and a curious thing occurred. For just that space of time it took to care for the infant that night, I was back in Grady washing Charlie, and his face came fully back into view. I rubbed him with the ointment, then wiped him off, washed his eyes with water, his body with soap, cleaning all the tiny creases of him and then rubbing him with starch powder and wrapping him in a clean towel. It was a soothing thing to do, a labor of love. I sat down in a rocker with him and rocked the rest of the night away, studying his face and calling him Charlie.

By the next day Mrs. McCambridge had arrived, explaining a little testily, “My own son was lyin' ill in the bed. I couldn't leave him, could I?” I walked out of the Garret household into the bright morning, feeling as though I'd been pent up there for days and days, instead of a matter of hours.

Charles was seated on the steps of our verandah, smoking his pipe, his face solemn. I knew the words which must pass between us, and I felt there was little use in putting them off, regardless of the fact my body ached with exhaustion. I sat down beside him.

“Worn out?” he asked.

“A little. But you can go ahead and say all the things you want to. I guess I deserve them.”

“I knew, Claire, knew from the start about you and Damon.”

I sat erect and stared at him.

“I saw him the morning after that big party was thrown in honor of his last visit home. Of course you know he always stayed at the hotel when he came home, and never with me.

“Anyway, we met as I was walking to my office, and he walked alongside me for a short distance. I think he was still a little drunk from the party, to be truthful. ‘Ah, what a night,' he said. ‘The folks in Grady really know how to welcome one of their own.' Then he asked me what your name was … called you a ‘comely little maid.' When I told him he asked if I hadn't been keeping company with you for quite a while.

“I told him I had, and then he wanted to know why I'd never married you, said it looked like I was going to be a bachelor forever. I told him I guessed the same might be said of him.

“‘Ah, you know me well enough,' he said. ‘I'm not the marrying kind. Seawater and women don't mix.' I thought he'd let it go at that, but he pressed me some more, wanting to know why you and I had piddled around so. I told him you hadn't accepted my offers of marriage. ‘And after all this time, you're not figuring she ever will,' he said. I told him that was possible. He wanted to know then if I had any ties with you, and in all honesty I had to say I didn't.

“That was all there was to the conversation. He went his way, and I went mine. I had business north of town for the next few days, and when I got back I didn't see him. Then on the morning he left, he came by my quarters early to say good-by. I remember it struck me as peculiar. He'd left town after his visits before without saying good-by unless it happened to be convenient. For some reason he made a point of doing it that time, and I've always wondered if he had a kind of premonition it was to be his last visit home.

“I'll never forget the last thing he told me, going down the walk, carrying all his belongings on his back. He said, ‘You'd better get your hands on that little filly while you're still young enough to keep up with her.' Then he winked his eye, gave a roaring laugh, and went off.