(1964) The Man (69 page)

“You wouldn’t work for
them
?”

“I’d work any place where I could be independent and write as I please. That includes the Miller chain or any other. What the hell, Edna. I’d rather be reporting for a reactionary paper where I can get a chance to give them a breath of fresh air, proselytize, than a paper whose readers believe what I believe and know what I know.”

As ever, George’s infallible logic subdued Edna. “You’re right, I guess,” she said.

The fresh drinks came. They drank in silence. It was wonderful, she thought, despite all this, how positive and clearheaded she felt.

“Let’s enjoy ourselves,” George Murdock was saying. “Rome hasn’t burned yet. Leave it to your Georgie. I’ll find another spot.”

“And I’ll help you!” she cried out. “This time I will, I promise. It’s only right. This time, every evening, I’ll tell you what I can about what goes on in the President’s office.”

“Edna, I repeat, no need for that. Besides, you’re quitting, too, next week. Did you forget?”

“Oh,” she said, and slumped. “That’s right.”

He kept looking at her, until she was uneasy, and then he kept looking at the Scotch, and then he said quietly, “Edna, when big things happen to you, your life sort of changes—know what I mean? You’re forced to take stock—and that’s what I’ve been doing myself these last two days, taking stock. I have a better picture of myself. I’ve been too conservative, not taking any chances, and to get anything out of life you’ve got to—well—stick your chin out and say to yourself and everybody, I’m me, I’m somebody, I deserve more out of life, out of my career and out of life, and I’m going out and get my share of life, no matter what. Know what I mean?”

Her mind had gone blank, but she said dutifully, “Yes, George.”

“I’m making a fresh start from tonight on. That’s what I decided. Like the next job. No more looking for anything second-rate. I’m shooting straight for the top. And like us, the two of us, no more waiting for the big doubloons at the end of the rainbow. Live for today, that’s all there is to be sure of, and if you have to make good, somehow you make it, and meanwhile you’re getting something out of life. Do you understand, honey?”

“Yes, George.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, “or you wouldn’t be sitting there like you’re miserable.” He put aside his drink and leaned across the table. “Edna, I’ve denied myself long enough. I want to start over again from scratch. Maybe it’s the wrong time, both of us going to be out of work, but maybe it’s the best time to start living. Edna, the minute you come back from France, let’s get married.”

She had not quite heard him, with her mind wallowing in self-pity, with the Gibson in front of her face, and she had been about to say “Yes, George” when comprehension forced its way into her stultified brain. “What? What did you say? I’m sorry, I—I’ve been drinking.”

He was smiling. “I said, darling, let’s get married. Forgive me for keeping you waiting this long, but if I’m going to be big, think big, I’ve got to show I can live big like—”

“Married?” She was about to weep. Could it be? Could it possibly be? “George—I—I think I’m going to die—you said—darling, you want to marry me?”

He continued to smile. “Nobody else, if you’ll have me. The minute you return—”

“Oh, George, I’m coming apart—come here, don’t let me cry—I’m so excited, I’ve never been happier—to think—George, kiss me—”

Nervously he glanced around the cocktail room, confirmed that they were still alone, and quickly he picked the chair up under him and moved it around the table beside her. She was sniffling as she accepted his kiss.

“I haven’t heard you say yes,” he murmured.

“Yes-yes-yes—a million times yes.” She had his shoulders, held him off, searched his face. “George, you mean it? I’m tight now—I don’t want to wake up in the morning and find out I was dreaming—we’re going to be married?”

“I’ll pin a note on you to remind you and to tell everyone else, ‘No Trespassing.’ ” He saw the waiter appear in the inner door. “Hey,” he called out, “two more of the same!”

“Oh, George, I’ve had enough to drink. I don’t need—”

“You haven’t had a drink as Mrs. Murdock-to-be.”

She enclosed both his narrow hands in her own, and snuggled against the wondrous safety of him. “When, darling, when will we do it?”

“Just as I said, right after you return from France. Of course, you’ll want to give Dilman a week or two’s notice—I mean, you owe him that much. It’s not easy for a President of the United States to replace his personal secretary. Then we can marry. We’ll work out exactly where and how, and I have a few bucks to tide us over while we’re both looking for jobs—actually, maybe you won’t have to work any more, if I can find something fast, something good—”

He had become solemn again, and she squeezed his hands and said, “Darling, don’t look so worried. I don’t want to start off with me being a burden. I want to quit that job, but it doesn’t have to be right away. Of course, I’ll stay on until you’re set. It’s the least I can do.” She kissed his cheek. “In fact, I’ll insist upon it.”

She parted from him, sat back in a ladylike way, as the celebrating round of drinks was served. Her eyes made out two Gibsons—two and a half—two waiters, two Georges; and the room reeled. She had never been so excited, so happy, so floaty, so lucid in her head, and, after the waiter discreetly left the lounge, so much at one with another person. He was no longer a separate being, a desirable object, a goal, an idea. He was her own, and she was his own, and the merging was miraculous.

After they toasted, she had no notion if she made sense, but she bubbled over and talked and talked about her life and hopes, and their life and future, and what she would do for him and what it would be like, the most perfect marriage in history.

How long she went on she did not know, except her first drink as Mrs. Murdock-to-be was drained, and she was being very serious now, practical, to show him he had not been mistaken because she was practical and would make his life an eternal Christmas.

She knew that her tongue was thick, but she knew also that on this memorable evening he must be reassured that he had not made a mistake.

“I’ll make it better than any marriage there’s been on earth, George, no bickering like my folks, or bossing around like my girl friend, Dorothy, did, no unfaithfulness from either of us like the people we know about here—the Arthur Eatons—that kind. You won’t want to chase, George, because you’ll have no need to. I’ll keep a beautiful house, and raise the best-mannered, smartest children, and give you interesting meals, and help you with your work, and charm your friends so you’ll be proud of me. You’d be surprised what I’m really like, George, how much better I am—better-groomed, and brighter, more fun—like when you first met me—remember? It’s just been worse recently, and you appreciate that, you know why. But once you have the right job, the one that’s perfectly right for you—and there’s no rush, George, I won’t quit until you tell me to—but once you’re settled and happy, then I can give up the White House office. You’ll see how different I’ll be, how relaxed, devoted, better-looking, once I get away from that horrible job and that poor miserable man I’m working for.”

“I’m sure of it, Edna,” he said.

“You can be surer than being sure of being sure of it,” she said grandiloquently. “Once I’m free to devote myself to you, and be with our kind of people, who are happier, as we will be, and not tied down to a friendless, tormented, heartbroken black man, with his black thoughts, who is worrying about being killed, who doesn’t even have a wife to console him because she drank herself to death, whose son is failing in school, whose daughter is passing for white—who is so afflicted with personal problems, nobody would believe it, let alone what he goes through in public where—”

She realized that her beloved George’s cool hand was upon her hand, caressing her hand lovingly, lacing his fingers through hers like they were married and in bed together. “Edna, what are you saying?”

“What am I saying?” she repeated, not remembering.

“About the President having a daughter. You must be mixed up. No more drinks. What if someone overheard you?”

“George, stop teasing. I haven’t been drinking any more than you. I’m very sober. I know everything I’m saying, and I never make up anything, like other wives do. You’ll see. You’ll find out. It’s one of my virtues from my father. You’ll always know your wife says everything true.”

“Everyone knows Dilman has that son in college, but—”

“George, I told you I never, never lie,” she said indignantly. “He has a daughter, too, older than Julian, and it’s a secret because she’s passing for white in New York, so he doesn’t recognize her maybe, or she him, I don’t know which, so that’s why nobody knows, but it’s true.” Through bleary eyes, she decided that he was still unconvinced of her integrity, and this was no way to begin a marriage. “George, he calls her Mindy, so does Julian call her Mindy, except her made-up passing name is Linda. Linda Dawson.”

“I can see where that would make him worried,” said George Murdock sympathetically. “It’s just odd, somebody as black as the President having a daughter hidden somewhere, white enough to pass.”

“Hormones,” she said knowingly. “Or is it genes?” She studied George’s many faces and tried to bring him into focus. “I don’t lie or exaggerate, George—”

“I didn’t say that you did.”

“But maybe you are thinking it—Edna, you are thinking, she is the kind of wife who’ll get drunk and make up stories and embarrass you socially. You said he’s black so how could he have a daughter who could pass? I can prove it, George. I wrote it down word for word in my diary. Did you know I have a diary? I started one the day T. C. moved into the White House. I thought some day—I’m not pretending to be a writer like you—but my job, I thought some day maybe my diary could be history. It isn’t much, but I am a President’s confidential secretary, two Presidents’, and maybe some day when we’re all dead, our children can make a million dollars getting a writer to fix it up. You hear of those things.”

“Very intelligent, Edna. I see I’m going to have an intelligent wife. Just don’t put me in your diary.”

She started to giggle and could hardly stop. “Of course you’re in it, George, but nothing you won’t like. You and T. C. and President Dilman—”

“And Mindy Dilman alias Linda Dawson. Pretty exotic company.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it, and released it. “Did Dilman tell you all of that stuff about his family?”

“Heavens, no—George, do you think we can have just one more drink to celebrate, a short one?—Dilman? No, he’s secret as a clam or something, and I don’t blame him, do you? But about the daughter, it came from him, sort of, well—I’m not sneaky, don’t think that—I’m very integrity, full of—you know—I never leak things to you—isn’t that so, George?”

“I’ve never known anyone with as much integrity as you, Edna.”

“Thank you. So you understand. Part of my job is, you know, to monitor his calls, the business ones, like I did for T. C., listening on the extension and taking down the gist of it shorthand so he has a record to refer back to. Standard procedure. So whenever Dilman makes a call, I’ve got to listen, except when it’s something real personal, like when he calls old friends like Nat Abrahams or the Spingers or some woman who lives with them named Gibson or his son, he tells me to get off, and let it be personal and I do. Well, this day he was letting me monitor calls, and maybe he was busy or upset, I don’t know, but he called his son and didn’t tell me—to get off, I mean—maybe he didn’t know or forgot I was on the line—and there it was, the President and his son Julian talking, and when I heard what they were saying to one another, I knew I shouldn’t be hearing it but I was too embarrassed to get off and let him hear the click and then always have him suspicious of me, so I suffered through, it, and when they hung up, I hung up simul—same time—and that’s how I heard the argument about his daughter and her passing, and about her, the daughter, being like her mother, Dilman’s wife, who wanted her to be white like she wanted to be white herself, and because Aldora, Dilman’s wife, couldn’t, she took to drinking—I don’t believe in drinking except socially, do you, George?—until she even became an alcoholic in that sanitarium in Illinois—in Springfield—and died after, except that was a long time ago. Isn’t it all horrible, George, how people let their lives become? Ours won’t, will it? For my part it won’t, I promise you.”

“I promise you, too.”

“I’ll be the best wife ever, George, once I’m away from that horrible atmosphere.”

“You’re the best wife in the world right now, darling. Let’s have one more for the road on that. Okay?”

They drank, and a half hour later they had a hamburger and gallons of hot black coffee—she was determined to give evidence of her wifely frugality—at the counter of the Mayflower Coffee Deck.

After that, they strolled for a long time in the cold, and George bought her a gardenia corsage in some place that was open late and warm inside, and then they walked through Lafayette Square until she felt the cold and began to sober. Then, so thoughtfully, so generously, he hailed a taxicab and took her home, and because it was late and she was wonderfully weary and he was inspired to get up early in the morning and look for the right job, he did not come in, except inside the hall of her apartment. She stayed in his arms, and as they kissed this time, she permitted him to pet her bust as long as he wanted to, because her bust and all of her belonged to him, and it felt good, so good.

When he was ready to go, and she could make out one of him, not two or three, she said, “You meant everything you said tonight, George, didn’t you?”

“Everything, sweetheart.”

“I think I bored you, talking so much, but I was so excited. It’s not every day a girl is proposed to and accepts. I hope I didn’t say anything foolish or—or indiscreet. Did I?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, if I did, it doesn’t matter, because we belong to each other now, no secrets, never, promise? You can trust me with everything and I can trust you. Isn’t that right, George?