5:45 to Suburbia (11 page)

While he was sitting there thinking these thoughts, he suddenly became aware of the noise off in the background outside his office, the persistent clatter of a typewriter which meant Sandra Scott was busy typing up the morning’s dictation.

He threw back the intercom switch and said, “I’m glad you’re back, Sandy.”

“I’m sorry about the temper tantrum, Mr. Cadence.”

“I guess we’re all entitled to one now and then … Now let’s see if we can get Charlie back.”

O
N THE
way back from lunch, Charlie Gibson got the idea to call Joan and invite her into the city for dinner.

Marge had said something over lunch that was so obvious it was a wonder he had not thought of it himself: that of course Joan should help him decide what to do about Janie, that despite Janie’s fervent request that her mother be left out of the matter, it was Joan’s problem too.

Marge had sounded bored when she had made the suggestion, and an equally obvious fact struck Charlie suddenly — that she
was
bored, that it wasn’t her province to help him with this sort of problem at all, that she had just faced and solved a problem of her own, and she was probably even a little disdainful of Charlie’s inability to cope with the matter quietly and with orderliness, as she had handled hers.

He had to admire Marge Mann; he did admire her. She was strong and proud and certain; and she rolled with the punch. If there were any lesson in life Charlie would want Janie to learn and learn well, it would be pride — pride in herself, no matter what happened, the pride of independence.

In a sense, Janie’s mother was. But Joan’s confidence was wild and went barreling along on wheels, while Marge’s stood firm on good ground. Joan was a raving optimist; Marge, a pleasant pessimist. Charlie decided the latter needed people less, and he supposed that was one reason Marge had never married anyone and one reason he hadn’t married Marge.

He didn’t want Janie to be the extreme independent spirit Marge Mann was, but he couldn’t help hoping she was a little less dependent than her mother, for Charlie Gibson had always had the misconception that his wife was a vulnerable and fragile, emotionally, as a piece of Chinese porcelain — when it concerned Charlie.

He could remember little things that had happened long ago. A day, for instance, when he sat on the Yacht Club dock up in Auburn, New York, and told her how much he had loved Mitzie Thompson. He could remember glancing down at her once and seeing her face, reading her thoughts, and thinking to himself, The poor kid’s afraid no one will ever want to marry her the way I wanted to marry Mitzie. She was a terribly skinny, bony kid and Charlie felt sorry for her.

Sure, it was ironic; but more than once after they were married, Charlie felt the main reason he had proposed to her was that he felt so bad about taking her out in the car that night and halfway undressing her. He was ten years older than she was, after all; and he had taken advantage of her, scared her silly; because when he’d exclaimed, “What’s happening to us?” her whispered “I don’t know” had haunted Charlie for weeks and weeks after. He felt almost like a child molester, and he was certain she had cried herself to sleep that night after he’d dropped her at her house.

It was hard, after so many years, to think back on things with any real lucidity, but there were two things Charlie had done to Joan for which he never forgave himself.

One was that he had, in his rage at the announcement she was pregnant, accused her of planning the baby. Despite all anyone could tell him about a woman’s diaphragm being, on occasion, not altogether reliable, particularly if it had been a misfit, he had persisted in his accusation for months. It was a wonder to him Janie was born healthy, a wonder and a marvel and a joy. So he never forgave himself that.

The other thing was, of course, Marge.

At least Joan never had to know about it. Thank God.

She would have left him, simply left him, and she wouldn’t have gotten over it, like some women. She wouldn’t have married another man and started all over again; she simply would have grown old, bitter, and probably blighted Janie’s whole outlook. Well, thank God it never happened. It took a war to make Charlie know whom he wanted to go home to and it was an odd thing that, during the war, actually during some of the rough moments when he wondered if he’d come out alive, and whom he’d want to see, Marge would come to mind. He’d think, Marge ought to be here, by rights, fighting for me. She always fought my other battles, and won; bet she’d slaughter these Nips.

And he’d remember the way Joan’s naked body felt, all curled around him, hanging on to him like a tame boa, when she slept. And sometimes she’d whimper in her sleep. And he’d murmur, “That’s all right, I’m here!” He remembered things like that — and then he’d remember the shoes.

They were living on Bleecker Street that Christmas, in the cold-water railroad flat. They were broke — because Charlie’s first job in New York paid next to nothing. He’d just suffered through some preposterous ailment called mononucleosis which had cost them an arm and a leg in doctor’s bills, and Joan was in her fourth month.

To complicate things, Charlie first fell in love with his wife that month. Before, he had only loved her, but now he was honest-to-God
in love
with the woman he married, and between them they had four dollars to splurge on Christmas.

They called it their “Gift of the Magi” Christmas afterwards, because Charlie spent his two on a very sexy-smelling cologne from Liggett’s, which gave her hives; and she spent her two getting his best shoes resoled (they were stuffed with cardboard before she whipped them off to the cobbler’s). And she was inordinately proud of the fact she had talked the cobbler, not only into new soles, but also into taps for both the heels and the toes for only two dollars. At the
office
where Charlie worked, he was known as Mr. Astaire. But he never told her that; he just sat around the house wondering why she didn’t realize men didn’t wear taps on their toes and heels, and wondering, as well, what was making her itch herself all the time.

For a long time he carried in his wallet the note she had written with the shoes: “I’ll never let you touch ground, darling!” until ultimately someone picked his pocket.

And Joan saved the little note he wrote: “To my very sexy mother” until it suddenly dawned on him one day years later, as he was searching through a bureau drawer for a collar button, and came across the note, that it was more odious than facetious — in the light of Freud and the Forties; and he’d put a match to it.

When Charlie stepped into the drugstore on the corner to call Joan immediately, before she called in her market list, he got a busy signal; and he decided something else about the difference between Marge and Joan. Joan was a blabbermouth; God, she blabbed everything! Everything, and to everyone! She was probably on the phone right now blabbing out another installment in the life history of Mrs. Charles Gibson, to Aileen Tullett, her worst competition in the blabbermouth contest. Maybe he’d
never
get through to her. Not all afternoon. Maybe he should send a wire.

Now Marge Mann was a lot of things, but she was not a sob sister, and she was not a woman’s woman. She was a
man’s
woman, and the reason was that she could keep her mouth shut and not tell herself all over the place.

That’s something else Janie should learn, Charlie thought — Writing a letter to announce she was having an affair! She got
that
from Joan.

Then the rather incongruous thought flashed through his mind: but where the hell would I be if she were doing it without my knowing it? I wouldn’t even be able to advise her. It wouldn’t occur to me Jane would let some young buck — not
Jane.
Jayne?

• • •

When Charlie got back to his office, he told Bonnie to put in a call for Mrs. Gibson. He reread Janie’s letter twice. Then, dutifully but in a haphazard sort of way, he shuffled through the papers on his desk, and out from under them, pulled the
Vile
dummy.

Splashed across the front of the mock cover were the words:

OTTO AVERY KEEPS IT GAY!

Charlie didn’t get it right away. His only reaction was, “Don’t tell me that bastard makes interesting, copy.”

Then he turned to the fourth page and read the blurb on the story:
FROM COAST TO COAST OUR FAVORITE COMMENTATOR HAS BEEN MAKING NEWS THAT HE DOESN’T DARE REPORT, BECAUSE IT SOUNDS TOO MUCH LIKE A FAIRY STORY.

Very slowly now, Charlie Gibson began to read the copy.

The woman in the phone booth at the Algonquin Hotel was very drunk. Two bellboys lingered along the outside.

“It’s a wonder she can dial the number,” one said.

“She can’t,” the other said. “She’s tried three times…. There, she’s got it now.”

“It’s a wonder she can remember the number. It’s a wonder she can stand up!”

“She can’t,” his companion said. “She’s leaning against the wall.”

“I’ll bet she gets the wrong number.”

“No, she’s talking.”

“It could still be the wrong number. I know a dame used to get herself loaded and go call up the Weather and just sound off like crazy, giving the Weather hell. And all the time the Weather would be playing over and over, ‘Cloudy skies forecast for Monday; strong winds,’ and this babe would be in there hollering, ‘You’re a son of a bitch, do you hear! You’re a son of a bitch!’ Over and over. It was the craziest thing I ever knew.”

“Listen,” the other one said. “She’s talking.”

“Bet she’s calling Weather.”

“Listen!”

• • •

From inside the booth the voice whined:

“Come over here and talk to me …

“No, I am
not
drunk. You believe that rumor? Hah-h! Et tu, Brutus? Eh? …

“I wouldn’t ask you to if it weren’t important! …

“Can’t wait until
five! …

“If you don’t come to me, I’ll come to you …

“What do you mean
you
wouldn’t do that. I’m talking about what I’
d
do. And I’ll come to you if you don’t come to me …

“No, right now! …

“No! …

“I have
not
been drinking, and I will not get in a cab and go home and hear from you later! …

“No! …

“Yes, I do need to see you! I need to! I need to! …

“Yes …

“Yes, right away …

“Yes, thank you, yes …

“G’by! …

• • •

When the woman came out of the phone booth, the pair of bellboys ducked to one side.

She said, “Listening huh?”

“No, ma’am,” one said.

The other said, “What do you think of this weather we’ve been having?” And he nudged his companion sharply in the ribs with his elbow.

The woman looked at them for a moment, weaving slightly.

Then she said, “Boys, I want you to know something.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Boys,” she said, “you are looking at a barren woman!”

• • •

“Where are you going?” Bonnie asked as Charlie Gibson rushed past her. “Wait a second. I’ve got Mrs. Gibson on one wire, and Mr. Cadence on the other.”

“Tell Mrs. Gibson I’ll call her back,” he said, “and tell Bruce-tell him to go to hell!”

“When will you be back?” she called at Charlie. “He’ll want to know about the dummy. What’ll I tell him?”

“Tell him what I told you to!” Charlie snapped. Then he disappeared around the corner.

His secretary stared blankly at the empty space he had just occupied. Then, shaking herself to efficiency, she pressed the button down on Cadence’s call.

“He just stepped out for a moment, Mr. Cadence,” she said. “He said he’ll call you back…. Well, of course he knew who was calling,” and, flustered, added quickly, “Well, no, maybe he
didn’t.
I mean, I’m not sure, Mr. Cadence. It’s all very confusing here today. I mean, it’s Mr. Gibson’s birthday.”

Then, she finished: “I don’t suppose it has
anything
to do with it, sir,” and heard the click in her ear.

O
N THE
morning of Charlie Gibson’s thirteenth birthday, he had set fire to the draperies in the living room of the Gibson home on South Street in Auburn, New York.

It was done deliberately, about an hour after breakfast.

At breakfast, Charlie’s father had appeared with two huge birthday-wrapped packages, and Charlie had sat in delightful suspense beside his younger brother, Gus, ten, who was already taller than Charlie, and who could knock Charlie down when he wanted to. And he wanted to a lot of times.

Charlie’s father had said in his gruff tone: “Someone in this house has a birthday today. Now who would that be?” and stood at the head of the table holding the gifts.

“It’s me,” Charlie had answered.

“It’s I,” his father had corrected him. “All right then, come and claim your gift.”

Charlie pushed his chair back and went to his father, reaching out for the packages. His father handed him only one.

“The other is for Gussie,” he told Charlie. “It’s not
his
birthday.”

“Well, we got him something
anyway,”
Charlie’s father said. “He’ll want to celebrate your birthday too.”

“I never got anything on his!”

“Listen to me, yong man,” the senior Gibson said, “you’re very nearly in danger of not getting anything on your own! … Now pass this package to your brother.”

Charlie’s gift was the huge model sailboat which he had always wanted; and Gussie’s was a fire engine.

The fire Charlie set was wholly successful; it blazed.

The newly-qualified fireman in the Gibson family was occupied, at the time, with mole-hunting in a vacant lot several blocks away, and Charlie’s father was off in the library reading the newspaper and grunting over the results of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Charlie’s mother smelled the smoke from the kitchen, and appeared in the living room just in time to witness the flames’ final swallowing of the blueberry-print fabric, and to scream, “Fire! Matthew! Oh, my God!”

Matthew Gibson’s reaction was one of tired resignation at the fact he had uncannily fathered a frightful misfit. Thank heaven for Gussie, anyway. And he had walloped with his belt, fined him one dollar, to be paid from his allowance of ten cents a month, and taken his sailboat back to Sears Roebuck.

Amelia Gibson had hunted six months for that blueberry print, and she was less resigned. She marched her son into the kitchen, struck a match, and forced his hand under the flames.

“You hurt those draperies just like this hurts,” she said bitterly.

“Draperies aren’t alive,” he told her in a reasonable tone. Then he began to feel the heat. She kept his hand there, and Charlie ultimately broke one of the resolutions for his thirteenth year he had scribbled in the flyleaf of his Bible: “Beginning this year I will never cry in my life again.”

Charlie spent the afternoon of his thirteenth birthday in his room, his hand wrapped in gauze and Unguentine, reading Kipling’s poem
If,
over and over:

His father worried himself with business problems down at the Gibson Mayonnaise factory.

And Gussie Gibson took the wheels off his engine and put them back on again.

Only Amelia Gibson and Charlie seemed to brood over the incident, and at nine o’clock that evening, as Charlie was putting on his pajamas, his mother appeared in his room.

“How’s your hand, Charlie?” she wanted to know.

Charlie shrugged.

“It was a bad burn,” she said. “I want you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“Come here,” she said.

Charlie went over to where she was sitting on his bed. He watched, puzzled, as she took a match out from the pocket of her dress.

“Light it,” she said.

“Why?”

“Do as I say,” she said.

Charlie lit the match and his mother held her hand out to it. Instantly, Charlie pulled the match away.

“All right,” she said. “We’ll do it over. I have more matches. We’ll do it until it’s right.”

“Why?”
Charlie protested.

His mother ordered, “Strike the match, Charlie. Do as I tell you!”

A dozen burnt matches later Amelia Gibson’s hand was as severely burned as her son’s, and she left the room in stony silence.

Charlie put the light out and lay in the dark wondering why she just couldn’t have said that she was sorry.