Boys & Girls Together (89 page)

“Keep your voice—”

“I don’t care if half of Kingsway hears. I’m getting angry.”

“How do you think you’ve been acting?”

“That was nothing,” Jenny said.

“Ouch,” Betty Jane said.

Charley walked into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s this darn can opener.” She held up a bleeding finger. “I just can’t make it do anything but cut me.”

“Here.” Charley took it, opened the can, handed it back.

She kissed him quickly, saying, “Husbands. No home should be without one.”

Charley walked in to work and looked at his secretary. Then he shook his head.

His secretary made a sad smile.

He walked into his office and sat behind his desk. She came in a moment later and closed the door. “What’s today’s reason?” she said.

“No reason.”

“But you just didn’t tell her.”

“I didn’t tell her.”

Jenny sighed and sat wearily down in a chair. “Oh, Charley.”

“I keep thinking she hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Meaning I have?”

“Meaning I have.”

“Charley, you told me on the phone in Wisconsin you’d get a divorce. You promised me.”

“I know what I said.”

“I’m not a bitch. I don’t much like acting like one.”

“I know that too.”

“Then please tell her.”

“I will, I will.”

“How do I know you mean it?”

“I always mean it.”

“How do I know you’ll do it?”

“There’s no way.”

“Please, Charley.”

“I said I would.”

“Don’t make me act like a bitch.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Don’t make me be the one to tell her.”

“Wow,” Charley said.

“Don’t make me do it.”

“Would you?”

“If pressed.”

“And I’m pressing you?”

“You are.”

“I don’t think anybody would be very pleased if you did that.”

“I’m so tired, Charley, I don’t care anymore who wins, just so everybody loses.”

“I don’t think you’d tell her.”

“Bet me.”

“I love you so much. Don’t let me ever think why.”

He entered his house angry, slammed the door, listened for a feminine voice, heard it in the kitchen. Starting there, he determined to tell Robby to leave and then just let Betty Jane have it quickly and efficiently, because in the long run that was the kindest way. He walked into the kitchen, started to speak, stopped.

“Hello, Mr. Fiske,” Mrs. Catton said, sipping tea.

“Where’s Betty Jane?” Charley asked the sitter.

“She’ll call at seven,” Mrs. Catton replied. “Any minute now.”

“She’s not here?”

Mrs. Catton nodded and continued sipping.

At seven, Betty Jane called.

“I’m with Penny,” Betty Jane explained. “You remember that talk we had the other night? Well, she’s in sort of a bad way and wondered if I could keep her company. Wasn’t I lucky Mrs. Catton was available?”

“Then you won’t be home tonight?”

“That’s right. I told Mrs. Catton to make you a steak. There’s one in the icebox. Are the kids asleep? They should be. Mrs. Catton can sleep in with Paula.”

“You’re not coming home at all?”

“Tomorrow sometime. You tell Mrs. Catton—what’s the joke?”

Charley just couldn’t stop laughing. “It’s this terrific mood I’m in.”

“Oh,” Betty Jane said. “Just my luck to miss it. Gotta go, g’bye.”

Charley put the phone down and went out to the porch. He sat, staring alternately at Carnegie Lake and his hands, his thumbs in particular, the nails in his thumbs, the edge of the tip of the nail. At some time or other he said, “No, I’m really not hungry, thank you,” to Mrs. Catton, and a while after that, “Good night, yes, I’m fine.” It was dark on the porch. Charley got a book and, bringing it very close to his eyes, began to read:

So he was to be deaf. A cripple. Stunned
,
the old man sat alone in the dark delicatessen
,
surrounded by tinned fish and memory
,
his great nose motionless
,
ignoring the aromatic overtures from the friendly pickle barrel. So he was to be a cripple! What he feared most was to be. For he had failed
,
failed a private image of himself
,
and though the failing was neither his fault nor of his choosing
,
it was still his. How could you do this to me? he said
,
speaking to himself. All this time I thought I knew you; I thought we were friends
... Charley put the book down and rubbed his eyes. It was a hot June night and his eyes hurt. He got up and found his flashlight and went outside, feeling under the porch where the lumber was stacked. Selecting three fine logs, he carried them into the living room and set them in the fireplace. He took the morning paper and folded it and wedged it around the three logs. Then he lit a match and had a fire. It crackled quite properly, was properly red, and he watched it until the logs were spent. Then he went upstairs and shook his son. “What shall we play?” Charley said.

Robby rubbed his eyes.” Wuzzatime?”

“Recess.”

Robby picked up his clock with the luminous dial. He looked at it, then at his father. Then he put the clock back and lay down again. “ ’Night.”

“You just name the game,” Charley said, “and we’ll play it.”

Robby shook his head.

“Why don’t you eat more? You’re too thin.”

“Is everything all right?” Mrs. Catton said from the doorway. “I heard voices.”

“I was just telling him to eat more,” Charley said, and he brushed by her and headed downstairs, picking up a deck chair from the porch, taking it outside. He sat down in the middle of the lawn and waited without sleep for the sun to rise. When it did, he got up and stretched and went inside, shaving, cleaning up, downing an entire pot of coffee. Just before he left for the train Robby came up to him and said, “Sorry.”

“What about?” Charley said.

“Last night. I shoulda come down with you. Or talked to you more. But you came in so suddenlike it scared me.”

When the boy was gone, Charley swelled his chest. Better and better, he thought; it’s not every father who scares his son.

“Gooooooood morning, Miss Devers,” he said later that morning. “You’re very chipper today, Mr. Fiske.” She shut the office door and leaned against it.

“I’ve got this funny joke to tell you is why. I didn’t tell my wife about divorcing her last night because—and get this now—because she was
sitting up with a sick friend
.” Charley laughed and laughed.

Jenny watched him.

“You’re not laughing. Where’s your sense of humor gone to?”

Jenny shrugged.

“Wait till you tell me a joke; see if I laugh.”

“Fine.”

“You can’t be mad
at me
because my wife takes it into her head not to come home. Fair is fair.”

“That’s right.” Jenny nodded. “What did you do?”

“When?”

“When you found out she wasn’t coming home.”

“Had the sitter cook me a steak and then went to sleep.”

“I couldn’t sleep. The last time I looked at the clock it was after three.”

“You gotta stay loose, kid. Listen to old Charley, he knows. I tell you, there’s a plot on to keep me from telling.”

“If you don’t tell her tonight, I’ll tell her tomorrow.”

“Set it to music and we’ll dance to it.”

“If only I were kidding,” Jenny said.

Charley flapped his arms. “Loose as a goose.”

When he got home that night Charley found his wife in bed sick.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, sitting down beside her.

“Nothing. I’ll be up in a sec.”

“Like hell you will. Robby said you were sick. What is it?”

“I know better, I do, but I skipped lunch because I was making this little nightie for Paula and then, well, it was hot this afternoon, and I shouldn’t have tried painting the porch steps. I just got tired.”

“Are you trying to hurt yourself?”

“I said I knew better.”

“You work too hard.”

“My home and my family; what else have I got?”

“What else has any of us?” Charley wanted to know.

The next morning Jenny said, “Well?”

“Close the door,” Charley told her. “I wanna talk.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Close the door and
sit down
.”

“Did you tell—”

“I said
sill
.”

Jenny sat. “Answer my question.”

“All in due time.”

“Did you tell her or not?”

“I’m a little sick of the way you’ve been acting,” Charley said.

“
You’re
sick of the way
I’ve
—funny, funny.”

“That’s your last bitch remark of the morning.”

“Charley—”

“My instructions to you are: shut the hell up.”

“Are you all right?”

“I am fine.”

“Sleep?”

“Sleep is an overrated commodity. I slept wonderfully. I have been, for the last days, sleeping wonderfully. I want to talk about shirts.”

“Shirts?”

“Look.” Charley took off his cord topcoat. “See this?” He fingered his: shirt. “It is a white Oxford-cloth, button-down shirt and it comes from the Brothers Brooks. Eye it. Tell me what you see.”

“It’s a shirt.”

“Pay attention. It is not a shirt; it is a very particular shirt and what is particular about it is that Mr. Myles has done his job to perfection. If you were to look inside this collar you would see a message imprinted: ‘No starch.’ When I first moved to Princeton—that is years ago now—I found that what laundrymen delighted most of all in doing was ignoring messages on shirt collars. My shirts came back starched, and I would explain that to the laundryman—I’m very particular about my shirts—and he would say that it wouldn’t happen again and then a week later back they’d come, starched as hell. This went on and on and then finally, one day, I went to Mr. Myles’ laundry and the next week, when I picked them up, there was no starch whatsoever in the shirts!”

“Did you tell her?” Jenny said. “That’s all I want to know.”

“For a moment, as I fingered the soft collar, I felt absolutely triumphant. I had found my laundryman! The quest was over. But then—then—” Charley shook his head sadly—“I realized my job was not nearly over. The ironing was atrocious. So I set to work. Every Saturday morning, when I went uptown to get my shirts, I would have a little chat with Mr. Myles. One week we would talk about the sleeve board, another the steam iron. We talked and talked and he was a willing man. But it still took months. Then, one Saturday in November—beautiful day, perfect; there was a game in Palmer Stadium, I remember, I heard the cheers—I went in to pick up my shirts and Mr. Myles handed them to me and they were on a hanger, Jenny, and the sleeves had been ironed with a sleeve board and they hung so clean and straight you almost had to
weep
. And Mr. Myles handed them to me and they were on a hanger, Jenny, and on the way back I heard the cheers again—”

“
Did you tell her?
”

“And I started cheering too: Rah, rah, rah-rah-rah—”

“Don’t shout, for God’s—”

“Rah, rah, rah-rah-rah, rah-rah-rah-rah-ray,
Myles
. And from that day to this, as the storytellers say, I have gone in every Saturday and I pick up my shirts and he hands them to me, hanging straight and clean on hangers, and he says, ‘Well, Mr. Fiske?’ and I say ‘Perfect, Mr. Myles’; and it’s not so easy as you think, getting a divorce, because it’s not hurting your kids or the gossip or the alimony or moving in town to some crummy apartment or the lawyer’s bills or anything else. It’s leaving my laundry-man that’s going to break my heart.”

Jenny picked up the phone and said, “Princeton, New Jersey, please.”

“Don’t do it,” Charley said.

“The number is Walnut 4-3878.”

“I’m telling you. Just don’t. Hang up the goddam—”

“Yes, it’s a business call.

“Jenny—”

“It’s too late.”

“You won’t do it. You’re bluff—”

“Don’t you know me at all?”

“Give me the damn phone.” He reached out for it.

She grabbed it with both hands. “Hello, Mrs. Fiske? This is Jenny at the office.”

“Give me the goddam—”

“There something I have to tell you about Charley.”

Charley wrenched the phone away. “I’ll tell her!”

“He’ll tell you!” Jenny shouted.

“It’s nothing, honey—just that I feel a little rocky—”

“He’ll be right home,” Jenny shouted. “To tell you!”

“Jenny’s such a worrier. I’ll be right home. Yes. Goodbye, honey.”

Jenny started him toward the door. “Love, here is your hat,” she said.

* * *

At half past three the call came. Jenny picked up her phone and said “Yes?”

“The bloody deed is done.”

“How did it go?”

“Hideously.”

“Charley?” Jenny said. But he was gone.

She sat at her desk for a long time before getting up and clutching her purse and hurrying to the elevators. She went down to the lobby and got a lot of change and went into a telephone booth. Then she called him back. He did not sound pleased to hear her. “How could you have called?”

“I had to talk to you,” Jenny said.

“There’s no limit to what you
have
to do, is there? Isn’t it enough she knows? What if she’d answered the phone? Did you have to gloat that much?”

“
Charley
—”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I’m sorry about this.”

“Like hell you’re sorry! You’re so glad you had to call to gloat—”

“I’m not, I’m not. Please—”

“I told you I wanted to wait till the time was ripe. But no. No, sir. Old Jenny, she wants blood—”

“Charley, please listen. It had to happen sometime, remember that. No matter when you’d told her it would have been hard for her, but I love you, I do, please, I love you so much, I’ll make you happy, don’t take this tone with me, please don’t talk to me this—”

“You’re a great actress, you know that?”

“All I want is for you to love me.”

“What you want is for everybody to lose. You got what you want now. Goodbye, Jenny.”

“Charley?” Jenny said.

But he was gone again.

The next morning Archie Wesker said, “Hey, lemme see, lemme see.” Jenny flushed.