People Who Knock on the Door (15 page)

Arthur listened, also aware of Maggie’s head resting gently against his cheek. And wouldn’t it be great, he thought, if they could spend a little bit of their evenings like this together, once college started, just sitting on a sofa and talking?

“’Scuse me.” Robbie’s voice had come from behind them.

Arthur saw Robbie standing in the living room doorway.

“Why’d you bolt the front door?”

Arthur stood up. “I felt like it. Why’d you sneak in? Can’t you ring the bell?”

“Wasn’t sneaking in; I hadda come in by the garage!”

Robbie had had a few beers, Arthur saw.

“Hello, Robbie,” said Maggie.

“Hi,” said Robbie, still in the doorway.

“I bolted the door because Eddie Howell crashed in, and I don’t want any more such,” Arthur said. “Did you sic him on me tonight?”

After a second, Robbie said, “No.”

“Don’t get mad again, Arthur,” Maggie whispered, putting on the shoes that she had slipped off.

Robbie disappeared into the hall.

It was hardly 11 o’clock, Arthur saw. “Fine brother I’ve got, don’t you think?”

“Aren’t all kid brothers like this?”

Mozart came to a halt. They sat on in the living room, but the atmosphere was not the same. Arthur rode home with Maggie in her car, and then he walked back home, even though it was raining a little.

Arthur knocked on Robbie’s door, feeling like one of the intruders, but on the opposing team.

“Yup?”

Robbie was in pajamas on his knees, packing his blue duffel bag. “Bill’s picking me up tomorrow to take me to the airport.”

Robbie had told him that this morning. “Got your swim shorts? Extra pair of sneaks?” Arthur asked in a bored tone. Their mother wanted Arthur to be sure Robbie had them.

“Yup. I have.” Robbie lost his balance, and his head almost disappeared into the duffel bag.

“Look, Robbie, did Eddie—”

“
I
didn’t tell him to come here.”

But Robbie was in touch with the churchgoers, or they with him, Arthur was sure. “I’d like them to keep away while Dad’s gone and you’re gone. I don’t want them crashing in, understand? Or that other creep Irene crashing in.—Does she ring you up here?”

“No.—Well—yesterday she did.”

“I’m not letting her or any more in.”

Robbie sat back on his heels. “I know what you’re gonna do when I’m gone. Here.” He looked at Arthur with a straining frown under his smooth forehead.

“You think
what
you want.”

“What were you doing on the sofa even—if I hadn’t come in?”

“You want to tell something to Mom and Dad? Go ahead! Make something up!” Meddling little rat! Arthur walked out and shut the door.

17

T
he brief interview Tuesday morning in a room of C.U.’s Administration Building was not as conclusive as Arthur had hoped. He had hoped for a yes or no, the possible no being because the university might be full up, in which case Arthur had imagined them ousting a worse student and taking him in. A Mr. Lubbock in shirtsleeves behind a messy desk took a careful look at his papers, paper-clipped them, and said there still were some places for well-qualified students and he could let Arthur know within a week. Could Arthur come in again in a week?

Arthur felt he had reason to be optimistic. En route to his next destination, the public library, he stopped at a used car lot to look over what they had. He saw a lovely two-year-old red Toyota, but the price was out of the question. A boring but reliable-looking Ford was within reason for him, except that he hadn’t the eight hundred and fifty dollars it cost.

“Single owner,” said the car lot man. “Seven years old; that’s why the price is so low, otherwise it’s a great car.”

It was brown. Arthur had thought of a yellow or red car. “I’ll think it over. Thanks.”

At the library, after returning his books, he went directly to the sociology stacks. The range of the titles, concerning health, migration, employment, baffled him and made it difficult to choose one, or two, but at last he selected one, then went to the science section where the words on the spines of the books looked like a language he knew, and he at once took three from the shelves.

“Now you’re reading sociology?” asked Miss Becker, noticing
Changing Tides: Human Migration Since the Second World War
.

“N-n—I just wanted to get a general idea of it.”

“If you want a general idea—” She got up and went to a shelf of new books behind her. “This one’s just come in. It’s not on reserve. Want to try it?”

The book was
Sociology and American Social Issues
. Arthur saw from a glance at the contents pages that it covered more ground than the book he had chosen. “Just what I want. Thanks, Miss Becker.”

“One week on this,” she said, stamping his card. “When’re you off for the east?”

“I’m not. Can’t swing the dough, sorry to say. Maybe next year. I dunno.”

“O-oh—I’m sorry, Arthur.”

Arthur nodded, embarrassed. “I’ll be going to C.U., though. I think.”

“They ought to be pleased to have you. At least you’ll be around. That’s nice.”

Arthur went off to Shoe Repair.

He wrote to his mother that evening at the San Francisco hotel and told her about trying for C.U. He wrote that he was not sure where the money would come from, but he was determined to get a degree and could take a part-time job, and that C.U. was at any rate a whole lot cheaper than Columbia. He added:

A woman called Irene Langley came to the house last Friday evening. I don’t know if she is on drugs or not, but she gave me the creeps and I had a hard time getting rid of her. Could you please ask Dad to tell his church friends not to barge in like that?

Arthur had a date with Maggie for Wednesday night, and had thought of supper at his house, followed by an open-air jazz concert at the Sky Palace, starting at 10 p.m. The Sky Palace was a former drive-in cinema that had been converted into a roofless theater with a stage, a few seats and plenty of room for parked cars. One didn’t have to buy tickets in advance. Arthur wasn’t sure Maggie would like the idea, but she did.

Floodlights lit the sky high into the darkness. The amplifiers sounded turned on to maximum. There was a big round dancing area below the stage where the band played, but it looked not worth it to try to get there through the standing crowd, some of whom were dancing where they were.

“Hey, Arthur!”

Arthur looked around. It had been Gus’s voice, and amid the half-illuminated figures and faces, Arthur saw Gus’s blond head in the distance. Arthur steered Maggie in the general direction.

“Got Veronica!” Gus said, lifting Veronica’s hand as if she were some kind of prize.

The girls knew each other from school.

“Gonna
dance
, Gus?” Arthur shouted. Then he said to Maggie, “Gus thinks he’s a lousy dancer.”

They didn’t try to get to the dance floor. The girls talked together, and Gus and Arthur. Gus bought hot dogs all round and Arthur beers and Cokes.

“Gus! Let’s go to
my
place after this,” Arthur said. “Got the house free!”

They went finally to Arthur’s house. The fridge was full of cold drinks. Scrambled eggs and coffee later, Arthur thought, if people got hungry. He loved being the host, pretending that the house was all his, his and Maggie’s, of course. Again the girls stayed together. What did they find to talk about nonstop?

“Veronica
is
sort of pretty,” Arthur said to Gus. Veronica had nice wavy brown hair, a peachy natural color in her cheeks. She was a little overweight and shorter than Maggie.

“Think she likes me?”

Arthur laughed. “How do I know?”

“Tell me if you think so,” Gus said quietly, and drank from his can of beer.

No one got hungry. Veronica wanted to leave around one, and Arthur was pleased that Maggie showed no sign of leaving. Arthur said good-bye to Gus and Veronica at the door.

He came back to kiss Maggie. “Nice evening! Wasn’t it? For me, anyway.”

“Yes.—What were you and Gus talking about?”

Arthur smiled. “
I
don’t know. Nothing.” He hesitated. “Can you spend the night?”

Maggie laughed as if it were a joke, but he knew part of her laughter was due to shyness. “Maybe I could, but—as it happens, I’ve got the curse.”

“Oh.—Well, that doesn’t matter. I mean, just stay with me.”

She shook her head. “Next time.—I’m very glad to get the curse.”

Arthur had been thinking the same thing, that she would be glad. “I got a sociology book today from the library. Just a sec, I’ll show you!”

A
BOUT FIVE DAYS LATER
, Arthur received a letter from his mother, part of which said:

Sorry about the Irene visit. Yes, your father knows her and gives himself some credit for having taken her off the drink and off the streets, it seems. I asked Robbie about her visit and first he said she hadn’t come by at all! I think he is a little afraid of her. Then Robbie said you were rude to her. But never mind that. I hope she won’t turn up again to bother you. She’s a lost soul with a very sick mother and a do-nothing younger sister who just sits at home and doesn’t even try to find a job.

Damn Robbie, Arthur thought, lying now.

But Arthur was not inclined to resentment in mid-July, able to see Maggie several times a week, and with a full-time job now at Shop Repair with a higher salary. And there was simply the joy of being alone in the house on West Maple Street, of cutting a few flowers from the back garden and putting them in a vase in anticipation of a visit from Maggie. She stayed over a couple of nights with him, and of course there was time to go to bed together in the evening if they wished, even if Maggie chose to go home to sleep. On the first such occasion, Arthur had told Maggie that he could take some precautions, not knowing how else to put it, and Maggie had said not to worry, because she had taken the pill. Simple! Life could be happy and simple—if not for a few other people. It was lovely to forget for a while that those other people existed.

Then suddenly it was all over, his privacy was over anyway, because the family was due back tomorrow, July 29th. His mother had telephoned from Salt Lake City. And in a couple of days, it would be August, and Maggie was going away for two weeks to Canada with her parents. She was going to a hunting lodge on a lake, and both the lodge and the lake were owned by a pilot friend of her father’s. Arthur wished he had been rolling in money or had enough to propose a two-week jaunt somewhere with Maggie, who could probably get the use of the car she drove, her mother’s, because the family had two cars. And by September 17th, Maggie would be flying east to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Brought you this,” said his mother, holding up a fireman-red shirt of heavy flannel with white buttons. “Not the weather for it now, but I couldn’t resist it in San Francisco, because it looked just your size.”

Arthur was pleased with this. He tried it on.

Robbie, suntanned from head to foot, was prancing around barefoot in jazzy black and white zebra-patterned swim shorts. The family had arrived close to 8 p.m., not 5 p.m., as they had hoped, and Arthur had had time to prepare dinner, for which his mother praised him. His father was rather silent and spoke in monosyllables even to his mother, Arthur noticed.

A Chinese lampshade that expanded into a hollow rectangle had to be installed on the living room’s central ceiling light before they could sit down to dinner. This was made of off-white paper. It looked like a box kite.

“And what’s your news, Arthur?” his mother asked when they were all at table.

The blessing had been short.

“Tom took me on full-time. Or did I say that on the phone? I forgot.”

“No, you didn’t. Isn’t that nice, Richard?”

“Um—yes,” said Richard.

“We had fresh seafood every night in San Francisco,” Robbie said to Arthur. “Fisherman’s Wharf a coupla times.” He had put on a shirt at their mother’s request.

The telephone rang. It wouldn’t be Maggie, Arthur knew, because he had called her at 6, and she knew that his parents were arriving. His father went to answer.

Arthur said to his mother, “By the way, Mom, I was not rude to Irene Langley. I admit I didn’t ask her to sit down. Not sure she wanted to. She came for the aura, as she put it.” Arthur spoke as if his brother were not present. “You’ve met her, Mom?”

“Once or twice at church,” his mother said quietly, as if she didn’t want to go on with the subject.

Arthur glanced at Robbie who was sitting up straighter than usual, eyes on his plate, from which he forked his food steadily. “Meet any interesting people on your travels, Robbie?”

“People?”

“You know, those two-legged things?”

Robbie clammed up.

Arthur might have asked him if he had met any nice girls, which would have been a normal question to a brother, but Arthur didn’t want to invite any comment about Maggie. Whomever Robbie had met, whatever he had done in the way of surf-boarding and gorging on lobster at Fisherman’s Wharf, couldn’t equal Arthur’s happiness in the past two and a half weeks with Maggie.

“But my dear, it just
isn’t
possible,” Richard was saying in the living room. “I’m pretty sure tonight’s no worse—I will. You can count on me. Good night.” Then the click of the telephone being put down.

Richard came back frowning, shaking his head. “Sorry.”

“Who was that?” asked Lois.

“Oh—um—Irene. Sounding a little upset tonight.” Richard picked up his napkin and continued his meal.

“Is her mother worse?” asked Lois.

“No, no. She herself. Anxious. About what I don’t know.” A pause, then he went on. “Wanted me to come over and see her tonight, or could she come here—walk.” His father shook his head and smiled at his mother. “Told her it was out of the question.”

“You’ve got to be firm with her, Dad,” said Robbie.

“That’s right,” said Richard.

Arthur looked at his mother, who was listening to Richard.

“A firm attitude, and they’re all right—such people. They’re
on
the right track,” said Richard. “Just have to stay on it.”

“Does Bob Cole talk to her at all?” Lois asked.

“Oh, yes. I think he said he went to see her once or twice.” Richard wiped his lips with his napkin and sat back. The bulge of his abdomen under his untucked pink shirt looked larger than before his vacation. His short, broad nose had a tan that suggested leather. He wanted no coffee, just an early night’s sleep.

Arthur and his mother tidied up in the kitchen, while Robbie looked at TV.

“Did you talk to Dad about C.U., Mom?” Arthur asked as softly as he could over the rattle of his own dishwashing at the sink.

“I did, Arthur, and I’m sure it’ll work out—with you sleeping here.”

“Because—” Arthur stood on tiptoe to see over the partition into the living room. Robbie was still engrossed in the TV screen. “—I felt guilty even bringing up C.U. to you—Dad being so down on me. But September’s getting near.”

“He’s not so down on you, Arthur. This trip’s done him a lot of good. He’s tired tonight, so maybe it doesn’t show. And Mama helped. She talked a lot to Richard.” His mother was putting things away in the fridge as she talked. “Mama just said straight out, it isn’t right to punish Arthur by depriving him of college when he’s earned it.”

Arthur was surprised, then felt like smiling at the simplicity of it.

His mother pressed his arm and kissed him on the cheek. “Things’ll work out. I’ll be glad to have you at home, to tell you the truth.—How’s Maggie?”

“All right. Fine.—I was over at her house a couple of times for dinner. Just Maggie and Betty. Her father didn’t happen to be there.”

And Maggie’s scent was on his pillow. It was from two days ago, and the perfume was fading. He lay face down and inhaled it when he went to bed, and in the mornings, he covered the pillow with the sheet and bedspread as soon as he got up, so as little as possible would escape. When would she next spend an hour with him in his bed, or even half an hour? Now, there was always someone in the house, or the danger of someone. Maggie’s house was easier, and she had a wonderful way of saying suddenly, “My mother’s not coming home for another two hours, I know,” when they might be doing a chore in the Brewster yard or snacking in the kitchen.

Maggie’d asked him to come to Canada with her and her family. This was in the Brewster living room one night about five days after Arthur’s family had returned.

“Why not join us for a week or so anyway, Arthur, if you’ve got the time?” her mother put in. “George’s lodge up there sleeps ten people.”

Arthur felt stunned. It was a glimpse of luxury, paradise even, that came like a flash and vanished quickly. A big log cabin, a lake, Maggie, and time on their hands. “I can’t take any vacation this summer—thanks. Also I promised my boss I’d work on till mid-September.”