Short Stories: Five Decades (138 page)

But Linda came out of the kitchen smiling and saying the maid was a calmer type than she appeared and was taking the news placidly. “She’s too old to be raped,” Linda said, “and she loves the children, so she’ll stay.”

Willard put the ladder in the garage and locked the garage and made sure the shutters were hooked from the inside in the children’s room and in Linda’s bedroom and in his own bedroom and in the bathroom in between, because all those rooms gave on the balcony against which the ladder had been propped the night before.

At the cocktail party, which was a replica of a thousand other cocktail parties being given on that particular Saturday night within a radius of one hundred miles from New York City, Willard and Linda told about the prowler and Martin had to describe what he looked like, feeling once more, as he had with the policemen, that it was a sign of low intelligence on his part that he couldn’t be more accurate. “He had this hat over his eyes and he didn’t have any expression on his face and he was rather pale, as I told the sergeant, and intense-looking.…” Even as he spoke, Martin realized that he was adding to the portrait of the man on the other side of the window in the misty night, that the intensity of the man’s expression was a new discovery, dredged from his memory, that the remembered face was being simplified, intensified, becoming heraldic, symbolic, a racial, dangerous apparition staring out of dark and dripping forests at the frail safety of the sheltered circle of light.

The Willards’ visitor started everyone off on their own stories of burglars, prowlers, kidnappers.

“… so there was this fellow suddenly staring down the skylight, it was summer and the skylight was open, on West 23rd Street, and my friend ran up to the roof and chased him across the roofs and cornered him and the fellow whipped out a knife and it took five transfusions before he was out of danger. Of course, the police never found him.”

“… a loaded .45. Right next to my bed, at all times. These days, with all these crazy kids. Anybody who tries anything in my house is in for a hot welcome. And don’t think I wouldn’t shoot to kill.”

“… the chain on the door and everything from every single drawer and cupboard piled in a heap on the rug. And I can’t tell you what else they did, in mixed company, but you can imagine. The police told them it was quite common. especially when they were disappointed in their haul. But of course, they were asking for it, living surrounded by all those Puerto Ricans.”

“… this was a long time ago, of course, when he had this Great Dane kennel, but the day after the Lindbergh kidnapping he sold every single dog he had in the place. At three times what he’d been asking before.”

Glass in hand, Martin listened politely, realizing with some surprise that all these solid, comfortable people, in their cosy and orderly community, shared a general fear, a widespread uneasiness, and that the face outside the Willard window had made them all remember that there were obscure and unpredictable forces always ready to descend upon them in their warm homes and that, with all their locked doors and all their police and all their loaded .45’s, they were exposed and vulnerable to attack.

“You’ve sent a delicious shiver down every spine,” Linda said, coming over to Martin.

“Not so delicious,” he said thoughtfully, looking around him at the serious home-owning faces. Linda, he saw, had made up her mind to take the whole thing lightly, after the rattled nerves of the night before and the fuss about the police. He admired her for it, but it worried him, and he didn’t like the idea of leaving her out there in that pillared, echoing house surrounded by acres of wilderness, especially since Willard worked late in the city several times a week and didn’t get home until midnight. After all, uncaught and unsuspected, there was nothing to stop the man from coming back a week from now, a month, two months.… On another rainy night, with no moon.

“We’d better be going now,” Linda said. “We’re expected for dinner at eight-thirty.” She glanced slyly around the room. “Anybody you want to take? The Charles’s said if you wanted to bring anybody, it’s only a buffet supper, really.…”

“No, thanks,” Martin said, smiling. “They’re all very nice, but …” Then he stopped. A tall, blond woman in a blue dress had just come into the room and was making her excuses to the hostess for being late. Her hair was done in a low bun on the back of her neck, making her look stately and old-fashioned. Her voice, as she made her explanations to the hostess, was murmuring and melodious, and she was by far the prettiest woman in the place. “Well,” Martin said to Linda, grinning, “maybe that one. Give me ten minutes.”

Linda shook her head. “No go, Brother,” she said. “Her name is Anne Bowman, and she’s married. And there’s her husband at the door.”

Linda gestured with her glass toward the door and Martin saw a tall man in a well-tailored dark suit, with his back to him, talking to Willard and the host.

“In that case,” Martin said, taking a last look at the beautiful Mrs. Bowman, “we might as well leave now.”

“You’ll see her tomorrow,” Linda said, as they made their way to the door. “I think Willard arranged a tennis game at their house tomorrow morning.”

They pushed unobtrusively toward the door to pick up Willard, who was still talking to their host. Bowman had moved off several steps and was talking to a group nearby.

“We’re going?” Willard said, when Linda and Martin came up to him. “Good, it’s about time.” He reached over and tapped Bowman on the shoulder. “Harry,” he said, “I want you to meet my brother-in-law. He’s coming over with me tomorrow to play tennis.”

Bowman had his back to them, finishing a story, and it was a moment before he turned around, on a burst of laughter that the story had provoked from his listeners. He had a smile on his pale, well-kept face and he put out his hand to Martin. “This is a pleasure,” he said, “I’ve heard so much about you. Your sister tells me all. Is it true, as she says, that you once nearly took a set from Herb Flam?”

“We were both twelve years old at the time,” Martin said, keeping his face straight and trying to act naturally, like anybody else leaving a cocktail party and responding in the ordinary way to an ordinary and casual introduction. It wasn’t easy, because after ten seconds of looking at the candid, healthy, successful face in front of him, he was sure that Bowman was the man he had seen outside the window the night before.

“Get a good night’s sleep,” Bowman was saying to Willard. “We’ll have a hot doubles.” He leaned over and kissed Linda goodbye, familiarly, on the cheek. “You can bring your boys,” he said to her. “They can play with our kids. They won’t be in the way.” He waved and turned back to the people he had been talking to, mannerly, well-dressed, at home, surrounded by friends, the sort of man, pushing a robust forty, you might see at the reunions of a good college or behind a vice-president’s desk of one of those polite businesses where everybody has a deep rug on the floor and where money is only mentioned in quiet tones and behind closed doors.

Martin walked silently out of the house behind Willard and his sister, not responding when Willard said, “He plays a damn good game, especially doubles. He doesn’t like to run too much any more.” And he was still silent in the car going over to the dinner party, trying to piece everything together and wanting solitude and reflection for it, remembering Bowman’s open and untouched smile as he shook hands, remembering the hard feel of Bowman’s dry, tennis-player’s hand, remembering the familiar, habitual way Bowman had kissed Linda good night.

“Linda,” Willard was saying, at the wheel of the car, as they bumped along the narrow country road toward the dinner party, “you must promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?” Linda asked.

“You must promise to announce, each time we set out for a cocktail party, ‘Willard, you are too old for gin.’”

At the dinner party Martin had to repeat, for the benefit of the guests who had not been at the Slocum’s for cocktails, his description of the man he had seen outside the window. This time, he made it as vague as possible. It was not easy. Bowman’s face and figure (aged nearly forty, blue eyes, sandy hair cut close, wide, smiling mouth, white, even teeth, height nearly six feet, weight probably about one seventy-five, complexion fair, shoulders broad, general impression—good citizen, father of family, responsible businessman) kept crowding in, the statistics, recognizable, damaging, on the tip of his tongue, making it difficult to recall the hazy generalities by which he had described the man until then. But there was no sense, Martin decided, in damning the man so soon and it would only lead to trouble if even a random word of his cast suspicion on Bowman before he made absolutely certain that Bowman was the man he had seen.

On the way home with Linda and Willard, and over a nightcap before going up to bed, he decided not to say anything to them yet, either. Staring at his sister, he remembered how anxious she had been not to call the police, how she had fought Willard about it and won, how she had leaned over to be kissed by Bowman at the door as they were leaving the cocktail party. She and Willard slept in separate rooms, he remembered, both giving on the balcony, and Willard stayed in town late two or three times a week.… Martin was ashamed of himself for the speculation, but he couldn’t help it. Linda was his sister and he loved her, but how well did he know her, after all these years? He remembered his own sensuality and the regrettable things he had done, himself, because of it. She was his sister, however innocent and wifely and delightful she seemed, and the same blood ran in both of them. No, he thought, wait.

They were on the tennis court at eleven o’clock the next morning, Willard and Martin playing against Bowman and a man called Spencer, who had a big service but nothing much beyond that. Bowman turned out to be agile and crafty and played with a good-humored enjoyment of the game, whether he was winning or losing.

Martin and Willard had brought over the two boys and they played at the edge of the court with the Bowman’s three children, two boys and a girl, ranging in age from six to eleven, all three of them rather pale and subdued, too polite and reserved, Martin thought, for children their age.

After the second set, Mrs. Bowman, looking surprisingly formal in a dark cotton dress with a white collar under her heavy bun of rich, dark blond hair, came out of the house with a tray with orangeade in a pitcher and some glasses. She stayed for some time, watching the game, and while she was there Martin made more errors than usual, because he kept glancing over at her, studying her, trying, almost unconsciously, to catch an exchange of looks between her and her husband, a sign, an indication.… But she sat there quietly, not saying anything, not applauding the good shots or commenting on the bad ones. She seemed to pay no attention, either, to the five children playing around her, and after a while, she got up, in the middle of a point, and wandered back toward the house, tall, curiously elegant, unattached, a silent and decorative figure on the sweeping green lawn which led up to the big, white, pleasant house.

The wind sprang up during the third set and made lobbing and overheads difficult and they decided to quit. They all shook hands and went over to the side of the court and drank their orangeade. The two Willard boys climbed all over their father, clamoring for a drink, but the Bowman children stood off at a little distance, silently, watching their father, and only coming over when he had poured a glass of the orangeade for each of them and called to them to come and drink it. They said, “Thank you,” in hushed voices and retired again to sip their drinks.

“It’s too bad you won’t be here all summer,” Bowman said to Martin, as they sat at the edge of the court with their drinks. “You’d raise the level of the tennis around here considerably. You might even get your poor old brother-in-law up to the net once in a while.” He chuckled good-naturedly, winking at Martin and wiping the sweat off his forehead with a towel.

“I have to be in Paris by the end of the week,” Martin said, watching Bowman’s face for a change of expression, a flicker of relief.

But Bowman merely kept wiping his face with the towel, placidly, smiling. “We’ll miss you,” he said, “especially on weekends. But, anyway, you’re coming to dinner this evening, aren’t you?”

“He’s set on catching the six o’clock to New York,” Willard said.

“Oh, that’s silly,” said Bowman. “We’re having a barbecue in the garden. If it doesn’t rain. Stay another night. New York is dead on Sunday, anyway.” He sounded friendly, hospitable.

“Well,” said Martin, deciding suddenly, “maybe I will.”

“That’s the boy,” Bowman said heartily, as Willard looked at Martin, mildly surprised. “We’ll try to make it worth your while. I’ll warn the dull country folk they have to put their best foot forward. All right, children,” he called. “Ready for lunch.”

On the way home, Willard looked over from the wheel. “What made you change your mind, Martin?” he asked. “Mrs. Bowman?”

“She is beautiful, isn’t she?” Martin said, going along with his brother-in-law.

“Every one of the local Don Juan’s has tried his luck,” Willard said, grinning. “Zero.”

“Daddy,” asked the older boy from the back seat, “what’s a Don Juan?”

“He was a man who lived a long time ago,” Willard said briskly.

During the afternoon, Martin asked as many questions as he dared about the Bowmans. He found out that they had been married fourteen years, that they were rich (Mrs. Bowman’s family owned cotton mills and Bowman himself ran the New York office), that they gave many parties, that they were liked by everybody, that the Willards saw them two or three times a week, that Bowman, unlike some of the other husbands of the community, never seemed the least bit interested in other women.

While he was dressing for the evening, Martin felt himself growing more and more baffled. When he had first seen Bowman at the party the night before, Martin had been sure Bowman was the man who had stared up at him from outside the living-room window, and when he had first seen him that morning on the tennis court the certainty had grown. But the house, the wife, the children, the things that Willard and Linda had said about Bowman, above all, the candid and relaxed manner in which Bowman had greeted him and pressed him to come to dinner, the transparent good humor, with no hint of any shadow beneath it, all conspired to shake Martin. If it really had been Bowman, he must surely have recognized Martin and been almost certain that Martin had recognized him. After all, they had stared at each other, both of them in a strong light, for a full ten seconds, at a distance of five feet. And if it had been Bowman, it would have been so easy for him to have called off the tennis game, to have telephoned and said he had a hangover, or there was too much wind, or with a dozen other excuses.