Short Stories: Five Decades (77 page)

“Read this,” he said.

“Dear Children,” the letter began, in Laborde’s hasty scrawl. “Just a note to keep you
au courant
. The weather’s beastly, the natives sullen, and the consulate is rocking. Goldilocks is out. Resigned suddenly, as of two days ago, with no explanation. Except that at every cocktail party and every bar where English is spoken, the guess is Kinsey. The first bit of poison leaked three days ago in a column in Washington. Goldilocks and bride, tear-stained, departed yesterday for an Alp, to ponder the irony of destiny. Burn this letter and keep a bed warm for me in the desert. Love …”

I folded the letter and gave it back to my husband. He put it thoughtfully into his pocket. “Now,” he said, “what do you think of that?”

He did not expect an answer and I said nothing. He took a turn around the small patio, touching the sun-warmed adobe wall, and stopped in front of me once more. “Poor man,” he said, and the pity was real and revivifying. “He was doing so well.”

He took another turn around the patio and said, “What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose somebody sent a letter to somebody.”

“Somebody sent a letter to somebody,” he repeated, nodding gently. He looked at me for what seemed like a long time, searchingly. Then he touched my hand and smiled in a very strange manner.

“Do you know what I’ve been thinking?” he said. “I’ve been thinking it might be a nice idea if we both got into the car and drove into C—and bought a good bottle of wine for dinner.”

“Yes,” I said, “that would be a very nice idea.”

I went in and changed and then we drove down the long, straight fifty miles to C—. We bought a bottle of Bordeaux that my husband said was of a quality he hadn’t expected to find so deep in the heart of America. He seemed delighted with the crowds on the streets and the things in the windows and insisted upon buying me a very pretty little cotton dress, in a green plaid design, that he saw in a shop.

We drove home and I prepared the dinner and we sat out under the stars and ate it slowly. The Bordeaux, my husband said, was exceptionally good, and we became quite tipsy over the unaccustomed wine, and we laughed unreasonably as we sat across from each other at the table and if there had been anybody there to see us, he would have thought that we were very happy indeed, that night.

Victoria put the folder down.

The story had never been printed. There had been three rejection slips and she had given up. The editors during that period were cowardly, she told herself. She had started four or five more stories and never finished them. Wishing does not make a writer, nor education, nor injustice, nor suffering. The house was sold, at a profit, and they moved to Los Angeles.

She looked at the photograph of her husband, grave, soberly lighted, falsely calm, falsely honorable. She was not sorry he was dead.

She looked out the window. It was still raining. The rain on the window drowned the drowning world outside. It had turned out to be a good day for funerals. A good day for questions, too. Victoria. Victory. Victory over what?

What sort of love could it have been that demanded that price for its survival? In a time of sharks, must all be sharks? Who was the monster who had sat, in the pretty new dress—proud, wily, subservient, dining under the desert stars, and had smiled in pleasure and complicity at the man across the table, enjoying the wine?

The blond hair had been wet that day, too, although Borden was young then and had not yet begun to use dye
.

Mixed Doubles

A
s Jane Collins walked out onto the court behind her husband, she felt once more the private, strong thrill of pride that had moved her again and again in the time she had known him. Jane and Stewart had been married six years, but even so, as she watched him stride before her in that curious upright, individual, half-proud, half-comic walk, like a Prussian drill sergeant on his Sunday off, Jane felt the same mixture of amusement and delight in him that had touched her so strongly when they first met. Stewart was tall and broad and his face was moody and good-humored and original, and Jane felt that even at a distance of five hundred yards and surrounded by a crowd of people, she could pick him out unerringly. Now, in well-cut white trousers and a long-sleeved Oxford shirt, he seemed elegant and a little old-fashioned among the other players, and he looked graceful and debonair as he hit the first few shots in the preliminary rallying.

Jane was sensibly dressed, in shorts and tennis shirt, and her hair was imprisoned in a bandanna, so that it wouldn’t get into her eyes. She knew that the shorts made her look a little dumpy and that the handkerchief around her head gave her a rather skinned and severe appearance, and she had a slight twinge of female regret when she looked across the net and saw Eleanor Burns soft and attractive in a prettily cut tennis dress and with a red ribbon in her hair, but she fought it down and concentrated on keeping her eye on the ball as Mr. Croker, Eleanor’s partner, sliced it back methodically at her.

Mr. Croker, a vague, round, serious little man, was a neighbor of the Collinses’ hosts. His shorts were too tight for him, and Jane knew, from having watched him on previous occasions, that his face would get more serious and more purple as the afternoon wore on, but he played a steady, dependable game and he was useful when other guests were too lazy or had drunk too much at lunch to play in the afternoon.

Two large oak trees shaded part of the court, and the balls flashed back and forth, in light and shadow, making guitarlike chords as they hit the rackets, and on the small terrace above the court, where the other guests were lounging, there was the watery music of ice in glasses and the bright flash of summer colors as people moved about.

How pleasant this was, Jane thought—to get away from the city on a week end, to this cool, tree-shaded spot, to slip all the stiff bonds of business and city living and run swiftly on the springy surface of the court, feeling the country wind against her bare skin, feeling youth in her legs, feeling, for this short Sunday hour at least, free of desks and doors and weekday concrete.

Stewart hit a tremendous overhead smash, whipping all the strength of his long body into it, and the ball struck the ground at Eleanor’s feet and slammed high in the air. He grinned. “I’m ready,” he said.

“You’re not going to do that to me in the game, are you?” Eleanor asked.

“I certainly am,” Stewart said. “No mercy for women. The ancient motto of the Collins family.”

They tossed for service, and Stewart won. He served and aced Eleanor with a twisting, ferocious shot that spun off at a sharp angle.

“Jane, darling,” he said, grinning, as he walked to the other side, “we’re going to be sensational today.”

They won the first set with no trouble. Stewart played very well. He moved around the court swiftly and easily, hitting the ball hard in loose, well-coached strokes, with an almost exaggerated grace. Again and again, the people watching applauded or called out after one of his shots, and he waved his racket, smiling at them, and said, “Oh, we’re murderous today.” He kept humming between shots—a tuneless, happy composition of his own—like a little boy who is completely satisfied with himself, and Jane couldn’t help smiling and adoring him as he light-heartedly dominated the game and the spectators and the afternoon, brown and dashing and handsome in his white clothes, with the sun flooding around him like a spotlight on an actor in the middle of the stage.

Occasionally, when Stewart missed a shot, he would stand, betrayed and tragic, and stare up at the sky and ask with mock despair, “Collins, why don’t you just go home?” And then he would turn to Jane and say, “Janie, darling, forgive me. Your husband’s just no good.”

And even as she smiled at him and said, “You’re so right,” she could sense the other women, up on the terrace, looking down at him, their eyes speculative and veiled and lit with invitation as they watched.

Jane played her usual game, steady, unheroic, getting almost everything back quite sharply, keeping the ball in play until Stewart could get his racket on it and kill it. They were a good team. Jane let Stewart poach on her territory for spectacular kills, and twice Stewart patted her approvingly on the behind after she had made difficult saves, and there were appreciative chuckles from the spectators at the small domestic vulgarity.

Stewart made the last point of the set on a slamming deep backhand that passed Eleanor at the net. Eleanor shook her head and said, “Collins, you’re an impossible man,” and Croker said stolidly, “Splendid. Splendid,” and Stewart said, grinning, “Something I’ve been saving for this point, old man.”

They walked off and sat down on a bench in the shade between sets, and Croker and Jane had to wipe their faces with towels and Croker’s alarming purple died a little from his cheeks.

“That overhead!” Eleanor said to Stewart. “It’s absolutely frightening. When I see you winding up, I’m just tempted to throw away my poor little racket and run for my life.”

Jane lifted her head and glanced swiftly at Stewart to see how he was taking it. He was taking it badly, smiling a little too widely at Eleanor, being boyish and charming. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Something I picked up on Omaha Beach.”

That, too, Jane thought bitterly. Foxhole time, too. She ducked her head into her towel to keep from saying something wifely. This is the last time, she thought, feeling the towel sticky against her sweaty forehead, the last time I am coming to any of these week-end things, always loaded with unattached or semi-attached, man-hungry, half-naked, honey-mouthed girls. She composed her face, so that when she looked up from the towel she would look like a nice, serene woman who merely was interested in the next set of tennis.

Eleanor, who had wide green eyes, was staring soberly and unambiguously over the head of her racket at Stewart, and Stewart, fascinated, as always, and a little embarrassed, was staring back. Oh, God, Jane thought, the long stare, too.

“Well,” she said briskly, “I’m ready for one more set.”

“What do you say,” Stewart asked, “we divide up differently this time? Might make it more even. Croker and you, Jane, and the young lady and me.”

“Oh,” said Eleanor, “I’d be a terrible drag to you, Stewart. And besides, I’m sure your wife loves playing on your side.”

“Not at all,” Jane said stiffly. The young lady! How obvious could a man be?

“No,” said Croker surprisingly. “Let’s stay the way we are.” Jane wanted to kiss the round purple face, a bleak, thankful kiss. “I think we’ll do better this time. I’ve been sort of figuring out what to do with you, Collins.”

Stewart looked at him briefly and unpleasantly, then smiled charmingly. “Anything you say, old man. I just thought …”

“I’m sure we’ll do better,” Croker said firmly. He stood up. “Come on, Eleanor.”

Eleanor stood up, lithe and graceful in her short dress, which whipped around her brown legs in the summer wind. Never again, Jane thought, will I wear shorts. Dresses like that, even if they cost fifty dollars apiece, and soft false bosoms to put in them, too, and no bandanna, even if I’m blinded on each shot.

Stewart watched Eleanor follow Croker onto the court, and Jane could have brained him for the buried, measuring glint in his eye.

“Let’s go,” Stewart said, and under his breath, as they walked to their positions on .the base line. He added, “Let’s really show the old idiot this time, Jane.”

“Yes, dear,” Jane said, and pulled her bandanna straight and tight around her hair.

The first three games were ludicrously one-sided. Stewart stormed the net, made sizzling, malicious shots to Croker’s feet, and purposely made him run, so that he panted pitifully and grew more purple than ever, and from time to time muttered to Jane, “Ridiculous old windbag,” and “I thought he had me figured out,” and “Don’t let up, Janie, don’t let up.”

Jane played as usual, steady, undeviating, as predictably and sensibly as she always played. She was serving in the fourth game and was at 40-15 when Stewart dropped a shot just over the net, grinning as Croker galloped heavily in and barely got his racket on it. Croker’s return wobbled over Stewart’s head and landed three inches beyond the base line.

“Nice shot,” she heard Stewart say. “Just in.”

She looked at him in surprise. He was nodding his head emphatically at Croker.

Eleanor was at the net on the other side, looking at Stewart. “It looked out to me,” she said.

“Not at all,” Stewart said. “Beautiful shot. Serve them up, Janie.”

Oh, Lord, Jane thought, now he’s being sporting.

Jane made an error on the next point and Croker made a placement for advantage and Stewart hit into the net for the last point, and it was Croker’s and Eleanor’s game. Stewart came back to receive the service, not humming any more, his face irritable and dark.

Croker suddenly began to play very well, making sharp, sliding, slicing shots that again and again forced Stewart and Jane into errors. As they played, even as she swung at the ball, Jane kept remembering the shot that Stewart had called in, that had become the turning point of the set. He had not been able to resist the gallant gesture, especially when Eleanor had been standing so close, watching it all. It was just like Stewart. Jane shook her head determinedly, trying to concentrate on the game. This was no time to start dissecting her husband. They had had a lovely week end till now and Stewart had been wonderful, gay and funny and loving, and criticism could at least be reserved for weekdays, when everything else was dreary, too. But it
was
just like Stewart. It was awful how everything he did was all of a piece. His whole life was crowded with gestures. Hitting his boss that time in the boss’s own office with three secretaries watching, because the boss had bawled him out. Giving up his R.O.T.C. commission and going into the Army as a private, in 1942. Giving five thousand dollars, just about the last of their savings, to Harry Mather, for Mather’s business, just because they had gone to school together, when everyone knew Mather had become a hopeless drunk and none of his other friends would chip in. To an outsider, all these might seem the acts of a generous and rather noble character, but to a wife, caught in the consequences …