The Cry of the Owl (13 page)

And still he thought about it even after he had gone to bed. Of course Nickie had got his number from Greg, and it had been unnecessary to ask where she’d got it. The only surprising thing was that
she hadn’t got it weeks ago on her own, the way she had his number at the Camelot Apartments. A pity a new marriage couldn’t keep her a little busier, a little more content. She had married Ralph about a month ago. Robert had seen the announcement in the
New York Times
one Sunday. They had been married in Ralph’s family church somewhere in upstate New York, Robert remembered, and he had thought it rather unusual that a man like Ralph Jurgen, in the advertising business, should make such a sentimental choice of a place to be married in. But then he didn’t really know Ralph. When they had run into each other at the apartment two or three times, or when Robert had had to take a telephone message from Ralph for Nickie, they had been cordial to each other, nothing more, nothing else.

The telephone rang again, and Robert got out of bed and answered it, frowning.

“Hello, Robert,” said Jenny. “I was wondering if you’d like to meet my friends the Tessers on Wednesday. I’d like to ask them for dinner. They’re very easy to get along with. Would you?” It came out softly and steadily, as if she had rehearsed it.

Robert squeezed his eyes shut. “Jenny, I’m not sure I can make it on Wednesday. I haven’t got this cylinder thing worked out yet. I’d better spend this week at home.”

“Friday, then? Friday’s an even better night for them, I know, because—”

“O.K. Friday.”

“About seven? I can tell you’re in the middle of work, so I won’t keep you. Good night, Robert.”

He met the Tessers on Friday. Dick Tesser was a tall, slender fellow in his early thirties, with black hair and a black, bushy mustache. He
was a contractor. His wife, Naomi, was small and blond, very talkative and cheerful. They seemed to take a parental interest in Jenny’s welfare. And Robert sensed that they liked and “approved” of him in regard to Jenny, which must have been due to what Jenny had told them about him, as Robert was rather quiet that evening. Robert and Dick had asked polite questions about each other’s work, and the rest of the conversation had been about the Tessers’ frost-ruptured water pipes and about their three children.

“We’ve had a few calls from Greg since we saw you last,” Dick Tesser said to Jenny when they were all in the living room with their coffee.

“Oh?” Jenny said.

“Dick, do we have to go into that?” asked Naomi.

“Yes, I think it’s a very appropriate time, in view of the fact we’ve met Mr. Forester tonight. Mr. Forester is the way Greg always refers to you,” Dick added to Robert solemnly. Dick had had quite a bit to drink.

“Greg’s got a chip on his shoulder,” Naomi said with a shrug, and threw a smile at Robert. “Rather understandable.”

“I’m sorry he’s annoying
you
people,” Jenny said.

“Wants us to exert our influence,” Dick went on. “He seems to think you’re a little puppet with strings attached. Strings that we’re holding. He’s called us three or four times, hasn’t he, honey?”

“Yes, but let’s not make more out of it than it’s worth, Dick.” She narrowed her eyes at her husband, a signal to shut up, but Dick missed it.

“I don’t like a man,” Dick resumed, “who tries to oust his competition by slamming at their character. And what’s so great about Greg’s character, I’d like to know? A very ordinary young man with
an ordinary job. And he’s jealous, granted. Jealous maybe because Mr. Forester has a better job.”

Naomi laughed. “Oh, I doubt if it’s because of the job!”

Robert stared at the floor and wished they would get off the subject. Jenny looked as uncomfortable as he.

“It’s my fault for ever—for ever making any promises to Greg,” Jenny said. “I should have known better.”

“Whoever knows better, darling?” Naomi said. “We all make mistakes.”

“Greg should pick up a nice girl, maybe behind some drugstore counter—”

“Oh, come on, Dick,” Naomi interrupted. “I can remember when Jenny liked him and you thought he was pretty O.K., too, so don’t start knocking him all over the place now.”

“All right, all right, but you know what he said to me and I didn’t like it, that’s all.” Dick looked at his wife with a tipsy sternness.

“What did he say?” Jenny asked.

“Dick, do we have to?” his wife said.

“He told a story about a prowler around your house,” Dick said to Jenny. “Said you’d been hearing funny noises outside the house and in, and then when you met Mr. Forester, they stopped. Greg’s conclusion: Mr. Forester was the prowler.” Dick scowled, waiting for the effect of his words.

The effect was a three-second silence before Jenny said, “That’s just not true.”

“We didn’t think it was true, darling,” said Naomi.

Dick was looking at Robert. “He backed it up with a lot of stuff about talking to Mr. Forester’s former wife in New York,” Dick
said, addressing Jenny now, “who said Mr. Forester was ready for a booby hatch.”

Jenny’s cup chattered in its saucer and she nearly dropped it. She stood up. “It’s just not true, Dick, and why do you repeat it?”

Dick looked at her in surprise. “All right, Jenny. Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I only said this because—because—”

“Haven’t you said enough now?” asked Naomi.

But Robert saw that she was surprised at Jenny’s reaction, too. He heard Jenny draw her breath in as if she were about to cry.

“Because,” Dick went on, “I think you and your friend Robert ought to know about it, Jenny. It’s a nasty story to be circulating in a community as small as this, as small and as nosy, I might add. And secondly because—I would like to say that one look at Mr. Forester and I can see he’s not the kind of man to be a prowler. Or to be going into an insane asylum.”

“I think your secondly might just as well have been kept to yourself,” his wife said. “The obvious doesn’t need to be said, does it, darling?”

Dick Tesser looked at his wife, bared his teeth in an exasperated smile, said, “All right,” and sat back.

“This is the third girl Greg’s lost, Robert,” Naomi said, “so it’s easy to see why he’s sore. I knew one of the other girls in Philadelphia. She said she never gave Greg any real encouragement, but he was livid when she married someone else.”

Robert glanced at her, then looked down at his coffee cup. “Sorry there’s so much disturbance,” he murmured. He felt Naomi’s eyes on him, Dick’s eyes, too, for a long moment. What did they expect him to do? Smile? Make a flippant comment? He wondered if Jenny, in
her openness and enthusiasm, had told the Tessers that he and she were engaged, or the next thing to it?

Finally Jenny said, “Wouldn’t anybody like some more coffee?”

“I think my husband could use another cup,” said Naomi.

The Tessers stayed only twenty minutes longer, but things went more smoothly. The Tessers told some amusing stories about a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer down the road from them who existed entirely on the barter system. Robert had the feeling they left early so that he and Jenny could have some time alone.

“I got the Seconals for you,” Jenny said. “They’re upstairs. I’ll get them.”

Robert walked about the living room, smoking a cigarette. On the shelf below Jenny’s phonograph, he noticed some rolled-up white knitting with needles sticking out from it. There was a cable stitch in it. It was the sweater Jenny had asked if she could make for him. Robert smiled a little, touched by it, by the work that would go into it in the hours when he was not with her.

“Here they are. Ninety-milligram pills. Is that too strong?”

Robert smiled. “Well—it’s the strongest, I think. I can cut them in half.” He took the glass bottle of red capsules from her. “I’m very glad to have them. Thanks a lot, Jenny. What do I owe you?”

“Oh, nothing at all.”

He had expected that. He took his wallet from his pocket. “But I insist. Here’s a five. Is that about it?”

“Oh, not five. I won’t take it.”

He came toward her with the bill, made as if to drop it into the hand that was not extended, and her hand came out, held his for a
minute, then he drew his hand away. Shyly, she put the bill down on the coffee table.

“What did you think of the Tessers?”

“I think they’re very nice.”

“They always start bickering a little when Dick gets high. They liked you. They both told me so—when you were out of hearing.”

He said nothing.

“Can we have them to your place sometime?”

“I suppose so. Why not?”

“Aren’t you going to sit down?”

“I think I should be taking off, Jenny. That was a great dinner.” She was pleased by his trite compliment.

“It’s a new way of cooking veal fillets I just read about.”

He got his coat from the kitchen closet.

“When’ll I see you?” she asked. “Tomorrow night?”

She said it as if it were already a sacrifice for her not to be with him all day tomorrow, which was Saturday. “I’m invited to the Nielsons’,” he answered, and watched her face slowly fall. He knew she was thinking, why hadn’t he asked them if he could bring her?

“I’d like to meet them sometime,” she said.

“Oh, you will. I’ll have them to my place. Well—I’ll call you tomorrow, Jenny.” Somehow he was holding her right hand. He gave it a quick shake and fairly ducked out the door.

The following week, Robert invited the Nielsons to his house for dinner, and Jenny cooked a leg of lamb for them. The evening went well, the Nielsons liked Jenny, and were plainly glad he had “a girl,” and it was plain she was going to be included in any future invitations
he got from the Nielsons. Robert showed no more attentiveness to Jenny than he had with the Tessers, no more than he showed now when he and Jenny were alone, but Jenny’s doting looks at him outweighed his behavior, Robert was sure. The Nielsons would assume he was just as in love with her. Later, talking with Jack Nielson at the plant, Robert made it clear that there was no romance between him and Jenny, and said he had seen her only a few times.

That week, Robert found a solution for the cylinder problem, presented his drawings to Mr. Jaffe, and a consultation was called for Friday with the production engineers. Robert’s stock at L.A. was slowly but surely going up, and he anticipated that an invitation to work in the Philadelphia main office was going to come soon. That, he thought, would obviate any further complications with Jenny by removing him from the scene. Philadelphia was two hours’ drive away, and though they might remain friends, they certainly would not be seeing each other so often. However, friends was not the right word so far as Jenny was concerned, and Robert supposed that when he went to live in Philadelphia, Jenny would have a period of loneliness, regret, even bitterness, and might want to break off with him completely. In anticipation of this, Robert was more than ever cautious with her. There were no more kisses, no more touching of hands.

When Robert spoke of Philadelphia, Jenny showed no resentment. She didn’t even hint to stay over on the nights when she was at his house quite late. She seemed content with his arrangement that they see each other about twice a week. Yet the rarer dates made her more intense, Robert felt. She had the air of savoring every moment, and one evening after a perfectly ordinary, even worse than
ordinary meal at a restaurant in Rittersville, Jenny said out of the blue, “If this coffee had poison in it, I think I’d drink it—if you put the poison there.”

Robert looked at her blankly for a moment, then he smiled. “I was just thinking it’s pretty poisonous already.”

No smile from Jenny. “I feel so happy with you. Dying—would be a continuation, if you die happy. Not an end to anything.”

Robert squirmed, unwilling to pass it off with a funny remark and unable to say anything equally serious. The silence that followed seemed terrible and unnecessary. “Jenny, do we have to talk about death? I mean, you told me about having to overcome your dread of it. Maybe I haven’t overcome mine. It’s still a depressing subject to me, I guess.”

“I’m sorry, Robert.”

“Oh, you don’t have to be sorry. But it’s perfectly silly, a girl as young as you talking so often about it. It’ll come, all right, to all of us, but not anyway soon, I think. Not for us.” Then he was sorry he had said “us,” and he looked away from her eyes.

“I didn’t mean I’m sorry I spoke about it. I’m sorry you feel depressed about it. But I understand. You have to be close to it for a while to overcome it. It’s just a little different from sleep. Byron says it. Sleep and death are sisters, he says.”

Robert sighed.

On May 2nd, Robert received a letter from Ernest Gunnarote, the president of the Arrobrit Company, which was the name of L.A.’s main office in Philadelphia, inviting him to come and work in their engineering department. Robert planned to leave on June 1st, and set about trying to sublet his house for the remainder of
his lease. He wanted to give Jenny a piece of jewelry, a necklace or a pin, when he left, and he began to look for something in the not very promising jewelry shops of Rittersville and Langley. He was sure Jenny was going to give him the white sweater as a going-away present.

Robert whistled as he climbed the shaky ladder to his peaked attic. He gripped a rung and pulled the ladder away from the rafter it rested on, ready to grab the rafter if the foot of the ladder slipped, and already imagining himself hanging in space five feet above the floor. It didn’t slip. Robert climbed into the attic and went to his suitcases. He looked into them hastily, not wanting to recognize the relics that were in them—a pair of forgotten socks, a worn-out shirt, a theatre program of a musical he had seen in New York with Nickie. He remembered the evening, but why had he kept the program? Another suitcase contained a seersucker suit that it would soon be warm enough to wear. He tossed the suitcases down onto the red couch. It was a whole sixteen days before he would be moving to Philadelphia; he had not even been down to Philadelphia to look for a place to live, but he wanted the suitcases in view to remind himself that he was leaving.