The Deceivers (4 page)

Cindy had been an army brat and had lived at military posts all over the world. She had said to Carl and Joan once, “Just look at me now. I didn’t want my kids to be rootless army brats, forever changing schools and friends. So I married this here industrial type because I had the childish idea we’d stay put. And I find the modern corporation has taken a leaf from the army manuals. Move the boys around. So it’s the same deal, only this time without a PX and without free medical care.”

Carl had, after a time, analyzed the reasons why the four of them got along so well. Bucky was, essentially, very like Joan in temperament, disposition and quality of mind. They were both cheerful optimists, both unfailingly energetic, both strong proponents of neatness and orderliness. Neither of them had the slightest appetite for any kind of philosophical conjecture. They were impatient with theory and intellectual speculation.

Cindy’s mind was more like Carl’s, yet more subtle, more oblique, more prone to dissect and be amused by the grotesqueries of life. And both he and Cindy were inclined to be pessimistic, frequently moody, frequently lethargic. And not particularly neat.

Sometimes when the four of them were talking, Cindy and Carl would go bounding off the beaten track into one of their conversational games, projecting the customs and practices of Crescent Ridge into exaggeration and absurdity, or making up new words to fit unique social situations, or establishing the platform of a new political party, a party which would outlaw cookouts, funny chef aprons, slacks on fat female picnickers, and meat which was charcoal on the outside and only slightly wounded in the middle.

And then Bucky would look at Joan and say, “There they go again.” And Carl would sense in Bucky and in Joan a
slight hurt at being left out, and perhaps a tingle of jealousy, but also a curious pride in them that they had married and they loved these two more intricate creatures. Sometimes Cindy was able to look at an accepted situation from such a wry angle that Carl would suddenly see the absurdities of his own behavior and laugh with pure delight and also with a feeling of discomfort, as though he had been mercilessly exposed to the world and to himself.

Also, in Cindy, Carl saw those emotional factors which, in himself, had kept him from attaining the success in the business world which he might otherwise have achieved. A skepticism, a reluctance to conform, an appreciation of the ludicrous, had kept him from being thoroughly sold on the necessity for an unthinking devotion to the mighty Ballinger Corporation. In too many conferences he had heard himself say things that affronted the gods of commerce. He knew he was considered something of a maverick, and he was aware of being passed over several times in the past so that more malleable, less skeptical, and less able men could be promoted.

Yet, as an assistant to the plant manager of the Hillton Metal Products Division of Ballinger, he drew eighteen thousand five hundred before taxes and other deductions. It was a respectable wage, and it enabled them to live in comfort. He was in charge of factory cost accounting and, in that position, was more directly answerable to the Comptroller of the corporation in the New York main offices than to the resident Plant Manager.

Ballinger had a paternalistic attitude toward the corporate executives on all levels, and he knew that it was likely that he would be left in Hillton until he reached the optional retirement age of sixty, or the mandatory retirement age of sixty-five. Were he to retire at sixty, he would have eighteen more years here. It was conceivable that by retirement time he would be making around twenty-five thousand. By 1975, after thirty years with Ballinger, the kids would be married, educated and have families of their own. He could count on eight or nine thousand retirement pay, and they would probably do the traditional thing of moving to Florida.

Unless he should suddenly become hopelessly inadequate in his job, there was little chance of being released by Ballinger. The work was just demanding enough to enable him to maintain a satisfying level of interest in it. So it was a good life. But at times he wondered where he would be had
he been able to accept the adjustments and compromises and devotion that high level executive work demanded. He suspected that his mind was good enough to have enabled him to reach that chill climate above the corporate timberline where income becomes a matter of bonuses, stock options and capital gains. At times he felt wistful and half guilty about his inability to commit himself totally, but he justified and rationalized by telling himself that he had and was having a good life, that there were many family advantages in being a nine-to-five guy, that he did not like airplanes and slept poorly on trains, that he was out of that decision-making area where flourish the ulcer and the massive coronary, and that, in the long view of history, it mattered very little whether his split second of existence in eternity was spent as Chairman of the Board of the Ballinger Corporation and advisor to the head of government—or as a sweeper in C Building.

Yet, on those rare times when he was called to New York, it was not amusing to be called Garrett by some florid and flint-eyed man whose manner was imposing, whose income was fabulous and whose thinking was appallingly fuzzy. It was not enchanting to be summoned like a clever and somewhat mischievous child and be asked to present neatly typed and bound analyses of cost trends and remedies for the approval of men who had not the ability to have composed the reports.

He had told himself many times that it was very much like the kid game of king-on-the-hill. The kid who was strongest and most ruthless and desired with the greatest desperation to achieve and retain the summit would do so. And the others, weakened by their suspicion that perhaps the top of the hill was not so terribly important after all, could select places on the slope where it was not likely anyone would try to dislodge them. Or they might be weakened by doubt as to their ability to attain and defend the summit.

This was a philosophy he had once attempted to expound to Cindy Cable. She had caught on immediately, and had looked at him in a mocking way and said, “How wonderfully selfish, Carl. Not your attitude, but the way you’ve kept from relating it to the world around you. Don’t you see that’s one of the very crucial problems of our society? How far can a man justifiably go in search of security?”

“Or a well-rounded life.”

“Isn’t that a rationalization rather than a description? The thing that gnaws, dear Carl, is your nasty little suspicion
that a man, to be a man, must involve himself with total commitment.”

“Or be half a man?”

“Don’t give me that abused and huffy look. I’m one of the uncommitted too. From twelve years old to twenty, I filled a great box with hundreds and thousands of words of ringing beauty. I burned with that good old hard gemlike flame, I did. But I couldn’t face the complete involvement of sending my deathless works to publishers. So long as I did nothing, I was avoiding the horror of being told the stuff stinks. And so I can keep on half believing in my heart that I had a great talent.”

Joan, who had been listening, said, with a slightly irritable expression, “Carl, I just do not understand why you say those things about yourself. You have a perfectly splendid job and you’ve been getting raises right along, and I don’t see why you talk yourself down so. I’m very proud of you and so are the kids and … I just don’t follow you at all when you talk about things like commitment and total involvement.”

And he remembered that Cindy had done an odd and quite touching thing. She had gone over to Joan and kissed her quickly on the cheek and said, “Carl and I have to turn everything into vast problems, Joanie. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a disease. Like Scrabble.” And when she turned away from Joan, Carl saw a surprising glint of tears in her eyes.

“I read some of Cindy’s stuff before we got married,” Bucky said. “It was pretty damn good. I tried to get her to let me send it to an old buddy of mine from Ohio State who was in the advertising department of
Collier’s
, but she wouldn’t let me send it along. The way I figure it, if you want to get stuff published, you got to have contacts in the business end of the magazines.”

“Bucky has got old buddies scattered all over hell and gone,” Cindy said, not too kindly.

Bucky said, in a defensive way, “You got to keep up your contacts. You never know when you can help somebody or a guy can help you. That’s what makes the world go round.”

“It never hurts to have friends,” Joan said.

“Except that sometimes it hurts to have friends,” Cindy said.

“There they go again,” Bucky said. “Why don’t you pair of eggheads go on a quiz program some place?”

   Now Cindy came slowly, with her smile that tilted higher
on one side than the other, into the hospital room, hair in a pony tail, wearing a white tailored shirt with the sleeves rolled up, gray walking shorts, red sandals, carrying a flat package in red polka-dot paper under her arm.

She handed the package to Joan and said, deadpan, “This is a hilarious book. It is excruciatingly funny. The clerk laughed so hard while she was explaining it to me that I haven’t the faintest idea what it’s about.”

“Thank you, Cindy.”

Carl gave Cindy the chair and sat on the end of the bed. As Joan unwrapped the book, Cindy said, “This is my first day of settling into the life of a slob.”

“Oh, did the kids get away?” Joan asked. “Say, I heard about this book! I read a wonderful review. Thanks so much, dear.”

“What’s this about the kids?” Carl asked.

“Bucky’s parents drove over yesterday from Battle Creek and picked up the little monsters. I think they suspect I am an unnatural parent and all that, because I did do a little devious staff work to get them off my hands for a while. I suspect I am called that strange girl Bucky married. Anyhow, they are doting grandparents, and they have a lovely place in the country not far from Fort Custer, and they did a decent job of raising five kids of their own, and they have the devoted services of the irreplaceable Myra who has been with them several centuries. They will be returned, spoiled rotten no doubt, on the last day of August to their loving parents. I do love the little animals dearly, but I have had too much time in the sole company of infants. The conversation is not very stimulating or rewarding. I had to do something before I ended up going around thrumming on my lips and wolfing pablum.”

“They can be an awful chore,” Joan said.

“I just had to have a break. I hope it’s going to turn into a summer custom. I’ve always been the sort of a person who needs privacy to sort of renew myself. And, boy, am I going to have it now. I’m going to turn the television to the wall. I’m going to read and loaf and toast in the sun and eat when I feel like it, and drink beer when I feel like it, and let the Cable manse go to rack and ruin. Bucky and I plan to take our three weeks in August, and end up at the farm to pick up the kids. And by the way, Carl, Bobby took along that little microscope thing you gave him. I asked him why and he said it was essential. That was the word he used, and you
can’t argue with that. So I asked politely why it was essential and he said he planned to look at a chicken with it. I asked him if the chicken would stand still and he said if it wouldn’t, he would run too. I get an odd mental image out of that. Old Bitsy, the butterball, was a gem. She cooed and danced and admired her new dress and babbled away about the wonderful farm. She is convinced from her personal research library of children’s books that all the animals will, of course, talk. It will break her heart when they won’t. She was terribly good until the car started to move and I waved. The last I saw of her was a bright red mask of anguish and a mouth you could have slipped a grapefruit into with no trouble at all.”

“They grow so fast,” Joan said wistfully.

“And this here unnatural mother hopes and prays that we’ll wind up with a pair like the Garrett heirs.”

“That’s nice of you to say that, Cindy,” Joan said.

“They are good kids. That Kip makes me wish I was fourteen again. He’s turning into a handsome devil.”

“When does Bucky get back?” Carl asked.

“He’s on the deal he calls the Big Swing. He called last night to make sure the children got off all right. He’s had the best trip ever, so far, and, on Friday, instead of coming home, he swings down to Memphis to some kind of a convention of industrial chemists. He made the usual wistful request for permission to do some night flying to save time and I gave the usual hearty No. I know what would happen. A lot of drinks with the customers, and then he’d decide to be an intrepid birdman and rack himself up on a mountain somewhere. You kids need some visiting time of your own, so I will now return to my new career of being the compleat slob. When do they excavate, Joanie?”

“Tuesday morning.”

Cindy stood up. “I’ll see you again before then, honey.”

“Cindy, you keep an eye on our house and make sure Carl doesn’t stay up until all hours. He gets his nose in a book and he loses all track of time. If you see the lights on late, call him up and give him hell for me.”

“I’ll sling rocks at his window. Be good, now.” She strolled out and turned in the hall and smiled and waved.

“It will be good for her to have a little rest,” Joan said. “But I didn’t know the kids would be gone practically the whole summer. She’s so odd about some things. If mine were
gone that long When they were the age of Bobby and Bitsy, I’d have gotten lonesome for them by the second day.”

“And gone and gotten them three days later.”

“I suppose so. She’s just like you used to be, Carl. She’s good with them, like you were, but you used to get so impatient sometimes.”

“I’ll take them at the present ages, thank you.”

The hall speakers softly announced the end of visiting hours in five minutes. He spent a few minutes looking at the book Cindy had brought and then kissed her good-by and she said, “Dear, please hand me my robe again. No rest for the wicked, I guess.”

He left at eight-thirty, walking out into the long gray and golden dusk of summer, walking out of the medicinal aromas and electronic efficiencies of the hospital. A pretty nurse stood on the lawn under a tree, smoking a cigarette and talking to a young man in a T shirt and khakis. As he passed them, walking toward the station wagon, the man said something to her in a low voice, and she laughed in a teasing and flirtatious way that was as old as time.