The Tight White Collar (18 page)

“Nate!” Margery screamed. “Nate, where are you?”

“It's all right, Margery,” said Jess gently. “You're going to be all right.”

Her eyes searched wildly and her hands pushed at Jess. “Nate, where are you?” she screamed, and it was the cry of a child caught in a nightmare.

Jess carried her upstairs and put her down on her bed. His fingers found the vein in her arm and he injected the quick, merciful needle.

“Nate,” she moaned. “Nate, I'm so tired. Where are you, Nate? Where are you when I need you so?”

Nathaniel knelt beside his wife's bed.

“I'm right here, darling,” he said. “I'm right here. Don't be frightened, darling. I'm right here.”

Jess Cameron and Virgie, standing in the open doorway twisting her apron, heard him and realized that Nathaniel was speaking to his wife in the same soft croon with which Margery habitually spoke to Robin. There was something horrible about Nate's voice, something frightening, and at last Nate heard it himself and stopped.

Margery slept and Jess put his hands under Nate's armpits and raised him to his feet.

“Virgie,” said Jess, “I want you to sit right here with Mrs. Cooper. If she wakes up, call me. I'll be downstairs with Mr. Cooper.”

In the dark, chill library, Jess struck a match to the waiting paper and wood in the fireplace.

“Here, Nate,” he said. “Sit down.”

He poured brandy into two glasses and handed one to Nathaniel. “Drink it up, Nate,” he said.

“What is it, Jess!” asked Nate. “What's happened to Margery?”

“She's tired,” said Jess as calmly as he could. “She's tired in a way that you and I can't even begin to imagine. It's the kind of tired that is called a nervous breakdown and the only miracle I can think of is that it hasn't happened long before now.” Jess sipped at his brandy and lit a cigarette. “I think that today all the strain that's been building up since Robin's birth is finally beginning to splinter in Margery. The time's come when you're going to have to make a choice, Nate. Robin or Margery. You're going to have to choose one because now it's going to be impossible for you to keep them both.”

“But what shall I do?” asked Nate, and in spite of the fire and the brandy he could barely keep his teeth from chattering. “If I pack Robin off to some place or other, I'm afraid that it would finish Margery completely.”

“If Robin stays, she will kill Margery,” said Jess. “She's close to a complete breakdown now.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don't know,” replied Jess. “Perhaps in a few days we'll be able to talk to Margery and when we do we are going to have to convince her that Robin must go.”

Nate stared out of the window at the gray lines of rain.

“Is Margery going to get well, Jess?” he asked at last.

“I don't know,” replied the doctor. “I hope so. I think she will, but I'm not sure.”

“When will you be sure?”

“Maybe tonight, when she wakes up. Maybe not for several days.” Jess finished his drink. “I'll be back tonight and I'll send a nurse over from the hospital to look after Robin. You and Virgie will have to take turns with Margery. I don't want anyone strange around her right now.”

That night, for the first time in years, Margery Cooper slept in her own bed instead of on a cot in Robin's room. Nate and Virgie undressed Margery and slipped a nightgown over her head, then Nate sat in a chair and held her while Virgie smoothed the sheets on the bed.

“I'll stay with her, Virgie,” said Nate. “You go to bed now.”

“I dunno, Mist' Cooper,” said Virgie worriedly. “I dunno if that white gal gonna do all right with Robin and if she don't that jes' fret Miz' Marg'ry.”

“She'll do all right, Virgie,” said Nate. “You go to bed.”

Nate put his wife to bed and then he undressed and lay next to her and Margery slept. Nate lay on his back and cradled her head on his shoulder and listened to her breathe.

Please, he prayed. Not Margery. Let Margery be all right and I'll never ask another favor as long as I live. Haven't You done enough? Can You hear me? Does even one word break through to You? Make Margery well.

He knew that she was awake when he felt her tears against his shoulder. He brushed her hair away from her face and tightened his arms around her and Margery began to sob. Nate had never heard a woman weep like this. It seemed to him that Margery was lost in a sea of tears and heaving sobs. She twisted against him and beat her clenched fists against the blankets and her cries were hoarse and jagged, and Nate could do nothing but hold her and try to soothe her.

For the first time in ten years the Cooper household did not function around Robin alone. Jess Cameron came every four hours to give Margery an injection and if the nurse, who looked after Robin and could just as easily have given Margery her shots, thought this peculiar, she said nothing. Her name was Iris Boulton and she had worked for Gordon long before Jess was out of medical school. She saw the extra gentleness in the way Jess touched Margery, the way his fingers smoothed her hair away from her forehead and the way he held her wrist so that it was almost a caress when he took her pulse. Iris Boulton was sorry and she turned away when Jess looked at Margery for surely if there were anyone who deserved more than this, it was Jess Cameron. Margery turned her face away from Jess and wept.

“Do you think he hates me?” she sobbed. “Does he hate me, Jess?”

“Of course he doesn't hate you,” replied Jess. “Nate loves you. Always has and always will.”

“He's always been so kind, Jess, and I never took the time to be kind in return. I only had time for Robin.”

“I know, Margery.”

“But I love him, Jess. I've always loved him and I didn't stop after Robin. I just didn't have time anymore, that's all.”

Jess turned away from her and stood up. “I know,” he said.

“I just lost my way,” she said. “And for a while I forgot all about him, but I never stopped loving him.”

“Why don't you tell him, Margery?” said Jess gently.

“I used to watch Lisa Pappas,” Margery told Nate. “I was like a spy the way I watched her and Anthony, but I couldn't help it. I'd see her going into Anthony's house, or I'd watch him walking toward the cottage and I'd picture them together.”

Nate laughed and held his wife close to him.

“I guess everybody in town has been watching Lisa and Anthony.”

“Yes,” said Margery, “except, you see, I couldn't make myself think that they were doing wrong. At first I told myself that it was terrible, the way she was carrying on her cheap little love affair right under the eyes of her husband and children, to say nothing of the whole town, but then I started thinking about love, and the whole thing didn't seem bad at all anymore.”

“You mean you think that Lisa and Anthony really loved each other and should have counted the world well lost if they'd been caught out?”

“Don't laugh at me, Nate,” said Margery.

“I'm not laughing, darling,” he said. “I was just thinking that you must be the only person in town to put a nice connotation on the Pappas mess.”

“Whenever I watched them,” Margery said wistfully, “I got to thinking how a lot of people just shove love away from them. Lisa and Anthony didn't push it away when it came to them. They hung on for all they were worth and said to hell with everything. It's more than I did, Nate, when things got bad for us.”

Nate stroked her hair and kissed her temple. “That's not important now, dear,” he said. “The only thing that's important is that you are well.”

The tears began to run down Margery's cheeks as they did so easily these days.

“Sometimes I can't bear to think of it,” she said. “All the years I wasted. I left you alone and you were so kind and gentle and patient.”

“Don't cry, darling,” said Nate. “And don't think about it anymore. As you can see, I survived very nicely. I guess I knew all the time that you'd come back to me.”

“Oh, Nate, honey, I've got so much to make up to you.”

He put his fingertips to her lips. “Not a bit of it,” he said softly. “All I want is for you to be well again and strong and happy.”

“I'll be well, honey,” she said, and her eyes began to grow heavy as the sedative began to work in her.

“Sleep now, darling,” said Nate. “I'll be right here next to you all night long.”

Margery sighed and drew closer to him and at last she slept.

“Oh, the sonsofbitches!” cried Lisa Pappas. She threw her raincoat on the floor and put her fists up to her temples. “Oh, the lousy, miserable sonsofbitches!”

Anthony leaned against the mantelpiece over the fireplace in his living room and smoked with long, slow inhalations.

“So they sacked Chris, did they?” he asked

“You're goddamned right they did,” said Lisa. “Sacked him and paid him off as if he were some stupid millhand.”

“Well, I hate to say it,” said Anthony. “But it's true. You can't win them all, Lisa.”

“Oh, shut up,” she yelled. “You sound just like some goddamned sanctimonious native.”

“Where's Chris?” asked Anthony.

“He stayed behind to talk to Arthur Everett and some other men about a job,” replied Lisa.

“Well, cheer up, darling,” said Anthony. “People are always screaming for teachers. Chris shouldn't have any trouble.”

“Oh, Anthony,” wailed Lisa and threw herself against him. “It was dreadful.”

Anthony circled her with one arm and carefully dropped his cigarette into the fireplace before he put his other arm around her.

“There, there,” he said. “It's all over now. Sit down and tell me about it. It couldn't have been as dreadful as all that.”

But it had been. The auditorium at the high school had been jammed. Chris and Lisa came in late and sat together in the back row of the hall. Lisa felt as if every eye in the place were fixed on her but Chris sat back comfortably and merely waited. That afternoon he had had a talk with a man named Donald James who worked for the State Teachers' Association.

“Listen, Pappas,” James had said. “How badly do you want to stay in Cooper Station?”

“Not badly at all,” answered Chris. “As long as I can teach I don't care where I go.”

“Well, there isn't a school superintendent in northern New England who hasn't heard about what this town is trying to pull on you. Since this thing started, we've had thirty-five inquiries about you, and there is one that's great. One town down in Massachusetts wants you for three levels of English at forty-five hundred a year.”

“How come?” asked Chris suspiciously.

Donald James smiled. “There's nothing like a martyr, Pappas,” he said. “Here's a town about to crucify you on the cross of public opinion and here's another town who says, ‘No, wait. We are good, broad-minded people. We'll take him.' Makes them look damned good in the eyes of the rest of the world.”

And now Christopher Pappas smiled.

“For forty-five hundred a year, I'll be any kind of martyr they want,” he said.

“Okay,” said James. “Just take it easy tonight. Let the whole damned town do the talking. You just sit there and take it.”

So Christopher Pappas leaned back in his seat and watched Doris Delaney Palmer mount the steps that led to the stage and he listened while a hush fell over the crowd.

“We are here this evening,” said Doris Palmer in clear, hard tones, “to discuss whether or not a recent action by the majority of the Cooper Station Board of Guardians was or was not ill advised.”

The crowd moved a little, and murmured, and Lisa felt her face getting hot.

“As I am sure you are all aware,” continued Doris, “one of the principal functions of the Board of Guardians is to protect the welfare of our children, their health, morals and education. If they fail in this duty, the townspeople may vote to reverse their action which they feel threatens the children's welfare.”

In the front row of the auditorium, Polly Sheppard sat with her hands clenched tightly together.

Goddamn you, she thought savagely, Goddamn you to hell.

But it was another thought, one which she did not like to admit she had at all, that tortured Polly.

You may ruin Christopher Pappas, thought Polly. But you're not going to ruin Jim. I've worked too long and too hard at becoming someone in Cooper Station to have it all shot to hell for the sake of one schoolteacher.

No, no, she told herself. I don't mean that at all. Lisa is my friend. I don't mean it at all.

But she did and she knew she did.

After all, Polly rationalized, it wasn't as if Lisa hadn't brought a good deal of this on herself what with her carrying on with Anthony Cooper right under everybody's nose.

Then Polly almost laughed out loud at herself. If everyone at Cooper Station who had ever “carried on” were to be run out of town, it wouldn't take long for Cooper Station to revert back to the forests from which it had sprung.

She glanced over at Jim, who sat next to Nathaniel Cooper, and the first thing she noticed about him, as she always had, was his head of thick, red-gold hair. But where once the sight had fascinated and intrigued her, it now angered and disgusted her. Jim and his damned attention-getting hair. It was the thing that had trapped her from the very beginning.

And now this! thought Polly angrily. I wish to hell I'd never heard of Chris and Lisa Pappas. If I hadn't mentioned him to Jim, he would never have suggested him to Arthur Everett and none of us would be in this mess now.

“However,” Doris Delaney Palmer was saying, “we are prepared to deal with Mr. Pappas in all fairness. Not one of us is about to do an injustice to anyone else.”

You sanctimonious old bitch, thought Jim Sheppard.

But he knew by now that he was not going to stand up and fight her in front of the whole town. If there was one thing Jim was not, as he put it, it was anyone's fool. He knew when he was licked. A few minutes before the town meeting Doris had come to him in the anteroom.

“If you fight to keep Pappas,” Doris had told Jim, “the town will reverse the board's decision and you know what chances you'll have at the next election.”

“That still won't get you out of the fact that Chris Pappas has a signed contract.”

“No, it won't,” agreed Doris. “But it will get you off the Board of Guardians.”

“What about Nate Cooper? I don't think he gives a damn one way or the other.”

“Neither do I,” said Doris. “But if you're as smart as you're supposed to be, there would be two of us with the town and there won't have to be a vote.”

“Even if I agreed with you,” said Jim, “I still don't see how we can get rid of Pappas now.”

“We are going to offer him the three thousand dollars we would pay him to teach and we are going to offer it to him in public and in a lump sum.”

“What if he won't take it?”

“He'll take it,” said Doris with her little smile. “I know his kind.”

“But are the townspeople going to stand for it?” asked Jim. “After all, it's three thousand dollars down the drain and the whole thing to do over again with a new teacher.”

“The money isn't coming out of the town's funds,” said Doris. “It's been donated by a private citizen.”

“Who?”

“One, as they say, who prefers to remain nameless. Let's just say a Good Samaritan.”

“Does Nate Cooper know?”

“No.”

And it's probably a good thing that he doesn't, thought Doris. Old Honest Nate wouldn't like it a bit if he knew.

“So in all fairness to Mr. Pappas,” Doris went on, “we are prepared to buy his contract from him for the full three thousand dollars.”

The crowd shuffled noisily and the murmuring grew louder and into distinct words and phrases.

“What are we paying him for?”

“But he hasn't worked for it.”

“Jesus, that's a lot of money.”

“Doesn't he know when he's not wanted?”

“Just let him get out of town.”

Lisa's face flamed all over again as she related these scraps of overheard conversation to Anthony.

“Can you imagine it?” she demanded angrily. “Just paying him off like a stupid millhand.”

Anthony opened a can of beer.

“And Chris accepted the money?”

“Of course,” said Lisa. “What else could he do?”

“He could have demanded his rights,” replied Anthony. “He could have insisted on his right to teach. He had a contract.”

“I suppose that's what you would have done,” flared Lisa.

“No,” he said. “I don't think I would. I've never been the type for the noble gesture any more than Chris has.”

Lisa was suddenly very angry.

“Leave Chris out of this,” she said. “Who are you to talk about anyone else?”

“No one, my love,” said Anthony. “No one at all.”

“And don't call me your love,” said Lisa. “You don't care about me and you never did. I was just somebody to spend the summer with. You don't even care about the baby.”

“Oh, yes,” said Anthony calmly. “The baby. Are you going to tell Chris about the baby?”

“He already knows,” said Lisa.

A little prickle whispered across the back of Anthony's neck.

“He knows that you think it's mine?” he asked carefully.

Lisa looked at him with an expression that was almost a sneer.

“Don't worry, Anthony,” she said. “Your secret is safe with me. It's only in books like the ones you write that people are so honest that they tell each other everything.”

And my other secret is safe, too, thought Anthony and lit a cigarette so that part of his face was shielded from Lisa's gaze.

Anthony blew out smoke in a cloud and thanked God that he'd been smart enough to give Doris Delaney Palmer the three thousand dollars in cash.

“How do you know you can trust me with all this money?” Doris had asked coyly.

“Because you want Chris and Lisa Pappas out of Cooper Station almost as badly as I do,” Anthony had replied.

But, of course, Doris Delaney Palmer was not the kind to let him off as easily as that.

“Why?” she had asked. “I thought you were rather fond of the Pappases. Well, Lisa Pappas anyway.”

Anthony wanted to strike her. “Do you want the money or not?” he demanded.

“Well, of course we do,” said Doris.

“Then take it and let there be an end to all this,” said Anthony. “You have your reasons and I have mine.”

Thank God it's over with, thought Anthony as he turned to face Lisa. They'll go away and I'll go back to New York and we'll all have escaped a mucky mess.