Big Money (39 page)

Mr. Wheatley laughed and Mrs. Wheatley cast down her eyes and sighed. “Once won't hurt him, will it, Charley?” “Of course not,” Charley found himself saying. “It would be an inspiration.”

Next day Charley and Mr. Wheatley had lunch alone at the University Club. “Well, son, I guess the die is cast,” said Mr. Wheatley when they met in the lobby. “The Wheatley women have made up their minds, there's nothin' for us to do but bow to the decision. I certainly wish you children every happiness, son. . . .” As they ate Mr. Wheatley talked about the bank and the Tern interests and the merger with Askew-Merritt that would a little more than double the capitalization of the new Tern Aviation Company. “You're surprised that I know all about this, Charley . . . that's what I'd been thinkin', that boy's a mechanical genius but he don't keep track of the financial end . . . he don't realize what his holdin's in that concern mean to him and the financial world.”

“Well, I know some pretty good guys who give me the lowdown,” said Charley.

“Fair enough, fair enough,” said Mr. Wheatley, “but now that it's in the family maybe some of ma advice, the result of twenty years of
bankin' experience at home in Birmingham and here in this great new dazzlin' city of Detroit . . .”

“Well, I sure will be glad to take it, Mr. Wheatley,” stammered Charley.

Mr. Wheatley went on to talk about a lot on the waterfront with riparian rights at Grosse Pointe he was planning to turn over to the children for a weddingpresent and how they ought to build on it right away if only as an investment in the most restricted residential area in the entire United States of America. “And, son, if you come around to ma office after lunch you'll see the plans for the prettiest little old English house to set on that lot you ever did see. I've been havin' 'em drawn up as a surprise for Mother and Gladys, by Ordway and Ordway. . . . Halftimbered Tudor they call it. I thought I'd turn the whole thing over to you children, as it'll be too big for Mother and me now that Gladys is gettin' married. I'll chip in the lot and you chip in the house and we'll settle the whole thing on Gladys for any children.”

They finished their lunch. As they got up Mr. Wheatley took Charley's hand and shook it. “And I sincerely hope and pray that there'll be children, son.”

Just after Thanksgiving the society pages of all the Detroit papers were full of a dinnerdance given by Mr. and Mrs. Horton B. Wheatley to announce the approaching marriage of their daughter Gladys to Mr. Charles Anderson inventor war ace and head of the research department at the great Tern Airplane Plant.

Old Bledsoe never spoke to Charley after the day the engagement was announced but Anne came over to Charley and Gladys the night of the Halloween dance at the Country Club and said she thoroughly understood and wished them every happiness.

A few days before the wedding Taki gave notice. “But I thought you would stay on. . . . I'm sure my wife would like it too. Maybe we can give you a raise.” Taki grinned and bowed. “It is regrettable,” he said, “that I experience only bachelor establishments . . . but I wish you hereafter every contentment.”

What hurt Charley most was that when he wrote Joe Askew asking him to be his bestman, he wired back only one word: “No.”

The wedding was at the Emmanuel Baptist Church. Charley wore a cutaway and new black shoes that pinched his toes. He kept trying to remember not to put his hand up to his tie. Nat Benton came on from
New York to be bestman and was a great help. While they were waiting in the vestry Nat pulled a flask out of his pants pocket and tried to get Charley to take a drink. “You look kinda green around the gills, Charley.” Charley shook his head and made a gesture with his thumb in the direction from which the organ music was coming. “Are you sure you got the ring?” Nat grinned and took a drink himself. He cleared his throat. “Well, Charley, you ought to congratulate me for picking a winner. . . . If I could spot the market like I can spot a likely youngster I'd be in the money right now.”

Charley was so nervous he stammered. “Did . . . don't worry, Nat, I'll take care of you.” They both laughed and felt better. An usher was already beckoning wildly at them from the vestry door.

Gladys in so many satinwhite frills and the lace veil and the orangeblossoms, with a little boy in white satin holding up her train, looked like somebody Charley had never seen before. They both said “I will” rather loud without looking at each other. At the reception afterwards there was no liquor in the punch on account of the Wheatleys. Charley felt half-choked with the smell of the flowers and of women's furs and with trying to say something to all the overdressed old ladies he was introduced to, who all said the same thing about what a beautiful wedding. He'd just broken away to go upstairs to change his clothes when he saw Ollie Taylor, very tight, trip on a Persian rug in the hall and measure his length at the feet of Mrs. Wheatley who'd just come out of the receptionroom looking very pale and weepy in lavender and orchids. Charley kept right on upstairs.

In spite of the wedding's being dry, Nat and Farrell had certainly had something, because their eyes were shining and there was a moist look round their mouths when they came into the room where Charley was changing into a brown suit for traveling. “Lucky bastards,” he said. “Where did you get it? . . . Gosh, you might have kept Ollie Taylor out.”

“He's gone,” said Nat. They added in chorus, “We attend to everything.”

“Gosh,” said Charley, “I was just thinkin' it's a good thing I sent my brother in Minneapolis and his gang invitations too late for 'em to get here. I can just see my old Uncle Vogel runnin' around pinchin' the dowagers in the seat and cryin' hochheit.”

“It's too bad about Ollie,” said Nat. “He's one of the besthearted fellers in the world.”

“Poor old Ollie,” echoed Charley. “He's lost his grip.”

There was a knock on the door. It was Gladys, her little face pale and goldenhaired and wonderfullooking in the middle of an enormous chinchilla collar. “Charley, we've got to go. You naughty boy, I don't believe you've looked at the presents yet.”

She led them into an upstairs sittingroom stacked with glassware and silver table articles and flowers and smokingsets and toiletsets and cocktailshakers until it looked like a departmentstore. “Aren't they sweet?” she said. “Never saw anythin' like it in my life,” said Charley. They saw some guests coming in at the other end and ran out into the back hall again. “How many detectives have they got?” asked Charley. “Four,” said Gladys.

“Well, now,” said Charley. “We vamoose.”

“Well, it's time for us to retire,” chorused Farrell and Nat suddenly doubled up laughing. “Or may we kiss the bride?”

“Check,” said Charley. “Thank all the ushers for me.”

Gladys fluttered her hand. “You are dears . . . go away now.”

Charley tried to hug her to him but she pushed him away. “Daddy's got all the bags out the kitchen door. . . . Oh, let's hurry. . . . Oh, I'm almost crazy.”

They ran down the back stairs and got into a taxi with their baggage. His was pigskin; hers was shiny black. The bags had a new expensive smell. Charley saw Farrell and Nat come out from under the columns of the big colonial porch but before they could throw the confetti the taxidriver had stepped on the gas and they were off.

At the depot there was nobody but the Wheatleys, Mrs. Wheatley crying in her baggy mink coat, Mr. Wheatley orating about the American home whether anybody listened or not. By the time the train pulled out Gladys was crying too and Charley was sitting opposite her feeling miserable and not knowing how the hell to begin.

“I wish we'd flown.”

“You know it wouldn't have been possible in this weather,” said Gladys and then burst out crying again.

To have something to do Charley ordered some dinner from the diningcar and sent the colored porter to get a pail of ice for the champagne.

“Oh, my nerves,” moaned Gladys, pressing her gloved hands over her eyes.

“After all, kid, it isn't as if it was somebody else. . . . It's just you and me,” said Charley gently.

She began to titter. “Well, I guess I'm a little silly.”

When the porter grinning and respectfully sympathetic opened the champagne she just wet her lips with it. Charley drank off his glass and filled it up again. “Here's how, Glad, this is the life.” When the porter had gone Charley asked her why she wouldn't drink. “You used to be quite a rummy out at the countryclub, Glad.”

“I don't want you to drink either.”

“Why?”

She turned very red. “Mother says that if the parents get drunk they have idiot children.”

“Oh, you poor baby,” said Charley, his eyes filling with tears. They sat for a long time looking at each other while the fizz went out of the champagne in the glasses and the champagne slopped out onto the table with the jolting of the train. When the broiled chicken came Gladys couldn't eat a bite of it. Charley ate both portions and drank up the champagne and felt he was acting like a hog.

The train clanked and roared in their ears through the snowy night. After the porter had taken away the supperdishes Charley took off his coat and sat beside her and tried to make love to her. She'd only let him kiss her and hug her like they'd done before they were married. When he tried to undo her dress she pushed him away. “Wait, wait.”

She went into the lavatory to get into her nightdress. He thought he'd go crazy she took so long. He sat in his pyjamas in the icy gritty flow of wind that came in through the crack of the window until his teeth were chattering. At last he started to bang on the door of the toilet. “Anything wrong, Glad? What's the matter, darlin'?”

She came out in a fluffy lace negligee. She'd put on too much makeup. Her lips were trembling under the greasy lipstick. “Oh, Charley, don't let's tonight on the train, it's so awful like this.”

Charley felt suddenly uncontrollably angry. “But you're my wife. I'm your husband, God damn it.” He switched off the light. Her hands were icy in his. As he grabbed her to him he felt the muscles of his arms swelling strong behind her slender back. It felt good the way the lace and silk tore under his hands.

Afterwards she made him get out of bed and lie on the couch
wrapped in a blanket. She bled a great deal. Neither of them slept. Next day she looked so pale and the bleeding hadn't stopped and they were afraid they'd have to stop somewhere to get a doctor. By evening she felt better, but still she couldn't eat anything. All afternoon she lay halfasleep on the couch while Charley sat beside her holding her hand with a pile of unread magazines on his knees.

It was like getting out of jail when they got off the train at Palm Beach and saw the green grass and the palmtrees and the hedges of hibiscus in flower. When she saw the big rooms of their corner suite at the Royal Poinciana, where she'd wanted to go because that was where her father and mother had gone on their weddingtrip, and the flowers friends had sent that filled up the parlor, Gladys threw her arms round his neck and kissed him even before the last bellboy had got out of the room. “Oh, Charley, forgive me for being so horrid.” Next morning they lay happy in bed side by side after they'd had their breakfast and looked out of the window at the sea beyond the palmtrees, and smelt the freshness of the surf and listened to it pounding along the beach. “Oh, Charley,” Gladys said, “let's have everything always just like this.”

Their first child was born in December. It was a boy. They named him Wheatley. When Gladys came back from the hospital instead of coming back to the apartment she went into the new house out at Grosse Pointe that still smelt of paint and raw plaster. What with the hospital expenses and the furniture bills and Christmas, Charley had to borrow twenty thousand from the bank. He spent more time than ever talking over the phone to Nat Benton's office in New York. Gladys bought a lot of new clothes and kept tiffanyglass bowls full of freesias and narcissus all over the house. Even on the dressingtable in her bathroom she always had flowers. Mrs. Wheatley said she got her love of flowers from her grandmother Randolph, because the Wheatleys had never been able to tell one flower from another. When the next child turned out to be a girl, Gladys said, as she lay in the hospital, her face looking drawn and yellow against the white pillows, beside the great bunch of glittering white orchids Charley had ordered from the florist at five dollars a bloom, she wished she could name her Orchid. They ended by naming her Marguerite after Gladys's grandmother Randolph.

Gladys didn't recover very well after the little girl's birth and had to have several small operations that kept her in bed three months.
When she got on her feet she had the big room next to the nursery and the children's nurse's room redecorated in white and gold for her own bedroom. Charley groused about it a good deal because it was in the other wing of the house from his room. When he'd come over in his bathrobe before turning in and try to get into bed with her, she would keep him off with a cool smile, and when he insisted, she would give him a few pecking kisses and tell him not to make a noise or he would wake the babies. Sometimes tears of irritation would start into his eyes. “Jesus, Glad, don't you love me at all?” She would answer that if he really loved her he'd have come home the night she had the Smyth Perkinses to dinner instead of phoning at the last minute that he'd have to stay at the office.

“But, Jesus, Glad, if I didn't make the money how would I pay the bills?”

“If you loved me you'd be more considerate, that's all,” she would say and two curving lines would come on her face from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth like the lines on her mother's face and Charley would kiss her gently and say poor little girl and go back to his room feeling like a louse. Times she did let him stay she lay so cold and still and talked about how he hurt her, so that he would go back to the tester bed in his big bedroom feeling so nervous and jumpy it would take several stiff whiskies to get him in shape to go to sleep.