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Authors: Richard Yates
Disturbing the Peace (Vintage Classics)
DISTURBING THE PEACE
Richard Yates was born in 1926 in Yonkers, New York. After serving in the US Army during the Second World War, he worked as a publicity writer for the Remington Rand Corporation, and for a brief period in the sixties as a speech-writer for Senator Robert Kennedy. His prize-winning stories first appeared in 1953 and his first novel,
Revolutionary Road
, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1962. He is the author of eight other works, including the novels
A Good School
,
The Easter Parade
and
Disturbing the Peace
, and two collections of short stories,
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
and
Liars in Love
. Richard Yates was twice divorced and the father of three daughters. He died in 1992.
ALSO BY RICHARD YATES
Revolutionary Road
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
A Special Providence
The Easter Parade
A Good School
Liars in Love
Young Hearts Crying
Cold Spring Harbor
The Collected Stories of Richard Yates
RICHARD YATES
Disturbing the Peace
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446420669
Published by Vintage 2008
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Copyright © Richard Yates 1975
Richard Yates has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in the United States in 1975 by Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence.
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Methuen Publishing Ltd
Excerpts from this work first appeared in
North American Review
Vintage
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099518556
For Monica McCall
DISTURBING THE PEACE
Everything began to go wrong for Janice Wilder in the late summer of 1960. And the worst part, she always said afterwards, the awful part, was that it seemed to happen without warning.
She was thirty-four and the mother of a ten-year-old son. The fading of her youth didn’t bother her – it hadn’t been a very carefree or adventurous youth anyway – and if her marriage was more an arrangement than a romance, that was all right too. Nobody’s life was perfect. She enjoyed the orderly rotation of her days; she enjoyed books, of which she owned a great many; and she enjoyed her high, bright apartment with its view of midtown Manhattan towers. It was neither a rich nor an elegant apartment, but it was comfortable – and “comfortable” was one of Janice Wilder’s favorite words. She was fond of the word “civilized,” too, and of “reasonable” and “adjustment” and “relationship.” Hardly anything upset or frightened her: the only things that did – sometimes to the point of making her blood run cold – were things she didn’t understand.
“I don’t understand.” she said to her husband on the telephone. “What do you mean, you ‘can’t’ come home?” And she glanced uneasily at their boy, who sat on the carpet eating an apple and absorbed in the CBS Evening News.
“What?” she said. “I can’t hear you. You’re what? . . . Wait; I’ll take this in the bedroom.”
When she was alone at the extension phone, behind two closed doors, she said “All right, John. Let’s start at the beginning. Where are you? At LaGuardia?”
“No, thank God; I finally got out of that son of a bitch. Must’ve spent at least two hours walking around and around out there before I figured out how to get a cab; then I got one of these damn talky cab drivers, and he—”
“You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
“Will you let me finish? No, I’m not drunk. I’ve been drinking but I’m not drunk. Listen: you know how much sleep I got in Chicago? The whole week? Almost none. One, two hours a night, and last night I didn’t sleep at all. You don’t believe me, do you? You never believe the truth.”
“Just tell me where you’re calling from.”
“I don’t know; some kind of stand-up phone booth, and my legs are about to – Grand Central. The Biltmore. No, wait: the Commodore. I’m having a drink at the Commodore.”
“Well, dear, that’s practically around the corner. All you have to do is—”
“God damn it, aren’t you listening? I just got through telling you I can’t come home.”
She hunched forward on the edge of the double bed with her elbows on her slacks, holding the phone tightly in both hands. “Why?” she said.
“Jesus. Hundreds of reasons. More reasons than I could possibly begin to – possibly begin to enumerate. One thing, I forgot to get a present for Tommy.”
“Oh, John, that’s absurd. He’s ten now; he doesn’t expect a present every time you—”
“Okay, here’s another thing. There was a girl in Chicago,
little PR girl for one of the distilleries. I screwed her five times in the Palmer House. Whaddya think of that?”
It wasn’t the first news of its kind – there had been a good many girls – but it was the first time he’d ever flung it at her this way, like an adolescent braggart trying to shock his mother. She thought of saying What would you
like
me to think? but didn’t trust her voice: it might sound wounded, which would be a mistake, or it might sound dry and tolerant and that would be worse. Luckily he didn’t wait long for an answer.
“And whaddya think of this? All the way back on the plane I kept looking at my sweet little Air Transportation Credit Card. Know what I could do with that card anytime I feel like it? I could say the hell with everything. Climb into a big silver bird and take off to someplace like Rio; lie around in the sun and drink and do absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing until—”
“John, I’m not listening to any more of this. Tell me why you can’t come home.”
“You really want to know, sweetheart? Because I’m afraid I might kill you, that’s why. Both of you.”
Paul Borg, like the Wilders’ son, was watching the CBS News. He said “Damn” when the phone rang because Eric Sevareid had just reached a summing-up about Senator Kennedy’s chances of defeating Vice President Nixon.
“I’ll get it,” his wife called from the steaming kitchen.
“No, no; that’s all right. I’ll get it.” His legal clients sometimes called him at home and they wanted to hear his voice right away, with no fooling around. But this was no client. “Oh,” he said. “Hi, Janice.”
“Paul, I hate to bother you at dinnertime but I’m terribly concerned about John . . .”
He listened, interrupting her with questions, and the
questions were enough to bring his own wife slowly out of the kitchen, enough to make her turn off the television set and stand as close as possible beside him at the phone, her eyes round with fascination. When he said “. . . afraid he might kill you?” her cheeks turned pink and the fingers of one unsteady hand crept into her mouth.
“. . . Well, of course I’ll do whatever I can, Janice. I’ll run up there now and – you know – have a talk with him, try to find out what the problem is. You just take it easy and don’t worry, okay? I’ll get back to you soon as I can. . . . Okay, Janice.”
“My God!” his wife said when he’d hung up.
“Where’s my tie?”
She found it and pulled his coat from the hall closet with such urgency that the wire hanger clattered to the floor. “Did he really threaten to kill her?” She looked radiant.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Natalie. No, of course he didn’t ‘threaten’; apparently he’s just going through some kind of nervous or emotional – I’ll tell you when I get back.”
He let the door slam behind him but she opened it and followed him halfway to the elevator. “Paul, what about dinner?”
“You go ahead and eat; I’ll get something uptown. And listen, I don’t want you calling Janice. I want her phone to be free so I can call her. Okay?”
They lived in one of the new, tall buildings of the northwest Village; Borg figured it would take him no more than ten minutes to get to the Commodore, and as he eased out of his parking space and headed uptown on Hudson he was pleased with the efficiency of his car and the fluid skill of his driving. He was pleased too at the way Janice’s voice had gone from desperation to a renewal of strength and hope, pleased that she’d called him in the first place. Once at a crosstown stoplight he
leaned over for a quick look in the rearview mirror, to make sure his hair and tie were straight and to admire the sober maturity of his face. Not until a horn blared behind him did he see the light was green.
He spotted his man as soon as he walked into the downstairs bar. John Wilder sat alone at a table against the far wall, staring into a drink with his forehead resting on his hand. But it was important to make this seem a chance encounter, which shouldn’t be hard: they both worked in offices not far away; they’d often met here for a drink on their way home. To dispel any notion of conspiracy he slid one buttock onto a barstool and ordered a Scotch and soda – “make it light” – and silently counted to a hundred before he risked another glance at Wilder. No change. His hair had been raked awry by nervous fingers (that alone was odd because he was usually careful to the point of vanity about his hair), and with his face in shadow it was impossible to guess at whether he was drunk or exhausted or – well, whatever. From the head down, though, he was the same as ever: a short, composed, well-proportioned man in a well-cut business suit, fresh shirt and dark tie, with an expensive suitcase on the floor beside his knee.
