Galveston (53 page)

“Definitely. We talked about that when we first learned of his illness. I was stationed close by at the time, and got to come home on emergency pass. We said when I got out I'd go right in with him, just like I'd sort of halfway planned before I left. But then it took on new importance. I knew I'd have to substitute as a father for Amanda and Jane, and look after Mother some, and the facing up to that responsibility was frightening.”

“I see.”

“Sometimes it seems life is like a stubborn automobile. It starts and stops, coughs, backs up and goes forward a little, then stops again.”

“How do you mean?”

“I want to tell you something, Willa. I don't know if it'll make any difference to you, but I was married once, before the war.”

“Oh? No, it doesn't make any difference, but I would never have guessed,” I said.

“I was only twenty. She was sixteen. I loved her very much; I always will.”

“What happened?” I asked, and could hear the hollowness in my own voice. Second runner in this race, too.

“She died, three years after we married, of diphtheria.”

“I'm sorry.”

“She was a tiny girl. Somehow she seems smaller now than she did when she was alive. And she was blond, had curly hair that would come loose from its braids and fall into her eyes. Always irritated her, you know. And she had a dimple on her chin, just one, right in the center, and freckles and blue eyes, and—oh, I'm sorry, forgive me for rambling. You don't want to hear all about Rosemarie, do you?”

“That was her name, Rosemarie?”

“Yes. Everybody called her Rosie.”

“She sounds totally opposite from me.”

“She was.”

“Then why would you be interested in me?”

“I don't know,” he said, and his eyes searched my face as though he wondered too. “Do you mind, about Rosie?”

“Why should I?”

“I don't know. It was a long time ago. We were so young and I had no idea where I was going, what I was going to do with my life. It's a thousand miracles we didn't have a child or two, although at times I've almost wished we had …

“But people change over the years. It might well be things wouldn't have worked out for us in the long run. We were darned young and inexperienced—like two kids ourselves.”

“So your choice of mates at this point would be based on something different?”

“Yes, although I'd never make the mistake of marrying for anything but love. I'd look for that first, then let the rest follow.”

I looked out the window. “Oh well, it's got nothing to do with me.”

“Maybe not.”

We sat silently for a few minutes, and I knew that he was not going to end the night on this note. He was going to kiss me. It was time for that at last, time either to forget the whole thing or go a level deeper.

When he did take my face between his hands and pull me toward him, he did it gently, and I knew the kiss would be a gentle thing, too, unassuming like Rodney, and warm and sweet.

He leaned back then, and I almost asked, “Well, how did that compare with your child bride?” Yet I stopped my tongue just in time.

“We'd better go now,” he said, and started the engine. “Sorry to burden you with all my talk about Dad, and everything.”

“It's all right. Everybody needs to open up now and then.”

“And you? Do you ever open up?”

“Oh, please don't begin probing tonight, and spoil it all.”

“Okay, I'm sorry. It's just that I feel so alone now. You don't know what it's like.”

“No, nor do you know what it is never to have known your father. You're very lucky for your memories, believe me.”

Did Rodney need me? Did I need him? I still don't know whether we did at first, for it was so unlike any experience I'd ever had with a man. I had thought Cliff Wagner was going to be something like Rodney at first, gentle and kind. After all, he did work at the Texas Creamery, home of Morning Glory Butter. What could seem more wholesome, more all-American? The Stutz Bearcat he drove belonged to an uncle he lived with, and I had thought, mistakenly, that when he allowed me to drive it, to test it at a hundred miles an hour out on the open road, it was going to be all fun and nothing expected.

Then one night in the Stutz, he abruptly pulled me toward him and started kissing me and pulling at my clothes, and insisting, insisting (very strange for a boy from the Texas Creamery) until he finally had me down on the floor and I had to fight to get my hand to the car door and open it to freedom. Afterward, I sewed up my torn blouse so that Mother wouldn't find out. I was afraid she might know anyway because as I hurried up the walk to our house, Cliff Wagner was shouting, “What the hell do you think you are, Miss Rich Girl? A prick teaser?” Then he drove off in the fast automobile, and I never saw him again. I thought he'd shouted loud enough to be heard all the way to Lovett Boulevard, but when I got inside the house was quiet and if anyone heard the commotion, nothing was said about it.

Rodney, then, would probably not try to force me into anything. I could afford to relax with him, nothing more expected than a gentle kiss now and then. It was going to be an easy thing, now that the first kiss had signified the beginning, different from anything before it.

Once Rodney got back into the routine of work, he applied himself with a frenzy. He was trying to pull in the reins, to bobtail expenses. He pressed harder than ever for new listings and buyers for the properties he had. He did all his own clerical work, and often toiled until nine or ten at night before closing the office. About the only time I saw him was for a quick sandwich at lunch or an outing on Sunday to look at more properties.

I began to get an idea. I was growing tired of the oil business, and Miss Daniel's patronizing ways toward my father. I offered to help Rodney.

“Oh, I couldn't let you,” he said from behind his desk. “I couldn't afford to pay you anything right now, and anyway, it wouldn't do for you to work for me when I'm seeing you on the outside.”

“You're hardly seeing me at all as it is now. Look, it wouldn't be like work because you couldn't fire me. You could run me off, but you couldn't fire me. And it would help you get caught up and maybe we could get out together more.”

“I don't know …”

“We can try it for a month. If things don't work out, I'll take the advice you gave me long ago and try out for the bedpan patrol.”

He laughed and said, “All right. But you've got to promise not to take anything personally that happens here. I may be different in business than I am when I'm not working. I might breathe fire over typographical errors—you can type, can't you?—and scream if something gets misfiled.”

“You wouldn't dare.”

“Okay, but you might be put off by the customers, especially the tenants in the rent houses.”

“I'll just take their messages and give them to you.”

“But I'm still afraid we might not get along together.”

“If you insult me I'll just stick my tongue out at you. I used to be very good at that.”

“All right. But don't cry or anything. It gets hectic in here sometimes.”

“I never cry. Besides, I can learn something new, and won't ever have to look at a report listed in barrels of oil. Gad, what a nice change.”

“You have to be kind to people on the telephone, you know, even when they're tiresome, which they often are. You've got to learn how to filter out people who read the newspaper ads and call just to fish for information, not really interested in buying. You'll get hordes of calls like that every Monday, because Sunday's when we'll be running the biggest ads.

“And on Thursdays, you can take the ads to the
Post
and
Chronicle
. You can even learn to write them, if you want.”

“There, see how much enthusiasm I've caused already?”

“Yeah. Now, scoot upstairs and tell your dad. If I hear a rumble I'll know he doesn't approve.”

“Don't worry. He always approves of what I do.”

“And when do you start?” Dad asked between cigar puffs. I could hear a shuffle outside the door: Miss Daniel getting an earful.

“Tomorrow.”

“Good, Baby. Great experience for you. Now, aren't you glad your mother and I insisted you take those clerical courses in high school?”

“Well, it beats the bedpan patrol, anyway.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You might find it hard, dealing with the public—they can be pretty tough.”

“That's what Rodney said.”

“You'll have to hold your temper with them. A mistake could cost him a sale, you know.”

“I'm well aware of my unbecoming personality. As you said, it'll be good experience for me. Maybe I'll even become pleasant.”

“Aw, Willa,” he said, and laughed indulgently. “Get out of here now, I've got work to do. Let me know how you make out. You gonna be on commission?”

“I won't even be on salary.”

When I told Mother that evening at dinner, she raised an eyebrow and took a fastidious sip of onion soup. “It might cause tension, working in an office together all the time.”

“Oh, I don't think so. Rodney's pretty easygoing.”

She looked across at Dad. “All right, Willa. Do whatever you want, of course. You know how we feel about Rodney.”

“At any rate, hell be out of the office most of the time. I'll probably see less of him than ever, during the day.”

She nodded and returned to her soup. I didn't interpret her remarks that night as anything to do with sex, although after what happened a few weeks later I could see what she'd been talking about and knew she had been right.

Chapter 3

I began with the Younger real estate company on Tuesday morning at seven-thirty—half an hour earlier than Dad opens his office. Rodney stayed out on calls most of the time and I answered the phone, collected rents, waited on people who came by for various things, typed contracts, applied for and received my notary license, and occasionally went to the courthouse to have a deed recorded. Thursdays I liked best, when I got to create Sunday ads for the papers, and even Rodney agreed my ads were more imaginative than his. We spent Sunday afternoons looking at properties, because this acquainted me with them and made it easier for me to write intelligent ads and to answer the questions of customers.

I soon learned to weed out the non-serious phone calls, which I would often manage without Rodney's having to return them, and any time a customer gave me a bad time I just waited until he left, or got off the phone, then cursed at the blank wall in front of the Remington. This particular aspect of my job amused Dad, I think because he hadn't known I was capable of such ingenuity.

Working there gave me a feeling of accomplishment that made me realize how much time I'd wasted before. Rodney was always praising my work, and promising to put me on salary as soon as he closed several pending deals, but I didn't care about the money. It was the sense of importance I craved. I came to work early, stayed late, thought of extra ways to help. I know now I must have been twice as valuable to Rodney as ever I was to Dad in his office.

It happened finally, the break. Rodney sold six houses in one month, closing all six contracts before the end of August. The Heights house was not among these, and didn't seem to be of growing interest on the market, although we'd hired a painter in the summer who gave it a bright, new look with gleaming white and Wedgwood blue trim. I picked the blue myself.

The commissions he did earn, however, were over two thousand dollars in total, and sent his spirits soaring. He went out in the afternoon of August twenty-third, and was gone two hours.

It was raining in torrents that afternoon, and I kept going back and forth to the window, looking for him and listening for the sound of his footsteps in the hallway. The thunder and lightning were a constant barrage so that I was half afraid the window glass would come shattering to the floor. I kept thinking of him in the Ford, driving God only knew where.

When he finally returned, he was carrying a bouquet of red roses and a box of candy, and a bottle of wine. His voice sounded more nasal than usual, and by the time he'd announced with great flair that, effective September first, I was to go on seventy-five dollars a month salary, I knew the wine he carried under his trench coat was not the first he'd come into contact with in the previous two hours.

“You could've gotten caught with this, you know,” I told him as he lifted the bottle from its hiding place. I had work to do that afternoon, and was not in the mood for an early celebration, especially when he had a head start.

“I know,” he said in mock whispers, “it's kind of like your smoking—all the more fun because you're not supposed to. After all, when was the last time—or even the first—we had any booze? I think I've been a fairly decent guy about this whole stupid mess. After all, they'd never have gotten away with prohibition if a few more of us had been around to vote.” He ambled into his office, talking over his shoulder.

I stuck the roses in a half-empty glass of water on my desk and followed him. My irritation at his coming back half drunk dispelled any joy I might have gotten from such a thoughtful gift as flowers and candy.

“And did you hear what I said about salary?” he asked. He was fishing around for a stack of paper cups he kept in a cabinet behind his desk.

“Yes, I heard. It's very nice. I think I'll take part of the first month's wages and buy you a new trench coat.”

“What's'a matter with the one I've got? It's still got at least ten years' wear in it.”

“Okay. I don't want to argue. God knows I don't want to argue. Just relax in here for a while. I'll close the door so the typewriter noise won't bother you.”