Galveston (54 page)

“Nothing doing. Here, I've found two paper cups. We're taking the afternoon off to celebrate. Damn if we don't—oops, 'scuse the language—deserve the afternoon, the way we've worked. After while I'm taking you to dinner. I've reversed the OPEN sign outside the door. Now all you have to do is take the telephone off the hook and we'll be set.”

I was getting nervous. He'd poured two cups of wine and now thrust one at me, almost spilling it all over my dress.

“Gee, you seem to have had a few nips while you were away.”

“How can you tell?”

“Your eyes are red, your voice different, your walk a little crooked—nothing much.”

“Well, it's all the fault of the damned prohibition. Gets people out of the habit of drinking, so they get where they can't hold it anymore. I haven't had nearly so much as I used to have without even getting a buzz. Damn war. Damn Volstead Act. Damn.”

“Rodney, why should you be mad about anything? You've just had the best month in your career.”

He leaned back on the couch where he'd slumped down after pouring the wine. “You're right. You always point out the good things.”

“Sure.”

“How do you like the wine?”

“It's pretty bad, but then I'm not much of a drinker.”

“First few cups, then it isn't so bad anymore. By that time your tongue is numb. Anyway, I figured you'd have had your share of the booze. I'm really surprised you're not a vet'run drinker.”

“Oh, so that's what you think of me. Well, I'll tell you something. If I wanted to drink no prohibition law or anything else would keep me from doing it. I just don't happen to like it particularly, and don't need it to have a good time.”

“That's my girl. Come over here and sit next to me. I want to put my arm around you.”

I edged closer. My hands were getting clammy. I wanted this to be over, for him to return to his normal self. I'd never before realized just how much I had come to depend upon his stability, or how uncomfortable I would be around him if that aspect of his personality were suddenly to disappear.

“Sometimes I need it,” he said, and I'd already forgotten what we were talking about.

“Hm? What's that?”

“A drink. Sometimes I need one … several.” He emptied his cup and poured another for himself, then filled mine dangerously close to the brim. He leaned back again and closed his eyes, and I had this welcome feeling that maybe he would fall asleep. Yet it wasn't to be. “Imagine—six houses in a month,” he said after a moment. “A person could almost make a living in this bus'ness.”

“As long as he had good clerical help.”

“Oh, yes. You're better than the girl we had before, better than I ever dreamed. You know, to be honest, I didn't think you'd be much use in the beginning. Thought you'd go at it like you went at the work in your dad's office. But you've fooled me, turned out to be a real princess. Did you come here when I told you? Why isn't my arm around you?”

I obeyed and moved against him. He was warm. Rodney was always so warm.

“It's stuffy in here, don't you think? I closed the windows when the rain started, but we've just got to have some air.” I pulled loose from his grip and crossed to open the window.

“Anybody ever tell you you're damned good-looking?” he said to my back while I fiddled with the latch. I kept working with it although it wasn't stuck, and didn't look around.

“Someone may have mentioned it a time or two, I forget.”

“You appreciate yourself least of anybody, Willa. You shouldn't be that way.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“My mother always told us that before we could like anybody else, we must first like ourselves. You know, that's one of the few things she's ever said I could completely agree with.”

“It makes sense.”

“I like you, Willa.”

“That's nice.”

“I like you a lot.”

“Good. Good clerical help is hard to find.”

“That isn't what I meant. Look, come over here by me now and quit faking the job of getting the window up. Let's finish the wine, then go to dinner.”

I let go a sigh and obeyed him again. Why was I so afraid of crossing him? It wasn't like me to be afraid of making someone mad, particularly when they'd provoked me as he had. He poured the rest of the wine into his cup and looked askance at mine, still full. “If you'd get a little tight, I wouldn't seem so drunk. I'm surprised at you for not figuring that out.”

“Oh yes, how thoughtless. Well, one of us ought to try and stay sober. Nothing to prove by both of us landing in jail.”

“We're not going to jail, darn it all. I never figured you for a scared-y-cat. What time is it?”

“After five.”

“Hungry?”

“Yes, but I'm not dressed properly to go anywhere special. Why don't I just go to Clancy's and get some sandwiches and coffee, plenty of hot coffee.”

“I don't want any hot coffee or any sandwich. I'm sick of roast beef.”

“All right. How about the Rice Hotel? I can go down and pick up some food, bring it back. It isn't raining anymore.”

“No. I'm taking you out tonight. You look just fine to me, and if anybody says anything about the way you look, I'll belt them.”

“I hardly think you're in shape to be going out to dinner or belting anyone either.”

“I'm not as bad off as you think. Hand me my coat and let's get out of here. It's almost time to close, anyway.”

“Good. That's the best idea I've heard all day.”

“Willa, is seventy-five enough? If it isn't, just say. You can name your price.”

“That's fine. You probably couldn't afford to pay me what I'm really worth.”

“Oh, so you really do have a price, then?”

“I didn't mean that. I just didn't want to be accused of underrating myself.”

“Everybody has a price, Willa. Even you.”

“You've not making sense. Let's go.”

He followed me through the door and I put out the lights. It seemed a long way between there and dinner, and it was.

An edge of the dying sun peered down on the steaming sidewalks as we walked to where Rodney had parked his car, a little awry in a space in front of the building. But car lights had begun to flash up and down the street. The day was nearly spent.

He opened my door with a cavalier sweep, then went to his own. He seemed always to be trying to prove he wasn't drunk or even tight, and I wondered whether he sensed how uncomfortable he was making me, how badly he was ruining my day, which had begun as high as his.

I suggested a couple of places we might eat, trying not to sound nervous or impatient but at this point not succeeding very well. Finally he waved a hand and said, “No, let's don't go for a few minutes. I want to talk to you.”

“All right.”

“Look at me, Willa.”

“What is it?”

“Sometimes I wonder where all this is leading. I mean, about us. We don't seem to ever get anywhere, do we? We just sort of tread water with each other, pussyfooting around, wandering …”

“Oh? I hadn't noticed. I thought we were doing fine.”

“You've been happy, the way it's been?”

“Happy? I'm not even sure I know the meaning of the word. Content, I guess. Yes, content. I know I haven't wanted it to stop.”

“Me either. That's all I've really ever known for sure. But I'm not sure I know why—or even if it matters very much.”

“You've been good for me.”

“I've only believed in you a little. It was all you needed, someone to believe in you and make you realize you ought to pay yourself the same service.”

“Maybe you're right, I don't know. You seem—until today—always to expect the right thing of me. No one has ever ‘expected' things from me—good things. Not even my parents. I think they always expected the worst.”

“Maybe that's why you've always been so hell-bent on giving it to them.”

“Maybe.”

“Willa, I think I might love you. A little, anyway.”

“I don't know. Maybe it's just that I'm different. You can't tell. You said it was love with Rosemarie. Maybe this isn't the same thing.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“I don't know how I feel, Rodney. Look how dark it's gotten. Once it starts, it comes so fast.”

“Yes,” he said softly, and I imagined the air outside after the stuffiness of the office had sobered him some. Certainly he was talking more coherently, whether or not he'd remember any of it tomorrow.

“Willa, couldn't you just come to me a little? I've wanted so much to hold you more, but you're so aloof. I want to kiss you right now. I very much want to now.”

“What's stopping you, Rodney?”

“Maybe nothing at all, maybe everything,” he said, and leaned toward me and kissed me like the time before, sweetly, unassumingly. I felt safe again for a moment … two … then he seemed to have decided something on his own and he kissed me again, only this time more forcefully. I was trying to be responsive, not to mind the wine on his breath or the way he was holding me, but he was getting out of hand. I could feel his teeth pressing behind his lips and he seemed to be gripping me tighter with each moment, exploring me like a high school boy. He kept going and kept going, after things had started out sort of ill at ease and I'd been fooled into thinking it would come to nothing.

Then he was doing something that brought it all back, Cliff Wagner and the Stutz Bearcat and the abrupt way he'd come for what he was after. My blouse was coming undone and he was whispering my name over and over in my ear and I was trying to stop him, God, had his hands ever been so strong? And before I knew it I was screaming in panic, “No, no, leave me alone, let me out of the car!” and forcing with all my might his leg off mine and his hand off my breast, and thinking how stupid I'd been to let it happen again.

He did stop then, I think a little sooner than it seemed, and leaned his head back against the seat. “Oh, Willa, I'm going to be sick. You'd better drive this heap somewhere and let me out.”

“All right. Scoot over to this side.” I got out and walked around, and the air felt so clean, so refreshing, like waking up after a terrible dream and finding it wasn't real after all. Except that it was. I got in and started the car and we drove home. By the time we reached Montrose he'd decided he could drive on to his house alone, but after telling me that he said nothing else and we rode on through the semi-darkness to the curb in front of my house.

I was angry, and the cattiness surfaced again. I left the car and looked at him through the window. “Don't expect me tomorrow,” I said.

How tiresome. A blue Daimler in the driveway. The Crosthwaites for dinner and I'd forgotten. All I wanted to do was bathe my face and go to bed.

Maybelle met me at the door in her inevitable blue middy dress, her usual look of puppy dog anxiousness to please written all over her face.

“Hello, Maybelle,” I said with exaggerated flatness. I was in no mood for pretending to be pleased at her presence. Mother and Dad and the Crosthwaites were in the parlor having tomato juice with lemon, the prohibition cocktail at our house when company is around. Though Dad has a “prescription” at the drugstore for liquor as a mild pain reliever, his stock usually remains in the cedar chest unless he is drinking alone or with close friends, and he does not consider the Crosthwaites good friends, no matter what my mother feels.

Velma was holding forth before the fireplace, talking about some committee she was working on for the coming Grand Opera season. Even if I'd not overheard her voice, penetrating as the blare of an alphorn at close range, I'd have known she was up there dominating the conversation. Velma is tall and ungainly, buxom, with wavy iron gray hair and deep-set eyes. She always wears large dangling earrings and lipstick that divides into squares along her wrinkled mouth. Velma has always had a wrinkled mouth. As far as I know, everyone has noticed it except her.

Mother's voice tripped across Velma's deep tones. “Is that you, Willa? Come in and say hello to Velma and Carter. Dinner's almost ready—Julia's made oyster bisque to kick off the oyster season.”

“And lemon pie,” Maybelle whispered in my ear, as though imparting some sensuous secret.

“Good evening,” I told them, nodding at everyone in a sweeping glance. Carter was seated next to Dad on a sofa across from where Velma stood. He is a slight, balding man, shorter by inches than Velma and henpecked so much by her at home and in public that Dad says, while working at his investment job, he is brash and overbearing, probably trying to make up for the beating he takes from his wife. Dad told me this privately, of course. Should anyone say a disparaging word against Velma in front of Mother, she would be angry for days, and I have often thought even before the days just past that Mother is more influenced by Velma Crosthwaite than by my father.

On any other night I could have made it all right through oyster bisque, but on that evening I simply had to extricate myself from the sheer dullness of dinner with them.

“Mother, I hope you won't mind, but I'm not feeling very well. Upset stomach, you know. I think I'll skip dinner and go straight to bed.”

It sounded pretty good to me as I said it, but Velma looked suspicious right away, and Carter shuffled his feet and looked down at the floor. Dad busied himself pulling a cigar from its case on the lamp table.

“Of course, if you're not feeling well,” Mother said. “Not even?—oh well, go along, then. I'll come up after while to check on—”

“It won't be necessary, probably something I ate for lunch. All of you go on and enjoy the evening.”

Maybelle insisted upon walking up the stairs alongside me. “How could you? Leaving me with the four of them. Oh, you are a cruel and vicious being, Willa, and cowardly too.” She murmured this with no malice, only her usual degree of matter-of-factness. Somehow I had to be nice to the pimply-faced, bespectacled girl, the sooner to get away from her and the rest of them.