Gentleman's Agreement (13 page)

He waved to the letters she was gathering together.

“Does that kind of stuff get you sore?”

“Not any more. Yes, sure it does. So what?” She shrugged, and with the same imperturbable look in her eyes she left the room. He looked after her. The Nordic type; the Aryan type. He lit a cigarette. He must search out that article
Life
had run a couple of years ago by Hooton of Harvard about the balderdash of race and types. Or read Hooton’s book. Suddenly he grinned. He’d have a little fun telling Minify about things.

The telephone rang again. Maybe this time.

“Hello—oh, Kathy. You back?”

“It was such a lovely
witty
present, Phil. First I laughed and then I sort of hugged it.”

“I’m glad. You’ll be getting a grimy note from Tom sometime—he went nuts over the gun. When can I see you?”

“Any time.”

“Right now, tonight, tomorrow, I missed you these four days. I wish we were married.”

“Phil.”

So, he had said it at last. Here, at an office desk, his elbow on a stack of notes and papers, into a perforated black disk he had said the words he’d forced back into his throat all that evening before she’d gone away.

“It’s a hell of a way to say it,” he said, “isn’t it?” There was no answer. “Kathy? You still there?”

“I missed you, too,” she said slowly. “Just awfully.”

He saw the picture when he came in. The old one that had been over the fireplace lay flat on the piano, and his present hung in its place. Pleasure darted through him, but he said nothing. She knew he had seen it, and remained silent with him. He took her into his arms.

Standing tight to each other, saying nothing, they knew no importance other than the one streaming close about them in this double admission of longing. The tentative was gone. The surprise was gone. Acknowledgment, compulsion, sureness—these they shared.

Later, leaning over her, he looked at her and found tranquility and an odd return of shyness.

“Darling. My beautiful Kathy.”

She smiled and turned away from his asking, knowing that he wanted her to say it, not knowing how to say it.

“You don’t look grim and dark now, Phil.”

“You don’t either.”

“Isn’t it—” She looked at him and then away. The question hung in the air.

“When it’s all mixed with being in love, yes.” He waited. “So damn beautiful you can’t bear it, I mean me.”

“Me, too.”

All night they forgot to sleep, except in snatches of drowsy silence which were half sleep. They talked with the candor that could come only in intimacy and confessed love. Already each felt a new loyalty to the other sketching in its first outlines beyond the old loyalty clinging to anything past. She could make him see more now, about her marriage, and he more about his stubborn suffering for Betty. Each had sought, each had hoped and watched for a new beginning, and now together they had found the way to it.

“Should we meet our families first?” Kathy said once. “Or after we’re married and surprise them?”

“Which way do you want ?”

“Any.”

Nothing was settled, no question fully answered, through all the hours until the windows showed graying streaks around the drawn shades. There was no time or need now for decisions. There was all the time.

Only when he was dressed and sitting on the edge of her bed for a last cigarette did they come to specifics. “Darling, I’ll tell Mom in the morning. Come and meet her tomorrow? I’ll stop by after the office.”

“All right. And Tom?”

“Let’s have him get to know you first. Then after he likes you we’ll tell him. He’ll be so happy.”

“Sure?”

“Sure. I guess it’s better for him to like you first, don’t you?”

“Then maybe tomorrow’d be better after he’s asleep?”

He nodded. “We’ll take him to a movie together for a start. That’ll make him all easy with you.” He took her into his arms. His clothed body, his sleeved arm around her still bare shoulders, shot a lewdness through him, unwanted, dismaying. He spoke somberly. “You’re not sorry, darling, about Tom?”

“Oh, Phil. You know I’m
glad.
” She hesitated. “It’ll be almost as if my marriage hadn’t all been wasted—as if all those years I’d had a boy growing up
for
me.”

He suddenly stood up. “I’m a Christ-bitten fool,” he said, and heard how thick his voice was. Then he left her.

Behind, alone, hearing him walk through the living room, hearing him click off the lights they’d forgotten, guessing that he looked once more at the framed print of the
Toledo
over the fireplace, Kathy lay in a confusion of fatigue and happiness that banished sleep for another while. He couldn’t know, she would tell him sometime after they were married, but now she couldn’t utter the words to tell him how right he was with her and for her.

She hadn’t expected it. She hadn’t guessed that with his moodiness, his complexity, he would have so simple and driving a power to move her. If she
had
speculated, she’d have guessed he’d be a nervous, unsure lover.

It mattered so much—no marriage had half a chance if the two were constantly frustrate or anxious about sex. Phil, she thought. Darling.

I’ll make him happy, I can help him, I’m good for being married. All the rest of it about Betty will disappear without his even knowing when it finally slides off into nothingness. I can make Tom feel right; I’m good with children; why wouldn’t I be with
this
one when I want to so much? And we’ll have our own.

She reached for a final cigarette, changed her mind, and turned out the light. In the dark she thanked something for having made it happen and did not try to name what it was she thanked.

Lack of sleep didn’t matter, Phil thought, when you felt this good. His mother’s pleasure over the news that they’d marry in a week or two had only made him indulgent, not uneasy and embarrassed. Whistling, he finished dressing and went back to his desk for the morning’s batch of hotel letters. Mrs. Green was still sitting there. Tom was already out.

“The story about Miss Wales made Kathy laugh, too,” he said. He didn’t want the talk to get back to personal levels. “She was delighted I hadn’t told Minify yet—wants to be around when I dish it out.”

Kathy had been angry about Dr. Craigie, had sniffed over Bill Johnson of the
Times.
He had forgotten to tell her about Belle’s telephone call. One of those shame-caused repressions? Sometime around midnight they’d remembered they’d had no dinner and they’d gone into the small kitchen for scrambled eggs and toast and milk. While they were there, they'd been able again to talk of impersonal things, and she’d wanted to know “everything that’s happened so far.” Sitting there, while she cooked for him, talking of his work, was like a rehearsal of married life. But he could report only episodes; the nebulous world of his own developing feeling he had to inhabit alone. So far, even for himself it remained uncharted.

“That thing about Miss Wales is the only thing that’s
been
amusing,” Mrs. Green said. He came to with a start. The letters were still in his hand.

“Funny thing,” he said, “the way I felt so man-to-man with Miss Wales when she pitched me that one. Asking her right out how she felt, as if we both were really on the inside. I keep forgetting it’s just an act.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s what’s called ‘Identification.’”

“I didn’t think it would come so fast.”

“What does Kathy think about it?”

“I
told
you.”

“I mean about your doing it at all?”

“Oh. She fretted about it some, pitfalls, stuff like that. She’s all for it.”

“When’s Dave due?” she asked without transition.

“Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next month. You know the army.”

He went off, ready for Dave, ready for more letters, ready for work and effort and anything. Never try to dismay a man, he thought in the taxi, about anything in the world the morning after he’s made love to his girl. Kathy’s face came back, hesitant, a touch surprised. A primitive sense of achievement and self-satisfaction filled him. She’d thought he’d be a goddam intellectual about everything! In the half-dark of the cab he sat back, trying to ready himself for the moment just ahead, the cab pulling up, the flag shoved upright, the making of change and the offer of the tip. The office was there, the series was there, the watching himself and asking himself were all just ahead of him.

“Identification.” In a way he was kidding himself. Always he knew that for him it would come to an end when he gave the word. That must make it different. He alone had an escape clause in his contract.

A dart of relief nipped at him.

Jee-sus, he thought then. I’m goddam smug myself.

Of it, yet also apart. The actor on the boards and the watching audience in the dark beyond. The lumberjack with his ax and the tree awaiting the blow. The invasion barge and the empty beach. The giver and taker at once.

It was fallacy. It could achieve nothing true. He’d embarked on a sort of Dostoevskian insoluble, dark, brooding, ending only in uncertainty. He should never have started it. At best it was an approximation; at worst a fraud.

The taxi stopped. The driver’s arm reached out to the white flag on the meter. Phil opened the door. On the street, sunlight blazed; cold air bit at him. Upstairs he went directly to Minify’s office. Minify was alone.

“It’s no good, John,” he began. “The damn idea’s a phony from the word go.”

John looked up, startled.

“It’s glib and trumped up and fake,” Phil went on. “I’ve got an ‘out’ all the time, and no real Jew has. My unconscious knows about that ‘out’ even if I forget it.”

“Hold on, there—”

“I’m starting over. There’ll be some other angle that isn’t slick like this one.”

Now John cut him short. “For God’s sake, stop psychoanalyzing it.” His words were brisk with irritation. “It’s a good angle—nobody said it was perfect. But it’s a new springboard into the thing, and that’s good.” Phil started to answer, but Minify waved him silent. “You had an ‘out’ all the time you were a miner, didn’t you?”

“Sure. So has a miner.”

“Not the usual, run-of-the-mill miner, to mix a phrase.” He sat back; the annoyed look left him. “There was nothing slick and fake in that series, Phil. You’re just having the usual attack of ‘it’s lousy—I’m lousy.’”

Phil thought, Maybe that’s all it comes to, and wished he’d thought it over longer before coming in. Then he saw Minify smile.

“And if the first couple articles do turn out n.g.,” John said calmly, “we’ve got a good ‘out’ ourselves.” He kicked the wastebasket beside the desk.

Phil looked down at the basket and laughed. “Escape clause,” he said. “O.K. I’d overlooked that.”

Reassured, he went back to his office and got to work. It was after six before he was ready to leave. Kathy had sounded happy when he phoned, and tired, and had suggested waiting until eight so she could nap. He might do a spot of sleeping himself. All afternoon he’d worked with his usual intensity; he was writing now as well as carrying on the research. The writing was going well; it pleased him. But he was tired, too.

He went through the reception room, dim and emptied of its authors and salesmen and portfolios. Bert McAnny, the assistant art editor, and Anne Dettrey were out in the hall, waiting for the elevator.

“I’m bushed,” Anne greeted him. “Getting the book to bed gets worse every issue.”

“I thought we weren’t to call it ‘the book’ around here,” Bert said. He pushed the down button again.

“True, true,” Anne said. “Anyway, what about a getting-to-bed drink? Sound cozy?” They all laughed. “How’s about it?”

They decided on the Oak Room and walked to the Plaza. Phil felt at ease with them, as though he’d been on the staff a long time. Shoptalk was what you missed when you worked at home, the lazily given “inside dope” that seemed curiously important: “Say, Luce paid fifty thousand for Churchill’s articles”—“When do they start?”—“February. I hear he’s fighting with Field for the autobiography”—“Jim told me the bidding was around a million already.” As they turned into Fifty-ninth Street, Bert began to talk with relish about a new illustrator he’d discovered. “He’s a kind of modern Leyendecker,” he said. “Same outfit in the army, and the minute I saw some doodles he did, I knew he had it.”

“Leyendecker?” Anne said. “You were in three-cornered pants when Leyendecker—”

“I know them all the way back,” Bert said. “This kid’s got it. Little Jew boy from the Bronx, but he sure has got it. Signed him for the Dohen serial.”

There was a pause.

It’s just an expression, Phil told himself. He feels affectionate and proud of this kid. Aloud he said, “What’s his name? Anybody ever hear of him?”

“Jacob Her—” Bert stopped then. He’s remembering about me, Phil thought, and embarrassment for Bert washed over him. “Jake Hermann,” Bert hurried on. “Fine stuff, all right. He’ll hit every cover on the stands in two years.”

Enthusiasm in the voice, pride, alliance. Don’t be bothered by idioms and expressions, Phil counseled himself. Bert feels like a jackass over the thing. But he thought of Belle’s Jew-us-down.

Over their drinks they talked about plays and movies and the difference in the holiday mood this year. Bert had missed all the war Christmases, he said, so he couldn’t catch the difference. It was Anne who asked about the series.

“I’m still just getting stuff together,” Phil said deprecatingly. “God knows there’s plenty around.”

“Too much,” she answered crisply. Nobody said anything. McAnny shifted in his chair.

“You a correspondent during the war?” he asked Phil.

Instantly Phil was hostile. He rescinded the excuses he had made before. He said, “What makes you think I wasn’t right in it?”

“I just—hey, don’t be oversensitive now.”

“I was with the Marines on Guad. First Division, Eleventh Regiment Artillery.” Don’t be oversensitive. Jews are oversensitive. “Jew boy” is just an expression—let it pass. But how directly Bert had leaped from Anne’s “too much antisemitism” to “were you a correspondent?” That fool mind was clearly taping even war correspondents as inferiors, so the train of thought meant, being a Jew, did you choose a cushy berth in the war; were you a slacker?