Onyx (16 page)

“For your brother, poor devil, it doesn't matter. But that bewildered child can't stay in Detroit.”

“By God, I'd like Bridger's hide!”

“And to think that I
encouraged
him. Of course, I had no idea you didn't want it, Andrew. She was lonely, and he was your partner. He
seemed
decent. Usually I'm a fair judge of character.”

“I begged him to come to her—begged.” The Major's voice shook, and to control himself he looked out at the sparse snowflakes drifting in the early dusk.

“The boy's a monster! How he pulled the wool over my eyes.”

The Major sighed. “What was all that agitation about dragging poor Oswald around Europe?”

“It's a mental trick that we all use to a lesser degree. Throw ourselves into something else in order to avoid the unbearable.” The doctor took out his small notebook, scribbling. “I'll arrange for an orderly to travel with your brother. Girardin will have her hands full with Antonia.”

“This, uhh, disturbance, it's temporary, isn't it?”

“In my opinion, yes. But the other—she's far too thin and rundown. She needs the best of care. I'll give Girardin instructions. Where do you plan to take her?”

“London seems the easiest.”

The doctor tore out a page, writing carefully. “Here's the name of a top man on Harley Street.”

That same evening the Major sent for his attorney, three property brokers, and an auctioneer, arranging to divest himself of the factory property, this house, a tract of timberland he owned near Pontiac. He never ceased seeing those thin, arching hands, yet his very real anguish for Antonia did not prevent him from conferring briskly, quite himself again. In his heart he admitted that leaving Detroit suited him to a tee. That insurance investigation had roused a malicious hive of gossip among his friends.

CHAPTER 8

SOCIAL NOTE

Major A. Stuart departed today for an extended tour of the continent of Europe. Sympathizers hope that the journey will help him to recover from the tragic loss by fire of the Stuart Furniture Company, long a Detroit landmark. He was accompanied by his brother, Mr. O. Dalzell, and by his niece, Miss Dalzell. Major Stuart will be greatly missed by his numerous friends and old comrades at arms from the Michigan Cavalry. He—

A knock interrupted Hugh as he dawdled over a late breakfast of bread and strawberry jam. He knew it was either Mrs. Trelinack or one of the three girls—they took turns dropping in—yet his voice cracked anxiously as he called, “Who is it?”

“Me, Maud.”

“I'm resting,” Hugh said, unfastening the latch, diving toward his pallet, angling his good profile toward the other room.

“This is on the way to the Newberrys'—today's my day there. I thought I'd pop in,” she said, putting down her basket and taking off her coat. The bib of her black dressmaker's apron glinted with threaded needles, and around her neat waist was a belt with a red pincushion. She peered nearsightedly at the
Detroit Journal
as she folded it. “So you saw that about Major Stuart?” she asked, piling dishes to carry to the sink.

“Yes.”

“One time I saw Tom leaving Hudson's with the niece. He knew her quite well, didn't he?” Maud's somewhat loud voice was pitched too high.

Hugh's head tilted. Maud was overly blunt, so why this oblique question about Tom and Antonia? It came to him with a little jolt that Maud was setting her cap for his brother. Maud? With her heavy step and appalling candor? That frugal
peasant
? “We never discussed Miss Dalzell,” he said.

Nothing could deter Maud. “I did some alterations for her once. She's too tall for such a tiny waist and those narrow hips. What a lively one! It was during the war in Cuba, and she took my specs and pretended to be Colonel Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill.” Maud's brief chuckle was honest. “I never understood why the Woodward Avenue crowd were so down on her—the things they said about the Major and her! Did you hear any of that?”

“Why should I?”

“They said she was his mistress.”

“She's his half brother's daughter.”

“A lot of them knew that, but they still said she was.”

“Nice ladies you sew for,” Hugh said, his teeth gritting in a spasm. Antonia was everything Maud was not, light, joyous, wellborn, tender, and he resented Maud's repeating old gossip.

“It
was
hard to believe. They're a bunch of drones, society women,” Maud said. “Anyway, I liked her.” There was the clink of a dish being set on marble. “I brought you a fresh-baked honey loaf. Want me to heat the coffee to go with it?”

“I'll fix fresh later.”

“Hugh, there must be a half pot left!”

“Mmm,” said Hugh.

“I put in two kinds of raisins.”

What a shame that Mrs. Trelinack, with her light hand and lavish ways with butter, had not done the baking. “Maud, you're very good to us,” Hugh said, stifling a faint sarcasm.

“Save a slice for Tom.”

As soon as she left he poured the contents of the tall percolator down the sink. He felt sorry for Maud. Poor girl, with a crush on Tom. Surely all her common sense should tell her that any man involved with the scintillating, graceful girl Antonia, could never feel anything more than friendship for
her
. Yet Maud was kind. He cut a sliver of the honey loaf, and nibbling, tasted the lard.

II

After supper Tom glanced through the paper. When he came to Social Notes, beads of sweat broke out on his face and his lips moved convulsively. The item had the casual, bloodless finality of a death certificate. She was gone, gone with no word to him, not even a brief note, gone as companion to his enemy. Never, never would he receive permission to kneel and beg her forgiveness.

He thrust the newspaper in the stove, watching it curl and bubble into cinders. He flung open the cupboard, reaching for the nearly full fifth of rye.

He drank until he was sodden. Hugh led him to his mattress, placing a folded towel under his head in case he vomited, taking off his boots, covering him with the quilt, services he had performed quite a few nights these past weeks.

III

One particularly bleak Sunday toward the end of November, Trelinack came by. “The womenfolk are in church,” he announced, setting down a bucket of beer, rubbing his hands to warm them. “Tom, if you don't mind my saying so, you look like hell.”

“It's tough being on twenty-four-hour call,” Tom lied. Having already learned the personalities of the Rice dynamo, the Armington and Sims generator, the angry, crouching Beck steam engine, he had so little to do that boredom bloated his misery. Unhooking the three mugs, he called, “Hugh, Trelinack's brought us some lager.”

Hugh disdained beer as a plebeian drink. “None for me, but thanks, Trelinack,” he said through the crack of the barely open door.

Trelinack poured himself a mugful. “Tom, a man asked me to put a proposition to you. He's of a mind to invest in an automobile shop.”

“Did you tell him I'm through?”

“That I did. He said back that he never figured you for a quitter. And I said to him that you were badly stung by the fire.”

“The fire, hell! Only an asshole wouldn't know that the automobile fad's over. Finished. Dead.”

“Tom,” Trelinack said quietly. “She's left Detroit.”

Tom's fist slammed down. Beer sloshed on marble.

“Hit
me
,” Trelinack said. “If it'll make you feel better, hit me. But that won't alter the facts. Blood sticks to blood, and she's left with her own people. So you might as well settle down to picking up the pieces of your life.”

“You should have gone with the others. Church is the place for sermons.”

“I'm a man of my word,” said Trelinack, fishing in his vest pocket.

“How many times do I have to say it? No fucking more toys for rich men!”

“It's a good thing we're friends, Tom, or I could take offense at your mouth.” Trelinack set down a folded sheet of yellow paper.

Hugh listened to them, the angelic side of his face, the right, broodingly intent. The skin was normal, freshly shaved, the lashes and brows growing in. He was healthy enough, strong enough, to get the white-collar job that his high school diploma entitled him to. Accordingly, a week before that he had set out with a clipped advertisement for an opening with the Soames Importing Company in the Hammond Building. That fifteen-minute walk was Hugh's Gethsemane. People had either stared at him or looked away. After years of pleasure at unearned admiration, he had been stunned by the pain of equally unearned revulsion. At each passerby's examination his body quivered, and this sensation was as horrible as the remembered anguish of his burns. He never had reached the Hammond Building. After seven blocks he had raced back to the flat.
I can't bear the stares
, he had thought, knowing that this cowardice had imprisoned him. He was in for life. And as long as Tom remained in a mechanic's job, he'd be stuck in drab living quarters.

When Trelinack closed the front door, Hugh pushed slowly to his feet.
Go carefully
, he told himself.
You'll probably never have another chance
. He entered the other room.

“Aren't you going to take a look?” he asked, picking up the yellow paper.

A check fell from its folds.

“Tom. Look!” Hugh's surprise was unfeigned. “A thousand dollars made out to you! Signed John Trelinack.”

Without a word Tom snatched the check, folding it into his pocket, yanking his heavy jacket from its hook behind the door.

“Where are you going?” Hugh asked.

“The sooner this gets back to Trelinack, the better.”

“It
is
a lot of money,” Hugh said, judiciously pruning his tone of everything except warm friendship for Trelinack. “He must have mortgaged his house. Can you imagine that kind of trust?”

Tom halted at the door. “What does his note say?”

Hugh opened the letter. “‘John Trelinack backs Thomas K. Bridger to the amount of one thousand dollars in exchange for ten percent of any profits in the Bridger Automobile Company.' Tom, the Major didn't put up any cash, and
he
took a quarter.”

Tom shook his head, his expression mingling affection and dismay. He cleared his throat. “I was pretty rough to him.”

“You can't just throw this back in his teeth.”

“I'll wait a couple of days.”

“Pretend you're considering it.” Hugh reached for the check, hastily burying it amid aromatic beans in the coffee jar. “It'll be safe here.”

IV

That evening Tom slicked down his hair and used his razor. Hugh guessed he was going to the Golden Age for a whore, the first time since Antonia's reign. As he slammed out the door he looked as though he were going to be punished rather than to seek enjoyment in a woman's arms. Hugh waited for five minutes before he took out his sketchbook.

“It's goddamn late,” Tom said. His face red, he emanated odors of whiskey, cheap musk perfume, and sex. “What're you drawing in the middle of the night?”

Hugh turned over the pad. “Big brother, I'm old enough to draw whatever and whenever I choose.”

Tom flipped over the pad. “The racer,” he accused.

“What of it?”

“So long as you don't figure on talking me into anything,” Tom said belligerently.

“Who do you think got burned?”

Tom sighed, shaking his head. “I didn't mean to sound off. I'm tired, that's all.”

“And drunk?”

“Yeah, some. Ahh, as if boozing does any good.” Tom sat at the table, burying his face in his arms. “Nothing helps, Hugh, nothing. The more I try not to think about her, the more she's on my mind.” His voice was muffled.

“Would talking help?” Hugh asked with heartfelt sympathy, momentarily deflected from his course.

“I can't. Everything's so locked up and painful.”

“I know what you mean.” Hugh wet his lips. “That's why I was drawing the racer. To see if I could face up to things.”

Tom raised his head, pointing with a dark-rimmed nail. “You got the cylinders too short.”

“I did? This is what I remember.”

Tom reached for the pencil, drawing. “There,” he said.

A cold wind off the Detroit River rattled the windowpanes as they ate breakfast. Hugh finished his oatmeal. “Tom …” He hesitated. “Would the Edison hire a bookkeeper who doesn't work on the premises?”

“There's no need, Hugh,” Tom said gruffly.

“What about my medical bills?”

“They're getting paid.”

“It's like being a ghost! Sitting here, staring at the walls, never pulling my weight!”

Around five that afternoon the generator broke down at the Edison. It was after ten when Tom got home. Hugh slept, a magazine's triangular corner peeking out from under his mattress. Careful not to awaken his brother, Tom extricated it. An old
Horseless Age
from 1898.

Tom pinched his earlobe until it was bloodless, glancing from the magazine to his brother. He bent, poking Hugh's shoulder.

“Wha … Oh, Tom. You're home.”

“We need to talk.”

Hugh looked at the magazine and scowled. “Can't I have any privacy?”

“Trelinack's thousand, it's more cash than I've seen at one time, but even if I kept it, it wouldn't be enough.” Tom's words rushed out. “Without credit backing I'm nowhere.”

“Tom, just because I was reading an old magazine—”

“We both know you've been working on me since Trelinack came over yesterday,” Tom said.

“I'm truly sorry, Tom, that I'm not able to be more subtle about getting you to do what you've already decided on. But at least I had the brains to figure we would start with a Curved-Dash. There's enough of them around to copy. A racer? You'll never remember how you built it. Each part was modified three times then modified again. And it cost a fortune.”