People Who Knock on the Door (24 page)

“Have you got a short whisky?”

He had, a hardly touched half-bottle of Ballantine’s which he had bought because it reminded him of Betty Brewster’s well-equipped household. Arthur fetched it from his suitcase in the closet. They each had two neat ones, and then Arthur escorted Francey down the hall to a shower room. One fellow saw them in the hall and whistled. The shower room was empty, and Arthur waited holding Francey’s clothes, while she stepped under the water. He had brought his bathrobe for her. By now it was nearly 2 a.m. He took Francey back to his room; then he went and had a shower. When he came back, Francey was in his bed.

“Bring the whisky,” she said.

He brought it and their two glasses.

Then they were in bed, with the door locked, the lights out, the whisky on the night table forgotten. Arthur was gentle, but reached a climax so soon, it was embarrassing. There was of course a next time. The second and third times he did much better. And the girl was perfect. To Arthur, she was no longer Francey, but
a girl
, or
the girl
. She was also not in a hurry. The dawn was showing at the window, when Arthur was aware of a pleasant drowsiness. He raised up on one elbow. The girl was looking at him with half-open eyes.

“Who would have thought,” she said, “you’d be so nice in bed? Well, I would.—I did.—Can you reach a cigarette?”

Arthur had to get out of bed for them, but he could see well enough not to turn the light on. In those couple of seconds, as he reached for the red and white pack on his writing table, he realized that he was cured, suddenly, as if from a disease. He was cured of his depression over Maggie. Was that the same as being cured of Maggie, the same as his love for her ending? Just erased, dead, gone? He wasn’t sure as yet. He simply realized that he was one hundred percent happier. And in those few seconds, he realized that this had nothing to do with hanging on to Francey, or being in love with her, or even trying to start an affair with her.

He lit a cigarette and handed it to her. Then he pulled on his pajama pants. “Shouldn’t we get some sleep? Have you got things to do today?”

“What’s today?” she asked sleepily.

“Saturday!” Arthur laughed.

She went off to the showers, by herself, and Arthur made cups of instant coffee, strong and black without sugar, as he had noticed Francey had taken her coffee in the Silver Arrow. The world was changed, as if he had been reborn, and thinking of the born-again Christians, Arthur laughed out loud. Great, if he stood up in church and shouted, “
I
am a born-again, because I slept with a nice girl—and out of wedlock, too! I experienced a miracle!” They’d thrown him out by the back of his neck and the seat of his pants!

Francey returned and got back into bed. “What’re you smiling at?”

Arthur brought the coffees. “The born-again Christians! My father goes to a born-again church here and that blond in the diner last night goes to the same church. And last night Gus and Veronica thought she looked pregnant. I happen to know she’s not married.”

“Hm-m. Pregnant.” Francey gave a short laugh. “Must say she looks like a floozie.”

“Doesn’t she?” Arthur laughed. “I had a fight with my dad about the whole thing. Well, not about her but about something—similar. Holier-than-thou bastards! Irene was asking last night if I was being a good boy!—They’re all
sick
!”

“Yeah, and what they’re doing politically is not so funny. They’re trying to run the government and they’ve got a good start. They’ve got a shit-list for liberals. Making sure they don’t get elected, you know? They’ve even started book-banning. The hell with all of them. It’s only the individual who matters—finally.”

“Yes.—And how can I thank you,
thank
you—for last night and this morning?” Arthur made a bow.

“Arthur, you’re still a little drunk! Drink your coffee; come back to bed and sleep a while.”

“After a shower.”

Arthur took a shower. Then they slept till nearly noon.

24

S
aturday afternoon around 1, Arthur drove Francey McCullough to a house in Varney Street, in town, where she had a date with a girl student to do some work for a dramatics class.

“See you again maybe. Thanks for the lift,” Francey said as she got out of his car. She had just given him her telephone number at a women’s dorm on campus.

Amazing, Arthur thought. Fantastic. Francey was so casual with her good-bye wave—just as he preferred her to be at that moment—and she had wrought a transformation in him overnight!

He drove back to his dorm room, and spent half an hour dreamily tidying up everything. What did last night mean?

What did Francey mean, with her few words to him? And last night? Did it mean that Maggie was really cut off, that he didn’t love her anymore, just like that? Arthur couldn’t believe that. But the pain Maggie had caused him was gone. That was why the word “cured” had occurred to him at dawn. Very strange, because he couldn’t with any honesty say he was in love with Francey or even much attracted to her. Maybe he’d spend another night with her, and maybe not. Maybe she wanted to see him again, and maybe she wouldn’t, when he telephoned her. She’d talked about her present boyfriend. “A kind of a quarrel, but maybe we’ll get back together, I don’t know.” Arthur had forgotten the boyfriend’s name, but he was a senior at C.U.

Arthur treated himself to the most pleasant of his assignments, reading a couple of stories from Joyce’s
The Dubliners
, followed by some bio; then the telephone rang around 4, when he was snoozing on his bed. Nobody answered in the next room, so Arthur got up and swiveled the telephone toward him.

“Hello,
Franky
!” said an excited voice, male.

“No. Frank’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“Home, he said. Wisconsin.”

The caller groaned. “If he comes in, can you tell him there’s a party tonight in Cranleigh, room number—one sixty-one. Any time after eight. Tell him John called.”

Arthur wrote this message and put it on Frank’s bed.

Then he had a happy inspiration to see his mother this evening. He dialed his house number, and Robbie answered. “How’re you, Robbie?”

“Okay.”

“Is Mom there?”

“Yep.” Robbie let the telephone drop hard on the table.

“
Hello
, Arthur!” said his mother.

“I was wondering can I come over tonight? If you’re home?”

His mother was delighted. Of course he could come over and have dinner with them, and did he need anything like sweaters or shirts so she could get them ready?

Just before his family’s dinner hour, Arthur drove to the house on West Maple. Norma Keer was trimming her hedges. Arthur put his car in the driveway and waved hello to Norma. “You getting very far with that little thing?” Arthur asked, because Norma was using secateurs instead of hedge-clippers.

“Getting the
dead
branches out!” she called out. “Better visit me soon or I’ll forget all about you!”

Arthur knocked on his front door and heard his mother’s steps, fairly running.

“Door’s
open
! Hello, Arthur!” She kissed his cheek. “You’re looking—pretty well. How long’s it been? A month?”

“
No
, Mom! Two weeks,” Arthur said, smiling. “Hi, Robbie.”

Robbie leaned against the living room doorjamb, eyes on the TV. “Hi,” he said over his shoulder.

Arthur hung his jacket in the hall and saw from a glance into the living room that his father was in his study, whose door was half open.

“Nothing special to eat tonight, just pork chops,” said his mother. “You’re thinner, Arthur. Are you getting enough to eat at that—dorm?”

“The food is
not
as good as yours. And I had a cold about a week ago.”

They chatted. The kitchen was as usual more pleasant than the living room for Arthur. His mother asked when he had last written to his grandmother, and Arthur replied truthfully two weeks ago.

“She phones me sometimes, you know, always asks about you. I told her about Maggie. Hope you don’t mind, Arthur.”

“No-o. Well—these things happen—they say.—I don’t look as if I’m collapsing, do I?”

Lois shook her head and smiled. She grabbed his sweatered left arm for a moment and pressed it. “Can’t tell you how glad I am you’re here tonight!”

Robbie had gone farther into the living room, nearer the TV with its voices and sounds of gunfire and explosions. Then Richard emerged from his study.

“Hello, Arthur,” said his father.

“Hi, Dad.”

His father said nothing more and entered the kitchen with the air of wondering how soon dinner would be ready.

The dinner period was no less sticky, with his father and Robbie silent, he and his mother being the life of the party, if the party could be said to have any life. His mother asked him to remind her that she had clean shirts ready for him in the hall closet and had he brought any dirty shirts? Arthur had forgotten to.

“By the way, Dad, how’s Irene?” Arthur asked in a silence. “Is she still going to church?”

“Sure she is.—As far as I know.”

“I was at the Silver Arrow last night. One of my friends thought she looked pregnant. I hope it’s not true.”

“Who told you that?” asked his mother.

“Nobody told me. It’s just that Veronica—Gus’s girlfriend— thought she looked pregnant.” Arthur was aware of Robbie’s gray eyes lifting from his food to his father. “I don’t suppose it matters. You said she used to—well—”

“She is pregnant, yes,” said his father, twiddling with his napkin at one side of his empty plate. “Funny, it—Well, long enough, I suppose, for somebody to notice.”

Robbie looked like a soldier on the alert. His torso and head didn’t move, but his eyes shot from his father to his mother, bounced off Arthur, then returned to his father.

Irene had fallen, and abortion was out of the question. If his father was still counseling Irene, he would counsel against it. What a mess! And poor Irene had half a brain, to be generous about it. “And who’s the father?” Arthur asked. “One of those truckers?”

“Arthur!—Don’t joke about a thing like that.” But his mother was smiling slightly.

“Didn’t mean to be joking,” Arthur said.

“We don’t know. Not the point.” His father got up, removing his own plate and Lois’s, too.

Wasn’t it some kind of point, Arthur thought, a matter of some interest, anyway? Was she plying her trade again, Arthur wanted to ask, but instead he said, “She’s got a boyfriend? Must have.” Had she initiated Robbie? And wouldn’t that be a funny twist? Arthur set his teeth to keep from smiling.

“Well—” said his mother, rising to remove Arthur’s plate. “Nobody knows. It’s sad.”

“So what’s she going to do?” Arthur addressed this question to both his parents.

Richard was returning to the table with four dessert plates. “What do you mean? She’ll have the baby, of course.”

Arthur lit a Marlboro. He was aware of a small pleasure, perhaps nasty of him, in seeing his father in a bind: His protégée Irene had kicked the traces and got herself pregnant. Ah, the pleasures of the body!

“. . . hard sauce to go with this fruit cake, Arthur. I hope you’ll like it,” said his mother, trying to fill in the silence.

His father had reseated himself.

“Who’s going to take care of the child?” Arthur asked.

“Why, she will,” his father replied. “Who else? She’s got her sister there at home to help.”

His father’s matter-of-factness surprised Arthur. Wasn’t this a catastrophe, Irene pregnant? At the same time, the situation seemed funny: that gross sister, sitting around eating candy, giving the baby its bottles, while Irene went back to work at the Silver Arrow. Funny and bizarre, just as bizarre as Robbie’s steely earnestness on his left. Robbie maintained his forward-leaning attitude, attentive to every word. “You mean,” Arthur said, spooning hard sauce onto his cake, “Irene won’t tell you who the father is? Or does she even know?”

“Arthur—can’t we change the subject?” said his mother.

Arthur glanced at his mother. “Just that the father could help in the situation. They haven’t much money, Irene and her sister, from what I’ve heard.”

His mother sighed. “Well, Irene’s not quite right in the head, poor girl.”

“She’s insane,” Robbie said, looking at Arthur. “I told you that the day she turned up here—last summer.”

Robbie’s grimness amazed Arthur. It was the ugly side of virtue, he supposed, feeling superior to dimwit sinners like Irene. “Girls do sometimes get pregnant, Robbie,” Arthur said gently, “and don’t forget it takes a fellow to make them pregnant. You must forgive. Isn’t that right?”

“Ar—thur—” said his mother.

Robbie said nothing.

After dinner, Arthur and his mother took their coffee into Arthur’s room, while Richard and Robbie stayed in the living room in front of the television. Arthur wanted a couple of things from his room.

“Do you think Maggie will stay with this new boy?” his mother asked.

“I dunno.—May as well assume so.” His voice sounded hollow, even scared. He wound a brown belt around his hand, then decided to buckle it on over his trousers and sweater. The empty feeling had come back.

“You look better in the face—your expression. But I’d like to see you put on a pound or two. I was quite worried about you a few weeks ago.—You’re not just pretending now, are you?”

He knew what his mother meant, pretending to be of good cheer when he wasn’t. Arthur shook his head, feeling suddenly angry for no reason. He avoided looking at his mother’s eyes. “Hey, Mom,” he said in a low voice, and glanced at his closed door. “Why’s Robbie so concerned about this Irene mess?”

His mother drew a deep breath. “It’s a disappointment—for Richard. You know? And Robbie understands that. Richard thought Irene was doing so much better, that she was happier and on her feet again—and now this, she’s—What is it, four or five months pregnant. That means she was putting on an act all this time.”

So it happened in December or January, Arthur reckoned. “Mom, if you could see the guys in the Silver Arrow!—And she sort of leads them on. No wonder nobody knows who the father is. And in fact who cares?” Arthur gazed into his open closet. He took his navy blue Viyella shirt from a hanger and remembered the afternoon he had bought it, on the occasion of his first dinner at Maggie’s house. “Is Dad still giving a tenth of his income to the church?” Arthur asked out of the blue.

“Ye-es, I’m pretty sure. And a bit more.”

Arthur closed the closet door and started folding his shirt on his bed. “Reminds me of a piece I read in
Time
in February. All these rich churches are connected—not like a business partnership, but they’re all spouting the same thing. It’s like a gas. You can’t see it, but it’s there, in the atmosphere. We’ve all got to breathe it—because the Moral Majority says so.” Arthur felt vaguely angry again, but he had managed to keep his voice calm. “These churches are off the income tax hook, and they’re rolling in dough. Like the Worldwide Church. They publish
Plain Truth
. Like the Moonies. The big shots live in luxury, and they say, ‘This is the way our people like to see us.’ Looking rich, I mean.”

His mother made no reply. Arthur knew she was thinking about something else. He had expected her to say that Richard and she didn’t look exactly rich, did they, nor did the Reverend Bob Cole. That wouldn’t have daunted Arthur in his argument. It was the leaders of these churches who were rich, and their followers broke, a lot of them, and just about as gullible as the gullible blacks who had followed Jim Jones to death in Guyana after being fleeced by him. That story had made a big impression on Arthur. Many of the American blacks in his group, and a few moonstruck whites, too, had been handing over regularly their Social Security checks to go into Jim Jones’s bank account. Arthur felt spoiling for a fight, but not with his mother.

His mother changed the subject. How was Gus; how was Veronica? And had he gone along with the two of them the evening they had been to the Silver Arrow? Here Arthur was able to say something a bit more cheerful, that he had had a date with a girl called Francey, just last night when they had gone to the Silver Arrow after Mom’s Pride. And Francey was not his new girlfriend by any means, because she had a steady boyfriend, Arthur had been told.

“Whatever it is—tonight you look a lot more cheerful. You know, Arthur, if Maggie’s stuck on this other fellow, you’ve just got to get over her. I don’t want to see you unhappy.”

Arthur opened a lower drawer, looking for things he might want.
Get over her
. He hated phrases like that. There would never be another girl like Maggie; it was as simple as that. Arthur could have cracked up at that moment, and he was about to excuse himself to go into the bathroom for a minute, when his mother proposed that they ring up Norma Keer and see if they could come over.

So Arthur telephoned, and ten minutes later, he and his mother were sitting in Norma’s living room; coffee was brewing in the kitchen, and Norma in stockinged feet bent over her coffee table, fussing with cups. When she asked Arthur how Maggie was, he was able to reply:

“Very well, I think. She’ll be majoring in sociology.”

But when Norma made cheerful remarks about seeing Maggie when summer vacation started, Arthur had the feeling that she was talking to a ghost, that the ghost was himself. Norma suggested a small brandy to go with their coffee, and Arthur accepted, though his mother didn’t.

“And Robbie?” Norma asked. “He hardly says hello to me anymore when I’m out in the yard. I always give him a hail.”

It occurred to Arthur that Robbie shunned Norma, because Robbie knew Norma was rather a friend of his. “And your health, Norma,” said Arthur, thinking both to change the subject and perhaps make the atmosphere more depressing, even though to inquire about a person’s health was surely a polite thing to do.

“Good news Monday. I was saving it to tell you—case you asked.” Norma sat down in her usual sofa corner, sitting a bit more upright than usual. “Doctor said Monday, ‘Great progress.’ Meaning I’m no longer on death row.”