Rich Man, Poor Man (77 page)

‘I don’t need any gypsies,’ Gretchen went on. ‘If I hadn’t met Teddy Boylan and laid him, do you think Tom would have burned a cross on his hill? Do you think he’d have been sent away like a criminal if there’d never been a Teddy Boylan? Do you think he’d be just what he is today if he’d stayed in Port Philip with his family around him?’

‘Maybe not,’ Rudolph admitted. ‘But there would’ve been something else.’

‘Only there wasn’t anything else. There was Teddy Boylan, screwing his sister. As for you -‘ ‘I know all I have to know about me,’ Rudolph said. ‘You do? You think you’d have gone to college without Teddy Boylan’s money? You think you’d dress the way you do or be so interested in success and money and how to get there the fastest way possible without Teddy Boylan? Do you think somebody else would have sought you out and taken you to concerts and art galleries and pampered you through school, and given you all that lordly confidence in yourself, if it hadn’t been Teddy Boylan?’ She finished her second martini. ‘Okay,’ Rudolph said, ‘I’ll build a monument in his honour.’ ‘Maybe you should. You certainly can afford it now, with your wife’s money.’

‘That’s below the belt,’ Rudolph said angrily. ‘You know I didn’t have the faintest idea … ‘

That’s what I was talking about,’ Gretchen said. ‘Your Jordache awfulness is turned into something else by your luck.’ ‘How about your Jordache awfulness?’

Gretchen’s entire tone changed. The sharpness went out of her voice, her face became sad, soft, younger. ‘When I was with Colin I wasn’t awful,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘I don’t think I’m ever going to find a Colin again.’

Rudolph reached out and touched her hand, his anger blunted by his sister’s continuing sorrow. ‘You wouldn’t believe me,’ Rudolph said, ‘if I told you I think you will.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘What’re you going to do? Just sit and mourn forever?’

‘No.’

‘What’re you going to do?’

‘I’m going back to school.’

‘School?’ Rudolph said incredulously. ‘At your age?’

‘Postgraduate school,’ Gretchen said. ‘At UCLA. That way I can live home and take care of Billy, all at the same time. I’ve been to see them and they’ve agreed to take me.’

To study what?’

‘You’ll laugh.’

‘I’m not laughing at anything today,’ Rudolph said.

‘I got the idea from the father of a boy in Billy’s class,’ Gretchen said. ‘He’s a psychiatrist’

‘Oh, Christ,’ Rudolph said.

That’s more of your luck,’ Gretchen said. To be able to say. Oh, Christ, when you hear the word psychiatrist’

‘Sorry.’

‘He works part time at a clinic. With lay analysts. They’re. people who aren’t MDs, but who’ve studied analysis, who’ve been analysed, and are licensed to treat cases mat don’t call for deep analysis. Group therapy, intelligent children who refuse to learn how to read or write or are wilfully destructive, kids from broken homes who have retreated into themselves, girls who have been made frigid by their religion or by some early sexual trauma, and who are breaking up with their husbands, Negro and Mexican children who start school far behind the others and never catch up and lose their sense of identity … ‘

‘So,’ Rudolph said. He had been listening impatiently. ‘So, you’re going to go out and solve the Negro problem and the

Mexican problem and the religious problem all on your own, armed with a piece of paper from UCLA, and…’

‘I will try to solve one problem,’ Gretchen said, ‘or maybe two problems, or maybe a hundred problems. And I’ll be solving

my own problem at the same time. Ill be busy and I’ll be doing something useful.’

‘Not something useless like your brother?’ Rudolph said, stung. ‘Is that what you’re trying to say?’

‘Not at all,’ Gretchen said. ‘Your being useful in your own way. Let me be useful in mine, that’s all.’

‘How long is all this going to take?’

‘Two years, minimum, for the degree.’ Gretchen said. Then finishing the analysis … ‘

‘You’ll never finish,’ he said. ‘You’ll find a man and…’

‘Maybe,’ Gretchen said. ‘I doubt it, but maybe … ‘

Martha came in, red eyed, and said that lunch was ready on the dining-room table. Gretchen went upstairs to get Billy and Thomas and when they came down the entire family went into the dining-room and had lunch, everybody being polite to everybody else, saying, ‘Please pass the mustard,’ and ‘Thanks,’ and ‘No, I think that’s enough for me right now.’

After lunch, they got into the car and drove out of Whitby for New York, leaving their dead behind them.

They reached the Hotel Algonquin at a little after seven. Gretchen and Billy were staying there, because there was no room for them in Rudolph’s one-bedroom apartment, where Jean was waiting for him. Rudolph asked Gretchen if she and Billy wanted to have dinner with him and Jean, but Gretchen said this was no day to meet a new sister-in-law. Rudolph invited Thomas too, but Thomas, who was sitting low in the front seat, said, ‘I have a date.’

When Billy got out of the car, Thomas got out too, and put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. ‘I have a son, too, Billy.’ Thomas said. ‘A lot younger than you. If he grows up anything like you, I’ll be a proud father.’

For the first time in three days, Billy smiled.

‘Tom,’ Gretchen said, standing under the hotel’s canopy, ‘am I ever going to see you again?’

‘Sure,’ Thomas said. ‘I know where to reach you. I’ll call

you.’ Gretchen and her son went into the hotel, a porter carrying the two bags.

‘I’ll get a cab from here, Rudy,’ Thomas said. ‘You must be anxious to get home to your wife.’

‘I’d like a drink,’ Rudolph said. ‘Let’s go in the bar here and … ‘

Thanks. I’m pressed for time,’ Thomas said. ‘I got to be on my way.’ He kept peering over Rudolph’s shoulder at the traffic on Sixth Avenue.

Tom,’ Rudolph insisted. ‘I have to talk to you.’

I thought we were all talked out,’ Thomas said. He tried to hail a cab, but the driver was off duty. ‘You got nothing more to say to me.’

‘No?’ Rudolph said savagely. ‘Don’t I? What if I told you you’re worth about sixty thousand dollars as of the close of the market today? Would that make you change your mind?’

‘You’re a great little old joker, aren’t you, Rudy?’ Thomas said.

‘Come on in to the bar. I’m not joking.’

Thomas followed Rudolph into the bar.

The waiter brought them their whiskies and then Thomas said, ‘Let’s hear.’

“That goddamn five thousand dollars you gave me,’ Rudolph said. ‘You remember that?’

‘Blood money,’ Thomas said. ‘Sure I remember.’

‘You said to do anything I wanted with it,’ Rudolph said. ‘I think I recall your exact words. “Piss on it, blow it on dames, give it to your favourite charity…”’

“That sounds like me,’ Thomas grinned.

‘Well, what I wanted to do with it was invest it,’ Rudolph said.

‘Always a head for business,’ Thomas said. ‘Even as a kid.’

‘I invested it in your name, Tom,’ Rudolph said deliberately. ‘In my own company. There haven’t been much in the way of dividends so far, but what there’ve been I’ve ploughed back. But the stock has divided four times and it’s gone up and up and up. I tell you, you have about sixty thousand dollars in shares that you own outright.’

Thomas gulped down his drink. He closed his eyes and pushed at his eyeballs with his fingers.

‘I tried to get hold of you time and time again in the past two years,’ Rudolph said. ‘But the phone company said your phone was disconnected and when I sent letters to your old address, they always came back with a stamp on them saying “Unknown at this address.”. And Ma never told me she was in touch with you until she went to the hospital. I read the sports pages, but you seemed to have dropped out of sight.’ ‘I was campaigning in the West,’ Thomas said, opening his eyes. The room looked blurry now.

‘Actually, I was just as glad I couldn’t find you,’ Rudolph said, ‘because I knew the stock would keep going up and I

didn’t want you to be tempted to sell prematurely. In fact, I don’t think you ought to sell now.’

‘You mean I can go somewhere tomorrow,’ Thomas asked, ‘and just say I got some stock I want to sell and somebody’ll give me sixty thousand dollars, cash?’

‘I told you I don’t advise you to …’

‘Rudy,’ Thomas said, ‘you’re a great guy and all that and maybe I take back a lot pi what I’ve been thinking about you all these years, but right now I ain’t listening to any advice. All I want is for you to give me the address of the place where that man is waiting to give me that sixty thousand dollars cash.’

Rudolph gave up. He wrote out Johnny Heath’s office address, and gave it to Thomas. ‘Go to this place tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I’ll call Heath and he’ll be expecting you. Please Tom, be .

careful.’

‘Don’t worry about me, Rudy. From now on I’ll be so careful, you won’t even recognize me.’ Thomas ordered another round of drinks. When he lifted his arm to call the waiter, his jacket slipped back and Rudolph saw the pistol stuck in the belt. But he didn’t say anything. He had done what he could for his brother. He could do no more.

‘Wait a minute for me here, will you?’ Thomas said. ‘I have to make a phone call.’

He went into the lobby and found a booth and looked up the number of TWA. He dialled the number and asked about flights the next day to Paris. The girl at TWA told him there was a flight at eight p.m. and asked him if he wished to make a reservation. He said, ‘No thank you,’ and hung up, then called the YMCA and asked for Dwyer. It was a long time before Dwyer came to the phone and Thomas was just about ready to hang up the phone and forget him. ‘Hello,’. Dwyer said, ‘who’s this?’ Tom. Now listen to …’

‘Tom!’ Dwyer said excitedly. ‘I’ve been hanging around and hanging around waiting to hear from you. Jesus, I was worried. I thought maybe you were dead … ‘

‘Will you stop running off at the mouth?’ Thomas said. ‘Listen to me. There’s a TWA plane leaving Idlewild for Paris tomorrow night at eight o’clock. You be there at the Reservations Counter at six-thirty. All packed.’ ‘You mean you got reservations on a plane?’ ‘I don’t have them yet,’ Thomas said, wishing Dwyer wasn’t so excitable. ‘We’ll get them there. I don’t want my name on any lists all day.’

‘Oh, sure, sure, Tom, I understand.’

‘Just be there. On time.’

‘I’ll be there. Don’t you worry.’

Thomas hung up.

He went back to the bar and insisted on paying for the drinks.

Outside, on the sidewalk, just before he got into the cab that drew up next to the curb, he shook hands with his brother.

‘Listen, Tom,’ Rudolph said, ‘let’s have dinner this week. I want you to meet my wife.’

‘Great idea,’ Thomas said. ‘I’ll call you Friday.’

He got into the cab and told the driver, ‘Fourth Avenue and Eighteenth Street’

He settled back in the cab luxuriously, holding on to the paper bag with his belongings. When you had sixty thousand dollars everybody invited you to dinner. Even your brother.

1963

It was raining when she drove up to the house, the torrential, tropical rain of California that flattened flowers, bounced off the tiles of roofs, .like ricocheting silvery bullets sent bulldozed hillsides sliding down into neighbours’ gardens and swimming pools. Colin had died two years ago but she still automatically looked into the open garage to see if his car was there.

She left her books in the 1959 Ford and hurried to the front door, her hair soaking, even though it was only a few yards. Once inside she took off her coat and shook her wet hair. It was only four-thirty in the afternoon, but the house was dark and she turned on the front hall light. Billy had gone off on a camping trip to the Sierras with friends for the weekend and she hoped that the weather was better up in the mountains than down on the coast.

She reached into the mailbox. There were some bills, some circulars, a letter from Venice, in Rudolph’s handwriting.

She went into the livingroom, turning on lights as she went. She kicked off her wet shoes, made herself a light Scotch and soda, and seated herself, on the couch, her legs curled up under her, pleased with the warmly lit room. There were no whispers in the shadows any more. She had won the battle with Colin’s ex-wife and she was going to stay in the house. The judge had awarded her a temporary allowance from the estate, against a final settlement, and she didn’t have to depend on Rudolph any more.

She opened Rudolph’s letter. It was a long one. When he was in America, he preferred to phone, but now that he was wandering around Europe, he used the mails. He must have pad a lot of time on his hands, because he wrote often.

‘Dear Gretchen,’ - she read, - ‘It’s raining in Venice and Jean is out in it taking pictures. She says it’s the best time to get the quality of Venice, water on water. I’m snug in my hotel, undriven by art. Jean also likes to take pictures of people for the series she’s doing under the worst possible circumstances. Hardship and age, she tells me, preferably the two together, tell more about the character of a people and a country than anything else. I do not attempt to argue with her. I prefer handsome young people in sunshine, myself, but I am only her Philistine husband,

‘I am enjoying, to the utmost the glorious fruits of sloth. Within me, after all the years of hustle and toil, I have discovered a happy, lazy man, content to look at two masterpieces a day, to lose myself in a foreign city, to sit for hours at a cafe table like any Frenchman or Italian, to pretend I know something about art and haggle in galleries for paintings by new men whom nobody ever heard about and whose works will probably make my livingroom in Whitby a chamber of horrors when I eventually get back there.

‘Curiously enough, with all our travelling, and despite the fact that Pa came from Germany and probably had as much German in him as American, I have no desire to visit the country. Jean has been there, but isn’t anxious to go back. She says it’s too much like America, in all essential ways. I’ll have to take her opinion on the subject.

‘She is the dearest woman alive and I am terribly uxorious and find myself carting her cameras around so as not to miss a moment with her. Except when it rains, of course, She has the sharpest of eyes and I have seen and understood more about Europe in six months with her than I would in sixty years alone. She has absolutely no literary sense and never reads a newspaper and the theatre bores her, so I fill in that section of our communal life. She also drives our little Volkswagen very well, so I get a chance to moon and sightsee and enjoy things like the Alps and the valley of the Rhone without worrying about falling off the road. We have a pact. She drives in the morning and drinks a bottle of wine at lunch and I drive in the afternoon, sober.