Short Stories: Five Decades (81 page)

The dream, of course, had been explicit. His sister was to die on May 14th. But dreams never were what they seemed to be, and Elizabeth and Alice looked so much alike, and they were always together and such good friends.… He knew enough about dreams to understand that it would be a simple transference in that shadowy, whimsical world—a wife for a sister, a sister for a wife. And now, of all the days in the year, his wife and child had picked May 14th to fly the three thousand miles over the rivers and mountains of the continent from New York to California.

He put out the light much later, with nothing decided, and tried to sleep. He stared up at the dark ceiling, listening to the occasional swift swhoosh of a car on the street outside, hurrying home through the waning night. For a man who didn’t believe in Fate, he thought, who saw the world in terms of simple cause and effect; who felt that no act was inevitable, that what was going to happen tomorrow or the next second was in no place determined and was everlastingly variable; who felt that no man’s death or burial place was fixed, that no event was recorded in any future book, that the human race got hints or warnings from no supernatural source—this was a ludicrous and profitless way to spend a night. For a man who walked under ladders, cheerfully broke mirrors, never had his palm read or his fortune told from cards, he felt that he was behaving idiotically, and yet he couldn’t sleep.

In the morning he called New York.

“Alice,” he said, “I want you to come by train.”

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“I’m afraid of the plane.” He heard her laugh incredulously over the phone. “I’m afraid of the plane,” he repeated stubbornly.

“Don’t be silly,” Alice said. “They haven’t had an accident with that plane yet, and they won’t start now.”

“Even so—”

“And I’m not going to try to keep Sally amused for three days in a roomette,” Alice said. “It would take me the whole summer to recover.”

“Please,” Roy said.

“And I couldn’t get train reservations for weeks,” Alice said, “and the apartment’s rented and everything. What’s come over you?” Her voice sounded suspicious and wary.

“Nothing,” Roy said. “It’s just that I’m worried about flying.”

“Good God!” Alice said. “You’ve flown two hundred thousand miles in all sorts of contraptions.”

“I know,” Roy said. “That’s why I’m worried.”

“Are you drunk?” Alice asked.

“Alice, darling,” Roy sighed. “It’s eight o’clock in the morning out here.”

“Well, you sound queer.”

“I’ve been up all night, worrying.”

“Well, stop worrying. I’ll see you on the fourteenth. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes.”

“This is a very strange telephone call, I must say.”

“I’m sorry.”

They talked for a moment more, but quite coldly, and Roy hung up feeling dissatisfied and defeated.

He called again two days later and tried once more.

“Don’t ask any questions,” he said. “Just do this for me, and I’ll explain when you get out here. If you want to come on the plane, that’s all right, but don’t come on the fourteenth. Come on the fifteenth or sixteenth or seventeenth. Any other day. But not on the fourteenth.”

“Roy,” Alice said, “you’ve got me terribly worried. What’s come over you? I’ve asked Elizabeth and she says that this doesn’t sound like you at all.”

“How is she?” Roy asked.

“Elizabeth is fine. She tells me to ignore you and come out as scheduled.”

“Tell her to mind her own damned business.” Roy had been working hard and sleeping badly and his voice was raw and nervous, and Alice reacted to it.

“I think I know what’s going on,” she said coldly. “Monica told me there’s a big party at the Condons’ on the fourteenth, and you’ve probably promised to take someone else, and a wife would be a big handicap—”

“Oh, God, will you stop that!” Roy shouted into the phone.

“I haven’t been married to you for seven years for nothing,” Alice said. “I’m not blind.”

“Come out today!” Roy shouted. “Come out tomorrow! Come out the thirteenth! Only not the fourteenth!”

“You know as well as I do that if I give up my reservations, I won’t get another until June. If you don’t want to see me any more, tell me. You don’t have to go through all this rigmarole.”

“Alice, darling,” Roy pleaded, “I assure you I want to see you.”

“Well, then, stop this nonsense or tell me what it’s all about.”

“Alice, it’s this way,” he began, resolved to tell her, no matter how much of an idiot it made him feel, but there was a click on the wire and then three thousand miles of whispering silence. By the time he got Alice back on the phone, ten minutes later, he felt too ridiculous, felt that he could not live with himself or his wife if he at this late date exposed himself as a silly, undependable man with a brain gone soft and nervous and irresponsible after all the sane, dependable years.

“I haven’t anything else to say,” he told Alice when the operator finally made the connection, “except that I love you very much and I couldn’t bear it if anything ever happened to you.”

He heard Alice crying softly at the other end of the wire. “We have to be together soon,” she said. “This is awful. And please don’t call me any more, Roy, darling. You’re acting so strangely, and after I talk to you, the most miserable ideas grab hold of me. Will it be all right when I get out there?”

“It’ll be wonderful, darling,” Roy said.

“And you’ll never go away without me again? Never?”

“Never.” He could close his eyes and see her crouched like a little girl over the phone in the bedroom of their quiet, pleasant home, both her hands on the instrument, her pretty, clever face screwed up with grief and longing, and it was hard to say anything more. “Good night,” he said. “Be careful.”

He hung up and stared wildly at the blank wall on the other side of the room, knowing he wouldn’t sleep again that night.

There was an early fog on the morning of May 14th, and Roy stared at it, hot-eyed and lightheaded from lack of sleep, and went out and walked along the quiet, gray streets, with only police cars and milk-delivery carts disturbing the soft, thick dawn.

California, he thought; it’s always foggy in the morning, fog is general in California before eight, and it’s a different time and a different weather on the coast of the Atlantic, and her plane isn’t due to leave for hours yet.

It must be the war, he thought. This would never have happened to me before the war. I thought I came out all right, but maybe I was overconfident. All the cemeteries, with the young men tucked away in the sand and spring grass, and the old ladies in black lace dresses dying on the next street in London in the air raids. A man’s imagination was bound to take a morbid turn, finally. I must take hold of myself, he told himself reasonably. I’m the man who always felt sane, balanced, healthy in all situations, who always scorned mediums and table tappers, priests and psychoanalysts.

The fog was beginning to lift, and he stopped to stare at the distant smudge of mountains that stood guard over the eastern approaches of the city. Planes had to come in steeply over them and circle the city and land from the westward side. A strip of blue appeared above the mountains and widened and widened, and the fog melted away in wisps among the ugly, fat palm trees that lined the street, and soon the sun was shining on the dewy lawns, and the sky looked clear and blue from Beverly Hills to Scotland.

He went back to his hotel and lay down without even taking his shoes off. Some time later he woke up. Vaguely, in the moment before waking, there was a confusion of planes going down in puffs of smoke, like the newsreel of an air battle, and Sally’s voice over it, regretfully saying, as she always did at bedtime, “Do I
really
have to go to sleep now? I’m terribly wide-awake.”

He looked at the clock. It was one-forty in New York. They were at the airport now, and the big plane was waiting on the field, with the mechanics fiddling on it and the men checking the gas tanks. The hell with it, he thought. I don’t care how foolish I seem.

He picked up the phone. “La Guardia Field, New York,” he said.

“There will be a slight delay,” the operator sang. “I will call you.”

“This is very important,” Roy said. “Urgent.”

“There will be a slight delay,” the operator said in exactly the same tones. “I will call you.”

He hung up and went to the window and stared out. The sky stretched, radiant and clear, over the hills toward New York. I’ll tell her the whole thing, he thought, idiotic or not. Forbid her to get on the plane. We can laugh about it later. I’ll take the first plane back myself and fly back with them. That’ll prove to her it has nothing to do with anything here.

He went and got out his valise and put three shirts in it, then picked up the phone again. Five minutes later he got the airport, but it took another five minutes to get through to the station manager for the airline.

“My name is Gaynor”—Roy’s voice was high and hurried—“and this is a very unusual request, so please listen carefully.”

“What was that name, sir?”

“Gaynor. G-a-y-no-r.”

“Oh, yes, Gaynor. Like the dive.” The distant voice laughed politely at its own joke. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“My wife and child—”

“You will have to speak louder, please.”

“My wife and child!” Roy shouted. “Mrs. Alice Gaynor, on the two-o’clock flight to Los Angeles. I want you to stop them—”

“What did you say?”

“I said I wanted you to stop them. They are not to take the plane. My wife and child. Mrs. Alice Gaynor. The two-o’clock flight to Los Angeles—”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Mr. Gaynor.” The voice was puzzled but polite.

“It can’t be impossible. All you have to do is announce it over the public-address system and—”

“Impossible, sir. The two-o’clock flight is just taking off at this moment. I’m terribly sorry. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No,” Roy said flatly, and put the phone down. He sat on the edge of his bed for a moment, then got up and went to the window. He looked out at the bright sky and the green-and-yellow mountains. He remained standing there, staring at the mountains, waiting for the call from the airline.

Peter Two

I
t was Saturday night and people were killing each other by the hour on the small screen. Policemen were shot in the line of duty, gangsters were thrown off roofs, and an elderly lady was slowly poisoned for her pearls, and her murderer brought to justice by a cigarette company after a long series of discussions in the office of a private detective. Brave, unarmed actors leaped at villains holding forty-fives, and ingénues were saved from death by the knife by the quick thinking of various handsome and intrepid young men.

Peter sat in the big chair in front of the screen, his feet up over the arm, eating grapes. His mother wasn’t home, so he ate the seeds and all as he stared critically at the violence before him. When his mother was around, the fear of appendicitis hung in the air and she watched carefully to see that each seed was neatly extracted and placed in an ashtray. Too, if she were home, there would be irritated little lectures on the quality of television entertainment for the young, and quick-tempered fiddling with the dials to find something that was vaguely defined as educational. Alone, daringly awake at eleven o’clock, Peter ground the seeds between his teeth, enjoying the impolite noise and the solitude and freedom of the empty house. During the television commercials Peter closed his eyes and imagined himself hurling bottles at large unshaven men with pistols and walking slowly up dark stairways toward the door behind which everyone knew the Boss was waiting, the bulge of his shoulder holster unmistakable under the cloth of his pencil-striped flannel jacket.

Peter was thirteen years old. In his class there were three other boys with the same given name, and the history teacher, who thought he was a funny man, called them Peter One, Peter Two (now eating grapes, seeds and all), Peter Three, and Peter the Great. Peter the Great was, of course, the smallest boy in the class. He weighed only sixty-two pounds, and he wore glasses, and in games he was always the last one to be chosen. The class always laughed when the history teacher called out “Peter the Great,” and Peter Two laughed with them, but he didn’t think it was so awfully funny.

He had done something pretty good for Peter the Great two weeks ago, and now they were what you might call friends. All the Peters were what you might call friends, on account of that comedian of a history teacher. They weren’t
real
friends, but they had something together, something the other boys didn’t have. They didn’t like it, but they had it, and it made them responsible for each other. So two weeks ago, when Charley Blaisdell, who weighed a hundred and twenty, took Peter the Great’s cap at recess and started horsing around with it, and Peter the Great looked as if he was going to cry, he, Peter Two, grabbed the cap and gave it back and faced Blaisdell. Of course, there was a fight, and Peter thought it was going to be his third defeat of the term, but a wonderful thing happened. In the middle of the fight, just when Peter was hoping one of the teachers would show up (they sure showed up plenty of times when you didn’t need them), Blaisdell let a hard one go. Peter ducked and Blaisdell hit him on the top of the head and broke his arm. You could tell right off he broke his arm, because he fell to the ground yelling, and his arm just hung like a piece of string. Walters, the gym teacher, finally showed up and carried Blaisdell off, yelling all the time, and Peter the Great came up and said admiringly, “Boy, one thing you have to admit, you sure have a hard head.”