The Toynbee Convector (24 page)

The tall woman spun about to give a similar regard to the wife, and the wife, if not an athletic team of winners, was at least a mob of admirers come along for the game.

“So this is—?” she asked.

“Annette,” said the husband.

“Anne,” said the wife.

“Yeah, that’s it,” said the husband. “Anne.”

“Anne! What a great name. May I have a drink, Anne?”

The tall and beautiful woman with the huge halo of blond hair and the steady early morning fog gray eyes and the marching stride and the dancer’s arms and hands, folded herself neatly into a chair and stretched out her from-here-to-there-and-happily-back-again legs.

“My God, I’m martini famished. Can it be
possible
?”

The husband stirred but his wife cried, “Don’t move!”

The husband froze.

The wife leaned forward to gauge this creature, top to bottom, even as the creature had gauged her.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What are you doing here—ah—”

“Constance!”

The wife looked at the husband. “So there’s
no
Constance,
eh
?”

The tall woman blinked at the husband. “What
have
you been telling Anne?”

“Nothing.” And that was the truth. “Well, she must know
everything
. I leave tonight on the jet to New York and then tomorrow on the
Concorde
to Paris. I heard there was a misunderstanding—”

“Sure as hell has been—” said the husband.

“And I thought I’d just race over and clear things up before I was gone forever.”

“Okay,” said the wife. “Clear?

“First, do I get a drink?”

The husband stirred.

“Don’t move,” said the wife, with a deadly coldness in her voice.

“Well, then,” said the lady as long as the lovely rivers of France and as beautiful as all of its towers and castles, “here goes. What an incredible woman you are!”

“Me?” said the wife.

“Your husband speaks of nothing else.”

“Him!?” cried the wife.

“Goes on and on. Drives me wild. Makes me mad with jealousy. How you met, how you courted, where you dined, what your favorite food is, the name of your perfume, Countessa, your favorite book,
War and Peace
, which you’ve read seven times—”

“Only six—” said the wife.

“But you’re on your way through seven!”

“True,” admitted the wife.

“Your favorite films,
Pinocchio
and
Citizen Kane
—”

The wife glanced at the husband, who shrugged sheepishly.

“Your favorite sport, tennis, and mighty good at it, beat the hell out of him. Good at bridge and poker, beat him again, four times out of five. Were the bright whirl at high school proms, in college, and on board the United States ship for England on your honeymoon and last year on a Caribbean cruise. How you won a Charleston contest on board the
Queen Elizabeth II
coming home from France the year before. Your love of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. Your playing Desdemona in a little theater group eight years ago to great reviews. Your tender loving care when he was in the hospital five years back. Your treating his mother as if she were fine Dresden china. Your placing flowers on his father’s grave at least four times a year. Your resisting buying two-thousand-dollar Dior dresses in Paris. Your dinner with Fellini in Rome when Federico fell in love with you and almost carried you off. Your second honeymoon in Florence where it poured for a week but you didn’t care, for you never went out. The short story you published in the
Ohio State Monthly
; superb...”

The husband was leaning forward now, entranced.

And the wife had grown immensely quiet.

“On and on,” said the woman whose name had caused all the commotion. “Babble babble. How he fell in love with you when you were twelve. How you helped him with algebra when you were fourteen. How you decorated this place from parquetry to chandeliers, from bathroom to back porch, and loomed the rug in the front hall and made the pottery on the sideboard. My God, dear Lord, would he never stop! Gibber-gibber. I wonder—”

The tall, the long, the lovely lady paused.

“Does he ever talk about me this way, when he’s with you?”

“Never,” said the wife.

“I sometimes feel,” said the beautiful woman, “that I do not exist when I am with him. That he is with you!”

“I—” said the husband.

“Be still,” said the wife.

He was still.

“Continue.” The wife leaned forward.

“No time. Must go. May I have that drink?”

The wife went and mixed a martini and came back as if bringing a blue ribbon to best cat of the show. The beautiful woman sipped it and said, “That’s the best damned martini I ever had. Do you foil at
nothing
?”

“Let me think.” The wife sat down slowly and eyed her competition. “So he
speaks
of me, does he?”

“That’s why it’s all over,” said the lovely lady. “I can’t stand it anymore. If you are so crazy for her, if you love her so much, I said, for God’s sake, what you are doing with
me
! Get. Go! Vamoose. One more day of The Greatest Wife that God Ever Created will drive me absolutely bonkers. Scram!”

The lovely woman finished her drink, closed her eyes on the savor, nodded, and arose, story after story, lovely battlement after battlement. She stood above them, like a summer cloud, motioning them not to get up.

“Now it’s scram for me, too. I’m off to the airport. But I had to come clear up a few things. It’s not fair to ruin lives and not rebuild. It’s been fun, George—”

“My name is Bill.”

“Oops. Dear Bill, much thanks. And Annette—”

“Anne.”

“Anne, you’ve won. I’ll be gone four months. When I’m back, don’t call me, I’ll call you. So long, good wife. So long, Charlie.” She winked and charged for the door, where she turned.

“Thanks for listening. Have a great life.” The front door slammed. The taxi, out front, could be heard motoring away.

There was a long silence. At last the wife said, “What was
that
?”

“One of those hurricanes,” said the husband, “that they name for women.”

He wandered off toward the bedroom where she found him packing a suitcase. “What do you think you’re doing?” she said, in the doorway. “Well, after all this, I thought you’d want me to get out—”

“What, and move into a hotel?”

“Maybe—”

“Where
she
could come get her hooks into you?”

“I just imagined—”

“You think I’m going to let you run free in a world where people like that are lying in wait? Why, you poor custard—”

“You can’t get hooks into a custard.”

“But she’s got a big spoon! Take those shirts out of the suitcases. Now put those ties over there, and put those shoes under the bed, and come out and have a drink, dammit, and sit down and eat any damn dinner I make for you.”

“But—”

“You’re a beast and a rat and a bum,” she said.

“But—”

Tears ran down her cheeks.

“I love you! God help me. I do.”

And she ran but of the room.

He heard her fiercely rattling ice into a shaker, as he dialed the phone.

“Put the stupid son of a bitch on,” he said.

“Junoff here. Well?”

“Junoff, you brilliant mastermind, you incredibly inventive helpmate friend! Who is she? How did you do it?”

“She? Who?” said the voice from Lake Arrowhead.

“How did you remember so much from my sessions with you years ago? How could you tell
her
? What theater group is she from and is she a fast learner and quick read?”

“Haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about Who is this?”

“Liar!”

“Is your wife there? What’s her name?”

“Annette. No. Anne.”

“Put her on!”

“But—”

“
Get
her!”

He walked out to the bar and picked up the extension phone and handed it to his wife.

“Hello,” said Junoff’s voice, one hundred miles away on top of a mountain near a lake.

His voice was so loud his wife had to hold the phone an inch away from her ear. Junoff shouted:

“Anne? I’m giving a party up here next weekend!”

And then:

“Come. And bring
Constance
!”

Junior

It was on the morning of October 1 that Albert Beam, aged eighty-two, woke to find an incredible thing had happened, if not in the night, miraculously at dawn.

He witnessed a warm and peculiar rise two-thirds of the way down the bed, under the covers. At first he thought he had drawn up one knee to ease a cramp, but then, blinking, he realized—

It was his old friend: Albert, Junior.

Or just Junior, as some as some frolicsome girl had dubbed it, how long, oh God... some sixty years ago!

And Junior was alive, well, and freshly alert.

Hallo, thought Albert Beam, Senior, to the scene, that’s the first time he’s waked before me since July, 1970.

July,
1970
!

He stared. And the more he stared and mused, the more Junior blushed unseen; all resolute, a true beauty.

Well, thought Albert Beam, I’ll just wait for him to go away.

He shut his eyes and waited, but nothing happened. Or rather, it
continued
to happen. Junior did not go away. He lingered, hopeful for some new life.

Hold on! thought Albert Beam. It
can’t
be.

He sat bolt upright, his eyes popped wide, his breath like a fever in his mouth.

“Are you going to stay?” he cried down at his old and now bravely obedient friend.

Yes
! he thought he heard a small voice say.

For as a young man, he and his trampoline companions had often enjoyed Charlie McCarthy talks with Junior, who was garrulous and piped up with outrageously witty things. Ventriloquism, amidst Phys Ed. II, was one of Albert Beam’s most engaging talents.

Which meant that Junior was talented, too.

Yes
! the small voice seemed to whisper.
Yes
!

Albert Beam bolted from bed. He was halfway through his personal phonebook when he realized all the old numbers still drifted behind his left ear. He dialed three of them, furiously, voice cracking.

“Hello.”

“Hello!”

“
Hello
!”

From this island of old age now he called across a cold sea toward a summer shore. There, three women answered. Still reasonably young, trapped between fifty and sixty, they gasped, crowed, and hooted when Albert Beam stunned them with the news:

“Emily, you won’t believe—”

“Cora, a miracle!”

“Elizabeth, Junior’s back.”

“Lazarus has returned!”

“Drop everything!”

“Hurry over!”

“Goodbye, goodbye,
goodbye
!”

He dropped the phone, suddenly fearful that after all the alarums and excursions, this Most Precious Member of the Hot-Dog Midnight Dancing-Under-the-Table Club might dismantle. He shuddered to think that Cape Canaveral’s rockets would foil apart before the admiring crowd could arrive to gape in awe.

Such was not the case.

Junior, steadfast, stayed on, frightful in demeanor, a wonder to behold.

Albert Beam, ninety-five percent mummy, five per cent jaunty peacock lad, raced about his mansion in his starkers, drinking coffee to give Junior courage and shock himself awake, and when he heard the various cars careen up the drive, threw on a hasty robe. With hair in wild disarray he rushed to let in three girls who were not girls, nor maids, and almost ladies.

But before he could throw the door wide, they were storming it with jackhammers, or so it seemed, their enthusiasm was so maniac.

They burst through, almost heaving him to the floor, and waltzed him backwards into the parlor.

One had once been a redhead, the next a blonde, the third a brunette. Now, with various rinses and tints obscuring past colors false and real, each a bit more out of breath than the next, they laughed and giggled as they carried Albert Beam along through his house. And whether they were flushed with merriment or blushed at the thought of the antique miracle they were about to witness, who could say? They were scarcely dressed, themselves, having hurled themselves into dressing-gowns in order to race here and confront Lazarus triumphant in the tomb!

“Albert, is it
true
?”

“No
joke
?’

“You once pinched our legs, now are you
pulling
them?!”

“Churns!” Albert Beam shook his head and smiled a great warm smile, sensing a similar smile on the hidden countenance of his Pet, his Pal, his Buddy, his Friend. Lazarus, impatient, jogged in place.

“No jokes. No lies. Ladies, sit!”

The women rushed to collapse in chairs and turn their rosy faces and July Fourth eyes full on the old moon rocket expert, waiting for countdown.

Albert Beam took hold of the edges of his now purposely elusive bathrobe, while his eyes moved tenderly from face to face.

“Emily, Cora, Elizabeth,” he said, gently, “how special you were, are, and will
always
be.”

“Albert, dear Albert, we’re dying with curiosity!”

“A moment, please,” he murmured. “I need to—
remember
.”

And in the quiet moment, each gazed at the other; and suddenly saw the obvious; something never spoken of in their early afternoon lives, but which now loomed with the passing years.

The simple fact was that none of them had ever grown up.

They had used each other to stay in kindergarten, or at the most, fourth grade, forever.

Which meant endless champagne noon lunches, and prolonged late night foxtrot/waltzes that sank down in nibblings of ears and founderings in grass.

None had ever married, none had ever conceived of the notion of children much less conceived them, so none had raised any family save the one gathered here, and they had not so much raised each other as prolonged an infancy and lingered an adolescence. They had responded only to the jolly or wild weathers of their souls and their genetic dispositions.