Tomorrow! (13 page)

“Would I like it?” He said soberly, “Don’t think I haven’t wondered.
Some
parts, you’d surely like.”

She murmured, “Let’s skip those parts, Chuck. I
know
about them. Like the poem. There is some corner of Lenore Bailey that is forever Chuck. The part of me that grew up with you. Skip that.”

“I don’t know about the rest of it, from your angle,” he said. “Being married, making your way in the world, having kids is one hell of a hard assignment, it looks like, from the visible record. Even my folks have had rugged periods—Dad walked out twice on Mom when they were younger—and Mom went three times to Ruth’s home. Once for a week. Taking me with her, though I was too little to recall it.”

“I can tell you.” Lenore listened to the ghostly, tinkling waterfall a moment. “For six months, maybe a year, I’d love it. We’d get the Edgeplains cottage. I’d fancy it all up. I’d make do with the clothes I have—plenty, God knows, for a long while. Then it would rain and snow and I’d catch colds and somebody would patronize me at church and so on. Next I’d see our cottage was just a lousy little bungalow, in a row, with dozens like it—and dozens of young women imprisoned there like me—breeding, probably—as I’d be. Then I’d start to hate it.

Mother and Dad, of course, would be completely off me, drinking too much, taking my marriage to you as their final, personal disaster.”

“It might—just might—serve them right,” he said grimly.

“Perhaps. Still, they are my father and mother. Mother’s unscrupulous, but I sometimes think it’s because she never had a chance to be anything better. And Dad’s weak. His mother spoiled him before he had a chance.”

“Is that any reason why you. . . ?”

“No. It isn’t. But look at it another way. They spoiled me. They saw to it, all my life, I had absolutely everything a girl could want to look luxurious, feel luxurious, be luxurious—”

“You were going to throw it overboard in college to be a scientific research worker. . . .”

“I
talked
about it. But I didn’t
do
it, did I, Chuck?”

“No. Marriage is important, too, though. Love is.”

“Look at it the other way. Suppose, just suppose, I married Kit.”

“Has he asked you?”

“No. He hasn’t.”

Chuck felt relieved—then alarmed. “Just what, then, has he asked for, all the time you’ve been spending with him?”

Lenore smiled a little. “That? He asked that immediately.”

He straightened. “The no-good, God-damned—”

“You stop, dope! Kit’s the kind of person who
always
asks that right off, of any girl. It’s just like manners with him. If she says ‘No,’ he accepts it.”

“I’ll bet!”

“I’m trying to tell you. You want to try to see how I feel? Or shall we go home?”

“I’ll listen,” he answered sullenly.

“All right. Then try to hear what I’m trying to say. Maybe my parents aren’t as sweet and loving and noble as yours. Maybe they’re climbers and kind of crumby at times. They
are.
But they are still
my parents.
Now, if Kit ever proposed and I said ‘Yes,’ a whole lot of very important and terrifying and real problems would come to an end forever. I wouldn’t love him—

no. We wouldn’t have as many things in common as—other men I know. One other anyhow. But at least I’d never be in a spot where I’d wilt at the Sight of my own house and hate myself for working so hard and despise never getting ahead fast enough to keep up with the bills. Don’t you see, Chuck, either way it wouldn’t be a perfect deal?”

“Not if you keep it on a dollars-and-cents basis. No.”

“It keeps
itself
on that basis. Where might I be,
either
way, in ten more years? On one hand, with a lot of kids—probably bad-tempered, embittered, envious, and ready to slip out and have fun on the side if I got the chance. On the other hand, I’d have everything in the world, and so would my folks, and I wouldn’t be a physical wreck—”

“This is all a lot of nonsense,” he said.

“Women,” she answered, “shouldn’t ever try to tell men what they really think! What they have to
consider
—when men won’t!”

“Some men consider other matters are more important than living-room drapes.”

“Don’t you think I do, too!” Her voice was urgent. “What in hell, Charles Conner, do you think I’ve gotten to be twenty-four years old without marrying for? I’ll tell you.
You.
I’ve had hundreds of offers and chances to enlarge a friendship into a gold hoop. Rich men, bright men, men in college, men from Kansas City, New York-even. Only first you had to take another year for architecture. Architecture, of all the hard-to-learn, hard-to-rise-in things! Then, two years for the army. And now, who knows? What if they start a new little war someplace? Maybe I’ll be
fifty
when you can afford a wife.” She stopped very suddenly, caught her breath and stared in the dimness. “Charley,” she whispered, “you’re crying.”

He blew his nose. “Maybe I was,” he said unevenly. “It’s a little hard to take it-like that.

Brick by lousy brick. Maybe, Lenore, you
better
give up the marathon. Maybe you
are
right. It’s so damned hard for a guy to separate how he feels and what he wants-from the facts.”

She came close to him, familiarly, because she’d been close to him often before, in cars, on hayrides, on warm pine needles at picnics, in movie theaters. “It’s a rotten time for young people.”

“For
people,”
he agreed, putting back his handkerchief.

“Charles?”

“Right here.” He kissed her forehead.

“Tomorrow, you’11 be gone.”

“Don’t remind we.”

“Charles. Why do we have to do like this all our lives?”

“For freedom,” he said ironically. “For God, for Country, and for Yale.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“You always do, Lenore.”

“Have you made love to other girls?”

“Some,” he admitted.

“I mean—really. Actually.”

“No.”

She hesitated. “Me—-either.”

“I know,” he nodded, his head moving against her dark hair. “That, I always knew.”

“With things like this, and you going away . . .”

He said, “Nix.”

“I always felt,” her voice faltered and went on, “I mean, if anybody else but you, Chuck—was—the first one—I’d
hate
that.”

“I’m agin it, myself.” She could feel his jaw set.

“Then . . . .”

He let go of her. He leaned forward and started the engine. This, he said to himself, is the hardest goddam thing I hope I’ll ever have to do in this world! ‘We could go,” he said in a strained voice, “to one of the many pretty motels and spend the next few hours. And then Lenore would belong—spiritually—to Chuck. They call it spiritual when they mean anything but. I love you, gal. I always may. But if I start showing you how much, dear, it won’t be in some motel, and it won’t be a sample. Okay?”

“That’s okay, Chuck.” She exhaled a tremulous, relieved sigh. “I just wanted to be sure, Chuck.” He swung around suddenly and kissed her harshly on the lips. “Shut up, now, baby. I know what you wanted to be sure of! That’s one of the reasons I care for you. You’re a
game
dame.”

“I—I—wouldn’t want you to think I—cheated on you—I mean—held out—because of any reason you disagreed with.”

“Must I shout?” He managed to grin. “I
know
what you mean. And now, I’m taking you back home—before I forget what
I
mean.”

More and more, Coley Borden had taken to standing by the window, especially at night, or on dark afternoons, when the big buildings were lighted. Sometimes when he looked for a long while, he’d sit on the sill—twenty-seven stories above the street, above the people-ants, the car-beetles—watching the last thunderstorm of summer, for instance. When his secretary came into his office, to announce a visitor or to bring copy for the
Transcript,
he’d be there, while black clouds tumbled behind the silhouette of the two cities, while the dull light Battened them so they resembled cardboard cutouts of skyscrapers, and until shafts of storm-stabbing sun restored dimension to the soaring cityscape.

He’d be sitting there, or standing, when fog rolled in or when the wind picked up dry earth from between the myriad acre-miles of corn stubble and plunged the cities into the darkness of a duster.

He’d watch rain there.

Sometimes the men at the city desk would say, “Coley’s getting a bit odd.” Then, thinking how his family had perished one by one in ways which, to the lucky, are merely statistical, they’d add a kindly, “No wonder.”

Mrs. Berwyn, his secretary, would always say,
“You’re
crazy—not the boss. He’s just taken to doing his thinking looking out the window. Maybe some of you dumb journalists would improve your work by staring at something more than city-room walls.”

Coley was, one night, looking at the moon and its effect upon the spires and minarets of his homeland. A powdery light sifted over the region and picked out not just the loftiest buildings but lesser structures, objects that did not usually draw his daytime attention. Thus the tarred roof of the block-square produce market stood revealed across River Avenue. Out toward Rocky Glen, near the Country Club, he could see the glister of a greenhouse and guessed it was the Thomas Nursery. Slossen’s Run, a muddy tributary of the river, indistinguishable by day from a dusty road, now glinted to the west wherever the buildings left a space for it to show-a proper water course by night, however much the day defiled it. He saw, too, the distant spires of River City’s Roman Catholic Cathedral newly finished, up on the corner of Market and, appropriately, St. Paul.

He was thinking that there had been a time in America, not long before even by the brief calendar of human lives, when church spires had been the loftiest landmarks. Now, the steeples of commerce towered above, dwarfing and belittling man’s homage to God. It was not, Coley reflected, an accidental phenomenon. When men turned from inner values to those outside, to

“getting and spending,” their tabernacles dwindled while trade places grew majestic.

He heard his door open and sighed, looking away from the moon-lacquered panorama.

“Mr. Conner’s here to see you,” his secretary said. “And it’s almost ten o’clock.”

“Conner?”

“Henry Conner.”

Borden smiled. “Oh. Hank. Tell him to come right in.”

“You haven’t had supper yet, Mr. Borden. Would you like. . . ?”

“Later. Later.” He snapped on lights and sat down at his desk.

Coley Borden could tell, nine times out of ten, about how a man felt, just from a glance.

Seven times out of ten, with the same quick look he could guess what a man was thinking. With women, he wasn’t so sure. In the case of Hank Conner, Coley knew even without the seeing what his thoughts would be. He was astonished, however, when Hank came in. Hank was

“dragging his shoulders.” His hair wasn’t iron-gray, any more; it was just plain gray, curly still, but he was getting bald. His homely, solid face was still good-humored, but in a patient way, not with his old exuberance. He looked like a man who would have a quiet chuckle ready for an ironic joke, not like a man who would yell louder than a Sioux and do a war dance in a bowling alley after six strikes in a row.

“Hello, Hank.”

And there was also a new, unwelcome diffidence about Henry Conner. He sat down uncomfortably in the walnut-armed, leather-upholstered chair beside the desk. “Good evening, Coley.” He didn’t add, “You old type-chewer,” or anything.

“Like a cigar?”

Hank’s head shook. “Brought my pipe. Mind?”

“This place has been perfumed by some of the vilest furnaces in the Middle West. Fire it up!” Hank did. “Came to talk about Civil Defense, Coley.”

“I know.”

“Kind of hate to. Always liked the
Transcript.
Respected it.” His big mouth spread with something like his old-time smile and when he rubbed his cheek, Coley could hear the bristles that had grown since morning. “You know, first time my name was in the paper, or my picture, it was the
Transcript.
High school graduation.”

Coley said, “Sure.”

“Tried to get you at your home. Mrs. Slant said you were still down here. So I hopped in the car.”

Coley didn’t say anything. Hank’s diffidence was real; so was the determination underneath. The best thing was to let Hank go about it in his own way. The editor felt sad. His instincts—and every syllable of his logic—were on the other man’s side.

“Of course,” Hank went on, after a sip of smoke, “I know Minerva Sloan was responsible for your policy change.”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s doing us bad harm. Real bad.” Hank mused a while, got up and lumbered across the room to the big map on the west wall. It was a street map of the two cities, their suburbs and the surrounding villages; there was a duplicate at CD headquarters. Hank used his pipestem for a pointer. “My district, Coley, is here—from West Broad on the north to Windmere Parkway. And from Bigelow to Chase Drive. Takes in a lot of territory—about four square miles, give you a few acres.” He smiled again. “It isn’t so full of folks as you’d think, on account of Crystal Lake and Hobart Park—about eleven thousand people is all. A little over three thousand homes and buildings. Stores in three small shopping centers. Libraries and schools and churches and hospitals and so on. You know it, about as well as I do.”

“Sure, Hank.”

“Out of my area, we had darn near a thousand volunteers, all told.” His eyes, clear and blue like Nora’s eyes, sparkled a little. “Three quarters of ‘em roughly were just plain people, working people, running from masons and carpenters and delicatessen owners to the middle category, folks like us Conners. I wouldn’t say more than a quarter—if that, quite—came from the big places around Crystal Lake or up in the chichi district toward Cold Spring. Just a cross section of ordinary city people, you might say. And I’m tolerably sure that out of the thousand not every man-jack—or woman-jill—would show up set and ready, if my outfit ever got asked to do what it’s here for.

“The point is, Coley, these people are the backbone of not just Green Prairie or the Sister Cities, or a couple of states, but the whole doggoned country. Les Brown may just be a handyman. But if you were cast on a desert island for a few years, you’d be smart to take Les—