Young Mr. Keefe (11 page)

First there was that night, that first time, in the borrowed apartment on Sixty-eighth Street, when her love had seemed almost terrifyingly urgent. “Hallelujah!” she had cried, and afterwards, as he held her in his arms, she had sobbed long, deep, grateful sobs. And then, that December night in the motel outside Reno, after they had been married for the first time, then it had been wonderful, too, with no hint of what was to come later. The next day they had driven south, intending to go to Las Vegas, but they had changed their minds and driven to Yosemite instead.

He remembered Yosemite. How many days had it been? Less than a week, but it had been their one true honeymoon. The other one, the longer one, that they called their honeymoon, had been a different story. Somewhere, he thought, between those days at Yosemite and the trip to the West Indies, then home to the apartment, everything had changed.

He remembered Yosemite Valley covered with snow, cold and jewel-like, the tall cliffs rising abruptly from the valley floor, frozen waterfalls sparkling in the sun. He remembered Inspiration Point, Mirror Lake—poetic names—and the huge old Ahwanee Hotel, where they had sat, with their shoes off, in front of the fire. They had taken long walks in the snow every afternoon, and once, when a swift flurry of snow descended, it had blinded them and they had stood very still in the centre of it. He had been able to see only her eyes. Laughing, thinking that they were lost for ever in the snowstorm, he had pulled his heavy coat around her and they sank down together in the snow. “We're invisible,” Helen had whispered, and he had kissed her with the snow blowing in her hair. The snow continued to fall. Later, she said, “If the Donner party had done this, they wouldn't have died crossing the Sierras. They could have kissed each other warm. Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Neither am I. Isn't this a wonderful way to freeze to death?”

And they laughed as they pictured how they would look if a rescue party should happen to stumble upon them. (“I shall insist they put us in a single stretcher,” Helen said.) After a while, the snow stopped, and they stood up and walked back to the hotel, cold now, and wet, but happy.

In the mornings they slept late. “Isn't it marvellous to think that no one knows where we are?” Helen said. They had no idea, during this time, that on either side of them, in California and Connecticut, plans were spinning out, arrangements were being made for a dignified wedding, a dignified honeymoon, a dignified life. The Keefe and Warren families were busily deciding how to deal with their erring children, figuring ways to make the best out of a bad situation.

In the evenings, they ate dinner in the big high-ceilinged dining-room and went to bed early. “No two people deserve to be as happy as we are,” Helen had said, and the words echoed now, prophetically.

But it had to end. They couldn't stay in Yosemite Valley for ever; they had to go back to face whatever had to be faced with their families. On the last afternoon, walking in the snow, they talked' about it.

“Well, we're big enough, aren't we?” Helen said. “We can stand right up to them—and tell them. Tell them how much we love each other, the things we plan to do. We can convince them, can't we, that we're old enough to know what we're doing?”

“It won't be easy,” Jimmy said. “Remember how they acted on the phone. They still think of us as children.”

“It will be easy if we just stand side by side and refuse to be cowed by them!”

“I ought to warn you about my family,” Jimmy said.

“What about them?”

“Well, it's hard to explain. They're Yankees—they don't make mistakes. At least they don't admit to making mistakes. There's only one member of the Keefe family who ever made a mistake—and that was the end of her.”

“Who was that?”

“My Cousin Harriet—my father's brother's daughter. Her picture has been turned against the wall!”

“What in the world did she do?”

Jimmy laughed. “Promise you'll never tell a soul? Everybody knows about it, of course, but it's just never mentioned. She married a cop.”

Helen was silent. “What did they do?” she asked, after a moment.

“They were noble. They're always noble! They tried to reason with her, and when she wouldn't be reasoned with, they cut her off.”

“Cut her off?”

“Yes. Severed relations. Pretended she was never born. Oh, my mother tried—she had them to dinner once, Harriet and her policeman. I remember the only thing she said about him.”

“What was that?”

“She said, ‘I imagine he looks quite
natural
in his uniform!'”

“Ah—”

“You see, that's the way they are. No mistakes tolerated. They have misfortunes, of course, like when somebody gets bumped out of Yale. Things happen that inconvenience them. But when those things happen, it's a sort of challenge. To see if they can turn the misfortune into an advantage. Do you see what I mean? Right now, they may be terribly distressed about you and me. We didn't get married the Keefe way. They'll have to figure out a way to make it a good thing.”

“You mean,” Helen said slowly, “that you marrying me is like—Harriet, marrying a policeman?”

“Oh, no, it's not that bad.” Jimmy took her hand. “They'll like you. But they'll have to go through this ‘working-things-out' process first. They'll have to get together, like a grand jury—all of them, all the cousins and uncles and aunts—and work it out. The next step will probably be a party. You'll have to be introduced to Somerville. Mother will have a tea for you, and you'll have to shake hands with Aunt Marian and Aunt Celeste and the Hartford cousins and the upstate cousins and my Great-aunt Kathleen, whose name—don't laugh—is Mrs. W. W. Doubleday …”

Helen giggled softly. “I
do
want to meet Mrs. W. W. Doubleday,” she said.

“You will.” He smiled at her. “You'll meet all of them. I'm afraid you'll sort of have to go along with it.”

“Why?” she asked suddenly.

“Because”—Jimmy laughed—“because they never make mistakes. They haven't made a mistake for four generations. That's why.” He swung her hand in his and they started back to the hotel.

That night, after dinner, instead of going directly upstairs, Jimmy suggested that they go into the bar for a drink. Helen had hesitated at first, but when Jimmy urged her, she consented. After all, he said, they were leaving in the morning to go back and face the music. He needed something, a drink, to strengthen him for that ordeal. Sitting in the bar, which was decorated to resemble a Western mining town, they talked about it some more. He tried again to explain about his father, who lived by rules laid down by his own father, and by his grandfather before that. And about his mother, Melise, who fancied herself a free agent, but who had lived long enough with the unwritten family laws to obey them always, and about Turner Ames, the lawyer, who counselled James Keefe, Sen., on everything, and about Miss Maitland, his father's secretary, who understood the intricacies of the Keefe family operation far better than Jimmy's mother did.

“But we're
ourselves
,” Helen had said. “We can make our own rules, can't we? Do we have to abide by theirs?”

“We can lead our own lives,” Jimmy said. “But we can't fly in their faces too much. We ran off and got married—we broke a rule there. But we can't do that sort of thing often. That's all I mean.” He smiled at her, but her face remained worried.

“Can we live where we want?” she asked.

“Of course—as long as we can convince them that it's the right place for us to live.”

“But why do we have to convince them?”

“Why should we antagonize them?”

“I don't mean antagonize them,” Helen said. She stopped then, and smiled. “I don't know what I mean,” she said. “I guess I just don't want anyone to interfere with us, darling.”

“Don't forget that I'm an only child …”

“Does that make a lot of difference?”

“Yes. It does, to them.” Then he told her what he had somehow not wanted to tell her before, though he had known that he must tell her some time. He had been trained to speak of wealth with modesty, or not at all. The richer you were, the poorer you pretended to be. It was known as “treating money tastefully.” If you could afford to buy a Cadillac, you bought a Ford, because it was more economical on gasoline. “There's quite a bit of money involved,” he said slowly.

“Oh?”

“Yes. We can ignore it for a while. But some day, I suppose, it will pull us back.”

“Back to where?”

“Back to Somerville—where it is.” He sipped his drink thoughtfully.

“Is it—that much?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“I don't know—”

“A million dollars?”

“More than that, I think.”

“
Two
million?”

“Well,” he said, “of course I really don't know. But when my grandfather died, the figure they printed in the paper was four and a half million.… That was in 1946.”

“Oh, my God,” she said. “That's a lot. And it's all—all going to be yours some day?”

“I'm the only child, you see …”

She was silent. “Oh, dear!” she said finally. “It scares me! It terrifies me. I wish you hadn't told me.”

“Let's have another drink.”

“No, no …”

“Come on. I'm sorry I told you if it worries you.”

“You have a drink. I'll wait.”

“All right.” He signalled the waiter.

“I'm beginning to see what you mean,” Helen said later. “I suppose they'll think I'm a gold digger …”

“No, they won't. Not when they see how nice you are.”

“Harriet's policeman,” she said. “Is that what they thought about him? That he was a conniver?”

“Well—”

“They did?”

“I guess some of the family thought that.”

“But she was—as you put it—‘cut off.'”

“Yes.”

“Poor Harriet,” she sighed. “Poor policeman!” She smiled a weary smile. “I feel I know them both so well already. Especially him. He and I are in the same boat.”

“Now, don't say things like that. It's not true.”

“If they don't like me—”

“They will,” he said. “Of course they will! Darling, you're the most wonderful girl in the world.”

“Am I?”

“Yes,” he said. “And do you know what I love most about you?”

“What?”

“It's—well, it's your
niceness
. You're so different from any girl I've ever known. You've got this wonderful thing—this niceness. It's everywhere—all about you, like a very nice perfume.”

“I love you, too,” she said softly.

He smiled broadly. “Then cheer up,” he said. “Have another drink, quick. Let's have a party.”

“Let's go upstairs now—”

“One more—”

“All right.”

It was always with the third drink that his spirits rose. That night in Yosemite, drinking the third drink, he began talking gaily, confidently, about the future. “I only told you about the money to explain why they take a proprietary interest in what I do,” he said. “And to explain why they'll take the same kind of interest in you. Which you mustn't mind. They're really quite nice people when you get to know them. Dad's a little Solomon Sobersides sometimes, but he's a good sport. But don't get the wrong idea,” he said earnestly. “Don't think that I'm just going to sit around all my life and wait for that money. I want to get a job of my own and make my own way. I've got to—in order to prove to myself that I can. Do you see? That's why I married you.”

“And I'll help you all I can,” she said softly. And then, as he lifted his glass and drained it, she said, in a breathless voice, “Please don't have another drink!”

“Why not?” he said lightly. “Clears my head. Makes me see stars in your eyes.”

“My eyes don't have stars!”

“Yes, they do,” he said, holding his face close to hers. “They do, they do! There's the Pleiades, Electra, Merope … the Southern Cross …”

“Please, Jimmy.”

“‘Please, Jimmy,'” he mimicked. “Just one more. So I can see the whole damn' Milky Way …”

Much later, when they got up to leave, he knew he was a little tight. But he felt extravagant and courageous. Helen seemed nervous and withdrawn, and he laughed at her and circled her waist with his arm. When they got to their room, he closed the door, and pulled her to him quickly and roughly in the darkness. For the first time, she drew away from him. He reached for her again. “Please. No,” she whispered.

“Helen—”

“Please, Jimmy—I'm afraid.”

“Of the money? Forget about that.”

“Not that!”

“Of me?” He held her tightly, laughing softly, searching for her mouth with his lips. Finally, she seemed to submit to him, let him kiss her and pull her down beside him on the bed. “Isn't this better than a snowdrift?” he asked her.

Then, all at once, she had cried out sharply. She gripped his shoulders hard with her fingers and began to sob. He held her as her whole body shook violently against him.

“What's the matter?” he had asked her. “Darling, what's wrong?”

She didn't answer him. He turned on the light then and sat there, stroking her hair. “Please, darling,” he said. “I'm sorry. Did I hurt you, Helen?”

“I don't know!” she cried.

“Please tell me what it is.”

He stood up and lighted two cigarettes. He gave one to Helen and sat down again, in the chair, while she lay, huddled forlornly on the bed, still sobbing and holding the lighted cigarette in one trembling hand. “What is it?” he asked again. “What's happened?”