Young Mr. Keefe (16 page)

When Claire returned to the apartment that Saturday morning, it was still early. The heavy, blanketing fog—which is common to San Francisco summers—had not rolled in from the sea; the air was clear and prismatic. The drive back from the airport, along the bay, with the top down, had blown her hair and flushed her cheeks. It had also wakened her considerably more than her breakfast cup of coffee had. She had been up since six, getting Blazer to the morning plane for Los Angeles. Claire felt clearheaded and exuberant, and yet, when she entered the cool immaculate apartment, she felt somehow let down. Blazer would he in the South until Thursday. She had a long, uneventful week-end to look forward to.

She took off her coat and gloves, placed them in the closet, and closed the sliding doors. She went into the living-room, closed the drapes on the sunny side, and sat down on the sofa. She kicked off her shoes, put her feet up on the cushions, and lay back. She felt bored. She wished the telephone would ring. She got up then, went into the bedroom, unplugged the telephone, and carried it out and plugged it in beside the sofa. Then she lay down again. A friend from Smith, Diane Higbee, had written that she might be passing through. But, Claire thought, with a vagueness that was typical of Higbee, she had given no indication as to when. For a while, Claire concentrated on making the telephone ring, on making it be Diane Higbee on the other end of the wire, calling from the Fairmont.

On the way to the airport, she had suggested to Blazer that they have a party on the following Saturday night. They had not had a party for quite a while. The occasion for the party would be to welcome Blazer home from Los Angeles. She had thought of painting a banner and stretching it across the windows—a banner that said, “Welcome Home from L.A., Blaze!” It was a little silly, but perhaps some of their friends might think it was funny. Blazer had seemed agreeable to the idea of the party. She began making a little mental list of the people they would ask. She would have Sue and Alec Fry—she had known Sue in New York—and Arnold William and that girl, whatever her name was, that he was dating, and Bill and Phyllis Brower, Tweetums DeMay—Tweetums was older than the rest of them, but lots of fun, and could be counted on to bring an interesting man for herself—and she would have Diane Higbee if she showed up and Jimmy. Diane could more or less be Jimmy's date. Had Jimmy ever met Diane at Smith? She couldn't remember. It was odd thinking about getting Jimmy a date; she had grown so accustomed to thinking of Jimmy as one-half of a married couple. Now she would have to make a mental effort to think of Jimmy as single again. Poor Jimmy. She wished he wouldn't drink so much. Was that the reason they had broken up? she wondered. Jimmy's drinking? No, probably he drank a lot because he was trying to forget all the unpleasantness. And besides, he didn't always drink too much, did he? Only sometimes, but still it was too bad. In college she didn't remember him that way. In college, he had been wonderful, funny, handsome Jimmy. Ah, she thought, he was handsome … and so proper! And so sweet.… She had often thought about him, wondering what he would be like, what would happen …

She let her thoughts wander deliciously off. The sun moved, came through the glass, and shone down upon her; dust motes swirled and floated in the air. Whom was it Zeus came to in a shower of gold? She tried to remember. But Jimmy wasn't Zeus. He was Hermes … Apollo. She imagined herself somewhere. Parnassus—and he, bronzed with the sun, in a shower of gold …

Poor Jimmy, she thought. Poor, sweet Jimmy. That morning on the mountain. He had looked so sad, so lost. It had been Blazer's fault, really, that he had started drinking like that. Blazer had started analysing his problem, saying to her, “Well, what do you think he should do?” Of course Jimmy had hated to hear them talking like that. What man wouldn't? Sometimes Blazer was so callous. She knew how Jimmy must have felt, but what could she say at that point? Well, she thought, it was a measure of Jimmy's manhood that he'd been able to climb back up to the top of that mountain, and across that ridge, after so much to drink. And he had.

Poor Jimmy. She wondered what he was doing now. Probably in his apartment, brooding, thinking too much. Instinctively, she disliked Helen. Though she knew nothing about her, she disliked her. She must be a fool, Claire thought, not to see what a good deal she had with Jimmy—handsome, sweet, and rich, too. She wished Jimmy had married someone like—like, for instance, herself. If she, for example, were married to Jimmy instead of Blazer … It was a tantalizing thought, and a darkly treacherous one; she let her mind tiptoe towards it, then moved away quickly. Blazer—why did she have, more and more lately, this odd twinge of misgivings when she thought about Blazer? After all, there was nothing wrong with Blazer. She loved Blazer—very much. It was not so much Blazer
now
that bothered her, but it was the thought of Blazer five years from now … or ten years from now. Blazer was like a fine, crackling fire that was dying down. Some day she would be left with the ashes, the grey ashes. The conceit pleased her; she thought about getting up and writing it down, but the sunlight on the sofa was too warm, too wonderful.

She would like to be able to do one specific, concrete, definite thing to help Jimmy. He needed help, no one had to tell her that. She remembered her mother's, the Mars Hill attitude when marital differences cropped up among their friends. It was, “Let's not see them for a while until it's settled, one way or another.” Well, that attitude was wrong. Why shouldn't a person's friends gather around at a time like that? Why shouldn't they look for specific, concrete, definite ways to help? Why should they be afraid to get involved? Jimmy clearly still carried a torch for Helen … why shouldn't she, Claire, do whatever she could to help? If she went to see Helen, for example, if she talked to her, it might help Jimmy. And it might do another thing, she thought guiltily. It might help her soothe her own, vaguely troubled conscience.

She imagined going to see Helen. She was at her mother's, Jimmy had said, in Rio Linda. Where was Rio Linda? She could find it on the map—that was no problem. When she got there, she could look up Mrs. Warren's address in the phone book. Then, seriously, Claire began to explore her motives. Did she want to see Helen just out of curiosity? Did she, somehow, want to see Helen to satisfy herself that Jimmy's marriage was indeed permanently and irrevocably over? Was there a green-eyed monster? No, no. No to all three questions. Jimmy was an old friend—of hers, and of Blazer's. If Jimmy really did want Helen back, and she thought he did, and she could really do something to help—and who knew whether she could—then wouldn't she really be accomplishing something important in two people's lives? Sometimes her own life seemed so purposeless and meaningless, so selfish and ungiving. Even if she accomplished nothing, wouldn't it be something just to have tried? Was it really so maudlin and foolish—the way Blazer said? Perhaps she could explain it to Jimmy.

Claire picked up the telephone and cradled the receiver between her shoulder and her chin. She dialled Operator, and gave her the Sacramento number which she knew. She let it ring for several minutes. There was no answer at Jimmy's apartment. She replaced the receiver. Where could he be …?

Yes, she thought, my life is purposeless. Look at me, right now, lying on the sofa in my stocking feet with absolutely nothing to do for forty-eight hours, till Monday morning. At least on Monday morning there was a job to go to. All I need, she thought, is a pound of chocolate-covered cherries and a pile of movie magazines to complete the picture—the complete, indolent, parasitic life. She stood up abruptly and walked across the room to the desk. She rummaged through the drawers for the California highway map, found it, and returned with it to the sofa. She spread it out in front of her. After a little trouble, she found Rio Linda, and, suddenly, seeing it there on the map—not far from where she was, an hour, perhaps—she was filled with a swift flutter of excitement. All right, she thought, I'll go. It was now quarter-of-eleven. If she left, say, at twelve, she would be there by one. She would spend perhaps an hour, then leave, and be back well before dark. All right—I'll go.

She stood up and looked around the room. Already, instead of being bored, she felt as though' all at once she had a million things to do. What would she wear, for one thing? Something simple, she decided, in dark colours—nothing extreme. And a hat … and white gloves. And what would she say? Well, she would go to the door … ring the bell … introduce herself, explain …

She went to her closet and began pulling out dresses. Then she remembered the party. If she were going to get anybody at home, she had better phone her invitations now. She ran through the list of names in her head. She would call them now, quickly, and then get dressed, fix a quick something to eat, then get in the car and go. She then remembered Scarlet O'Hara—the red Jaguar. It did not fit, exactly, into the picture she had planned to create with white hat and white gloves. Well, perhaps with the top up …

She went to the telephone and dialled Sue Fry's number.

“Susie?” she said when she reached her. “Hi! This is Claire.… Can you come to a party next Saturday night? Can you? Oh, wonderful! It's for Blazer—the poor guy's spending the week in Los Angeles on business.… Oh, come any time, Susie—you know our parties …”

By twelve-ten—miraculously, it seemed—she was ready to go.

Mrs. Walker Warren had three things to do that afternoon, and one of them, the most important one, was to water her garden. In California, watering the garden is a ritual, an almost daily one, as necessary as having a garden itself. But to Mrs. Warren that afternoon, watering the garden loomed up as just another of the heavy, unpleasant chores that life had lately been thrusting upon her. She dreaded it. Standing in her living-room on her shrimp-coloured carpet, with the chore ahead of her, she thought of her friends, her own contemporaries, who had either gardeners or husbands to do such things for them. She thought of Agnes Miller … Dorothy Widener. She looked out through the french windows at the garden, at the tall blue agapanthus, the tree roses bleeding at the end of thick woody stems, and felt sorry for herself. She turned and went upstairs to her room to change.

She spent a good deal of time finding a pair of slacks that would not reveal a panty line. Finally, she found a pair—soft blue denim—and put them on. To these, she added a short-sleeved pink cotton blouse and a large, wide-brimmed gardening hat. Looking at herself in the long mirror, she was pleased with the result. If it were not for the fluff of blue-white hair beneath the hat, she decided, she might pass for a woman of, say, forty. She turned sideways, sucked in her tummy, wishing she had not had quite so much lunch, and smiled wanly at her image. Thank goodness she had kept her figure. Thank goodness she dyed her eyebrows. She started down the stairs and noticed that Helen's door was closed.

She reminded herself of the two other things she had to do. One was to call her insurance agent about her fur-jewellery policy that seemed to have lapsed. The other was to find time, somehow, for a good, long, heart-to-heart talk with Helen.

Mrs. Warren's garden had been photographed many times by magazines—notably
Sunset
, which had called it “compact and care-free, making the most of every precious inch of a small city back yard.” She had been pleased with the
Sunset
article, but her pleasure had not been undiluted. The article had reminded her that the garden was small. That it was not carefree. That it was, after all, only a garden on a city lot. It reminded her of so many of the unpleasant things about her life—the fact that the neighbourhood around her was disintegrating. Magnolia had once been the nicest street in town. But already, on her corner, was the Lucky Penguin Ice Cream Parlour. Though the Warren house still stood, trim, white, and dignified, at the end of a neatly tailored front walk, the house next door, just beyond her fence, bore a sign that said
ROOMS TO LET.
Mrs. Warren had often said that she couldn't understand why anybody would want to live anywhere but in California. And yet, as more and more people came to her way of thinking, and moved there from other parts of the country, she was dismayed. She deplored the rapid, haphazard growth of California towns; she yearned, nostalgically, for the days of the missions, the Spanish dons, private irrigation, and low taxes. She wheeled the garden hose to the centre of the terrace, turned on the water at the spigot, and began soaking the beds.

It was nearly two o'clock when she finished. She replaced the hose and sat down, exhausted, in one of the rattan chairs. It was getting hot. She felt that she would like a glass of iced tea, but it seemed like so much trouble—to go into the kitchen, make tea, crack open ice-trays, squeeze lemons. Doris, her housekeeper, had Saturdays off, and this was another thing that annoyed her. In the old days, even on the regular maid's day off, there had been another maid; there had been someone to fill in. A woman hadn't had to do everything herself. Mrs. Warren felt a familiar, slow ache rising from the small of her back. Arthritis. Old age. Loneliness. Fifty-seven years old. As old as the century. What good did it do to dye one's eyebrows, to have a garden, to diet and exercise to keep one's figure from thickening? She lay back in her chair, miserable, and fanned her face with her fingertips. Then, from the front of the house, she heard the door-bell.

She got up and walked across the terrace to the french windows. She could see through the living-room to the front porch. There was a girl there—a girl she had never seen before. And what an astonishing-looking girl.… What an incredible shock of yellow hair. She opened the windows and walked through the house to the door, and opened it. “Good afternoon,” she said pleasantly.

“How do you do?” Claire said. “I'm Mrs. Gates—Mrs. Stuart Gates—from San Francisco. I'm looking for Mrs. Keefe. Is this the right house?”