But the stranger apparently didn’t want to be left alone. “Naw, I wasn’t in the war,” he said in the same quick, automatically apologetic way that Bill Brock always said it. “Wasn’t even in the service until forty-five, and then I never got overseas. Never even got out of Blanchard Field, Texas.”
“Oh, yeah?” And this opened up further conversational possibilities. “Well, I spent a little time at Blanchard in forty-three,” Michael said, “and I sure as hell wouldn’t’ve wanted to stay. What’d they have you doing there?”
A small, witty spasm of revulsion worked in the young man’s face. “Band, man,” he said. “Fucking marching band. I’d made the mistake of telling some personnel interviewer I played drums, you see, so the minute I finished basic they hung this fucking snare drum on me. Parade drum. Rattly-tat, rattly-tat. Retreat parades, full-dress parades, award ceremonies and all that Mickey Mouse. Jesus, I thought I’d never get outa there alive.”
“Are you a musician, then? In civilian life?”
“Oh, not really. Haven’t got my union card yet, but I’ve always liked to fool around with it. So what’d you do at Blanchard? Take basic there?”
“No, I took gunnery.”
“Yeah?” And the young man’s eyes were as wide and keen as a boy’s. “You an aerial gunner?”
It was turning out to be as pleasant as any similar talk at Harvard, or in the offices of Chain Store Age: all Michael had to do was answer questions, as briefly as possible, and he could feel himself gaining stature in his listener’s mind. Well, yeah, he had flown in combat – Eighth Air Force, out of England; no, he’d never been shot down or wounded, though he’d had the shit scared out of him a few times; oh, yes, it was certainly true that English girls were wonderful; yes, no; yes, no.
And as always before, he managed to change the subject before there could be any hint of a waning of interest. He asked the young man how long he’d been living in Larchmont – a year, was all – and if he was married.
“Oh, sure; who isn’t? You know anybody here who isn’t? That’s what Larchmont’s for, man.” And he had four children, all boys, all about a year apart. “My wife’s Catholic,” he explained, “and she was stubborn as hell about all that for an awful long time. Think I got her pretty well talked out of it now, though – hope to hell I do, anyway. I mean, they’re good; they’re nice; but four’s plenty.” Then he asked where Michael lived, and said “Wow, you got the whole house? That’s nice. We’ve just got an upstairs apartment. Still, we’re better off than we were in Yonkers. Spent three years in Yonkers; wouldn’t want to go through that again.”
By the time the train came clattering in they had shaken hands and exchanged names – the stranger’s name was Tom Nelson – and as they moved out across the platform Michael noticed for the first time that he carried what looked like a sparse roll of paper towels held together with a rubber band. But they were neither soft nor clean enough to be towels; they had a mottled, handled look that suggested they were laboriously drawn-up “specification sheets” for spare parts or tools required today by Tom Nelson’s employer (A garage owner? A construction boss?) and which Nelson would spend hours tracking down in the warehouses of some dismal place like Long Island City.
And if nothing else, riding into town with Tom Nelson might provide a few sad and funny things to tell Lucy about tonight: this hapless, Church-ridden, too-young father of four, this wry, rueful, rattly-tat parade drummer from the dust of Blanchard Field who hadn’t even earned his tanker’s jacket, let alone his union card.
For the first few minutes of the ride they sat together in silence, as if each were trying to think of a new topic; then Michael said “They still have the boxing tournament at Blanchard when you were there?”
“Oh, yeah, that was always a fixture. Big morale factor, or something. You like to watch that?”
“Well,” Michael said, “as a matter of fact I went out for it. Middleweight class. Lasted through the semifinals; then some supply sergeant took me apart with left jabs – never met a man with a left jab like that, and he knew how to use his right hand, too. Technical knockout in the eighth round.”
“Damn,” Nelson said. “Course, I could never’ve done anything like that because of my eyes; still, even with good eyes I probably wouldn’t’ve tried it. Right up to the finals; that’s impressive. So what kinda work you doing now?”
“Well, I’m a writer, or at least that’s what I’m trying to do: poetry and plays. Got a book of poems almost done; had a couple of plays produced in a very small way, up in the Boston area. Just for the present, though, I’ve got a dumb little commercial-writing job in the city – you know, to keep the groceries coming in.”
“Yeah.” And Tom Nelson gave him a sidelong look that glinted with amiable teasing. “Jesus. A gunner, a fighter, a poet, and a playwright. Know something? You’re coming on like a fucking Renaissance Man.”
And amiable or not, the teasing hurt. Who was this little bastard? But the worst and most sickening part was that Michael had to admit he’d asked for it. Dignity and reserve were qualities he had always prized more highly than almost any others; why, then, did he always, always have to shoot his mouth off?
And even if it might not be strictly true that a man like Paul Maitland would “die” in Larchmont, it was clear that Paul Maitland would never open himself to the ridicule of some fool on a Larchmont commuters’ train.
But Tom Nelson seemed unaware of having inflicted pain. “Well, poetry’s always been very big with me,” he was saying. “Can’t write it to save my ass, but I’ve always liked to read it. You like Hopkins?”
“Very much.”
“Yeah, he kinda gets into your bones, doesn’t he? The way Keats does; the way some of the later Yeats does, too. And I like the hell out of Wilfred Owen. Even Sassoon, to some extent. Like some of the French, too, Valéry and those people, but I don’t think you can understand their stuff unless you know the language. I used to like to illustrate poems – got on a big illustration kick for a couple of years and I’ll probably get back to it, but now I’m doing more just regular pictures.”
“You’re an artist, then.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah; thought I’d told you that.”
“No, you didn’t. And you work in New York?”
“No; work at home. Take my stuff into the city once in a while, is all. Couple times a month.”
“So you’re able to—” and Michael was about to say “able to earn your living at it?” but he checked himself; the question of how any artist earned his living was apt to be a delicate one. Instead he said “—able to work full time at it, then?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I had to teach back in Yonkers – taught high school there – but then things began to pick up a little.”
And Michael ventured a careful inquiry about technique: Did Nelson work in oils?
“Naw, I can’t seem to get much going when I try that. I do water-colors – pen-and-ink drawing with a color wash – that’s all. I’m very limited that way.”
Perhaps, then, he was limited to the art departments of advertising agencies, or perhaps, since “watercolors” did suggest pleasant little scenes of boats moored in their harbors or of flocks of birds on the wing, he might be limited to the kind of stifling gift shops where pictures like that were displayed for sale along with expensive ashtrays, with pink shepherd-and-shepherdess figurines, and with dinner plates bearing the portraits of President and Mrs. Eisenhower.
Another question or two might have been enough to establish all that, or to clear it up, but Michael didn’t want to press his luck. He remained silent until the train had brought them into the echoing swarm of Grand Central.
“Which way you headed?” Nelson asked when they emerged blinking in the city sunshine. “Up or down?”
“Up to Fifty-ninth.”
“Good; I’ll walk you to Fifty-third. Gotta check in at the Modern there.”
And it took a little while for that to sink in, as they walked,
but by the time they’d turned uptown on Fifth Avenue Michael was no longer in any doubt that to “check in at the Modern” meant a business appointment with the Museum of Modern Art. He wished there were some way he could accompany Nelson on that visit – he wanted to see exactly what the hell went on in there – and in the end, as they came to the corner of Fifty-third, it was Nelson who made the suggestion. “Want to come along?” he said. “This’ll only take a couple minutes; then we can head on up in your direction.”
There seemed to be a touch of deference in the face of the uniformed man who opened a thick plate-glass door for them, and again in the bearing of the elevator operator, though Michael couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined it. But nothing was left to his imagination in the strikingly pretty girl whose reception desk stood at the far end of a big, hushed room upstairs, and who whipped off her horn-rimmed glasses so that her lovely eyes could shine with admiration and welcome.
“Oh, Thomas Nelson,” she said. “Now I know it’s going to be a good day.”
An ordinary girl would probably have remained seated to pick up a phone and press a button or two, but there was nothing ordinary about this one. She got up and came swiftly around her desk to take Nelson’s hand and to reveal how slender and well-dressed she was. She blinked and mumbled on being introduced to Michael, as if noticing his presence for the first time; then she turned quickly back to Nelson for a few moments of bright talk and laughter that Michael couldn’t follow. “Oh, but I know he’ll be waiting,” she said at last. “Why don’t you just go on in?”
And the bald, tan, middle-aged man who stood alone in the inner office, pressing the knuckles of both hands onto an empty table, did indeed appear to have been waiting for just this moment.
“Thomas!” he cried.
He was a little more polite than the girl in meeting Nelson’s guest – he offered Michael a chair, which Michael declined – then he went back to the table and said “Now, Thomas. Let’s see what wonderful things you’ve brought us this time.”
The rubber band came off, the mottled roll of papers was unfurled and then gently rolled the opposite way to help them lie flat, and six bright watercolor pictures were laid out for the man’s inspection – almost, it seemed, for the delectation of the world of art itself.
“My God,” Lucy said that night, when Michael had gotten just that far in telling the story. “So what are the pictures like? Can you tell me?”
He was a little annoyed with the “Can you tell me?” part of it, but he let it pass. “Well, they’re certainly not abstract,” he said. “I mean they’re representational – there are people and animals and things in them – but they’re not realistic. They’re very sort of – I don’t know”; and here he was grateful for the only technical information Nelson had given on the train. “He does a kind of scratchy, blurry pen-and-ink drawing with a water-color wash.”
And she favored him with a slow, intelligent-looking nod, as if commending a child on a surprisingly mature insight.
“So anyway,” he went on, “the museum guy started moving very slowly around the table, and he said ‘Well, Thomas, I can tell you right away that if I let this one go I’d never forgive myself.’ Then he walked around some more and said ‘This one’s rapidly growing on me too. Can you let me have them both?’
“And Nelson said ‘Sure, Eric; help yourself.’ He’s just standing there calm as hell in his damn zipped-up tanker’s jacket, looking like he couldn’t care less.”
“So are they acquiring these pictures for some – seasonal exhibit, then, or what?” Lucy said.
“That’s the first thing I asked him when we were out on the street again, and he said ‘Naw, these are for the permanent collection.’ Can you imagine that? The permanent collection?” And Michael went to the kitchen counter to put more ice and bourbon into his drink. “Oh, and another thing,” he said to his wife. “You know what he paints his pictures on? Shelf-paper.”
“What-paper?”
“You know. Like what people cover shelves with, for storing canned goods and stuff like that. Said he started using it years ago because it’s cheap, then he decided he ‘likes the way it takes the paint.’ And he does it all on his fucking kitchen floor. Says he keeps a big flat square of galvanized tin there, to make the right kind of surface; then he lays a soaking-wet piece of shelf-paper on it, gets down on his haunches and goes to work.”
Lucy had been doing her best to prepare their dinner ever since Michael came home, but she’d been too frequently distracted. The pork chops were dried out and she’d forgotten to chill the applesauce; the green beans were limp and the potatoes weren’t baked through. But Michael noticed none of it, or didn’t care. He ate with one elbow on the table and his hand spanning his brow, and with a third or fourth glass of whiskey in readiness beside his plate.
“So I asked him,” he said around his chewing, “I asked him how long it takes him to make a picture. He said ‘Oh, maybe twenty minutes if I’m lucky; usually more like a couple hours, sometimes a day or so. Then about twice a month I go through ’em and throw a lot of ’em out – maybe a quarter or a third – and whatever’s left are the ones I bring into town. The Modern always wants first pick, and sometimes the Whitney wants a look at ‘em, too; then I take the rest of ’em up to my dealer – you know, to my gallery.’ ”
“What’s his gallery?” she asked, and when he repeated the name she said “My God” again, because it was a place made well-known by the art pages of The New York Times.
“And he told me – and he wasn’t bragging; Christ’s sake, nothing this little bastard ever says is bragging – he told me they give him a one-man show there at least once a year. Last year they gave him two.”
“Well, it’s all a little – hard to take in, isn’t it?” Lucy said.
Michael shoved his plate aside – he hadn’t even opened his baked potato – and picked up his whiskey as if it were the main course. “It’s incredible,” he said. “Twenty-seven years old. And I mean, Jesus, when you think of – Jesus, honey.” And he shook his head in wonderment. “I mean, talk about making difficult things look easy.” Then, after a while, he said “Oh, and he said he’d like us to come over for dinner some night soon. Said he’d check with his wife and give us a call.”
“Really?” Lucy looked as pleased as a child on her birthday. “Did he really?”
“Well, yeah, but you know how those things are. It may slip his mind. I mean it’s nothing to count on, or anything.”
“Couldn’t we call them?” she asked.
And he was silently exasperated. For a girl raised in the upper reaches of the upper class, she could be surprisingly dense about good manners. But then, perhaps good manners had never been especially characteristic of millionaires in the first place; how could ordinary people ever know about that?
“Well, no, baby,” he said, “I don’t think that’d be too good an idea. I’ll probably run into him again on the train, though; we’ll work something out.” Then he said “No, but listen, let me give you the postscript to all this. When I finally got to the office my brains were kind of reeling. I knew I couldn’t face the job, so I went in to waste a little time with Brock, and I told him about Tom Nelson. When he’d heard it all he said ‘Well; that’s interesting. I wonder who his father is.’ ”
“Oh, that’s just like him, isn’t it?” Lucy said. “Bill Brock is always going on and on about how he hates cynicism in any form, but he’s really about the most cynical person I’ve ever known.”
“Wait, though; it gets worse. I said ‘Well, Bill, for one thing his father’s a pharmacist in Cincinnati, and for another I don’t see what the hell difference it makes.’
“And he said ‘Oh. Well, okay, then, I wonder whose cock he’s sucking.’ ”
Lucy was seized by a spasm of revulsion so acute that it forced her up from the table. The syllable “Ugh!” came from her distorted lips and she stood hugging herself with both arms as if chilled to the bone. “Oh, that’s
vile,” she said, shuddering. “That’s the vilest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah, well, you know Brock. And anyway he’s been in a lousy mood for weeks. I think he’s having a few troubles with Diana.”
“Well, I’m not surprised,” she said as she began to clear the plates away. “I don’t know why Diana didn’t dump him long ago. I’ve never understood how she could’ve taken up with him.”
*
One Saturday morning Bill Brock called up, in unaccustomed shyness, to ask if he could come out to Larchmont alone that afternoon.
“Are you sure he said ‘alone’?” Lucy inquired.
“Well, he kind of slurred it, or elided over it, but I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. And he certainly didn’t say ‘we.’ ”
“Well, then, it’s over,” she said. “Good. Only, now we’re in for it: he’ll want us to sit around for hours while he pours out his broken heart.”
But it wasn’t that way – not, at least, in the first part of Brock’s visit.
“I mean, I’m all right in short-term relationships,” he explained to them, hunching forward on the sofa in readiness for a serious discussion of himself. “I know I am, because I always have been in the past. What I can’t seem to do is sustain a hell of a lot of interest over the – you know – over the long haul. I get tired of a girl, is what it amounts to. I get bored and then I get restless; simple as that. Frankly, I’ve never understood the concept of marriage. I mean, if it works for you people, fine – but then, that’s your business, right?”
For the past several months, he reported, Diana had been “making marriage noises. Oh, just a hint here and a hint there at first – those were easy enough to handle – but then it started getting worse. Finally I had to tell her, I said ‘Look, honey: let’s face a few facts, okay?’ So she agreed to move out of my place – she got an apartment with another girl – and we started seeing each other on a different basis, maybe twice a week at the most. That’s the way things were when we came out here that last time. And she enrolled in an acting class – you know how they have these little ‘Method’ classes all over town now, mostly run by broken-down actors trying to put a few dollars together? Well, that sounded like a nice idea; I thought it might be good for her. But son of a bitch, it wasn’t more than a couple of weeks before she started going out with a guy she’d met in the class – some actor-boy, actor-twerp, actor-asshole; rich father out in Kansas City who pays him to stay away from home. Then three nights ago – and I swear to you, this was the worst night of my life – I took her out to dinner and she told me in this very cool, distant way – she told me she’d moved in with this guy. She ‘loves’ him, and all that shit.