The Town and the City: A Novel

  “That has nothing to do with it!”

  “This country doesn’t mean a thing to you kids, it’s just a big dumb place where you happen to be helling and spoofing around, that’s all it is!”

  Peter smiled.

  “Sure, sure!” yelled the old man. “You kids know it all. But you’ll get it in the neck all right and it won’t—”

  “You hope so.”

  “I hope so? Lordy, Lordy, you’re getting it in the neck now,” he said with an agonized expression, “but I guess there must be a kind of new courage among you. You can take so much and not give a damn and still go around with that smile. I give you credit for that, all of you. But you don’t care! You don’t care for your parents who love you. Something evil and awful has happened, there’s nothing but unhappiness everywhere. And the coldness of everybody!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Peter.

  “Life is living, working at it, planning, believing in it, things to do, living, living, simple living, and there’s God in it, too!”

  “Some people get bored.” Peter was saying whatever would make his father mad.

  “Oh, that’s another tall tale made up for God knows what reason. It’s all so insane. I would never dream that my own children would fall for it, you, and Liz, and Francis! I would never dream it! Why do you all want to be so unhappy, why do you want to punish yourselves? Lord only knows what’ll happen to Charley and little Mickey in time, or you. In the end it just finally breaks a father’s heart. Both ways!”

  With a swift sweet insight, Peter suddenly heard himself blurt: “Why don’t you come and visit Judie and me tonight and we’ll go to a show. It’s your night off, isn’t it?”

  “What for?” barked Martin, a little surprised. “I don’t think she’d be glad to see us.”

  “She’s got to, well, she’s my girl, and she should meet you more. Why not?”

  “Well, I’ll talk to Marge about it. I guess you’re pretty serious on the little girl, aren’t you?” The old man looked away gently. “I didn’t mean what I said about her, I don’t even know her, that’s the whole trouble—”

  “I’m not serious about her, I guess I’m not serious about anything, or I guess I’m serious about everything and that just can’t be done. I dunno,” Peter was muttering sadly.

  “Well—”

  “Come on over tonight,” he stammered. “We’ll do something. I’ll see you tonight? Huh? Don’t forget.” And Peter went out casually. When he closed the iron gate at the sidewalk, he saw his father sitting inside in an attitude of brooding loneliness.

  “The most beautiful idea on the face of the earth,” he thought unaccountably, “is the idea the child has that his father knows everything.”

  In the subway he brooded over the thought that that must be the idea men had always had of God. But he recalled sorrowfully that when the child grew up and sought advice he got only fumbling earnest human words, when the child sought a way of some sort he only found that his father’s way was not enough, and the child was left cold with the realization that nobody, not even his father, really knew what to do. And yet, that children and fathers should have a notion in their souls that there must be a way, an authority, a great knowledge, a vision, a view of life, a proper manner, an order in all the disorder and sadness of the world—that alone must be God in men. No matter if men could live without inner stress and qualms, without scruples or morals or dark trepidations, without guilt or self-abasement or horror, without sighs and distressful spiritual worry that had no name—no matter, they continued to think that. The should-be in their souls powerfully prevailed, that was mightily so.

  [8]

  When Peter barged into Judie’s apartment, he found her in the front room entertaining a young man she had met in a bar that morning. They were drinking beer and talking. He was a young seaman just back from a voyage to Brazil, wearing dark glasses, cubana pegged trousers, and a weirdly colored silk scarf around his throat. At first he glared angrily at Peter, not understanding the situation, not knowing that he was a victim of Judie’s incessant plot to make Peter jealous. Peter decided not to appear jealous and walked into his den and sat down and stared gloomily out the window at the gray rooftops of the day.

  When the weird young seaman eventually left, Judie came in and sat on the arm of Peter’s chair, with a wry, nervous air.

  “Are you jealous?”

  “No, I’m not jealous. When are you going to grow up, you damn fool.”

  “When are you going to grow up, Mister Martin! You disappear for days, and expect me to sit around and wait for you.”

  “I went home for a while, that’s all.”

  “You went home,” she mimicked sarcastically, “home to those damn parents of yours who don’t do anything but criticize all day long. Well, you can have ’em, brother!”

  “Listen,” said Peter, getting up and gripping her by the arm and almost shaking her, “you want to get married, but you don’t want anything that goes with it.” Peter was yelling. “Sure, sure, you want to get married—and you won’t even speak a civil word to my own folks. I don’t even know what kind of mother you’d make—”

  “Don’t you love me?” she suddenly demanded, tearfully. He had frightened her. She moved to a corner of the room and stared at him appalled, and he felt a rush of sorrow for her.

  “Look, Judie, dammit, I do! I like you! Maybe you and I could make a go of it, all our lives maybe, but there are some things you do that I don’t like!” He was flustered and torn by these things he did not want to say.

  “Well, you’re not perfect yourself!” she cried.

  “Okay, I’m not perfect—but what are we going to do?” he finally brought out wearily. He sat down. “Listen,” he said finally, “my folks are coming over late this afternoon, I invited them. We’re all going out to dinner and a show.”

  “I’m not going. I don’t want to see them.”

  “Well, there you have it.”

  “I want to marry you, not them.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to marry them. Where I come from young married couples get along with their folks—”

  “I don’t care where you come from, small towns and poor people and all their silly rules. I’m going to live the way I like and I don’t care what anybody thinks. You’re getting to be just like your old man, just a stuffy old goat always worried about something or other. You love to worry! Why don’t you just try to enjoy life—like my father used to do before he died,” she added contemplatively. “When I first met you, Petey, I thought you were just like him—your smile and the way you did things, a great athlete, and the way you liked to eat and make love and—just be! But now you’re just like your father. Oh, I hate him!” she cried angrily.

  Peter was sitting by the window where a mournful rain had begun to patter in the glass, and he was staring out. Judie saw him like that, and came over and sat in his lap, and leaned her face against his, softly. And just the feel of her temple against his cheek, her warm small skull pressed endearingly against him, and her little hand curling in his, made him forget all the trouble.

  In the half darkness they stared at the shadowy sockets of each other’s eyes, at the faint luminous eye of themselves, and brooded, and listened to the rain on the rooftops. They knew so much about each other, finally, that it must be impossible for them to fight ever again. The whole world was raining, but they were together in the warm sweet atmosphere of themselves, in the faint light their eyes made in the darkness, in the climate their bodies made embracing, in the season of their loving sadness. They were completely alone together in the sweetness of this, but it was then and then only somehow that they could remember the real enormous human love they must have for everyone else in the world. And the wisdom of the tender fact that they loved each other was so true and final. So much so that they did not say a word for hours together in the darkness, they were just quiet there.

  When Peter’s mother and father came at sev
en o’clock, Judie herself went to the door and greeted them with a bashful tenderness. Peter was happier at that moment than he could ever recall.

  His father sat on the edge of the couch nervously, with the ponderous, modest, decent air of his kind of man, with the vast sad look of him more striking than ever, as he looked at little Judie and seemed to decide that she was a good girl after all. His eyes were luminous, moist, and shy as he looked up at her. Peter knew that his father was a forgiver before anything else, a forgiver within himself before he ever forgave in a formal sense. And his mother, with her shrewd peering eyes and her shy, jolly ways, she too was a person of whom he was proud—because of her great understanding which was always concealed under her gay rueful little manner. She would chuckle and “try to make the best of things” always, and Peter sensed the value of that strongly.

  “Well,” said the old man, “are we ready to hit a good feed and a show?”

  “And I know just the place to go!” cried Judie, bubbling and blushing. “A restaurant I bet you never went to! You!’”

  “Me?” cried the old man pleased that she was addressing him. “All right there, my little one, name it and we’ll see.”

  “Huh!” scoffed Judie. “I’m not telling you. We’ll just go there and I bet you’ll admit you never went there.”

  “It’s a deal!” laughed the old man, taking out a cigar and lighting it. As Judie ran into her room to dress, the mother turned to old Martin and chuckled gleefully.

  “She can be so cute! She’s so nice, Petey! I’m so glad we came. You know, she has the same little mannerisms Lizzy used to have!” She dabbed at her eyes, inexplicably. “The little thing!”

  When the doorbell rang, Peter hurried to it with the tremendous feeling that he had just learned how to live and love, and would never forget the secret. He opened the door with the air of someone accepting a challenge, like a little boy, vaguely conscious of the foolish joyousness of it all—yet with that mysterious fear of something overpoweringly unknown. He remembered this feeling later on, and recognized the prescience of it sadly. The man at the door showed a police badge and walked in nonchalantly.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You’re Peter Martin? You’ll have to drop downtown with us. We only want to ask a few questions to clear up something. There’s been a suicide, fellow by the name of Waldo Meister. Jumped out the window of Kenneth Wood’s apartment. But our investigations aren’t complete yet. Just put on your coat.”

  The detective sat in the front room and began chatting with the others, telling them all about it affably. Peter lingered meditatively in his bedroom for a moment, full of sinking feelings. Waldo Meister was dead!

  “Oh, is that all!” he heard Judie laugh scornfully. “It’s just as well. And I hope Kenny did it himself!”

  The detective pounced on this. “Look here, little girl! You may not know it, but that’s a serious charge—”

  “Uff!” she scoffed, and barged around the room in her old slapdash way. “That bastard tried to kill my cat and I’m glad he’s dead, I was gonna kill him myself.”

  “Take it easy, Judie,” said Peter angrily.

  “Oh, shut up!”

  “A fine thing!” roared the old man, pacing around the room. “Now my own son is mixed up in a murder case! Now it’s finally coming out! I told you not to get mixed up with these people, I warned you a hundred times! Now you’re in trouble! Well, good God!—Murder!”

  The detective grinned as though enjoying the scene. “Well, we’re not sure about that! I think personally it’s a suicide, all right.”

  The old man glared at him. “Isn’t that bad enough? That a man should go and throw himself out of a boy’s window for some silly reason! That’s what this damn world is coming to nowadays! You ought to know that yourself in your profession!” He was red in the neck and perfectly pale in the face.

  Suddenly everyone noticed that Peter’s mother was crying. Peter rushed to her and held her in his arm; she was trembling. “Take it easy, Ma, it’s nothing, it’ll be okay.”

  “All these terrible things!” she moaned. “Petey, what are they going to do to you?” She clung to him fearfully, shivering all over and pale.

  Judie suddenly laughed almost hysterically. “Good God!” she cried, without elaborating any further, and Peter turned to her with a look of hatred.

  “You watch what you’re doing, you little—”

  “Shaddap!” yelled Judie defiantly, and for a moment they glared at each other.

  The old man was infuriated. “This is what I might have expected from brats! You’re all alike, all of you! If you’d of stayed home and minded your business, or made decent friends, you wouldn’t be getting in awful jams like this! Well, you didn’t listen! Goddamit, you asked for it!”

  “Ain’t it nice to say I told you so!” cried Judie mockingly.

  “Shut up!” cried Peter, out of his mind. He rushed to Judie and took her by the arm and, for some reason or other, in his agonized confusion, tried to sit her down in a chair. Judie shook him off with a loathing look. His knees were like water, he had to sit down. The detective by now was somewhat confused himself, but momentarily pulled himself out of that by assuming his official capacities and saying that it was time to go.

  “You’ll have to identify the body at the morgue.”

  “Can I come along too?” cried Martin, suddenly grabbing up his coat.

  “It won’t be necessary, Mr. Martin.”

  “But I want to come along. If my kid’s in trouble I want to see if I can help. And I don’t want him to get any kind of raw deal—”

  “No, no, nothing like that, he’s in no trouble—none that I know of. It’s an open-and-shut case all right, but we’re just checking. If I were you people I wouldn’t go and get excited.”

  “But I can’t help it!” sobbed Peter’s mother. “It’s just something that never happened to any of my children, they were never mixed up in anything like that. Can’t my husband go along and help? Oh, Petey, you must tell them the truth, whatever you know, don’t lie to them, Petey. George, why don’t you go along with him. Oh, what am I going to do now?”

  Peter was heartbroken as she said these things. He rushed back to her. He had a blind reeling feeling of stumbling about from one person to another in an awful nightmare. He had not seen his mother cry since he was a boy and it wrenched him to see her like that. He himself was crying, silently, great tears rolling down his face, which he brushed away wonderingly.

  Judie was disgusted and suddenly threw on her coat and flounced out of the house.

  “Where are you going?” yelled Peter, stumbling across the room after her.

  “I’m sick and tired of all you damn serfs. I’ll come back to my house after you’re all gone. Do you know something?” she suddenly added, rushing back to the doorway. “It’s just typical of poor people, always afraid of everything. Well, that’s not for me! If you get in trouble and you need money to get out of jail, I’m the one who can get you out, not them!” she cried contemptuously. “So I’ll see you later, fool.”

  “Listen, my young lady,” roared old Martin after her, “you can always spray your nose with perfume, it will lessen your own odor! How do you like that!” He jammed his hat on his head and stalked around fuming, as Judie slammed the hall door and left. The detective standing beside Peter looked at everybody with amazement. “And that’s that,” sighed old Martin, taking off his hat and holding it and looking around mournfully, as though somehow paying respect to the awfulness of what had happened, not knowing what to do any more.

  Peter went downtown with the detective in his car and his parents simply went home in the subway. The thought of how they would feel now in all their terror and innocence crushed him completely.

  When they arrived at Kenny Wood’s apartment at the Palmyran Towers, Kenny was pale and obviously scared out of his wits by the turn of events. He looked white-faced at Peter. His father was there making telephone calls to his i
nfluential friends all over town. He was a trim handsome man, graying at the temples, youngish in his energy and poise, a well-known broker on Wall Street and figure in New York society. Peter had never seen him before in all the years he had known Kenny. Now that the boy was in trouble, it was plain that the father was concerned only with the possibility of scandalous repercussions.

  “You see,” he was saying to another detective, “I have a reputation to maintain. I just wish that the investigation might have been conducted with more decorum. The tabloids are apt to make an awful splash about it.”

  “We can’t do anything about the press, Mr. Wood.”

  “Yes, I suppose not.” He smiled quickly. “Who is this?” he added, looking at Peter, but Peter hated him so much at that moment, with a kind of sullen pleasure, that the man got a dirty look for his curiosity. Eventually Mr. Wood left, explaining that he had to go for an important appointment, squeezing Kenny’s arm, saying something in a low voice as the boy listened grinning, and bounding out energetically with a kind of embarrassed little gaiety.

  Tired and confused, Peter wandered into the front room while waiting for whatever the detectives wanted. He realized as he crossed the threshold that Kenny’s great-grandmother was in the room. He had almost forgotten her existence. Actually, he was a great favorite of hers from way back.

  She was a withered old lady, but she still bore traces of some old rawboned strength. She sat with a plaid blanket over her lap, old gold-rimmed spectacles in her upturned hand, some flowers beside her in little clay pots that she tended, and a knotted cane resting against the chair. She frowned thoughtfully. “I was sitting here,” she said, “and they came and told me about it. Do you know something? I don’t think it’s such a much. I’ve seen men commit suicide in my time. I saw a man jump off a bluff into the Missouri River a long time ago, I was a little girl.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Well, Petey, I can’t count any more, I guess it was in the Sixties, as I say I was a little girl. Did you hear him in there talking about his reputation? Do you know what he’s talking about? The work and suffering of the men who came before him, my husband, my husband’s son. When they heard there was gold, they went. They didn’t find gold, none to speak of, that is, and you know they came back all the way. Some of ’em went West and a lot of ’em came back, but it was all the same then, they all craved work. My husband began cutting trees in Virginia and my son made paper and sold it. Then he went in the cattle business in Kansas. That’s his reputation in there!”