Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

  “To us, my darling,” she said.

  They looked steadily at each other as they drank.

  “We ought to do this more often,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “It’s good to get out now and then. I’ll make more of an effort, if you want me to.”

  She reached for celery. “That’s up to you.”

  “That’s not true! It’s not me who’s ... who’s . ..”

  “Who’s what?” she said.

  “I don’t care what you do,” he said, dropping his eyes.

  “Is that true?”

  “I don’t know why I said that,” he said.

  The waiter brought the soup and took away the bottle and the wineglasses and refilled their goblets with water.

  “Could I have a soup spoon?” Wayne asked.

  “Sir?”

  “A soup spoon,” Wayne repeated.

  The waiter looked amazed and then perplexed. He glanced around at the other tables. Wayne made a shoveling motion over his soup. Aldo appeared beside the table.

  “Is everything all right? Is there anything wrong?”

  “My husband doesn’t seem to have a soup spoon,” Caroline said. “I’m sorry for the disturbance,” she said.

  “Certainly. Une cuiller, s’il votes plait,” Aldo said to the waiter in an even voice. He looked once at Wayne and then explained to Caroline. “This is Paul’s first night. He speaks little English, yet I trust you will agree he is an excellent waiter. The boy who set the table forgot the spoon.” Aldo smiled. “It no doubt took Paul by surprise.”

  “This is a beautiful place,” Caroline said.

  “Thank you,” Aldo said. “I’m delighted you could come tonight. Would you like to see the wine cellar and the private dining rooms?”

  “Very much,” Caroline said.

  “I will have someone show you around when you have finished dining,” Aldo said.

  “We’ll be looking forward to it,” Caroline said.

  Aldo bowed slightly and looked again at Wayne. “I hope you enjoy your dinner,” he said to them.

  “That jerk,” Wayne said.

  “Who?” she said. “Who are you talking about?” she said, laying down her spoon.

  “The waiter,” Wayne said. “The waiter. The newest and the dumbest waiter in the house, and we got him.” “Eat your soup,” she said. “Don’t blow a gasket.” Wayne lighted a cigaret. The waiter arrived with salads and took away the soup bowls.

  When they had started on the main course, Wayne said, “Well, what do you think? Is there a chance for us or not?” He looked down and arranged the napkin on his lap.

  “Maybe so,” she said. “There’s always a chance.” “Don’t give me that kind of crap,” he said. “Answer me straight for a change.”

  “Don’t snap at me,” she said.

  “I’m asking you,” he said. “Give me a straight answer,” he said.

  She said, “You want something signed in blood?”

  He said, “That wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

  She said, “You listen to me! I’ve given you the best years of my life. The best years of my life!”

  “The best years of your life?” he said.

  “I’m thirty-six years old,” she said. “Thirty-seven tonight. Tonight, right now, at this minute, I just can’t say what I’m going to do. I’ll just have to see,” she said.

  “I don’t care what you do,” he said.

  “Is that true?” she said.

  He threw down his fork and tossed his napkin on the table.

  “Are you finished?” she asked pleasantly. “Let’s have coffee and dessert. We’ll have a nice dessert. Something good.”

  She finished everything on her plate.

  “Two coffees,” Wayne said to the waiter. He looked at her and then back to the waiter. “What do you have for dessert?” he said.

  “Sir?” the waiter said.

  “Dessert!” Wayne said.

  The waiter gazed at Caroline and then at Wayne.

  “No dessert,” she said. “Let’s not have any dessert.”

  “Chocolate mousse,” the waiter said. “Orange sherbet,” the waiter said. He smiled, showing his bad teeth. “Sir?”

  “And I don’t want any guided tour of this place,” Wayne said when the waiter had moved off.

  When they rose from the table, Wayne dropped a dollar bill near his coffee cup. Caroline took two dollars from her handbag, smoothed the bills out, and placed them alongside the other dollar, the three bills lined up in a row.

  She waited with Wayne while he paid the check. Out of the corner of his eye, Wayne could see Aldo standing near the door dropping grains of seed into the aviary. Aldo looked in their direction, smiled, and went on rubbing the seeds from between his fingers as birds collected in front of him. Then he briskly brushed his hands together and started moving toward Wayne, who looked away, who turned slightly but significantly as Aldo neared him. But when Wayne looked back, he saw Aldo take Caroline’s waiting hand, saw Aldo draw his heels smartly together, saw Aldo kiss her wrist.

  “Did madam enjoy her dinner?” Aldo said.

  “It was marvelous,” Caroline said.

  “You will come back from time to time?” Aldo said.

  “I shall,” Caroline said. “As often as I may. Next time,

  I should like to have your permission to check things out a little, but this time we simply must go.”

  “Dear lady,” Aldo said. “I have something for you. One moment, please.” He reached to a vase on a table near the door and swung gracefully back with a longstemmed rose.

  “For you, dear lady,” Aldo said. “But caution, please. The thorns. A very lovely lady,” he said to Wayne and smiled at him and turned to welcome another couple.

  Caroline stood there.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Wayne said.

  “You can see how he could be friends with Lana Turner,” Caroline said. She held the rose and turned it between her fingers.

  “Good night!” she called out to Aldo’s back.

  But Aldo was occupied selecting another rose.

  “I don’t think he ever knew her,” Wayne said.

  WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET, PLEASE?

  When he was eighteen and was leaving home for the first time, Ralph Wyman was counseled by his father, principal of Jefferson Elementary School and trumpet soloist in the Weaverville Elks Club Auxiliary Band, that life was a very serious matter, an enterprise insisting on strength and purpose in a young person just setting out, an arduous undertaking, everyone knew that, but nevertheless a rewarding one, Ralph Wyman’s father believed and said.

  But in college Ralph’s goals were hazy. He thought he wanted to be a doctor and he thought he wanted to be a lawyer, and he took pre-medical courses and courses in the history of jurisprudence and business law before he decided he had neither the emotional detachment necessary for medicine nor the ability for sustained reading required in law, especially as such reading might concern property and inheritance. Though he continued to take classes here and there in the sciences and in business, Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came. It was during this time—his lowest ebb, as he referred to it later—that Ralph believed he almost had a breakdown; he was in a fraternity and he got drunk every night. He drank so much that he acquired a reputation and was called ‘Jackson,” after the bartender at The Keg.

  Then, in his third year, Ralph came under the influence of a particularly persuasive teacher. Dr. Maxwell was his name; Ralph would never forget him. He was a handsome, graceful man in his early forties, with exquisite manners and with just the trace of the South in his voice. He had been educated at Vanderbilt, had studied in Europe, and had later had something to do with one or two literary magazines back East. Almost overnight, Ralph would later say, he decided on teaching as a career. He stopped drinking quite so much, began to bear down
on his studies, and within a year was elected to Omega Psi, the national journalism fraternity; he became a member of the English Club; was invited to come with his cello, which he hadn’t played in three years, and join in a student chamber-music group just forming; and he even ran successfully for secretary of the senior class. It was then that he met Marian Ross—a handsomely pale and slender girl who took a seat beside him in a Chaucer class.

  Marian Ross wore her hair long and favored highnecked sweaters and always went around with a leather purse on a long strap swinging from her shoulder. Her eyes were large and seemed to take in everything at a glance. Ralph liked going out with Marian Ross. They went to The Keg and to a few other spots where everyone went, but they never let their going together or their subsequent engagement the next summer interfere with their studies. They were solemn students, and both sets of parents eventually gave approval to the match. Ralph and Marian did their student teaching at the same high school in Chico in the spring and went through graduation exercises together in June.

  They married in St. James Episcopal Church two weeks later.

  They had held hands the night before their wedding and pledged to preserve forever the excitement and the mystery of marriage.

  For their honeymoon they drove to Guadalajara, and while they both enjoyed visiting the decayed churches and the poorly lighted museums and the afternoons they spent shopping and exploring in the marketplace, Ralph was secretly appalled by the squalor and open lust he saw and was anxious to return to the safety of California. But the one vision he would always remember and which disturbed him most of all had nothing to do with Mexico. It was late afternoon, almost evening, and Marian was leaning motionless on her arms over the ironwork balustrade of their rented casita as Ralph came up the dusty road below. Her hair was long and hung down in front over her shoulders, and she was looking away from him, staring at something in the distance. She wore a white blouse with a bright red scarf at her throat, and he could see her breasts pushing against the white cloth. He had a bottle of dark, unlabeled wine under his arm, and the whole incident put Ralph in mind of something from a film, an intensely dramatic moment into which Marian could be fitted but he could not.

  Before they left for their honeymoon they had accepted positions at a high school in Eureka, a town in the lumbering region in the northern part of the state. After a year, when they were sure the school and the town were exactly what they wanted to settle down to, they made a payment on a house in the Fire Hill district. Ralph felt, without really thinking about it, that he and Marian understood each other perfectly—as well, at least, as any two people might. Moreover, Ralph felt he understood himself—what he could do, what he could not do, and where he was headed with the prudent measure of himself that he made.

  Their two children, Dorothea and Robert, were now five and four years old. A few months after Robert was born, Marian was offered a post as a French and English instructor at the junior college at the edge of town, and Ralph had stayed on at the high school. They considered themselves a happy couple, with only a single injury to their marriage, and that was well in the past, two years ago this winter. It was something they had never talked about since. But Ralph thought about it sometimes—indeed, he was willing to admit he thought about it more and more. Increasingly, ghastly images would be projected on his eyes, certain unthinkable particularities. For he had taken it into his head that his wife had once betrayed him with a man named Mitchell Anderson.

  But now it was a Sunday night in November and the children were asleep and Ralph was sleepy and he sat on the couch grading papers and could hear the radio playing softly in the kitchen, where Marian was ironing, and he felt enormously happy. He stared a while longer at the papers in front of him, then gathered them all up and turned off the lamp.

  “Finished, love?” Marian said with a smile when he appeared in the doorway. She was sitting on a tall stool, and she stood the iron up on its end as if she had been waiting for him.

  “Damn it, no,” he said with an exaggerated grimace, tossing the papers on the kitchen table.

  She laughed—bright, pleasant—and held up her face to be kissed, and he gave her a little peck on the cheek. He pulled out a chair from the table and sat down, leaned back on the legs and looked at her. She smiled again and then lowered her eyes.

  “I’m already half asleep,” he said.

  “Coffee?”she said, reaching over and laying the back of her hand against the percolator.

  He shook his head.

  She took up the cigaret she had burning in the ashtray, smoked it while she stared at the floor, and then put it back in the ashtray. She looked at him, and a warm expression moved across her face. She was tall and limber, with a good bust, narrow hips, and wide wonderful eyes.

  “Do you ever think about that party?” she asked, still looking at him.

  He was stunned and shifted in the chair, and he said, “Which party? You mean the one two or three years ago?”

  She nodded.

  He waited, and when she offered no further comment, he said, “What about it? Now that you brought it up, what about it?” Then: “He kissed you, after all, that night, didn’t he? I mean, I knew he did. He did try to kiss you, or didn’t he?”

  “I was just thinking about it and I asked you, that’s all,” she said. “Sometimes I think about it,” she said.

  “Well, he did, didn’t he? Come on, Marian,” he said.

  “Do you ever think about that night?” she said.

  He said, “Not really. It was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Three or four years ago. You can tell me now,” he said. “This is still old Jackson you’re talking to, remember?” And they both laughed abruptly together and abruptly she said, “Yes.” She said, “He did kiss me a few times.” She smiled.

  He knew he should try to match her smile, but he could not. He said, “You told me before he didn’t. You said he only put his arm around you while he was driving. So which is it?”

  “What did you do that for?” she was saying dreamily. “Where were you all night?” he was screaming, standing over her, legs watery, fist drawn back to hit again. Then she said, “/ didn't do anything. Why did you hit me?” she said.

  “How did we ever get onto this?” she said,

  “You brought it up,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what made me think of it.” She pulled in her upper lip and stared at the floor. Then she straightened her shoulders and looked up. “If you’ll move this ironing board for me, love, I’ll make us a hot drink. A buttered rum. How does that sound?”

  “Good,” he said.

  She went into the living room and turned on the lamp and bent to pick up a magazine from the floor. He watched her hips under the plaid woolen skirt. She moved in front of the window and stood looking out at the streetlight. She smoothed her palm down over her skirt, then began tucking in her blouse. He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her.

  After he stood the ironing board in its alcove on the porch, he sat down again and, when she came into the kitchen, he said, “Well, what else went on between you and Mitchell Anderson that night?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I was thinking about something else.”

  “What?”

  “About the children, the dress I want Dorothea to have for next Easter. And about the class I’m going to have tomorrow. I was thinking of seeing how they’d go for a little Rimbaud,” and she laughed. “I didn’t mean to rhyme—really, Ralph, and really, nothing else happened. I’m sorry I ever said anything about it.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  He stood up and leaned against the wall by the refrigerator and watched her as she spooned out sugar into two cups and then stirred in the rum. The water was beginning to boil.

  “Look, honey, it has been brought up now,” he said, “and it was four years ago, so there’s no reason at all I can think of that we cant talk about it now if we want to. Is there?”

  She said, “There?
??s really nothing to talk about.”

  He said, “I’d like to know.”

  She said, “Know what?”

  “Whatever else he did besides kiss you. We’re adults. We haven’t seen the Andersons in literally years and we’ll probably never see them again and it happened a long time ago, so what reason could there possibly be that we can’t talk about it?” He was a little surprised at the reasoning quality in his voice. He sat down and looked at the tablecloth and then looked up at her again. “Well?” he said.

  “Well,” she said, with an impish grin, tilting her head to one side girlishly, remembering. “No, Ralph, really. I’d really just rather not.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Marian! Now I mean it,” he said, and he suddenly understood that he did.

  She turned off the gas under the water and put her hand out on the stool; then she sat down again, hooking her heels over the bottom step. She sat forward, resting her arms across her knees, her breasts pushing at her blouse. She picked at something on her skirt and then looked up.

  “You remember Emily’d already gone home with the Beattys, and for some reason Mitchell had stayed on. He looked a little out of sorts that night, to begin with. I don’t know, maybe they weren’t getting along, Emily and him, but I don’t know that. And there were you and I, the Franklins, and Mitchell Anderson still there. All of us a little drunk. I’m not sure how it happened, Ralph, but Mitchell and I just happened to find ourselves alone together in the kitchen for a minute, and there was no whiskey left, only a part of a bottle of that white wine we had. It must’ve been close to one o’clock, because Mitchell said, ‘If we ride on giant wings we can make it before the liquor store closes. You know how he could be so theatrical when he wanted? Soft-shoe stuff, facial expressions? Anyway, he was very witty about it all. At least it seemed that way at the time. And very drunk, too, I might add. So was I, for that matter. It was an impulse, Ralph. I don't know why I did it, don’t ask me, but when he said let’s go—I agreed. We went out the back, where his car was parked. We went just as . . . we were . . didn’t even get our coats out of the closet, thought we’d just be gone a few minutes. I don’t know what we thought, I thought. I don’t know why I went, Ralph. It was an impulse, that’s all I can say. It was the wrong impulse.” She paused. “It was my fault that night, Ralph, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done anything like that—I know that.”