“I dunno.—May as well assume so.” His voice sounded hollow, even scared. He wound a brown belt around his hand, then decided to buckle it on over his trousers and sweater. The empty feeling had come back.
“You look better in the face—your expression. But I’d like to see you put on a pound or two. I was quite worried about you a few weeks ago.—You’re not just pretending now, are you?”
He knew what his mother meant, pretending to be of good cheer when he wasn’t. Arthur shook his head, feeling suddenly angry for no reason. He avoided looking at his mother’s eyes. “Hey, Mom,” he said in a low voice, and glanced at his closed door. “Why’s Robbie so concerned about this Irene mess?”
His mother drew a deep breath. “It’s a disappointment—for Richard. You know? And Robbie understands that. Richard thought Irene was doing so much better, that she was happier and on her feet again—and now this, she’s—What is it, four or five months pregnant. That means she was putting on an act all this time.”
So it happened in December or January, Arthur reckoned. “Mom, if you could see the guys in the Silver Arrow!—And she sort of leads them on. No wonder nobody knows who the father is. And in fact who cares?” Arthur gazed into his open closet. He took his navy blue Viyella shirt from a hanger and remembered the afternoon he had bought it, on the occasion of his first dinner at Maggie’s house. “Is Dad still giving a tenth of his income to the church?” Arthur asked out of the blue.
“Ye-es, I’m pretty sure. And a bit more.”
Arthur closed the closet door and started folding his shirt on his bed. “Reminds me of a piece I read in Time in February. All these rich churches are connected—not like a business partnership, but they’re all spouting the same thing. It’s like a gas. You can’t see it, but it’s there, in the atmosphere. We’ve all got to breathe it—because the Moral Majority says so.” Arthur felt vaguely angry again, but he had managed to keep his voice calm. “These churches are off the income tax hook, and they’re rolling in dough. Like the Worldwide Church. They publish Plain Truth. Like the Moonies. The big shots live in luxury, and they say, ‘This is the way our people like to see us.’ Looking rich, I mean.”
His mother made no reply. Arthur knew she was thinking about something else. He had expected her to say that Richard and she didn’t look exactly rich, did they, nor did the Reverend Bob Cole. That wouldn’t have daunted Arthur in his argument. It was the leaders of these churches who were rich, and their followers broke, a lot of them, and just about as gullible as the gullible blacks who had followed Jim Jones to death in Guyana after being fleeced by him. That story had made a big impression on Arthur. Many of the American blacks in his group, and a few moonstruck whites, too, had been handing over regularly their Social Security checks to go into Jim Jones’s bank account. Arthur felt spoiling for a fight, but not with his mother.
His mother changed the subject. How was Gus; how was Veronica? And had he gone along with the two of them the evening they had been to the Silver Arrow? Here Arthur was able to say something a bit more cheerful, that he had had a date with a girl called Francey, just last night when they had gone to the Silver Arrow after Mom’s Pride. And Francey was not his new girlfriend by any means, because she had a steady boyfriend, Arthur had been told.
“Whatever it is—tonight you look a lot more cheerful. You know, Arthur, if Maggie’s stuck on this other fellow, you’ve just got to get over her. I don’t want to see you unhappy.”
Arthur opened a lower drawer, looking for things he might want. Get over her. He hated phrases like that. There would never be another girl like Maggie; it was as simple as that. Arthur could have cracked up at that moment, and he was about to excuse himself to go into the bathroom for a minute, when his mother proposed that they ring up Norma Keer and see if they could come over.
So Arthur telephoned, and ten minutes later, he and his mother were sitting in Norma’s living room; coffee was brewing in the kitchen, and Norma in stockinged feet bent over her coffee table, fussing with cups. When she asked Arthur how Maggie was, he was able to reply:
“Very well, I think. She’ll be majoring in sociology.”
But when Norma made cheerful remarks about seeing Maggie when summer vacation started, Arthur had the feeling that she was talking to a ghost, that the ghost was himself. Norma suggested a small brandy to go with their coffee, and Arthur accepted, though his mother didn’t.
“And Robbie?” Norma asked. “He hardly says hello to me anymore when I’m out in the yard. I always give him a hail.”
It occurred to Arthur that Robbie shunned Norma, because Robbie knew Norma was rather a friend of his. “And your health, Norma,” said Arthur, thinking both to change the subject and perhaps make the atmosphere more depressing, even though to inquire about a person’s health was surely a polite thing to do.
“Good news Monday. I was saving it to tell you—case you asked.” Norma sat down in her usual sofa corner, sitting a bit more upright than usual. “Doctor said Monday, ‘Great progress.’ Meaning I’m no longer on death row.”
“How marvelous, Norma!” Lois said. “Why didn’t you call us up—Monday?” Lois laughed with pleasure.
“Oh—Just saving it. Don’t I look happier? Doctor had the results of a couple more tests—I can’t keep track of ’em all. Anyway, he said, Two big problems conquered.’ He thinks I have nothing to worry about. So all the pills and the X-rays really did accomplish something.”
Yes, it was a miracle, Arthur thought. He had never expected to hear such words from Norma. He felt as happy for her as if she had been a member of his family—his grandmother, maybe. “Cheers, Norma!” Arthur lifted his little glass. As he tipped his head back he was aware of the Italian Renaissance table beyond him and on his right, the sturdy one that Maggie had admired. Would Maggie ever look at it again, here with him? Smile at him as she had that day, with the fingertips of her right hand, he remembered, touching the top of that table? He was glad that his mother declined a second coffee.
Then he was standing with his mother in the driveway beside his car; his mother was telling him to drive carefully, and Arthur realized that he hadn’t said good night to his father or to Robbie, and that he didn’t care.
“You keep happy. And call me soon!”
The next day, Sunday around 4 p.m., Frank Costello got back from Wisconsin. Arthur had known his privacy couldn’t last forever.
Frank tumbled duffel bags and what looked like a guitar in a canvas case onto the floor near his bed.
“Nice trip?” Arthur asked, because Frank hadn’t even said hello, or was maybe too out of breath to do so.
“Yeah. Not bad, thanks. Makes a break.”
“One message for you there. It’s on your bed.”
“Oh, yeah. Thanks.”
Now the atmosphere was different, more tense. But the happy thing was, Arthur thought as he settled himself on his bed to read the remaining required pages of Alfred Whitehead, that he had pulled out of his slough of depression. Nice word, slough, suggesting mud or a quagmire. How did one pronounce it, sluff or sloff? Was it safe to base his cure on Francey McCullough? That meant that any girl could do it. Girls were interchangeable, he had read somewhere in a novel. Of course, just for going to bed with, that was true. And what else did he know about Francey? He decided he would call Francey up Tuesday. That would not be rushing things. Maybe she’d tell him straightaway she was back with her boyfriend. Get back to Whitehead! Whitehead was boring. Nothing but platitudes.
Still, on Monday morning Arthur found himself hoping as usual that there might be a letter from Maggie at the desk downstairs. There was nothing for him. And as usual, he imagined Maggie preoccupied with Larry Hargiss, probably seeing him at least three times a week. Why not, since their universities were so close, and maybe Hargiss had some classes at Radcliffe? And maybe Maggie was thinking that it would be bet
ter, wiser or something, if she didn’t write again. Arthur had written once again after his first post-Hargiss letter, and he was sure she hadn’t lost his dorm address, unless she wanted to lose it.
On Tuesday around 6 p.m., Francey telephoned Arthur.
“Why didn’t you phone me?” she asked.
Arthur heard her badly, because Frank had a cassette on. “I was going to phone you in about ten minutes!”
“. . . doing tonight? Want to come to my place? . . . Ellsworth three eleven.”
Francey had her dorm apartment free, and she had food for dinner. The apartment, though small, had two bedrooms, a bath and a tiny living room with a TV set. Luxury!
“How’ve you been?” Francey asked.
What to answer to that? “Okay.”
“You’re so serious!” Francey said, unsmiling, and she grabbed Arthur round the waist. “I’m depressed. So why don’t we eat and drink—and relax.”
The telephone rang while Francey was making rum drinks. She didn’t answer it. Francey was frying hot dogs and toasting buns. She asked Arthur to make the green salad.
“These boots—drive me nuts,” Francey said, removing a pair of furry beige boots from near the door, throwing them into a closet. “Not my boots, Susanne’s.”
They ate at a bridge table, to music by Cole Porter, “Ridin’ High” and other old stuff that Arthur liked, and “It’s All Right with Me,” which he thought a fitting song for both of them.
“Are you forgetting your boyfriend with a new fellow every night?” Arthur asked.
“I’m not forgetting him,” she said a bit sullenly. “Maybe I ought to. Life’s tough, isn’t it? I wish I didn’t fall in love so hard.”
Less than an hour later, they were in bed, in a bed that smelled like a perfume factory, though Arthur was sure Francey hadn’t doused it in perfume deliberately. The making love was strange, like a duty to be done, as when he carried sacks of weeds at Mrs. DeWitt’s, and his body obeyed his will. By the same token, the pleasure at the end was not so much a pleasure but a finish. Francey said, “Oh!” Francey was pleased. She could have done it again, when he couldn’t.
“I wish I were in love with you,” she said.
Arthur said nothing. Did he wish that? Francey was easy to be with, the kind of girl who didn’t make trouble. And she had saved him from a collapse. Did that count for something? Was that enough, and enough for what?
“Now I have to throw you out, because it’s ten to ten and Susanne might come back from a movie any minute. She’s the type to lodge a complaint, as they say, if a fellow’s actually in bed. You can be here if you’re up and dressed.”
Arthur got dressed. He thought he should leave.
“Call me again?” Francey said.
For some reason, Arthur didn’t want to telephone Francey the next day or the next. By Friday, he felt quite depressed again, without knowing why. Around 6 p.m., Frank offered him, not for the first time, some of his angel dust. Arthur declined. The cocaine might have been fun for a few minutes, if he felt anything at all from it. The couple of times Arthur had sampled coke, not from Frank, he hadn’t felt anything, and someone had told him it was because he didn’t sniff enough. Arthur was sure Frank would give him enough, but Frank also depressed Arthur.
“Pick y’up,” said Frank. “Do you good. Better for you than alcohol.”
“Since when am I drinking a lot of alcohol?” Arthur asked in a good-natured tone. Angel dusters, Arthur had observed, always had a bad word to say about alcohol, even a couple of beers, and when Arthur had asked a coke-taker why he wouldn’t drink, even one beer, the fellow had replied, “Because if I start on alcohol, I can’t stop. I finish everything in sight.” That thought was depressing, and so was the prospect of Frank’s presence until the end of the school year. Frank had even told Arthur days ago that he had been “dismissed” from C.U., but Frank lingered on, using the room as a place to sleep, and C.U. was not throwing him out, Arthur supposed, because no other student was going to rent Frank’s part of the room this late in the school year. Before 7, Frank and his pal John departed.
Arthur went to the swivel telephone and dialed Betty Brewster’s number.
She was in. “Hello, Arthur, how are you?”
“Pretty much okay—thanks. And you?”
“Same as ever. Warren left the house five minutes ago. What a pity, because I know he’d have wanted to say hello to you.”
“Is—I haven’t heard from Maggie in—in quite a few days. Is she okay?”
“Oh, far as I know. She phoned us last Sunday. Warren was here, which was nice. I know she’s studying pretty hard. I’ll tell her to write to you, if she’s being forgetful.”
“Oh, don’t tell her.” Arthur’s face grew suddenly warm.
“Well—the house isn’t the same without you—Warren said. He said, ‘Get Arthur back, I don’t want to do all these little things.’” Betty laughed.
Arthur had stinging eyes when he hung up, and he flung open the fridge door and reached for a beer. He could of course go back to the Brewsters’ house tomorrow, tonight, which would be a hell of a lot more aesthetic than where he was, but he would feel as if he were sitting there waiting—and hopelessly—for Maggie, or else making use of the Brewsters’ kindness.
He had an impulse to call up Francey and repressed it. Nice to know she was there, however.
The next morning, as if prompted by a long-distance thought wave from Betty, a letter from Maggie was at the desk for him. Arthur was aware, as he opened the envelope, of his hope that Maggie had got fed up with Mr. Hargiss, of his hope for even a hint along this line. The letter was dated 19th May.
Dear Arthur,
Am writing this before I start out on a regimen of work so I can pass the finals. Maybe you are doing the same? Math is still my toughest and I still have to pass a fresh exam to make minimum requirements. On the other hand, am taking a basic one-semester sociology course and I like my Prof. Robert Pinderley, very much.
Whatever you might be thinking, I don’t go out much. Nobody does here, as the atmosphere is rather strict and we all have so much work to do. Before exam times, they give us coffee and sandwiches in the dorm corridors around 11, because lots of us are studying till after midnight.
My mother says (again!) that she misses you. So I hope with your decision to live in those C.U. dorms you aren’t too unhappy. I suddenly wish we could take a walk by the quarry and feel free again! High school work was never like this, no?
Maybe you’re happier now—than you sounded in your last letter? Maybe you’ve met somebody you like or who at least can cheer you up? I hope so.
Please write another note when you can.
With very much love,
Maggie
This letter gave Arthur a lot of instant thoughts pro and con, but the negative won out. No mention of Mr. Hargiss, but that was Maggie being tactful. Had his last letter sounded so glum? And despite mentioning the quarry, she hoped he had met someone else. What could be more negative than that? It added up to “let’s be friends,” which to Arthur was horrid.
He set off for philosophy class at 9 a.m. Boring Whitehead, and even more boring Plato. Everything they said seemed so obvious—why had they taken the trouble to write it all out?—and also unconsoling. Wasn’t philosophy supposed to help you to live? Maybe extremists were better, people like Nietzsche, even Cotton Mather, the latter surely a soulmate of his father’s, all hellfire and damnation and no sign of tolerance. “Jesus!” Arthur said aloud, like a curse.
He thought of phoning Gus this evening and going over to the Warylsky house for an hour. Or maybe he’d run into Gus on the campus today and ask him. He never encountered Francey, though he never especially kept a lookout for her on the campus. He didn’t want to call on Norma tonight. In fact, he didn’t want to see Gus,
not merely because he was too depressed to inflict himself on a friend, but because he knew Gus couldn’t really help. Nobody could help.
By 6:30 that evening, Arthur was saying on the telephone to Francey, “Come over. Can you? Frank’s out and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
Francey hesitated just a couple of seconds. “Why not?”
“Pick you up in five minutes!”
Arthur did. They played the radio, which belonged to Frank. They tuned in to dance music, for atmosphere, though they didn’t dance. Arthur produced a dinner of sorts, slightly aided by Francey who was not much interested in dinner. She sipped his scotch and looked dreamy and distant and a bit sad. Then they went to bed. Around 1 o’clock, Arthur said:
“Has it ever occurred to you to be my girlfriend?” He waited, hoping she would say, “Why not?”
She was smoking a cigarette. “I don’t want to be anybody’s girlfriend. I just want to be.”
That sounded like philosophy. “Do you have to be in love? Does everybody—have to be in love?”
She laughed. “I am against it.—But I still say you’re nice.”
Arthur thought it best to let it go at that. Francey was going to stay the night. He would love that, to wake up in the morning and find her there. And if he found that bore Frank also in the morning, to hell with him. Nothing could wake Frank in the morning, anyway.
That pleasant night and early morning with Francey set him up for the next many days, enabled him to study with a level head, and even made him believe he had found, by accident, a new philosophy: Take life as it comes. Enjoy and be grateful. Not grateful to God, but to luck and chance. Tread carefully, speak carefully, and hang on to what you’ve got. Be polite to what you’ve got. When the word polite occurred to Arthur, he sent flowers to Francey McCullough’s dorm room, having ascertained at the florist’s shop in Chalmerston that his card would be attached to the bouquet and that the flowers wouldn’t be just dumped downstairs but put into the hands of either Miss McCullough or of her roommate in room 311. They were pink roses and blue carnations, a crazy combination, Arthur supposed, but he had fancied that mixture. He had written on the card: