People Who Knock on the Door

  Would his mother ever remarry? She was only about forty-three, not exactly old. But there were no prospects around that Arthur could see or imagine. He wished his grandmother could come and live with them, but her life and her dance school in Kansas City was bound to be more interesting than Chalmerston. Arthur tried to take cheer from the fact that he was free of his father’s harangues and disapproval, that September meant the East and New York. But he still missed Maggie and it hurt, like a disease that he could not get rid of. Francey had not cured him. He wondered, in fact, if Francey had had any effect at all in regard to Maggie? Gus had introduced him to a blond girl called Leonora, half-Polish and half-French, who was visiting relatives of Gus’s family in town. She had been interesting and attractive, but she hadn’t struck a spark; it had simply been a pleasant evening.

  His mother drove to Foster House every four or five days to visit Robbie, and Arthur still declined to go. Arthur gathered that Robbie never asked about him or expressed any wish to see him. His mother returned from his visits with an air of optimism: Robbie was obeying all the rules and didn’t seem to mind them. Robbie said the food was good. He had a different roommate now, because Robbie had made some remarks that the Puerto Rican boy had complained about. Racial remarks, Arthur gathered.

  “So he’s going to get out when the six months are up?—He’ll start back in school here?”

  “It depends on his behavior, they said. So far, it’s considered quite good. I talk with Mr. Dillard every time I go, you know.”

  Mr. Dillard was one of the superintendents, Arthur knew. Robbie was presumably coming home in December, on probation.

  When his mother returned from her next visit, the news was not so good: Robbie had got into a fistfight with his new roommate, who had accused Robbie of breaking a toolbox, while Robbie had said that someone else had come into the room and done it. “Each boy is making a toolbox, I mean,” his mother explained, “and they take the boxes to their rooms in the evening till the next carpentry lesson.” Robbie had broken the boy’s nose, and Robbie was walking around stiffly with his ribs strapped in adhesive tape. The other boy was bigger and had retaliated.

  Arthur made hardly a comment.

  He was doing an errand for his mother in J. C. Penney’s on a Saturday morning in early August when he saw Maggie. Arthur was at the “novelties” counter with his mother’s list in hand, waiting for a salesgirl, when he happened to look to his left. At first, he didn’t believe it was Maggie, but someone rather like her, because this girl’s hair was longer, quite to her shoulders and brushed back and held by a clip or a ribbon. His heart seemed to stop. The girl was Maggie. Now she leaned forward, talking to a salesgirl across the counter. She appeared to be by herself. There were lots of people between them, coming and going.

  “Help you, sir?”

  “Th-this,” Arthur said, handing the piece of paper to the salesgirl, as if abandoning the idea of reading it to her, and in fact he didn’t understand the numbers on the list which had to do with thread weights. He looked again at Maggie, who stood with her left foot extended and resting on the heel. That was just like Maggie!

  “Yes, here you are. This the color you mean for the yellow?” The girl had three spools on her palm already, two white, one yellow.

  “I’m sure that’s okay,” Arthur said, fishing money out.

  There was time. Maggie hadn’t finished at the counter.

  Arthur got his little white bag from the salesgirl and walked toward Maggie, hesitated, then went on.

  Maggie lifted her eyes from the counter and looked at him, and smiled uncertainly or shyly. “Oh—Arthur!”

  “’S really you! I couldn’t believe it.” He crushed the top of the paper bag, which was weightless, in his fingers. “Thought you weren’t coming back till September.”

  “I changed my mind.—Mom—”

  Someone bumped into Arthur and passed him. “What?”

  “Mom says you’re going to Columbia in September.”

  “Right. Yes.”

  Now Maggie had to give her attention to the salesgirl, and took her purchase, in a larger bag.

  They started to walk slowly toward an exit.

  “You’re staying the rest of the summer?” he asked.

  “Till the seventeenth of September.”

  Arthur nodded and took a breath. “Walk you to your car?” He wondered if Larry Hargiss was with her, maybe holding the car somewhere.

  “I have to buy one more thing. Somewhere else.”

  They were out on the sidewalk. She was walking in another direction from Shoe Repair, where he was due back now, because he had asked Tom’s permission to run out on a quick errand for his mother. What a lucky little errand it had been! Arthur felt stunned, hypnotized even, by the fact that Maggie was beside him, so close their arms almost touched, Maggie whom he could seize now like a madman, if he chose, and whose body would be firm and real. If he didn’t ask now, he thought, he was gutless. Or a fool.

  “Can I call you sometime, Maggie?” he asked in a firm voice.

  She smiled again, more at ease than a minute ago. “Sure, Arthur. Why not?”

  “Okay.” He stopped. “I have to go the other way. Now. I’ll call you, Maggie.” He turned and walked away, trotted, looking at the pavement. It was like a dream! Yet her voice was still in his ear: Sure, Arthur. Why not? How long had she been in town? Five days? Longer? Had Mr. Hargiss just departed from the Brewster house? Why would she say why not like that unless she still liked him?

  Arthur felt elated, though puzzled, all the rest of the day. He was selling now, as well as being manager in name. His elation, he told himself, must be based solely on the fact that Maggie was in town, geographically near. But if she was still tied up with Mr. Hargiss, she might also have said why not in the same manner, Arthur was thinking by 5 p.m. It would be stupid to build himself up for a letdown.

  Nevertheless he was inspired to ask his mother out to dinner that evening at the Chowder House, a place that served excellent seafood.

  “What puts you in such a good mood?” she asked. “Don’t tell me Tom’s given you a raise already?”

  “Not quite yet. I just thought it’d be nice to go out for a change.” He intended to mention Maggie during dinner. Or he might decide not to mention her at all.

  Arthur was midway through delicious fried scallops and was about to begin, “By the way,” when his mother said:

  “I saw Jane Griffin at the Home today. She’d heard also that the church was going to pay Irene’s hospital bills—when that child arrives.”

  Dismal subject. Ruining the evening, Arthur thought. But since it was on his mother’s mind, he knew he had to share it with her. “Well, well. Did the minister announce it from the pulpit?”

  “No-o, silly! Bob mentioned it to Jane, because Jane’s a full-time employee now at the Home. Where that child might go, you know, finally.”

  Arthur was not enjoying his food so much now. “Did she say anything about who the father might be?”

  “Well—she said she’d heard the rumor. Because Richard often visited her, but Jane made light of it and said they—meaning people—might as well be talking about Eddie Howell or Bob Cole who also visit her.”

  Arthur was laughing. “Eddie Howell! That stallion!—I suppose Jane was fishing—for you to say yes or no about Dad?”

  His mother shrugged. “Maybe.—But I didn’t rise to the bait. Everyone knows the rough company Irene meets where she works.”

  Arthur wanted to change the subject, and couldn’t. “Did Jane connect any of this with what Robbie did?”

  “Didn’t seem to. No hint of that.—Robbie still doesn’t want any of his father’s clothes.”

  Arthur could have told his mother that the day he had sorted out the sweaters. His mother had been sad the day she got back
from Foster House and Robbie had rejected the clothes, but his mother had left the sweaters and scarves at Foster House to be given to the other boys. Since then his mother had tried again with some more items that had belonged to Richard.

  Now to make the atmosphere a little more cheerful, if he could, Arthur said, “I saw Maggie today.”

  “Maggie? She’s in town?”

  “Yes. She was shopping and I ran into her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before? So that’s why you’re in a good mood.—Are you going to see her again?”

  “I said I might call her, yes.—What would you like for dessert, Mom?”

  That night, Arthur had a vivid dream about Maggie taking a boat somewhere, and he was seeing her off. She had a stateroom to herself, and there were lots of people around, all strangers. Maggie said she was going to the Arctic, and Arthur could not find out why. She was going to be gone a long while, she said, and he was miserable at the prospect. Her hair was much longer, down to her waist, and then as he was waving good-bye to her—from some place remote from the ship but not the dock—her hair became shorter and shorter until it was as it used to be, and Maggie flitted into her stateroom and closed the door. Arthur awoke with damp eyes and a forehead wet with sweat.

  He rubbed his chin with a clenched fist. My God, just a dream, he thought. Maggie was here in town! And she wasn’t going to the Arctic!

  That day, Arthur telephoned the Brewster house during his lunch hour.

  Betty answered in a cheerful tone and passed him to Maggie.

  “Art,” he said, though Maggie never called him that. “You said I could call you up, so I am. Any chance of seeing you?”

  A few seconds later, he had a date to come to Maggie’s house around 6:30 “for a Coke or something.”

  Arthur fully expected to run into Larry Hargiss, so he paid attention to what he wore. After a shower at home, he put on clean blue jeans and shirt, and a summer jacket not absolutely clean but not dirty either. A particularly pretty peachy rose was in full bloom in the garden, but he decided against bringing this in hand, in case Mr. Hargiss was present.

  Mr. Hargiss was at least not in the living room when Arthur arrived. Betty greeted him warmly and remarked that she hadn’t seen him in more than a month.

  “You kids have what you want. I’m going upstairs,” Betty said.

  Maggie made a gin and tonic for Arthur. She wore a pale green shirtwaist dress, white sandals, and looked especially pretty, Arthur thought. The gold bracelet he had given her was still on her right wrist. Had she been in bed with Mr. Hargiss, wearing that? Arthur thought at once, he had been in bed with Francey, wearing Maggie’s chain around his neck; Francey had even praised it. Did that make them even? Did it matter?”

  “What’re you frowning about?” Maggie asked.

  “I dunno.”

  Arthur was prepared for Mr. Hargiss to come down the stairs at any moment, but decided not to ask if he was here, not to say or ask anything about him. But the minutes went by and Mr. Hargiss did not come down the stairs. Maggie talked about Radcliffe and how much she liked her sociology course which she had been able to take in her second semester. She told him about a field project she and another girl student had been given. They had visited employment agencies in Cambridge and had made a survey of their successful and unsuccessful clients with regard to age and education with graphs to illustrate the findings.

  “What about race as a factor?”

  “I know!” Maggie laughed. “Wasn’t supposed to be a factor in this particular survey.”

  A vision of a half-black baby in Irene’s arms danced before his eyes. How much did Maggie know of the story Irene was putting out?

  “I am sorry about your father, Arthur.”

  Arthur rolled his glass between his hands. “Well, I’m not—terribly.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  Arthur hesitated. “Well, look what he did. To you—to us. The way he acted. You think I appreciated that?” He blinked. “You’ve no idea how much pleasanter life is at my house now. You ought to come over and see. Two rooms done over. Mom and I’ve got space! Peace and quiet—”

  “Oh, yes, Robbie’s gone.”

  Arthur gave a laugh. Again he glanced toward the staircase, but maybe Mr. Hargiss really wasn’t here. “Gone, yes, till December at least. He’s at a place called Foster House near Indi. Full of juvenile delinquents like him. Up to age eighteen.”

  Maggie asked what was going to happen after December. Probation anyway, then maybe the Marines, Arthur told her.

  “When would you like me to push off?” he asked.

  “No hurry. I haven’t got a date tonight.” She was sitting on the opposite sofa, forearms crossed on her knees, and frequently she glanced at the carpet, as if she were shy with him.

  “Then maybe you’d like to go out to dinner somewhere.”

  Arthur took her to Mom’s Pride. The air-conditioning was on, and the jukebox sounded fine. Heartened by the first half of his hamburger, Arthur broke his resolution and asked:

  “And how is Mr. Hargiss?”

  “Oh—all right—I suppose.”

  “You came home sooner than you said you would. That’s why I asked.”

  “Well, true, I am back earlier.”

  He shouldn’t ask anything more just now, Arthur thought. Maggie wouldn’t like being quizzed. “Feel like dancing?”

  It was better, dancing. Arthur could relax. During a slow song, he held her in his arms. The magic was still there, for him. And in Maggie? He was not sure.

  When they were sitting in the booth again, he said, “Did your mother say anything to you about Irene Langley?”

  “No.—Is she that blond woman—”

  “Yes. The one I told you about last summer. Goes to my father’s church. Well—you haven’t heard. I may as well tell you before you hear it from someone else. She’s pregnant—and she’s saying my father is responsible.”

  Maggie’s brows frowned. “Wha-at? Saying it to your mother?”

  Arthur nodded. “And to me, too. So when Robbie heard—this, he really turned against my dad. That’s when he shot him, when my dad—”

  “Oh, Arthur, I didn’t know that!”

  “Yes—well—” He nervously downed the last half inch of his beer. “And now—I mean, not now, but when he was alive, it seems my father admitted it to my brother.” There it was, and Maggie was going to start drifting away tonight, now. She’d be polite. But she would be going to the Arctic.

  “It’s not true, is it?—Or is it?”

  “Maybe it is true. My dad was seeing Irene quite often, not—” He began again. “I don’t mean he ever stayed the night with this old bag, but he went to see her the same as he went to see a few other people who go to that church. Irene works at a diner. She’s an ex-prostitute, really awful to look at.” Arthur scowled at the table.

  “Well, do you believe it?” Maggie’s tone didn’t sound as earnest or heavy as he had feared.

  “I have to. Yes.—What a family! Brother in jail, father in—in disgrace. Baby’s due this month. Hope it’s half black, as I always want to say to Mom and don’t.”

  Maggie’s gaze rested on her empty glass that she slid back and forth on the table. She declined Arthur’s offer of another scotch and water.

  “I thought I should tell you all this, because if I didn’t—it’d be like seeing you under false pretenses. Something like that.” If she wanted to tell her mother, he thought, there was nothing he could do about that, and maybe her mother had already heard it from somewhere and had chosen not to say anything to Maggie?

  Arthur wanted another beer and got up to get it. As he was standing waiting at the busy bar counter, he realized that he couldn’t burst out tonight with a cheerful speech about what he wanted to do, what he i
ntended to make of himself by the time he was twenty-three. A scientist! He meant to have a doctorate degree by twenty-three or so and an interesting job somewhere, and if a fixed job were not interesting enough then, he’d be on some exploratory trip or doing research work where he wished. Respected among his colleagues! Dreams! But why couldn’t he make them come true? Yet how could he say any of this tonight without sounding as if he were boasting, full of hot air, trying to compensate for what he had just told Maggie? The image of a hot volcano came to his mind. That was himself! He grabbed his beer and tossed down a dollar bill. He even recognized the volcano picture: It was one he remembered in a book of von Humboldt’s voyages that his grandmother had given him when he was about ten.

  They lingered on till midnight at Mom’s Pride and talked of other things. Arthur looked for a change in Maggie, because of what he had told her, but he did not see any. Could it be that the sins of the father weren’t always visited upon the son? When Arthur drove Maggie home, she didn’t ask him to come in, but Arthur didn’t mind.

  “Kiss you good night?” he whispered. It was like a yes or no question about Mr. Hargiss. He kissed her. And a second time. He went off to his car, sure that he would see her again.

  Had Maggie parted with Mr. Hargiss? Maggie wasn’t the type to announce outright that she’d given someone the brush-off. He’d have to court her again, even if she had. He rather liked the idea.

  32

  “To see Robert Alderman,” Arthur said to a guard in the front hall of Foster House.