He wondered what it would have meant if her grandfather had not died, or if she had had another father, lived in a bigger town, known somebody she could trust. What sort of person would she have been? He could not believe that she would be much different. The fear, possibly, would be more deeply buried; layers of complacency would hide it, and nobody would realize it was there. He did not feel like blaming her father. He did not imagine that Carleton Tweany was responsible for letting her down, or that Dave Gordon was somehow culpable for being young and not very bright or very perceptive. The guilt—if there was any guilt—spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. Across the street a man had parked with his lights on to examine his rear left tire; perhaps he was the person to be considered responsible: he was as good as anybody. He, also, was a participant in the world; if he had, at some early time, made some particular gesture he had not made, or refrained from some gesture-then perhaps Mary Anne would be healthy and confident, and there would be no problem.
Perhaps, at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed. But he doubted it. Nobody had made Mary Anne go wrong, because she had not gone wrong; she was as right as anybody else and far more right than some. But that was of no use. He could know she was right, and she could sense it in her compulsive fashion; but still no way remained by which she could live. It was not a moral issue. It was a practical issue. Someday, in a hundred years, her world might exist. It did not exist now. He thought that he saw the new outlines of it. She was not completely alone, and she had not invented it in a single-handed effort. Her world was partially shared, imperfectly communicated. The persons in it had insufficient contact; they could not communicate with one another, at least not yet. Her contacts were brief and fragmentary—a child here, a Negro there, an isolated thought that brought some response and then faded out. The fact that he felt it, even a little, proved that she was not sick, was not merely misconceived. And he was much older. He could not possibly have come closer. He loved her and others loved her, but that was of no use. What she needed was success.
Across the street the unidentified individual was kicking his tire and bending to see. Schilling watched as the man circled the car, bent once more, and then, getting behind the wheel, roared noisily off. Had a tire been low? Had he run over a bottle, a beer can? Had something of inestimable worth fallen out and been lost? The man was gone, and he would never know. Whatever the man had done, whatever he had, in secret, hatched and developed, would remain unknown.
Schilling opened the telephone book and found the number of the Lazy Wren. He dialed and listened.
“Hello,” a man’s voice, a Negro voice, came in his ear. “Lazy Wren Club.”
He asked to talk to Paul Nitz. Eventually Nitz was at the phone.
“Who was that who answered?” Schilling asked.
“Taft Eaton. He owns the place. Who’s this?” Nitz sounded dulled. “I have to go play a set.”
“Ask him where Mary Anne Reynolds is,” Schilling said. “He found her a place.”
“What place?”
“Ask him,” Schilling said. He hung up. When he felt better, he returned to his work.
Beyond the locked door, individuals passed. He heard the sound of their shoes against the pavement but he did not look up. He put new records on in the listening booth; he sharpened his pencil; he sealed up the Decca order sheet in an envelope and started on the Capitol order sheet.
The darkness hung over her, modified by the scatter of light from the hall. When she turned her head she saw that the hall door was open. She had not locked it; there seemed to be no point. In the dim light a figure was outlined, a man’s figure.
“It didn’t take you long,” she said.
The man entered the room. But it was not Joseph Schilling.
“Oh,” she said, startled, as the opaque form materialized close beside the bed. “It’s you. Did—Tweany tell you?”
“No,” Paul Nitz said, and sat down on the bed beside her. After a moment he reached out and stroked her hair back from her forehead. “I found out at the Wren, from Eaton. This is sure a ratty-looking dump.”
“When did you find out?”
“Just now. I just went down there, to start work for the evening.”
“I’m not in very good shape,” she said.
“You were running,” Nitz said. “And you ran right into yourself. You weren’t even looking where you were going…you were just going, trying to get away. That’s all.”
“Nuts to you,” she said feebly.
“But I’m right.”
“Okay, you’re right.”
Nitz grinned. “I’m glad I got to you.”
“So am I. It’s about time.”
“I wanted you to leave, that night at your apartment. I was sick of that painting.”
“Me too,” she said. After a moment she asked: “Do me a favor?”
“Anything you want.”
“You could go get me my cigarettes.”
“Where are they?” He stood up.
“In my purse, on the dresser. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“How far’s the dresser?”
“You can see it. There’s only this one room—is that too far?”
A period passed in which she lay listening to the noise of Paul Nitz fumbling around in the dark. Then he was back.
“Thanks,” she said as he lit a cigarette for her and placed it between her lips. “Well, it’s been hectic. A hectic week.”
“How do you feel?”
“Not too good,” she said. “But I think I’ll be okay. It’ll take a while.”
“Lie there and rest.”
“Yes,” she said gratefully.
“I’ll turn on some heat.” He found the small gas heater and lit it. Blue flames became visible; the fire hissed and sizzled in the darkness of the room.
“I can’t see him again,” Mary Anne said.
“All right,” Nitz said. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of you until you’re back on your feet, and then you can take off, wherever you want.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
He shrugged. “You took care of me once.”
“When?” She had no memory of it.
“That night when I passed out and hit my head on the toilet. And you sat down with me on the couch and held me in your lap.” He smiled a little, awkwardly.
“Yes,” she said, remembering. “In some ways we had a lot of fun, that night. Lemming… I wonder what became of him. That was such a strange night.”
“I took some time off from the Wren,” Nitz said. “I don’t have to go back for almost two weeks. A sort of premature Christmas vacation.”
“With pay?”
“Well, partially.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that.”
“Now we can go places.”
Mary Anne considered. “Would you really take me places!”
“Sure. Wherever you want.”
“Because,” she said earnestly, “there’re a lot of places I want to see. We can do a lot of things…could we go up to San Francisco?”
“When you feel like it.”
“We can ride on the ferry. Can we do that!”
“Absolutely. There’s one that goes to Oakland.”
With fervor she said: “I want to visit some of those little restaurants out in North Beach. Have you ever been there?”
“Plenty of times. I’ll take you to the Hangover Club to hear Kid Ory.”
“That would be wonderful. And we can go out to Playland…to the funhouse. We can go down the slides. Would you like that?”
“Sure,” he agreed.
“Jesus.” She reached up and hugged him. “You’re a kid.”
“So are you,” Nitz answered.
“I am,” she said. And then she thought of Joseph Schilling. And, presently, snarling with pain and despair, she clutched the man beside her, crying: “What the hell am I going to do? Answ
er me, Paul! How can I live like this?”
“You can’t,” he said.
“It was bad enough before. I knew something was wrong—but now it’s worse. I wish I hadn’t gone in there; Christ, if only I hadn’t gone in there that day.” But it wasn’t true, because she was glad she had found the store. “It’s still there,” she said brokenly. “The store. Joseph Schilling. They’re both there. In a way.”
In a way, but it was a dead shell. There was nothing inside. She lay in the darkness, her arm around Nitz’s neck, cigarette between her fingers, sobbing. It had come and gone, and left her by herself. But she didn’t want to be by herself.
“I can’t stand it!” she shouted. She hurled her cigarette across the room; it struck the far wall and dropped to the rug, a little flicker of red light. “I’m not going to die here in this rat hole.”
Nitz went over and put out the cigarette. “No,” he said, coming back. He gathered her up in his arms, and the bedcovers also, and carried her to the door. “Here we go,” he said, holding her against him. He carried her down the hall and down the stairs; he carried her past the closed-up doors and their blaring sounds, past Mrs. Lessley the landlady, who peered out, suspicious and wary-eyed and hostile. He carried her down the front steps and along the night sidewalk, among the people wandering here and there in droves and in couples among the stores and gas stations and drive-ins and hotels and bars and drugstores. He carried her through the slums, through the business district, past neon signs and cafés and the office of the Leader, past the modern little shops of Pacific Park. Holding her tightly against him, he carried her to his own room.
22
• • • • • • • •
Old men sat in the park, old men in rows covering the benches with their coats and newspapers.
Across the grass a scatter of yellow leaves broke under the feet of people. Two children, boys in jeans, tramped with brown paper bags—their lunches—toward the rim of the park. The old men read their L’Italia and accepted the autumn sun. Beyond the park the Catholic church was tall, and it cast its shadow. A handful of pigeons strode through the gravel around the drinking fountain, seeking remnants of food. The San Francisco sky was a thin, brittle blue. Turning on her bench, Mary Anne saw the slope of Telegraph Hill and the tower at its top: Coit Tower, like a pre-Christian column.
A bus, green and large, went along Columbus Avenue and was lost behind offices. On Mary Anne’s lap her baby stirred, reached out his arms. She drew him back. He had no need for a bus.
He had no need of anything: he was plump and wrapped in warm clothes, clean and cared-for. He dozed. Against his mother he rested and heard the clang of the city. Above and around him, Mary Anne was his protection.
On the park bench with her baby she was young and fresh. She wore a long white smock and low-heeled slippers, and her brown hair, still short, tangled over her ears and fringed her fore head. Earrings, copper and hooped, glinted. Her ankles, pale, bare, were lean above her slippers. Once she took a cigarette from her pocket and lit it with her lighter.
The day was peaceful. Overhead a gull wheeled. Now and then the gull croaked like the sound of dry ropes and wood. Presently a kindly middle-aged lady in a black coat came along the path and seated herself on the bench facing Mary Anne.
Mary Anne picked up a paperbound book that she had brought with her, that Paul wanted her to read. She examined the cover, turned it over, and then she put it down. She did not feel like reading or doing anything at all; she was content to sit. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and in an hour Paul would appear. She met him here; she liked to meet him in the park.
On the opposite bench the kindly middle-aged lady leaned forward, and, with a smile, said: “What a healthy little fellow.”
Mary Anne raised the baby up against her. “This is my son.”
“What is his name?”
“Paul. He’s eleven months old.”
“What a nice name,” the kindly middle-aged lady said. She waved at the baby and pantomimed faces.
“His father’s name is Paul,” Mary Anne said. Looking down, she examined the baby’s collar, smoothed the cotton fabric. “I have seven other children. This is the youngest. The oldest is thirteen.”
“Good heavens,” the kindly middle-aged lady said, amazed.
“I’m just kidding,” Mary Anne said. But someday it would be true; she would have a whole houseful of sons, big sons, strong and noisy sons. “He can’t talk yet. He likes to listen to music. His father is a musician.”
The kindly middle-aged lady nodded sagely.
“His father,” Mary Anne said, “is a student in the afternoon, and in the evening he plays piano at the Club Presto on Union Street. Bop piano. There’re five men in the combo.”
“Music,” the kindly middle-aged lady said. “I believe I haven’t heard any music in the last few years, not since the war, that can compare to Richard Tauber.”
“That’s square,” Mary Anne said, playing with the baby’s hand. “Isn’t it, Paul?”
“And Jeanette MacDonald,” the kindly middle-aged lady said nostalgically. “I’ll never forget her and Nelson Eddy in Maytime. That was such a lovely movie. I cried at the ending; I still cry at it, when I think about it.”
“Go cry somewhere else,” Mary Anne said, joggling her son up and down on her knee.
The kindly middle-aged lady gathered up her purse and departed. Mary Anne smiled down at Paul, and he gurgled and frothed.
Beyond the park the rise of houses glinted in the afternoon sun. Cars, dark specks, crept up the narrow streets, up the hill between the houses. At Mary Anne’s feet a pigeon wandered, pecking at random.
“See the big bird?” Mary Anne said softly to her son. “Nice pigeon. Dinner for one. How about a pigeon pie? Come here, pigeon. Feed the poor.”
She nudged at the pigeon with her toe and it flapped away. Almost at once it was back, again traveling in an aimless circle. Mary Anne wondered what it found to eat, and what it was thinking. She wondered where it lived and who took care of it, if anybody.
“Are you a lady?” she asked the pigeon. “Or a man?”
She sat on the park bench with her son, holding him against her and watching the pigeons and the old men and the children. She was very happy. She watched people appear and go; she saw the leaves fall from the autumn trees and the grass glow with dampness. She saw the whole cycle of life: she saw the children grow old and become bent little men reading L’Italia and she saw them reborn in the arms of women. And she and her son remained unchanged, outside the birth and decay that went on around her. They could not be touched. They were safe. She saw the sun go out and return, and she was not frightened.
She wondered where she had got this peacefulness. It had come with her baby; but where had he come from? She did not completely understand him. He was a mystery, a separation of herself, and he was her husband held tight in her arms. Perhaps he had come to her on the wind. The warm spring wind had plucked at her and brought her this, had filled her up with permanent life. Had carried off the emptiness.
Mary Anne and her son watched the world change around them, watched everything that had ever happened and would ever happen. And after that they got up and went to the end of the park. There they waited, because the hour was up and it was time to wait.
People hurried along Columbus Avenue, and Mary Anne shaded her eyes with her hand to see if he was coming. She held the baby across her shoulder, and the people moved by her on both sides. Presently she saw a gaunt, ambling shape making its way along, hands in its pockets, coat flapping, hair long and uncombed.
“There he is,” she said to her son. “You’re facing the wrong way.” She turned him around to see. “See?”
“You sure look good,” Paul Nitz said, arriving shyly.
“You don’t; you look like a bum.” She kissed him. “Let’s go eat. Did you shop?”
“We can shop on the way home,” he said.
“Don’t you have a
ny money?”
As they walked he searched his coat pockets, bringing up ticket stubs, paper clips, pencils, folded notes. “I guess I gave it to you.” He squinted in the glare of the sidewalk. “To one of you, anyhow.”
Lagging behind him, Mary Anne strolled along, hugging her son and looking into store windows, as Paul Nitz searched the rest of his pockets. Once she yawned. Once she stopped to peer at a display of imported Scottish pipes and then a shelf of harmonicas. Once she caught up with her husband and leaned against him while the three of them waited for the streetlight to change.
“Tired?” he asked.
“Sleepy. Would you look good smoking a pipe!”
“I’d look like the wrath of God,” he answered.
The light changed and, with the other people, they crossed.
Philip K. Dick, Mary and the Giant
(Series: # )
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