Collected Stories Page 26

  He was twenty-seven the summer that Gretchen met him, which was a rather advanced age for a boy of his type. He couldn’t afford to get much older than that, for his hair was the sort that is gone soon after thirty and the boyish fullness of his face was soon to take on an omen of obesity. It may seem odd to harp on Jimmie’s looks so, but his looks were just about all that he had to go on. He was loosely connected with the same crowd that Carl Zerbst was, only he never had even the loan of such a flashy conveyance as Carl Zerbst had. Nevetheless he seemed to be well-enough liked, he cut quite a figure at Mona’s, which was the place outside of Laguna where fun-lovers went when the sun had withdrawn from the beach. He could be counted on for the quick and right answer and he fitted in quite acceptably with both crowds.

  There were two crowds that he and Carl Zerbst moved around in, not mutually exclusive but different enough for it to be something of a trick to operate with an equally fair degree of success in each. In the afternoons you could always find Jimmie playing volleyball on the beach with a number of other bright and anonymous young fellows of the sort that abounded on Southern California beaches before the war started and during the years there was so much unemployment. Jimmie had on sky-blue trunks of a satiny finish that sparkled in the sun when he leapt and shouted. He cut fantastic capers, asserting himself all over whatever place he was in, giving nobody a moment’s chance to ignore him.

  The trouble was that nearly all of the others did the same thing so that sometimes it was as if each was performing in a separate ring, possibly in a translucent glass sphere of some kind. The rule of the game was to seem to be part of the others, but each was translucently walled away from the rest by his self-absorbed brightness. Nearly each one had his talent and his good looks, the act that he could put on, the gaiety and the good times that his youth called for. But these were not stable commodities. They were not to be counted on for more than five summers or three summers or even two. And having a thing in your grasp that dissolves without ceasing makes for an acid brewed at the roots of the heart. This acid is kept down there for a certain time only, and then it begins to rise and appear on the surface. It changes the prettiest face in a frightening manner, showing up in the eyes and around the mouth, affecting even the voice. A shocking anomaly when the wolf’s eyes begin to peer out of the lamb’s soft face!—ridiculous and too awful to think about…

  The meeting with Jimmie came about in this way. Jimmie was worried about his scalp condition. He had been warned that saltwater dried the scalp and contributed to baldness, so he did not go in the water in the presence of others. He had bought a rubber swimming cap which he carried up the beach with him to a secluded spot where he could put it on unobserved and take a swim by himself, for he felt that a man wearing a swimming cap was somewhat ludicrous-looking and not in the bright tradition. Now on this afternoon that he met Gretchen the volleyball game had broken up a little before sundown and he had started up the beach for his solitary swim when he noticed that the girl who had been watching him all afternoon with lonely eyes was a little way up ahead of him, walking disconsolately in the same direction as he. He was not a boy who wasted much thought on others, but those who said that Jimmie had a good heart were right about it. It pleased him to think that his charm was something that could be used to bring sunlight to dark places. So when he noticed this lonely girl ahead of him on the beach, he overtook her and started a conversation.

  Gretchen was so grateful she made no effort to hide it. The desire for real companionship had been thwarted for two months, since the California trip started, and this was the first release. She found herself chattering as freely as Augusta and all at once the conviction that she had a nice figure returned. Her simplicity and his boyish high spirits got them along quite easily together. He wasn’t ashamed to put on the swimming cap in Gretchen’s presence. He put it on and they went in swimming together. The big waves knocked them over each other, against and around each other, and Gretchen’s excitement gave her a glow that more than made up for the imperfections of her form and features, and if Jimmie had declined somewhat from the meridian of his beauty, it was not in Gretchen’s eyes enough to notice.

  Jimmie was the type that cuts up with girls but doesn’t make many passes. There had been a few embarrassed chapters in his life of the sort that a sophisticated person would guess from something barely visible about him. He would never be definite about such a thing as that. It was like his talent and his thinning blond hair and everything else in his ephemeral makeup. He was well-liked by girls and got along with them fine in the presence of others but when alone with a girl he was less at ease, it was usually something that he tried to avoid. And so he was somewhat surprised and pleased with himself when at the suggestion of a particularly big wave he found himself and the girl in a juxtaposition more definite than he had planned. And he didn’t get up and she didn’t try to either. It was a lovely sunset, exactly the sort of the pulp romance illustrations, and somebody’s portable radio on the other side of the rocks played all the most melting tunes, such as “Melancholy Baby,” “Kiss Me Again,” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon.”

  The first year of their marriage they stayed in California and the brief spurt of manly assurance that being married gave Jimmie served him well for a while. He got a little extra work in the movies and she gave private instruction to movie people’s kids in Beverly Hills. Jimmie met a young fellow who was supposed to be a rising star on the lot, their lives were briefly lit by his terrible glamour. But it turned out to be a disadvantage for the rising young star was suddenly disgraced somehow or other and Jimmie was included in the dismissal. There was no more extra work to be had and the manly assurance petered out of Jimmie and he began to lie around the apartment in shorts or his pale blue bathrobe not even much caring to go to the beach anymore. She was so in love with him by this time, for hers was the sort of devotion that can’t stop growing, that nothing he did caused her anything worse than perplexity or sorrow. That is to say that she never flew into rages or hit him over the head with the kitchen stove as she would have been thoroughly justified in doing, particularly after the ex-rising star of the studio began to use their apartment as social and business headquarters and even took to sleeping there when he got put out of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. She was so in love with Jimmie that he could almost convince her that Bobby was a nice boy. She only felt sorrow and perplexity when Bobby, stinking with liquor, fell in their bedroom at three in the morning and had to be put to bed on the other side of Jimmie because you couldn’t just leave him lying there on the floor in his stupefied condition.

  So the California interval petered out and they returned disconsolately to Dubuque, the war having started and Jimmie involved with his draft board. But Jimmie had a talk with the doctors and it was mutually and amicably agreed that his temperament was not just right for the army, and he got out of it. He went into one of the local defense plants and by this time the fact that Jimmie had talent, or had had talent, was universally forgotten and ignored, it was now a living faith only to Jimmie and Gretchen. To Gretchen the living faith was Jimmie himself who could do nothing wrong but who could make little mistakes. Who could be misled by wrong people, because of his trusting nature, and who was just too naturally sweet to be safe in a world of people who have no respect for the finer things anymore.

  He was twenty-nine and he hadn’t changed much from the summer that she met him in Laguna, but just enough to make all the difference in the world with somebody of his pretty-boy, baby-face type. He was a pretty boy who wasn’t very pretty anymore and although he only weighed about 165 pounds which wasn’t too much for his five feet and seven inches, he nevertheless looked rather pudgy in clothes that weren’t carefully tailored. Somebody down at the defense plant had mortified him to death by calling him Piggy for a nickname. It wasn’t fair to call him that. He did have a very short turned up nose and a round face so that he looked like one of those pretty little pigs in the colored cartoons, but the sobriq
uet was unkind to a boy who had hobnobbed with the near-royalty of Hollywood and Broadway and who everybody with any perception should know had a brilliant future as soon as the war was over.

  As the spring of their first year in Dubuque rolled around Gretchen’s sorrow and perplexity had grown to alarming dimensions which was not improved when a telegram arrived from New York signed Bobby and saying COME QUICK CHANCE OF A LIFETIME WILL EXPLAIN WHEN I SEE YOU. Gretchen could see nothing to be very joyful about in this message but Jimmie let out a wild whoop of joy and rushed to the bureau and started throwing shirts, socks and neckties into his suitcase. “Baby, this is the break that we’ve lived for!” he kept saying.

  “But what is it, Jimmie?” she pleaded.

  “I’m sure it’s about the Repertory deal.”

  “What deal is that,” she enquired of him sweetly and gently.

  But he didn’t stop to tell her, in case he knew, and at six o’clock in the evening of the same day he had hopped on a plane with somebody’s cancelled reservation and two hundred fifty dollars from their savings account which left them all but cleaned out. It has not been mentioned, though perhaps understood, that he had already gotten his release from the defense plant. A sort of occupational neurosis had taken care of that. His hands had started shaking uncontrollably at work so that he was too much of a nuisance and the doctor at the plant had agreed with him that further routine employment for a man of his talent might lead to a serious crack-up.

  So he was off to Broadway. And about a week after his departure came a brief wire, which said, JUST ARRIVED EVERYTHING TOO WONDERFUL FOR WORDS THINGS HAVE NEVER LOOKED BRIGHTER FOR YOU AND ME DEAREST BABY WITH ALL MY LOVE JIMMIE.

  At first she thought it was only the excitement of this wire that affected her stomach and put her to bed for a day, but the doctor informed her the manifestations were of a less psychic order. She didn’t even know where to reach Jimmie to let him know that they were going to have it. Someone suggested wiring him in care of Actor’s Equity which she did, but evidently the wire was not delivered to him. Three weeks had passed since his flight to whatever wonderful thing it was that Bobby had lured him off to. Then came one of those big Jumbo postcards, covered all over with his feverish childish scrawl in pale green ink and the face of it bearing a picture of “The Great White Way.” “In the left-hand corner,” wrote Jimmie, “you will see the house that we open in after the Boston try-out.” That was the only allusion he made to the wonderful thing he had gone to. In the left-hand corner was an indiscriminate welter of lighted marquees announcing everything from Betty Grable to Ruby Foo’s. Which one was he going to open in after the Boston try-out? It didn’t matter. She packed her things and made ready to join Jimmie in his long-delayed but seemingly imminent and astonishing plunge to glory. Then came one of those vague let-downs their life had been so full of. UNION DIFFICULTY HAD TIED UP OUR PLANS BUT BOBBY IS IN CLOSE TOUCH WITH THE RICHEST ANGEL ON BROADWAY DO NOT COME HERE UNTIL I ADVISE YOU FURTHER. WITH ALL DEAREST LOVE TO YOU, JIMMIE.

  She managed to conceal this wire from her folks and proceeded with her departure. She wired Jimmie: GOT YOUR MESSAGE BUT CANNOT ALTER PLANS FOR REASONS THAT I WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU WHEN I SEE YOU. She then liquidated the remainder of their savings account on a train ticket and a two-piece suit with an adjustable waist-line.

  He met her at the train all smiles and she instantly burst into tears and told him her story. Jimmie cried, too, in the cab that took them to Bobby’s. Why didn’t you let me know, he kept repeating. Wire? Actor’s Equity? No, of course he didn’t get it! How would they know where he was? Oh, well, anyhow—

  Bobby was wonderful to them and again, in spite of past history, she was almost persuaded that he was a very sweet guy as Jimmie insisted. Certainly his apartment was a dream! And he gave it to them, lock, stock and sunlamp. He stayed next door with a bachelor friend of his who was also in show business. And the first few days were wonderfully bright and cheerful with everybody talking and acting like characters in a drawing room comedy of the smartest description. Unmistakably Jimmie had gotten in with a really up-and-coming set of people. She could see that he was just dizzy with it. He was even more exhilarated than he had seemed that first summer at Laguna Beach when vague studio prospects had tossed him among the clouds. However the exact thing which all of this exuberance was leading up to was still a bit too obscure for Gretchen’s comfort. She dared not show her anxiety to Jimmie but she would certainly have appreciated plainer speech on the subject of the big deal that seemed to be cooking.

  Nobody seemed to have time to sit down and discuss it with her and when she brought it up when they were, finally, alone in bed together, he would say. Baby, this repertory idea would only make sense to somebody who was born in a wardrobe trunk!

  Exactly what that meant was no more certain than anything else had been.

  Along toward the end of her second week at Bobby’s there was a curious and distressing scene. The bachelor friend that Bobby was staying with burst into the apartment at about four in the morning and shouted her name in the living room. She was alone in bed, for Bobby and Jimmie had gone off somewhere in connection with something about the repertory deal. She hastily slipped on her robe and went to the living room but by the time she had got there Bobby and Jimmie himself had entered the apartment and a fierce struggle was in progress. Bobby who was much the biggest and huskiest of the three had pinioned the arms of his hysterical friend, and the friend was screaming things that made only the vaguest but most horrible sense to her. They got him out of the apartment, but by the time they did so, Gretchen felt she could not remain there any longer. They all sat down and talked things over quietly. “You don’t believe it?” Jimmie kept pleading. And she said, “No, I don’t, of course I don’t, I couldn’t!” But she could not look at him, all she could do was sit there stupidly crying and clinging on to his hand and letting him kiss her and squeeze her shoulders spasmodically against him. Bobby made coffee and they sat up all night and by the time morning came it had all been settled that she should go back to Dubuque till the union difficulty and so forth had blown over. And as for those things the hysterical friend had shouted, forget them altogether and just go on as if nothing at all had happened—and have the baby.

  She had the baby that summer in Dubuque, and when fall came she went back to teaching again and she and the baby lived in the home of her parents. It was very much like the life before she knew Jimmie, for she had not been a popular girl and had lived at home very quietly. There was a difference in that the interval with Jimmie had left her with hunger for more than a routine comfort. But she didn’t complain of the fox-teeth in her heart. She felt as if she had done something wrong and foolish for which she was now enduring a necessary penance. She was patient at teaching and studied at night and thought that maybe that summer she’d be with Jimmie somewhere, in the East or at home, and being somewhat enlightened, a bit less confused, it might be possible to continue their life on a more realistic basis. Having the son had meant very little at first because she was still so absorbed in the lack of Jimmie. It was perhaps foolish of her to want the child to be like him. But she did, and was pleased that its eyes stayed blue and its hair showed no sign of getting any darker. It seemed to have a light nature the same as Jimmie and she was certain that it was exhibiting signs of Jimmie’s talent. It laughed before it could talk and the laugh was like Jimmie’s, sudden and unimaginably charming as his was or had been when they had first met at Laguna. The truth of it was that the wayward Jimmie the First was undergoing a very wonderful metamorphosis in the mind of his wife. He was becoming a pearl in the shell of her recollection. She was seeing him more and more as he was on the beach that summer at Laguna, in the wonderful sparkling blue trunks, leaping into the air with bursts of laughter among those anonymous bright young men who ignored her. It seemed as if he had gone right up in one of those skyward leaps and never come back to the earth, which was in a sense precisely what Jimmie had done.

/>   On a descending scale of enthusiasm the messages about the repertory deal that was cooking in New York continued to reach her. But they became vaguer than ever and the lapses between them were longer. And then one day came an ordinary government-stamped postcard, not even graced with a picture of lighted marquees. It was not at all like Jimmie. She thought wildly for a moment that Bobby must have written it, or one of those others whom she had never trusted in spite of Jimmie’s insistence that they were so nice. Certainly one thing after another had blown up and they had witnessed and experienced and tacitly admitted the blowing up of them. But here was the message purportedly from Jimmie. “The repertory deal has gone up in smoke like everything else in my life. I have disappointed you and disappointed myself and everyone else who ever had any faith in me. There is nothing left to believe in and nothing to hope for except that you will forget me. With all my love, Jimmie.”

  Surely it was a forged document or something that Bobby dictated and forced him to write with a revolver pressed to his temple. The ink was pale green and the handwriting, childishly crooked, could only be Jimmie’s. In a few days some word would come to refute it, some jubilant contradiction would surely follow. She waited and while she waited went patiently on with her untheatrical life. But no more messages came from the wayward Jimmie, and the hope he expressed in the last one was slow to come true.