Young Mr. Keefe Read online

  Blazer looked up. “Been in the water?”

  “No,” Jimmy said. “It’s not too good for swimming.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Well, the bottom’s pretty mucky,” he said. “It’s the kind of bottom that you step into, and your foot sinks. And a lot of bubbles come up. Besides, I saw a snake.”

  “Coward,” Blazer said, and rolled over.

  “I like to swim where I know what’s on the bottom.”

  “I think I’ll go in,” Blazer said. He stood up and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  “You’re not going to change here, are you?” Claire said quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “Well—”

  “Jim’s a man and you’re my wife. You’ve both seen me in the raw separately, for God’s sake. Why not together?” He pulled his trunks out of his knapsack and started off into the shrubbery, swinging them by the draw-string.

  “It sounds like a sensible argument,” Jimmy said.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Claire said absently.

  Jimmy stooped over the fire and picked up the bubbling pot of coffee. “Mind if I pour myself a cup of this?”

  “Go ahead, please do.”

  He poured coffee into a paper cup. “Smells good,” he said. “Any cream?”

  “Evaporated milk … there, in the can.”

  He poured milk into the cup and tasted the result. “Good,” he said, “very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I pour you some?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “About last night—” he began.

  “Please,” she said sharply. “Never mind.”

  “O.K.,” he said. “That’s just the way I feel. Never mind.”

  Blazer came out of the woods in his trunks and headed towards the water.

  “Cereal?” Claire asked.

  “No, thanks.” Jimmy looked hard into his cup.

  “Aren’t you going to have any breakfast?”

  “I’m not too hungry …”

  “I can make some toast …”

  “No, thanks.” He drained his cup. “I’ll see what Blazer’s doing,” he said.

  He found Blazer standing on one of the rocks, studying the water. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Aren’t you going in?”

  “I don’t know,” Blazer said. “You’re right about the bottom. It doesn’t look too appetising. I saw a turtle over there—a snapper. How’d you like to step on one of those things?”

  “Now who’s the coward?” Jimmy asked.

  Blazer leaped back on to the sand and laughed. “Well, let’s all go in later,” he said. “There’s safety in numbers.”

  “Well … perhaps.”

  The two of them stood side by side, looking at the lake. It was one of those increasingly rare moments, Jimmy realized, when the two of them were actually alone together. Ordinarily, he would have thought nothing of this; to-day, it made him feel awkward and embarrassed.

  “Christ, I wish we didn’t have to go back to-day,” Blazer was saying. “We really should have given ourselves more time—say a week. Then it would have been worth all the trouble getting up and getting down.”

  “Yes, a week would be good.”

  “Look,” Blazer said, “let’s do it again some time. Could you take a week off from work? I could, and probably Claire could take some time off from her charity cases. Later in the summer—and the four of us can come up here together.”

  “Four?”

  “Sure, with Helen.” Blazer looked at him. “What’s the matter between you and Helen anyway? You don’t seem to include her—”

  “Well, the fact is,” Jimmy said slowly, looking away, “we’ve—we’ve separated; I told Claire yesterday, on the lift. I’m sorry—I haven’t been telling you the truth, I know. But that’s the way it is. I wasn’t going to tell you, but you’d have known sooner or later—”

  “What happened? She walked out on you?”

  The abruptness of the remark startled him. “Yes,” he said. “She left. She—she went home. It’s—well, it’s just one of those things.”

  Blazer was silent. Finally, he said soberly, “I’m sorry to hear that, Keefe-o. I really am.”

  “Well,” Jimmy said rapidly, “you never think that it will happen to you. I never did. And then it does happen to you, and you don’t know what to do. I know I’m not unique, it’s happened to lots of people. But—well, I just didn’t have the guts to tell you before.”

  “Forget it. It’s just a hell of a shame.” He put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. It was a spontaneous gesture—and, for Blazer, a boy not given to physical displays of affection, it was a singular one. “You’re too nice a guy,” Blazer said.

  “Thanks,” Jimmy said. His chest reverberated with gratitude, suddenly, and joy. They started back.

  “Didn’t you go in?” Claire asked.

  “No, we lost our nerve,” Blazer said.

  “You’re both cowards.”

  They sat around the little fire, the steaming coffee pot. “Jimmy just told me about Helen,” Blazer said.

  “Oh, did he?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

  “What do you think he should do?”

  “What?” Claire asked.

  “Do. What should he do?”

  Jimmy wanted to stop the conversation. “You’ve both been wonderful to me,” he said. And, quickly realizing the vacuity of the remark, he added, “I mean you’re both very therapeutic.”

  “We—well, we want to help you in every way we can.”

  “Sure,” Blazer said. “But how?”

  His joy, in the moment by the rock, had disappeared. Instead, he felt a dry sickness in his throat. This was why he hadn’t wanted to tell them. He knew they would begin entwining themselves in his problem, making it their own. And after all, it was his, his to decide.

  “Look—” he began.

  But all at once Claire and Blazer were deep in a conversation about him.

  “Of course we’ve never met her …” Claire said.

  “She was damned good-looking in that picture …”

  He began hearing them from a distance, and, for a minute, it seemed as though they were actually moving away from him. “Of course she’s probably one of those determinedly California girls …” “Yes, but Jimmy’s a little New England, too, don’t forget …” “But didn’t he come out here? Didn’t he try?”

  Their words had no meaning now, heard through such layers of air, with what seemed like trees and water and finally mountains in between. He had retreated from them now, into his familiar trough of self-despair, and he wondered if they would miss him if he should actually stand up and walk away. Presently he stood up and walked towards the woods. They went on talking—two conspirators, mapping strategies, laying plans. Why don’t they try to straighten out their own marriage? he thought angrily.

  He walked slowly into the trees, along the path they had taken yesterday. Of course, he thought, they were only trying to be kind. Perhaps even last night Claire had only been trying to be kind. Was that possible? Well, he thought bitterly, he didn’t want their kindness if their kindness came in these odd spurts. Claire, for instance. Yesterday, they had climbed up the mountain, and she had fallen. He had reached for her, and she had cried, “Don’t touch me!” and she had meant it. Then later, in the night, she had begged him to touch her, and meant it, too. She was off and on. He was out of their sight now. He heard them calling him. He stopped, but didn’t answer them.

  And yet, he remembered, when Claire had asked him, “Would it be hard for you to love me?” he had answered no, that it would not be. Hadn’t he meant that, too?

  What is happening to me? he wondered. And he thought, perilously, that perhaps there was some subtle ingredient in himself, some substance that, when it came into contact with others, precipitated unhappiness. Had this been what had destroyed his own marriage? And was it now destroying Blaz
er’s?

  “Jimmy!” Claire’s voice called.

  “Coming,” he answered.

  Hadn’t he perhaps known, when Claire woke him in the night, that going with her would lead only to one thing? And hadn’t he gone with her, knowing? And if that were the case …

  He turned and started back. If that were the case, if he was to blame … he tried not to think what it would mean if he was to blame.

  “Where’ve you been?” Claire asked when he reached them.

  “Just exploring,” Jimmy said, smiling hard.

  “You didn’t like us talking that way, did you? About Helen—we’re sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s all right.”

  “We promise not to do it again.”

  “I know you must be pretty broken up about it,” Blazer said.

  “No.”

  “Sure. You must be, I’m sorry.”

  “Please,” he said, “let’s not talk about it. I’m not broken up. I’ve just got to the point where the subject bores me a little.”

  “Sure, that’s understandable.”

  Claire said, “While you were gone, I did have one thought. Not that I’m an expert on broken homes or anything, but I do do that sort of thing in San Francisco …”

  “I’m not a charity case,” Jimmy said.

  “No—but what would you say if I were to try to see Helen? If I tried to talk to her. Would that help?”

  “I’d say—”

  “What? What do you think?” She looked at him searchingly.

  “I’d say for God’s sake let’s shut up about it,” he said.

  They were both silent.

  Jimmy looked around. “Do you mind?” he asked. “I mean, would you think it was awful if I had a sip from that Thermos? I feel in the need of something, and I’m afraid a drink is it.”

  Claire said softly, “It’s hardly the cocktail hour—ten-thirty in the morning.”

  Blazer looked at him. “Yeah, why don’t you hold off?” he said casually. “We’ll have to start back in three or four hours.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me,” Jimmy said. He picked up the Thermos, tilted it, and drank deeply. Putting it down, he said, “That warms me up fine. Just fine.”

  It was a large Thermos, and he looked at it, over the lip, inside. It was half-empty. Three hours? They would be starting back. Four hours, perhaps, and there would be enough. He patted the jar carelessly, and said, “I drink, you know.” They said nothing. Furtively he thought: Four hours? Would there be enough for four slow hours of time?

  7

  The opening scene, the earliest part, was vivid enough. It was the end, the weeks they had spent in the apartment on Capitol Avenue, that was the hardest to remember. He moved his mind back into this shadowy area of disjointed greetings and good-byes, trying to isolate the scenes, establish the sequence. Sitting by the rock in the warm sun, holding the cool yellow drink in his hand, he tried to put things together, one by one.

  First there was that night, that first time, in the borrowed apartment on Sixty-eighth Street, when her love had seemed almost terrifyingly urgent. “Hallelujah!” she had cried, and afterwards, as he held her in his arms, she had sobbed long, deep, grateful sobs. And then, that December night in the motel outside Reno, after they had been married for the first time, then it had been wonderful, too, with no hint of what was to come later. The next day they had driven south, intending to go to Las Vegas, but they had changed their minds and driven to Yosemite instead.

  He remembered Yosemite. How many days had it been? Less than a week, but it had been their one true honeymoon. The other one, the longer one, that they called their honeymoon, had been a different story. Somewhere, he thought, between those days at Yosemite and the trip to the West Indies, then home to the apartment, everything had changed.

  He remembered Yosemite Valley covered with snow, cold and jewel-like, the tall cliffs rising abruptly from the valley floor, frozen waterfalls sparkling in the sun. He remembered Inspiration Point, Mirror Lake—poetic names—and the huge old Ahwanee Hotel, where they had sat, with their shoes off, in front of the fire. They had taken long walks in the snow every afternoon, and once, when a swift flurry of snow descended, it had blinded them and they had stood very still in the centre of it. He had been able to see only her eyes. Laughing, thinking that they were lost for ever in the snowstorm, he had pulled his heavy coat around her and they sank down together in the snow. “We’re invisible,” Helen had whispered, and he had kissed her with the snow blowing in her hair. The snow continued to fall. Later, she said, “If the Donner party had done this, they wouldn’t have died crossing the Sierras. They could have kissed each other warm. Are you cold?”

  “No.”

  “Neither am I. Isn’t this a wonderful way to freeze to death?”

  And they laughed as they pictured how they would look if a rescue party should happen to stumble upon them. (“I shall insist they put us in a single stretcher,” Helen said.) After a while, the snow stopped, and they stood up and walked back to the hotel, cold now, and wet, but happy.

  In the mornings they slept late. “Isn’t it marvellous to think that no one knows where we are?” Helen said. They had no idea, during this time, that on either side of them, in California and Connecticut, plans were spinning out, arrangements were being made for a dignified wedding, a dignified honeymoon, a dignified life. The Keefe and Warren families were busily deciding how to deal with their erring children, figuring ways to make the best out of a bad situation.

  In the evenings, they ate dinner in the big high-ceilinged dining-room and went to bed early. “No two people deserve to be as happy as we are,” Helen had said, and the words echoed now, prophetically.

  But it had to end. They couldn’t stay in Yosemite Valley for ever; they had to go back to face whatever had to be faced with their families. On the last afternoon, walking in the snow, they talked’ about it.

  “Well, we’re big enough, aren’t we?” Helen said. “We can stand right up to them—and tell them. Tell them how much we love each other, the things we plan to do. We can convince them, can’t we, that we’re old enough to know what we’re doing?”

  “It won’t be easy,” Jimmy said. “Remember how they acted on the phone. They still think of us as children.”

  “It will be easy if we just stand side by side and refuse to be cowed by them!”

  “I ought to warn you about my family,” Jimmy said.

  “What about them?”

  “Well, it’s hard to explain. They’re Yankees—they don’t make mistakes. At least they don’t admit to making mistakes. There’s only one member of the Keefe family who ever made a mistake—and that was the end of her.”

  “Who was that?”

  “My Cousin Harriet—my father’s brother’s daughter. Her picture has been turned against the wall!”

  “What in the world did she do?”

  Jimmy laughed. “Promise you’ll never tell a soul? Everybody knows about it, of course, but it’s just never mentioned. She married a cop.”

  Helen was silent. “What did they do?” she asked, after a moment.

  “They were noble. They’re always noble! They tried to reason with her, and when she wouldn’t be reasoned with, they cut her off.”

  “Cut her off?”

  “Yes. Severed relations. Pretended she was never born. Oh, my mother tried—she had them to dinner once, Harriet and her policeman. I remember the only thing she said about him.”

  “What was that?”

  “She said, ‘I imagine he looks quite natural in his uniform!’”

  “Ah—”

  “You see, that’s the way they are. No mistakes tolerated. They have misfortunes, of course, like when somebody gets bumped out of Yale. Things happen that inconvenience them. But when those things happen, it’s a sort of challenge. To see if they can turn the misfortune into an advantage. Do you see what I mean? Right now, they may be terribly distressed about you and me. We didn’t get married t
he Keefe way. They’ll have to figure out a way to make it a good thing.”

  “You mean,” Helen said slowly, “that you marrying me is like—Harriet, marrying a policeman?”

  “Oh, no, it’s not that bad.” Jimmy took her hand. “They’ll like you. But they’ll have to go through this ‘working-things-out’ process first. They’ll have to get together, like a grand jury—all of them, all the cousins and uncles and aunts—and work it out. The next step will probably be a party. You’ll have to be introduced to Somerville. Mother will have a tea for you, and you’ll have to shake hands with Aunt Marian and Aunt Celeste and the Hartford cousins and the upstate cousins and my Great-aunt Kathleen, whose name—don’t laugh—is Mrs. W. W. Doubleday …”

  Helen giggled softly. “I do want to meet Mrs. W. W. Doubleday,” she said.

  “You will.” He smiled at her. “You’ll meet all of them. I’m afraid you’ll sort of have to go along with it.”

  “Why?” she asked suddenly.

  “Because”—Jimmy laughed—“because they never make mistakes. They haven’t made a mistake for four generations. That’s why.” He swung her hand in his and they started back to the hotel.

  That night, after dinner, instead of going directly upstairs, Jimmy suggested that they go into the bar for a drink. Helen had hesitated at first, but when Jimmy urged her, she consented. After all, he said, they were leaving in the morning to go back and face the music. He needed something, a drink, to strengthen him for that ordeal. Sitting in the bar, which was decorated to resemble a Western mining town, they talked about it some more. He tried again to explain about his father, who lived by rules laid down by his own father, and by his grandfather before that. And about his mother, Melise, who fancied herself a free agent, but who had lived long enough with the unwritten family laws to obey them always, and about Turner Ames, the lawyer, who counselled James Keefe, Sen., on everything, and about Miss Maitland, his father’s secretary, who understood the intricacies of the Keefe family operation far better than Jimmy’s mother did.

  “But we’re ourselves,” Helen had said. “We can make our own rules, can’t we? Do we have to abide by theirs?”