Young Mr. Keefe Read online

  “We can lead our own lives,” Jimmy said. “But we can’t fly in their faces too much. We ran off and got married—we broke a rule there. But we can’t do that sort of thing often. That’s all I mean.” He smiled at her, but her face remained worried.

  “Can we live where we want?” she asked.

  “Of course—as long as we can convince them that it’s the right place for us to live.”

  “But why do we have to convince them?”

  “Why should we antagonize them?”

  “I don’t mean antagonize them,” Helen said. She stopped then, and smiled. “I don’t know what I mean,” she said. “I guess I just don’t want anyone to interfere with us, darling.”

  “Don’t forget that I’m an only child …”

  “Does that make a lot of difference?”

  “Yes. It does, to them.” Then he told her what he had somehow not wanted to tell her before, though he had known that he must tell her some time. He had been trained to speak of wealth with modesty, or not at all. The richer you were, the poorer you pretended to be. It was known as “treating money tastefully.” If you could afford to buy a Cadillac, you bought a Ford, because it was more economical on gasoline. “There’s quite a bit of money involved,” he said slowly.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. We can ignore it for a while. But some day, I suppose, it will pull us back.”

  “Back to where?”

  “Back to Somerville—where it is.” He sipped his drink thoughtfully.

  “Is it—that much?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “A million dollars?”

  “More than that, I think.”

  “Two million?”

  “Well,” he said, “of course I really don’t know. But when my grandfather died, the figure they printed in the paper was four and a half million.… That was in 1946.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “That’s a lot. And it’s all—all going to be yours some day?”

  “I’m the only child, you see …”

  She was silent. “Oh, dear!” she said finally. “It scares me! It terrifies me. I wish you hadn’t told me.”

  “Let’s have another drink.”

  “No, no …”

  “Come on. I’m sorry I told you if it worries you.”

  “You have a drink. I’ll wait.”

  “All right.” He signalled the waiter.

  “I’m beginning to see what you mean,” Helen said later. “I suppose they’ll think I’m a gold digger …”

  “No, they won’t. Not when they see how nice you are.”

  “Harriet’s policeman,” she said. “Is that what they thought about him? That he was a conniver?”

  “Well—”

  “They did?”

  “I guess some of the family thought that.”

  “But she was—as you put it—‘cut off.’”

  “Yes.”

  “Poor Harriet,” she sighed. “Poor policeman!” She smiled a weary smile. “I feel I know them both so well already. Especially him. He and I are in the same boat.”

  “Now, don’t say things like that. It’s not true.”

  “If they don’t like me—”

  “They will,” he said. “Of course they will! Darling, you’re the most wonderful girl in the world.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And do you know what I love most about you?”

  “What?”

  “It’s—well, it’s your niceness. You’re so different from any girl I’ve ever known. You’ve got this wonderful thing—this niceness. It’s everywhere—all about you, like a very nice perfume.”

  “I love you, too,” she said softly.

  He smiled broadly. “Then cheer up,” he said. “Have another drink, quick. Let’s have a party.”

  “Let’s go upstairs now—”

  “One more—”

  “All right.”

  It was always with the third drink that his spirits rose. That night in Yosemite, drinking the third drink, he began talking gaily, confidently, about the future. “I only told you about the money to explain why they take a proprietary interest in what I do,” he said. “And to explain why they’ll take the same kind of interest in you. Which you mustn’t mind. They’re really quite nice people when you get to know them. Dad’s a little Solomon Sobersides sometimes, but he’s a good sport. But don’t get the wrong idea,” he said earnestly. “Don’t think that I’m just going to sit around all my life and wait for that money. I want to get a job of my own and make my own way. I’ve got to—in order to prove to myself that I can. Do you see? That’s why I married you.”

  “And I’ll help you all I can,” she said softly. And then, as he lifted his glass and drained it, she said, in a breathless voice, “Please don’t have another drink!”

  “Why not?” he said lightly. “Clears my head. Makes me see stars in your eyes.”

  “My eyes don’t have stars!”

  “Yes, they do,” he said, holding his face close to hers. “They do, they do! There’s the Pleiades, Electra, Merope … the Southern Cross …”

  “Please, Jimmy.”

  “‘Please, Jimmy,’” he mimicked. “Just one more. So I can see the whole damn’ Milky Way …”

  Much later, when they got up to leave, he knew he was a little tight. But he felt extravagant and courageous. Helen seemed nervous and withdrawn, and he laughed at her and circled her waist with his arm. When they got to their room, he closed the door, and pulled her to him quickly and roughly in the darkness. For the first time, she drew away from him. He reached for her again. “Please. No,” she whispered.

  “Helen—”

  “Please, Jimmy—I’m afraid.”

  “Of the money? Forget about that.”

  “Not that!”

  “Of me?” He held her tightly, laughing softly, searching for her mouth with his lips. Finally, she seemed to submit to him, let him kiss her and pull her down beside him on the bed. “Isn’t this better than a snowdrift?” he asked her.

  Then, all at once, she had cried out sharply. She gripped his shoulders hard with her fingers and began to sob. He held her as her whole body shook violently against him.

  “What’s the matter?” he had asked her. “Darling, what’s wrong?”

  She didn’t answer him. He turned on the light then and sat there, stroking her hair. “Please, darling,” he said. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you, Helen?”

  “I don’t know!” she cried.

  “Please tell me what it is.”

  He stood up and lighted two cigarettes. He gave one to Helen and sat down again, in the chair, while she lay, huddled forlornly on the bed, still sobbing and holding the lighted cigarette in one trembling hand. “What is it?” he asked again. “What’s happened?”

  “I saw a ghost,” she sobbed. “Forgive me. I saw a ghost …”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A boy,” she said. “A boy I knew.”

  Then she told him. She had known a boy at Cal—she wouldn’t tell Jimmy his name. She had been in love with him. At least, she had thought so then. They had been unofficially engaged—he had given her his fraternity pin. To celebrate, they had gone to a dance—a big dance at the Mount Diablo Country Club. He had got quite drunk, and afterwards they had gone for a drive in his car. She had worn a blue scarf around her head, and they had driven, very fast, through the night in the open car. All at once, in the quiet hills above Alameda, he had stopped the car, opened the door, pulled her from the seat into the darkness, held the blue scarf tight around her throat, and raped her.

  No one had suspected anything. He brought her back to the Pi Phi house and let her out at the door. She got out of the car, went up the steps, into the house, and went to bed. For nearly a week, she went to her classes as usual. He did not call; she did not see him again. Then, one morning, she didn’t wake up. Her room-mate became alarmed and called th
e house-mother; the house-mother called a doctor. The night before, quietly, automatically, after brushing her teeth and putting her hair in pin curls, Helen had swallowed twenty sleeping-pills, one by one. Helen’s mother had rushed over to Berkeley from the valley; when Helen recovered, she refused to give her mother any explanation. Her mother took her out of college, and, because she seemed anxious and preoccupied, decided that Helen had been studying too hard. Mrs. Warren wrote an indignant letter to the dean of women, complaining that the courses were too rigorous. Then she planned pleasant things for Helen to do—things that would get Helen’s mind off school. It had been Mrs. Warren’s idea for Helen to take a trip to New York. It was on that trip that she had met Jimmy.

  Helen tried to explain it to him. “I don’t know what happened,” she said desperately. “All of a sudden, for a moment, my mind went back! Suddenly it wasn’t you any more. It was him! It was that night! It was like a vision, it was so real. I know you’re not like that—”

  He didn’t answer her, but sat there, smoking. “I’ve never told anyone but you,” she said. “Please forgive me.” And then she said urgently, “It will be all right, won’t it? It won’t happen again, will it? Will it, Jimmy? Will you help me, Jimmy? It won’t happen—if you help me!”

  She held out her hand, and he took it, feeling a small shiver run through her arm. She lay back and closed her eyes. How young we both are! Jimmy thought suddenly. Helen was only twenty-one; he was not much older. The hotel room all at once seemed immense and empty, strangely impersonal, and a great tug of loneliness gripped him—loneliness, homesickness, a feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar place. Of being a little boy again, lost, frightened, running down a dark street, and being faced with the task of caring for another lost and frightened human being. Ashamed, he recognized the little-boy urge—to run away and leave her there.

  But he sat there, holding her hand, smoking, knowing that if he got back into bed he would be unable to sleep. Knowing nothing else.

  Claire and Blazer were clambering across the rocks. “I’m the king of the castle!” Claire chanted. “And you’re the dirty rascal!” She stood on tiptoe on top of the first boulder that began the giant stepping-stones into the lake. “Dethrone me if you dare!”

  Blazer climbed after her. At the top, he tussled with her a moment before she leaped to the next rock. He followed her, and, as she tried to leap to the third, she landed short of it, in the water, and began swimming and splashing and screaming. Blazer dived in after her.

  Jimmy sat on the shore, his back against the rock, watching them. “Come on in!” they called. “It’s wonderful!”

  Jimmy gestured to his glass. “I’m having too much fun sitting here getting tight,” he said.

  “Lush!” Claire called.

  The sun shone down brilliantly and caught every splash they made, reflected and pounded the glittering reflections back against the trees and rocks, and into his eyes. His eyes glistened; he felt warm, hazy. He sipped his drink. This made remembering pleasant, remote and effortless. He could watch the scenes as they flashed before him, like slides from a magic lantern, without involvement. He and Helen moved quaintly, curiously, figures in a faraway pantomime. He remembered driving back to Rio Linda in the rented car, becoming aware for the first time of the flat, broad Central Valley, brown now and winter-burned.

  “I’m afraid my family’s house won’t be very grand by your standards,” Helen had said as they entered the little valley town.

  “What difference does that make?” he asked her.

  “I’m worried,” she said, “about what your family might think—if they came out here.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said.

  The Warrens’ house was a two-story white colonial, but built, in the manner of many California houses, on a narrow lot so that the houses on either side of it pressed their windows close against it. In the back, Mrs. Warren had a patio and garden surrounded by a high ivy-covered fence. From the living-room, through the french windows, Jimmy had seen tubs of winter-blooming camellias.

  The Warrens greeted them affectionately, if a little distractedly. There was a great deal of nervous laughter as Walker Warren showed Jimmy the front-yard sprinkler system he had recently installed, and explained that he planned a similar system for the back yard. Mr. Warren was a small, friendly man with smiling blue eyes behind rimless glasses. He was in the hardware business. He owned the largest hardware store in Rio Linda, and also two smaller stores in neighbouring towns. It was quite a coincidence, he thought, because he had stocked Keefe hinges, bolts, and valves ever since he had started the business. “You make a good product,” he told Jimmy. “They’re good sellers. I never thought I’d meet the man that made them, though.”

  “Oh, it’s not me, sir,” Jimmy said. “It’s just the family.”

  “But you’ll go into the business, won’t you?”

  “Well—perhaps,” Jimmy said.

  Then Mrs. Warren, a slim, handsome woman with blue-grey hair, took Jimmy by the arm and led him through the garden, pointing out beds that would soon blossom with tulips, lilies, and tea roses. “I always wanted a summer wedding for Helen,” she said, “so that we could have it here—in the garden. But”—she smiled—“I’m sure this will work out for the best.” Then Mrs. Warren looked at him. “I’m putting you both in the guest room,” she said, and she laughed nervously. “After all, you are married!”

  That night a special-delivery arrived from Jimmy’s mother. It was full of elaborate plans. She was sorry, she said, if she had been a little bitchy on the telephone. It was only that it was such a shock, such a blow, so sudden. Could he really blame her? However, it was too late now to worry about things like that. They were working things out. Daddy and Turner Ames had been busy on it; the Warren family, she thought, were being most co-operative. She and Jimmy’s father were flying to California in a week for the “nice” wedding.

  Everything would be lovely, she was sure, and just to show him there were no hard feelings, she was buying Jimmy and Helen a honeymoon trip to the Caribbean. She enclosed the itinerary. She had made all the reservations, bought all the tickets, supplied the fat booklet of hotel coupons. She had planned the date of the trip so that it would allow Jimmy and Helen a visit with the family in Somerville. Finally, she had enclosed a cheque, signed in her firm, round hand, “Melise Kimball Keefe,” for a thousand dollars.

  That night, in the Warrens’ pink and white guest room, Jimmy told Helen about it. Helen had not liked the idea of the trip. After all, she pointed out, they had decided to stay in California—for a while, at least. Jimmy was going to find a job. They were going to find a place to live. It seemed silly to fly back to New York just to take Melise’s trip. But Jimmy wanted to go. He thought it might be good for Helen, and also he knew his mother. He knew she wanted the Caribbean honeymoon because she had been cheated, like Mrs. Warren, out of a proper marriage.

  But the difference was that Melise Keefe could afford to do something about it. If she could not have an Eastern marriage with her friends present, a marriage with crew-cut Eastern ushers, Eastern bridesmaids, and an Eastern bride, she would have a satisfactory, if not perfect, social substitute with the glamorous six weeks’ trip to the West Indies. If she could not have a wedding with a reception held in a huge tent on a high terrace overlooking Long Island Sound or the Connecticut River, with champagne, red-jacketed waiters, an orchestra imported from New York, she would have the next best thing.

  Besides, Jimmy argued, since his mother was paying for it all, why should they refuse? Why shouldn’t they have the trip? It had been their first quarrel, although it had been conducted in whispers and had ended with Helen saying, “Quiet! Quiet! They’re in the next room—they’ll hear us!”

  He remembered his parents’ arrival. He remembered his father, chatting with forced geniality to Walker Warren about the hardware business. He remembered his mother, murmuring, “Charming … charming,” as Mrs. Warren showed her through the
house and garden. And, the night before the wedding, he remembered going alone to his parents’ suite at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco—summoned there on the pretext of going over some business papers with his father. His mother had greeted him at the door in a long pale-blue robe; they had had cocktails sent to the room.

  “This is the craziest business,” Jimmy had laughed. “Getting married all over again. Are Helen and I supposed to act like a blushing bride and bridegroom to-morrow?”

  “Well, well,” his father had said, “you know how women are. Your mother wanted it this way, Jim. I guess she just didn’t think you’d be really married if you weren’t married in a church.” He winked at Melise.

  “I don’t think it’s crazy at all,” Melise said. “It’s the only nice way to do it. Thank heavens Mrs. Warren agrees with me.” She sat down and arranged her long skirt about her feet. “Of course,” she said, sipping her martini, “I suppose you and Helen have been—living together—all along.” She shook her head. “Goodness, how could you help it—in that house?”

  “What do you mean, Mother?” he asked her.

  “I mean—well, there’s hardly enough room in it for you to have had separate bedrooms!”

  “That’s a little unkind, Mother,” he had said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I mean it. Honestly, Jimmy, couldn’t you have looked into things a little bit before you took this step? Really, when I first saw the way they lived—well, it was the kind of house where I was afraid to ask where the bathroom was! For fear there wouldn’t be any!”

  “Now, Mellie—” Mr. Keefe said.

  “Mother, that’s not fair. You’re not that much of a snob, are you?”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I am!”

  “I think the Warrens are very nice,” Jimmy said. “They’ve been very kind to me. I love Helen, and—well, I think her parents are very nice!”

  “Oh, they’re nice,” Melise said wearily. “They’re very nice! I just don’t like them, that’s all. I’m sorry, but I don’t! I’ve said it, and I never intend to say it again, but there it is. I don’t like them.”

  Jimmy remembered sitting, flushed and angry, as his mother sat opposite him, silently sipping her martini.