Aberration of Starlight

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I think that it is really a swell opportunity, a fine opportunity, for the two of us to get together over a glass of cold beer at the Bluebird on a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I say so. John McGrath agrees. We are both businessmen and despite the difference in age, God knows we understand each other. That is always the great thing about business, it brings you into contact with people of all types and breeds and from all walks of life and you get a chance to see a little of the world. Right? It is damn right.

Oh hell yes, the Depression, damn and double-damn the Depression, it has hurt business all across the board but if a fellow keeps his eyes open and his nose clean and isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty, hell, he’ll make out all right. I’m making more money now than I have in years! I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much, that could just mean that things are getting better all across the country. People beginning to talk a lot about defense contracts what with the European situation and all. Damned if you can make head or tail out of it.

The textile-factoring business, the whole credit game for that matter, goes along, day after day, come hell, high water, or Depression. Banking is banking whichever way you cut it. People always need somebody to stand behind them with the dollar when it comes to expansion and new materials and that sort of thing. It’s an interesting business, that’s all there is to it! Why, John has seen millionaires turn into paupers overnight. And vice versa! He tells me the wonderful story, wonderful, wonderful! about old Whitestone asking him to go into business with him, just the two of them, years ago, but how he preferred to work for a salary and not take all his headaches home.

By God though, they’re still friends! Families exchange cards at Christmas and every other damn thing. Oh, absolutely! A prince of a man, old Whitestone.

I know, of course, who Whitestone is? I don’t really know although certainly the name is a familiar one in business, a big name. A high mucky-muck all right. Well, old man Whitestone is just the President of the National Credit Office and you know what that is! There’s Dun and Brad and the National Credit and that’s it. A very very big man, but just as regular … A prince! Still good friends, yes indeedy.

I of course excuse John as he rises to go to the men’s room just as I order two more beers. When he returns they have been paid for and John shows surprise and protests that it is his round but I wave it off and John sits. As far as business goes, John goes on, he has to see it as looking a damn sight better but mainly, mainly, at least that’s what he surmises, because we damn well, yes indeed, damn well are getting ready to get into another goddamned war in Europe. God knows why! That’s your damn Jew Roosevelt.

John lowers his voice and leans across the table and says that it is as usual a Jew war and that Helga — Mrs. Schmidt? — who was born and raised in Germany and still has a brother and lots of other relatives over there, have I got to know her? He thinks for sure I have, and certainly, hell, yes, I know her, a hell of a good sport, an honor to make her acquaintance. Well, anyway, it turns out that Helga says that nothing’s the matter with Hitler as far as she can tell, he’s been a godsend for Germany, and just what’s the matter with the Germans getting their jobs back from the Jews? The damn Jews have run the country for years and the Germans are getting goddamn sick and tired of them. And if truth were told, they run this country too! It’s for Christ’s sake clear that every German you meet over here is clean and decent and hard-working. Can you blame them for how they feel about the kikes?

I mention that I’ve read some stories once in a while in the paper about how the Jews are being treated pretty bad but I admit that it’s probably all propaganda. John says goddamn tootin it’s all propaganda a yard wide and that Helga tells him all that crap in the paper, but Helga didn’t say crap, is put in there by, who else? The Jews! By Christ, they own all the papers.

I am certain that surely if anybody knows what is going on in Germany it is Mrs. Schmidt. You have to take her word before you take the word of the papers. John nods and says that you have to go a long way before you find a woman with a head on her shoulders like Helga. I apologize, and then apologize again for putting my two cents’ worth in when I’m not asked but I think that they, John and Mrs. Schmidt, make a handsome couple, a real match. I’m really sorry for sticking my nose into somebody else’s business. John nods and of course, she is a fine, good woman and he’s known her for years and years, knew her husband, Otto, God rest his soul, he was a fine big strapping man. John’s late wife, Bridget, and Helga, had been the best of friends. No need to apologize, certainly not. Between the two of us and the lamppost and in strictest confidence, he and Helga haven’t actually talked seriously about it but they’ve put their cards on the table and after the passing of time, for decency’s sake, who knows? She and John aren’t relics, for God’s sake, with one foot in the grave!

Of course, it must be obvious to me that John is not what anybody could call lonely. There’s Marie and Billy. And Marie is only too happy to stay with him now that Bridget, God rest her soul, is gone. But a man has no right to make his daughter a slave even though it’s her pleasure to cook and keep house for him — and for herself too of course. Christ knows that Marie deserves some life! She hasn’t been given a fair deal, you know. Well, I don’t really know but I had gotten an idea … the “other woman”? I’m just guessing because Marie never … I am one hundred per cent right, John lets me know, treated like dirt by the man—man! An excuse for a man, by God. She’s taken it all in stride and kept her head high.

And then I have to excuse John, please, for talking out of turn, but he thinks that it is something that has to be said … John suddenly ducks under the table to tie the laces of his spectators as the waitress comes over with two fresh beers and straightens up just as I’m paying for them. He is annoyed, almost angry that he has again been prevented from paying for the round and protests that it is his treat but I smile and assure him that he can spring next time. John again apologizes for talking out of turn but… he really thinks that I should know that he thinks that Marie likes me an awful lot, as a matter of fact, an old man who knows his daughter and has been with her through thick and thin has a right to say, as far as he is concerned and there’s no two ways about it, that he thinks that Marie is sweet on me. I protest, almost blushing, but John nods his head. He very deliberately does his best to make it crystal clear to me that as far as he is concerned and he damn well doesn’t want me to think that he is being common, God knows he hasn’t spent his life working with really good skates, and the girls who work at the office are, by and large, fine decent girls, not a floozy in the bunch, so … He wants to make it crystal clear to me that he is being as straight as a die with me. That’s maybe why he might sound a little rough saying that Marie hasn’t been married in the true sense of the word for six years and six years is a hell of a long time for a young woman in the prime of her life to go it alone. Is he being crystal clear? Alone, without a man to look after her, or anything. To be as plain as the nose on your face, Marie seems to John to look like she can use some companionship, some manly companionship. It seems to John that she can use it. It seems to John, as a matter of fact, that she needs it. John grants that a woman is not like a man in that respect, but still. Still and all. She’s been kind of nervous the last year or so.

I wonder. I wonder and smile and blush. I bend my Trommer’s coaster in half. I wonder aloud, still smiling and blushing, if what John is saying is what I think John is saying? Yes indeed. I am absolutely right that what I think John is saying is what John is saying. John is telling the God’s honest truth to me because he thinks I’m a crackerjack salesman, and he’d always admired a moustache on a man, always admired a man who smokes a pipe, how he wishes he could cut out the goddamned weeds! Always, always liked a go-getter too. Not some goddamn milksop of a momma’s boy crying about how cruel the world is, can’t make a dollar, thinks money grows on trees for Christ’s sake! A man’s got to take the bull by the horns. John likes me and wants me to know how he thinks Marie feels about me.

And certainly, let’s call a spade a spade, John implies, it’s perfectly clear to him that the way he feels Skip, that’s his pet name for her, John says, the way he feels Skip feels about me is the way that I feel about her. Do I think that John is, for the love of God, blind? That he can’t see us every day of the week mooning over each other and making eyes morning, noon, and night? Pretending to just happen to be in the same place at the same time? Going to Budd Lake and the Locks all the time, oh, perfectly respectable, with Billy along and Dave Warren and Eleanor? John wouldn’t be surprised if even Dave, for God’s sake, who was behind the door when the brains were passed out, it was no secret, has noticed our mooning around. And Dave Warren wouldn’t know it if he smacked his thumb with a hammer, hasn’t got the brains to button his fly. John considers that it wouldn’t be a crime, far from it, if I should invite Marie out some evening soon, maybe dancing at the WigWam or the Seven Gables or the Hi-Top. Skip hasn’t danced, to his knowledge, in years, but it used to be a treat to watch her on the floor. She could really step. And Billy! Why, Billy looks up to me the way he should have been able to look up to his father and was just the other day asking John how old he’d have to be before he could smoke a pipe, like Mr. Thebus. John got a kick out of that Mr. Thebus but Marie has drummed manners into him, and respect, she doesn’t want him growing up like the goddamn hooligans and riffraff on the street corner.

I’m wondering and stammering, just a little, wondering if John wouldn’t mind then, if I begin to, well, date Marie, act, that is, like her escort? I had indeed, there was no use trying to deny it, I had been hit by her like a ton of bricks ever since the day I’d first seen her get out of the car from the station. John is laughing as he rises and picks up his walking stick, God knows he wouldn’t mind one iota if I begin to court Marie, and if the thing comes to naught, well, there’s a lot of summer left for the two of us to have some good, clean fun together. We’ve both been married and know our p’s and q’s. John is a little worried about seeing Skip looking so drawn. She needs a real change. A woman in the prime of her life.

On the road with the sun low over the fields to our left as we stroll toward the farmhouse John mentions that he intends to settle some money on Marie when he dies. But hell, he thinks that’s a hell of a note really, and he has now decided there is no reason in the world that she shouldn’t get the bulk of the money right now if she decides to remarry, to the right man. And I am enough of a man of the world, it seems to John, to know what he means by the right man. If I get his drift?

I’m smiling into the glare of the sun, lopping the heads off black-eyed Susans with a switch and John brings up Helga Schmidt’s name again and considers that if he does what we discussed in the Bluebird concerning that wonderful woman, a congenial and lovely lady, Marie would feel really free because she’d know that he’d be well taken care of in his old age after retirement, which is, let’s call a spade a spade, not far off. And that might, it is John’s considered opinion, might just make Skip a little more receptive to anything an, what can John call it, an admirer, might have to say concerning marriage.

Then John mentions the possibility of a double wedding, oh, certainly as a joke. But anyway, it seems to him that irregardless of what happens between him and Helga, that I should go ahead with his blessing. All that John wishes for Marie is her happiness and he doesn’t want her worrying about him. But I should take my time and not rush into anything.

I clap John on the back, as happy as a clam. It’s been one of the best Sundays! How swell that everything, as quick as a wink, should almost solve itself! God almighty, it has been a crackerjack talk. John laughs and says that it will be such a joy to him to see Marie’s face when she tells him that I’ve asked her to go dancing and then, then her face when he says, why, of course, Skip, you’ll go, won’t you? God knows, he’ll tell her, I have no objections to Mr. Thebus! Oh, it will be rich!

We hear the supper bell as we reach the fork in the road. I think that maybe I’ll ask Marie to take a walk after supper and tell her, well, something about how I feel about her. If John doesn’t mind? The rush? My God! Mind? He doesn’t mind and thinks, as a matter of fact, that he just might take a leaf from my book and ask Helga to play the piano for him in the parlor. She used to all the time in years past, but of course poor Otto was alive then.

Just then, as we come around a curve in the road, we are face to face with, speak of the devil! Marie and Helga, who are arm in arm, laughing and talking to beat the band. And when they see us in front of them, they separate and rush to us, Marie stopping in front of me to look into my eyes, her cheeks slightly flushed, and Helga calmly and yet surely taking both of John’s hands in hers, her eyes modestly on the ground. The four of us stand in the gorgeous light of the sunset, at a loss, just at a loss for words.