Experiment in Springtime

Chapter 3

Martha disapproved of the car. It was too sleek and ostentatious and didn’t match the personality she had selected for herself. Besides, every time she rode in the car, she was reminded, annoyingly, of the presentation speech Charles had made when he’d given it to her for her birthday, three years before. Charles had probably intended the speech to be ingratiating but it hadn’t sounded that way.

“I want you to have the best I can afford, Martha. I want to make up to you for all the years when you had so little.”

Those were his exact words. Implying that he’d picked her up from the gutter and rescued her from starvation, instead of from a $35-a-week-and-chance-for-advancement job at Burleson, Bonds. All the years when you had so little. Hooey. Maybe her salary wasn’t so large then as the one she received now for being Charles’s wife, but the hours were shorter and she was free. Free, at least, for something to happen to her.

Well, there was no point in thinking about that. It was over, she was married and settled, and nothing more would ever happen to her because she wouldn’t let it. She was not one to shirk her responsibilities or change her mind. Duty was her favorite word and doing it was her favorite occupation. No matter what her personal feelings about Charles were, she would have gone through hell for him if she thought people expected her to, and someone was watching. She had a great deal of what she considered strength of character, but which Charles called a perfectionist obsession. She was deeply hurt when he told her that. “You have an obsession, Martha. You want everything to be perfect, yourself and me and your mother and Laura and the servants and the house, and we’re all failing you daily and hourly.”

They continued to fail her and she continued to do her duty. As one dull and blameless day followed another, she had only one outlet, Charles’s money. Money was her drug, and spending it was her method of escaping from her life. The department stores and antique shops and French salons and auction houses all intoxicated her. Like a drunk who doesn’t care what he drinks as long as it contains alcohol, she bought without discrimination, without restraint. Later, when she took her purchases home and unwrapped them, her euphoria would evaporate and she would be left with a hangover. The genuine antique candlesticks looked shoddy, the bargain French original didn’t fit, and the still life was childish. But she couldn’t restrain herself from buying things, nor could she force herself to return or exchange them once they were bought. That would be a confession of failure, a weak spot in a strong character, a rift in the obsession.

“Forbes.”

She tapped on the glass partition that formed a Mason-Dixon line between her world and Forbes’s world.

The chauffeur gave no sign that he had heard. She frowned at the back of his head, trying to decide whether Forbes was getting deaf or subtly insolent. It was difficult to tell. From behind, he looked very young and guileless. His ears stuck out a little too far from his head, and the back of his neck was shaved and scrubbed and vulnerable, like a victim’s ready for sacrifice.

“Forbes.” She tapped again. This time he turned his head slightly and the illusion of youth and innocence disappeared. His face was ugly and sharp as a witch’s.

“Stop at Ryrie’s, Forbes.”

“Pardon, ma’am?” He kept one hand on the steering wheel and with the other he turned down the glass partition.

“Stop at Ryrie’s.”

“I won’t be able to get a parking place near there. Is it all right if you have to walk a couple of blocks?”

“Why, certainly,” she said, a little hurt that Forbes should have forgotten that she was very fond of walking. Though she seldom did any, she often pictured herself striding freely along country lanes with the sheerest enjoyment; and striding with her, at her heels, a dog. The dogs varied in breed, but their behavior was always perfect; they responded to her faintest whisper and were of indeterminate sex.

The car stopped smoothly beside the curb. Forbes was a good driver and a good mechanic — let credit be given where credit was due — but he had one baffling peculiarity. Every few months he would disappear for a week or so without telling anyone. When he returned, looking rather worn, he offered no explanation and Charles asked for none. It was as if Charles had some secret way of understanding and tolerating the various necessities of people’s natures; he would no more question Forbes about his disappearances than he would remind her of her extravagances.

She got out of the car and crossed the street, raising her feet carefully because the glasses made the sidewalk appear too close. She turned off onto Madison Avenue, excited to be out of the house again, and pleased with the crowds who seemed more polite and cheerful than she remembered them.

She quickened her pace. The drug was already having its effect.

A diamond clip for her mother for Mother’s Day. Two sweaters and a slip for Laura. A set of canisters, a crystal vase, a pair of real gold bobby pins. A tie for Charles. From counter to counter, out of one revolving door into another revolving door, until her arms were full and the euphoria had taken possession of her.

The tie for Charles was bought as an afterthought. He would never wear it, but it was a nice gesture, a nod in the direction of the fact that it was his money, after all, and he might as well get something out of it.

She passed from the last door into the street again. She paused, blinking gently behind her glasses, her eyes scanning the crowd as if she hoped, half-expected, to find a friend there. But there was no one she knew. She had lost touch with her old friends and had made no new ones. These people were all strangers, indifferent to her. They were all hurrying from someone and some place to someone and some place. Without interest, they brushed past her and she loathed them.

She began to walk again. The sun was warm on her face, the wind fresh off the lake, but in that minute’s pause outside the store she felt that she had died a little. She had waited and no one had come, nothing had happened.

The hangover was setting in already. She felt cheated — by the spring, by Charles, by the very packages which had grown heavy in her arms, by the whole world.

Behind her a man’s voice called, “Martha! Oh, Martha!” and for a second she hesitated because the voice sounded like Charles’s. It held the same bantering note, as if there was something intrinsically humorous about her name and the repetition of it. It was not Charles’s voice, of course. But her mistake was significant. It showed how much of the time she thought about him, how completely he had pervaded her life.

“Martha!”

She stopped and turned around. A man in a light brown suit and no hat was threading his way through the crowd towards her. She didn’t recognize him, and she was on the point of walking on and pretending she hadn’t heard him.

But it was too late. He was beside her, his hand familiarly touching her arm.

“Well, Martha.” He stood very close to her, smiling, and because they were the same height their closeness seemed indecently intimate.

She drew away and said stiffly, “I’m sorry, I...”

“I thought it was you hiding behind those glasses. Come on over here. I want to look at you.”

He gave her a friendly little push and she moved, from sheer momentum and shock, and stood in the doorway of a florist’s shop. There was a sheaf of daffodils in the window flanked by white china swans. She tried to concentrate on the daffodils, count them, one, two, three, four... He was deeply tanned and in contrast his eyes looked very pale and excited. He had a queer, tense way of standing, as if he was all ready to do something drastic, like snatch her purse or break into a hundred-yard dash. Anyway, there were twelve daffodils. An even dozen. A round dozen. A...

She turned and faced him. “Well, Steve. How nice to see you again.”

“Just got back a week ago. First thing I did was to phone the old number. But you weren’t there, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“Take off those glasses and let me have a look at you. You’ve changed, Martha.” He was frowning and his face wore a disappointed expression.

“Oh, have I? Well, in five years you can expect a reasonable amount of change.”

“I want to talk to you. Come on in some place and have a drink.”

“No, sorry. I can’t.”

He smiled, very faintly. “Why not?”

“Well, it wouldn’t look right.”

“Why not again?”

“Besides, I have the car waiting.”

“Can’t cars wait by themselves or have they got them so personalized now that they have to have a companion?”

“This one happens to have a chauffeur in it,” she said with careful indifference.

He took a step back and said, “Well, well. Doing all right for yourself, eh, Martha?” He noticed then for the first time what she was wearing. “Husband dead?”

“Of course not. Why should he be dead?”

“Shouldn’t be. But then a hell of a lot of people are. Including me, almost.”

“Really?”

“I have a few pieces of flak here and there. When they get them all dug out of me, I’ll send you one for a souvenir. Do you want it plain or inscribed, for Auld Lang Syne?”

“I don’t consider that very witty.”

“No.” He avoided her gaze. “No, I guess it wasn’t.”

“Why aren’t you in uniform?”

“I’m out now. I’m a civilian.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Do? Well, first I’ll take a rest and then I’ll write a book not about the war, and when the book doesn’t sell, I’ll get my old job back on the News.”

“You mean you’re going to stay here?”

“That’s right.” He added dryly, “I hope you don’t mind. It’s a pretty big city, there should be room for both of us.”

“Why should I mind? As a matter of fact, Charles and I will do our best to help you.”

“Thanks.”

“If you’re serious about writing a book, perhaps Charles can help you make some good contacts. He knows a great many important people.”

“If it’s a good book, I won’t need good contacts, but it’s kind of you.” He glanced at her curiously. “Charles. Is that his name?”

“Yes.”

“I’d heard you married a good guy.”

“That’s nice.”

“I was very glad, naturally. I was hoping you’d get someone more suited to you than I was.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, as if they needed some restraint. “Why the funny clothes? Remember the blue dress with the white flowers on it?”

“Blue dress?” It was at the bottom of a trunk packed in layers of tissue paper and mothballs. The last time she’d taken it out to look at it she found that the flowers had yellowed. She had told Charles that she had a headache, and she went to bed and stared for a long time up at the ceiling in bitter silence. “No, I don’t remember.”

He traced a pattern on the sidewalk with the toe of his shoe.

“What’s he like? Charles, I mean.”

“He’s... well, he’s very nice. He’s older than I am. He’s good-looking and he has a nice sense of humor.”

“And money. In fact, the works.”

“In fact, the works, as you say.”

“Well, I’m damn glad to hear it.” He spoke with too much emphasis. “I really am. I’d like to meet him.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“Oh?”

“Charles has been very ill.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

He twitched his shoulders and she saw that his suit was too small for him. She had told him once that he always got his coats too small and that the next time she would go with him to the tailor to supervise the measuring. But the next time he had gone to a tailor he had ordered uniforms and she didn’t even know about it until later. He had walked out of her life as completely as if he’d stepped off the edge of the world.

Yet here he was back, an image in a florist’s window. The daffodils grew out of his throat, reached up their yellow heads to touch the tip of his ear. The swans drew away, arching their delicate necks in elegant disdain.

“Look,” she said. He looked, and saw himself framed in flowers. Neither of them smiled.

“Well,” he said finally. “I don’t want to keep you.”

“It isn’t that I wouldn’t like you to meet Charles. But he has been ill...”

“Don’t apologize. I hardly think Charles would like to meet me,” he said pointedly. “Anyway, I probably wouldn’t fit in. You have quite a place, I suppose.” He hesitated, as if he didn’t want to hear about any more things she had but couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Have you?”

“It’s quite nice.”

“He probably built it for you when you were married, as in the Ladies’ Home Journal.” She didn’t answer and he went on, with a laugh: “It’s a damn funny thing, but in Italy whenever I wanted something to read like Time or the New Republic or the New Yorker, all I could ever find was the Ladies’ Home Journal. I became quite fond of it. I used to read the recipes. We all did. We had a kind of journalese talk. ‘If you’ve never tried fried green olives minced with chocolate ice cream, you’re really missing something.’ It got to be practically a code.”

He paused. She said quietly, “He built the house for me.”

“Sure. He would. Indirect lighting? Automatic heat, glass bricks, built-in bar?”

“There’s no need to...”

“Sun deck? Terrace? Maybe even a fountain?” He saw by her eyes that he’d struck it right. “By heaven, a fountain! I’ll be damned. Now wait, let me guess about the fountain. It’s one of these naked water-baby affairs, and the little darling is spewing the water out of its mouth. Am I right?”

“It’s not a neuter baby, it’s the infant Hermes.”

“Jesus,” he said softly. “You haven’t changed much after all, have you, Martha?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, except that it’s in very bad taste.”

She turned with an air of finality, but he put his hand on her arm to hold her back. One of the parcels fell on the sidewalk but neither of them noticed.

“No, wait, Martha. I’m sorry. You haven’t told me how the family is. How’s the kid sister?”

“Laura’s fine.”

“And your mother?”

“Fine.”

“And the old man?”

“He’s dead. He died a short time after you left.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. He was a good man, full of laughs.”

She began to walk and he followed her. His walk was oddly graceful.

“It’s a funny thing,” he said, “to come back like this, and you find some of your friends have died, and some are married and have kids, and some of them have moved away and some of them aren’t your friends anymore. I don’t know exactly what I expected. Five years is a long time, it was to me, anyway, but I still had the crazy notion that somebody would be keeping a place for me. You know? I expected to blow into town and phone a lot of people and have them say maybe: ‘Well, by God, it’s Steve Ferris. Come on out and we’ll have a party!’ Instead of that I had a hard time even identifying myself. There’d be a whispered conversation at the other end of the phone. ‘Darling, do we know anyone called Ferris?’ Or ‘Well, we were going to the movies, Steve, old boy. Maybe next week?’”

He smiled to show her that it didn’t hurt him. “Some of them had kids they couldn’t leave or wives who didn’t want to go out or have anyone in. A lot of them were dead, or just vanished. If I’d left a hole in anyone’s life, the gap had closed long ago. It’s a strange feeling.”

She walked faster but he didn’t appear to notice. He kept gliding along beside her, without effort.

“A damn strange feeling,” he repeated. “It’s as if they’d made up their minds that I wasn’t coming back and when I did it was a shock. It was so unexpected it was against nature, practically. That’s how you feel, isn’t it, Martha?”

“Of course not. I’ve never thought about you one way or another.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Then you’re very vain.”

“I guess I am,” he said slowly. “I guess that’s my whole trouble.”

They turned at the next corner and their shoulders touched for an instant. She drew away sharply.

Across the street a few yards down she could see Forbes. He was standing on the curb, running a cloth over one of the car windows. Two little boys stood beside him and watched, their heads tilted in awe.

She wondered whether Forbes had already seen her.

Abruptly she swung around and faced Steve. “Well, Steve, it’s been pleasant meeting you again.” In spite of the parcels she managed to hold out her hand in a friendly way.

“Has it?” He ignored the hand. His eyes were fixed on the car. “Some tub. Paid for? Yes, of course, it would be. How fast can it go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” He shook his head in bewilderment. What kind of crazy world had he come back to, that you could have a car like that and not see how fast it would go?

“I really must run along, Steve.”

“Certainly. I understand.”

“I hope, I sincerely hope, that the book turns out well. And if it doesn’t, I’m sure Charles will be able to do something for you.”

“Charles can’t do a damn thing for me except crawl down a drain.”

“Well, don’t be childish. Where are you staying?”

“The Neal Hotel. We’ve got fountains there, too, only we call them showers and they’re to wash in.”

He didn’t say goodbye, just turned on his heel and walked away as fast as he could.

Once he was out of sight around the corner he slowed down. He was feeling shaky and there was a sharp pain in his chest. He didn’t know whether it was from the piece of flak they hadn’t been able to remove, or from seeing Martha again.

He stopped at the first bar he came to. He sat down at a table and ordered an ale. The place was very dark but as soon as his eyes had adjusted he began to look around for someone he knew. He knew there wouldn’t be anyone, but he sat with tense expectancy, ready to jump up and greet someone and buy him a drink and talk over old times.

“Well, if it isn’t Steve Ferris! How’s the boy, Steve?”

“Great. Just great.”

“When’d you get back?”

“A week ago.”

“Why in hell didn’t you give me a ring? Seen any of the old crowd?”

“Sure. I just ran into Martha on the street.”

“Martha? Oh, we never see Martha anymore, not since she got married. The wife bumped into her one day and hardly recognized her. She had on funny-looking clothes and a new ritzy way of talking. The wife nearly died laughing...”

He ordered another ale and thought, well, that’s all right, I’m practically dead laughing myself. Charles and I. Charles has been very ill. What the hell.

The waiter came back and put a bowl of pretzels on the table.

“Thought you’d like some pretzels,” he said.

“Chawls, my boy, how very thoughtful of you.”

“We got some potato chips, too.”

“Why, Chawls, it’s a veritable profusion of fine foods.”

The waiter hovered over the table. He smelled of stale sweat and peppermint. “If you’re feeling lonesome-like maybe I can do something about it. If you’re not, well, there’s no harm in asking.”

“I am above the coarser things of life.”

“Well, I am myself, if you come right down to it,” the waiter said somberly. “I’ve got my principles, same as the next man.”

“Sure.” Steve smiled. “You could pick up a nice piece of change by selling Grandpa to a glue factory. Bet you never thought of that, Chawls.”

“My name’s not Charles.”

“Could be,” Steve said. “I personally know a man called Charles who sold his grandpa to a glue factory and he’s never regretted it for an instant.”

“What the hell,” the waiter said, and went away looking troubled.

Steve watched him for a while, not because he liked his face, but because he knew the waiter a little now and the other people were all strangers.

A man and a girl came in from the street and sat down side by side at the bar. The man had his hand possessively on the girl’s hip. The two of them kept looking and looking at each other, as if they were trying to drown themselves in each other’s eyes.

The pain in Steve’s chest sharpened. He got up. He saw the waiter come hurrying toward him and he reached for his wallet.

The waiter said with a frown, “I don’t know what gave you the idea my name was Charles.”

“How much?”

“Fifty cents. Matter of factly, my name’s Harry, not Charles.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Steve said and flung the money on the table.

He passed the bar without a glance at the man and girl, and went up the steps into the street.