How Like a God

IX

He reached down, and quietly and precisely picked up the lamp and set it back in its niche, trying to make the shade hang straight. “Yes, it’s me, Mrs. Jordan,” he called down. “Knocked the lamp off again.”

Her voice came:

“Oh — I thought maybe it was someone to see Miss Boyle. If you break it you’ll have to pay for it.”

A door in the basement opened noisily, then banged shut; Mrs. Jordan had returned to her room. Silence. Still he stood — the idea of movement was hateful — he felt physically exhausted, and completely indifferent to all things. He told himself, you might as well be a dead leaf hanging on a tree...

Do other people feel like this? If they do why do they live? A dead leaf blown in the wind. It isn’t so much the helplessness; you could stand it to feel yourself pushed and pulled, here and there, if only you knew what was doing it and why. You called yourself a weakling and a coward because you let Lucy go, but that was silly.

In November, two years after Lucy had left, Erma suddenly decided to go to Europe. You had never heard from Lucy or written to her. In your room was her photograph; for a long time it stood open on your chiffonier, then, one day, just after you got back from your visit home when you told Jane all about it, you took the photograph down and put it away — in a drawer. It’s probably still around somewhere.

Throughout those two years it was obvious that everyone, including Dick, expected momentarily to hear that you and Erma were engaged. You yourself wouldn’t have been surprised if some morning at breakfast you had found an item on the society page of the Plain Dealer: “Miss Erma Carr announces her engagement to Mr. William Barton Sidney.”

You did in fact find information in the society column one morning, but it was to the effect that Miss Carr would leave shortly for an extended stay abroad. All day at the office you expected to hear from her, and when at five o’clock no word had come you telephoned to Wooton Avenue.

“How long are you going to stay?” you asked.

“A winter, a month, ten years! Why don’t you come over next summer? Meet me’ in Brittany or Norway or somewhere. You ought to have a real vacation anyway. We could stay over there forever, and you could run back once a year to attend the stockholders’ meeting.”

You were puzzled and irritated. Was this a proposal of marriage, or was it a polite hint that she would like to change her business arrangements?

“By the way,” you said, “now that you’re going away maybe you’d prefer to turn your proxy over to Dick. Seriously, I think it would be a good idea. You don’t know how long you’ll be gone, and after all who am I? I’m in an anomalous position. You can be sure that Dick doesn’t relish having a mere employe dressed up like an equal.”

“Has he been nasty?” she asked quickly.

“Lord no. I’m not complaining. It’s just that there doesn’t seem to be much sense in it, and naturally I feel a little ridiculous.”

“You don’t need to. You shouldn’t. As for the proxy, keep it if you please.” She hesitated, then went on, “I didn’t intend to mention it, but the other day Tom Hall insisted that I make a will, and if I fall off an Alp or drink myself to death you’ll be able to celebrate by buying a yacht.”

You’ve always been curious about that will. What exactly did it say? Surely not the whole to you; yet with Erma you can’t tell. There was no one else but Dick, and she wasn’t apt to swell him up. The whole thing! Under certain circumstances, then you could have given Dick something to think about. Was it changed later when she married Pierre? Perhaps, no telling; if so, has it again been changed to you?

It was more than a year before you got a letter from her, a note rather, and then another year to the next. When she got married she didn’t write you about it at all; you learned of it from a letter to Dick.

It is amusing to speculate on the probabilities in Pearl Street if you had not had that proxy in your safe deposit box. Though that’s not fair either; why must you constantly pretend that Dick tried to choke you off?

One day he said to you:

“What do you think of this New York thing? We might as well decide it. I was thinking last night — I say yes, at once. Gustafson says that England alone will place half a billion in six months. If we handle it right, and if those idiots keep on fighting a year or two, there’ll be no limit — hell, anything’s possible. I’m uncomfortable every minute I’m away from those boatloads of easy money. What do you think?”

“I think I’ll go home and pack up,” you laughed.

The next day you went to New York to find offices, and paid a fortune in premiums to vacate leases. Within six weeks the entire organization, sales and administrative, was moved and installed. Exhausted by your labors, you were nevertheless stimulated and refreshed by the interest of the new activities and the new scene. The tempo everywhere was quickened. As for Dick, he plunged into the boiling middle of it, his mouth shut but his eyes open, grabbing with both hands. You reflected that he was making himself and his sister two of the richest persons in America, but certainly it never occurred to him; he was much too busy to think about it.

Then Larry came, was welcomed graciously by Dick, and sent off to the Carrton plant, and you began to feel a solidity in life; you were catching hold of an edge here and there. Above all, one particular edge.

On arriving in New York you had suggested that Jane and Margaret and Rose leave the little flat in Sullivan Street and set up a household for you, in any part of the city they might select. This was your most cherished gesture and the thought of it warmed you for months.

Jane said no. The others were more than willing, but she vetoed it flatly. She said that you might want to get married, and that you should assume no such encumbrance. You protested that you were only thirty-one, and that you wanted never to get married, anyway. No, she wouldn’t do it. You remained in your little two-room suite at the Garwood.

You were a great deal with her, more than at any period before or since. You took her to plays and concerts, subscribed to the opera, and persuaded her to use the accounts you opened at two or three of the stores. You met a lot of her friends — a strange assortment, there were none you ever really liked except young Cruickshanks, then just a boy, writing verses on the back of menus and grandly offering them to the restaurant manager as payment for his meal. You thought Margaret was in love with him. And you liked Victor at first; no use denying it, you thought him agreeable and likable. He seemed to you more normal and balanced than anyone else in that crowd.

One Saturday in May, lunching with Jane downtown, you insisted that she drive with you the following morning to look at a house somewhere north of White Plains which you had been told of by one of the men in the office.

“There are nine rooms, two baths, everything modern, and it’s at the edge of a wood on top of a hill overlooking one of the reservoirs,” you told her. “Sounds like the very thing we want. I think you’d like it.”

“I know I would,” said Jane warmly, too warmly. “It sounds perfect. But it’s impossible. You see, I’m going to be married.”

“I thought... I thought—” you stammered.

You stopped. You couldn’t say that.

“Who is it?”

She smiled. “Victor, of course. You really didn’t know? You must have. I’ve been as silly as a schoolgirl.”

You lost your head and almost made a scene there in the restaurant. You pretended to no power of veto, but by heaven, if you had it you would certainly use it on Victor Knowlton — a half-baked writer and lecturer, coarse-grained, opinionated. You had heard curious tales about him which had amused you at the time, but which, remembered now, convinced you that he was no man to marry your sister.

“No man is expected to be a saint,” you concluded, “but neither should he be a promiscuous pig, if he expects a decent woman to marry him.”

“I don’t think I need defend Victor against the charge of being a promiscuous pig,” said Jane slowly. “That’s a little strong, isn’t it? Anyway it’s his own affair, just as my own checkered past is mine. And from your own standard you must admit it’s decent of him to want to marry me after having had me for nearly a year. Of course it’s true that I’ve argued against it, but now that we’ve decided to have children—”

You stared at her. This couldn’t possibly be your sister, your dear Jane. You wanted to yell at her, shout some insult at her, but you felt suddenly weak, done in, and frightened. Well, it’s all over, that’s that, you told yourself, standing on the narrow Fulton Street sidewalk, after she had parted from you at the restaurant door and hurried off to the subway.

Any man who expects to get anything from a woman is a fool, or if he does it’s just an accident. No matter who she is, she takes what she wants, and a fat lot she cares about you. Erma would agree with you all right; she’s at least honest about it. Mrs. Davis didn’t hurt you any maybe; she used you; what did she give you? A son; a hell of a favor that was, he ate a dozen dinners at your expense and made an ass of you with that joke of a statue — though he may not have meant it — and he’s spent over seven thousand dollars of your money hanging around Paris and Rome.

Lucy — Lucy wasn’t a woman, she was Lucy. It would have been the same with her — no. No! That was like a raindrop that never falls from the cloud — is whirled upward instead, to float above the atmosphere eternally, finding no home.

The most savage and insolent feast though was that of little Millicent, in that room with the afternoon sun lazing at the window, long ago, as she went silently back and forth collecting things from your closet and dresser and piling them on a chair, and finally turned and came towards you...

Abandoned, bitter, with nothing anywhere in reach to hold onto, you were not surprised that the old familiar fantasy returned; you accepted it, and felt her hands again for the first time in many months, the night after Jane left you standing in front of the restaurant.