Letting Go

1

If someone had asked Gabe what he had been doing for the last five minutes, he could not have given a satisfactory answer. He couldn’t remember — at least not until he looked around and saw where he was. His faith in his own ability to tell where and what he was about had diminished with the oncoming of winter. It had already begun to diminish in the autumn, when he had returned to Chicago. Of late he was not always very lucid; however, the realization that he wasn’t came to him only in moments when he was. Otherwise he did not fully sense that he was no longer observing and understanding in the ways that he was used to. In the most lucid moments, he could not decide whether that might not be a form of self-improvement. But mostly he was without irony.

The crowds weren’t helping him any. He was — yes, shopping! Despite the complaints of merchants that the recession had cut Christmas trade by a third, the downtown shops were no less tumultuous than he remembered them to be at this season. Registers rang; clerks called, “Mr. M! Mr. R! Miss Gloria!”; the faces around him glowed red from the cold of the streets, from the heat of indoors. He spent the darkening hours of the afternoon walking out of one store and into another, through the blowy Loop and then straight into the wind up Michigan Boulevard — most of the time with no idea of what he was after. He opened the doors of shops that were completely inappropriate, or would have seemed so had he been able to establish what sort of gift was appropriate. As the day wore on, his fuzziness became indistinguishable from his apathy. Around five he pulled his car out of the garage on Wabash and found himself heading south in the murderous rush of homeward traffic.

It was snowing — or sleeting, or sooting — when he pulled off the Outer Drive. His watch showed five-thirty. Since he did not want to go back and sit around his apartment for an hour before eating, he decided he would eat now, hungry or not, and have a long evening. He tried to relish the idea of a long evening. He had two applications to fill out later, one for a job teaching American literature in Greece, another for a position in Istanbul. Though he doubted that either was exactly the place he had been looking for, he was certain that he could not stay on much longer in Chicago; it was one of the few things he was certain of. In filling out the applications he would at least have begun to make a plan for departing. What was to be avoided was resigning and subsequently having no place to which he had to go. He might not even have returned after the summer, had it not been that there wasn’t any place he could think of to which he could migrate, no place where there would be a chance of a little peace and some happiness. Of course, it was not exactly happiness he had discovered in choosing to remain amidst familiar surroundings — it was just that by staying he had avoided the onus of running. Whether sailing off to the Middle East this coming September would be any less what it might have been a year before, he could not tell in advance. He could only make out the applications and wait to see what happened.

He parked outside a delicatessen on Fifty-fifth Street. He tried hard to work up an appetite by looking at the salamis hanging in the window. The disorder that he had come to feel as an undercurrent in his life had arisen, he knew, out of just such absurdities as eating when he didn’t want to. He must try to bring together his actions and his appetites. Yet there always seemed to be extra bits of time to juggle with: a stretch between classes, a dull period after lunch, the solitary hours when the sun was setting. In more pleasant weather he might have taken a walk, but they were having a miserable December — and where was there to walk to? He thought of phoning Bill Lake, or calling Mona, and then he remembered a pleasant-looking, slightly assertive girl he had met at the Harnaps’ after a Moody lecture; but he did not know where she lived, and besides, he did not want new friends. Not now — he was leaving town. He should have left, he thought, watching his wipers deal with the sluggish precipitation, he should have left long before this. But at the end of the summer he had had strong feelings about “facing up” to what had happened, so he had returned from the East — and what was there to face up to? He had not come back for facing up’s sake; he had returned to Chicago to assert his sense of his own innocence.

Forcefully he entered the delicatessen. Like someone’s mother, he pushed upon himself two sandwiches and then dessert. He did his best to stretch out the meal; he ate a pickle; he asked the waitress for a newspaper to read while he downed a second cup of coffee; nevertheless he was back out on the street in time to hear the grim old church on Kimbark ring out six o’clock — and there it was before him: his long evening.

The streets of the neighborhood had a black sheen, like the backs of animals. He drove aimlessly around. Every few blocks there were washed-out-looking Christmas trees stacked up against buildings. The men trying to sell the trees stood by, hands in the pockets of their overcoats; some stirred at little fires they kept going in old paint buckets. The drizzle stopped and started, changed from rain to snow and back again. Still, he did not head home.

Where he met with one-way signs he had a stronger sense of purpose than he had at those intersections where he had a choice of directions — where he might head east, west, north or south, drive a thousand or two thousand miles to a place where nothing would suggest the past and he could turn into his old old self again. He remembered a self of his that was more substantial than the one he was saddled with now; he remembered being in the saddle. He remembered being happier. Well then, he would just take off — except there were certain practical matters to restrain him. His father’s wedding was the day after Christmas. It would only add to the wear and tear to move between now and then. Directly after the wedding, however, there was nothing to stop him from taking off for Europe …

Except his having made up his mind to the contrary. He would not depart until he had a definite commitment about the future; he would depart in a dignified fashion, affairs in order. He was not the kind of man who could walk off a job, whatever the extremes of depression led him to believe about himself. Furthermore, there was no need for him to run away, not so long as he could continue to be realistic about what he had and had not done. He had only to distinguish for himself between the impact one had on the lives of others and the sheer momentum of fate — chance, luck, accident, for which no man who had merely crossed another’s path could be held accountable.

But having a lucid moment, he was forced to contemplate the crossing of paths … The same impulse that had led him to want to tidy up certain messy lives had led him also to turn his back upon others that threatened to engulf his own. He had finally come to recognize in himself a certain dread of the savageness of life. Tenderness, grace, affection: they struck him now as toys with which he had set about to hammer away at mountains. He had tried to be reasonable with everyone — but the demands made upon him had been made by unreasonable people. But the demands made on them had not been reasonable. Still, he had tried to be true to his feelings, to what he was … So on the one hand he still believed himself put upon; on the other, he saw — or was willing to see — where he had not been savage enough. And he doubted that he ever could be, for it did not seem that he knew how to be; and he was not finally sure that he should be. Or had he been savage? Circles …

Fortunately the choice now was not between extremes of impotence or savagery. He had simply to get back on his feet. There were two applications to make out, a wedding present to buy for his father.

On the Midway he turned left and started for the Outer Drive. He would try it again. He should not have permitted himself to have been so indecisive all afternoon. The stores would be open late because of the holiday; he had only to go into one (which one?) and pick something out (what?). He couldn’t turn up at his father’s wedding empty-handed … though he would just as soon not turn up at all. The only reason he had wandered around all afternoon unable to make a choice was because he had not even wanted to recognize the necessity for making one.

When he reached Stoney Island, he swung the car to the right, away from the Drive — no, he would not fly East on Christmas Day, he would invent an excuse — Then at Sixty-third he turned left, out toward the streaming lights headed for the Loop. How could he ignore a wedding he had helped bring about?

Against his will! Almost on the Drive, he made a wild U-turn, and with cars bleating all around him he leaned over the wheel and headed into Sixty-third again, for he refused to be responsible for his father’s fate. In his aggravated mood he was finding it necessary to believe either in fate, blind fate, as having arranged for his father’s condition, or in himself as the agent of misery; himself as a kind of witch, mindless, malevolent … And in time past what was it he had seemed to others — Libby, Martha, his father — but an agent of deliverance? Well, he had delivered his father all right — into a lifeless, hopeless union! How could he buy a present for what was not a wedding but a funeral? As a life went slipping away — oh how she would feed on his father’s good heart! — he was to stand by in his tuxedo, smiling!

Impotence and savagery, that was precisely the choice. Either do nothing, or put his foot down and call a halt to the whole thing. Then what? The circumstances of his father’s union seemed to render him impotent. When he had the rights, he did not seem able to muster the power; when he had the power, he did not know if he had the rights — which washed away what power he had.

With no plan at all — a condition no more comfortable for having become regular — he continued west on busy Sixty-third, under the iron structure of the El. A Salvation Army band, five men and two maidens, made a thin blue line across the intersection at Dorchester. “Silent Night, Holy Night” beat valiantly up into the thick wet air. A cornet lashed out at a high note, the neon lights sizzled in the rain, and then all was consumed in the roar of a train shooting by overhead. For evangelical reasons of its own, the band turned and was marching back toward the curb it had just stepped down from, missing a few beats in the change-over. Gabe slouched in his seat as horns blew behind him.

Out his side window he saw a lanky colored man hustling in and out of a flock of evergreens. Wet, dark, and limp, the branches tipped against the wall of a brick apartment building. Moving amongst them, holding her coat together under her chin, was Martha. Parked at the curb was the little beat-up convertible that he knew she had bought for herself; the bumpers were crusty and one door wasn’t shut tight. He saw her remove her wallet from her purse. She handed a bill to the Negro — and traffic was moving again, horns blowing down his neck. But he did not start forward — he couldn’t. A train overhead drove down on the piles of the El with all its force. An equivalent force drove down in him. For the moment he had been stripped of his clothing and thrown in a dark cell for a crime he had not committed. But the bars, the blackness, the disgrace, the humiliation — he must have committed it! Unwatched, he followed Martha’s face; he had not seen it since he had stood across from her in the little graveyard near the tip of Long Island, where Markie had been buried — and where he had felt, with the same intensity, the confusion he felt now.

His second trip to the Loop was not altogether unsuccessful. A small package sat on the seat beside him when he arrived back on the South Side a little after eight. Carrying it up the dim stairway to the Herz apartment, he could feel the muddiness of the stairs under his shoes. Galoshes stood outside doorways on each landing. Beneath an exhausted bulb on the third floor, he rubbed his feet on the welcome mat and knocked. A slender girlish figure swung the door back; she was wearing slacks and a sweater, and her hair was in her face. She made a small noiseless clap with her hands. It was a gamble dropping in on someone as unpredictable as Libby, and he was relieved that she seemed pleased to see him.

“Hi!” She pushed her hair up with both hands. “Come in — shhhh, though.” Her fingers went up to her lips.

He whispered, “I just want to drop something off.”

“What?”

He had been holding the package behind him. Coyly. “This.” They were in the living room, beside the false fireplace, inside of which sat piles of books. Candles burned in a long tin holder on the mantle, flitting light over half of Libby’s face. A hard glare from a gooseneck lamp fell on the frazzled upholstery of the couch and chairs. The room seemed a vast and barren place; no rug still, and little furniture — though café curtains had been hooked on to several of the windows.

Libby rattled the gayly wrapped box. “What is it?”

He pointed down the hall, to what had formerly been Paul’s study. “For the smallest Herz.”

With a jerky movement of her head, she shot her hair back and flopped down on the sofa. But the hair fell forward, along the fragile line that ran from the corner of her eyes to the corner of her mouth, a line he had first appreciated long ago. “How sweet, Gabe.” She held the package in her lap, fingering the ribbon. “Chanukah gelt,” she said.

For a moment he was puzzled; then her suggesting that he had meant to present Rachel with a gift for the Jewish holiday disappointed him. She did not appreciate the good-natured spontaneity of the purchase — that looking for a wedding present, he had settled on a baby present. “Just a little toy,” he said.

“For Chanukah—”

He interrupted, smiling. “Is it Chanukah time again?”

“You like too much to tease me about that.”

“When I got up this morning I was thinking how much I felt like Purim.”

“What you don’t want to say is that you really brought it for Christmas.”

He let the matter drop. Earlier in the year, when they all had begun to act like friends again, he had submitted to a thorough examination on the subject of his lack of faith. He was to be accused now, and only half-playfully, of celebrating the Christian heresy. Libby herself was in the clutches of another divinity. He simply smiled, again.

“May I open it for her?” Libby asked.

While she worked away at the ribbon, he asked where Paul was. But she wasn’t giving him much attention; the present she was so feverishly opening might have been for herself. “He’ll be back — what sweet wrapping paper — we haven’t seen — ooops, I don’t want to tear it — seen you for what, a month? — you have to come to dinner — though you can drop in when — aahhh—” Two sheets of tissue paper floated down around her house slippers. “Oh she’ll love it,” she said, lifting the dog from the box. “Gabe, it’s such a charming little — Do you wind this, yes?”

“Just turn the key.”

“It plays?”

“I think so.”

“Gabe, thank you so much,” she said, as a tune tinkled out of the animal. “She’ll be crazy about it.”

“I was a little afraid it might be too old for her — the key turning—”

“She happens to be a brilliant six-month-old. Would you like to see her?”

“Should you wake her?”

“We can watch her sleep. I spend hours watching her sleep.”

“If that’s okay with you—”

“You haven’t seen her for ages,” Libby whispered, as he followed her down the hall. “She’s grown and grown …”

In Rachel’s room they stood side by side over the crib. Striped curtains were pulled across the windows; a double row of framed Mother Goose pictures hung from the wall. Since his last visit — the night Libby had called the office and asked Paul to bring him home for a drink to celebrate Rachel’s third month in the family — a new floor of black and white linoleum squares had been laid. When Libby brushed by the curtains, they gave off a crisp sound. The floor shone … She might have ruffled him earlier by muddling the reasons for his gift-bearing, but that was no longer important. It hadn’t really been so spontaneous a purchase anyway. It was, in fact, for this moment that he had driven from the Loop directly to the Herzes. He waited beside the crib for those feelings that he believed he deserved to have. He waited.

“Her hair gets blacker,” Libby whispered, “and her eyes get bluer … She’s a Rachel, isn’t she? Can’t you see her drawing water from a well—” The infant stirred; Libby’s wistfulness ceased for a moment. She resumed, in a voice barely audible, “—out of a well in what-do-you-call-it, Dan, Nineveh? Isn’t she something?”

“She’s a honey.”

“She’s our baby,” Libby said.

They watched the child sleep. The “our” had not been unintentional, of that he felt sure; it was simply Libby’s final refusal to give up a claim on anyone. She kept her hold on you — for if she was not in desparate need at the moment, there was always the future. She was what she had charged him with being: the tease. He scowled at her in the dim room, remembering that letter full of sweetness she had sent to him from Reading. He believed he must still have it somewhere. He couldn’t bear her, really. Our baby. Nineveh!

However, he had not dropped in unannounced, bearing an offering, to work up old grievances. He had come for the satisfactions that a new child is said to give. He had expected to be able to look down into the crib and know that all was not wrong in the world, or in himself. But no such assurance was forthcoming.

Yet he had helped to rescue Rachel, he had helped to place her in this crib … But nothing happened, no matter what weights he placed on his own scales. He stood beside Libby, looking down at Rachel, at the white sheet, at the wool blanket, at the incredible infant hands … Then he saw his solace, what it was that would set his days right. During these last few months he had been continuing to live the restricted bachelor existence — necessary, of course, to a discovery of taste, pleasures, limitations — when he was just about ready for a more expansive career. Till now everything had been by way of initiation. Bumbling toward a discovery of his nature, he had made the inevitable errors of a young man. But he was ready now to be someone’s husband, someone’s father. Looking down at Rachel, he was convinced that he had been feeling edgy of late only because he was on the edge of something. What else? It explained much that seemed inconclusive, uncertain, about the past.

Turning, Rachel made a weak nasal sound. It was slight, but human and penetrable; it broke through the thin skin of his reflections. What looked to be truth poured through: he was imagining in the name of the future what should have been a past; he could have left young manhood, stopped bumbling, whenever he chose …

When Libby put the musical dog at the end of the mattress, he was unprepared for the urge he felt to reach in and take it back. He found himself reduced to elemental emotions and passions. He had been hoping that the child would render him less culpable than he had been feeling since dinner. Now he turned from Rachel’s dog. He still did not have a present for his father and Mrs. Silberman. Nothing has changed.

In the hallway, Libby asked, “Isn’t she darling? An honest opinion now. A few unbiased words to an objective mother.”

“Unbiased, I’d say she’s perfect.”

“For which statement you will be allowed the pleasure of being her baby-sitter some night. We prefer unbiased baby-sitters.”

His desire earlier to take the toy away caused him to speak now with too much eagerness; he knew he was too eager to play her game, but he did. “That might be fun. I think I’d enjoy it.”

“Are you an unbiased diaper man?”

“Well, I do have what they call a slight fecal aversion—”

“Can’t use you,” Libby broke in. “This enchanting child poops a blue streak.” They were in the living room, speaking in normal voices, smiling with kindness at one another. “Will you stay?” Libby asked, pushing her hair back. “Stay for coffee?”

He had not come so as to leave more firmly convinced that nothing at all had changed. There was Libby smiling — wasn’t that a change? And Rachel was a living fact, which counted for something. “I wouldn’t mind some,” he said.

“Let me just turn it on.”

When she returned to the living room he asked her if Paul was still at his office. Alone with Libby he always felt the necessity to establish clearly Paul’s whereabouts. That compulsion had a long history, and the contemplation of it momentarily fatigued him. No sooner had he decided to remain in her company to be cheered up a little, than he saw how inappropriate she was to induce in him optimism and serenity.

“He went to services,” she said. “He should be home soon.”

“Is tonight the holiday?”

“He’s saying Kaddish.”

“… I didn’t know.”

“You did know it was Chanukah though — didn’t you?”

“Libby—” he began, ending only with, “I’m afraid not.” And he remained seated.

“Now you know what that is?” She pointed to the four candles flickering into extinction in the holder.

“Candles for Chanukah?”

“A menorah — oh you did know. You pretend because it gives you some pleasure — a savage atheistic pleasure”—she smiled still—“to frustrate me about all this.”

“You have certainly become a very Jewish girl, Libby,” was his reply.

“Well, what are you being, Gabe — skeptical? Don’t you believe it’s possible? You don’t see me as a very religious person? Do I strike you as unalterably secular?”

“You strike me as very religious.”

“But you don’t take it seriously, do you?”

“What?”

“Being Jewish. Being religious!”

“For myself or for you?”

“Either. Both!” she said, slightly leaving her seat.

“It’s not an issue in my life.”

“It is in mine.” Clearly it was only herself that she cared to talk about anyway; though she added, “And it can’t help but be in yours. You were born one.”

“I can only assure you again that it isn’t. At least it hasn’t been yet — all right?”

“Not on the conscious level perhaps.”

He made a slight whistling noise through his teeth.

“Well, you have an unconscious,” she said.

To which he nodded.

“So how do you know what’s in it?” she asked.

He remembered her having said something like that long ago. “How do you?” he asked.

“I”—she hesitated, and she flushed—“interpret your actions.”

“Oh yes?”

“Don’t you interpret mine?” Before he could answer, she spared him by opening the question out all the way. “Don’t we interpret everyone’s? I’m not saying all your problems have to do with your identity as a Jew—”

“You see me as a man with a lot of problems, it seems.”

“I just think now that you’re like the rest of us.” Her gaze dropped.

Of late a drop of self-pity was coloring his life — more than a drop. It colored his answer. “You didn’t always,” he said.

With that, the tug he had once felt toward this girl came back to him. They still had the old impulse to flirt, it seemed. Had they been brave enough, or weak enough, or silly enough, to have gone ahead and slept with one another a certain tender curiosity would probably have died out between them long ago. But their sentimental exchange released an anchor, and sexuality moved now on the surface. He sensed the energies of Libby’s body — the purr, the whininess — as he had not earlier, when they had been together beside the crib. Though there she had been conscious — he thought — of whatever energies she imagined him still to have.

Libby became at once dramatic and metaphysical; she tossed her head, not simply to deal with her hair. “We lose some things, we gain others.”

“Well,” he answered, smiling and appalled, “you’ve gained religion.”

“And it makes all the difference.”

“Oh does it? Between what and what?”

“Between knowing what you are and what you aren’t,” she said. “Knowing what’s important and what’s not. Go ahead and be cynical if you want. Remember Isabel Archer?”

“I do.”

“Well, she didn’t know what was valuable; she didn’t know who was valuable.”

“At the end I thought she came to know—”

“Now I do too.”

He paused. “That statement,” he said, knowing he had just been maligned, “isn’t marked by much humility, for a religious person like yourself.”

“Well, I do know more.”

He only nodded; one of the energies he happened to be without was the energy to resist an attack, from himself or from another.

“I feel different about myself, Gabe. My marriage, my child.” The word turned her lyrical on the spot. “Paul lights the candles and he says the prayer, in Hebrew, and I stand on the side and watch — and I’m holding Rachel — and that’s a very special feeling. I’ve never had it before.”

“You’re happier?”

The reverent mood into which she had plunged herself made it impossible for her to give him a facile answer. However he was taking her, she was taking herself absolutely seriously. “We have Rachel,” she said.

He had no desire to be hard on her any longer, even if she should be hard on him. What was she but a very simple girl? “She’s a fine little baby,” he said.

“She’s a dream. I know I sound corny saying all these excessive things, but I can’t help it. When I was growing up I swore I’d refrain from certain practices — one of them was boring people about my babies.”

“It shows you don’t have to be true to adolescent ideas, or fantasies.”

“It does. I was a great enemy of religion too, you know. I raised a lot of hell — caused a lot of hell — around our house about God and Christ and the Virgin Mother. But it’s different now, Gabe. Being a Jew.”

“What is?”

“You’re skeptical again.”

Not until she made me so, he thought. The truth was that more often than not he was willing to believe the best of her. “Do you believe in God now? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know whether I believe in God,” came her sharp reply.

“Then we’re probably a good deal closer in our theology than you think.”

“You don’t understand. What’s important is being something. Maybe I’m not making myself clear.”

“In one way you are, in one way you aren’t.”

“You don’t understand,” she told him, “the power of faith.”

“Faith in what?” he demanded.

“All I’m saying is that everything’s changed … I’m changed … Paul’s changed.” In a lower, less courageous voice, she said again, “Paul is changed.”

“I didn’t mean to be cavalier about your happiness,” he said, after some time had passed. “Or about your conversion. I’m really not a very fierce atheist, Libby. How did all of this begin anyway?”

“I only wanted to let you know …” Apparently she saw no sense in going on.

“… Of course.”

“It was only a discussion. I only want to add”—she seemed unable finally to drop the subject—“that in the end believing or disbelieving in God isn’t the point.”

“Not for you perhaps.”

“Not for a lot of Jews.”

“Not even for Paul?”

She lifted her chin — too high. “I don’t know. Religion has a different meaning for a man than for a woman.”

“Paul believes then?”

“You don’t understand about marriage. I think that’s something I’ve observed about you, Gabe,” she said sternly.

“Who’s even talking about marriage?”

“You don’t have to believe exactly as your mate does, to be happy.”

He relaxed a little, and sat back; apparently she had not been about to accuse him of anything specific.

“I don’t know what Paul believes,” she said.

Nothing further was said by either of them, and so Libby’s final admission became laden with gravity. Suddenly she rose and left the room; alone, he found himself contemplating the hardest fact of the Herzes’ life: the husband did not make love to the wife. Still …? No sooner did the idea come into his mind than he pushed it right out. He had not been put on this earth to service the deprived, whatever the deprived themselves might think. Whatever he might think! He could not fathom yet his soft heart. It was an affliction! It was not soft at all! He was soft — the heart was hard.

He was having another bad day.

Two of the candles Paul had lit burned out. The two still wavering cast a homey light, domesticating the barren room, hypnotizing its inhabitant. He was brought around again to thinking of himself as a husband and a father.

Libby burst back into the living room. “Chanukah, Gabe, doesn’t even require that you believe in God—” A small black tray, two cups and a coffee pot upon it, was thrust against her body and accentuated what little bosom she had. She stood over him ready to put the tray down. To reach out for her would require little maneuvering on his part; he believed she was aware of this. “It’s the people it commemorates,” she said, peering straight down at him, “what they did and so forth — and though they believed in God, what you’re celebrating is what they did. You can think of it as the Jewish Fourth of July.”

“Oh Libby—”

“Oh Libby what! Libby what! Doesn’t that make any sense to you?” She seemed angry about something; perhaps it was what she was talking about.

“Oh Libby be quiet or you’ll wake up your baby. That’s all,” he said softly.

“Well …” She set the tray down. “You’re not going to win me with charm.”

Silence followed. Libby sat on the sofa, the meaning of what she had said unfolded while they looked at each other’s shoes. They both drank their coffee.

“You can pour yourself more,” she said, “if you want more.”

“I still have some, thank you.”

She asked stiffly, “When will you be going East?”

“Christmas Day. I’m going to fly out that morning.”

“Will it be a big formal wedding?”

“Mostly family and old friends.”

“Paul’s mother is coming to visit us,” she said.

“… He mentioned something about it the other day.”

“I didn’t know …”

“We had a cup of coffee at the Commons.”

“I didn’t know you’d talked.”

“Just a chat.”

After a second of what was clearly indecision, she asked, “Did he tell you how long she’s going to stay?”

He shook his head.

“Well, I suppose he couldn’t,” she said, curling her mouth not quite all the way into a smile, “because we haven’t decided. It’s all a little like walking on eggs. It’s the first time she’s going to be seeing the baby,” she said, waving her arms and nearly tipping the coffee pot, “so it’ll all work out.”

“It should be a thrill for her.”

“That’s what we think. Hope. It’s her only grandchild.”

“When is she coming?”

“She’s taking the train — she doesn’t fly. Oh — Christmas Eve.” She took a sip of coffee and calmed down. “I’m not all stone and mortar, as you can see, about all this. I only think we should have established how long she’ll stay, that’s all. So she knows and we know … in case, you know. It’s all had to be a little feeling-out and careful.”

“I’m sure that everything will work out,” he said dutifully.

“Yes — she wanted to come, after all. I’m simply a little unnerved. Not that I’m what I used to be. I used to be”—she lifted one hand—“impossible. But it’s the adoption that’s gotten to me a little. The combination of things. We’re going to court right after Christmas, so there’s that too. The twenty-ninth — Paul told you that?”

“No.”

Relief — apparently Paul had not told him anything he had not as yet told her. “We sign the paper — and she’s ours. Absolutely ours. Though I can’t imagine her not being ours. You know? If she’s not ours whose can she be? I’m not a total coward, Gabe, no matter what I may seem to people — but you don’t know how thankful I am that we never had to see or know anybody else who was involved. When I think of how kind you and Sid and Martha Reganhart — Sid called before, in fact, and I know it’s something about the court business, and I really was hoping that he wouldn’t tell it to me, because I don’t want to hear. I’m not a coward, but it’s just — Rachel is Rachel.”

“I understand.”

“And he didn’t tell it to me.”

Sid’s accession to her desire made her, of all things, gloomy. Gabe said, “Why should you have to be distracted by legal details anyway? That’s not a mother’s business.”

“Except that I’m so neurotic. Well, I am still — somewhat,” she said, though he had not raised a finger. “I was sure some catastrophe had occurred, and that that was why he wanted to speak to Paul and not me.”

She waited to hear what he would tell her. “That sounds like the old neurosis coming out, all right,” was what he said, moving in his chair.

“I guess I still need someone around to reassure me every fifteen minutes or so — do you mind terribly?”

“Since I’m here, I might just as well reassure you as not.”

“I can pay you off in coffee. Want more?”

“I don’t think so. I’d better go.”

“Don’t. Do wait till Paul comes. We hardly ever see you—” Suddenly she was cheery and full of energy. “I think we should all do something together. I don’t know — go out to dinner. You know those Greek places, where they dance and have the old Greek music — wouldn’t you like to go? I want to, Paul wants to, I think — and why don’t you come? We could go any place really, just have dinner, or go to the ballet when it comes, or the opera. I’ve been clipping things to do out of the Sunday paper all winter long. We have a good baby-sitter I really trust, and we can go if you want to. Any night. It would be fun.”

“It sounds as though it would.”

“You see, Gabe? Everything looks so much better. We’re halfway out of debt; we’ve even paid off most of the co-op loan, which I thought we wouldn’t pay till we were dead, and I’ve gained two whole pounds. I don’t know if it’s noticeable or not, but I have, and the doctor says I’m a veritable Tarzan. And then there’s Rachel — and she’s always there. Isn’t that something? I’m in the kitchen and she’s in the other room, and I’m in the living room, and she’s — well — there. Though sometimes I’m in the kitchen — this is my nuttiness again — and I think, Oh Christ she’s not there. And I zoom into her room, and she is there, tight asleep — or awake and gurgling to herself. I know I swore I’d never be a bore about my baby, but I can’t help it. Really, even Paul’s mother doesn’t unnerve me that much. What can she do? What can anybody do?” Tilting her head, she made herself look a little younger, a little more innocent, than she was. “If I could apologize, Gabe, for that terrible night when I said those awful things to you — I really want to apologize with all my heart.”

“You’ve apologized already.”

“It was just so awful—” She was close to tears. “I can’t apologize enough.”

“So long as everything’s worked out.”

“You’ve never been anything but kind to me, Gabe.” Unable to control her emotions, she left the room. In the few minutes while she was gone, he put on his coat.

“I didn’t mean to drive you out,” she said, coming down the hall.

“I have to go home and fill out an application anyway.” He did not take the hand which she was holding a little way out from her side. “I only dropped by for a minute.”

“What are you applying for?”

“For a job in Istanbul — exotic, don’t you think?”

“Paul said you might not be staying next year.”

“I’m thinking of going abroad for a year or two.”

“We’re going to miss you. If we’re still here. Paul has given up on his Ph.D.”

“I didn’t know.”

“He’s given up writing, I think. Now he says he might want to teach in a high school. That’s okay with me — I don’t care where he teaches, so long as he stays happy.”

“Of course.”

“By the end of next year,” said Libby, moving rapidly on, “we’ll all be scattered all over the place again.” She had taken a step backwards into the hall. “Would you like to get a last look at Rachel?”

“No, I’d better—”

“Wait one second—” She ran off, leaving him to stand in his coat. What was she up to?

She reappeared just as abruptly. “There are just those little catches on the side of the crib. I couldn’t remember closing them. I’d put new sheets on, and then I couldn’t remember — As I said, I’m still the old nut I always was.”

To smile seemed inappropriate, but that was what he did. “It’s natural to worry, Libby.”

“I want to tell you something, Gabe.”

This girl! This girl!

“I want to tell you because I think you would want to know.”

“And what is that?”

“Sid, tonight when he called, told me that he was going to get married.”

He’d had no idea what she might be going to say. Even after she had spoken, he did not immediately see what the news had to do with him. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure …”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“And I thought you would want to.”

Only now was he stunned. “Certainly, why not …”

“I saw her the other day, Gabe. Outside the co-op. I had Rachel in the carriage, and suddenly I turned and started pushing it the other way. I was actually running, and I knew it was noticeable, but I couldn’t help it. Remember that warm day we had? Well, that was it. I think she saw me, but I couldn’t stop myself. If she had looked into the carriage and seen Rachel, I knew it would break her heart. It would break mine. I go to bed and I lie awake, ever since that happened, and I think: Rachel’s going to smother under the blanket. I think I haven’t snapped those damn snaps, the ones that lower the bars on the side. I even thought of asking Paul to send this crib back for another model. Truly, I get up four and five times a night. I get up and I check — and then I wind up in bed, thinking about her. Every time I go down to the basement to hang up my wash, I somehow think of her little boy. I was probably rude and impolite again, and awful, but I just had to turn the carriage around and get away. Then when Sid told me he thought he was going to be married pretty soon … Well, I didn’t know if you knew or not — I don’t want to seem a gossip, but I thought you would want to hear.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

“I feel I’m talking about things that are none of my business—”

“It was a horrible thing, Libby. I suppose that makes it everybody’s business.”

She did not understand that he was trying to shut her up, but it was not entirely her obtuseness that was responsible — his tone had been vague. He realized that he wanted to hear even more. So did Libby.

“What — what does she … say about it? How does she feel now?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“I thought perhaps you run into her. At the University.”

“We even manage not to run into one another.”

“I’m sorry, Gabe. It’s a hard thing to forget. It’s a hard thing not to talk about. I keep wondering what it’s like for her. I nearly called her once — I feel now how rotten I was with her, when I was being rotten and crazy with everyone. I almost called her one evening to come over for coffee. But I don’t even know what to say. You become somehow afraid of a person when something like that happens to him.”

“The best thing for all of us is to let the past be. There’s nothing anybody can do about it.”

“I feel terrible that she saw me and I kept running.”

She waited; he nodded. “I was going to say something to Sid,” she said. “He’s been so kind to us, he hasn’t charged a penny, and he’s been so concerned, so decent. I was going to ask him to explain for me to her … That’s it, you see, it would all have taken so much explanation.”

Despite his inability to keep his mind precisely on what he was about, by ten o’clock he had managed to complete both applications. He typed the address on each envelope, then settled back in his chair. It was done. By March he would hear, and by June he would be gone. There was really nothing more for him to do in the way of planning.

Except call Jaffe.

At first he could not explain why the idea had occurred to him. Then he remembered Libby saying that Jaffe had called her, and the nervousness she had expressed over the lawyer not giving her his message directly — at the same time that she had expressed gratitude for his reticence. What a girl! She still had the power to present her anxieties in such a way that they came to seem your anxieties. It did not appear to be an unconscious talent either — it never had. Doubtless what she had been hoping was that Gabe would volunteer on the spot to call Jaffe for her and to work out whatever little problem had arisen. But, of course, no problem of which she didn’t know the details beforehand could be imagined by Libby to be “little.” If Sid had called, what else but catastrophe! Theresa wanting Rachel for her own — or worse.

Was that even a legal possibility? He did not know the final ins and outs of the adoption. He had not even realized that Theresa would have to do any signing. Had Jaffe called to say Theresa wouldn’t sign? Was the natural father to sign too? Did he have to be dug up now? Would he meet the Herzes?

No, it probably wasn’t even necessary for the father to appear in the court at all. Whatever the necessities, Jaffe would take care of them; he was a capable man, he would see to it that everything was tight and binding; the Herzes would be protected. It was not his business to brood over the last-minute details; he had his own applications to mail. The Herzes were Rachel’s parents and they would have to work out matters for themselves.

With Jaffe’s help.

Why not? Surely he was better equipped than a layman to deal with whatever problem might have arisen; that he did not charge them for his services was his own affair … Not that if some last-minute help were needed, he himself wouldn’t step forward. If there was some foul-up concerning Theresa Haug, he felt he could solve it as well as anybody. Better, in fact. What he would have liked was for Jaffe to call him and ask that he be of assistance. He had no reason to believe, however, that Jaffe would ever again seek his help … which was precisely why he should call him. Call him. Yes, he would really like to do that. Jaffe should know that he was quite willing, and quite able, to play his part in this adoption right down to the end.

Martha should know that too. Surely she would if he were to sit down and call Jaffe right now. Where else had she been going with that Christmas tree?

… Some things Gabe surmised about her now; some things he knew. He knew, for instance, that she had moved. One day on the co-op bulletin board he had seen an index card announcing a sale of furniture; he had recognized the handwriting even before recognizing the address. Then one day he had seen her, just her back, moving through the doorway of a little rooming house on Kenwood. That night, driving down Kenwood — it was not too far out of his way, one cross street was as good as another really — he had seen Jaffe’s car parked outside. That was how he had learned about the convertible too. He had seen it in front of the rooming house, and on another night, when he happened to be driving by Jaffe’s apartment on Dorchester, he had seen it again. The following week he saw it parked outside of Jaffe’s apartment on three different nights. The week after, only two. But probably it was parked there now; they would be up in Jaffe’s apartment decorating that tree.

Leaning forward again in his chair, he set about checking what he had written. Reviewing the facts of his birth, education, and professional experience, a conviction began to grow in him that bad news awaited the Herzes. He had only Libby’s insane anxieties to go on, but surprisingly, the application before him, with its listing of accomplishments, of degrees attained and works completed, led him further and further into pessimism. He was reminded (not that he had to be) of all that was unrecorded there — what he had not been prepared for, the unaccomplished. Having failed to imagine in the past what calamities there might be, he began imagining present calamities for which he had no real evidence.

Still, nothing was to be lost in giving Jaffe a ring. He would like to catch Martha in the lawyer’s apartment anyway. To be sure, she was under no further obligation to him; however, for him to find her with Jaffe now would perhaps make her aware of the suspicions he had about times past — that he had come to suspect that as soon as he had driven off to Long Island in August, she had gone to bed with her old suitor. Of course, concrete evidence was slight — only that when he had called Chicago to tell her that Markie was in a coma in the Southampton Hospital, Sid Jaffe had picked up the phone.

At the funeral nothing had been said about the phone call, about anything, in fact. He had watched her suntanned, expressionless face looking down into the grave. Afterwards the only words spoken between them had been hers. “Please, let me start from scratch.” He had thought then that she had said little out of grief and fatigue — and out of her desire to end the affair. It was a desire he saw fit to obey. No, to honor. But in the months that followed he was more and more convinced that she had said so little out of shame as well as sorrow. Now when he needed it, he summoned up the image of Martha receiving the tragic news in bed.

And he happened now to need it. He did not feel he was deceiving himself by continuing to believe that he was not an irresponsible man. Even his decision to call Jaffe about the adoption was evidence in his own behalf. Chances were it was only Libby’s morbid imagination to which he was bending; nevertheless, he did not want it said by others — or by himself to himself — that he had gone less than all the way once again. If that was what he had done in earlier days, surely it had to be chalked up partly to inexperience; youth, he told himself. But now he was older. He would simply pick up the phone and have a talk with Jaffe. He would like Martha to be reminded, should it happen that she was once again in Jaffe’s bed, that in the end it was she who had been unfaithful to him, and not the other way around.

For the moment he believed this. For the moment he believed more. Standing over the phone, he reasoned that even if he had married her, there was no guarantee that one morning a child of hers might not have rolled from his bed (or tripped down the stairs, or slipped in the bathtub, or stepped in front of a car, or swallowed a bottle full of iodine) and died.

2

Dear Mr. Jaffe—

I am not able to come to your office about that baby or ever. I have not told you all the truth. I am a married woman. My real name is Mrs. Harry Bigoness the other name I made up though my first name is Theresa really. Haug isn’t my Maiden name it is just something I made up because I suppose I liked the sound of it. I am only a housewife in Gary Ind. and I went astray and now I am back with my husband Mr. Bigoness and we both do not want me mixed-up in any of that business. That is all my “shameful” past and was a big big mistake. Harry knows what is best for our family especially with this “recession” on. I don’t think I should get mixed-up again. I had done all I can. I hope I am not cauzing trouble but it was a shock to me and Mr. Bigoness and now it is over and done, with. Harry says it is absolutely done, with. Excuse me.

Yours Very Truly,

Theresa Bigoness (Theresa “Haug”)

12/16/57

Gabe:

Here is the letter I told you about — let me know what happens.

Sid Jaffe

P.S. Please save the letter for my files. Thanks for your interest.

The mills were dark and nearly smokeless; for all the mass and solidity, without purpose. High up on concrete foundations, the wooden houses — two stories each, set fifteen feet apart — brought to mind prehistoric lake villages, dank shacks on stilts. The dwellings went on and on, as did the aerials hooked to the roofs, until blocks away the weather blurred the wires and rods, leaving what might have been ancient writing, hieroglyphics, illegible markings in the unpleasant winter sky. It was a day of dampness, of heaviness, a day without color; a haze like cold steam moved forward in puffs. Stuck to a few front doors were clumps of holly; those Christmas trees visible behind lace curtains were not aglow — there was no wasting of electricity, no sign anywhere of comfort or luxury. The big soiled cars lining both sides of the street indicated that, though it was a Tuesday and not yet four in the afternoon, men were at home. The day itself felt grainy to the skin.

Twisting the key in the door of his car, Gabe had numerous shooting thoughts, but only one that was strong and recurrent. I am in it again.

There was nothing of value in the car, yet he came around to check the far door too. His stray thoughts turned on theft, assault, violence … He informed himself that his life didn’t depend on this little trip. Yet the mills, the houses, the fact that Harry Bigoness was probably a steel worker, served to intimidate him. The man’s name could itself have been a word having to do with the atmospheric conditions, the haze, the chill, the shadows. The weather will be mostly bigoness through the late afternoon and evening. Big business. Big onus. By gones — let them be—

Bigoness. Over one of the four bells he found the name. Each time he rang the bell he cleared his throat. He looked at his clothing. The smell he smelled was not himself; it was the house exuding its odor — wet surfaces and old carpeting, a dusty weightiness in his nostrils. The varnished baseboards looked sticky. In the pebbled glass that cupped the electric bulb over his head, last summer’s bugs showed through as dirty spots. He stopped clearing his throat when he became conscious that he had been doing it. His hand shot up to his pocket. Theresa’s letter was still there; he hadn’t dropped it anywhere.

He rang again, and again nothing happened. He did not know what to do next. Though in it now, he had only to walk down the stairs and get in the car to be out of it. After all, if the snarl was legal — a matter of signatures, identities — then it was only sensible to leave it to a lawyer to untangle … Only he did not see that he could give up so easily. He would talk to Theresa; when her husband came home, he would talk to him — and that would be that. They were probably no more than nervous. He was probably no more than nervous.

No one seemed to be at home. He tried not to pay any attention to the emotion he felt; however, he could not help but recognize it as relief. He marched three steps forward and twisted the knob of the glass-paned door leading to the inner stairway. When it opened, his heart did not know how to respond; it was no longer entirely clear as to what was in its own interest. It rose and sank simultaneously, like two hearts. He rushed up three landings to Apartment C; without hesitating very long, he knocked. He had only taken time to count the number of milk bottles lined up on the doormat. Six. He heard a creaking, but when no one answered, he decided it was only his weight on the floor boards. He knocked again, then took out his billfold, hunting for a blank scrap of paper, and he came upon a business card of his father’s. Crossing out the printed name and number, he began to phrase a message. He was reminded that he had only eight days in which to buy that present. A child’s cry came faintly through the door.

“Hello?”

The crying had already stopped.

He knocked. “Is anyone home?”

Feet moved. “Hello? Theresa? Mrs. Bigoness?”

He knocked again. “Is any …? Theresa, it’s only Mr. Wallace.” Mispronouncing his own name had its effect — it made sharp the feeling that he had erred in taking this trip upon himself. He should simply have washed his hands of … “Hello?”

Inside something dropped, someone spoke; footsteps crossed the floor. Then the door opened, a crack; a blue-eyed little girl, no more than four or five, stood before him in red pajamas.

“Close it, Melinda — get back—”

The child was looking at him. From behind her came a brief barrage of sobs. Then the man’s voice again.

“Oh hell—Melinda!”

The little girl turned away and the door eased slowly shut. Gabe reached for the knob, pushed it, and the door went flying backwards into the wall.

“Hey!”

A slender dark man, in need of a shave, was standing over an ironing board, a plastic basket full of wash beside him on a wildly yellow living-room rug. The first thing he noticed — even before he noticed that the man was wearing an apron — was that the fellow was not, as he had imagined he would be, older than himself. “Hey — what’s the matter with you — get out!” The small boy who was crawling on the floor began to wail.

“Are you Mr. Harry Bigoness? My name is—” He could not say Wallace again, though he hadn’t the chance to say anything.

“Just get out of here, that’s all!” Rubbing madly at his chin, plucking at the apron, the man came around from behind the iron. Big mahogany furniture lined all the walls; the panels of a chest before which Bigoness now stood were designed to give the illusion of depth. “Close the door, get out of here, will you!”

The little girl was pulling at her father’s blue work trousers. “I want my sandwich.”

“Mr. Bigoness, I’m representing Sid—”

“Get your hand off my door — don’t you understand?”

“I want my sandwich.”

“—the lawyer who has been in correspondence with you people—”

Not too gently, Bigoness uncurled the little girl’s hand from his leg and advanced upon him. The man’s chest curved in toward its center, but out to beefy shoulders; his arms were ridiculously long. It was his build more than his face that made him look stupid. “Now did I ask you, get your hand—”

“You don’t even know who I am.”

“You woke up that kid—”

“If you’d have answered when I rang—”

“Who do you think you are, invading people—” A crash, then a shattering, then a whimper, came from another part of the house. “Get, before I call the police!”

“Daddy!” The little girl had disappeared and was calling from behind some door. “My Daddy!”

“Mister, I’ll give you three—”

He might then have turned, stepped back. Bigoness’s face was not very far from his own. “Is your wife home — may I speak—”

“Oh — oh — everything fell! It fell on me! I didn’t—” As the little girl cried in the other room, the small boy on the floor continued to whimper. Bigoness tried to fill his lungs; he rose up on his toes; his head moved. His visitor held fast — and Bigoness broke for another part of the house.

“Oh hell.” His moan was deep, pitiful.

“It just fell,” the little girl was explaining.

“Oh Melinda—”

By the time Bigoness had returned to the living room, with a sponge in one hand, the front door was shut, and Gabe was standing inside, hat in hand. “Mr. Bigoness, I’m here representing Sid Jaffe, the lawyer. He’s been writing to you about this adoption case. He’s written four letters since he received a letter from your wife about a month ago. He’s tried to call you on the phone, but it’s been disconnected—”

“Did I say come in here, you?”

“Haven’t you received Mr. Jaffe’s letters?”

“You’re trespassing on private property that don’t belong to you!”

“He’s sent the letters to this address.”

“Where does he come off sending letters to my address? Where’s he get my address?”

“From the phone book.”

“I never received any letters. I never got ’em, and I don’t want ’em. I’m asking you to go, Mister. I’m asking you nice—”

“Mr. Bigoness, I don’t want anything from you. Is your wife home?”

“My wife’s my business.”

The little girl had returned to the living room. She began asking again for her sandwich. All the while the two men talked, she pulled at her father’s trousers.

“I’ve come down from Chicago—”

“I’m busy—”

“All we would like is for you to sign a paper, and for your wife—”

“I’m busy, she’s busy, we’re all busy! Now—”

“—a consent form, and that’s it. There’s nothing for you—”

“I said three times, Get out!”

“Will you please listen to me?”

“I want my sandwich.”

“It’s a simple procedure. It’ll take five minutes — perhaps if I speak to Theresa—”

“My wife’s my business.”

“She had a child—”

“I want my sand—”

“I don’t care what she had, she don’t have time to go—”

“I only want a word with the two of you.”

“Listen—”

“I want my sandwich.”

“Bigoness, simply let me—”

“I want my sandwich!” The little girl threw herself upon the floor. “I want to eat!”

Instantly another howl went up. What she had thrown herself upon was her little brother.

“Christ,” groaned the harassed father. “Ohhh—”

Gabe held his words, and Bigoness dropped back on the sofa. “Oh man,” he said, “what are you bothering me, huh? It’s Christmas time, don’t you know that? What are you bothering me about?”

“I only want to talk to you, Mr. Bigoness, and to Mrs. Bigoness.”

Two dark, distrustful eyes took him in, head to toe. “Your name Wallace?” the man asked.

“That’s right.”

Bigoness nodded, his lashes dropping halfway over his eyes. Softly he said, “You son of a bitch.”

“Daddy! My sandwich—”

“You want a sandwich, go make it.”

“I can’t reach the peanut butter.”

“Ain’t that too bad.”

“Daddy!”

“Oh man …” His feet swung down; Gabe saw only obstinacy in the thick dark workman’s shoes. Bigoness was heading out of the room. The solemn little girl did not smile with victory; she followed on her father’s heels, whimpering. “I’m the new nigger around here,” Bigoness said.

Alone, he took quick glances around the room — as though Theresa might pop up from behind a chair or emerge from back of the curtains. The decor was Chinese modern — the yellow rug swam with pop-eyed dragons; the walls were papered with rickshaws and coolies and junks. There was nothing that was not immense, no object, no design. The two lamps at either end of the sofa were the size of small people — they were small people, one a yellow woman, the other a yellow man, each in kimono, each with hands up sleeves, each with bulb screwed in top of head. All the upholstery was silky, Oriental; only the TV set made a forthright concession to the Occidental world of Indiana. The room seemed to be expanding and narrowing by the moment. There was no chair in which one could sit without sinking. He instructed himself to remain standing — let Bigoness sit. He felt himself becoming excited. He went over what had to be accomplished; he was excited because he felt that something already had been. He had not fallen back — no matter how close he might have come. What he did counted, not what he thought.

Jaffe had indicated on the phone that if the signing of the consent forms could not be worked out, he might have to take a chance and appear in court without any signatures at all. He would report to the court that the child had been abandoned. The danger, however, was that a social agency of the court might be called into the case at the request of the judge; the adoption could then be delayed for months and months, with any number of complications arising. The social agencies of the courts were not very sophisticated — nor, said Jaffe, were the courts themselves, which frowned upon private adoptions anyway. If it was necessary for him to claim abandonment in court, there might even be religious trouble. The infant had been born in a Catholic hospital of a mother who claimed to be Catholic — if the judge sitting in County Court that day also happened to be Catholic, it might eventually be suggested that the child be turned over to a Catholic adoption agency to be placed in a Catholic family, or, for the meantime, in a Catholic orphanage.

Further, since the court presumed the offspring of a married woman to be the offspring too of her lawful husband, it was quite impossible — Jaffe had explained, countering a suggestion of Gabe’s — to go into court with Theresa alone. Whether the husband was or was not the natural father was inconsequential; the child was simply not his wife’s to give away. He had to sign. Also — it was here that Gabe had stopped listening — there were matters of inheritance, insurance benefits … He had stopped listening because he had begun to wonder how this could be anybody’s business but Jaffe’s … Then Jaffe was saying that he was going to have to start charging the Herzes for his time. Since he would now have to go down to Gary, track down the Bigonesses, talk with them—

Here Gabe had butted in. Jaffe had been thorough till then, but certainly not friendly; he had been clipped and to the point and even impatient. So Gabe had leaped in — he could himself do the tracking down, if that was all right with Jaffe. He could do the initial consulting, if that was okay … “And I’d rather,” he had said, “that you wouldn’t tell the Herzes—”

But he had not bothered to instruct Jaffe not to tell Martha, if he chose to. He had been sure she was in Jaffe’s apartment while the two of them had spoken, while he had informed Jaffe of his willingness and persuaded him finally — how pleasant! — of his usefulness. Waiting for Bigoness to return now, he had a full-blown daydream: he saw himself being reconciled with Martha. He dreamed of stealing her back from Jaffe. He saw himself on the brink of many changes. He was not sorry now that he had come, nor that his trip was a secret from the Herzes. It gave him strength, knowing that he did not want or expect their gratitude.

Bigoness had removed his apron; he was eating a sandwich. He had taken up a leaning position in the door and had the air of someone who has just completed some serious thinking. His beard was blue, as were his eyes, and his part seemed chopped into his hair. His face sloped almost straight back from his nose, as if the brain within was tubular in shape. “Now who is it you represent again, Mr. Wallace?”

“The lawyer who’s written you about this adoption. Sid Jaffe.”

Bigoness thought that over while he chomped away at the sandwich.

“Have you read Mr. Jaffe’s letters?”

No answer.

“I asked if you’ve read Mr. Jaffe’s letters.”

“You know,” Bigoness said, making much of the unhurried ease with which he continued to eat, “I’m in the union, Mister”—he swallowed—“and we got a lawyer too, a pretty smart cookie. So I know what questions I got to answer and I know which ones I don’t have to answer. It’s in the Constitution of this country that I only have to answer what I want. If you want to keep talking, that’s all right with me, you go ahead. I got to eat my sandwich anyway. But don’t try to tell me what I’ve got to answer, and what it says in the Constitution I don’t have to answer if I don’t want to.” Secure in his rights, he ambled over and plunged into the upholstery of a wing chair near the window. Spreading the blinds with two fingers, he looked outside, a new man, a bored man, a defiant man.

“I wonder if I could speak to your wife.”

“You spoke to my wife, buddy.”

“She’s not at home?”

“Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t.”

“Mr. Bigoness,” he began again, “nobody wants anything of you. Or of your wife. Mr. Jaffe has only asked — you know this if you’ve read his letters — he only wants you to come down to the court on the twenty-ninth and sign a consent form saying that you want your child adopted by another family. This was all arranged months back, between Mr. Jaffe and your wife. It’s simply a matter of signing the papers. At the time we didn’t even know she was your wife, you see.”

“Whatever happened months back, I don’t care about neither.”

“Doesn’t your wife care?”

“My wife cares about what I care about. I’ve got nothing to do with any paper-signing.”

“I don’t think you understand what kind of paper it is. It doesn’t make you responsible for the child. Just the opposite, in fact. It will free you of any responsibility at all where this child is concerned.”

“Well, I don’t have no responsibility, Mister. I’ve got kids of my own.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Shit, that ain’t what you said. What do you think I am? Why don’t you go back up to Chicago and tell Mr. Jaffe to sign his own papers? Cause Theresa ain’t signing nothing. I mean her name ain’t even Haug, for crying out loud.”

“She’s obliged to, however.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She’s legally responsible for that child, until she signs a paper which releases her from that responsibility.”

Bigoness tried eating again.

“And so are you,” Gabe said.

“Oh is that so?”

“You’re her husband.”

“I ain’t the father.” He did not seem delighted to have had to make the statement. He mumbled, “Why don’t you go see him.”

“Because he’s not responsible—”

“Oh screw that,” said Bigoness. “You ain’t sticking me. See,” he said, his mouth narrowing to a point, “I know what you guys are up to. I know what kind of business you guys are in.”

“I’m not in any kind of business.”

“Tessie told me, don’t worry about that. I ain’t signing any papers, so why don’t you think twice and leave me alone.”

“Why don’t you let me talk to your wife?”

“Look, why don’t you leave us both alone! I’m not signing any papers, don’t you understand me? I’ve been signing papers all my life. Five papers to get this here sofa carried up those stairs, you understand that? I signed a paper for my car. I signed a paper for my Hollywood bed that’s right there in the bedroom — where it’s going to stay! I signed for plenty, and I paid for plenty and nobody’s going to stick me. We got a lawyer in the union, Mister. I can get advice whenever I need it, don’t kid yourself about that.”

“Any lawyer will tell you that if you want to be sure that nobody does stick you where this baby is concerned—”

“Look,” he said, standing, “the only way you don’t get stuck is you don’t sign.”

“What I’m trying to explain—”

“I understand what you’re trying to explain.”

“You don’t seem to.”

“You think you’re so smart and I’m so stupid?”

“Why don’t you just listen to me?”

“I listened plenty. I listen to what Tessie tells me you guys—”

“I want to speak with Theresa myself.”

“You can’t speak to her! Why don’t you leave us alone? I got a lot of bills, Mr. Wallace. Maybe you don’t know what that is. I’ve been out of work for five months. I’ve been taking care of this house here for five rotten months, and now my wife’s home with me and she’s out working, and that’s that. You got a paper,” he said, “well, you leave it here. I’ll take a look at it for you, okay? We got nothing else to talk about.”

“You’ll have to sign in court, however.”

“Oh sure.” He dropped his lids again, moved his shoulders, shifted on his heavy shoes. His entire body said, Listen to this guy, will you?

“A judge has to witness the adoption. That protects you as well as the people who are adopting the baby.”

“I told you, didn’t I, that I got a lot of bills — don’t you listen? I’m going to pay them, you hear, don’t you worry about that either. But I just ain’t stepping up to some judge, see, and saying, here I am, your honor, go ahead and stick my ass in the workhouse.”

“This has nothing to do with any work or workhouse, or with any bills you may have.”

“I’ve been married already before this, buddy. I’ve been married, I’ve been divorced. I’ve been around. I’ve lived in six different states in my life, you understand? I’ve been involved with your kinds of lawyers, believe me.”

“What kind is that?”

“I ain’t got no prejudice. I just been involved, so I know what I’m talking about. You guys got some kind of deal going, that’s all right with me. Tessie got confused, made a little mi—”

“Daddy—” His little girl had stepped back into the living room.

“Get out of here, you. Go play, go color. Take him with you.” He pointed to the small boy who had been sitting in the center of the rug all the while they had been talking.

The little girl said, “Walter’s still making a tinkle.”

It took a moment for the words to register on Bigoness. “Oh Jesus!” Again he fled.

A second later a door opened; a child cried; the toilet flushed; Bigoness moaned. He came back to the living room with still another child in his arms.

“C’mon, cut it out, boy,” Bigoness was saying, as he paced the rug; the diaperless child in his arms rolled back his head and howled. The little girl followed her father as he walked. “C’mon, Walter boy, you’re all right. Ah come on now, stop crying, will you? You going to be a big man or you going to be a little sissy boy?” The little boy continued to weep. “Oh man,” groaned Bigoness, “look, why don’t you leave me alone?” At that moment he did not appear to be anything but pitiful. “This little kid’s been strapped to that toilet seat for about a hour — and it’s on account of you butting in around here. You come in here and you dis-repp everything, and I forget all about him. Why don’t you go away and stop breaking up my house? I don’t know whether you trying to stick me, or you in the black market — you guys that sell babies, I don’t know which — but why don’t you just get out?”

“I’ve explained to you who I am.”

“Tessie told me about you, Wallace—”

“Well, I don’t know what she could have said.”

“You guys care about one thing, and that’s the buck.”

“What guys?”

“You got the baby, why don’t you just leave us alone?”

“Because you’re responsible for that baby — until you sign that paper—”

“The hell I am! What do you want from me, Mister!”

“I want you to come into court with your wife, and sign”—his weariness almost overwhelmed him—“a little paper. Mr. Jaffe’s office will pay your travel expenses, we’ll get you a baby-sitter—”

“Where is this court, Africa? Man, I’ve had a rough time — I’m waiting on a phone call for a job—”

“The court is in Chicago.”

“I don’t live in Chicago.”

“I said we’ll pay your expenses; it’ll take a couple of hours. You’re not working anyway—”

“My wife is.”

“We’ll pay her a day’s salary! Stop being contrary!”

“I’m not getting mixed up in no black market.”

“This isn’t the black market!”

“Don’t you raise your voice in my house, hear? This is my house!”

“I won’t raise my voice — I’ll get you hauled into court if you keep this up!”

“Yeah? For what?”

“You’re going to have more trouble than you bargained for, Mr. Bigoness!”

“You go ahead, you tell me what for, huh?”

“You want to support a fourth child?” He had spoken desperately — had he gone too far? Either too far or not far enough … Suppose Bigoness said yes.

“It’s not my kid—”

“It’s your wife’s!”

“It ain’t hers either. You want to stick somebody, you go stick old Dewey, he’s the son of a bitch knocked her up. He’s the son of a bitch took her away from here. When she married me, Mister, she married my three kids too. She ain’t running out again, you understand that? I had one old lady run away already. She thought life was a bowl of cherries, see. One day she just takes our little portable phonograph and all her Ricky Nelson records and so long, honey. I was left with them three kids — and I didn’t run out on them neither. Her son-of-a-bitchin’ family wouldn’t take them — okay, I didn’t run out on them. I went and found them another mama. Don’t tell me what I’m going to support! I got three kids, and I didn’t set them out in the street, neither. I’m a nursemaid around here, and scrub lady, but pretty soon they’re going to open that mill up and then old Tessie’s going to get her ass back in this kitchen, and this here family’s going to get shaped up around here. You just leave us alone, Wallace, and I’ll work everything out all right. Don’t you worry about me!”

“What does Theresa make in a day?”

“What she makes is my business.”

“You tell me what she makes, and we’ll make good her salary for the morning she has to be up in Chicago. We’ll cover both your travel expenses.”

He had to wait a long time for a very short answer.

“Yeah?”

“That’s right.”

He waited again; he could not tell what might or might not push Bigoness the wrong way.

“What about a baby-sitter?” Bigoness asked.

“And a baby-sitter.”

“Well, she makes …” He looked up at the ceiling for a figure — and found one. “She makes herself about sixteen, seventeen bucks a day, that’s about what she makes.”

“That’s good pay for a waitress.”

“Well, that’s what she makes. Who the hell said she was a waitress? Maybe she’s a waitress, maybe she’s isn’t.”

“And how much are travel expenses?”

Bigoness hardly hesitated. “About fifteen bucks.”

“For one person, fifteen dollars?”

“I’m talking about round trip.”

“So am I.”

“What are you saying? I’m a liar? Jesus!”

“I’m only saying that it’s about four or five, from Gary to Chicago and back.”

“Well, what about lunch, huh? Meals? What”—he searched—“what about the general inconvenience?” He seemed to feel he had hold of something with that last phrase. “What about that?”

“Look, someone is trying to adopt a baby; somebody, whether you appreciate it or not, Bigoness, is finally doing you a favor. Did you a favor. Don’t try to turn this into a business venture—”

“Oh man, oh man! Look what’s talking about business!”

“Bigoness, this is not the black—”

“And Jesus, what did I ask for, a million dollars? A brand new washing machine? A TV? Jesus! I’m asking for ten lousy bucks more for fare.”

“For two—”

“Well, I’m busted, damn it! I’ll tell you that — I ain’t ashamed. I didn’t do it. Old Wanda pulled her ass out of here over a year ago, when this one was just born.” He pointed to docile, sleepy Walter, on the sofa. “She just took off, and she took the checkbook with her. I raced down to the bank, but it was too late — she’d wiped me out, the son of a bitch. And now this fuckin’ recession. The bastards are hounding me, Mister. Don’t worry, I get letters all right, I get plenty of letters. I never got so much mail in my whole life. They’re all lining up outside to take my furniture away — take my bed away, my TV away — but I’ll tell you, I didn’t make this recession, and I didn’t ask for it neither. I like nice things too”—he was pointing down at Gabe’s shoes—“I like nice sofas and I like nice big beds to roll around in, just like everybody else. I got a new Plymouth, and that there’s a guaranteed orthopedic mattress on that bed, that’s the best money can buy. I gave that little bitch Wanda the best money can buy. Don’t think I don’t like nice things — don’t worry about that!”

He let Bigoness finish. He let him feel that he was finished. He let him stand there empty-handed. “I’ll give you ten dollars each for the train,” he said finally. “And seven and a half dollars for a half day of your wife’s wages. And four dollars so you can pay a baby-sitter for four hours. That’s thirty-one fifty. Mr. Jaffe will write and tell you the place and the time. Is there a phone where he can reach you?”

“I’m doing business with you. I ain’t doing business with no shyster lawyer.”

“I’m acting for Mr. Jaffe. He’s acting for the family.”

“What kind of jerk you think you’re dealing with?”

“I don’t know what it is that’s bothering you now—”

“Don’t think I ain’t got you figured out, Wallace. You ain’t just spreading cash around for your own fun, don’t kid me. Now you’re a pretty smart fella, all right. I see the way you come in here and act tough and hard, and all the time being fancy and ritzy, sort of like Lepke — I’ve seen all about him on the TV, don’t worry about that. Oh, you’re going to keep me in my place and all that. Well, I’ll tell you one thing — I may be out of work, but nobody’s going to make shit out of me while I’m standing around. You ain’t the first one that’s tried it, and you ain’t getting away with it neither. You want that kid — okay, you take the kid. But don’t come around here thinking you’re going to make shit out of me. That’s what old Wanda thought, you see, but she got it all wrong. And old Tessie thought she’s going to do it too, but she come back for her Thanksgiving dinner, Mister, she come crawling back here for turkey stuffing and candied sweets all right, and now she’s going to be a good mama to those kids, you hear? I’ll take fifteen bucks for the train, like I said — fifteen for me, and fifteen for Tessie. Don’t talk to me about no ten-dollar train rides.”

“You should disabuse yourself of the notion that this is the black market.”

Bigoness nodded and nodded. “Yeah, I’m going to do just that. That’s still going to cost you another ten bucks, Mr. Wallace, even if it’s the red-white-and-blue market.” He was amusing himself, which did not mean that he was not in dead earnest. He was fully alive to the possibilities of the moment. “That’s going to cost you exactly forty-one dollars and fifty cents. Don’t think I don’t know how to add up a row of figures either.”

Gabe reached into his jacket. Bigoness whitened; did he think Gabe had a gun? Only a moment earlier Gabe had been wondering if Bigoness had one … He took out his billfold. “Let’s make it forty-five,” he said. “Four and a half dollars for the general inconvenience. You forget the general inconvenience.” He set three bills, two twenties and a five, into the groove of a small floral ash tray. He set them down just out of Bigoness’s reach. And the fellow could not wait; he took a hurried, desperate walk to the cash, and nearly stumbled on the rug.

There had been moments when he could have backed away. He had not. He had humbled Bigoness — raising the ante had done it, finally. He had remained stern, unmovable; that was his accomplishment. In the flush of success, he tried to think of a single mistake he might have made, and halfway home he came up with one. Whether the train was five, ten, or fifteen dollars made no real difference to a man who owned a new Plymouth. Bigoness would drive into Chicago, as he himself was driving now; Bigoness had known he would all along.

Conned … Really? He made himself relax. Forty-five dollars, fifty or even sixty, wasn’t much when one considered what had been accomplished … by him. Though toe to toe with Bigoness — in that second when, shouting at one another, he had believed himself about to be hit, or shot — he had seen his usurpation of Jaffe’s offices as the most selfish and stupid act of all; he had seen himself seeing only himself. But he’d been mistaken.

When he reached Chicago, he drove directly up Kenwood. Why Kenwood? Why not? Old energies began rising to the surface. He slowed the car; behind Martha’s windows were the lights of a Christmas tree. Ah, she had it … She must be home from work; her car was parked in front. He contemplated his solitude, the injustice of his isolation, and found no reason whatsoever for his having to eat dinner alone again tonight. He did not have to wash his hands of anything. He parked the car. One of the doors of her car was slightly ajar; before heading up the stairs, he slammed it shut. It wouldn’t stay; it slipped and was ajar again.

Everything she has is broken … But the thought no longer filled him with fear and distrust. It was not that which had been building in him in the long ride up from Gary. Forgiving himself, he forgave her.

3

Martha’s head poked out just beyond the bannister at the top of the short stairway. “Yes?”

He did not know whether she could see him, but he felt he could not advance another step without being invited to do so. He leaned his head into the shaft of light, feet in place. “Martha? It’s Gabe … Wallach.”

When she moved to the head of the stairs, he was surprised to find her fully dressed. He had imagined her in a robe; he had even imagined her having a visitor. But all that was missing were her shoes; she wore a white blouse and a narrow red skirt. He waited for her to speak, to move, to turn and walk away.

She said, “Why, hello.”

“Are you busy?”

“No.”

“… I thought you might be free to have a bite with me.”

“I was just eating.”

“Oh, I see.”

He would not have been surprised, really, if that moment his enterprise had fallen through; but neither of them moved.

He asked, “How are you?”

“I’m fine … How are you?”

“Fine.”

Up in the shadows, she crossed her arms and leaned one shoulder against the wall. He would not believe that she was so blatantly registering impatience. He couldn’t really be sure that she wasn’t standing up there smiling.

“I see you’re an automobile owner,” he said.

“Oh yes.”

“Would you mind very much if I advanced out of the doorway here?”

“If you like—”

“You see, I came to ask if you wanted to have dinner with me.”

“Well, I’ve begun, you see—”

“Oh, I didn’t know.”

“Yes.” Then: “But you’re welcome to come up the stairs.”

“I’d like to,” he said, without advancing.

“Well — why don’t you then.”

“I don’t want to interrupt your dinner.” He started up toward her.

“One doesn’t really think in terms of interrupting a plate full of raw vegetables.” God, she was smiling.

“Well — would you like to go out then?”

“No, no, I like raw vegetables—”

He was beside her. Her hair was pulled back, her lipstick was paler, but that seemed the extent of the change. It had really been only a few months. “How are you?”

“I’m pretty well,” she said. “You look well.”

“It’s good to see you, Martha.”

“I live just down here.”

She turned away — but the way she had turned.… He heard instantly the openness, the pleading in his last words. He had spoken too softly — not that he could have helped it. His desire to be tender was almost more than he could manage. It seemed to be effecting him as far down as his muscles; the weakness in his fingers was such that he could not even have made a fist, had there been any reason for his wanting to. The sternness Bigoness had been witness to was nowhere to be seen. He followed after her, neither too close nor too far. It was like having endured a long rainy spell; and now, no clouds — and soon, the sun.

At least she was not what he had been dreading as he had rung her bell. Actually he should be feeling energetic, not limp. For down below he had awaited a face hard, grudging, foul, a witch’s face. And what had she been to him in that awkward moment on the stairs but kind? Whose face had he seen but hers? Not until he stepped into her room did it occur to him that her kindness could have arisen out of the simple fact that she was about to marry another man. It cost her nothing to be nice; why fight him any longer? Inside the door, which remained ajar, he looked when he could at her hands. At least it was not the kind of engagement that is spoken of as formal. There were no rings.

He was gripped by shyness. “Well, well,” was what he said.

“May I take your coat?”

“Well — it’s a pleasant little room.”

“Well, it’s a little room.”

“But pleasant …” A blue India print covered a small bed pushed against the far wall; the print hung an even half inch from the floor, all around an even half inch. There were two red throw cushions at the head of the bed. An old oak table was set in the center of the room, two candlesticks upon it; before the chair in which Martha had been sitting was a plate full of raw vegetables: a carrot, some lettuce, a stick of celery, slices of a green pepper. Against the walls were a chest and a washstand, and hanging untilted above the bed was Cynthia’s large circus picture. It was the first object he recognized from the old life. Then the sight of some paperbacks on a bookshelf by the window touched him nearly as much as the picture; they might have been real, palpable human things. The throw cushions on the bed, the little red rug, and the stumps of two lavender candles on the table helped to save the room from austerity. A tissue-thin Chinese shade ballooned over the ceiling bulb, releasing a thin gold light onto the table top. There were three bulbs strung around the tree, fewer than there had seemed to be from outside. He commented on the comfort of the place.

“Oh I suppose so,” she said, not unpleased. “There are six women in the house and only one bath. That’s not entirely comfortable.”

“Do you all share that refrigerator?” He motioned to a big old Westinghouse purring in the hallway.

“Discomfort number two.”

“Still—”

“It’s not too bad, no. Oh there’s an Indian girl, or Pakistani, and she leaves her little footprints on the toilet seat—”

“Yes? Both feet?”

“Both. I think you’re thinking of dogs. Truly, she squats up there … Life is very international here. There’s a silent little Korean girl, and a noisy dyke, and a chesty young thing who’s an assistant associate copywriter on the Near North Side but lives down here for the culture. And there’s a terribly heavy pathetic German girl who types theses for people, and there’s one of those guitar players without make-up, who I believe squats too. And there’s me. I seem to represent the old sturdy bourgeoisie. What do you think of that? May I take your coat?”

“You sound as though you like being the delegate from the middle classes. You sound — you look — at ease, Martha.”

She hung his coat in the closet, and while her back was turned he peeked into it. He found no resemblance to any closet of her past. There were even empty hangers. She seemed — so nice. It turned out she wasn’t at all bad bourgeois. Had he not allowed full play to his morbid imaginings, had he not such a weak-minded sense of causality, he would have come back to her months ago. He would have come back had he not been sure that she no longer had any use for him; he would have come back had it not been for Jaffe’s car parked outside here, and her car parked outside there; he would have come back if his mind had been clearer. At least he was certain she was pleased that he was here now; believing this to be so, he was so excited that for a moment he actually trembled.

“I suppose I am,” Martha said.

“That’s fine.”

Conversation was exhausted.

She reached for the shoebag hanging inside the closet and, hardly raising her knees, stepped into a pair of slippers.

He looked around the room, having seen everything twice already. “I notice,” he said finally, “that you have a car.”

“That seems to have impressed you all right.”

“Well, it’s rather a snappy number. Though your front door doesn’t close all the way, I notice—”

“Oh, but I think that adds dash.”

“Absolutely.”

They both worked a little at grinning. “I just got it back,” she said, sitting down at the table.

“From being fixed?”

“From being stolen. Would you like to sit down? Do you want a carrot? I’m afraid that’s all I can offer. The dyke made free with my leftover salmon. She’s very aggressive about canned foods. Would you like some sherry? There’s a bottle in the closet.”

“I’ll just sit.” He pulled out a chair opposite her; on its seat rested a lavender cushion. Everything was so — careful. Suddenly the order of the place — everything matching — was no longer becoming; it was chilling — though that passed too. “Who stole your car?”

“Some poor dishonest boys, I suppose. The police found it three days ago. It was in a junk yard. They’d sold it. Though a friend of mine says it went there on its own; you know, out of some deep knowledge of its own essence.”

He said, “Oh yes,” and smiled. The words of this friend of hers served to settle his emotions. He did not tremble; he was not chilled. That he did not feel distant from her, that he could see this day as an extension of their first days almost a year before, did not mean that she was not conscious of all that had intervened. Of course he was conscious of all that too; it was just that he was willing to forget it. She was probably only being nice. She had a friend who said such-and-such. He had an impulse to ask her if she was really going to marry this friend; he had every reason to believe she was, except the reasons he had not to …

She had given him an opening, so he went ahead and made talk. “How did it get stolen? Did you leave the key in?”

She frowned, looking up from her plate. “No, I didn’t leave the key in.”

He had somehow offended her. “Well — how then?”

“Well … as a matter of fact,” she said, having decided, it seemed, to go on, “I saw them stealing it. I was working a little late one night — reading The Princess Casamassima in my office — and when I came out to the Midway, there was my car being pushed away, out toward Cottage Grove.”

“Being pushed?”

“Yes. I started running after them, and felt like Barbara Stanwyck or someone, shouting, ‘Stop, thief! Help!’ and so on, and waving my handbag — and then I was out of breath, and they were pushing it faster than I could run, so I turned and came back to the office and called the police. I called the operator, and I told her I wanted the police.” She cut a piece of lettuce and ate it. Footsteps were mounting the stairs; he restrained himself from looking over his shoulder. Martha went on as though she were expecting no one. Her desire to be witty and gay, an ingénue, made him uneasy, but he made it his business to look interested.

“And the operator,” Martha said, “—this is the Chicago part of the story — the operator asked me what I wanted them for, and I told her my car was being pushed away, being stolen, and she said oh no, it was probably the snow-removal people.”

“She did?”

“It hadn’t snowed for nearly a week — which I managed to convince her of finally — and then she asked me where I was calling from, and she gave me the police. The Hyde Park district police, and I told him that my car was being stolen, right then, and that if they just sent a squad car around they could intercept it, but he began to ask me what kind of car it was and where I lived, and I told him, look, they’re stealing it right now. You just have to go there now. And he asked me where exactly it had been parked before it was pushed, and I told him across the Midway, and he said, Oh then it was being stolen really in the Woodlawn district, and I said, but the operator connected me with you, and he said that was because I was calling from Hyde Park — and then there was a lot of clicking and a terrible dreadful dead line, and I was pulling my clothes and stomping the floor, and then I was talking to another Sergeant O’Somebody with a lilting voice from the Woodlawn district — whom I proceeded to tell that my car was being stolen, right then. That was the idea I kept trying to push to the front, you see, that it was being stolen at that very moment. But he took my name and my home address, and he asked where I was calling from, and I told him, and then — well, this goes on and on, you know, from one sweet sergeant to the next. Apparently if I had been able to arrange to call directly from the car while it was being pushed, I could have worked something out with the authorities. Finally I just sat in my office sort of awestruck, and two hours later two policemen showed up at my house, right here, and stood in the doorway and asked what the trouble was.”

“Then how did you get it back?”

“Sid called somebody in the department — you remember Sid? — yes, well”—she was no longer so interested in the telling, but pushed hurriedly on to the end—“and some plain-clothes men came around, and then they — well, they called me at the office three days ago and said they’d located it. I drove down in the police car to a depressing little junk yard on the west side, and honestly, the junk dealer, who’d paid something like ten bucks for it, had tears in his eyes when I got in and the policemen towed me away. The battery had been taken out, and for some obscure reason, the little ash tray.”

“But now you’ve got a battery—”

“Oh it’s in perfect condition.”

“One can see that all right.”

“Oh yes? Wait’ll you see me driving around with my top down and my hair blowing in May. Then you’ll be brimming with envy, and I’ll just shoot by, nose in the cool air.”

“Yes.”

She turned back to her slender dinner — ah, slenderizing for somebody, he thought. What was wrong with the way she had always been?

He waited to see what the effect would be of her gay anecdote. But it had been too gay; it had no effect. He was already beginning to regret having come, though only slightly. “I wouldn’t mind that glass of sherry now,” he said.

“It’s in the closet, if you want to help yourself.”

He poured the sherry and set the bottle on the table. He understood what she had told him: Go ahead, pal, get a look at the closet … at the new me. He could not keep his mind out of her mind. He remained standing and walked around the room while Martha continued with her meal. He pushed aside a branch of the tree and looked over the tinsel at their two automobiles on the street. To make the visit inoffensive, he supposed it was now his turn to be jocular. It was his turn to say that he too was getting along just fine. But what he wanted to pour forth was only the truth. His energies, born again this day, were spinning down.

“I saw you buying this the other night,” he said.

“The tree?”

They were not facing one another. “I was on Sixty-third and I happened to see you.”

“Oh, yes?”

“—smaller than I thought it was.” It was nearly impossible to think of what to say.

“It’s smaller than I thought it was,” she answered. “I’m afraid it was my money’s worth, however.”

Without much heart, he laughed. “It’s good sherry,” he said.

“Are you sure I can’t offer you something? A celery?”

“Thank you, no.” He came around to the chair facing her; he saw no sense in being anything but serious. “Well, Martha, how are you getting on?” It had not been his intention to sound fatherly, but he could not dissolve his feelings into words; he simply couldn’t find the right tone.

She shrugged. “I’m getting on.”

“Are you taking a course still? You said—”

“As a matter of fact I am.”

“What in?”

“Well, Henry James as a matter of fact.” Making her admission, she used her hands in a way that was not very natural to her, or to anyone.

“How do you like him?”

She hesitated; then sat on both his eagerness and her embarrassment. “Not very well, I don’t think.”

If she was going to be offhanded, he would be more offhanded. Tapping his glass, he said, “That’s too bad. I believe I once encouraged you to read some James.”

“Oh that’s right … Well, his conscience gives me a pain, frankly. Oh — and do you want to know a phrase I’m not too crazy about? To put a fine point on it.’ Do you really like to hear about people going around putting fine points on it? Oh, and the other one—‘She hung fire’—what is that anyway? I hung fire, you hung fire, we hung fire. The girls at my school all hung fire. He writes a little bit like a virgin, don’t you think? I mean I think he has a very virginal mind, to put it mildly.”

“That strikes me as an extraordinarily virginal remark.”

“Well,” she said, standing and walking around the table to the door, “you should know that it isn’t.” In the hallway she opened the refrigerator; then back in the room she asked, “Would you like to share my yogurt?”

“I meant critically virginal.”

“I asked if you were interested in some yogurt.”

“I have the sherry, thank you. Martha, it’s no blow to me if you don’t care for James.”

“I didn’t intend it to be. You asked what I thought, so I told you.”

“At least we continue to fight our battles,” he said, with a mild display of anger, “on the headiest of planes.”

She turned, apparently thought one thing, and then said another. “Who’s fighting?”

“I’m not.”

Sitting down across from him again, she said, “I’m not either.” She looked at him for a moment. “I’m hanging fire. Have I got it right?”

“You’re still a semi-cheery girl—”

“Why shouldn’t I be? There’s nothing for me in gloom, Gabe. I’m getting married, you know.”

“No, I didn’t … Yes, I did.”

“Which?”

“I just did hear about it, that is. Sid told Libby Herz.”

“Yes? How is she?”

“The baby will be legally theirs next week.”

“So Sid said … It seems Theresa was married—”

“Yes.”

“You’ve heard about it?”

“Yes.” Dying to say more, he said nothing.

“Apparently it’s gotten a little complicated.”

“So I heard,” he said. “When will you be getting married?”

“We haven’t set a date. There are some other matters.”

“Of course.”

Silence.

“… How is Cynthia?”

“Are you asking if she’s the other matter?”

“Well—”

“Because she is.”

“How is she?”

“She’s living in Paris with her father.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Neither did very many of us, till recently.”

“I see.”

“Apparently she’s all right, Gabe. I don’t mean to be sounding secretive. We just learned a few weeks ago that Dick’s divorced again. He was going to arrange to keep it a secret from us.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’ll all work out,” Martha said. “You know …”

“How did you find out?”

“June Reganhart stopped off here, on her way to Hawaii or some place — to convalesce from him.”

“And to tell you?”

“We had lunch together. She wasn’t a bad girl, you know. She wasn’t silly.”

“I thought she seemed decent.”

“Too decent for that son of a bitch. He finally hit her too. But she’s a higher class girl than I am. He only had to smack her once. But in front of that poor baby.”

He thought: she does not mention Markie at all.

“By the time she grows up,” Martha said, “she’ll have seen quite enough, don’t you think?” She carried her dishes over to the small marble washstand and stood there longer than was necessary to rinse the two plates. Her pose was so familiar — her weight on one leg, her head bowed — and so much did he desire her, so much was his desire to touch her and his desire to blot out the past one single yearning, that he walked to where she stood and put a hand to her hair.

She told him no. He put his hand down. The stirring within him was not just lust; lust was subsumed within it. He had to undo all that had been done, do what had not been done. He walked off and sat down again behind his glass. She had suffered most; she still suffered most; he would respect what she wanted of him. He would go slow; to go slow and to be immovable were not mutually exclusive. He thought of Cynthia in Paris. He thought of Markie dead. He thought of it squarely.

“So what happens with him in Paris?” he asked.

She turned, as though having recovered herself. “It’ll be worked out. We can only do what we can.”

“Do you want him to send her back then?”

She closed her eyes a moment. “Yes. We do.”

“I see.”

“Do you? You’ve been saying that since you came in.”

He could not believe that she really wanted to be callous. But perhaps that was only self-deception on his part. He did not answer.

“I’m marrying him,” she said, “because I want to.”

“I can only offer my congratulations.”

“I’m not asking for your approval.” She brought a glass with her from the sink and sat down opposite him. “How about you pouring me a little sherry?”

“To the second Mrs. Reganhart,” she said, with feeble witty intentions. “To her recovery in Hawaii. That’s my last duchess hanging on the wall, et cetera.”

They drank. Then Martha moved across the room, onto the India print, placing a throw pillow between her head and the wall. “And what about you, Gabriel?” she asked. “What are your plans?”

Apparently she had only gotten up to be more comfortable. Having sparred, were they now going to talk, at last? “Well”—he turned his chair to face her—“I’m leaving Chicago. In May.”

“Forever?”

“I think so. I’ve applied for a job in Turkey — a lectureship in Istanbul. And also one in Greece.”

“You’ve obviously got your heart set on Turkey, I can see.”

“I’ve got my heart set on leaving, in a way.”

“Well, to Turkey,” she said, and sipped at her glass. “How is your father?”

“He’s getting married, you know, next week.”

“I remember. It’s still going to happen?”

“Oh yes.”

“You don’t sound as though you’ve suffered a conversion to Silbermanism. Isn’t that …”

“I think of it as Fayism myself. No, no conversion.”

“Why don’t you just fly to the wedding and storm through the church doors and say, ‘No! I, I—’ What’s his name? Ulysses’ son?”

“Telemachus.”

“I — well, you get the idea.”

Of course, he had had the thought himself. “You’re full of literary allusions these days.”

“I’m the oldest kid in my class. I have to set an example. Oh Gabe—”

“Yes?”

“I was only teasing, partially, about Henry James.” Again he felt that she had not said what had first come to her. “I was being, specifically, not to put too fine a point on it, a sort of, what could be called an, though not entirely, aesthetic bitch.” She had her knees up under her; leaning forward she nearly toppled off the bed as she placed her glass on the floor. “I think he makes a lot of sense.”

“That’s swell. The whole department will be relieved.”

“Now you’re going to be the bitch?”

How could he help it? He was imagining her married to Jaffe — and resenting Jaffe too, for not even having mentioned to her his trip to the Bigonesses. Of course, it might be that Jaffe had not spoken with her since the day before … Nevertheless, he still would not tell anyone himself!

Unfortunately, this time there was no strength to be derived from the decision.

“—is virginal.”

“What?”

“Pull your chair up if you can’t hear.”

“Yes.” He dragged his chair over to where Martha sat. She was smiling at him.

“The fat girl who types theses lives next door,” she whispered, “and she puts an empty water glass to the wall. To hear.”

“To hear?”

“Yes.”

“And what,” he said, not amused, “does she get to hear?”

“Oh. Discussions. About Henry James. A little Browning.”

“And that excites her?”

“Well, she’s terribly fat.” He did not know what to make of her girlishness or what to do with it. He did not know if she was up to what he began to believe she was up to. “No, look — I was saying, when your eyes fogged over, that you do get the feeling that old James, for all he does know, doesn’t really know what goes on when the bedroom door snaps shut. It seems to me that people live more openly with their passions.”

“More openly than what?”

“Aren’t you following me? Than in James—”

“All people?”

“Well, no, of course not … I suppose I live more openly with mine …”

“Yes?”

“Than you, I suppose — for one.”

“I see.”

“You see still again?”

“I’m never quite sure, Martha.” It was not meant to be a summation of his way of life; she took advantage nevertheless.

“That’s what I mean,” she said. “I’ve done what I’ve felt strongly about.”

“I thought you were going to talk about James this time without being a bitch. I thought, in fact, you were going to talk about James.”

“I’m talking about passions. I’ve gone out on a limb once or twice, is all I said—”

“And now?”

“Right now, or now?”

“Both.”

“I don’t know, Gabe—”

He kissed her; she said, “Let’s not, no,” but he had managed to twist her about and force her backwards. His passion for her was so intense, had so much to do with the alteration he had believed his life to have begun to undergo in the last twenty-four hours, that it overrode his other powers. He could not talk; he could not reason. His weight upon her, he forced his hands onto her body, and she thrust him away. It was all very clumsy … “Please,” she said, “the door is open—”

He went to close the door; when he turned, Martha was standing. He tried to kiss her again. “What do you think you’re doing?” she said.

Compromised by his having been pushed from the bed, compromised further by the adolescent ring to her words, his pride beat once, beat twice, but could not really sustain itself. “Are you going to put me on the spot, Martha? Are you going to make me explain myself?”

“I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“With whom else then?”

“Please, don’t put on that you’ve been cuckolded—”

“Is that what you’d call putting too fine a point on it?”

“I suppose that’s what he means.”

They kissed again. Martha’s feet slowly gave way; they were backed onto the bed, face to face. He held back none of his weight, none of his passion. Then she pulled away; she reached up and caught him with a stiff open palm squarely on the side of the head.

He sat up at the foot of the bed, his elbows on his knees, his face hidden.

“I can’t afford this,” she said, and stood.

“I thought the first thing you might say,” he told her, not quite looking up, “would be apologetic.”

“I take my life more seriously than that.” He heard the faucet begin to run at the other end of the room. He tried not to speak again until he had himself mostly under control, but he could not wait that long.

He asked, “Did you plan on that?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s the only thing you’re ever overcome with then, my friend — desire. Aside from that you’re a perfectly prudent man.”

His jaw tingled, and his eye too, where a fingernail had nicked it. He pulled himself up. The dampness at the edge of his lash was not a tear, so it must be a drop of blood. On the floor before him was a shoe of his, on its side. He tried to put it on standing up, but finally he had to sit down to manage, and he was humiliated. He went to the closet for his coat, while Martha said nothing.

“You might have sat in your chair, Martha,” he said, “and saved us this. You might not have talked so fetchingly about your passions. You have a long finger, Martha, and you beckon with it. Prudent is not the word to describe you—”

“Why don’t you please go?”

He felt totally dislocated; with his coat on and buttoned he still could not believe in the last three minutes.

Martha was lighting the two candles on the table just to be doing something. “I can’t afford to sleep with you. I hope you at least understand that.”

“You can with him?”

“That’s right.” She spoke stiffly. “I think I can.”

“Even when you were supposedly committed to me?”

She walked to the Christmas tree. “Who are you to talk about commitment?”

“I know, Martha—”

“You don’t know a God damn thing.” Then, caught, she lost control, or gained it. “I’ve had a penchant for jelly-filled men, but I’ve gotten over it. I’ve spent my life associating with the wrong kind of men, one way or the other.”

“You only get in bed with whomever you want—”

“That’s exactly the case—”

“—when you want.”

“Shut up. Please go. You can’t make me feel rotten over something I couldn’t even help. I’ve given up being self-destructive. That’s right, I’m going to bring some order into my life. There’s order in this world, and I’m due for my share of it.”

“I hope you get it.”

“Why shouldn’t someone else aside from you? Why should it be only you who get away unscathed?”

“That’s another virginal opinion, Martha. Nice and narrow.”

“Are you going to tell me about your fine conscience? Those little pains don’t even begin to count. Don’t kid yourself — your conscience and James’s conscience both give me a pain in the ass, if you want the truth.”

“And your own?” he asked viciously.

“Mine’s fine! Sid Jaffe happens to be a fine man. He’s not jelly cither. He’s going to get me my baby back, do you know that? If he has to fly to Paris and get that son of a bitch guillotined, he’s going to get her back here. And then I’m going to have an orderly life — do you hear? Don’t ever try to get me in bed again, you! And don’t worry about my conscience. Worry about your own. I’m not playing it safe. I’m using some sense for once. I’ve let go and let go and let go — I’ve let go plenty. I’ve had a wilder history than you, by a long shot. I’ve got a right to hang on now. Don’t ever get in bed with me again. Ever!”

All he could think to say, as an answer, a defense, was to tell her what had happened that afternoon in Gary. But of course that was no answer. He could say nothing. His hour with Bigoness — after all, what was he going to build it into? That puny little exchange — the humbling of a stupid man — was not enough to elevate his life. He lived a little life, an insignificant life. Puny … Nothing at this point seemed able to give him proportion or dignity. It was not even out of anything so weighty as jealousy that this woman’s intended had not mentioned to her his phone call. What he had done, what he had forced Jaffe to let him do, counted for nothing. He turned to leave, and then — because he was so unwilling, so incredulous — he turned back for a final instant. And what his eyes saw in her eyes — could it be? Uncertainty? She knows she is fooling herself. She is in pain! Now he must take her in his arms! But he could no longer deceive himself with what he wanted to believe were her feelings.

4

Puny?

Fury! Fury was what he was feeling! He had made plans of his own for the afternoon. The sun was high, the streets clear and brilliant. He had told himself to make plans and he had made them. He had seen a handsome quilt advertised in the Sunday papers — which took care of his present. He would buy it. He had a date for drinks in the Loop at five with the girl he had met at the Harnaps’. She had sounded pleasant and genuine on the phone, and not so assertive this time, he preferred to believe, as eager. He would have dinner with her too. She was assistant to the curator at the Art Institute. Fine. His humiliation was two nights past; it no longer was going to get him down. Nothing was going to get him down … Except that he was so damned angry. He was going to have to miss his penicillin shot too. He drove with no regard for the law — though he had justice on his mind — changing lanes, leaning on his horn, braking sharply, speeding, speeding down to Gary. There were still those applications to mail. He had rushed so, that he’d forgotten again to put them in his pocket. He couldn’t keep everything on his mind, with the result that he sometimes couldn’t keep anything on it.

Thirty minutes later he was threading his way in and out of monotonous, endless streets; the glare of the sun made them no less dreary. He saw only lusterless houses, insulated from light, life, the seasons. In the muddy little squares of front yard — snow-filled on his last visit — children sat and shivered, or hopelessly slid their tricycles through the soft earth. Some men were in the streets washing their cars, arms moving mechanically up and down, water ringing on hub caps, steam twirling off roofs. He peered at every street sign, while slowly the blue sky and white sun drew away, restoring a proper and wintery distance between heaven and earth. Even the stinking weather was against him. His anger and disgust burned steadily away. That he had not stopped to think of his other affairs — he had rushed down the stairs, into the car, and off — did not decrease his passion any; his fury had many causes. For one thing (this dawned slowly) he was lost.

A half-dozen men in faded field jackets and heavy shoes were congregated around the pumps of a gas station; he pulled off the road and up beside them. When he leaned toward them to speak, a whizzing sensation fanned out from his eye through the left half of his skull. Under the gaze of these idle men he grew conscious of his small bandage. The wound throbbed; leaving Martha’s, he should have driven directly home and washed the cut. He could not even remember the name of the movie he had gone to see instead; he had not really seen it.

He wasn’t thinking. He had to start to think. Yet he did not want to calm down, if that’s what thinking would accomplish. If he wasn’t being prudent, that was all right with him.

He asked directions — his foot all the while tapping the gas — and received a curt reply from a short man with a not very high opinion of him. But he had asked curtly in the first place. He listened, then drove off — some words having to do with his bandage following after him. While he was swinging away, a foot kicked the rear fender. Sons of bitches. As though nobody else had troubles.

But he had only gone off the curb. He felt himself not permitting himself to calm down.

Today? The nineteenth. Six days before he was to go East; four shopping days, sang the radio, till Christmas. Carefully he had planned this day. Lovingly. Resurrectingly! Looking himself over in the mirror as he was about to depart — for his shot first, then the Loop — he had only decided to phone on the chance that Theresa herself might be home, just to make certain, to check up. And the nerve of that dumb bastard! Who the hell did he think he was!

He pulled up behind a two-toned Plymouth, tan and white. Woolly tassels framed the rear window, and two tailpipes stuck out from the car’s underside. The machine had a high polish. He looked the automobile over, tried a door and found it locked. The urge he had was undefined, but destructive. Before starting up the stairs he thought of getting back in his car and driving around Gary, from one diner to another, until he found Theresa. He could deal with her, then she would deal with her husband.

Breezing out of the alley on a tricycle came the blue-eyed Bigoness girl. She looked flatly up at him, where he stood at the top of the stairs. He went into the house, working out in his mind the blood relationship between this child and Rachel. There was none. He rang the bell once, then leaned all his weight against it until he heard shoes galloping down the stairs.

“Vic? Yo, Vic?” Bigoness beat down one flight, then another, until he was confronted with the enemy. He came to a powerful halt, practically rearing backwards.

“You—”

“That’s right—”

Outrage: “Where were you! Around the corner?”

“I telephoned from Chicago. I think we’d better have a talk. Right now.”

“Right now I got other things.”

“Well, you’re going to have to have this thing too.”

“You don’t tell me what I got to have or don’t—”

He took an official tone. “It’s now three o’clock. I have to be back in Chicago—”

“Nobody told you to come down here in the first place.”

“I told myself. You told me.”

“The hell I—”

“We had better move our conversation upstairs. I take it your wife isn’t home?”

“Look, I told you — I spent it. Little Walter got sick as a dog. What do you expect, I’d let him die? Let a little kid run a hundred and four—”

“I think we should be talking in private.” A door had opened on the next landing. His eye released a small crack of pain. He should have gone first for his shot.

“—let the kid die?” Bigoness was shouting, dramatically. “You got a sick kid, man, you call a doctor, you buy medicines—”

“Nevertheless, I gave you the money for a purpose.”

“I didn’t sign anything, did I?”

“Just your word.”

His what? Bigoness gaped.

“A promise, Bigoness. An agreement.”

“I said I’d think about it. Don’t tell me I signed something!”

“You said you’d do it.”

“You’re thinking of some other customer, Jack. Something came up … Look, I’m waiting on a phone call, will you—” Bigoness reached for the door.

His eye gave him another ten seconds of pain. He would get blood poisoning. A movie? Why a movie? He was doing things backwards, today too. He should have gone first for the shot, then come here. “Let’s,” he said calmly, wedging his foot in the door, “talk a minute upstairs. Maybe we can still reach some sort of agreement.”

“I don’t think so.”

“We’d better try.” He would be out of here by four, meet the girl at five … His date now seemed even more crucial to his life than his shot. Dropping his head, he stepped through the door. He had an immediate and overwhelming sense of the vulnerability of his back. Why had he dropped his head — so Bigoness wouldn’t strike him on the chin, on the eye?

Upstairs he paused momentarily at Bigoness’s door; his heart struck, like a clock hitting the hour; he moved through.

“Hey—”

The TV set was on; the place smelled of furniture polish. He pictured Bigoness rubbing down the living room suite and watching give-away shows all day. To his own astonishment, he stepped forward and turned off the sound.

“I’m busy—”

“I see your car’s been washed,” Gabe said. “You can’t be that busy.”

“Me washing my car is none of your business.”

“My business is that you have a car.”

“Oh man, everything is your business.”

“You have a car, yet you took money for train fare—”

“I never said I didn’t have a car. I like to take trains, that’s all.” He had no intention of being comic.

“You like to take money apparently.”

“God damn you, I never stole in my life!”

He saw with relief that Bigoness had not shut the door behind him; it became easier to get his words out. “I’m saying that you had no right to take all that money in the first place. In the second place, you had no right to spend it and then tell me you and your wife can’t come up to Chicago a week from Monday because you can’t afford to. That money was so you could afford to.”

“I said I had—”

“Just let me finish. Third — you see — you had no right to go back on your word.”

“You done now?”

“For the moment.”

“I ain’t signing any papers.”

So much weariness and so much rage rose within him that the one canceled out the other.

“I don’t want to get mixed up in anybody else’s troubles.” It was Bigoness who had spoken.

“You are mixed up in them.”

“No, sir,” said Bigoness, shaking his head.

“Your wife’s mixed up in them.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Bigoness, what is it you want?” But what he expected to hear, he did not. Bigoness’s finger slid in under his belt. The man had no grand schemes; he had no grand mind. It was victory enough for him to walk cockily to the window, slightly bowlegged, his fingers hooked in his trousers. It was enough for him to have suddenly become a cowboy. God! Gabe wished himself the owner of a pistol, a knife. But what did he have, outside of his will, and his intelligence, and whatever strength was in his body? And that strength was probably not as great as his opponent’s. He sat behind a desk all day. Still, he had ten or twelve pounds on the fellow, at least two inches … The vision he had was of himself leaping upon the man’s back and pummeling him until he agreed to show up a week from Monday. The back he saw himself pummeling was, in fact, turned to him now. If he was going to jump, this was his chance.

Of course he did not even begin to take it. “I think,” he said to the back, “you’re allowing the situation to run away with you. Perhaps I’ve made it sound like a larger issue than it really is.”

The back — at least it might just as well have been the back — spoke. “Man, you don’t go around laying out cash for small issues. I’m getting out while the getting’s good.”

“That cash was for train fare and expenses.”

“I got a right to change my mind.” He turned to show his face: stolid. Not till then did Gabe realize that he was himself sitting on the sofa, that he had sat down.

“Let’s forget the forty-five,” Gabe said.

Bigoness’s lashes fluttered; only half his eyes showed. “What do you mean, forget it?”

“Forget it. That’s all. You had a doctor bill—”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Whatever you had is okay with me. Let’s simply forget it.”

“Well,” said Bigoness, coming around to turn up the sound of the television, “all right, I’m willing.”

Bigoness was willing.

Gabe ignored everything he could possibly ignore. “Now we can start from scratch,” he said.

“We sure can.”

“I want to assure you”—repeating and repeating and repeating—“that neither of these papers that you sign will bind you to anything whatsoever. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite that you’re going to bring about. Signing these papers will free you from any responsibility where Theresa’s baby is concerned. Do you see that? Isn’t that clear yet?”

“I ain’t signing any papers.”

“But aren’t you listening to me?”

“I just told you, Mister,” said Bigoness, as though addressing one demented, “that I don’t want to get involved. Understand? Get it? You’re willing to forget the forty-five bucks, I’m willing to forget it. Why don’t we call it quits, before we get angry at each other.”

“Bigoness”—he was barely able to prevent his head from dropping into his hands—“there’s a child’s life involved here. A child can have a decent family and a good life and a good education, and all it takes from you is a short little trip into Chicago …”

“You hand me a laugh, you know?” He had not interrupted Gabe; he had only waited for exhaustion to overtake him. “You think you can come out here and just push people around because they’re having hard times, don’t you? Just tell people what to say and where to sign on the dotted line. You think nobody’s got anything to think about but you and your business. But I’ll tell you, buddy”—pointing—“people have been thinking they’re going to tell me what to do all my life. Now you’re working, now you ain’t; now you’re making a buck eighty an hour, now you’re making a buck eighty-five; now you’re a man, now you’re nothing but a nursemaid. And now you’re going to tell me I’m going to sign those papers, and I’m telling you”—tapping his chest—“I’m not. I make up my mind about things — nobody makes it up for me. Not you, not Tessie, not that bitch Wanda, not anybody but Harry Bigoness! And don’t you go telling me about decent families, you hear? What the hell you mean? I ain’t been out of this place for six weeks — I could’ve run out on those kids too, you understand? But I got guts, you understand that? I could say just like Wanda — screw ’em, and just take off too. But I’m no bum, Mister. Nobody’s ruining my life for me. I work in a factory and you walk around in a tie all day, but at least I earn an honest living. You think I’m some kind of lower kind of person, but I didn’t run out on those kids, did I? I got ’em a new mama, didn’t I? I always held a job, since I’m sixteen years old, and I read a couple books too, in case you want to know, and I didn’t make this recession — understand? — and don’t think you’re going to shove anybody around because of it!”

“You’re telling me then that you won’t do it?”

“Jesus, you’re a slow learner, ain’t you? I told you that on the phone. You could have saved yourself the gas.”

“What does your wife think of this?”

“She knows what’s good for her.”

“I’d like to see her.”

“Hey, I just asked you, who do you think you’re shoving around?”

Again the image of himself leaping upon Bigoness, dragging him down by the throat, crossed his mind, even as he was thinking that he should never have come. He was only matching pride against pride. Dumb pride against dumb pride.

“Then what do you propose to do about this child your wife brought into the world?”

“I don’t think I get you, Wallace.”

“As far as the law is concerned, it’s you who’s responsible for this child. Look, I told you all this last time.”

“And what is it you’re asking?”

“I’m asking what you propose to do about it.”

“—you take me for stupid—”

He rose; he could not bear one more minute of it. “I take you—”

There was a banging beneath him, a thumping, as though his heart was beating upwards in him. A broom handle whacked against the ceiling below, then a voice, “Phone!” Bigoness was darting past him, through the doorway—

“Right there!” he called, tearing down the stairs. “Hold it!”

Gabe stood where he was, each shoe planted on a dragon. Beneath him were the grotesque designs; around, hemming him in, were the heavily oiled surfaces of the elaborate furnishings. When he finally made a move it was only mildly defiant; he switched off the television set. Then he looked around. Where was the phone? He was not sure whom he wanted to call; it was simply that there were other people whose business was more properly the Bigonesses than was his own.

In the dark corridor that led to the bedrooms, the phone sat on a small table. He picked it up to find it dead. Of course — he was not thinking. His eye throbbed, opportunely. He could leave because he needed his shot. He could leave because he had an appointment in the Loop at five. Instead he moved further in the apartment, at first aimlessly, then after some clue to Theresa’s whereabouts. The search began to seem rational.

He entered a room where the shades were drawn; the mattress was furled with sheets and the carpet littered with cups and saucers. He pulled at the tangle of bedding and a man’s pajama top slipped onto the floor. He groveled under the blankets with one hand, and pulled forth what turned out to be a thin blue nightgown. He rushed to the closet. Suits, trousers — a dress! Skirts! Hanging before him was Theresa’s gold skirt. She did live here! He turned a pocket inside out, heard a noise — and made a break for it.

The noise came from back of one of the doors leading off the hall. It was only the whine of a kitten or a puppy. He went into the kitchen and began to open all the drawers. He could leave because nothing was working out. Nothing was in these drawers but silverware, playing cards, and green stamps.

The noise again. A child, a little boy, somewhere in the apartment. And with him his mother, hiding? His stepmother? He followed after the sound, located the door, and opened it. He really should go; this was insane.

The boy was strapped to the toilet seat. When he saw Gabe he let out an agonized scream. He strained to release himself from the seat; his face went from red to white to red again; the odor of the child’s feces was overpowering. Gabe’s eye throbbed. He closed the door, then opened it and was in the bathroom, leaning over the miserable child. The odor was of sickness. He slid the boy’s shirt up and looked for whatever was holding him down. The child began to pull and yank, his arms straining upwards as he screamed and wept.

Wallace!

No one was calling him. But his head grew dark and heavy, as though a blow had been struck upon it. His stomach was turning. He was himself, but this life was another’s. The room was pink; so was the toilet paper; so were the dirty linens stuffed into the bathtub. His fingers worked along the tape that crisscrossed the child’s middle. Minutes passed before he came to a small knot at the side of the seat. He worked at it with what he thought was all his attention. But he had no luck. He kneeled on the floor before the child, and at last he gave in and held his head in his hands. I am here.

Go! Go away!

Suddenly he was flooded with sympathy for Bigoness. He worked helplessly at the tape, feeling only sorrow for the stupid bastard. The law that held him accountable was absurd. Him meaning Bigoness. He heard Bigoness saying that he was not involved. So why didn’t he leave the man alone? Go home. But in that same instant he saw himself strangling Bigoness, squeezing his throat till the face turned colors — and then was no color. He was holding a gun to Bigoness’s head — At that moment the child shot forward, arms and legs whirling. A pain shot through Gabe’s whole body — he had been caught on the side of the head by the little boy’s shoe. His eye! He howled; the child screamed hysterically.

“Shhhh,” he said, shaking. “Quiet, shhhhh …” He wiped the child’s brow, then his own. He hunched over the tape, as though working against time. He should look through all of Theresa’s pockets. He should never have left her alone in that taxi. Why not? How not? His arms were hanging at his sides, three times their own weight. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t handle it. Alone he would only complicate matters further. Call Jaffe. He was at a point with Bigoness where he could save nothing. There was a point beyond which it made no sense to go. That was called prudence—

… She had wanted to smack him. She had planned it, right there on the steps. She had led him on. Always she had led him on, made use of him, tried to rope him—

The child wept, actual suffering, actual tears. Gabe’s fingers were no longer of any use. They were stiff. Revolted suddenly, his stomach turned and turned. He rushed to the window and flung it open. Down in the alleyway below, the little Bigoness girl pedaled back and forth. Call Jaffe.

“Shhhhh, please — just a minute … you’ll be all right.” He had turned back to the boy, a nondescript dark-haired child. He touched the damp hair. He felt sorry again for Bigoness, a man who had stuck by his children. He forced himself to get control, to think straight. He would have taken his coat off, but it did not seem to him that he had time. He searched (telling himself: I am an educated man, I am a decent man) and he searched for the little hook that held the child down — and discovered instead the toilet handle. An educated man, he finally flushed it. The water rushed, the child howled, the smell rose, and diving down one final time, he found the attachment that bound the child, and ripped it open.

He had to pick up the boy. He had to clean him. Flushing the toilet a second time, he carried him from the bathroom. He moved under weights that were only his clothes, his shirt and jacket and coat. All right, he had been imprudent—now was he happy? But there was no backing out, not if he had gone too far. But when had he begun going too far? He told himself, I am here, and it meant nothing.

“What the hell — you crazy—Put that kid down!” Bigoness was flying at him, his arms making great circles.

“I just took him off—”

“Put him down! I know where you got him, you son of a bitch!”

“You left him tied—”

“You son of a bitch! Give him to me!” The child out-howled his father, as he was wrenched away.

“I wasn’t stealing your baby! God damn it, let’s keep this straight—!”

“Get out! Get out, Wallace, before I call the police!”

“Call the police and you’ll make the biggest—”

“—no mistake to throw a guy like you in jail.” He rocked the weeping child in his arms.

“You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

“I’m calling the cops. I’ll give you three.”

Quickly Gabe said, “You’ll bring your creditors right down on your head.”

“I’ll bring them down on yours, you crook!”

“Look—look, this is absurd! You know it is! I’m not connected — listen to me, will you? You’d better calm down and think over what’s best for you.”

“I know what’s best … Ah quiet down, Walter honey — oh you son of a bitch, I know what’s — Come on now, Walter, willya? You’ll be all right, boy …” He paced the floor with his child, a worried parent.

“Why don’t we make some kind of deal, please—”

“Why don’t you bug off!”

“Why don’t we make a cash deal?” He put himself in Bigoness’s line of vision. “I want a favor and you need money.”

“I don’t need your money. I got a deal coming up with Vic, my buddy. I’m going to have myself some work in just about two weeks. Three weeks.”

“Your phone call didn’t work out, did it?”

“Why don’t you keep your nose out of my business, you wheedling son of a bitch.” He placed his child, who had howled himself almost to sleep, down on the sofa.

“I’ll give you”—he reached for a figure—“fifty dollars more.”

Bigoness turned; Gabe had a second thought. “A week from Monday, as soon as you and Theresa have signed the papers, fifty dollars more.”

“And this ain’t the black market, huh? What are you trying to do, get me all fucked up with the union?”

“Fifty dollars for an hour’s work. Yes or no?”

“… That’s no big offer, is it, for me taking such a big chance?”

“You’ve already taken forty-five dollars.”

“I didn’t take — you gave. You tried bribing me already.”

“Well—” he said, uncertainly, having still a third thought, “it was just as big a chance then.”

“And that’s why I don’t want nothing to do with it, you understand?”

“Look, yes or no? Fifty dollars.” He had nearly said a hundred.

“Twenty-five now, and twenty-five then?”

“Nothing now.”

“Nothing now never helped nobody’s troubles.”

“You’ve had forty-five already.”

“Jesus! I thought we were going to forget about that. Boy oh boy! First you tell me you’re going to forget it, and I say I’m even willing — and now you keep bringing it up again!”

In the morning Gabe had cashed a check so as to have money for the weekend, for the present, for dinner that evening. He had with him a little under a hundred dollars. What prevented him from handing it all over to Bigoness was only the word bribe. But fifty was surely not less of a bribe — and a hundred might do the trick. A hundred right now. No!

Nevertheless, he saw one door closing, saw it shut. Jaffe could no longer go into court and claim abandonment; a subsequent investigation would uncover Bigoness, uncover this moment. Deep, he had to go deeper. He could not now give Bigoness nothing; of course he couldn’t.

“—want to be surer, then fifty later too.”

“I don’t follow you.” He had to pretend an inability to comprehend, when in fact their two minds — one moving down, one moving up — had apparently met.

“—what I suppose is the best thing, for you to feel safe and me to feel safe, that we ain’t either going to get screwed, is you give me fifty now and then you hold out another fifty for then, see, and then …”

“I still don’t follow you.”

“More when it’s over,” Bigoness was saying. But his voice had dropped.

Gabe used Bigoness’s own phrase. “Are you done now?”

“Well … yeah, I’m done.”

“Didn’t you get a letter today, from Mr. Jaffe?”

“I don’t get no mail.”

“You got a letter telling you when and where to show up.”

“What do you think, that’s all I got to worry about?”

“What I’m asking is, do you know what’s wanted of you exactly — the place and the time?”

“I don’t know nothing.”

He took out his billfold. Bigoness sat up. Gabe took from it an old dry-cleaning receipt and wrote on the back the necessary information. He offered the slip of paper to Bigoness, continuing to hold his billfold in the other hand. “Take it,” he said. He pushed it in Bigoness’s direction; Bigoness extended his hand — and then it was fluttering to the rug. Gabe had opened his hand, but Bigoness had not closed his. Very faintly, Bigoness grinned.

“Pick that up.”

“Shit, that ain’t a fifty-dollar bill. Don’t look like it to me.”

“You know what it is. Pick it up.”

“Hey, what am I, a carpet sweeper to you? Huh? Your slave?” Bigoness sat down on the sofa beside his child, who moaned now in his sleep. He started tapping his fingers together before his mouth; inspired, he whistled “Here Comes the Bride.”

“Twice I’ve asked you to pick that paper up.”

Nothing.

“I thought you were concerned about your family.” Bigoness’s eyes were on his billfold; deliberately he had not put it away: had that been a mistake? “I thought you were a man who worried about doctor’s bills.”

“All dressed in white … da-da da-da-da …”

This stubbornness! This thick head! To think that he had put the idea of a bribe into this dumb ox’s head!

“Look, what kind of bastard are you—”

“Watch—” Bigoness began.

“We’re talking about a baby. Pick that money up!”

“It ain’t money.”

“Paper! Pick it—”

“I didn’t ask for this recession, Wallace, before you blow a gut. I never asked for hard times.”

“What kind of—”

“Ah shit, what kind are you? Huh? I’m taking the big risk, while you guys make thousands.”

“Can’t I get it into your head—”

Bigoness waved one hand. “Okay, you’re the happy father then, what do I care? I’m giving you a kid for the rest of your life. Don’t you appreciate that, Poppa? A little — what? Boy? Girl?”

“—beside the point.”

“Well, I got a right to know what it is. Here you keep telling me that kid really belongs to me, I got a right at least to know what it is.” He waited.

“A girl.”

“… Well, maybe I’d like another little girl around here. Just to even things up. Man, you give me a hard enough time, in the end I might just as well move the little bastard right in here with the rest of ’em.”

Gabe said nothing; no muscle moved.

“At least that’d be the legal thing, right? You got to consider that, don’t you?”

“Adoption is perfectly legal. Don’t be sly.”

Bigoness shook his head as though he knew better. “That may be and then it might not be, given the way things are. But if I’m willing to give up a little baby, seems to me you ought to have a little more respect. A hundred dollars more for a whole little baby — man, that’s not bad.”

“Either you pick up that paper or I leave. I didn’t make this recession either, don’t be a God damn fool. I didn’t give you your hard times. I’m sorry about all your marital difficulties, I’m sorry you’re out of a job—”

“Oh yeah, you’re sorry.”

“Either you pick it up—” He felt silly, picky, quibbling; he felt he was missing the point himself. Was everything to come down to this — his having his way? “Or I leave and you get nothing.”

No response.

“I mean that.” No word from Bigoness, no movement at all. No whistling. Without any clear impression of what would follow, Gabe took a step toward the door. And Bigoness ducked down; his hand swooped across the rug; he twisted the paper around in his fingers, then shoved it into his shirt pocket.

They were silent, however, as though it were not quite over. Bigoness said, “You’re getting me cheap, Mister. When a man is down,” he said sourly, “you sure do know how to make him crawl around for you.”

But even as Bigoness spoke, Gabe felt moved to thrust the entire billfold at him. Everything. Go all out. What was the difference? He just wanted it over! He looked at Bigoness, Bigoness at the billfold. Gabe thought: he only wants what I put it in his head to want.

Bigoness whined, “What about expenses?”

“I gave you forty-five—”

“Oh shit—”

“Here.” He did not think, did not reason. He jammed a bill into Bigoness’s hand. He hoped it would be a ten; it turned out to be a twenty. What difference? “The rest you get after you sign.”

“You ain’t going to subtract—”

“No. No!”

He turned, just as the little boy rolled over and woke up. Of course Bigoness had known that he had not been stealing the child. Yes, Bigoness was smarter than he was, smarter under pressure. Why shouldn’t he be? He moved through the door, so weary that he could not have put up much resistance had the extortionist, the thief, the miserable bastard chosen that moment to attack him from behind for the rest of the money. But no one laid a finger on him as he passed out the door and down the stairway. All the violent thoughts had been his own.

He emerged from the front door as a woman with a shopping bag was struggling up the porch steps, one at a time. He held the door open for her.

“Oh, how is little Walter?” she asked.

“Oh — I—”

“Aren’t you …?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, I saw you going in …”

“Yes?”

“I thought you were Harry’s doctor.” She giggled. “You look like a doctor.”

“I’m just—”

“Well, isn’t it something?”

“Yes.”

“We never cared for her, you know. Not a bit. I’ve never myself liked Southerners. And my husband, well, he spotted her right off.”

“Well, yes—”

“Harry, on the other hand, is good to those children as gold.”

“Yes — I have to be going—” He showed her that he was about to release the door.

“It’s a shame, a hard-working boy like that, and, well, I won’t even say the sort she is. Maybe she’ll work out this time, but she’s no proper stepmother even,” she said hopelessly. “Just running off—”

“Excuse me, I have to go — be going—”

“—better off without her, if you want my opinion. Don’t you believe—”

“I think—” said Gabe, and breaking away, he let fly the door.

He drove back to Chicago as madly as he had left it. He went immediately to the doctor’s office, and by the time he got to the Loop for drinks it was nearly six. A slender, dark-haired girl had sat alone at a table for half an hour, the waitress told him, then paid for her drink and left. He drove home; not till he was there did he remember that he had forgotten the quilt. At nine Libby called. She asked if he would fill in for their baby-sitter on Christmas Eve; their regular girl had gone home for the holidays. He said yes. It would give him something to do the night before he left. It would please Libby and it would please him — if not now, then. He said yes, and then he did not let Libby hang up. He talked and talked; he said more words to her than he had in years. He told her he had gone to the doctor in the afternoon and gotten the second of three penicillin shots. He told her how he had leaned over in a movie and hit his head on the corner of the seat. He had dropped his billfold, tried to pick it up, and whack. He should have gone off instantly to wash it out but had neglected to. He hadn’t realized he had broken the skin. However, had he not gone to the doctor the next day, he might well have wound up with a serious case of blood poisoning. So near the brain … He did not ask to speak to Paul. He saw no way of getting around to it, no cool, calm way even of his making the request that might not send Libby screaming down the hall. And he did not call Jaffe. He had called a day or two before to say that everything was fine, just perfect. There was no sense in calling again. After all, there was nothing for Jaffe to do; he had himself done everything.

He went to bed earlier than he should have, with the result that he slept badly. His head ached all through the night. The doctor had assured him that he would not expire in his sleep; the doctor was a humorous man who took minor ailments lightly. Of course, Gabe had only raised the question lightly — he did not really expect to die. Nevertheless, for long stretches he did not sleep because he would not allow himself to. It was as though his illness might overpower him were he not awake to protect himself. But dozing, he had dreams of struggle and loss, dreams of falling. He was wrestling with Bigoness over a pit alive with monsters. They rolled and rolled, arms locked about one another, and then they fell, onto Bigoness’s rug.

He awoke. The room was dark. He set his mind a task. He tried to figure out the amount of money that would have been appropriate — safe — wise — binding—right—to have promised Harry Bigoness.

5

Gabe:

We will be at the Cape Cod Room (splurge! our sixth anniversary!) of the Hotel Drake (AM 3-4582) from 7–8:30. At Surf Theater (AM 4-9724) till 10:20. Meet train at LaSalle St. Station 10:45. Home by 11:15 thereabouts. Be charming to Mrs. Herz when we bring her home. Very charming. I am nervous — but have not been so expectant in years. Oh brave new world and so on. If Rachel wakes up (she will), expect you to read to her. Bottle may help.

L.

On her way out she handed the note to him. “Here’s where we’ll be,” she had said. At seven-thirty, while they were still at the Drake he wrote a memorandum to himself on the back of Libby’s note.

Have plane ticket.

Take quilt.

Call taxi by ten.

Call airport first, check etc.

Mail applications!

Enough cash.

Call Jaffe.

Call Bigo

Number eight was crossed out. It was then written in again. The process was repeated three times over.

At eight — the Herzes were still enjoying dinner at the Cape Cod Room — Rachel woke up and cried briefly. He gave her a bottle. He stood by the crib, thinking over and over all that he had been thinking over and over for days. There were no new thoughts for him to have. He referred to his list of things to do. At eight-fifteen he telephoned Gary.

“I’d like to speak”—yes, this was safe, this was wise—“to Theresa Bigoness, please.”

He heard the broom bang against the ceiling.

“Hello?”

“Theresa?”

“Uh-huh.”

“This is Gabe Wallach.”

“Who?”

“Martha’s friend … Mr. Wallace.”

“You want to speak to Harry?”

“I wanted to speak with you. Privately. To say hello … Just to make sure everything is all right. Is everything …?”

“… I’m okay.”

“I was sorry I couldn’t get to see you—”

“Uh-huh.”

“—when I came to talk to your husband.”

“Maybe you better talk to him.”

“I wanted to tell you that Mr. Jaffe’s looking forward to seeing you on the twenty-ninth, you know. You remember Sid Jaffe — he got your letter, of course.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Everything’s all right then?”

“I feel okay.”

“And we’ll be seeing you on the twenty-ninth?”

“I’ve got a job.”

“I know. The twenty-ninth, of course, has been taken care of.”

“The mill’s all closed up, I have to work—”

“Hasn’t your husband told you that you’re coming into town on the twenty-ninth?”

Silence.

“Theresa, you’re coming, right? You have to, you know. That was all made clear to you by Mr. Jaffe.”

“I have to work.”

“… I’ve paid your salary for that day, more than your salary already.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Theresa, are you listening to me? You do remember me?”

“I have to go upstairs now.”

“When you were in trouble, Theresa, everybody up here was very kind to you. You were taken care of — weren’t you?”

Again she did not see fit to answer immediately.

“Well, isn’t that so?”

“No.”

“It is so, Theresa. Don’t you remember how unhappy you were?”

“Not everybody was nice to me.”

“Who wasn’t?”

“Not everybody,” she whispered.

“Your husband has agreed to come up to Chicago. Hasn’t he told you that?”

“I didn’t have to be treated like that.”

“What are you talking about? Like what?”

“I have to hang up now. I can’t talk long, count of it’s Mr. Phelps’s phone, not mine.”

“Theresa—”

Time passed. The Herzes were finishing up at the Cape Cod Room AM 3-4582; Rachel lay on a blanket on the living room floor, where her sitter had carried her — where, for some fifteen minutes, he had been looking at her. Once again he called Gary.

“I’d like to speak to Harry Bigoness, please.”

The broom.

“Hullo?”

“This is Wallace, I’m calling from Chicago.”

“Look, you just call my wife?”

“No.”

“What do you want anyway?”

“I wanted to give you a ring, to make sure everything was all right.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, that’s all.”

No answer now from the husband.

“Everything’s okay then, about the twenty-ninth?”

“My kid was in the hospital.”

“Who?”

“Walter.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Something with his insides. They don’t know.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“—won’t be able to …”

“What?”

This round the words were sharp and clear; Bigoness took his time with them. “I said I don’t think I can make it.”

It was Gabe’s turn to be silent.

And Bigoness’s to lose his temper. “Did you try to talk to Tessie before?”

“I’ve promised you your money, Mr. Bigoness—”

“My kid is sick!”

“Well, that costs money—”

“God damn right it costs money. What do you think it costs, nothing?”

He said nothing — and not out of strategy; he had no strategy, only confusion.

“Look,” said Bigoness carefully, “I ain’t got time to talk. I’m meeting with a friend. I got some business …”

“You just can’t change your mind like this.”

“I’m too busy.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“I told you.”

“… What do you want, Bigoness — more?”

“You asking?”

“I asked you a question, that’s right.”

“You want to talk about money?”

“How much do you want — don’t be coy, God damn it.”

“I’ve been talking to the lawyer down the union. I’m talking to a friend here — he knows something too.”

“So? What?”

“I know my rights, Wallace.”

“No one’s tried to deprive you of your rights.”

“I know what you been full of crap about, and what you ain’t.”

“How much money do you want?”

“If I wasn’t hard up I wouldn’t ask a guy like you for a God damn penny.”

“I understand.”

“Five hundred bucks.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I ain’t the doctors, Mister—” Bigoness began rapidly. “I ain’t the President of the United States. I ain’t Khrushchev or any of those guys. I didn’t give my kid bad inside troubles. I need five hundred bucks. Take it,” and there was a tremor in his voice, “or you know what.”

“And what’ll it be next?”

“What next?”

“Tomorrow. What will it be then, another five hundred? What’ll it be by the twenty-ninth? This is crazy, Bigoness. Whoever you’re talking to is giving you the wrong information. You can’t go around extorting money from people; that’s against the law. Why don’t you follow your own instincts?”

“See,” said Bigoness, “you don’t trust me.”

“What?”

“You son of a bitch.” It was said for what seemed to be the simple pleasure of saying it.

“What’s going on with you, Bigoness? You’re ashamed of asking for this money yourself. Bigoness — don’t hang up—”

“I got business upstairs.”

“Bigoness, you’re a father yourself—”

But the phone clicked.

He removed his jacket from the closet, where Libby had neatly hung it beside his coat. He opened his checkbook and wrote out a check. Then he came back into the living room and tried to play with Rachel. He was able to make her smile. He checked the time; the Herzes were entering the movie. He could drive down in forty minutes, back in forty minutes, allowing himself at least an hour in Gary. He would hand the check over to Bigoness and this time be given proper assurance. But he could never be properly assured. Nor could he leave Rachel alone … He would mail the check tonight, and fly to New York tomorrow—

Nothing would work. He was rocking Rachel now, to get her back to sleep. It’s all become too abstract, he thought, holding the child. Bigoness did not believe Rachel was as real as Walter. He had to be put in touch with the simplest of human facts. He was stupid, but he had feelings. If he could meet Paul, see Libby — see Rachel. If he could be Gabe, rocking her. In one way it was all so simple.

He asked the operator for Gary again.

“May I speak to Harry Bigoness?”

“What is this, a joke?”

“Please, I’m calling from Chicago.”

“So what!”

“Can you get Harry Bigoness to the phone?”

“You the guy’s been calling all night?”

“I’m sorry, please, I’d like—”

“A little peace and quiet, that’s what we’d like!”

The phone was dropped; he waited to hear the broom beat on the ceiling.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Bigoness — this is Wallace.”

“You son of a bitch, I told you not to talk to my wife, didn’t I?”

“I felt it was important to speak to her.”

“How about what other people feel, huh?”

“I want to talk to you now—”

“What were you going to tell her to do, that’s what I want to talk about!”

“I wanted to find out whether you were still coming.”

“Then what?”

“That was all.”

“You’re trying to screw up my life for me—”

“That’s absurd—”

“Everything’s that way to you! Not to me! You leave off Tessie, you hear?”

“I’ve written out a check for five hundred dollars.”

“… Oh yeah, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“I got to see it,” Bigoness said. He was not managing to sound as cool as he intended. “Before I believe it,” he added.

“I’ve got to be sure about you too.”

“I’m plenty reliable, don’t worry about me. You’re the one don’t strike me as a safe bet.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I want to see that check before I make any promises. I want to make sure it don’t bounce, to put it blunt.”

“I can assure you it won’t.”

“Maybe you better bring cash.”

“Bigoness—look, I want you to realize, I don’t want you to forget — a child—”

“Look—”

“A child, like Walter—”

“You don’t believe Walter was in the hospital. I’ll tell you whose fault it is too; that kid ain’t never recovered from the shock of you, Mister—”

“All I’m saying, all I want to make clear—” he broke in, “is that the child, the parents … Bigoness, is this clear to you? They’re all as real as you and I. They’ve got feelings—”

“I got feelings, damn it! Who don’t have feelings! You just stay away from my wife, do you hear? She’s home now and she’s staying home. Soon as I get work she’s going to start learning to be a good mama—”

“Nobody’s trying to get her away from you.”

“If I catch her ass down that Fluke’s place—”

“Why don’t you listen—”

“I’m listening all right. We’re talking about whether that check of yours is going to bounce.”

“Do you understand about this child?”

“Oh yeah, I know. She’s my responsibility and she’s my legal problem. Don’t worry, Wallace, I got some advice about that too. I told you what I’d do if you keep bugging me now—”

“You won’t understand.”

“It’s you,” Bigoness said maliciously, “won’t understand.”

“Bigoness — you’re at home tonight?”

“I told you, I got business—”

“You stay where you are. Don’t you move!”

He took what was his from the closet. His watch showed that the movie had just begun. No one would ever know; he would set it right; the knowledge of how close he had pushed them all to failure would be his own — as would the knowledge of his final success. That was fair. He carried Rachel into her bedroom and dressed her in a red snowsuit and a pair of white shoes; he dressed her right over her woolen pajamas. He lined a wicker laundry basket that he found in the kitchen with a double thickness of blanket; then he wrapped the child in still another blanket and carried her in the basket down the stairs of the old building.

Up till now he had stopped before the end. Now with the basket beside him on the front seat, he started the car. Someone was to get what he wanted! Someone was to be satisfied! Something was to be completed!

Finish! Go all the way!

He began to tremble. But why? What had he to bring to Bigoness’s attention but the very simplest facts of life? Bigoness would have to see the child to believe it, to stop bargaining over it. A life! A life! What was there left to appeal to, but the man’s human feelings?

He tucked Rachel securely in the basket. Then with the motor rocking beneath him, he picked her up and held her to him. And it was not out of pity or love that he found himself clutching her; the mystery of her circumstances was not what was weighing him down. He clutched her to himself as though she were himself. It was as though the child embraced the man, not the man the child. He ground his teeth, locked his arms: if only he could be as convinced as he was determined; if only he could tell which he was being, prudent, imprudent, brave, sentimental … A bleeding heart, a cold heart, a soft heart, a hard, a cautious … which? Oh if he could only break down and give in and weep. But there was no comfort for him in tears, or in reason. He had passed beyond what he had taken for the normal round of life, beyond what had been kept normal by fortune and by strategy. Tears would only roll off the shell of him. And every reason had its mate. Whichever way he turned, there was a kind of horror.