The Goodbye Look

chapter 20

I went back to San Diego and drove out Bayview Avenue to George Trask’s house. The sun had just set and everything was reddish, as if the blood in the kitchen of the house had formed a weak solution with the light.

A car I had seen before but couldn’t remember where – a black Volkswagen with a crumpled fender – stood in the driveway of the Trask house. A San Diego police car was at the curb. I drove on by, and made my way back to the hospital.

Nick was in Room 211 on the second floor, the woman at the information desk told me. “But he’s not allowed to have visitors unless you’re immediate family.”

I went up anyway. In the visitors’ lounge across from the elevator Mrs. Smitheram, the psychiatrist’s wife, was reading a magazine. A coat folded with the lining turned out was draped across the back of her chair. For some reason I was very glad to see her. I crossed to the lounge and sat down near her.

She wasn’t reading after all, just holding the magazine. She was looking right at me, but she didn’t see me. Her blue eyes were turned inward on her thoughts, which lent her face a grave beauty. I watched the changes in her eyes as she gradually became aware of me, and finally recognized me.

“Mr. Archer!”

“I wasn’t expecting to see you, either.”

“I just came along for the ride,” she said. “I lived in San Diego County for several years during the war. I haven’t been back here since.”

“That’s a long time.”

She inclined her head. “I was just thinking about that long time and how it grew. But you’re not interested in my autobiography.”

“I am, though. Were you married when you lived here before?”

“In a sense. My husband was overseas most of the time. He was a flight surgeon on an escort carrier.” Her voice had a rueful pride which seemed to belong entirely to the past.

“You’re older than you look.”

“I married young. Too young.”

I liked the woman, and it was a pleasure to talk for once about something that had no bearing on my case. But she brought the conversation back to it:

“The latest on Nick is that he’s coming out of it. The only question is in what condition.”

“What does your husband think?”

“It’s too early for Ralph to commit himself. Right now he’s in consultation with a neurologist and a brain surgeon.”

“They don’t do brain surgery for barbiturate poisoning, do they?”

“Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing the matter with Nick. He has a concussion. He must have fallen and hit the back of his head.”

“Or been hit?”

“That’s possible, too. How did he get to San Diego, anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“My husband said you brought him here to the hospital.”

“That’s true. But I didn’t bring him to San Diego.”

“Where did you find him?”

I didn’t answer her.

“Don’t you want to tell me?”

“That’s right.” I changed the subject, not very smoothly. “Are Nick’s parents here?”

“His mother’s sitting with him. His father is on his way. There’s nothing either you or I can do.”

I stood up. “We could have dinner.”

“Where?”

“The hospital cafeteria if you like. The food is fair.” She made a face. “I’ve eaten too many hospital-cafeteria dinners.”

“I thought you mightn’t want to go too far.” The phrase had a double meaning that we both heard.

She said: “Why not? Ralph will be tied up for hours. Why don’t we go out to La Jolla?”

“Is that where you used to live during the war?”

“You’re a good guesser.”

I helped her on with her coat. It was silver-blue mink complementing the slash of gray in her hair. In the elevator, she said:

“This is on one condition. You mustn’t ask me questions about Nick and his family constellation. I can’t answer certain questions, just as you can’t, so why spoil things.”

“I won’t spoil things, Mrs. Smitheram.”

“My name is Moira.”

She was born in Chicago, she told me at dinner, and trained as a psychiatric social worker in the University of Michigan Hospital. There she met and married Ralph Smitheram, who was completing his residency in psychiatry. When he joined the Navy and was assigned to the San Diego Naval Hospital, she came along to California.

“We lived in a little old hotel here in La Jolla. It was sort of rundown but I loved it. After we finish dinner I want to go and see if it’s still there.”

“We can do that.”

“I’m taking a chance, coming back here. I mean, you can’t imagine how beautiful it was. It was my first experience of the ocean. When we went down to the cove in the early morning, I felt like Eve in the garden. Everything was fresh and new and spare. Not like this at all.”

With a movement of her hand she dismissed her present surroundings: the thick pseudo-Hawaiian decor, the uniformed black waiters, the piped-in music, all the things that went with the fifteen-dollar Chateaubriand for two.

“This part of the town has changed,” I agreed.

“Do you remember La Jolla in the forties?”

“Also the thirties. I lived in Long Beach then. We used to come down for the surf here and at San Onofre.”

“Does ‘we’ refer to you and your wife?”

“Me and my buddies,” I said. “My wife wasn’t interested in surf.”

“Past tense?”

“Historical. She divorced me back in those same forties. I don’t blame her. She wanted a settled life, and a husband she could count on to be there.”

Moira received my ancient news in silence. After a while she spoke half to herself: “I wish I’d gotten a divorce then.” Her eyes came up to mine. “What did you want, Archer?”

“This.”

“Do you mean being here with me?” I thought she was overeager for a compliment, then realized she was kidding me a little. “I hardly justify a lifetime of effort.”

“The life is its own reward,” I countered. “I like to move into people’s lives and then move out again. Living with one set of people in one place used to bore me.”

“That isn’t your real motivation. I know your type. You have a secret passion for justice. Why don’t you admit it?”

“I have a secret passion for mercy,” I said. “But justice is what keeps happening to people.”

She leaned toward me with that female malice which carries some sexual heat. “You know what’s going to happen to you? You’ll grow old and run out of yourself. Will that be justice?”

“I’ll die first. That will be mercy.”

“You’re terribly immature, do you know that?”

“Terribly.”

“Don’t I make you angry?”

“Real hostility does. But you’re not being hostile. On the contrary. You’re off on the usual nurse kick, telling me I better marry again before I get too old, or I won’t have anybody to nurse me in my old age.”

“You!” She spoke with angry force, which changed into laughter.

After dinner we left my car where it was in the restaurant parking lot, and walked down the main street toward the water. The surf was high and I could hear it roaring and retreating like a sea lion frightened by the sound of his own voice.

We turned right at the top of the last slope and walked past a brand-new multistoried office building, toward a motel which stood on the next corner. Moira stood still and looked it over.

“I thought this was the corner, but it isn’t. I don’t remember that motel at all.” Then she realized what had happened. “This is the corner, isn’t it? They tore down the old hotel and put up the motel in its place.” Her voice was full of emotion, as if a part of her past had been demolished with the old building.

“Wasn’t it called the Magnolia Hotel?”

“That’s right. The Magnolia. Did you ever stay there?”

“No,” I said. “But it seems to have meant quite a lot to you.”

“It did and does. I lived on there for two years after Ralph shipped out. I think now it was the realest part of my life I’ve never told anyone about it.”

“Not even your husband?”

“Certainly not Ralph.” Her voice was sharp. “When you try to tell Ralph something, he doesn’t hear it. He hears your motive for saying it, or what he thinks is your motive. He hears some of the implications. But he doesn’t really hear the obvious meaning. It’s an occupational hazard of psychiatrists.”

“You’re angry with your husband.”

“Now you’re doing it!” But she went on: “I’m deeply angry with him, and with myself. It’s been growing on me for quite a while.”

She had begun to walk, drawing me across the lighted corner and away from it downhill toward the sea. Spray hung in luminous clouds around the scattered lights. The green common and the waterfront path were virtually deserted. She began to talk again as we walked along the path.

“At first I was angry with myself for doing what I did. I was only nineteen when it started, and full of normal adolescent guilt. Later I was angry with myself for not following through.”

“You’re not making yourself entirely clear.”

She had raised the collar of her coat against the spray. Now she looked at me over it like a desperado wearing a partial face mask: “I don’t intend to, either.”

“I think you want to, though.”

“What’s the use? It’s all gone – completely past and gone.”

Her voice was desolate. She walked quickly away from me, and I followed her. She was in an uncertain mood, a middle-aging woman groping for a line of continuity in her life. The path was dark and narrow, and it would be easy by accident or design to fall among the rocks in the boiling surf.

I caught up with her at the cove, the physical center of the past she had been talking about. The broken white water streamed up the slope of the beach. She took her shoes off and led me down the steps. We stood just above the reach of the water.

“Come and get me,” she said to it or me or someone else.

“Were you in love with a man who died in the war?”

“He wasn’t a man. He was just a boy who worked in the post office.”

“Was he the one who came down here with you, when you felt like Eve in the garden?”

“He was the one. I still feel guilty about it. I lived here on the beach with another boy while Ralph was overseas defending his country.” Her voice flattened sardonically whenever she spoke of her husband. “Ralph used to write me long dutiful letters, but somehow they made no difference. I actually wanted to undercut him, he was so superconfident and know-it-all. Do you think I’m slightly crazy?”

“No.”

“Sonny was, you know. More than slightly.”

“Sonny?”

“The boy I lived with in the Magnolia. Actually he’d been one of Ralph’s patients, which is how I got to know him in the first place. Ralph suggested that I keep an eye on him. There’s an irony for you.”

“Stop it, Moira. I think you’re reaching for trouble.”

“Some reach for it,” she said. “Others have it thrust upon them. If I could just go back to that time and change a few things–”

“What would you change?”

“I’m not quite sure.” She sounded rather dreary. “Let’s not talk about it any more now.”

She walked away from me. Her naked feet left wasp-waisted impressions in the sand. I admired the grace of her departing movements, but she came back toward me ciumsily. She was walking backward, trying to fit her feet again into the prints she had made and not succeeding.

She walked into me and turned, her furred breast against my arm. I put my arm around her and held her. There were tears on her face, or spray. Anyway, it tasted salt.