Through all this, Douglas remained good-natured. He didn’t openly blame the public for its stupidity or the nurseryman for selling him defective avocados, he simply let it be understood that he had done his best and no one could expect more.
No one did, except Verna, and the day he’d sold his clarinet, even though she hated the shriek of it, she went up to her bedroom and wept. The sale of the clarinet wasn’t like the gradual loss of interest in ceramics and poetry and all the other things. There was an absolute finality about it that hit her like a fist in the stomach. Her pain was so actual and intense that Douglas sent for the doctor. When the doctor came he seemed just as interested in Douglas as he was in Verna herself. “That boy of yours looks as if he needs a good tonic,” the doctor had said.
The “boy” would be twenty-six tomorrow.
“Two hundred at least,” Verna said. “After all, it’s his birthday and she’s his sister.”
She covered the canary cage for the night, checked the kitchen to see if the maid had tidied it properly before she left, and went into the den, where Douglas was lying on the couch, reading. He was wearing beaded white moccasins and a terry-cloth bathrobe with the sleeves partly rolled up revealing wrists that were so slim and supple they seemed boneless. His coloring was like Helen’s, dark hair and the kind of chameleon gray eyes that changed color with their surroundings. His ears were like a woman’s, very close-set, with pierced lobes. In the right lobe he wore a circle of fine gold wire. This tiny earring was one of the things he and Verna frequently quarreled about, but Douglas would not remove it.
When he heard his mother enter the room, Douglas put down his book and got up from the couch. Verna thought, with satisfaction, at least I’ve brought him up to show some respect for women.
She said, “Go and put some clothes on, dear.”
“Why?”
“I’m having company.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Please don’t argue with me, dear. I have one of my headaches coming on.” Verna had a whole battalion of headaches at her disposal. They came on like a swarm of native troops; when one of them was done to death, another was always ready to rush forward and take its place. “Mr. Blackshear is coming to see us. It may be about money.”
She explained about the shares of AT&T that might have got stuck in a drawer, while Douglas listened with amiable skepticism, tugging gently at his golden earring.
The gesture annoyed her. “And for heaven’s sake take that thing off.”
“Why?”
“I’ve told you before, it makes you look foolish.”
“I don’t agree. Different, perhaps, but not foolish.”
“Why should you want to look different from other men?”
“Because I am, sweetheart, I am.”
He reached out and touched her cheek lightly.
She drew away. “Well, it seems to me...”
“To you, everything seems. To me, everything is.”
“I don’t understand you when you talk like that. And I won’t have another argument about that earring. Now take it off!”
“All right. You don’t have to scream.” There was a thin line of white around Douglas’s mouth and the veins in his temples bulged with suppressed anger. He unfastened the earring and flung it across the room. It ricocheted off the wall on to the blond plastic top of the spinet piano, then it rolled forward and disappeared between two of the bass keys.
Verna let out a cry of dismay. “Now look what you’ve done!”
“I’m sick of being ordered around.”
“You’ve wrecked my piano. Another repair bill to pay...”
“It isn’t wrecked.”
“It is so.” She ran over to the piano, almost in tears, and played a scale with her left hand. The C and D keys were not stuck, but they made a little plinking sound. “You’ve ruined my piano.”
“Nonsense. I can fix it easily.”
“I don’t want you to touch it. It’s a job for an expert.” She rose from the piano bench, her lips tight as if they’d been set it cement.
Watching her, Douglas thought, there are some women who expand with the years, and some who shrink.
Verna had shrunk. Each week she seemed to grow smaller, and when Douglas called her old girl, it wasn’t a term of endearment, it was what he really thought of her. Verna was an old girl.
“I’m sorry, old girl.”
“Are you?”
“You know I am.”
“Will you go up and change your clothes, then?”
“All right.” He shrugged as if he’d known from the very beginning that she would get her own way and it no longer mattered because he had his own methods of making her regret her authority.
“And don’t forget to put on a tie.”
“Why?”
“Other men wear ties.”
“Not all of them.”
“I don’t see why you’re in such a difficult mood tonight.”
“I think it’s the other way around, old girl. Take a pill or something.”
As he passed the piano on his way out of the room, he ran his forefinger lightly along the keys, smiling to himself.
“Douglas.”
He paused in the doorway, holding his bathrobe tight around his waist. “Well?”
“I met Evie and her mother downtown this afternoon.”
“So?”
“Evie asked after you. She was really very pleasant, considering what happened, the annulment and everything.”
“I will be equally pleasant to her, if and when.”
“She’s such a lovely girl. Everyone said you made a very attractive couple.”
“Let’s not dredge that up.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you might want to see her again? She didn’t ask me that, of course, but I could sense she was still interested.”
“You need a new crystal ball, old girl.”
When he had gone, she began to circle the room, turning on the lamps and straightening the odd-shaped ceramic pieces on the mantel which had been Douglas’ passing contribution to the art. Verna didn’t understand what these pieces represented any more than she understood Douglas’ poetry or his music. It was as if he moved through life in a speeding automobile, now and then tossing out of the windows blobs of clay and notes in music and half-lines of poetry that he had whipped up while stopping for the red lights. Nothing was ever finished before the lights changed, and what was tossed out of the windows was always distorted by the speed of the car and the rush of the wind.
Verna Clarvoe greeted Blackshear with an effusiveness he didn’t expect, desire or understand. She had always in the past made it obvious that she considered him a dull man, yet here she was, coming out to the car to meet him, offering him both her hands and telling him how simply marvelous it was to see him again and how well he looked, not a day, not a minute, older.
“You haven’t changed a bit. Confess now, you can’t say the same about me!”
“I assure you I can.”
She blushed with pleasure, misinterpreting his words as a compliment. “What a charming fibber you are, Mr. Blackshear. But then, you always were. Come, let’s talk in the den. Since Harrison died, we practically never use the drawing-room. It’s so big Dougie and I just rattle around in it. Helen no longer lives at home.”