“Why don’t you hang onto it?” Tony said, with a twinge of superstition. “If it’s brought you luck.”
“Luck.” Oliver grinned painfully. “You keep it for me. Maybe the luck’ll work better that way. Please.”
Tony put his hand out slowly and Oliver dropped the watch into his palm. The watch was surprisingly heavy. It was thick and the gold of the case was elaborately chased and the face was yellowed a little and marked with thin, old-fashioned Roman numerals. Tony looked at it and noticed that it was after eleven. Damn it, he thought, I’m going to miss Elizabeth. She’ll never wait.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll give it to my son, when the time comes.”
Oliver smiled anxiously. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the idea.”
Tony put the watch in his side pocket and stood up. “Well …” he began.
“Don’t go yet,” Oliver said. “Not yet. There’s one more thing.”
“What’s that?” Tony tried to keep his impatience with his father, with the evening, with the sad and littered little room, out of his voice.
“Wait. Just wait.” Oliver made a wide, mysterious gesture with his hand and went over to the telephone. He sat down on the bed, still in his cap and trenchcoat, and picked up the phone. He clicked the instrument impatiently. “I want Orange 7654,” he said. “That’s in New Jersey.”
“Whom’re you calling?” Tony asked suspiciously.
“That’s right,” Oliver said, into the phone. “Orange.” He turned to Tony, holding the instrument to his ear. “You knew we moved to New Jersey a few years ago?”
“Yes,” Tony said.
“Of course. You were there. Happy Thanksgiving.” Oliver grinned painfully. “It turned out it wasn’t really practical to live in Hartford any more,” Oliver said. “And in one way, it turned out very well. The plant was obsolete, anyway, and I had a chance to buy in New Jersey and we expanded enormously. The move made a rich man out of me.” He laughed. “The romance of business,” he said vaguely. “I could even afford to be a patriot and join up when my country called. Operator, operator!” he said impatiently into the phone.
“Whom’re you calling?” Tony asked.
“Your mother.” Oliver’s face was tight, almost as though he might cry; although it was probably only the whisky, and his eyes were full of pleading.
“Oh, come on now,” Tony said. “What’s the sense in that?”
“Just once,” Oliver said. “Just this last night. Just for the both of us to say hello to her, together. How much harm can that do—just to say hello?”
Tony hesitated, then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said wearily.
“That’s fine,” Oliver said happily. “That’s a sport.”
That’s a sport, Tony thought. The vocabulary of my father.
“Come over here.” Oliver waved to him vigorously. “You take the phone. You speak to her right off. Come on, come on.”
Tony walked over and took the phone and put it to his head. He heard the regular distant ringing sound in the receiver. His father was standing close to him, liquorish-smelling, breathing fast, as if he had just run a long distance. The phone rang and rang.
“She’s probably asleep,” Oliver said anxiously. “She hasn’t heard it yet.”
Tony didn’t say anything. He listened to the ringing.
“Maybe she’s taking a bath,” Oliver said. “Maybe the water’s running and she can’t hear it …”
“There’s no answer,” Tony said. He started to hang up, but Oliver grabbed the phone from him and put it to his own ear, as though he didn’t trust Tony.
They stood still, the thin, mechanical double sound surprisingly loud in the quiet room.
“I guess she went to a movie,” Oliver said, “or she’s playing bridge. She plays a lot of bridge. Or maybe she had to work late. She works very hard and …”
“Hang up,” Tony said, “she’s not home.”
“Just five more rings,” said Oliver.
They waited for the five more rings, then Oliver hung up. He stood staring at the phone on the shabby bed-table scarred with cigarette burns and the marks of wet glasses.
“Well, isn’t that too bad?” he said, very low, shaking his head, staring at the phone. “Isn’t that just too bad?”
“Good night, Father,” Tony said.
Oliver didn’t move. He stood looking at the phone, his face serious, reflective, not especially sad, but remote and thoughtful.
“I said good night, Father.”
Oliver looked up. “Oh, yes,” he said flatly. He put out his hand and Tony shook it. There was no force in his grip.
“Well …” Tony said uncomfortably, suddenly feeling the weight and embarrassment of saying good-bye to the wrong member of the family who was going to the war. “Good luck.”
“Sure. Sure, Son,” Oliver said. He smiled remotely. “It’s been a nice evening.”
Tony looked hard at him, but his father obviously had nothing further to say. It was as though he had exhausted all his interest in him. Tony crossed to the door and went out, leaving his father standing next to the telephone.
He took a cab down to Number One, hoping that Elizabeth hadn’t gone. She wasn’t at the bar when he went in and he decided to have one drink and wait fifteen minutes and then, if she hadn’t arrived, go home.
He ordered a whisky and idly put his hand in his pocket and felt the watch. He took it out and stared at it. It was like having 1900 in your hand. A fat man was standing in a spotlight next to the piano, singing a song called “I Love Life.”
Tony turned the watch over. It was almost dark at the bar, but if he held the watch down low on the bar a beam of light from a small lamp behind the bottles struck it. The lacily engraved gold gleamed in his hand. There was a little catch on one side of the watch and Tony flicked it and the back snapped open. There was a picture in it and Tony bent over to look at it. It was a photograph of his mother, taken when she was very young. Her hair was in a funny dowdy bun, but it didn’t matter, she was beautiful just the same, staring out of the aging photograph with wide, candid, rather shy and smiling eyes in the slanting, furtive light that the barman used to mix his drinks while the show was on at the piano.
Oh, God, Tony thought, what did he want to do this to me for?
He looked around for a place to throw the photograph, but at that moment he saw Elizabeth making her way among the tables toward the bar. He closed the watch and put it in his pocket, thinking, I’ll do it when I get home.
“Wicked, wicked,” Elizabeth whispered, chuckling, and squeezed his hand. “Is Papa safely in bed?”
“Yes,” Tony said. “Safe and sound.”
19
THE ROAD SPED SMOOTHLY under the tires, the car passing through flickering bands of shade thrown by the rows of trees on each side, the kilometer stones, with the Norman names, going past with streaming regularity. Tony sat straight at the wheel, driving automatically, remembering the night in New York, realizing that for many years he had tried, with a conscious effort, to forget it.
The last time you see your father before he dies, he thought, you should know it, there should be a sign, a warning, a Nevermore, so that you can say an appropriate word, so that you do not hurry from a bare hotel room, worrying that you are late for a rendezvous at a bar with a girl who has come to the city, at the age of eighteen, to enjoy a war.
He was conscious of his mother seated beside him, her eyes closed, the wind picking at the loose ends of her scarf. What would it have been like, he wondered, how would everything have been changed if she had been home that night, if she had come to the telephone and he had heard her voice after Oliver had said, “That’s fine. That’s a sport”?