“Gretchen is not a whore,” Rudolph said. “Her son is not a brat. And this is not your house.”
“I was waiting for the day you would finally say those words,” she said.
Rudolph ignored the invitation to melodrama. “He’s going to stay only a few days,” he said, “and he needs kindness and attention and I’m going to give it to him and Martha’s going to give it to him and you’re going to give it to him.”
“What will I ever tell Father McDonnell?” His mother looked, eyes magnified and blank, up toward Heaven, before whose gates stood, theoretically, Father McDonnell.
“You’re going to tell Father McDonnell that you have finally learned the virtue of Christian charity,” Rudolph said.
“Ah,” she said, “you’re a fine one to talk about Christian charity. Have you ever seen the inside of a church?”
“I haven’t got time to argue,” Rudolph said. “Calderwood is expecting me any minute now. I’m telling you how you’re going to behave with the boy.”
“I will not allow him in my presence,” she said, quoting from some portion of her favorite reading. “I will close my door and Martha will serve my meals on a tray.”
“You can do that if you want, Mom,” Rudolph said quietly. “But if you do, I’m cutting you off. No more car, no more bridge parties, no more charge accounts, no more beauty parlors, no more dinners for Father McDonnell. Think about it.” He stood up. “I’ve got to go now. Martha’s prepared to give Billy dinner. I suggest you join them.”
Tears as he closed his mother’s bedroom door. What a cheap way to threaten an old lady, he thought. Why didn’t she just die? Gracefully, unwaved, unrinsed, unrouged.
There was a grandfather’s clock in the hallway and he saw that he had time to phone Gretchen if he made an immediate connection to California. He put in the call and made himself another drink while waiting for the call to come through. Calderwood might smell the liquor on his breath and disapprove, but he was past that, too. As he sipped his drink he thought of what he had been doing the day before at just this hour. Entwined in twilit warmth in the soft bed, the red-wool stockings strewn on the floor, the sweet warm breath mingled with his, rum and lemon. Had his mother once lain sweetly in a lover’s arms on a cold December afternoon, clothes carelessly discarded in lover’s haste? The image refused to materialize. Would Jean, old, one day lie in a fussed-up bed, eyes staring behind thick glasses, old lips rouged in scorn and avarice? Better not to think about it.
The phone rang and it was Gretchen. He explained the afternoon as quickly as he could and said that Billy was safely with him and that if she thought best he would put Billy on a plane to Los Angeles in two or three days, unless, of course, she wanted to come East.
“No,” she said. “Put him on a plane.”
A tricky little sense of pleasure. An excuse to get to New York on Tuesday or Wednesday. Jean.
“I don’t have to tell you how grateful I am, Rudy,” Gretchen said.
“Nonsense,” he said. “When I have a son I will expect you to take cafe of him. I’ll let you know what plane he’s on. And maybe one day soon, I’ll come out and visit you.”
The lives of others.
Calderwood himself answered the door when Rudolph rang. He was dressed for Sunday, even though his Sabbath duties were behind him, dark suit with vest, white shirt, somber tie, his high, black shoes. There never was enough light in the frugal Calderwood house and it was too dark for Rudolph to see what sort of expression Calderwood had on his face as he said, neutrally, “Come in, Rudy. You’re a little late.”
“Sorry, Mr. Calderwood,” Rudolph said. He followed the old man, who walked heavily now, a certain measured number of steps between him and the grave, to be economized, doled out.
Calderwood led him into the somber oak-paneled room he called his study, with a big mahogany desk and cracked oak and leather easy chairs. The glassed bookcases were filled with files, records of bills paid, twenty-year-old transactions that Calderwood still didn’t trust putting in the modest basement vaults where the ordinary business files were kept, open to any clerk’s prying eye.
“Sit down.” Calderwood gestured toward one of the leather and oak easy chairs. “You’ve been drinking, Rudy,” he said mournfully. “My sons-in-law, I regret to say, are also drinkers.” Calderwood’s two older daughers had married some time before, one a man from Chicago, another a man from. Arizona. Rudolph had the feeling that the girls had picked their mates not out of love, but geography, to get away from their father.
“That isn’t what I brought you here to talk about though,” Calderwood said. “I wanted to speak to you man-to-man, when Mrs. Calderwood and Virginia were not on the premises. They have gone to the movie show and we can speak freely.” It was not like the old man to indulge in elaborate preliminaries. He seemed ill at ease, which also was not like him.
Rudolph waited, conscious that Calderwood was fiddling with objects on his desk, a paper opener, an old-fashioned inkstand.
“Rudolph …” Calderwood cleared his throat portentously. “I’m surprised at your behavior.”
“My behavior?” For a wild instant Rudolph thought that Calderwood had somehow found out about himself and Jean.
“Yes. It’s not like you at all, Rudy.” The tone was sorrowful now. “You’ve been like a son to me. Better than a son. Truthful. Open. Trustworthy.”
The old Eagle Scout, covered with merit badges, Rudolph thought, waiting, wary.
“Suddenly something has come over you, Rudy,” Calderwood continued. “You have been operating behind my back. With no apparent reason. You know you could have come to the door of my house and rung my bell and I would have been glad to welcome you.”
“Mr. Calderwood,” Rudolph said, thinking, old age here, too. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I am talking about the affections of my daughter Virginia, Rudy. Don’t deny.”
“Mr. Calderwood …”
“You have been tampering with her affections. Gratuitously. You have stolen where you could have demanded.” There was anger in the voice now.
“I assure you, Mr. Calderwood, that I haven’t …”
“It’s not like you to lie, Rudy.”
“I’m not lying. I don’t know …”
“What if I told you the girl has confessed everything?” Calderwood boomed.
“There’s nothing to confess.” Rudolph felt helpless, and at the same time like laughing.
“Your story differs from my daughter’s. She has told her mother that she is in love with you and that she intends to go to New York City to learn to be a secretary to be free to see you.”
“Holy God!” Rudolph said.
“We do not use the name of God in vain in this house, Rudy.”
“Mr. Calderwood, the most I’ve ever done with Virginia,” Rudolph said, “is buy her a lunch or an ice cream soda when I’ve bumped into her at the store.”
“You’ve bewitched her,” Calderwood said. “She’s in tears five times a week about you. A pure young girl doesn’t indulge in antics like that unless she’s been led on artfully by a man.”
The Puritan inheritance has finally exploded, Rudolph thought. Land on Plymouth Rock, hang around for a couple of centuries in the bracing air of New England, prosper, and go crackers. It was all too much for one day—Billy, the school, his mother, now this.
“I want to know what you intend to do about it, young man.” When Calderwood said young man, he was apt to be dangerous. Instantaneously, Rudolph’s mind flashed over the possibilities—he was well entrenched, but the final power in the business lay with Calderwood. There could be a fight, but in the long run Calderwood could get him out. That silly bitch Virginia.