Norton was silent then, staring at the backs of his well-cared-for hands. “That’s funny,” he said at last. “I mean I guess I should feel that too. But I don’t. That makes me pretty much of a heel, I suppose.”
“People react differently,” Farrell said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worrying about it,” Norton said. “I’m not worried at all. That’s strange, isn’t it?” He lifted his second drink. “Well, here’s mud in your eye, or whatever they say in this place.”
“Mud in your eye will do as well as anything else,” Farrell said.
“God, I hate those corny toasts, don’t you? I lunch every now and then with one of our vice presidents, and he always says: ‘Here’s to all good Democrats — the dead ones.’ Then he laughs as if he’d just said it for the first time.” Norton shook his head. “I’m a Democrat but that wouldn’t occur to him, I suppose.”
Norton seemed to be in a hurry to get tight, Farrell thought; he was taking his second Martini in deliberate swallows, grimacing a bit, but finishing it off as if he were in a drinking contest. It was an incongruous role for him to be playing. He looked a prototype of respectability in his dark suit and tightly knotted tie; his neatly handsome features, as a rule politely and gravely devoid of expression, scarcely suggested a potential of compulsive or reckless behavior. Farrell realized that he had never seen Norton behave with abandon. Until now, Farrell thought, amending his judgment as Norton called for a third drink.
“Those aren’t salted peanuts,” he said. “Those are Martinis.”
“I’m all right,” Norton said, smiling quickly at him. “I just want to relax, ease up a little. Don’t you ever feel like doing that?”
“Sure,” Farrell said.
“Don’t worry, I’m all right,” Norton said. He shifted closer to Farrell to make room for a group of men standing beside him. The place was filling up and the air was thick with laughter and smoke and the clatter of ice and glasses. It was a friendly hiatus for most of the drinkers, one that reduced the tensions of the day and prepared them for the train ride to the suburbs. Occasionally this relaxing interval ended in disaster; in the exegesis of office gossip the last quick one for the road could easily become two or three, and finally trains would be missed, dinners turn cold in far-away homes, and as alibis were constructed and phone calls made, the friendly atmosphere would curdle with the flavor of guilt and wifely disapproval. But everyone was betting that this wouldn’t happen to him, and this lent spice to the game; it wasn’t illicit drinking, but it might well turn into that, and at the instant of judicial equipoise it seemed a way of having the best of both worlds.
“I’m not going to get loaded, don’t worry about that,” Norton said, and Farrell saw that a nerve or muscle was twitching at the comer of his mouth. “You don’t know me very well, I guess,” Norton went on, watching Farrell with narrowing eyes, as if trying to guess his thoughts. “You don’t know me at all, as a matter of fact,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”
“I guess no one ever knows all about another person,” Farrell said.
“That’s what I mean,” Norton said quickly. “You may think you know a person pretty well, but actually you don’t. Do you understand what I mean? We all act the way we want people to think we are. Isn’t that it?” He finished his drink and moved the glass across the bar. “Look, John, I called you because I had to talk to somebody, and this may come as a surprise to you, but I respect you as much as any man I’ve ever known. As God is my judge, I respect you. And I respect your wife and children. Did you know that, John?”
The Martinis were taking effect, Farrell saw, eating through the protective layers of reserve and circumspection. “Well, I appreciate that,” he said. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“You’re an older man than I am, and I respect your judgment,” Norton said. “That’s not just being polite, John. That’s the absolute truth.”
Farrell nodded and sipped his drink.
“You don’t know anything about me, John,” Norton said insistently. “You as much as admitted that, didn’t you? So you’re going to be shocked as the devil at what I’m going to tell you.” He turned to face Farrell, and there was suddenly a look of pain about his eyes that lent significance to his prediction. He had already drunk half of his fourth Martini, but Farrell realized that he wasn’t drunk; his face was pale and a strand of dark hair hung over his forehead, but the liquor had not yet touched the core of his personality.
“Well, I’ll try not to be shocked,” Farrell said.
“I’ve never been sorry for anybody or anything in my life,” Norton said. “Doesn’t that shock you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, listen. I’ll tell you something about myself. Since last night I’ve been going through hell. Not because of what happened, not for a second. But about why I was never sorry for anybody or anything.” Norton took a deep breath. “It’s because I’m a heel, that’s why, John. I’m no good, no good at all.”
“We all get to thinking that at times,” Farrell said. “It’s probably a healthy sign. Anyway, I feel rotten about last night too.”
“Just listen, I want to tell you something about me,” Norton said, gripping Farrell’s arm. “First of all, you know Janey. She’s the most wonderful girl in the world, you’ve got to believe that. If you saw her with Junior, taking care of him, reading to him, molding him into — into...” He sighed and fumbled for a cigarette. “I can’t explain it very well. You’ve just got to take my word for it, John.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I was certain you’d understand, John. That’s why I’m telling you this. I respect you more than anybody I’ve ever known. But I’m a bastard. You’ve got to realize that.”
“You’re just in a bad mood,” Farrell said. “It will pass.”
“No, listen: it’s nothing like that. Janey and I got married when we were pretty young. She was twenty-one, I was twenty-four. Well, she came from a different background than I did. I don’t mean she had money, but her family was different. Her father taught English in high school, and her mother was a lovely person, like Janey is. The way they talked to one another, the way they read books and listened to music, the whole way they lived was different. They always set the table as if it was for company. I mean, even when it was just themselves, they lived nicely. What I’m trying to explain,” Norton said, articulating with a painful effort, “is that it was natural to them, it wasn’t an act or anything like that. It was all peaceful and beautiful. That’s one side.” He frowned and stared at his glass. “What was the other? Oh, yes.” The frown faded and he smiled bitterly. “We were the other side. My family. We were decent, honest people, mind you, but we were different from the Schuylers — that was Janey’s family name. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t,” Farrell said.
“It’s funny, you live practically next door to people and you don’t know the wife’s family name. If you don’t mind my asking, John, what was Barbara’s family name?”
“Walker.”
Norton stared at the surface of the bar and Farrell saw the muscle twitching at the comer of his mouth. “I don’t know why I asked you that,” he said. “I don’t usually ask people personal questions.”
“Maybe we could leave this for another time,” Farrell said. “We should be getting home.”
“No, I want to finish,” Norton said. “Please let me finish, John.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“The trouble started after we were married,” Norton said. “I worked for a bank in Chicago, and we took an apartment on the South Side not far from where my family lived. That was the big mistake, I guess. My father had been dead a long time and there was just mother and my two older brothers. They were different from me. They didn’t finish high school, and they got kind of down-to-earth jobs, I guess you could call them. One was a clerk at Montgomery Ward’s, Monkey Ward, he called it, and the other found himself a place with a company that supplied automobile parts to retailers.”