Bagombo Snuff Box (29 page)

Just as the telephone had rung twice at the right time, so
did Louis’s wife appear as though on cue. Natalie was a cool, spare Boston
girl. Her role was to misunderstand Louis. She did it beautifully, taking apart
his reflective moods like a master mechanic.

“Did you hear the telephone ring, Louis?” she said.

“Hm? Oh—yes. Uh-huh,” said Louis.

“It rang and then it stopped,” said Natalie.

“I know,” said Louis. He warned her with a sigh that he didn’t
want to discuss the telephone call or anything else in a flat, practical Yankee
way.

Natalie ignored the warning. “Don’t you wonder who it was?”

“No,” said Louis.

“Maybe it was a guest who left something. You didn’t see anything
around, did you, that somebody left?”

“No,” said Louis. .

‘An earring or something, I suppose,” said Natalie. She wore
a pale-blue cloudlike negligee that Louis had given her. But she made the
negligee meaningless by dragging a heavy iron chair across the lawn, to set it
next to Louis’s. The arms of the chairs clicked together, and Louis jerked his
fingers from between them just in time.

Natalie sat down. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” said Louis.

“See the moon?” said Natalie.

“Yup,” said Louis.

“Think people had a nice time tonight?” said Natalie.

“I don’t know,” said Louis, “and I’m sure they don’t,
either.” He meant by this that he was always the only artist and philosopher at
his parties. Everybody else was a businessman.

Natalie was used to this. She let it pass. “What time did
Charlie get in?” she said. Charlie was their only son—actually Louis Charles
Reinbeck, Junior.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Louis. “He didn’t report in to
me. Never does.”

Natalie, who had been enjoying the moon, now sat forward uneasily.
“He is home, isn’t he?” she said.

“I haven’t the remotest idea,” said Louis.

Natalie bounded out of her chair.

She strained her eyes in the night, trying to see if Charlie’s
car was in the shadows of the garage. “Who did he go out with?” she asked.

“He doesn’t talk with me,” said Louis.

“Who is he with?” said Natalie.

“If he isn’t by himself, then he’s with somebody you don’t approve
of,” said Louis.

But Natalie didn’t hear him. She was running into the house.
Then the telephone rang again, and went on ringing until Natalie answered.

She held the telephone out to Louis. “It’s a man named
Turley Whitman,” she said. “He says he’s one of your policemen.”

“Something wrong at the plant?” said Louis, taking the
phone. “Fire, I hope?” ,

“No,” said Natalie, “nothing as serious as that.” From her expression,
Louis gathered that something a lot worse had happened. “It seems that our son
is out with Mr. Turley’s daughter somewhere, that they should have been back
hours ago. Mr. Turley is naturally very deeply concerned about his daughter.”

“Mr. Turley?” said Louis into the telephone.

“Turley’s my first name, sir,” said Turley. “Turley Whitman’s
my whole name.” “I’m going to listen on the upstairs phone,” whispered Natalie.
She gathered the folds of her negligee, ran manlike up the stairs.

“You probably don’t know me except by sight,” said Turley. “I’m
the guard at the main-plant parking lot.”

“Of course I know you—by sight and by name,” said Louis. It
was a lie. “Now what’s this about my son and your daughter?”

Turley wasn’t ready to get to the nut of the problem yet. He
was still introducing himself and his family. “You probably know my wife a
good deal better’n you know me, sir,” he said.

There was a woman’s small cry of surprise.

For an instant, Louis didn’t know if it was the cry of his
own wife or of Turley’s. But when he heard sounds of somebody trying to hang
up, he knew it had to be on Turley’s end. Turley’s wife obviously didn’t want
her name dragged in.

Turley was determined to drag it in, though, and he won out.
“You knew her by her maiden name, of course,” he said, “Milly—Mildred O’Shea.”

All sounds of protest at Turley’s end died. The death of protests
came to Louis as a shocking thing. His shock was compounded as he remembered
young, affectionate and pretty, mystifying Milly O’Shea. He hadn’t thought of
her for years, hadn’t known what had become of her.

And yet at the mention of her name, it was as though Louis
had thought of her constantly since she’d kissed him good-bye in the moonlight
so long before.

“Yes—yes,” said Louis. “Yes, I—I remember her well.” He
wanted to cry about growing old, about the shabby ends brave young lovers came
to.

From the mention of Milly’s name, Turley had his
conversation with the great Louis C. Reinbeck all his own way. The miracle of
equality had been achieved. Turley and Louis spoke man to man, father to
father, with Louis apologizing, murmuring against his own son.

Louis thanked Turley for having called the police. Louis
would call them, too. If he found out anything, he would call Turley at once.
Louis addressed Turley as “sir.”

Turley was exhilarated when he hung up. “He sends his regards,”
he said to Milly. He turned to find himself talking to air. Milly had left the
room silently, on bare feet.

Turley found her heating coffee in the kitchen on the new
electric stove. The stove was named the Globemaster. It had a ridiculously
complicated control panel. The Globemaster was a wistful dream of Milly’s come
true. Not many of her dreams of nice things had come true.

The coffee was boiling, making the pot crackle and spit.
Milly didn’t notice that it was boiling, even though she was staring at the pot
with terrible concentration. The pot spit, stung her hand. She burst into
tears, put the stung hand to her mouth. And then she saw Turley.

She tried to duck past him and out of the kitchen, but he
caught her arm.

“Honey,” he said in a daze. He turned off the Globemaster’s
burner with his free hand. “Milly,” he said. Milly wanted desperately to get
away. Big Turley had such an easy time holding her that he hardly realized he
was doing it. Milly subsided at last, her sweet face red and twisted. “Won’t—won’t
you tell me what’s wrong, honey?” said Turley.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Milly. “Go worry about people
dying in ditches.”

Turley let her go. “I said something wrong?” He was
sincerely bewildered.

“Oh, Turley, Turley,” said Milly, “I never thought you’d
hurt me this way—this much.” She cupped her hands as though she were holding
something precious. Then she let it fall from her hands, whatever her
imagination thought it was.

Turley watched it fall. “Just because I told him your name?”
he said.

“When—when you told him my name, there was so much else you
told him.” She was trying to forgive Turley, but it was hard for her. “I don’t
suppose you knew what else you were telling him. You couldn’t have.”

“All I told him was your name,” said Turley.

“And all it meant to Louis C. Reinbeck,” said Milly, “was
that a woman down in the town had two silly little dates with him twenty years
ago, and she’s talked about nothing else since. And her husband knows about
those two silly little dates, too—and he’s just as proud of them as she is.
Prouder!”

Milly put her head down and to one side, and she pointed out
the kitchen window, pointed to a splash of white light in an upper corner of
the window. “There,” she said, “the great Louis C. Reinbeck is up in all that
light somewhere, thinking I’ve loved him all these years.” The floodlights on
the Reinbeck house went out. “Now he’s up there in the moonlight somewhere—thinking
about the poor little woman and the poor little man and their poor little
daughter down here.” Milly shuddered. “Well, we’re not poor! Or we weren’t
until tonight.”

The great Louis C. Reinbeck returned to his drink and his
white iron lawn chair. He had called the police, who had told him what they
told Turley—that there were no wrecks they knew of.

Natalie sat down beside Louis again. She tried to catch his
eye, tried to get him to see her maternal, teasing smile. But Louis wouldn’t
look.

“You—you know this girl’s mother, do you?” she said.

“Knew,” said Louis.

“You took her out on nights like this? Full moon and all
that?”

“We could dig out a twenty-year-old calendar and see what
the phases of the moon were,” said Louis tartly. “You can’t exactly avoid full
moons, you know. You’re bound to have one once a month.”

“What was the moon on our wedding night?” said Natalie.

“Full?” said Louis.

“New,” said Natalie. “Brand-new.”

“Women are more sensitive to things like that,” said Louis. “They
notice things.”

He surprised himself by sounding peevish. His conscience was
doing funny things to his voice because he couldn’t remember much of anything
about his honeymoon with Natalie.

He could remember almost everything about the night he and
Milly O’Shea had wandered out on the golf course. That night with Milly, the
moon had been full.

Now Natalie was saying something. And when she was done,
Louis had to ask her to say it all over again. He hadn’t heard a word.

“I said, ‘What’s it like?’” said Natalie.

“What’s what like?” said Louis.

“Being a young male Reinbeck—all hot-blooded and full of
dreams, swooping down off the hill, grabbing a pretty little town girl and
spiriting her into the moonlight.” She laughed, teasing. “It must be kind of
godlike.”

“It isn’t,” said Louis.

“It isn’t godlike?”

“Godlike? I never felt more human in all my life!” Louis
threw his empty glass in the direction of the golf course. He wished he’d been
strong enough to throw the glass straight to the spot where Milly had kissed
him good-bye.

“Then let’s hope Charlie marries this hot little girl from
town,” said Natalie. “Let’s have no more cold, inhuman Reinbeck wives like me.”
She stood. “Face it, you would have been a thousand times happier if you’d
married your Milly O’Shea.”

She went to bed.

“Who’s kidding anybody?” Turley Whitman asked his wife. “You
would have been a million times happier if you’d married Louis Reinbeck.” He
was back at his post by the bedroom window, back with his big foot on the
radiator.

Milly was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Not a million
times, not two times, not the-smallest-number-there-is times happier,” said
Milly. She was wretched. “Turley—please don’t say anything more like that. I
can’t stand it, it’s so crazy.”

“Well, you were kind of calling a spade a spade down there
in the kitchen,” said Turley, “giving me hell for telling the great Louis
Reinbeck your name. Let me just call a spade a spade here, and say neither one
of us wants our daughter to make the same mistake you did.”

Milly went to him, put her arms around him. “Turley, please,
that’s the worst thing you could say to me.”

He turned a stubborn red, was as unyielding as a statue. “I
remember all the big promises I made you, all the big talk,” he said. “Neither
of us thinks company cop is one of the biggest jobs a man can hold.”

Milly tried to shake him, with no luck. “I don’t care what
your job is,” she said.

“I was gonna have more money than the great L. C. Reinbeck,”
said Turley, “and I was gonna make it all myself. Remember, Milly? That’s what
really sold you, wasn’t it?”

Her arms dropped away from him. “No,” she said.

“My famous good looks?” said Turley.

“They had a lot to do with it,” said Milly. His looks had
gone very well with the looks of the prettiest girl in town. “Most of all,” she
said, “it was the great Louis C. Reinbeck and the moon.” :

The great Louis C. Reinbeck was in his bedroom. His wife was
in bed with the covers pulled up over her head. The room was cunningly contrived
to give the illusion of romance and undying true love, no matter what really
went on there.

Up to now, almost everything that had gone on in the room
had been reasonably pleasant. Now it appeared that the marriage of Louis and
Natalie was at an end. When Louis made her pull the covers away from her face,
when Natalie showed him how swollen her face was with tears, this was plainly
the case. This was the end.

Louis was miserable—he couldn’t understand how things had
fallen to pieces so fast. “I—I haven’t thought of Milly O’Shea for twenty
years,” he said.

“Please—no. Don’t lie. Don’t explain,” said Natalie. “I understand.”

“I swear,” said Louis. “I haven’t seen her for twenty years.”

“I believe you,” said Natalie. “That’s what makes it so much
worse. I wish you had seen her—just as often as you liked. That would have been
better, somehow, than all this—this—” She sat up, ransacked her mind for the
right word. ‘All this horrible, empty, aching, nagging regret.” She lay
backdown.

“About Milly?” said Louis.

“About Milly, about me, about the abrasives company, about
all the things you wanted and didn’t get, about all the things you got that you
didn’t want. Milly and me—that’s as good a way of saying it as anything. That
pretty well says it all.”

“I—I don’t love her. I never did,” said Louis.

“You must have liked the one and only time in your life you
felt human,” said Natalie. “Whatever happened in the moonlight must have been
nice—much nicer than anything you and I ever had.”

Louis’s nightmare got worse, because he knew Natalie had
spoken the truth. There never had been anything as nice as that time in the
moonlight with Milly.

“There was absolutely nothing there, no basis for love,”
said Louis. “We were perfect strangers then. I knew her as little as I know her
now.”

Louis’s muscles knotted and the words came hard, because he
thought he was extracting something from himself of terrible importance. “I—I
suppose she is a symbol of my own disappointment in myself, of all I might have
been,” he said.