The Incredible Charlie Carewe (31 page)

“She’s been so good, so wonderful—I’d hoped she’d got rid of her need—oh, damnit—what can we do, Gregg?”

“I don’t know, Virginia, but perhaps you can make her know, some way, that you are her friend.”

“But she knows that, Gregg—how can you be so stupid! Jeff and I saw her through her miserable drunken times, times when she was so ill—she has no feeling about that with me.”

“Perhaps not, not about that—but think a minute. Will she ever want to come back here? Especially if Charlie and his son are here? She has too much sensitivity for that She won’t want to make things awkward for anyone.”

“I suppose,” said Virginia sadly, “it would be awkward of course.”

There was no necessity to even “think a minute” as Gregg had said, for Zoë would never be back. It was more than tact or sensitivity, it was an enormous sense of failure too great to be borne. She was willing to cancel out the appearance of her marriage in the divorce mill of Reno, to play out the conspiracy for the sake of preservation of the innocent. But once the business of traveling, of arriving in Chicago, of the meeting with her father was over, she knew she had a date with some bitter thinking. Her father was pleased to see her, but when she announced her intentions to him, she had to sit and listen like a child to a lecture on why Charles Carewe had not been the right man for her.

“Unscrupulous bounder. No one ever took him seriously in business.”

From there he proceeded to analyze the Carewes’ name and school and club connections, as far back as he knew them, and what his intimates and associates knew of them.

“Thinned-out blue bloods, all of ’em. No drive, no initiative. So damned afraid of being ‘spectacular,’ they never got into the thick of things. Never had the guts to make enemies. Have to have enemies to prove yourself.” A paroxysm of asthmatic coughing overcame him at this point, and a young, bespectacled male nurse took over, and Zoë, after offering her concern and help, was waved out of the room.

The tasteless opulence of the old house, the gloom and oppressiveness of the humid, hot day, depressed her to the point of inertia. There was a list of people she should phone—to say, what? The usual “Let’s get together—let’s have lunch—or dinner?” Tomorrow maybe, she thought. Today I’ll just give in and rest—I’m so tired, tired. She poured a drink with a thought that she must be careful not to get drunk—her father had enough troubles, the least she could do was to hang on till she got to Reno. She sat with her elbows propped on the window sill, staring out at the street below, along which cars moved like dark syrup, and heat waves made the buildings across the way look unstable and fluid. Mexico must be even hotter, she thought, and thinking, she visualized Charlie, brown and lean in white bathing trunks; intruding into the vision came a figure of a woman who reached and touched the faint recent silver in his temples and said how distinguished it made him look. And then he was saying, “I have a son, you know—he looks just like me. . . . Oh no, a former marriage, not Zoë’s naturally!” And there was general laughter at the idea of Zoë’s being a mother—and suddenly she stood up, shaking the dream from her mind.

She thought she would just walk over to the lake before dinnertime, just to keep moving, just to keep herself from thinking, and then tomorrow—tomorrow she would really get down to things and plan out her life. On the way down the stairs and out into the street she kept up a running dialogue with herself. “Might even get married again, you know!” Really? And think of Charlie whenever you went to bed? “One thing, never have to worry about money—Dad will be generous when I’ve shed his ridiculous son-in-law.” What will you do with the money? Travel? Join the rest of the chic fifth wheels? “Nonsense, I’ll get scads of people around; amusing, entertaining people.” She laughed a little and a doorman at the entrance of an apartment building turned and watched her curiously. She sensed his look and made her lips firm. “Watch it, my girl, you’re just a teensy bit drunk, you know!” She decided she’d feel better if she took a cab and had it drive north for a while on Michigan—there would be air coming off the lake. She stood for a while at the curb, watching the speeding cars. There was an empty cab which she hailed with her white-gloved hand. He pulled over smartly into the curb, never thinking that the lady would miss her footing and step in front of him. All he saw was a flash of a dimpled smile as he braked hard and yelled. It wasn’t really his fault, the car only knocked her down, but she must have hit her head on the pavement, because when he sprang out of the cab and the crowd began to gather it was obvious that she was quite dead.

Jean Charles first heard the sound of the sea when Gregg shut off the engine of the station wagon. His aunt Virginia knew that he liked to swim and in her letters, special letters just for him that were enclosed in letters to M’ma and Grand-mère, she told him of the big “swimming pool” right outside their house. She was one person he wasn’t nervous about meeting. “Grandmother and Grandfather” were fuzzy in his mind. Just old people like all old people, probably. Then there was this not so old man, Mr. Nicholson, who had been his father’s teacher. He was fine, he liked him. Mr. Nicholson had met him at the train which got into Nelson at seven o’clock this morning—Jean Charles guessed it was pretty early for them, but Mr. Nicholson was cheerful about it, and he settled a lot of things straight off, which made him lose some of the tight sickness in his stomach. He said it would be easier if everybody called him “John”—if that was all right with him. Mr. Nicholson said he was to call him “Gregg” as he was no relation and he would feel old if John called him “Mr.” And then they got into this beautiful station wagon, shiny and blue and new and clean. Boy!

His head felt as if it was going to swivel off as he looked at everything on the way up to the house. And the odor. It wasn’t just the smell of
water
, like the sweet vegetable smell of the falls and the ponds, it was sharp and unchanging. It assaulted the inside of his nose, and as he breathed it in and it went down his throat, he felt queer, like he wanted to cry or something. He knew that the
look
of something could do that—like when the pines at home were still, just before a big storm, and you could watch the lightning flickering between them, or sometimes the color of a mackerel sky, reddened by the sunset. But here was just the
smell
of the sea, and it was so disturbing that he didn’t realize they were turning into his father’s house. He had visualized the moment for so long, pored over snapshots of the place, wondered and wondered. And now here it was and the sickness in his stomach began again. He had been told that his father wouldn’t be there for a few days, yet. He was still in Mexico City on business, where he’d been all winter, and he felt glad in a way, because it meant that he would get over his first shyness and get acquainted with the others and be more relaxed when he met him He didn’t want to behave like a fool kid right off.

“Welcome home, John,” said Gregg.

“Is that it?” said the boy, pointing to the sea.

“That’s it. It’s just for looking and hearing though, for a while, I’m afraid—you’d freeze if you went in swimming for another month, anyway.”

“You ever been in a forest pond? Some of the guys and me go in as soon as the ice melts just to the edges. Of course nobody’s fool enough to stay for—— Who’s that?” he finished on a whisper. “That’s not Aunt——”

“No, no, that’s our good housekeeper, Doreen Archer. She’s nice, but a little boring. She likes to talk about her daughter, who’s a trained nurse for babies——”

“A
what?
”

“Doreen, this is John, will you take his bag up to Mr. Charles’s room, please?”

“How do you do, John. That I will, sir, Mr. Gregg. It’s nice and fresh and clean for the young man. And you just come around to the kitchen any time you want to, John. It’s nice to have someone in the house who will like fresh-baked cookies again!”

“Gosh, thanks—uh, Doreen!”

Doreen turned her crinkled moonface to Gregg. “The livin’ image!” and her several chins wobbled as she shook her head unhappily.

As he lay in the darkness in his father’s four-poster bed, John fought off the desire to sleep. He was very tired from the trip and the excitement and the newness of everything; but now that he was alone, he wanted to go over things, to sort them out in his mind, before sleep caught up with him. He was surprised by a wave of homesickness, since for nearly a year, it seemed, he had hated Clarke Falls more than ever, and everything and everyone in it. There had been a great relief when Grand-mère told him that in the spring he would go to his father’s home. The problem of running away had always been a knotty one; and it seemed as if Grand-mère must have been reading his mind—she
always
seemed to be able to do that, and—well, here he was! The last few weeks he’d almost been able to be nice to M’ma. Not that she was any help; she never talked to him any more than usual. Always that dumb-cow look of hers. Whenever she did look at him—she seemed to look through him, and then beyond him as though over his shoulder was somebody else. Often he actually looked behind him to see, but of course there wasn’t anybody. It was just a way she had. He guessed she’d taken good care of him. He remembered times when he’d been sick or feverish and he felt the comfort of her firm breast and shoulder. And it was she who always came up to his room and saw that he was covered, and all that stuff. But there was a wall he couldn’t break through. She wouldn’t
talk
to him. He had given up long ago even trying to be mischievous and teasing with M’ma, because it didn’t bother her. She’d just turn her back on him and go someplace else.

There was an ache in his heart at leaving his airedale, Corky, whom he’d raised from a puppy, and he didn’t know when he’d be seeing him again. The Carewes’ dog, Smitty, was okay, but she was fat and a female and not very friendly.

Of course he knew this was a trial trip. Grand-mère had warned him, “It is up to you, entirely—you will have to be attentive and learn their ways, and do things as
they
wish. They will have the responsibility of caring for you as your father is a very busy man, and so you must be obedient to them—otherwise, you will come back here.”

He could see it wasn’t going to be as scary a job as he had thought. Of course he had never been inside such a big house in his life. In contrast to Clarke Falls, the places people lived in seemed bigger and their outdoors smaller. Except for the sea, of course—the wonderful sea. He listened a minute to its low rumble-rumble-
crash
—and then silence, and then rumble-rumble-
crash
again.

Everybody was so nice to him. At first he felt stiff with the effort of not bumping into things, afraid to touch the beautiful cloth on the chairs; the rugs seemed soft and unstable, and he had to hold himself in to keep from his habit of running instead of walking. Gregg and Aunt Virginia had taken him for a tour, but just where different rooms were located was still a little mixed up in his mind. The best room of all was Gregg’s at the top of the stairs. He’d never seen so many books—and all jumbled up and lying around like they’d been read a lot—not like the downstairs library where Grandfather’s books were in perfect rows and bound with beautiful leather. Gregg said they would work together up there in his room. He told him that the schools here in the East were pretty tough, and that they’d probably have to do some catching up so that when he went in next fall he wouldn’t have any trouble. It was funny when Gregg said, “You
like
Homer?” when he pulled out a familiar copy of a translation of the
Iliad
. It had been one of a “set” of books in the small library in the principal’s office at Clarke Falls, and he’d borrowed it for a time. “Who doesn’t?” he’d replied, although he knew he was showing off a little at Gregg’s obvious approval. Then they’d talked about the textbooks he’d used in school and Gregg quizzed him a little on math and then said, “H’m. Backwoods school, indeed. We’ll show ’em, kid!” And he’d felt just wonderful. And Aunt Virginia had laughed and hugged him, and said, “You seem to be the answer to a teacher’s dream. The truly docile student.” He’d frowned a little at the word. It sounded sort of sweet and sappy, but Gregg, seeing what he was thinking—he guessed he
had
kind of made a face—flipped over the pages of a big dictionary, and showed him where the word meant “able to be taught,” and then he understood.

It was hard to find out just when he would see his father. There were boxes and boxes of presents from him—clothes and a tennis racket, and airplane model kits and a beautiful bike with everything on it—boy! He could hardly wait till tomorrow when he could look at it all over again. They said it was “hard to tell.” Apparently he had arrived in New York, and he’d written them that he could hardly wait to see his son and that he’d be up to Nelson, just as soon as he could get away. John tried not to ask too many questions; it was rude, he knew. Especially because about a year ago he had finally come to understand the circumstances of his birth—from Grand-mère: that his father and mother had made a hasty marriage and found out that they were not right for each other very quickly. He could sure understand that. His mother was certainly not pretty—fat and heavy-footed, and that glum expression on her face all the time. He bet his father was a real lively person and how anybody who looked like he did in his pictures could fall in love with M’ma was more then he’d ever understand. And one thing, certain, he would never understand, and never forgive his mother—or Grand-mère for that matter—for never having told his father about himself. That was
too
much. Of course his father had married again—why wouldn’t he? It was too bad his wife had died in that accident, but secretly he was glad when Aunt Virginia told him there weren’t any other children. His father was his, now—all his! And they’d get over any strangeness at not knowing each other, and be real friends, and it was all going to be like a dream that comes out all right.

He was awake at sunrise, and sitting up straight; there was only a fraction of a moment of unfamiliarity, because his dreams had been full of all the things that had happened to him—it was like waking up on Christmas Day. You’d never forgotten during the night that it was going to be Christmas. You just woke up and said, “Hurray!” Somebody must have been in during the night, for his door was half open. He knew he’d shut it last night, because he liked doors to be shut. Whenever his mother came in and covered him, she always went out and left the door ajar, and then he would have to throw the covers off and go and slam it shut in irritation. He cocked his head in a listening attitude, for there was a jingling sound coming down the hall, and then he held his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud in delight, for around the edge of the door appeared a pointed nose and black shoe-button eyes looking at him in a very startled manner.