Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel (21 page)

“They’re snobs, hon. We’re working people.”

“I’m an actress and going back to a film location in three days. You’re the founding executive of a national company. How dare they write us a letter like this?”

“To hell with them.”

“I’m going to make them eat their words. They’re not going to treat us like this, Hershel.”

The lawn party was to begin at five
P.M.
Rosita and I drove up at five-fifteen. There were no cars parked in front; the only car in the driveway was Hershel’s black Cadillac. We walked around the side of the house. Linda Gail was rearranging chairs in the backyard, her face pinched with anger. Next door a bunch of teenagers were diving in a swimming pool that glowed with a smoky green aura from the underwater lighting. She walked into the bamboo that grew along the fence and snapped her fingers at the swimmers. “Please tell the adult members of the household that I’m sorry they cannot attend our party,” she said. “Also tell them the noisy behavior of their ill-mannered children is not appreciated.”

“This is going to be awful,” Rosita whispered.

“Yes, it is,” I replied. “Talk to her. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Where are you going?”

“Probably firing in the well.”

I went inside and used the phone in the bedroom. The wallpaper and bedclothes and padded furniture were a blend of pale blue and pink and silver that reminded me of a child’s nursery. I dialed Roy Wiseheart’s home number.

“Hello?” he said.

“I need to clear up something,” I said.

“Holland?”

“I’ve been told that Harlan McFey was an employee of your wife.”

“Oh, McFey again. Use your judgment, partner. Why would my wife have anything to do with a man like that?”

“You tell me.”

“Okay, I’ll ask her, if that will make you feel better. Maybe he worked for one of her family’s companies. You know how many people they employ?”

“You said you had no connection to him. Were you lying to me?”

“No, but I’ll tell you what. The next time I see you, I might just punch you in the nose.”

“Save the martial rhetoric. Just answer yes or no. Did you lie to me?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you get an invitation to Linda Gail’s lawn party this evening?”

“If she sent one, I never saw it.”

“Oh, she sent it, all right. You would have been at the top of her list.”

“Well, I didn’t get it, or at least I didn’t see it. So how about giving it a rest?”

“What are you doing right now?”

“Talking to you, which I wish I wasn’t doing. Give me the address. Remind me in the future not to answer my telephone on Saturday afternoon.”

I told him where the house was. Then I said, “You have a lot of friends here’bouts. I bet they’d love to come over.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’ve got faith in you. You can do it. Make us proud.”

He hung up. At 6:05 his Rolls-Royce pulled into the Pines’ driveway; his wife was not with him. Four couples from the neighborhood arrived; then others, people who drove modest automobiles. In the next hour, I met a golf pro, an accountant, a stockbroker, a social secretary, a cattleman, an Episcopalian minister, a female tennis champion, and an amphibian charter pilot who wore a patch over one eye. All of them seemed overjoyed to be invited to the home of a Hollywood actress who was a friend of Roy Wiseheart’s. Linda Gail was ecstatic. From across the yard, Wiseheart toasted me with his champagne glass.

I couldn’t help but feel a great sense of kinship and warmth toward him. Random acts of charity define few of us, and seeing them in a man of his background made me think that the possibilities of goodness are at work in everyone, even those with whom we associate an avaricious and profligate ethos. Then I saw his eyes shift from me to Linda Gail. She was wearing a sundress, her shoulders smooth and tan and muscular, the tips of her dark brown hair burned almost blond, her breasts and hips tight against her dress when she reached up to retie a strip of bunting to the gas lamp.

I had no doubt that something unexpected happened inside Roy Wiseheart. Maybe it was because he had acted in a charitable way toward her and he now saw her in a different light, or maybe he was entering that time in a man’s life when he falsely perceives his youth slipping away. The look on his face did not involve lust or desire; nor was it one of acquisitional need. I think he saw Linda Gail Pine as a rebellious and petulant and vain girl who needed a protector and was nothing like the women he had ever courted or slept with. She was also brazen, the kind who would incur a thousand cuts to prevail over an adversary. And she was very good to look at, with her countrywoman’s breasts and the childlike joy in her eyes.

There was only one problem with Linda Gail: She was married. I walked across the St. Augustine grass and placed my hand on Wiseheart’s arm. I could feel the body heat trapped under his sport shirt. “Thanks for doing what you did,” I said.

“Nothing to it,” he replied.

“Hershel is my closest friend.”

“I gathered that.”

“I’d like for you to be the same,” I said.

He turned so I would have to take my hand from his arm. His face was no more than six inches from mine. To this day, I don’t believe I have ever looked into a pair of more intelligent and perceptive eyes, nor had I ever met a man who was more aware of nuance than he. “I’d like that,” he replied.

I gazed at the wire fence and bamboo that separated Hershel and Linda Gail’s property from the next-door neighbor’s. “Did you ever live in a neighborhood that didn’t have fences?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“I guess setting boundaries is what civilization is all about. We set boundaries, and then we have to live within them. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

He was drinking a Scotch and soda. He rattled the ice cubes in the glass and watched Linda Gail carry a huge tray of baked Alaska from the kitchen to a serving table. “I never gave it much thought,” he replied. “Did you ever see a creamier dessert? I get hungry looking at it.”

Chapter

14

R
OY WISEHEART CALLED
me at home Monday morning. “You tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” he said. “Just don’t lay your damn recriminations on me later.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Evidently, your friend Hershel has gone back to the job site in Louisiana. In the meantime, his wife has gotten herself into serious trouble nobody needs. The police called me from the River Oaks substation on Westheimer. I also got a call from the manager at the country club. We’ve got about thirty minutes before she’s packed off to the city lockup. You don’t want to think about the women in the downtown jail on Monday morning. Got all that?”

“No.”

“I’ll have another run at it. Take notes if you like,” he said.

Linda Gail had dressed in a pink suit with a narrow-waist coat and a skirt wrapped tightly around the hips, and a pink pillbox hat with a black feather in the band, and ankle-strap patent-leather black shoes, and white gloves that went to the elbow, not unlike Clara Wiseheart’s. She had gotten in her waxed black Cadillac and driven to the River Oaks Country Club, where she walked directly into the manager’s office and asked, “Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with?”

While two security personnel stood outside the door, Linda Gail was assured that her application for membership would be reviewed, that all consideration would be given to her, that no bias or insult was intended by the letter of rejection.

“I think you’re under a misimpression,” she said. “I didn’t come here to negotiate with you. You’ve already indicated what you think of us. I would just like you to be a little more specific. Are we not cultured enough for you? Do you not like the wax job on my automobile? Should we work on our diction? What exactly is it that puts your nose so high in the air?”

The manager, who used a feigned British accent that came and went with the occasion, was beginning to lose his composure. “Frankly, our membership is based primarily on income, Mrs. Pine. Most of our members are millionaires. You’re not.”

“You’re correct. I’m merely a film star and have never owned a string of filling stations,” she said, rising from her chair. “If you haven’t heard of Castle Productions, you will. We will be filing suit against you and your ersatz accent and your dump of a country club for slander and besmirching my name and my professional reputation. By the way, there’s dandruff on your collar.”

She walked down the carpeted hallway to the front entrance, her little purse gripped in front of her like a family coat of arms. It should have been over. With a phone call or two from Roy Wiseheart, the country club probably would have been glad to admit the Pines. But Linda Gail in motion was like an artillery shell. The law of gravity would have its way.

In this instance, that meant Linda Gail getting into her Cadillac and backing into the grille of an Oldsmobile. Rather than get out and examine the damage, she shifted the hydromatic transmission into low and drove away, tearing the bumper loose from the Oldsmobile and T-boning a Buick at the end of the aisle.

“So it’s a parking-lot car accident,” I said to Wiseheart. “Her insurance rates will go up. Hershel has had worse problems.”

“You didn’t let me finish. She slapped a cop in the face,” Wiseheart said. “You don’t slap a Houston cop.”

“I guess that puts things in a different light.”

“Do you want me to go down to the police station by myself, or do you want to come, too?” he asked.

When I arrived at the substation on the edge of River Oaks, Roy Wiseheart was sitting down in a small room with a uniformed police officer. The officer dwarfed the folding chair. His head was the size of a cider jug, his hands as broad as baseball mitts, ridged with knuckles that resembled lead washers. Wiseheart leaned forward and cupped his hand on the officer’s shoulder. “She and her husband are church people. Mr. Pine was at Kasserine Pass and Omaha and the Bulge,” he said. “I’m sure Linda Gail feels like hell about this. Officer, they’re just getting started here in Houston. They’re a little bit insecure. That’s why she was carrying on the way she did. The girl is scared.”

“She’s insecure because she owns a Cadillac?” the policeman said.

“I bet they busted their piggy bank to buy it at a used-car lot. She’s got a chance at a movie career. Do you know what this will do to her? I saw the Globe and Anchor on your arm. I flew with Pappy Boyington. How about it, gunny?”

The policeman stood up. He wore a sky-blue uniform with black flaps on the pockets. The back of his neck was thick and pocked with acne scars. “My wife belongs to the Northside Church of Christ,” he said.

Wiseheart nodded reverentially.

“They could use some he’p,” the policeman said.

“I know exactly where it is. They’re fine people,” Wiseheart replied. “If you’ll give me the name of your pastor, I’d like to give him a ring.”

Ten minutes later, Wiseheart and I and Linda Gail were back on the sidewalk, across the street from an enormous high school whose lawn was shadowed by live oaks. Linda Gail’s face looked glazed, as though she had just walked out of a meat locker into a warm room. Her Cadillac had been towed.

“How did you know Hershel was at Omaha Beach?” I said to Roy.

“You must have told me,” he replied.

If I did, I had no memory of it.

“I guess that winds things up here,” he said, looking up and down the street. He tapped his palms together, his fingers spread, his eyebrows raised. “Can I give you a ride?” he said to Linda Gail.

“That’s very nice of you,” she replied.

“I’m going right by your house,” I said.

“On your way to the Heights?” Wiseheart said.

“I’m supposed to see a friend in River Oaks,” I lied.

“Well, it’s been quite a morning. I hope everything turns out all right for you, Linda Gail. Call me if I can help in any other way.”

“Thank you so much. I’ll be forever in your debt,” she said.

I opened the passenger door of my car for Linda Gail to get inside. She tried to look straight ahead and not let her eyes follow Wiseheart’s Rolls, but there was no mistaking the resentment she felt because I had not let Wiseheart drive her home.

Neither of us spoke. When I pulled into her driveway, I heard her take a breath as though resuming a routine that was unbearable.

“Do you want to say something to me, Linda Gail?” I asked.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Then what
did
you mean?” she asked.

“Are you and Hershel having problems?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“He loves you.”

She didn’t seem to hear me. She stared wanly at the front of her house. “I know what it looks like now. I couldn’t put my hand on it, probably because I wouldn’t let myself admit it.”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” I said.

“My house. It looks like the public restroom on West Venice Beach. I was there just last week. Now I’m here.”

“Hershel said you made him wear slippers at the public pool.”

She turned her head and looked at me like someone awakening from a dream. “What did you say?”

“I don’t think you know how he lost part of his foot. He and I walked in snow up to our knees in zero-degree weather. He carried Rosita in his arms while his right foot was so swollen with frostbite that he couldn’t unlace his boot.”

“He told you I asked him to wear slippers at the pool?”

“His feelings were hurt, Linda Gail.”

“I didn’t want the children staring at him. I didn’t want to correct them in front of him. So I tried to avoid an unpleasant situation that would embarrass him. Did that ever occur to you?”

“Did you tell him that?”

“What good would it do? Talking to either of you is a waste of time, particularly you, Weldon. Do you think it’s wrong to want a better way of life? I never want to go back to the house I grew up in. If you’d lived in my house, you wouldn’t want to, either. During the Depression, we glued cardboard soles on our shoes.”

“Hershel is a good man. I’m not sure what Roy Wiseheart is,” I said.