Escape the Night (6 page)

John Carey remembered coming home too late: emaciated in death, Ellen already seemed a skeleton. “I built this firm for you.”

“You built it for yourself. I won't put Peter at risk for your obsession.”

“
Your
obsession.”

Charles paused. In a level voice he said, “It isn't, now.”

“Then you're a fool. A man needs something that belongs to him, or he's no man at all—or father.” John Carey plucked a cigar from his pocket, carefully unwrapping it to steady himself. “Do you remember Clayton Barth?”

“One of our salesmen.” Charles's look turned wary. “He used to cover Texas.”

“And Oklahoma.” John Carey waved his unlit cigar. “Sit down.”

“What does Barth …?”

“Sit down, dammit. I won't have you hovering like that.”

Charles hesitated, then stubbed his cigarette and sat. John Carey lit the cigar, eyes narrow with concentration, letting the silence and the things in the room—fine Chinese vases, his smiling picture with Winston Churchill—work on his son. He emitted a long stream of cigar smoke. “It's quite pathetic, really. He'd been with us fifteen years. The spring of the sixteenth year Barth approached me at our sales conference at the Biltmore and said he needed to talk.”

Even now, John Carey could see the man as clearly as in a photograph …

“He was short, with frog's eyes and a pouch for a stomach that made him wear his pants too high, and the room—the smoke and noise and larger men acting confident—seemed to shrink him even more. ‘Mr. Carey,' he croaks, ‘I'd like a chance at that sales manager's position that's opened up.'

“He stood there holding his overcoat and hat in front of him, as if he were ready to leave should the idea bore me. There was no point mincing words: everything about him whispered, ‘Keep me where I am.' ‘I'm sorry, Clayton,' I say, ‘but you're fine where you are. I've got someone for the other.'

“His shoulders slump. ‘Well, sir'”—John Carey's voice rose in savage mimicry—“‘then I'd like permission to resign at year's end …'

“I couldn't believe the
servility
of the man. Finally, I say, ‘Resign?' and let him dangle there awhile. For the first time he
interests
me—I want to see what he'll say.

“His eyes are begging me for help. ‘It's Clayton, Jr.,' he stammers. ‘With that sales manager's job I would travel less. What I mean, Mr. Carey, is the boy needs me now his mother's dead …'

“‘My wife died, too,' I tell him. ‘I haven't quit yet.'

“‘I know, sir. I hope you got my letter …'

“‘So what do you propose to do?'

“He looks embarrassed. ‘There's a bookstore in Stillwater. I can buy half an interest if I manage it, too. I could see Clayton, Jr., at night, and I know the business …'

“‘Then you know how bad a business that can be.'

“‘Yessir.' I can smell liquor through the Sen-Sen he'd been chewing and realize he's shakier than last year. All at once it strikes me that he thinks the road is making him a drunk, when having a job he could halfway do was what held him together. ‘But I'm worried about little Clayton,' he's saying. ‘He's gotten too inward. Spending that much time alone will twist a man …'

“His voice trails off and I wonder if he's talking about himself. ‘You're all right in this job,' I tell him. ‘The boy can respect that, and you'll make a living.'

“He keeps shaking his head with that weak man's stubbornness. ‘It's for the best, Mr. Carey.'

“‘Then you'd better resign now,' I say. ‘I don't want you selling with your mind somewhere else.'

“He looks pale, as if it shocks him that anything he says or does has consequences. ‘But my security … I need time to arrange things.'

“I wave a hand. ‘You'll get half a year's severance pay and I'll carry your life insurance for the next eighteen months. Anything else?'

“He just stares at me. Finally, he shakes his head and turns away. I watched him walk into the crowd of salesmen, looking smaller with each moment. Never saw him again.” John Carey put down his cigar, watched it burning slowly in the ashtray. “Fourteen months later the salesman's job in Barth's old territory opens up again and who should call me begging it back but Clayton. Even long distance his voice was slurry. His bookstore had failed, he needed a job—to support ‘little Clayton,' of course. ‘Please,' he kept saying, ‘I know the territory. Not just the cities, but the stores in Ardmore and Wichita Falls. I know their names …'

“I cut him off. He'd lacked the sense to know the job was more than money to him, and called his stupidity love for a son.

“Three weeks later to the day, my secretary brought in a copy of the life insurance policy I'd extended with a two-sentence letter signed Clayton Barth, Jr. I remember it—tight, coiled handwriting. The letter said his father had put a revolver to his forehead and pulled the trigger. I guess the boy thought I should feel guilty.” John Carey's voice became an angry blast. “Why should I, when his own father never cared enough to show his son a man, even at the end.” The wintry smile John Carey gave was no smile at all. “Our policy excluded suicides.”

Charles studied his father. Quietly, he asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

John Carey stared at his cigar; it was no longer lit. “Because I don't relish Peter having a eunuch for a father.”

Charles looked steadily at John Carey, as if debating whether to say more. Then he shrugged. “I don't equate leaving here with suicide.”

“There are different ways to kill yourself.”

“Then think how much closer you'll feel to Phillip.”

The room was very still. John Carey asked, “So you no longer care whom I choose.”

Charles's eyes closed for a moment. “Not anymore.” His eyes opened. “Cheer up, Father—I may even take HUAC with me.”

Watching Charles's expressionless face, John Carey realized with a stab of fear that his son's passion had fled, that they were no longer joined even in anger or ambition. He felt suddenly tired. “Well,” he said dismissively, “I can't force manhood on you. But you're still responsible for editing the manuscripts you've started. Those can be done at home—after that, we'll discuss what else you might do. Considering his mother, it might be good if at least Peter saw
you
work at something useful.”

“As you like.” Charles stood, reaching for his coat. He walked to the door, then turned. “Clayton Barth still troubles you, doesn't he. You gave him no way out.”

It took John Carey by surprise. “Why should I have,” he snapped. “The only person Clayton Barth had the power to destroy was his own son.”

Charles's slight smile in the doorway seemed almost pitying. “Sweet Jesus Christ,” he murmured, and was gone.

CHAPTER 4

In the months that followed Charles's leaving, for the first time in his life, John Carey felt alone.

For seven years, his sons had circled him like strange dogs, bound by their hungers and the scent of his will. Neither Charles nor Phillip knew its terms, how often it had been changed, even whether it existed. Neither asked. Yet its gift of power had drawn the two competing brothers to his side in a subtle alchemy that took the place of love. Feeling the ruin of a chemistry which had relied on Charles's need, Black Jack Carey slapped at the knowledge as though it were a cobweb, denying what he could not face.

One gray and gloomy Tuesday, shortly after Peter's third birthday, John Carey called his chauffeur and left the office early, appearing at Charles's in his long black Lincoln to announce: “It's time I knew my grandson.”

He gave no reason: John Carey could not explain his need for Peter, even to himself. Charles, regarding him with cool blue eyes, said, “He's playing upstairs,” and John Carey's time with Peter began.

Peter knew nothing of the black-haired dandy who had terrified his sons. To him, his grandfather was a florid, soft-spoken man with shrewd black eyes and a white mane of hair, whose callused hands gripped him tightly as they crossed the street.

“Grandpa, how did your hands get so rough?”

They were waiting in line at the Hayden Planetarium, shortly after Peter's fourth birthday. John Carey smiled ruefully down, eyes penetrating and a little sad. “Do you really want to know?”

Peter nodded.

“Then the stars can wait.”

The chauffeur drove them through the Holland Tunnel and into New Jersey, to the bindery.

Peter looked at the long, gray building. “What is it?”

“They make books from sheets of paper. I would bring the sheets here in a wagon drawn by horses.”

“Horses? Are you very old?”

John Carey frowned. “I never think about it. Would you like to see inside?”

It was dark and hot and smelled like glue. The man in charge treated John Carey like someone special. “I want Peter to know how books are made,” he said. The man stopped what he was doing to show them: at the end, he gave to Peter a finished book, its spine stamped with fine gold print, which his grandfather read aloud, “Van Dreelen and
Carey
.”

“Is that our name?”

John Carey nodded. “These are our books.”

“Do you still drive them?”

“No. Not anymore.”

“Because the horses are all dead?”

“They don't use horses anymore—we have trucks. Other men drive them for me.”

“Then what do
you
do?”

John Carey tucked the book back under Peter's arm. “I decide what books will have our name on them.”

“So other people can see it?”

John Carey didn't answer: Peter felt consumed by the blackness of his stare. Then a small smile crossed his face. “We'll come again. There's something else I want to show you.”

They went to the car. John Carey nodded curtly at the chauffeur. “Drive us to the firm.”

An hour later they stopped in front of a twenty-story building of slate-gray stone jutting upward from the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. On its exposed side, towering over the ruckus of Fifth Avenue, “Van Dreelen & Carey” was lettered in outsized gold script, glistening in the late afternoon sunlight. The building's front was of an elaborate French design, with a mansard roof and black wrought-iron railings around the upper office windows, its elegant glass doorway—surrounded by more windows filled with John Carey's hardback books—topped by ornate gold-painted filigree and the same gold lettering, “Van Dreelen & Carey,” that Peter recognized from the book he held. “Is that our name, too?”

“Yes.”

They stared up at it from the sidewalk. Chill fall winds brushed Peter's face. “Do we own this building, Grandpa?”

“Yes.”

“Did we always?”

“No—not always. Men named Van Dreelen owned it once—your Grandmother Carey's family.” John Carey turned, palms extended toward Peter. “I got these calluses shoveling coal into their furnace.”

“
Then
you bought it.”

“Yes—a long time later.”

Peter thought of his father, the way he had of sometimes looking over his shoulder, as if someone were pursuing him. “Do other people want it, too?”

“Yes.” John Carey's face was hard. “But I won't ever let them take it from us.”

Peter looked back at the lettering above the door. “How come my daddy never brought me here before?”

John Carey did not answer.

Peter felt puzzled. “Does he love this building, too, Grandpa?”

For a long, silent moment, John Carey turned to stare at it. “I don't know.”

“Then why do
you?
”

John Carey kept staring at the building, motionless, gripping Peter's hand. In a fierce near-whisper, he said, “Because it's
ours
.”

The hoarseness in his grandfather's voice made Peter somehow afraid. Timidly, he asked, “Are you much older than my daddy?”

“Yes, John Peter, I am.” John Carey's eyes were still fixed on the building. “Why?”

Peter could not say what he knew only by instinct: that no one had driven horses or stoked furnaces for a long time, that his grandfather moved more slowly now, as if the movements were from memory and the memory was failing, that his face became redder when they had to hurry across a street, that it was autumn and leaves fell from their trees, that there was no Grandmother Carey and no one ever spoke of her, that
old
voices sounded lonely. “Don't worry, Grandpa. I'll take care of your building for you.”

John Carey knelt abruptly on the sidewalk, clasping Peter's shoulders and staring into his eyes. “What made you say that?”

“I
will
.”

“Then why did you ask about your father?”

Still Peter couldn't say. He touched the lines on his grandfather's face. “Because you have
cracks
. Daddy only has little cracks near his eyes.”

John Carey was silent. Then he smiled. “What does your Daddy play with you?”

“Sometimes he chases me, in the park.”

It frightened Peter when John Carey started trying to chase him like his father: Peter saw that it was much too late.

His grandfather would run and then pull up, wheezing and red-faced. A worried Peter stopped asking if they could run; disappointed, his grandfather would challenge him. “I'll catch you this time, Peter.” Peter learned to run less quickly, allowing his grandfather to catch up. After a time, Peter would say, “Let's talk about our building,” and then John Carey would stop, and they would sit, Peter facing him, as he explained about books and authors and money, about the low cost of paperbacks and how touchy John O'Hara was—the things he no longer told his son.

Phillip Carey watched his father fall in love with Peter.