No Place for an Angel (38 page)

“What did you do in that funny church, Jerry?” Catherine asked him. It was a bright spring Sunday morning, sometime around Easter in Dallas when he was in law school and they hadn't gone to church for the best of all possible reasons. Their freshly spent love clung around them, fragrant and dense, undispersed, and out of this bright cloud he was laughing. He could not stop laughing. “We drank blood,” he said. She began laughing too. They could not stop. “What did you do?” he asked her. “We drank grape juice,” she said. “It was a substitute.” Later in the day, he caught her observing him, out of the depths of a chair where she was supposed to be reading the Sunday papers. “We shouldn't have laughed like that,” she said. “It's all sacred,” she added. “And anyway, I always liked feeling you were different from ordinary people, that there was something about you nobody could know about.” He did not answer. His father was aging, poor, deferential to his son's wife's wealthy family, kind to all alike. But the thing that had taken him from his mother and isolated him with this man's passion and tried out of the night to find a voice to reach him, tugging at him like a black tide, that was forever shut away. It occurred to him that a religion is valid or not valid only by the numbers of people who can be persuaded to believe in it. His father had in every fiber of his spirit believed. He could not reach his son. Nothing in the length and breadth of
Texas, that unenlightening land, could come forward to say that this was not a tragedy, if a tragedy is an impasse and a man's life swept into it. He groped, wanting to drop it all, the whole subject, wanting her to drop it too. Yet it had attracted her. It accounted for the small veil of difference, of wonder and mystery, that lay in her mind about him. It was the promise of manhood not yet, on that Sunday morning in Dallas, entirely his own. So he held on, not wishing to sever utterly the thread of the past, for it might be leading him to his own fulfillment. “I never meant to laugh at him,” he told her, withdrawing. She nodded. When he said a thing like that, she understood him. If life were made up one percent of decencies, one percent of decent attitudes and right answers and good generous things to know, Catherine would never fail to understand it. It was when even that one percent was gone and not to be found that she went crazy—or crazy was what the psychiatrists were trying to say by calling it a lot of other names. According to Jerry, she wasn't crazy at all. It was all the swing of the same identical pendulum, side to side. She could not give up what she was. And a big part of what she was, was her knowledge of him. There was no way to make her lose it.

He went to Bunny Tutweiler's funeral. It was in a funeral home in Washington and he got there too late because he couldn't get a taxi in the rain. Her husband, Bentley Tutweiler, was there, sitting alone in the parlor which was the living room of an old-fashioned house with white Corinthian columns out front. They had put in a linoleum floor which was highly waxed. He had once seen a convention of undertakers and morticians lobbying against some bill they thought unfair to them; they looked to be
having as good a time as anybody, but he hadn't been able to push through the crowd without a chill down his spine; they seemed to represent death out of life instead of in life, as though the moment of death were a melting into their arms and into coffins and graves just as one might get upon a stage by disappearing into a dressing room and getting covered with a wig and masked in make-up. Once back of the footlights you confronted the human race in new terms. Poor old Bunny! Do I applaud now? he wondered.

He shook hands solemnly with Bentley Tutweiler, to whom he wished to present himself as a friend whom Bunny had for reasons best known to herself asked to look after her daughter in case anything happened to her. This was only an opener. He, in truth, intended to fight for Diane if he had to forge a marriage certificate. But Tutweiler got up, removed a handkerchief from his breast pocket, blew his nose and shook hands. “You must be Jerry Sasser,” he said. “She wrote me about you. It's all right about the little girl.” That finished that. Jerry almost laughed. Maybe if he could have laughed the little chill would go away. Oh, stop it, Bunny, he wanted to say, Come on out, the game's over. But once you got that going, he might have to see it apply to everything. Stop, Catherine, stop running off, stop going crazy; it was all a joke, we'll go to the drugstore and laugh about it. But at the moment of upheaval, the moment of certainty, the moment of focus and flesh, everything would be real again—Merrill would wake up and be there, same as ever.

There was a huge green plant with oblong shiny green leaves in the corner. Muzak was playing, and one at a time the funeral home functionaries came out in frock coats with white
carnations in their buttonholes and mumbled appropriate words, inquiring whether they wished to have the coffin open or closed. Jerry deferred to Bentley Tutweiler, who said he didn't know. “Closed,” said Jerry desperately. If they left it open she might jump out of it. The door opened and three more people came in. One was Bunny's girl friend, Jeannie MacFarland, with whom she had once, between men, shared an apartment. The other two were from the law office. They were late because they couldn't find the address. More flowers came in, in baskets, like a school recital in Merrill, and other chairs were brought. The morticians' footsteps did not make any sound at all. Some of the flowers were wet from the rain; when Jerry saw that he thought of Catherine. Maybe things would work out somehow so that Catherine would eventually take Diane. That would be a long time off. Right now, in the discreet apartment he was about to rent out near Arlington, he was going to hire a quiet ample mulatto woman to look after the child, and weekends he would be with her. She could continue to climb around all over him, sit on his shoulders, explore his ears, pull his eyebrows, and crawl up under his coat. She would put her hand in his and walk along the Potomac. They had been there last weekend, and a fish came up and looked at them. He would have long serious talks with the mulatto woman, who would believe him to be a fine, sincere man whose wife had tragically passed away. The closed grey coffin rolled in. They were asked to bow their heads in prayer.

Why had the morticians been lobbying in Washington? Right now he forgot. They were in danger of having some law passed which was prejudicial to their profession, but what were
they doing to make a law necessary? Were they usurping the rights of ministers of various faiths by interring the dead, returning the body to the earth, consigning the soul to God? Were they taking advantage of the family's grief and guilt to put up prices on coffins and embalming, counseling fraudulent methods for preserving the flesh, as if anyone was going out with a spade in fifty years to see if the guarantee had been fulfilled. After fifty months even, who cared? Were they presenting bills too large or selling cemetery space which didn't exist? Were they cremating on the sly to save space? But cemeteries were municipal property. Were undertakers go-betweens for municipality? Was there a little city hall system involving rake-offs? Bunny, who always thought of everything, had had burial insurance. He didn't have to look into anything very much, only put them on to getting in touch with her estranged husband, whereabouts unknown. He was easy to find and had appeared as quick as anything. He was not a bad-looking man, though a little bit skinny. Perhaps he had even been a good lover; maybe she had luck that way, though why he couldn't say. She was pliant and satisfying and the heart could rest, not being required.

It grew on him out of the quietly bowed heads of the five of them that nobody was going to blame him with anything. If she had been worried increasingly about him and what was going to happen next during the last six months, she had not complained to anybody. That was something. Solid value received. (Thanks, love. Jolly good girl. Some talk for a Texan. Shouldn't confuse her now, poor old Bunny.) Let her rest; she had disappeared perhaps through wanting to. Catherine had disappeared but they had
found her in a Fort Worth hospital, suffering from exhaustion. “I found your mother, Jerry.” “Mother! I haven't got a mother. She died.” “Yes, you have. Your father told me. Forgive me for not telling you before.” What did anybody say to that? “That's okay.” Mustn't upset her. “I can give you her address. I have to give it to you because I can't—” “Can't what?” “She could be a place for you, don't you see? I can't any more. I just can't. It's run out. There isn't any more.” “We'll talk it over when you feel better.” “It all fell through, didn't it? The scheme about the magazine and all.” “How did you know? Look, I'll pay your family back. Someday, somehow.” “It isn't paying back, Jerry. That's not the point.” “I don't want a mother, Catherine, can't you see that? You put her on to me— Look, I'll pay your family back. Someday, somehow. I promise.” “I know but even if you do, I still can't stand it. I can't be the world you live in. Let's drop out of it . . . run a filling station, anything.” “It's still just the world, always the same.” “Don't quarrel, hold on to me. Just hold on to me. Please. And forever. Please.” He held her. She had a few tears left, fresh as rain. “Jerry, I can't go another step.” “What happened after you left, before you found my mother?” “I can't remember.” “I think you dreamed it all; she's dead.” “I didn't. No. But she didn't believe me. She had seen your picture in an article once about Washington politics and thought you must be some other Sasser.” “That's funny, even though it said from Merrill.” “I think that one said from Dallas.” “Should I go say here is your long-lost son $100,000 in debt? I have to go now, or jump out the window when the family comes.” His hand, lingering on her arm, suddenly tightened. “They'll try to make you leave
me.” “Leave you!” Her laugh was quick, girl-like; it came out of nowhere, starlight in hell. Her face was worn down to nothing. His heart plunged into a broad river of pain. Footsteps sounded in the corridor, trooping along: the Lathams. If not now, then later. His kiss almost pulled her up by the roots, in which case he would have certainly had to leave her to wither and die in the sun, for he wasn't going to stick around and face them. He got out and in the corridor and around the corner, out and gone, just in time. They didn't see him, but would they have, anyway? He was invisible already in a grey world. Things had broken. His clean working order was destroyed. Sludge was pouring in from everywhere. He would take it and keep on. A grey life in a grey world. Not for Catherine. Impossible. As though he were still present before her, he could see her eyes grow vacant, blue and vacant, the woman quality receding to nothing. Eyes of a little boy. Color of fair Texas spring day. Hardly perceptible pale eyebrows, outlining the bone above the socket. He had to move fast to keep a jump ahead of thoughts like that. Thoughts like that would kill you.

“What are you doing now?” asked Bentley Tutweiler. They had repaired to the Mayflower for a drink.

“Juggling figures for the oil companies. Now they've settled depletion allowances, gas allotments are all the rage.”

“Oh, that's right. Your wife's family was in oil.”

“Not working directly for them. Indirectly, I would say. It's all done by companies now. No private ownership direct. Wildcatting is subsidized. Do you know the industry?”

“Can't say I do. Insurance is my game. Adjustor.”

“Interesting life.”

“Yes, it is. There wasn't anything really wrong with Bunny and me. We just couldn't get along. I guess that's all there is, ninety percent of the time.”

“Yeah, guess that about says it.”

A more amiable man could never, in any crisis, Jerry Sasser judged, be hoped for; and to think he had simply fallen out of nowhere. A treasure indeed was Bentley Tutweiler. Perhaps all Tutweilers were treasures. Hadn't he once known a jeweler named Tutweiler? Are you a Jew? he wanted to ask. He didn't look it, but might be half or a quarter Jewish. Bunny was not Jewish; her name had once been Sanders or Saunders, something like that. He had got that straight before Diane was born. What difference did blood make? He didn't know and didn't want to know.

“Tutweiler, boy, you're a great guy,” he said. His second drink was taking hold. He was running the verge of laughing, but had to fight it off. He slapped Bentley Tutweiler on his thin shoulder. He was overdoing it now, concentrating on looking straight at the color of the whiskey, far too solemn and after-funeral-looking. They had stood around together in the cemetery in the rain, which had brought on the practical rightness of going to a bar.

“Hey, I'd like to bring the kid by sometime.”

Just calling her “kid” meant he wouldn't ever do it; she wasn't a kid at all. But it was the signal for a lot of sentimentality. They wallowed in it up to the neck through a third and a fourth and maybe—God alone knew by then—even a fifth drink. At the end Bentley was weeping. He had a soul, after all. Jerry Sasser was weeping because he didn't have one. When he finally got bored, at the end of what the bourbon could do for that day at least, he said he just couldn't talk about it any more, and left. He said it hurt too much. In a way, it did hurt. What was it that hurt? he wondered. Another phase gone; time passing. He did feel for Bunny, some way or other. He wondered if she ever knew what had happened, or had she lost consciousness at once. He had not been inclined to ask.

The next week he found the mulatto he was looking for. He realized when he found her, this comfortable, somewhat aristocratic, certainly gentle and practical housekeeper and nurse, that no power on earth would persuade Priscilla that he was not also living with her, a woman Catherine would instantly have realized he would behave more like a gentleman with than anyone he had ever known, a woman he would never touch, whose sense of what was appropriate to hear he would never violate or even ruffle. He saw her with immeasurable satisfaction the day he brought her to the new apartment he had rented way across town, shaking the dust of the Bunny Tutweiler area off his mentality forever—all that pink soap. He was out near Arlington now and had done some choosing, grey curtains for the living room and the rudiments of some solid new furniture. He had got her dressed in plain gingham and she had a sharp little dark animal face, broad at the top with dark eyes slightly scared since her mother's disappearance. He was saying to the new woman, “As I told you, she is a natural child.” The woman did not change expression. “I remember,” she said. She reached down to Diane, not to shake hands but to take her hand. Diane had to lift her own up a little way, and placed it, white in the dark one. “We're going to see about your room,” said the woman. “I'll open an account for you at Garfinkle's. I'll pay the bills. She has to have a good room, her own.” The woman's
eyes widened slightly; it was a leap of trust, of confidence, she had not expected. He shoved his hands in his pockets, turning away. He was acting, slightly. It startled him. Once he had begun this way in a situation he would be expected to keep it up. If he was acting at all, didn't it mean that he didn't really care? Did he care? He had certainly meant to care. For the first time in a long time, his glory spent, the proud ships gone into history, the dazzling white uniforms never to be put on again, the language of the innermost inside to spring to his tongue no more (but Bunny Tutweiler, at least, in his life no longer); he had meant to care. What astonished him now was his deep travail, his own will to seriousness. Whether other people knew it or not he was always retaining his right to swerve off—when he ran out of his father's church that day, that had set up a pattern, practical and even wise. But the tableau of three—child, nurse and father—would bear the closest scrutiny. For one thing, it required him to remain. It demanded that he should never laugh. He had, in other words, not to wonder why he was acting once, but to become an actor. Tableau would follow tableau. He would discuss Diane daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, with this woman who was already doing grave honor to them both. It would be an endless program. He could not have asked for better. In times away alone with the child, they would instantly, with perfect consent, pick up their life together, walk along the shore, look at the sea, walk in the park, look at the Potomac, climb up and sit on Lincoln's knee, count the miles on the speedometer in the car, eat through all the different ice cream flavors at Howard Johnson's. Time would pass; she would grow, go away, school life, some boy's clumsy forcing of her lips, the world's
deep waters. He idled through the conversation, feeling handsome again for the first time in years; his squint relaxing, his drink-roughened skin freshening. He stood straighter. The woman by her correct speech, the very occasional use of Sir, was creating him, perhaps almost consciously, to suit herself, what she thought he should be as regards this child. Holding the child's hand; the child consenting to this, grown calm. Calmly himself he remembered women, remembered them all, that army, those feminine phalanxes which hovered in memory back of Bunny Tutweiler, who had been a sort of Great Divide, and which had started after Catherine, who had been a sort of Jumping-off Place. How pretty, how perfect they had all had the gift to seem, at least for their little moment, and that was something. It was quite a lot. Perfect little girls, Catherine used to say, thin, mad, faithful, accurate, brushing her cornsilk hair, the hotel mirrors giving him three of her at once. Those perfect little girls who ran America. Stewardesses, perfume clerks, restaurant hostesses, nurses, secretaries, receptionists, on back to WAVES and WAC officers and Red Cross girls. Carefully packaged, expertly wrapped, opening at a touch—Jesus! His vision blurred, encompassing the child in gingham. He had to get out. May she be nothing special, he thought, addressing nobody special; just measure up completely when the time comes, have her moments when some good man will think a fresh perfection has come alive out of the world's most glowing ad for the country's most admirable product. In the meantime: “Will you read to her? She likes that.” The small face came into focus, brightened, looking up. She adores me, he thought: adores me. “Sure, we'll read. We shall certainly read, Diane.” What to read? What to get her? Catherine would tell him. He would ask Latham to ask Catherine. He went out.