No Place for an Angel (4 page)

Irene understood perfectly that Barry had invented a friend in Washington whom he had to see in order to keep from stopping in with her relatives in Maryland. She sat on beaches all along the Atlantic coast and knew this, without animosity; a friend, even a “best friend”—if such a thing existed—took no interest in one's family. She was aware, like all her generation, of having been created by the war. Family was a dream you sometimes had, awakening conscience; like an occasional religious phase, they passed quickly out of your mind again as soon as you actually did anything about them. Family having kept the boys, Tom and Will, and having now been visited, now could be set aside. The boys were back again, as they always would be, and all together, the four Waddells had picked up Barry Day off a particular Washington streetcorner at 2
P.M
. on Sunday. Afterwards, driving South, all America, in late summer shaggy weight of green and silent cloud-filled skies, came forward to meet them, over and over, and so often seemed a friend. But a lot of it lay waste and was horrible.

They loved the coast and drove along it when they could. Tacitly, they agreed to indulge in a childlike companionship, and spoke only of which road to take, and where to spend the night, of the mileage, the car, and food. Every evening Charles drank a good deal of gin and Irene went out alone on the beach, while the boys wandered away like strangers.

Barry walked in whatever towns there were; once when there wasn't a town he came on Irene, sitting beside a wild clump of reeds near the sea.

“I wish he would get off the bottle,” she said. “I wish he would discuss things.

“What makes it so awful now for me and Charles,” she continued, “is all the past history, the great big thunderous, horrible, glorious times we went through. He was always in it, heart and soul; even before the war, he took it all in the soundest way. Then the war, Europe, us—all that glory. Well, you remember. Now, look. All of a sudden, his place in the world is gone; he feels he's a has-been and wonders who cares. Oh, Barry, I do thank you for coming. Do you think I can come right out and sympathize? Say all this to him? I can just remember how it all was, how great, and decide not to stir him up about it all. When men get up against it, they're always alone.”

“What about you?” Barry asked.

She shrugged. “I've had my good times and bad. Don't tell me you've forgotten. Didn't I use them all up, right to the last notch?”

He was silent. It made him uncomfortable for Irene to need him, even more restless for her to admit it. What could he do? The Waddells would keep right on anyway toward whatever disaster or triumph their energy was leading them. He would as soon sit on an explosion as try to lend a helping hand; they would be the first to give him a hard time over stupid well-wishing. He could listen to her. He guessed that was the most that was indicated.

He could even see a long way into what she meant. Americans had flowed to Europe, for the war, the liberation and afterwards, and the times the Waddells had kept in step with had been touched with greatness. Now this seemed to have been snatched away, and Charles, who had been a big man, had made a wrong turn somewhere and was off in a motel on the North Carolina coast, drinking gin alone. Barry let this soak in on him. Not saying much, they listened to the sea.

“Look what a tan I'm getting. God knows this is better than sitting around the apartment. I thought I'd go mad.”

“It's a fine apartment,” Barry said, sincerely complimenting her taste.

“Well, but things begin to seem empty—all things are just things, you know, once the motion stops.”

She bit her lip, feeling older in spite of all she could do. Mention of the apartment had brought to mind the dust on the African knickknacks, the tarnish on the silver cigarette boxes; all that and more and worse would silently wait their return. “It's getting used to a thing like this happening, that's what we can't seem to do. Charles feels like a machine has gone bad on him. He wants to kick hell out of it, hear it cough and turn over; and if it won't do that, he wants to ring up the manufacturer and tell them to send for it.”

The sea rolled behind her phrases; it seemed to turn them, lift them, exalt them, and dump them, time after time.

“It's just that everything and everybody has to go p.r. now. And Charles won't learn it, and he wasn't quite big enough to get away with not learning it. He thought he was, but he wasn't.”

It seemed a reasonable explanation, and Barry believed she must be right.

“But there're other jobs,” he said. “Millions of them. So everybody has been telling me all my life, wanting me to get one.”

“He's at the stage where it all looks black,” she said. “So he's sensibly drinking his way deeper in,” she added bitterly.

“I doubt if he's drinking any more than usual,” said Barry. “You could keep him company,” he suggested.

“He doesn't want me around,” she said. “He knows I know his weaknesses. It's his pride.”

They went all the way down to Florida like this, and Irene would always remember walking at night by moonlight, the great full moon beating silently down on the great sea. She began to think of it all as a phase, the trouble they had got into.

They stopped for an extra day or so in Savannah where Charles took the boys fishing, and Barry plundered the town for art and antique shops and believed that he had found a Corot. It needed restoring, but he could get that done cheaply; and if Charles and Irene would put out the $500 (perhaps less) to have it, he thought they could get that back many times over in New York, even if it wasn't a real Corot, it was such a damn fine picture. But then he knew he wasn't going to interest them in anything like that now; they weren't keen any more; he would come nearer to interesting one of the twins, who were so bright they could probably make up the sum out of their piggy banks.

He went back to the motel in the Mercury (he had borrowed it for the afternoon) and found Irene by the swimming pool, rather deep in a sleazy flirtation with the owner's son, who also served as the lifeguard. He had no idea how far this had gone and Irene never asked herself that any more than Barry did. She licked the corner of her mouth where some lipstick had crumbled, and reflected on things.

It had got really hot—a heat wave, the papers said. Once on the way again, they scarcely spoke to one another any more when outside of air conditioning. One place they stopped in to lunch had a pool with water too hot to swim in, and Barry began to get the twins mixed up, whereas before he had never had any trouble. “Well,” said Irene, irritably, “it's what they get for buying identical blue sweatshirts.” “If you'd let us get tattooed,” said one of them, “then it would be more convenient.” “I think that's revolting,” said Irene. “I think tattoos are revolting. I could never stand anyone with skin trouble.” “Warren was tattooed,” said the other twin. “Who is Warren?” asked Charles. “The lifeguard back at Savannah,” said the first twin. They all rode silently then for what seemed another week of hot sun and flashing overheated highway and sun-glazed plants and trees. Their dark glasses made red sweat-rims against their cheeks, and hot wind streamed constantly through the windows, dulling their skin to the numbness of leather. Irene's bright scarf ruffled and snapped in the air stream with an apparent variety which could not be thought about.

The twins had dark brown hair and grey eyes and were of a height, about as tall as Irene, slightly shorter than Barry, and not within shouting distance of Charles. Though only sixteen, they seemed nearly to have attained their full size. They had identical secret bland faces and could never be surprised or found without information. They always listened, were quiet and seemed entirely happy. After speaking, their mouths closed pleasantly, in exactly the same way, over white teeth, each with a slight overlap in the very front. Being happy alone would have made them seem twins, Barry supposed, even if they had not been born that way. He had never known any twins before. It was rather restful, as if by being two, one could escape areas of uncertainty and self-doubt. He wondered if there had been any psychoanalytical studies of twins, and reflected that no one was more likely to know and tell him cheerfully than themselves. But he said nothing.

They drove through Miami with their eyes shut, it was horrible, they all agreed, and in another hour or so reached the Keys, open on either side, swept by agreeable breezes, a landscape more to their notion. They looked for somewhere to spend the night.

There were very few people in the motel they selected, only themselves and another couple from Indiana with (by coincidence) two boys, though not twins. Barry's money was running low; he thought he would have to leave and hitchhike back to New York any time now. But then the motel couple, who were exceedingly kind, and so attuned to human plight and error one could almost believe one had arrived in some sort of understated paradise—that is, a place where people came up to what one was always hoping they might do—this remarkable pair discerned that Barry might not like to rent a whole unit for himself and offered him for next to nothing a small room adjoining the office, where, during the crowded months, their assistant lived. Thus, he shook away temporarily from the Waddells, twins and all, and was in no time making himself useful around the boats and the beach, refilling the diving tanks and sweeping sand out of the laundry. The water lay halcyon, pale blue, tranquil; time dropped away; after one night's sleep it was no longer clear how long they had been there.

The motel couple lived in screened rooms above their office, the entire house being set apart a stone's throw from the units. Surrounding porches with ferns and tropical plants secluded them in a shadowy privacy that made them seem nearer to the palms and the water of the cove than to their business. Yet, the moment the units began to seem routine, with their air conditioning and efficiency kitchens and identical furnishing—that is, about twilight of the second day—down the long steps from her parents' house came a marvelous little girl with straight thick sunburnt hair and bangs, and asked the Waddells to have drinks with her mother and father. The couple from Indiana were invited as well and everyone had the same idea about the boys who were left to scrub in the showers. Even Barry had bathed and dressed and produced from somewhere (he had bought it down the road at Matecumbe) a clean white sport shirt. The women all wore their raw silk shorts with tropical shirts and the men in shorts and sandals sprawled in lean skeletal chairs, talking easily. Charles volunteered a good many lies on what he was doing in New York, but as all of it as information was exact (it was what he had done before he was let out), it seemed not to be a lie at all. The Indiana couple were in light machinery, which ran to lawn equipment, mowers, hedge clippers, and this ran the conversation naturally into electronic imports such as Charles' company dealt in. Both Charles and the Indiana man were therefore mutually acquainted with certain types of steel gaskets perfected in West Germany, which Charles had got a contract for distributing to manufacturers along with a photographic device. Here the motel owner wanted to know about his own lawn mower, which Barry had coaxed into running that afternoon.

“Oh, God,” said Charles, “don't ask me anything practical.”

“No,” said Irene, “He discusses these things in conference, but who repairs the electric blender? I do.”

“She once blended a finger in with the daiquiris,” said Charles.

Barry had heard variations of this routine, and lapped up more gin, while explaining what he had done to the lawn mower. The motel owner said that the repairman at the garage had charged him five dollars for doing the same thing but it hadn't worked, and his wife said they had a way of charging now simply for diagnosis, you had to ask them humbly, as if they were medical specialists, if they wished to go ahead and do the work. She had an example or two of that, which made everyone laugh. A breeze blew through the ferns and screens. The Indiana woman asked about mosquito preparations. One of her boys seemed to be allergic to the bites.