Orrie's Story (25 page)

Pollo came around to Orrie's side of the table and loomed over him. “You owe it to your mother, and you know it.” The lawyer moved away when Orrie began to weep. The tears were not those of grief: he had other ways of mourning. It appeared that any serious effort he made towards atonement would be opposed by the world—and for the best reasons, kindness, sympathy, understanding, just what he could not bear. The inevitable truth was that he should do away with himself, but how to do so without further obscuring the point was beyond him at this moment, hence his access of self-hatred. He was guilty of course, but in quite a different way from what would be inferred upon his suicide. He was guilty of having done nothing in the matter of Erie before shooting him to death. He was guilty of having panicked, losing control, using a man's weapon without a man's authority to wield it. His father had undoubtedly tried to teach him about apprenticeship, but he ran away, refusing to listen, rejecting instruction in manhood, horrified at the death of the pheasant, a wild creature that lived by Nature's law and expected to be prey of any creature larger and not of its own blood.

Pollo returned to him after a while and said, “Let's get you bailed out. Whatever your situation, insofar as I see it, staying here will not help. Think of it: you're a smart fellow, I hear. And you should remember this: you can tell me anything and it won't go further if you don't want it to. I'm not
allowed
to tell anyone else. This is an even more useful system than Confession, because I won't ask you for penance. I'm obliged to defend you, notwithstanding what you did or what you're charged with—which incidentally are usually two different things even with professional criminals.” He touched Orrie's shoulder. “Frankly, I suspect at this point you yourself might not be absolutely certain what happened or why.”

But the lawyer had now gone too far. He was being patronizing, and while Orrie saw no alternative but to accept his immediate suggestion, he could not really trust him.

The money that Paul Leeds spent to help Orrie was not his own but rather his father's, and with the lawyer's large retainer (Pollo was renowned in his field), it exceeded the sum he would have gone through had he been normally profligate, and he did not dare to tell his old man where it went, though the irony was that for the first time in his life he was doing something other than serve his own proximate pleasures, something in which he could take pride, and furthermore, he knew he was doing it well, for the person for whom he cared most had told him so.

The recognition that he was in love with Ellie took some time because though at twenty he had had experience with women, it was only of the kind associated with being handsome, well-born, and affluent and for his part had little to do with feelings much deeper than the generic sexual urge. What he felt for Ellie was foreign to sensuality. She was an ethereal young girl, a saint in her selfless regard for her brother, and with so delicate a physical presence that she seemed to exist on air rather than food, and she had no personal interest in him whatever, which seemed only right, for otherwise he would have felt like a creep, given the difference in their ages. It was good of her to commend him for the help he was providing Orrie.

“I hope you understand it's easier for me to thank you than for Orrie. Please don't think he's not grateful.”

The fact was that as the weeks went by Orrie had tended more and more to avoid his friend, and when he could not, he was frequently all but disagreeable. Ellie's implication concerned her brother's pride—and she was always worth listening to—but Paul had begun to wonder whether her devotion made her altogether blind to what he had begun to suspect was an unattractive element in Orrie's character, a tendency first to reject offered assistance and next to accept it with reluctance and then finally resent those who gave it. Paul still felt sorry for his friend, but by now the main reason he continued to adhere so loyally to his cause had more to do with maintaining Ellie's respect than serving his original friendship, for which after all he had done more than a bit, to the degree that he stayed away from college and, after his father had consequently cut off his funds, went so far as to take the first job he had ever experienced, namely, that of temporary clerk for the holiday mail, at the big main post office in the city (parking on the street all day, collecting tickets and losing hubcaps and antenna), which he discovered was no means to wealth. He had never been so admirable a person in all his life, but it was a fact that neither had he ever been so uncomfortable and lonely, for everyone seemed to assume he had limitless funds and concerns of greater magnitude than what they saw him doing, neither of which was the case, but he did not dare reveal the truth even to Ellie, lest it cause her to reflect unfavorably on his value if he no longer had money.

Owing to his financial state, his quarters were necessarily mean and therefore could not be in the immediate area lest he be embarrassed. He still kept the car he had rented from the garage man upstate, who had known him only when he was prosperous and had not yet questioned his credit. He drove to one of the neighboring towns and got the off-season rate for a little room and bathroom privileges in a tourist home operated by a widow in her fifties, who usually did not have paying guests in the cooler months when nobody came to swim in the lake, and was therefore unaware of how inadequately that area of the house was heated. After a few weeks of this and meals at a lunch counter whose bill of fare never changed, Paul no longer believed (if he ever had) that living modestly was any more “real” than having the wherewithal for the pampering of oneself, yet his resolve to stick to his mission was firmer than ever, for though he might by now have been tempted to abandon Orrie, he had this fealty to Ellie, by which he could continue to rise above himself.

Both Orrie and Ellie were living with the Terwillens, under a temporary legal guardianship arranged by Anthony Pollo. Paul would greatly have enjoyed being a welcome guest in this house that usually smelled of Mrs. Terwillen's no doubt delicious cooking, but when he came to see his friends, he had yet to be invited even to enter the living room from the little vestibule just inside the front door. He always asked for Orrie, but invariably nowadays it was Ellie who came out to say that her brother was indisposed, a state of affairs Paul would not have deplored had he been able to spend the time with her, but with one or both Terwillens circulating nearby, he was reluctant to suggest going elsewhere should it sound like making a date. He suspected their coolness towards him took its source in an assumption that a guy his age (furthermore, one with money) could have only one intention when frequenting a penniless female orphan—and in all fairness, they would have been right if dealing with an earlier Paul, who had always found girls from more humble circumstances than his own more sexually attractive than those of his own milieu.

Christmas promised to be an exceptionally bleak time for him. He might even have found his father briefly bearable had he not alienated the man forever by his apparent failure at still another school. Even his landlady would be out of town, visiting a daughter in the Midwest, and his only comfort in remaining alone in the house was that he could control the thermostat. The local eating places would all be closed on the twenty-fifth. To feed in public he would have to find some hotel dining room in the city. The alternative would be canned soup and sardines in the widow's otherwise empty kitchen.

After paying his rent, he had had just enough left from the money he had earned sorting letters at the P.O. to buy gifts for Ellie and her brother, and on Christmas morning he went to deliver them, which, so as to avoid anyone's embarrassment, he decided to do discreetly, putting the packages on the doormat, ringing the bell, and leaving before the summons was answered. But in putting the plan into action, making too hasty a departure, he slipped on the icy sidewalk and had just got to his feet when the door opened and Mrs. Terwillen appeared.

“Why, Paul,” she said, in a much warmer tone than usual, perhaps because of the holiday. “Merry Christmas. Did you hurt yourself?”

“It was nothing.”

She picked up the two little packages, which he had wrapped himself, no doubt awkwardly, but he had never done such a thing before. He had even remembered to attach little cards for the recipients' names. “Well, won't the children be happy.” Her smile grew warmer. “Come in and have some coffee. Bobby's out delivering the church baskets to the needy, but everybody else is here.”

“Thanks, but I got to be going,” he said for his pride's sake, but by the time he reached the car, Ellie had come out and was shouting to him.

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” he cried in return.

“I said, can't you come in?”

Now he accepted the invitation. The Terwillens had what looked like a really pleasant house, with everything flowered, walls and slipcovers and pictures and even little figurines. Ellie led him into a solarium off the living room, where the windows of many small panes were continuous. Mrs. Terwillen brought a plateful of pastries and asked him whether he drank coffee: suddenly she seemed to think him younger than he was.

When they were alone Ellie thanked him for the present, which, still wrapped, lay beside her on the flowered sofa.

“Maybe you'd better open it. I don't really know what you like or don't like. I'll change it for something else if it isn't right.” Her hair was brushed to glisten today, with a bow-shaped barrette at each ear, a well-fitting burgundy-colored dress of velvet, and what looked like new plastic-framed eyeglasses. He suspected Mrs. Terwillen was responsible for the changes, which may have gone too far, Paul preferring the Ellie he had known.

She lowered her head between rising shoulders, as young girls do when admitting their deficiencies, and said, “I don't have anything for you, and I'm sure Orrie doesn't either.”

“That's all right.”

“He'll be out in a minute, I know.” Mrs. Terwillen had left Orrie's gift on a table near the front door. It was a fountain pen of the type Paul himself used, which Orrie had noticed once, in their dorm room, and admired because of the way it filled.

“Go ahead, open it,” Paul told Ellie.

She untied the ribbon and peeled away the paper more carefully than he had ever seen anyone do. He admired all her ways.

“Oh, gosh,” she said, taking the little gold wrist-chain from its box. “Isn't it
nice.”

“Are you sure?” Paul asked. “I didn't know how you might feel about it.”

“I've never had any real jewelry before.”

He would not have called it exactly jewelry, such a simple thing without even any precious gems, but would say nothing to diminish it now that she appeared so pleased.

She draped the chain over her left wrist.

“It's not too big, is it? I could get a few links taken off.”

“No, it's just right.” She kept smiling at the bracelet.

He did not know what to say to a girl like her when they were not discussing her brother, and was reluctant to break the current mood by bringing up the subject of Orrie, which no doubt she would return to soon enough.

“How about a refill?” asked Mrs. Terwillen, coming in with the pot. She stared into the cup she had brought earlier. “But you haven't touched any of
this.”

Ellie displayed the bracelet, and for an instant Paul was worried lest the woman misinterpret his motives, but Mrs. Terwillen beamed at him with her motherly plump face and said, “That's the nicest thing I have ever seen!” He hastily drank most of the coffee, which was cool enough by now to chug-a-lug, and she replenished the cup. “I just wish you could stay and have Christmas dinner with us, but I'm sure you —”

“I'm free,” he said hastily, almost spilling the cream he was adding to his cup from the tiny pitcher. He forgot his pride and added, “I'd really love to stay.”

He was further rewarded by Ellie's saying, “That's just great.” But as it turned out, her enthusiasm for his remaining had mostly to do with her brother. When Mrs. Terwillen went away to tend the turkey she said, “Maybe you could talk to Orrie man-to-man. He won't listen to me any more.”

Paul nobly agreed. “But what should I talk about? He hasn't even come out the last few times I've dropped in.”

“I don't know. What do boys talk about when they're together?”

Paul said, “I've been thinking, there are these doctors that specialize in treating people who are in a depressed state of mind.”

“No.” Ellie shook her head. “I know he would think that would mean he's crazy.”

“But it wouldn't,” said Paul. “My mother's not crazy and she goes to a doctor of that type and she's not exactly even depressed but nervous and drinks and smokes too much.” He was amazed at himself, making these revelations to a high-school girl in a little town upstate.

But Ellie kept her narrow focus on her brother. “He just sleeps all the time. At meals he hardly eats a bite.”

Paul rose and got rid of his cup and saucer, which he had been holding in his lap all the while. “I'll go see him.”

Ellie said, “It's upstairs, third door on the right.” She shook her raised wrist with the chain. “I've got to help Mrs. Terwillen with the meal, so I'll take this off and leave it here.”

Paul was touched by her concern that he might be offended if she was not wearing the bracelet next time he saw her.

He took Orrie's gift from the table where it had been left by Mrs. Terwillen and climbed the stairs.

Orrie was sitting on the edge of his bed, tying his shoes. Paul said, “Ellie told me to come on up.”

Orrie lifted his head. “She's always got ideas about what I should do.”

Paul did not like this, but said only, “She's worried about you.”