Authors: Howard Fast
On the other hand, Tom had never revealed any part of his own sexual fantasies. He had a deep-seated suspicion that he had never deflowered a virgin, although several girls he had known had insisted that such was the case; and Eloise's virginity scored highly in his imaginings. He was determined to have intercourse with her their first night on the train. Eloise, her eyes tightly closed against the light, could manage no more than a whisper, and in those muted tones she attempted to convey to Tom what a severe migraine headache was like. "Every jolt of the train is agony," she said to him. "Even the sound of my own voice hurts me."
"Well, God damn it, isn't there anything you can do?"
"I've taken aspirin and'codeine and I'm so sick, Tommy. I wish I could die."
Tom left her, went into the lounge car, ordered an old fashioned, and got into a conversation with a well-dressed, rather good-looking woman in her thirties who was sitting in the next chair. He bought her a drink and learned that she was a buyer for Krempel's Department Store in Oakland. They each had two more drinks, and Tom went back to his compartment. Eloise was as he had left her, desiring neither food nor drink. Tom went to the dining car, and since there was an empty seat opposite the buyer from Krempel's, they resumed their acquaintance. She was divorced. He said little about his own situation, except to explain his naval uniform with the information that he was an officer on leave. Since she was to leave the train at Omaha, he felt fairly secure. After dinner, they went to her compartment, had some more drinks, and then went to bed. There was no need on Tom's part to seduce her; the buyer from Krempel's had made the decision much earlier, utterly enthralled by this handsome, slender young man in uniform. Tom, driven by his feelings of frustration and rejection, performed dutifully and without joy; then he
made his way back to his own compartment.
Eloise's headache persisted all the way to Chicago, and there, during the few hours of stopover between trains, it finally disappeared. Tom took her to lunch at the Pump Room, and sitting across the table from him, Eloise, with shining eyes, told him how much his patience and consideration meant to her.
"I've been such a disappointment to you," she said. "But I will make up for it, Tommy. I promise you."
"Not at all." He was almost abject in his guilt, which Eloise translated into compassion.
"When we came here," Eloise said eagerly, "I saw how every woman in the room turned to look at you. I'm not a bit jealous, Tommy. I'm so proud. I took an oath last night that I would never again have a migraine—"
"But you can't help it," he said gallantly.
"But I shall help it. It will be mind over matter—only trains are so dreadful. Anyway, I know how lucky I am. I had a chat with Mr. Whittier, and he assured me that I was marrying the man who would one day be governor of California."
"Did John say that?"
"He did."
"Well, that's a long way off. If ever," he said modestly. "Anyway, you look very pretty."
"I suppose that the one good thing you can say about migraine is that when it stops, you just float away with good feeling. Do you like the dress? I feel silly in pink, but everyone says it's becoming."
"It's great."
But on the Twentieth Century Limited, going from Chicago to New York, Eloise's migraine returned; and Tom brooded in the lounge car, smoking too many cigarettes and asking himself, "How in hell did I ever get into this?" and remembering Whittier's warning to him, "For you, Tom, no divorce ever. Make up your mind about that at the very beginning."
Somewhere between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Barbara realized what she was going to do. It was like an idea planted long ago that had grown slowly, as if looking down for the first time in years, she had come to the notion of origin and what it meant; and instead of driving on to the Napa Valley, she stopped in San Francisco and went to her mother's house on Russian Hill. Jean was delighted to see her. The gallery was growing, and Jean bubbled with enthusiasm. The Nolde had arrived, and a quick trip to New Mexico had enabled her to acquire a painting of a buffalo skull by O'Keeffe. "Which ordinarily I would not have, but this one—isn't it splendid, Barbara?"
Barbara regarded it dubiously. "I guess so. Can I spend a few days here, mother?"
"Of course."
"And that money you put away for me, the account in the bank, how do I use some of it?"
"Very simple. Just go to the bank and fill out a withdrawal slip. Good heavens, they know you."
The following morning, Barbara walked to Sam Goldberg's office. She felt wonderful now. It was a clean, cool July morning, and she filled her lungs with the good salt air. This was her place, no question about that, and in all the world there was no other place like it.
At the office, Harvey Baxter welcomed her warmly. He had a wife and two children, the only reason he could contain his unabashed admiration of Barbara; and, mumbling his delight, he drew her into Sam Goldberg's old office, now his. "How very good to see you, Miss Lavette. This time, I hope you'll stay for a while."
"I think so." She plunged right in. "Harvey, I want to buy Sam's house."
"Oh?" He considered it, schooled in the fact that a lawyer should never respond immediately to anything.
"It hasn't been sold?" Barbara asked anxiously.
"Oh, no. No, indeed. The estate hasn't been settled yet."
"And you can sell it to me?"
"As the executor, yes—no reason why not, if you really want it. It's not a very fashionable house."
"Well, I do want it. How much will it cost me?"
"What a pity you never said as much to Sam! He would have left it to you in his will. Well, I can put a fair price on it—say, twenty thousand dollars. We can get you a mortgage for twelve, so that would be about eight thousand in cash." He was aware of the circumstances that had created the Lavette Foundation, and he asked her whether that was too much.
"Oh, no. No, the price is all right. What about the furniture?"
"You know, it's a strange case. Sam had absolutely no one in the world, not a single blood relation. Aside from the money he left to his housekeeper, Mrs. Jones, there were instructions that she could take anything in the house that she wished to have. Very odd, but then, Sam Goldberg was an original. You could say that, couldn't you?"
"I guess so. Where is Mrs. Jones now?"
"Still living at the house. Why don't you go by and see her."
"I will. Meanwhile, Harvey, the house is mine. Agreed?"
"Absolutely. I'll work it out for you."
On her way to Green Street, Barbara could hardly contain her excitement. Somehow, the simple fact that she had made the decision and would own the house changed everything. There was a place that was her own, at last, a place where the books, the walls, the pictures, would be hers. She had always loved the little house. It had been a place of refuge and security when she needed both desperately, and now it was such a place once again, when her need was almost as desperate.
Mrs. Jones opened the door, and her face lit up at the sight of Barbara. "I couldn't wish for no one more," she said. "I didn't think I'd see you again."
Barbara couldn't contain herself. "I bought the house, Mrs. Jones."
"This house?"
"Yes." And when the black woman's face fell, she added, "Oh, no, you don't have to leave—unless you want to."
Mrs. Jones led Barbara into the kitchen, and over coffee, they worked out an arrangement. When the transaction was completed and Barbara moved in, Mrs. Jones would stay on at the same wages Goldberg had paid her. There were a few things in the house that Mrs. Jones wanted as mementos. The rest, except for some pieces of furniture, Baxter would sell, giving the money to Mrs. Jones. At first the black woman refused, explaining that the ten thousand dollars she had received in the will was ample, more indeed than she had ever dreamed of having. But Barbara insisted, and finally Mrs. Jones assented.
That evening, Barbara called Los Angeles and spoke to May Ling and told her what she had done. "Please don't let daddy be hurt by this," she begged May Ling.
"He'll understand."
"I'm not choosing between him and Jean. You must make him understand that. It's just that I must have a place that is completely my own, a place where I can work and live and be entirely with myself."
"I know." Yet when May Ling put down the phone, she felt a chill of cold fear. It was eight o'clock in the evening, and Dan was not yet home. He might call at any moment and tell her that he would not be home tonight. Joe was in the service, and day by day, the threat of war came closer. It was a time of death—her mother, her father, Sam Goldberg. If anything should happen to Joe, well then, she too would die. She walked around the house from room to room. How lonely it was, how empty, how desolate! The old Chinese superstition states that the spirit of the dead stays in his abode for three years, and even though May Ling disdained superstition, she would not dream of selling the house, even though Dan had suggested it, pointing out that a place like Palos Verdes was adjacent to San Pedro and one of the very best up-and-coming neighborhoods. She could leave her job at the library; the shipyard was making more money than he knew what to do with.
But May Ling would not hear of it. Leave her job? Then she would surely wither away. She could not tell Dan that she must live here, in this house, for at least three years after her mother's death, obedient to a superstition she had always scoffed at. Yet tonight, after speaking to Barbara, even superstition could not people the empty house, cold as a tomb.
It was after nine when Dan returned, and May Ling, as if seeing him for the first time, had an impression of a man close to exhaustion, tired and aging. He had not eaten. May Ling sliced ham, fried eggs, and opened a can of beans, apologizing for not expecting him and not cooking, but Dan said, "Baby, there's nothing in the world in the way of food I put ahead of ham and eggs and canned baked beans. You don't know how many years I lived on that."
"Ugh. Come home tomorrow, Danny, and I'll cook you a great Chinese dinner."
may just take you up on that."
"Barbara called from San Francisco," she told him.
"Oh?"
"She bought Sam Goldberg's house. From the estate."
Dan went on eating for a few minutes. Then he said, "For herself or for the foundation?"
"For herself. She's going to live there."
"Well, I had her for longer than I ever dreamed I would. I can't complain."
"I can," May Ling said miserably. "Oh, Danny, I'm so lonely and so unhappy. I suppose it's being Chinese. You grow up with a thing about a family, and there was always a family here. Now they're all gone, mom and pop dead, Barbara up there, Joe in the service, and you away so much. I -don't want to whimper about it, Danny. I never have."
"I know."
"Do you still love me?"
Dan burst out laughing, almost choking on his mouthful of food, and May Ling cried out, "Don't laugh at me, Dan. I'm miserable and serious and deeply unhappy."
He swallowed the food, took a long gulp of the beer May Ling had-poured for him, and said to her, "Now listen to me. I spent the morning with Admiral Land. He's out here again, and he brought with him two young smart-ass yard managers who were trained by the Maritime Commission and who know more about shipbuilding than I could learn in a hundred years. We have six ways now, and Land wants to put in five more. That's why I get the two yard-managers. They'll run the whole works. In the next two months, we'll have eleven keels laid and two hundred and fifty workdays of shipbuilding ahead of us—"
"Danny, you haven't heard a word I said!"
"No? Well, listen. I told Land I was through, finished, that I didn't want the goddamn shipyard."
"You told him that?" May Ling whispered. "Danny, how could you?"
"Isn't that what you wanted?"
"Oh, no. No. You can't do that. Why do you listen to me? Betty Hargrave—she was head librarian and just back from her sabbatical in England—told me how it is. She saw them come back from Dunkirk and then she went through the bombing in London, and Danny, it's that one little island against those monsters—"
"O.K., now listen. You know, I'm beginning to like Land. He's a tough, mean old bastard, but Jesus, he's got the whole world on his back. He wouldn't let me walk out of it, and I'm not sure I really wanted to. He's opened up fourteen yards out here on the Coast, and mine is the best bet. In some ways, the man's a besotted genius. He's lined up over two thousand plants in eighteen states— cylinders, pistons, turbines, sheet steel, winches, compasses, cable—all of them being blueprinted and made and shipped and by God, we're building ships the way no one ever built them before, and this is only the beginning. Well, we worked it out. I'll supervise the building of the ways and the hiring of about three hundred men. That will take maybe eight, nine weeks. Then I'm taking three months off—the first vacation I've had since I started that lousy shipyard."
"Oh, Danny, how wonderful!"
"Hold on. What was the best we ever had it?"