Chapter 17
One June afternoon Bemrose stood on his crutches in front of the doctor’s office waiting for Larry to hail a cab at the corner. The dust of Eighty-third Street, gold in the five o’clock sun, touched the pavement with the light, speech, and feel of full summer. Across Madison Avenue the weathered brick of an old building glowed warm and solid behind swaying, languorous sycamores. No change of weather threatened. Summer had floated into the city, settled quietly, and was prepared to stay.
The doorman where Arthur’s doctor had an office must have left the front entrance to get a cup of coffee. The block seemed under lock and key. Bits of paper lay motionless in the street, and the windows of the apartments above sheered off empty and sightless. Larry started toward Madison Avenue for a cab when a pleasant older woman came out of the house, and finding no doorman, chatted with Bemrose. She called after Larry to get another cab for her if he could find one.
He gestured and whistled until a decrepit vehicle pulled up to the curb. Jumping on the runningboard, he directed the driver to Arthur who was shifting uncomfortably on his crutches, tired from the long wait and the strain of seeing the doctor. Larry offered the cab to the woman, but she assured him that she was in no hurry. He started to protest when Arthur thanked her and hobbled toward the taxi. A few months ago he probably wouldn’t have accepted such a favor, but now he didn’t seem to give it a second thought. He was soon chatting easily with the cab driver.
Larry noticed that Arthur went out of his way these days to make friends with people who performed the anonymous minor services—waiters, doormen, elevator operators, telephone girls and newsdealers. At a restaurant yesterday he soothed a belligerent waiter by asking whether he had ever made goulash and if, in his opinion, the sauce of the establishment’s product, which Arthur had ordered for lunch, were the right color. The waiter, a Hungarian, transferred the remaining beef cubes to Arthur’s plate, and spooning the sauce expertly, solemnly pronounced that real goulash should be a darker brown. He urged him to come back the next day when sauerbraten, the house special, would be served with spaetzle and a sauce he could underwrite.
More people seemed to tell Bemrose their troubles now, probably figuring that a man on crutches knew about trouble and would understand. The cab driver was unloading his grievances against the Mayor, railing against the new traffic regulations and clarifying what the Mayor, in his opinion, could do to himself. He passed a soiled piece of paper to them through the lowered glass partition, and Larry saw it was a ticket for speeding.
Bemrose invited the driver to call him about the ticket in the morning, and asked Larry to write out the office phone number for the man whose name, according to a card facing them, was McGuinn. Before many more red lights his new client was offering Arthur a divorce case, something Haynes and Bemrose never touched, even when it meant alienating good clients of the firm. In the month since Larry had gone to work for Bemrose as his office manager, Arthur had insisted on referring three divorce actions, which involved good clients, to less fastidious colleagues, unwilling to mar the Haynes tradition of never handling a domestic matter. But now he seemed interested in the cab driver’s difficulties.
“I’m having trouble-trouble with my wife,” the man explained, taking sulky jerks at his steering wheel. “They say it’s tough-tough to get a divorce in New York the way things-things is bolixed up.”
“What’s the matter with your wife?” Arthur asked. The fellow’s double-jointed stutter had the effect of unlimbering his own speech.
“She never run-runs around,” McGuinn vouchsafed.
“Money troubles?”
But McGuinn apparently made out all right. His brothers owned property in Brooklyn near Coney, and cut him in regularly on rent from two of the houses. He had paid an income tax last year.
“Any children?” Bemrose prompted.
McGuinn whipped out a cellophane-covered snapshot of Georgie, Jr., drooling on a bib. The youngster seemed to be rolling up his daily weight gain.
“A youngster like that ought to keep you together.” Bemrose blew some dust off the cellophane and handed the picture back to McGuinn.
“We just don’t jell-jell,” McGuinn explained. “I’m a-always asking for night work because it’s no good-good going home.”
“Why? Doesn’t your wife make you a nice home?”
“She’s a swell-swell cook,” McGuinn admitted. “She keeps the house clean, and she irons my shirts-shirts, but we don’t j-jell. We ain’t the right combi-combination.”
“And you want a divorce?” Arthur asked.
“I was think-thinking of it.”
A red light held them up, and Bemrose leaned back, his eyes half closed. “Go easy on this divorce proposition,” he said. “Better make sure you want one. You have a nice home, nice kid, and your wife’s not chasing other men. What are you looking for—excitement?”
“I saw a guy pull-pull a hold-up a block from here,” McGuinn volunteered.
“That’s the point,” Bemrose said. “You can see all the hold-ups, murders, street brawls, knifings, and race riots you want for excitement. If things get dull in this neighborhood, you can drive up to Seventh Avenue.”
“Maybe I should be satis-satisfied,” McGuinn conceded. “She’s a sweet-sweet kid, but you know. Blah!” He threw out his underlip in disgust.
“Supposing you do live on milk and crackers at home. You can order steak when you go out,” Bemrose told him.
“I guess you’re right, boss. I know it ain’t easy to get un-unhitched.”
“Ain’t always good sense,” Bemrose echoed. He handed McGuinn a twenty-five cent tip, but the driver shook his head.
“Figure they pay you more than two-two bits for advice,” he said. “I got off cheap. Call you in the morning, boss, about the t-ticket. Watch your head with them crutches.”
While they waited for someone to answer the doorbell, Larry said, “You did all right. I didn’t know you could do such a job of selling marriage. You sounded like an old hand.”
“What the hell? By the time that guys pays for a divorce and finds himself a floozy— What’s he going to get that’s any better?”
Lucy opened the door, and if Bemrose had wanted to present his new client, McGuinn, with an argument for marriage, he couldn’t have found a better example than Mrs. Bemrose in a sheer dark blue dress with sleeves that showed the creamy white of her upper arms. There had been changes in Lucy these past months, Larry decided. Having something to do, someone to look after had given her an animated look of accomplishment.
As if to demonstrate her new security, she kissed Arthur full on the lips before she stepped aside to let them into the house. He slid his crutches onto a hall chair, and Larry spontaneously kissed her, too, wanting to for the first time he could remember, somehow warmed by her new awareness. He invited himself to stay for a drink before Lucy had a chance to tell him about the Martinis that were mixed and waiting upstairs.
She asked to hear the details of their visit to the doctor’s. Larry debated how much of the truth he should tell her. So far the doctor had remained fairly noncommittal in his talks with her. Larry himself went out of his way to report signs of progress in Bemrose which he noted at the office. The day Arthur walked twenty feet to the water cooler without crutches, Larry phoned her at once. She’d be encouraged to fuss more over Arthur’s comfort, Larry felt, if she thought he were improving. Her optimism would be communicated to Arthur.
Recently Larry had begun to wonder whether this somewhat unrealistic optimism might someday react unfavorably. Lucy might reproach him for his lack of candor someday when she found out that Arthur really hadn’t improved. He had learned to use his crutches with greater skill, and he was more resigned to his condition, but the nerve sheaths had not healed. Larry had considered easing Lucy into the facts, gently while he reported what the doctor had said, but in this pleasant room, on an unruffled summer day, with Bemrose apparently contented and reconciled, Larry decided to continue the deception until some marked change in Arthur necessitated greater frankness.
“Did the doctor really think he was better?” Her gray eyes widened.
“He’s doing fine.” Larry studied the stem of his cocktail glass. “The doctor expects him to have a remission any time now.”
The old anxiety, when she worried about Arthur’s dislike of the Daughertys, shadowed her forehead.
“That’s nothing bad. His symptoms will disappear. That’s what it means.” Larry laughed deep and low.
“Oh.” Slowly the concern thawed from her face. “That’s wonderful. Do you hear, Arthur? The doctor says you’ll be well.”
Instantly Larry regretted having extended her hopes. He might have let things ride along, saying that the doctor had found Arthur about the same. Actually he had been discouraged that Bemrose’s walking had not improved at a faster rate. The doctor told Larry privately today that he might decide to try typhoid shots or sodium cacodylate if there weren’t a change soon.
“Aren’t you happy about it, Arthur? Isn’t it wonderful?” Lucy asked eagerly.
“I’m very happy,” he said quietly.
Larry had as little faith in Bemrose’s seeming contentment as in today’s summer weather. First, second, and last Arthur was a realist, and if he thought protest would benefit his condition, he’d demonstrate noisily. Since quiet and placidity seemed indicated, he remained calm. While he was insecure and helpless, Arthur would behave and be docile around Lucy. The change in him was probably opportunist, the way a small boy behaves when he has to. Larry would have liked to believe that the transformation went deeper. A major illness might have that effect on some men, but he couldn’t convince himself that Bemrose had gone through any fundamental change.
The upstairs telephone jangled noisily, and Bemrose’s calm left him as he picked up the receiver and talked to Davis Shore. Larry saw puckers of concern gather in his chin.
“Anything wrong?” he asked when Arthur hung up.
“How can I tell?” Bemrose’s hand shook as he fingered a crease in his trousers. “He wants to see me tomorrow morning about that appeal, the one that has been up for months, since long before I went into service. I can’t understand why he’s in a hurry. Court has recessed.”
“What time are you seeing him in the morning?”
“Eight a.m.”
“Oh, Arthur—” Lucy put out her hand in a frightened stab at authority, but the unfamiliar power conferred by his helplessness soon drifted through her fingers. “You’re supposed to sleep until eight. The doctor told us——”
“Does Shore know you’ve been sick?” Larry asked.
“Who doesn’t know?” Bemrose asked with unexpected bitterness. Or self-pity.
“Everyone understands, and everyone is sympathetic,” Lucy protested. “You could have asked Mr. Shore to make it later. He would have understood.”
Larry tried to warn her. “That’s all right. I’ll pick Arthur up in the morning.”
With synthetic brightness, she changed her tack. “You haven’t told me how you like working at the office, Larry.”
“Is anyone supposed to like working?”
She hesitated a moment before her laugh caught on. It lapped at the ceiling and flowed in ripples toward the wall.
“We’ll make a decent lawyer out of him if he gives us time,” Bemrose said.
“I have to take that, too,” Larry objected. “It isn’t enough that I see his bills are paid and he stays out of jail.”
“Does he order you around?” Lucy asked, taking up Larry’s line of abuse.
“He orders everyone around. That poor Miss Thompson. Have you ever seen Miss Thompson?” He covered his eyes.
“She looks very intelligent,” Lucy said.
“Intelligence isn’t what I admire in women. I like women who keep their brains out of their faces.”
“I gave her money a year ago to buy herself a new hat. Did she ever buy it?” Bemrose asked.
“What she needs is one of those schools that give you a new personality,” Larry insisted.
“Maybe just a trip to the beauty parlor regularly,” Lucy suggested.
“Beauty’s too much to expect,” Larry insisted. “A less-than-ugly-parlor.”
Bemrose shook with quiet laughter. “She’s been around so long,” he said helplessly. “I never bothered to look. I never took the time.”
“He must be a busy man,” Larry said to Lucy. “I’d just as soon look at the lawyer who used to share my office, and he never won any beauty prize. Did I ever tell you about Moe? He was this big—” Larry measured his shoulder. “And he used to get a cold water permanent for the hair growing out of his ears.”
“Oh, Larry—” Lucy laughed and the threat of Davis Shore’s phone call was forgotten for the moment.
In a little while, when Larry felt they were both all right, he got up to go. He had walked as far as the stairway when Bemrose called after him, “Don’t break your neck to get here in the morning. I have a hunch Shore isn’t going to keep the appointment.”