And here was Cronin, that very same ungrateful drunk guy, sitting in front of me telling me the marriage was off and giving me the impression that he was the one who’d called it off.
“What the hell’s going on, Jeff?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
He stared some more at his glass. “Only friends a man should have are animals. They never let you down.”
“Linda’s never let you down. She’s a good woman.”
Glaring at me. “She is, huh? You know that for a fact?”
“Yeah. I do. I’ve known her all my life. She’s a good woman, just like I said.”
“Well, old buddy, I guess there’s good and there’s good, isn’t there?”
When you’re drunk, you think you’re just full of profundities.
“What the hell’s that mean, Jeff?”
“It means what it means.”
“Thanks for clearing it up.”
“Wedding’s off.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
As big a guy as he was, and a pretty good drinker too, he must have been putting them away a long time. He was about ready to pass out. I doubted he’d had breakfast.
“You can’t drive like this.”
“Hell if I can’t.”
“You’ll wake up in the drunk tank if you d. And you might kill somebody in the process.”
“I wouldn’t mind killing somebody about now.”
Tears came without any warning. No big sob scene, just the tears of a guy unskilled in the ways of letting go with the gentler emotions. “And right now the person I’d like to kill is myself.”
Those were his last words for a while.
His face hit the table pretty hard, knocking over his beer glass. It was empty.
I leaned out of the booth. “Elmer?”
“Yeah?”
“You give me a hand?”
“Passed out, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I shoulda cut him off.”
“Yeah, you shoulda.”
He came over.
It was hell getting Jeff into my car.
Four
My office is a single room on the side of the local dime store. You reach it by climbing three untrustworthy wooden steps.
On the tiny porch was a small white box with a white envelope Scotch-taped to it: Mr.
McCain. I carried it inside.
The reason I work for Judge Whitney is so I can afford such luxuries as indoor plumbing, electric lights, and a mattress. In a town with too many lawyers already, a tyro doesn’t exactly get the highest-paying clients.
Take this little box. Helen Reynolds, a sweet weary woman who cleans rooms out at the Sunset Motel, has a fifteen-year-old son who has been in and out of trouble with the law since he was twelve. Mostly minor offenses: toilet-papering the trees of girls he has crushes on, overturning garbage cans in alleys, and writing dirty words on the sides of buildings. Buggsy Siegel he’s not. But he seems to be in court every month or so. Maybe if his dad hadn’t died in Korea the kid would’ve turned out better. You never know about those things and you can make an argument either way.
Anyway, none of the other lawyers will take his cases. No money in them. Helen lives in a two-room apartment and drives a
Hudson, one of the big ones that looks like an overturned bathtub. So I take his cases.
And in lieu of pay she makes me angel food cakes with a lot of nice frosting on them. Every three-four weeks I get one. This was my payment on account.
The mail was three overdue bills, an invitation to a s@eance Halloween party (Maybe Bridey Murphy will be there!) thrown by a very successful tort lawyer, and a note folded in half.
Hi McCain-I need to talk to you. Called and stopped by.
Mary
Mary Travers is the girl I should marry.
She’s smart, sweet, sensible, and as good-looking in her dark-haired way as Pamela Forrest is in her blond-haired way. She had a straight-A average in high school and had hopes for college, but then her dad got sick so she had to stay home and help support the family. She works the lunch counter down at the Rexall. A couple of nights, especially on high school graduation night, we came close to going all the way. She’d caught the McCain virus in junior high just as I’d caught the Pamela virus in fourth grade. And neither of us could find a cure. There was a time, right after high school, when she pursued me actively. But no more. I ate lunch at the Rexall a few times a week, and those were the only times I’d see her.
The way she looked at me, I knew she still loved me. And the way I looked at her, she knew I was still in love with Pamela. We were miserable.
I had just sliced myself a piece of cake with my letter opener when the phone rang.
“Hi, McCain.”
“Hi, Mary. I got your note.”
“I knew Susan Squires really well.”
“That’s right. You did.”
“I wondered if we could get together and talk.”
A ruse for a sort of date?
“Sure.”
“You could stop by the house.”
The house she referred to was the one she’d grown up in in the Knolls. My dad had gotten a good job after the war and we’d moved to a new house in one of the thousands of Levittown-style developments that had spread across the country. Washers and dryers. A new car every couple of years. A Tv antenna on the roof. Steak once a week. The Gi Bill.
A chance for your kids to go to college. Uncle Miltie. Howdy Doody. Ed Sullivan.
The promise of America, especially to those who had grown up in the despair of the Depression and had gone off to war.
A lot of returning Gi’s did well but Mary’s dad had not. He’d seen Japanese soldiers slice up his friends with machetes and then hang them like slabs of beef off palm trees.
He had a “nervous condition.” Couldn’t hold any job long. Went into depressions so bad they had to put him in the bughouse a couple of times.
And now he had cancer. Mary still lived at home to help him and her mother, who wasn’t all that healthy either. I felt terrible about not being in love with Mary. Sometimes I got down on my knees and actually prayed that I’d stop loving Pamela and start loving Mary. That’d make so many people happy. Including me.
“There’s a hayrack ride tonight,” I said.
“I saw that.”
“You want to go?”
“Are you serious? With me?”
