Джеймс Кейн - The Enchanted Isle

They treated us very nice, very different from how they were next morning with me, and they said nothing at all about being paid in advance. We went up, and I unpacked as usual, putting our things away, and then we went out and had dinner, as it was late and the hotel dining room looked deserted. We found a place called The Isle of Hope and had a pretty good dinner of crab soup, snapper, and parfait, and with his fish Rick had some wine. Then we went back to the hotel, and I didn’t undress in the bathroom, but in front of him, out in the open. But he didn’t pay much attention, and I guess I liked it that way, but I was beginning to wonder how long his fright would last and if it would ever end. I mean I liked it, him being my father, but after all I’m human. But he didn’t make any pass, and I sat there a while in the chair, the only one we had, and he sat sipping his Scotch, as he’d brought the bottle along, the one he’d had sent up in Baltimore. And I said, “Rick, there’s just one thing.”

“Yes, Mandy, what?”

“The same old. Mother.”

“...You mean you still want to call her?”

“Rick, it’s been bugging me all day. Forget what I said last night, about my reason for wanting to then — now there’s another reason. Rick, after what you said, about her calling the cops, it has popped in my head that she could, anyway, without knowing about the coat. Just to report me in as a runaway girl or something. A truant juvenile, something like that. Or suppose she takes space in that magazine? They have one, did you know that? That locates missing children. And how you do, you take an ad out, give in the missing child’s picture, and they run it with her description. And that magazine goes everywhere — to police, filling stations, bus terminals, airports, any place you can think of. And it gets results, so they say. The missing child is found. Well, suppose she does that to me — not out of meanness, but love. So she does what it takes to find me, and then they pick me up... and you up. And there we’ll be with that money, just from being too dumb to put in a call while we still had the chance and head off that dragnet stuff. That’s what I’m worried about!”

“OK, OK, I see your point. And I know what you do.”

“Yes, Rick? What?”

“Soon as we get to Miami you send five bucks to New York, to the newsstand at Grand Central Station, to mail you cards, picture postcards of New York, in the return envelope that you send. So they do, and when you get those cards, you write your mother one, what a swell place it is, New York. Then you say you’re all right and please don’t worry about you, you’ll write her more later. So then you send that in an envelope, to the same newsstand, with a note: ‘Please mail the enclosed card for me.’ So they do and that’s that. Your mother thinks you’re up there, she has no reason to worry, she don’t call the cops or take any ad in that magazine... Hey, Mandy, I try to help.”

“...OK, I guess that’ll do it.”

But in the night I kept thinking about it, and in the morning I said, “Rick, getting back to Mother, who you may be getting sick of, but I can’t get her out of my mind, and that idea you had, the card I’d mail from New York. It’s OK, except for one thing: it’ll take at lease a week, and this is Thursday, after me leaving home on Monday. Or in other words, sending a card that way, it’ll be ten days from the time I took off, and in that time God only knows what she does from worry about me. And if we lost out for that reason, we’d just have ourselves to thank for not getting with it and...”

“OK, I’ve changed my mind. Call her.”

“Oh, Rick, thanks, thanks, thanks.”

“But not from here, not from the hotel. It’s small, not like the one in Baltimore, and the girl on the board could get nosy, she could listen in. There’s a drugstore down the street, next door to that restaurant we ate in last night, and all drugstores have a booth. Put in a station-to-station call, dial the area code, then your house number, and drop in the money, in coins, soon as the operator tells you. Then she won’t know.”

“OK, I’ll do it now.”

“But let’s pack and check out. I’ll wait in the lobby.”

“Yes, that’s the best way. I’ll do it.”

So I packed and went down, and he checked us out. Then he sat down to wait, and I said, “I’ll make it as quick as I can, and then we can have breakfast. In the bus terminal would be nice.”

“OK, I’ll be right here.”

I went out and walked down the street and, sure enough, there was the drugstore. I went in and changed five dollars into quarters, nickels, and dimes. Then I went in the booth and dialed. But I kept getting a busy. That was Mother, it turned out, calling the dispatcher downtown of Steve’s trucking company to say he couldn’t drive that day for reasons I’ll get to later. Then she had to call his replacement, guy name of Jim Dolan, to tell him he had to drive — take the Parcel Post up to New York, then pick up wine off the boats, off the French Line boats at their pier, and bring it back on the down trip next day. So it kept her on the phone, and that’s why I couldn’t get through. I guess it went on for twenty minutes, until the fourth or fifth time that I tried, and then at last Mother came on. I said, “Mother, this is Mandy.”

“...Well! Where are you? And what have you been up to?”

“Mother, is that how you talk to me? When I call with love in my heart? To explain to you what I did. I mean leaving home that way and leaving that note for you.”

“I asked what you’ve been up to.”

“Who says I’ve been up to anything?”

“You must have been. What about that coat?”

“...What coat?”

Because I own up that caught me completely off guard, and I had to stall, to get my mind together. She said, “The one you showed Ed Vernick!”

“How do you know about that?”

“He called me, that’s how I know. To warn me that something went on — and put himself on notice. He did not mean to be dragged in. I ask you once more, where did you get it?”

“...From a store is where, a Baltimore store.”

“You mean you stole it?”

“I mean I bought it.”

“With what?”

“Money, what do you think?”

“Yes, but where did you get it?”

“...I found it. On the floor of a car.”

“What car?”

“I don’t care to say what car!”

“The whole thing sounds like what Ed Vernick said, a mess. And you’re not telling the truth about where you got that money! I don’t believe you found it, on the floor of a car or anywhere. Mandy, if some man gave it to you, you’re going to pay a price, you’re going to pay one awful price, I warn you. Mandy, while you can, I beg you come home. It’s only...”

“Mother, I can’t, I won’t.”

“Where are you?”

“That I prefer not to say.”

“Mandy, I have to know!”

“Mother, I promised not to say.”

“Promised whom?”

“It’s none of your business whom.”

She began hooking it up then, with loud, snuffly sobs, about all she’d done for me, giving me “money, clothes, everything,” and what a pest I’d been, “since the day you were born, bringing me nothing but grief.” And then, “taking off that way, and leaving me that note. I never read such a thing in my life. And on top of that, going to see Ed Vernick and flaunting a mink coat at him. What on earth possessed you?”

“Mother, cool it.”

“...You dare say such a thing to me?”

“I do. Cool it. Knock it off!”

For some moments she didn’t speak, and then in a different, more sensible tone she asked me, “Where are you?”

“I said I prefer not to say.”