Kurt Vonnegut - Jailbird

Now she began to lean her shopping bags against my legs, as though I were a convenient fireplug. There were six of them, which I would later study at leisure. They were from the most expensive stores in town — Henri Bendel, Tiffany's, Sloane's, Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale's, Abercrombie and Fitch. All but Abercrombie and Fitch, incidentally, which would soon go bankrupt, were subsidiaries of The RAHJAC Corporation. Her bags contained mostly rags, pickings from garbage cans. Her most valuable possessions were in her basketball shoes.

I tried to ignore her. Even as she entrapped me with her bags, I kept my gaze on the face of Leland Clewes. "You're looking well," I said.

"I'm feeling well," he said. "And so is Sarah, you'll be happy to know."

"I'm glad to hear it," I said. "She's a very good girl." Sarah was no girl anymore, of course.

Clewes told me now that she was still doing a little nursing, as a part-time thing.

"I'm glad," I said.

To my horror, I felt as though a sick bat had dropped from the eaves of a building and landed on my wrist. The shopping-bag lady had taken hold of me with her filthy little hand.

"This is your wife?" he said.

"My what?" I said. He thought I had sunk so low that this awful woman and I were a pair! "I never saw her before in my life!" I said.

"Oh, Walter, Walter, Walter," she keened, "how can you say such a thing?"

I pried her hand off me; but the instant I returned my attention to Clewes, she snapped it onto my wrist again.

"Pretend she isn't here," I said. "This is crazy. She has nothing to do with me. I will not let her spoil this moment, which means a great deal to me."

"Oh, Walter, Walter, Walter," she said, "what has become of you? You're not the Walter F. Starbuck I knew."

"That's right," I said, "because you never knew any Walter F. Starbuck, but this man did." And I said to Clewes, "I suppose you know that I myself have spent time in prison now."

"Yes," he said. "Sarah and I were very sorry."

"I was let out only yesterday morning," I said.

"You have some trying days ahead," he said. "Is there somebody to look after you?"

"I'll look after you, Walter," said the shopping-bag lady. She leaned closer to me to say that so fervently, and I was nearly suffocated by her body odor and her awful breath. Her breath was laden not only with the smell of bad teeth but, as I would later realize, with finely-divided droplets of peanut oil. She had been eating nothing but peanut butter for years.

"You can't take care of anybody!" I said to her.

"Oh — you'd be surprised what all I could do for you," she said.

"Leland," I said, "all I want to say to you is that I know what jail is now, and, God damn it, the thing I'm sorriest about in my whole life is that I had anything to do with sending you to jail."

"Well," he said, "Sarah and I have often talked about what we would like to say most to you."

"I'm sure," I said.

"And it's this." he said, " 'Thank you very much, Walter. My going to prison was the best thing that ever happened to Sarah and me.' I'm not joking. Word of honor: It's true."

I was amazed. "How can that be?" I said.

"Because life is supposed to be a test," he said. "If my life had kept going the way it was going, I would have arrived in heaven never having faced any problem that wasn't as easy as pie to solve. Saint Peter would have had to say to me, 'You never lived, my boy. Who can say what you are?' "

"I see," I said.

"Sarah and I not only have love," he said, "but we have love that has stood up to the hardest tests."

"It sounds very beautiful," I said.

"We would be proud to have you see it," he said. "Could you come to supper sometime?"

"Yes — I suppose," I said.

"Where are you staying?" he said.

"The Hotel Arapahoe," I said.

"I thought they'd torn that down years ago," he said.

"No," I said.

"You'll hear from us," he said.

"I look forward to it," I said.

"As you'll see," he said, "we have nothing in the way of material wealth; but we need nothing in the way of material wealth."

"That's intelligent," I said.

"I'll say this though:" he said, "The food is good. As you may remember, Sarah is a wonderful cook."

"I remember," I said.

And now the shopping-bag lady offered the first proof that she really did know a lot about me. "You're talking about that Sarah Wyatt, aren't you?" she said.

There was a silence among us, although the uproar of the metropolis went on and on. Neither Clewes nor I had mentioned Sarah's maiden name.

I finally managed to ask her, woozy with shapeless misgivings, "How do you know that name?"

She became foxy and coquettish. "You think I don't know you were two-timing me with her the whole time?" she said.

Given that much information, I no longer needed to guess who she was. I had slept with her during my senior year at Harvard, while still squiring the virginal Sarah Wyatt to parties and concerts and athletic events.

She was one of the four women I had ever loved. She was the first woman with whom I had had anything like a mature sexual experience.

She was the remains of Mary Kathleen O'Looney!

"I was his circulation manager," said Mary Kathleen to Leland Clewes very loudly. "Wasn't I a good circulation manager, Walter?"

"Yes — you certainly were," I said. That was how we met: She presented herself at the tiny office of The Bay State Progressive in Cambridge at the start of my senior year, saying that she would do absolutely anything I told her to do, as long as it would improve the condition of the working class. I made her circulation manager, put her in charge of handing out the paper at factory gates and along breadlines and so on. She had been a scrawny little thing back then, but tough and cheerful and highly visible because of her bright red hair. She was such a hater of capitalism, because her mother was one of the women who died of radium poisoning after working for the Wyatt Clock Company. Her father had gone blind after drinking wood alcohol while a night watchman in a shoe-polish factory.

Now what was left of Mary Kathleen bowed her head, responded modestly to my having agreed that she had been a good circulation manager, and presented her pate to Leland Clewes and me. She had a bald spot about the size of a silver dollar. The tonsure that fringed it was sparse and white.

Leland Clewes would tell me later that he almost fainted. He had never seen a woman's bald spot before.

It was too much for him. He closed his blue eyes and he turned away. When he manfully faced us again, he avoided looking directly at Mary Kathleen — just as the mythological Perseus had avoided looking at the Gorgon's head.

"We must get together soon," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"You'll be hearing from me soon," he said.

"I hope so," I said.

"Must rush," he said.

"I understand," I said.

"Take care," he said.

"I will," I said.

He was gone.

Mary Kathleen's shopping bags were still banked around my legs. I was as immobilized and eye-catching as Saint Joan of Arc at the stake. Mary Kathleen still grasped my wrist, and she would not lower her voice.

"Now that I've found you, Walter," she cried, "I'll never let you go again!"

Nowhere in the world was this sort of theater being done anymore. For what it may be worth to modern impresarios: I can testify from personal experience that great crowds can still be gathered by melodrama, provided that the female in the piece speaks loudly and clearly.

"You used to tell me all the time how much you loved me, Walter," she cried. "But then you went away, and I never heard from you again. Were you just lying to me?"

I may have made some responsive sound. "Bluh," perhaps, or "fluh . . . "