Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

“Would I like it?” He said soberly, “Don’t think I haven’t wondered. Some parts, you’d surely like.”

She murmured, “Let’s skip those parts, Chuck. I know about them. Like the poem. There is some corner of Lenore Bailey that is forever Chuck. The part of me that grew up with you. Skip that.”

“I don’t know about the rest of it, from your angle,” he said. “Being married, making your way in the world, having kids is one hell of a hard assignment, it looks like, from the visible record. Even my folks have had rugged periods—Dad walked out twice on Mom when they were younger—and Mom went three times to Ruth’s home. Once for a week. Taking me with her, though I was too little to recall it.”

“I can tell you.” Lenore listened to the ghostly, tinkling waterfall a moment. “For six months, maybe a year, I’d love it. We’d get the Edgeplains cottage. I’d fancy it all up. I’d make do with the clothes I have—plenty, God knows, for a long while. Then it would rain and snow and I’d catch colds and somebody would patronize me at church and so on. Next I’d see our cottage was just a lousy little bungalow, in a row, with dozens like it—and dozens of young women imprisoned there like me—breeding, probably—as I’d be. Then I’d start to hate it.

Mother and Dad, of course, would be completely off me, drinking too much, taking my marriage to you as their final, personal disaster.”

“It might—just might—serve them right,” he said grimly.

“Perhaps. Still, they are my father and mother. Mother’s unscrupulous, but I sometimes think it’s because she never had a chance to be anything better. And Dad’s weak. His mother spoiled him before he had a chance.”

“Is that any reason why you…?”

“No. It isn’t. But look at it another way. They spoiled me. They saw to it, all my life, I had absolutely everything a girl could want to look luxurious, feel luxurious, be luxurious—”

“You were going to throw it overboard in college to be a scientific research worker….”

“I talked about it. But I didn’t do it, did I, Chuck?”

“No. Marriage is important, too, though. Love is.”

“Look at it the other way. Suppose, just suppose, I married Kit.”

“Has he asked you?”

“No. He hasn’t.”

Chuck felt relieved—then alarmed. “Just what, then, has he asked for, all the time you’ve been spending with him?”

Lenore smiled a little. “That? He asked that immediately.”

He straightened. “The no-good, God-damned—”

“You stop, dope! Kit’s the kind of person who always asks that right off, of any girl. It’s just like manners with him. If she says ‘No,’ he accepts it.”

“I’ll bet!”

“I’m trying to tell you. You want to try to see how I feel? Or shall we go home?”

“I’ll listen,” he answered sullenly.

“All right. Then try to hear what I’m trying to say. Maybe my parents aren’t as sweet and loving and noble as yours. Maybe they’re climbers and kind of crumby at times. They are. But they are still my parents. Now, if Kit ever proposed and I said ‘Yes,’ a whole lot of very important and terrifying and real problems would come to an end forever. I wouldn’t love him—no. We wouldn’t have as many things in common as—other men I know. One other anyhow. But at least I’d never be in a spot where I’d wilt at the Sight of my own house and hate myself for working so hard and despise never getting ahead fast enough to keep up with the bills. Don’t you see, Chuck, either way it wouldn’t be a perfect deal?”

“Not if you keep it on a dollars-and-cents basis. No.”

“It keeps itself on that basis. Where might I be, either way, in ten more years? On one hand, with a lot of kids—probably bad-tempered, embittered, envious, and ready to slip out and have fun on the side if I got the chance. On the other hand, I’d have everything in the world, and so would my folks, and I wouldn’t be a physical wreck—”

“This is all a lot of nonsense,” he said.

“Women,” she answered, “shouldn’t ever try to tell men what they really think! What they have to consider —when men won’t!”

“Some men consider other matters are more important than living-room drapes.”

“Don’t you think I do, too!” Her voice was urgent. “What in hell, Charles Conner, do you think I’ve gotten to be twenty-four years old without marrying for? I’ll tell you. You. I’ve had hundreds of offers and chances to enlarge a friendship into a gold hoop. Rich men, bright men, men in college, men from Kansas City, New York-even. Only first you had to take another year for architecture. Architecture, of all the hard-to-learn, hard-to-rise-in things! Then, two years for the army. And now, who knows? What if they start a new little war someplace? Maybe I’ll be fifty when you can afford a wife.” She stopped very suddenly, caught her breath and stared in the dimness. “Charley,” she whispered, “you’re crying.”

He blew his nose. “Maybe I was,” he said unevenly. “It’s a little hard to take it-like that.

Brick by lousy brick. Maybe, Lenore, you better give up the marathon. Maybe you are right. It’s so damned hard for a guy to separate how he feels and what he wants-from the facts.”

She came close to him, familiarly, because she’d been close to him often before, in cars, on hayrides, on warm pine needles at picnics, in movie theaters. “It’s a rotten time for young people.”

“For people,” he agreed, putting back his handkerchief.

“Charles?”

“Right here.” He kissed her forehead.

“Tomorrow, you’ll be gone.”

“Don’t remind we.”

“Charles. Why do we have to do like this all our lives?”

“For freedom,” he said ironically. “For God, for Country, and for Yale.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“You always do, Lenore.”

“Have you made love to other girls?”

“Some,” he admitted.

“I mean—really. Actually.”

“No.”

She hesitated. “Me—-either.”

“I know,” he nodded, his head moving against her dark hair. “That, I always knew.”

“With things like this, and you going away…”

He said, “Nix.”

“I always felt,” her voice faltered and went on, “I mean, if anybody else but you, Chuck—was—the first one—I’d hate that.”

“I’m agin it, myself.” She could feel his jaw set.

“Then….”

He let go of her. He leaned forward and started the engine. This, he said to himself, is the hardest goddam thing I hope I’ll ever have to do in this world! ‘We could go,” he said in a strained voice, “to one of the many pretty motels and spend the next few hours. And then Lenore would belong—spiritually—to Chuck. They call it spiritual when they mean anything but. I love you, gal. I always may. But if I start showing you how much, dear, it won’t be in some motel, and it won’t be a sample. Okay?”

“That’s okay, Chuck.” She exhaled a tremulous, relieved sigh. “I just wanted to be sure, Chuck.” He swung around suddenly and kissed her harshly on the lips. “Shut up, now, baby. I know what you wanted to be sure of! That’s one of the reasons I care for you. You’re a game dame.”

“I—I—wouldn’t want you to think I—cheated on you—I mean—held out—because of any reason you disagreed with.”

“Must I shout?” He managed to grin. “I know what you mean. And now, I’m taking you back home—before I forget what I mean.”

More and more, Coley Borden had taken to standing by the window, especially at night, or on dark afternoons, when the big buildings were lighted. Sometimes when he looked for a long while, he’d sit on the sill—twenty-seven stories above the street, above the people-ants, the car-beetles—watching the last thunderstorm of summer, for instance. When his secretary came into his office, to announce a visitor or to bring copy for the Transcript, he’d be there, while black clouds tumbled behind the silhouette of the two cities, while the dull light Battened them so they resembled cardboard cutouts of skyscrapers, and until shafts of storm-stabbing sun restored dimension to the soaring cityscape.