Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

He had played with the idea of moving her to an apartment of her own in town, with Martha to tend her, but he could not bear the thought of the expression on her face at the moment when he would take her through the door of the house for the last time, stricken by the ingratitude of a son whom she had loved above all things in her life, a son whose shirts she had ironed at midnight after twelve hours on her feet in the store, a son for whom she had sacrificed youth, husband, friends her other two children.

So she stayed on. Rudolph was not one to miss payment on his debts.

“Who is it upstairs? You’ve brought a woman into the house,’ she said accusingly.

‘I’ve never brought a woman into the house, as you put it, Mom,’ Rudolph said, ‘although if I wanted to. I don’t see why I shouldn’t’

‘Your father’s blood,’ his mother said. Dreadful charge.

‘It’s your grandson. I brought him home from school.’

That was no six-year-old boy going up the staircase,’ she said. ‘I have ears.’

‘It isn’t Thomas’s son,’ Rudolph said. ‘It’s Gretchen’s son.’

‘I will not hear that name,’ she said. She put her hands to her ears. Television-watching had left its mark on her gestures.

Rudolph sat on the edge of his mother’s bed and gently took her hands down, holding them. I have been lax, he thought This conversation should have been held years ago.

‘Now listen to me, Mom,’ he said, ‘He’s a very good boy and he’s in trouble and ..’

‘I won’t have that whore’s brat in my house,’ she said.

‘Gretchen is not a whore,’ Rudolph said. ‘Her son is not a brat. And this is not your house.’

‘I was waiting for the day you would finally say those words,’ she said.

Rudolph ignored the invitation to melodrama. ‘He’s going to stay only a few days,’ he said, ‘and he needs kindness and attention and I’m going to give it to him and Martha’s gains

to give it to him and you’re going to give it to him.*

‘What will I ever tell Father McDonnell?’ His mother looked, eyes magnified and blank, up towards Heaven, before whose gates stood, theoretically, Father McDonnell.

‘You’re going to tell Father McDonnell that you have finally learned the virtue of Christian charity,’ Rudolph said.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you’re a fine one to talk about Christian charity. Have you ever seen the inside of a church?’

‘I haven’t got time to argue,’ Rudolph said. ‘Calderwood is expecting me any minute now. I’m telling you how you’re going to behave with the boy.’

‘I will not allow him in my presence,’ she said, quoting from some portion of her favourite reading. ‘I will close my door and Martha will serve my meals in a tray.’

‘You can do that if you want, Mom,’ Rudolph said quietly. ‘But if you do. I’m cutting you off. No more car, no more bridge parties, no more charge accounts, no more beauty parlours, no more dinners for Father McDonnell. Think about it’ He stood up. ‘I’ve got to go now. Martha’s prepared to give Billy dinner. I suggest you join them.’

Tears as he closed his mother’s bedroom door. What a cheap way to threaten an old lady, he thought. Why didn’t she just die? Gracefully, unwaved, unrinsed, unrouged.

There was a grandfather clock in the hallway and he saw that he had time to phone Gretchen if he made an immediate connection to California. He put in the call and made himself another drink while waiting for the call to come through. Calderwood might smell the liquor on his breath and disapprove, but he was past that too. As he sipped his drink he thought of what he had been doing the day before at just this hour. Entwined in twilit warmth in the soft bed, the red-wool stockings strewn on the floor, the sweet warm breath mingled with bis, rum and lemon. Had his mother once lain sweetly in a lover’s arms on a cold December afternoon, clothes carelessly discarded in lover’s haste? The image refused to materialise. Would Jean, old, one day lie in a fussed-up bed, eyes staring behind thick glasses, old lips rouged in scorn and avarice? Better not think about it.

The phone rang and it was Gretchen. He explained the afternoon as quickly as he could and said that Billy was safely with him and that if she thought best he would put Billy on a plane to Los Angeles in two or three days, unless, of course, she wanted to come East.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Put him on a plane.’

A tricky little sense of pleasure. An excuse to get to New York on Tuesday or Wednesday. Jean.

‘I don’t have to tell you how grateful I am, Rudy.’ Gretchen said.

‘Nonsense,’ he said. When I have a son I will expect you to take care of him. I’ll let you know what plane he’s on. And maybe one day soon, I’ll come out and visit you.’

The lives of others.

Calderwood himself answered the door when Rudolph rang. He was dressed for Sunday, even though his Sabbath duties were behind him, dark suit with vest, white shirt, sombre tie, his high, black shoes. There was never enough light in the frugal Calderwood house and it was too dark for Rudolph to see what sort of expression Calderwood had on his face as he said, neutrally, ‘Come in, Rudy. You’re a little late.’

‘Sorry, Mr Calderwood,’ Rudolph said. He followed the old man, who walked heavily now, a certain measured number of steps between him and the grave, to be economised, doled out.

Calderwood led him into the sombre oak-panelled room he called his study, with a big mahogany desk and cracked oak and leather easy chairs. The glassed bookcases were filled with files, records of bills paid. Twenty-year-old transactions that Calderwood still didn’t trust putting in the modest basement vaults where the ordinary business files were kept, open to any clerk’s prying eye.

‘Sit down, Rudy.’ Calderwood gestured towards one of the leather and oak easy chairs. ‘You’ve been drinking, Rudy,’ he said mournfully. ‘My sons-in-law, I regret to say, are also drinkers.’ Calderwood’s two older daughters had married some time before, one a man from Chicago, the other a man from Arizona. Rudolph had the feeling that the girls had picked their mates not out of love, but geography, to get away from their father.

That isn’t what I brought you here to talk about though,’ Calderwood said. ‘I wanted to speak to you man-to-man, when Mrs Calderwood and Virginia were not on the premises. They have gone to the movie show and we can speak freely.’ It was not like the old man to indulge in elaborate preliminaries. He teemed ill at ease, which also was not like him. Rudolph waited, conscious that Calderwood was fiddling th objects on his desk, a paper opener, an old-fashioned inkstand.

‘Rudolph’ Calderwood cleared his throat portentously, ‘I’m surprised at your behaviour.’

‘My behaviour?’ For a wild instant Rudolph thought that Calderwood had somehow found out about himself and Jean.

‘Yes. It’s not like you at all, Rudy.’ The tone was sorrowful now. ‘You’ve been like a son to me. Better than a son. Truthful. Open. Trustworthy.’

The old Eagle Scout, covered with merit badges, Rudolph thought, waiting, wary.

‘Suddenly something has come over you, Rudy,’ Calderwood continued. ‘You have been operating behind my back. With no apparent reason. You know you could have come to the door of my house and rung my bell and I would have been glad to welcome you.’

‘Mr Calderwood,’ Rudolph said, thinking, old age here, too, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’

‘I am talking about the affections of my daughter Virginia, Rudy, don’t deny.’

‘Mr Calderwood’

‘You have been tampering with her affections. Gratuitously. You have stolen where you could have demanded.’ There was anger in the voice now.