Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

There was a soft, sighing sound at the window, and Cahill saw that the wind had grown stronger and that it had begun to snow. A thin shower of snow sifted in through the open window, making a pale pattern on the floor. Fair and warmer, Cahill thought angrily, that’s what the forecasters said. The liars of science, portentously surrounded by inaccurate instruments, confidently deluding you with false visions of the future. Like Dr. Manners, armed with stethoscope and X-ray, patting him heartily on the back last Tuesday, telling him of course he occasionally must expect to feel a twinge here, a pain there; he was not as young as he used to be. How many men died on Sunday who had been told during the week by their doctors that they were not as young as they used to be? The breezy assumption on the part of the medical profession that agony was the ordinary condition of life. Manners, he thought resentfully, would be considerably less breezy with himself if it were his chest that trembled to the tone of pain, secret and until now distant, but there, warning, definite. Experimentally, Cahill lifted his left arm and stretched it. Again, as always in the last few months, there was the small answering pressure, dull, lurking, cross his chest, across his heart. “A slight irregularity,” Manners had said. “Just nerves. Nothing to worry about.” Nothing for Manners to worry about, perhaps. And the constriction across the stomach; that, too, according to Manners, was nerves. Nerves, the modern equivalent for Fate, the substitute for the medieval Devil, which attacked mankind in the form of obscure, and often mortal, ills. Nerves, the perfect formula for the lazy diagnostician. Or—and Cahill could feel his breath catching in his throat at the thought—perhaps Manners, out of kindness, was hiding the true information from him. A hearty clap on the back, an innocuous prescription for sugar water and belladonna, and, after the door had closed, a thoughtful, sorrowful shrug, and the fateful entry in the case history of Philip Cahill “Prognosis negative.”

Cahill put the palm of his hand under his pajama jacket, on the warm skin of his abdomen, as though by the touch of flesh on flesh he might discover the dreadful secret that lay there. Within him, under his hand, he could feel a faint, erratic quivering. Not good, he thought, not good at all. His mind touched regretfully on the edge of the word he was afraid to say. The papers were so damned full of it, the posters on the buses, even the radio. And if it occurred in the stomach, it was fatal at least eighty per cent of the time, and you almost never found out about it before it was too late. Maybe that was what Reeves had called about. Maybe Manners had gone to Reeves and explained to him and asked what Reeves thought should be done. The services that friends had to do for each other. You start out as gay children, playing tennis with each other, racing each other across the lakes of summer, roaring jubilantly together on your first drunks, and twenty years later, all that far in the past, you have to go in and announce to your friend that his death is at hand.

Ridiculous, Cahill thought. I’m not going to lie here any longer. He got out of bed and stood up. His legs felt weary and uncertain, and there was the tense, stretched sensation in his stomach as he put on his robe and slippers. He looked over at Edith. She still slept, the rhythm of her breathing unchanged. Walking slowly, his slippers shuffling across the rug, he went silently out of the bedroom. He descended the stairs, holding the banister, shivering a little in the night-frozen house. In the hall below, he went over to the telephone, on the table under the mirror. He hesitated, staring at the phone. The clock in the living room said ten minutes to seven. He picked up the phone and dialed Joe Reeves’ number. While he listened to the long succession of buzzes in the receiver, he stared at himself in the mirror. His face was haggard, his eyes thick and glazed and encircled completely by muddy blue shadows. His rumpled hair looked slack and lustreless, his face exhausted and—hunted. He looked for a moment, then turned his back on the mirror.

Finally, there was the sound of someone picking up the receiver at the other end. Whoever it was fumbled a long time with the instrument, and Cahill said impatiently, “Hello! Hello!” Then he heard a sleepy, dark voice mumbling irritatedly, “Mr. Reeves’ residence. Who that calling?”

“Hello,” Cahill said eagerly. “Violet?”

“Yes. This Violet. Who calling?”

“Violet,” Cahill said, making his voice even and clear, because he remembered with what suspicion Violet regarded the telephone, “this is Mr. Cahill.”

“Who?”

“Cahill. Mr. Cahill.”

“It’s an awful early hour of the mawnin’, Mr. Cahill,” Violet said aggrievedly.

“I know,” Cahill said, “but Mr. Reeves has a message for me. He especially asked me to call him as soon as I could. Is he up yet?”

“I dunno, Mr. Cahill,” said Violet. He could hear her yawn enormously at the other end of the wire. “He’s not here.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s gone. Went last night. He and Mis’ Reeves. They gone for the weekend. I’m the only livin’ soul in the house. And”—her voice took on a tone of impatient complaint—“I’m freezin’ here in my night shirt in this drafty old hall.”

Cahill could sense that Violet was on the verge of hurling the receiver down on the hook—an amusing trick of hers, with which she concluded telephone conversations in mid-message. It was not amusing now. “Violet,” he said urgently, “don’t hang up. Where did they go?”

“Don’t ask me,” Violet said. “They didn’t tell me. You know Mr. Reeves. He was sittin’ around the house last night, real restless, like he is, and all of a sudden he jumped up and said to Mis’ Reeves, ‘Let’s get into the car and get away from here for a couple of days.’ They just packed one little bag. Mis’ Reeves was wearing slacks and she didn’t even bother to change ’em. They just gone for a ride, I guess. They’ll be back by Monday, never you worry.”

Slowly, Cahill put the receiver down. He looked up and saw that Elizabeth was standing at the foot of the stairs, in an almost transparent nightgown, her bathrobe carelessly open and hanging loose from her shoulders. Her dark hair was down, flowing thickly around her throat. Her face was creamy with sleep and her eyes were half closed in an amused, almost condescending smile. “Daddy,” she said, “who on earth are you calling at this fantastic hour? One of your other girls?”

Cahill stared dully at her. Through the frail rayon of her nightdress, he could see, very plainly, the swell of her breasts, rising generously from the exposed, rich skin of her bare bosom. “None of your business,” he said harshly. “Now go upstairs. And when you come down again, make sure you’re decently covered! This is your home. It is not a burlesque house! Is that clear?”

He could see the incredulous, hurt grimace gripping her features, and then the blush, rising from her bosom, flaming on her cheeks. “Yes,” she said faintly. “Yes, Daddy.” She turned, hugging her robe around her ashamedly. Cahill watched her walk slowly and painfully up the stairs. He wanted to say something, call her back, but by now he knew there was nothing to say and that the child would not come back.

He went into the living room and sank into a chair, feeling cold. Wildly, he contemplated the thought of living until Monday.

S he was surprised to see him in the church. She hadn’t known he was in Los Angeles. And there had only been the one notice in the one newspaper—“Ex-State Dept. Officer Dies. William MacPherson Bryant died last night at the Santa Monica Hospital, after a long illness. Entering the foreign service in 1935, he held posts in Washington, Geneva, Italy, Brazil and Spain, before resigning for reasons of health in 1952. The couple were childless and he is survived only by his widow, who, under her maiden name, Victoria Simmons, is the editress of the Women’s Page of this newspaper.”