Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“Sure.”

“Is she still angry?”

“I don’t know,” Gillian said, shrugging.

“She’ll get over it. You see, Gillian, she doesn’t know what we know, now does she?”

“What’s that, Dad?”

“She doesn’t know you’re going to be a grrrreat actress, now does she? She thinks you’re going to take all those lessons and then go knocking on producers’ doors or wherever it is starving young actresses go knocking, and then taking parts in summer stock, and bits in the chorus, that’s what your mother thinks. But we know, don’t we, Gilly?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Sure we do.” He nodded. “ I know, Gilly. I know. ” He nodded silently and then said, “Gilly, do you know what I’d like to do right now?”

“What, Dad?”

“I’d like to go into the bar on the corner and show off my grownup daughter to my friends. What do you say, Gilly? Have you taken to drinking beer yet?”

“Oh, Daddy, I’m underage,” she said, smiling. “They wouldn’t serve me.”

“Do they serve you in Talmadge, Connecticut?”

“No, but we sneak beer into the dorm from the grocery store,” Gillian said, giggling.

“They’ll serve you here,” he said. “They’d damn well better serve my daughter. Come on.”

He rose and extended his arm to her, and she looped her hand through it, smiling, and thinking again, I should have worn heels.

David showed Mr. Devereaux his first story a few days before Christmas.

It was a story about a man drowning.

He was a little embarrassed about showing it to the j.g., especially after he’d so vehemently objected to the idea of writing one. But one day while he was leaning on one of the depth-charge racks and looking out over the water, he began thinking of that day at the lake. And all at once he wanted to write about it. He’d typed up the story on one of the ship’s machines, and gave it to Devereaux the next day.

“It’s all in capital letters,” he said. “There’re only caps on the radio shack’s typewriters.”

“That’s all right,” Devereaux said. He glanced at the first page. “‘Man Drowning,’ huh? That’s a good title.”

“Yes, sir.” David looked at the manuscript uneasily. “Sir, maybe you’d better let me have it back.”

“Why?”

“Well... it’s pretty bad.”

“Let me be the judge of that, all right?”

“Well, sir, if you want to waste your time with—”

“It’s my time, Regan. Don’t worry about it.”

“Still, sir, it’s pretty bad,” David insisted.

David was right, Devereaux discovered. Not only was the story pretty bad; it was very bad. It was, in fact, totally lacking in quality, totally devoid of any talent. The worthlessness of the manuscript presented Devereaux with a peculiar dilemma. He was aware that had he not prodded David into trying his hand at fiction, David would have gone along writing uninhibited and emotional letters to Miss Hot Pants in Talmadge, Connecticut, and never given a thought to more ambitious stuff. But Devereaux had planted the thought in David’s head, and this was the result of that seed, and the result was pretty awful. So what to do about it now?

Devereaux was disappointed. But more than that, for a reason he could not understand, he took David’s inability as a personal affront, as if a horse he had bet upon heavily had somehow let him down in the stretch. He admitted to himself that David Regan did not possess the tiniest shred of talent, and then he was irrationally annoyed by the lack of talent. How could he have been so fooled?

I made a mistake, that’s all, he reasoned. The kindest thing would be to tell young Regan I made a mistake. He has no talent. I was wrong. That’s the kindest thing to do, and that’s what I will do.

But that was not what he did. Perversely, he continued to believe that David had willfully tricked him into a false belief. Perversely, and completely unconsciously, he pursued a course over which he had very little real control.

He asked to see David three days after Christmas, long after he had read the story, long after his initial disappointment had had an opportunity to harden into an angry resentment. The black gang had discovered babbitt in the engines and reported it to the captain, who had asked that the Hanley be sent back into dry dock. The two met in Combat Information Center, the radar shack. A small palm tree, which the boys had brought aboard and decorated with homemade Christmas ornaments, sat in the center of the plotting board, lighted from below.

“Come on over here,” Devereaux said, and they went to the table just inside the doorway, on the bulkhead behind the Sugar George. The radarmen usually stood voice radio watch when they were in port, a duty that had been curtailed while the ship was in dry dock. A radio receiver was on the shelf above the table, the earphones dangling. Devereaux unplugged the phones and threw them to a corner of the table. He snapped on a light. “This is a pretty good story, Regan,” he said. “Why’d you choose to write about a man drowning?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“My name is George,” Devereaux said, and then wondered why he had said it.

“Sir?”

“George. Call me George. Let’s cut out this officer-enlisted man bunk. We’re here to get some real work done, aren’t we? This is a little more important than twiddling radar dials.”

“Yes, sir.”

“ George ,” Devereaux said.

“George,” David repeated hesitantly. He wet his lips.

“Good. Why’d you start your story this way, David?”

“Because that’s the way it...” David stopped. “I don’t know, sir. It came to me that way.”

“Is this a true story? Is that it?”

“No, sir.”

“George.”

“George. It isn’t, George. I made it up.”

“Who’s the man in this story, David?”

“Nobody I know, si... George.”

“Your father?”

David was silent.

“Your father, David?”

“Yes, sir,” he said softly.

Devereaux nodded. “That’s all right. That’s a good way to begin. A lot of writers use personal experiences as a springboard. Is this the way he died, David? By drowning?”

“Y... yes, sir. That... that was the way it happened.”

“I see. Well, I’ll tell you what I’d like you to do, David. That is, if you really want to, if you think you’ve got the stamina it takes.”

“Wh... what’s that, sir?”

“I’d like you to rewrite this story.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because I think we can sell it.”

“Sell it?”

“To one of the magazines. Oh, you won’t get much for it, but it’ll be a start. What do you say, David?”

“Well, George, I...” It was easier to say the name now, somewhat easier, but still a little strange. “I don’t know, George. Do you really think it has a chance?”

“Absolutely,” Devereaux said. “Now here’s what I think is wrong with it.”

He did not tell David everything he thought was wrong with it. In his honest opinion, everything was wrong with it, and nothing was right, and his criticism would have filled three volumes of tiny print. But he did point out a few of the errors to David, and all the while he wondered why he didn’t simply tell David the truth.

He was pleased, he was almost delighted, when David let him down once more with the revisions. If anything, the rewrite made the story worse than it was originally. Devereaux suspected this would happen, but the horror of the writing soared beyond his wildest dreams. This was terrible, absolute garbage! How could he have been so fooled by those letters?

“This is beautiful,” he said to David. “But I’ll tell you something, David, do you mind?”