Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“It won’t be foolish, Julia. You killed me when you said, ‘Yes, it happened in Rome.’ That was death. The rest is only ritual.” He sniffed and said, “I haven’t cried in all the time we’ve been married, have I?”

“No,” she said.

He nodded. “Because I wanted your respect.” He sniffed. “I’m sorry.” He searched for a handkerchief in the pocket of his robe, found none. “Well,” he said. He gave a curious shrug. “Well, you’ll have the boy.”

“Thank you, Arthur.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “You’ll have the boy.”

There was something more in his words, unspoken, yet how could she have really known, there was so much confusion that day. “You’ll have the boy” sounded like a promise, not a threat, and yet he had said, “I’ll die, or I’ll kill myself.” Still, how could she have known? And at the lake, the look in his eyes, did she know then, did she know what he was about to do in that rowboat, did she even suspect? She tried to remember, but that day too was confused in her memory. Perhaps she had known that day at Lake Abundance when the shutter clicked and the boat edged away from the dock, known she was sending her husband to his death, and let him go because this was the only thing left to him. Perhaps she didn’t stop him because she had taken everything else, robbed him of everything else, and now she couldn’t steal from him the one thing left, the one thing he could still do with a measure of dignity and pride. Perhaps she didn’t stop him because she wasn’t that big a bitch yet.

She listened to David snoring in the room next door, listened to the impersonal lake outside lapping at the dock pilings. The night was so still.

She lay alone in the night.

Alone.

The letter had come a few days before Memorial Day in 1943. Her son was in a naval prison, and she was waiting for the war to end, and the letter came in its hesitant Italian hand. She had turned it over to look at the flap, and had seen the name Francesca Cristo, his sister. Hastily, she had ripped open the envelope. The letter spoke of Renato, the letter told what had happened during an Allied bombing attack on the seaplane base at Lido di Roma, fifteen miles southwest of Rome.

“ Mi dispiace che tocca a me di dirtelo, sorella mia, ma egli é morto. ”

I am sorry that it falls on me to have to tell you, my sister, but he is dead.

It was a lovely day, the kind of day David appreciated. Standing by the window in his office, he looked down the twelve floors to the street, saw newspapers sweeping along the gutters on Madison Avenue, the only falling leaves south of Central Park, saw topcoats whipping about the legs of people who rushed into the wind with their heads ducked. There was a pace to the city now that fall was here. Summer died slowly, gins-and-tonics dulled the senses, languid winds lulled the flesh, but in the fall something changed. He smiled and turned away from the window. The New York Times, Herald Tribune, News , and Mirror were stacked on his desk. He glanced at the headlines only cursorily, PRESIDENT INVOKES TAFT ACT IN MOVE TO END PIER STRIKE; SEE PIER STRIKE END BY T-H BAN, and then turned to the television sections and read the reviews of last night’s show. Not too bad. Gould and Crosby had liked it, even if...

“David?”

He looked up. “Yes, Martha?”

“You’ve got an appointment at ten with Mr. Harrigan. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

“No, I haven’t...”

“Good. On those calls...”

“Yes, how’d you make out with MCA?”

“We really did leave that name off the crawl, David.”

“How’d that happen?”

“I’m checking it now.”

“Well, there isn’t much we can do about it, anyway.”

“No, but I can send them the cockroach letter.”

“Okay, what about that judge?”

“David, he’s merely a municipal court judge, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you think he’ll be okay?”

“Sure, he’s only window dressing, anyway. It’s a strong enough show without him.”

“Should we offer him money?”

“Why not?”

“It might offend him.”

“Not if we offer enough.”

“Well, whatever you say,” Martha said dubiously. “Let me see. Was there anything else?”

“Benton and Bowles.”

“Oh, yes. They want to consider the package a little longer, David. They have the feeling a live show would be better for this particular product.”

“What’s live or filmed got to do with it, would you mind telling me?”

“I’m only repeating what they—”

“Get me MacAllister. No, never mind, it’s almost ten. Listen, I don’t want to spend more than a half hour with this Harrigan. Come in at ten-thirty and remind me of a meeting, will you?”

“There is a meeting at eleven,” Martha said. “In Mr. Sonderman’s office. And you’ve got a screening this afternoon at four. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

“And I’d hoped to catch an early train!”

“Are you going up to Talmadge this weekend?”

“Yep. It’s my birthday.”

“No! When’s your birthday? The fourteenth is your birthday.”

“The fourth, Martha. Sunday.”

“Oh, for hell’s sake... Oh, that’s awful. Really, David, that’s awful. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I took a full page in Variety . You mean you didn’t see it?”

“Now what shall I do?” Martha said. “I haven’t anything to give you. I thought it was the fourteenth.”

“You can give me a great big kiss,” David said.

“All right,” Martha answered, smiling. “Your place or mine?”

“Mine, I guess.”

“Now or later?”

“Later. I think I heard someone outside.”

“Mr. Harrigan, probably. Shall I send him right in?”

“Just give me a few minutes to clear my desk.”

“Okay. Happy birthday, stinker. You could have said something.”

She walked out of the office, and he watched her, smiling, thinking how much he liked her and how fortunate he was to have rescued her from the typing pool. Martha Wilkins was a woman in her early thirties, married to an architect, a plain girl who wore her simplicity with such distinction that she created an impression of offbeat glamour. Her dark hair was straight and long in a time when most other women were clipping off their locks with wild boyish abandon. She never wore lipstick to the office, and some of the Sonderman wags claimed she kept her mouth cosmetics-free in order to facilitate the grabbing of a quick kiss by the water cooler. David had never tested the validity of this theory — and he never would. Their working relationship was too good, a quick give-and-take, which he found rare, an understanding, a communication that bordered on linguistic and mental shorthand. The cockroach letter , he thought, and then smiled as he remembered the joke that had provoked the Regan-Wilkins label.

The joke involved a man who was flying on a major airline when a cockroach crawled up the side of his seat and onto his hand. The man indignantly sent a letter to the airline the moment he landed in San Francisco. A few days later, he received a letter from the president of the firm, assuring him that the pilot and copilot on that particular flight had been suspended pending a full investigation, that the stewardesses had been fired without further ado, and that the caterers who provided food for the airline had been notified that their contract would not be renewed when it expired.

“We are distressed about that cockroach, sir,” the letter went on. “It is the first one ever reported in the long history of our company. We are doing everything in our power to see that responsible and effective action in the future prevents any such vermin from being carried aboard our airplanes or remaining there. I sincerely hope you will overlook whatever embarrassment or discomfort the incident may have caused you, and continue to fly with us in safety whenever your needs so dictate. Sincerely yours, J. Abernathy Michaelson, President.”