“Memories, my dear. Memories.”
“Well, I’ve got a few memories myself, but I don’t go spreading them out in the middle of a table every couple of weeks.” She leaned over his shoulder to get a closer look at the picture taken at the ranch. “You look like you were a real lively bunch.”
“We were, thirty years ago.”
“Oh go on, you haven’t changed so much.”
“Not as much as Curly anyway,” he said grimly. “I looked him up last time I went through Albuquerque, and I hardly recognized him. He was an old man already, and his hands were so crippled by arthritis he couldn’t even play pinochle anymore, let alone work cattle. We talked about old times for a while, and he said he’d drop in on me next time he came to Chicago. But we both knew he’d never make it.”
“Well, don’t dwell on it,” Muriel said brusquely. “That’s the trouble with your poking around in the past like this — you get to dwelling on things. You mark my words, Stan Fielding. That old suitcase of yours is your worst enemy in this world. And if you were smart, you’d take it right down to the pier and chuck it in the briny with a farewell and amen.”
“I don’t claim to be smart. I’m thirsty, though. Bring me out a beer like a good wife, will you? It’s a hot day.”
“You’re not going to make it any cooler by lapping up beer,” she said. But she went out to the kitchen anyway, because she liked his reference to her being a good wife. They’d only been married for a month, and while she wasn’t passionately in love with him, he had many qualities she admired. He was kinder, in or out of his cups, than any man she’d ever known; he had a sense of humor and good manners and a fine head of hair and all his teeth. Above all, though, she appreciated his gift of gab. No matter what anyone said, really educated people with brains, Stan could always top them. Muriel was proud to be the wife of a man who had an answer for everything even though it might be, and often was, wrong. Being wrong, in a classy way, was to Muriel every bit as good as being right.
His easy manner of conversation had encouraged Muriel and emboldened her. From the taciturn and rather timid woman he’d met in Dallas she had developed into quite a loud and lively talker. She knew she had nothing to fear from him no matter what she said. He took all spoken words, including his own, with a grain of salt and a shrug. To written words his attitude was different. He believed absolutely everything he read, even flat contradictions, and when he received a letter, he treated it as if it were a message from a king, delivered via diplomatic pouch and much too special to be opened immediately. He always spent at least five minutes turning it over, examining it, holding it up to the light, before he finally slit the envelope.
When Muriel returned with his beer, she found him hunched over one of the letters, looking tense and anxious, as if this were the first time he’d read it instead of the fiftieth.
Most of the letters from Daisy he had read aloud to her, and she couldn’t understand his excitement over such dull stuff: The weather was warm. Or cold. The roses were out. Or in. Went to the dentist, the park, the beach, the museum, the movies... Probably a nice girl, this Daisy of his, Muriel thought, but not very interesting.
“Stan.”
“Eh?”
“Here’s your beer.”
“Thanks,” he said, but he didn’t reach for it immediately, as he usually did, and she knew this letter must be one of the bad ones he didn’t read aloud or talk about.
“Stan, you won’t get the blues, will you? I hate when you get the blues. It’s lonesome for me. Bottoms up, eh?”
“In a minute.”
“Hey, I know. Why don’t you show me the picture of the guy that looked like Abraham Lincoln? He must have been a real card, that one. Tell me about him, Stan, about how you would have been Secretary of State, wearing a top hat and a cutaway...”
“You’ve heard it before.”
“Tell me again. I’d like a good laugh. It’s so hot in here I’d like a good laugh.”
“So would I.”
“What’s stopping us, then? We’ve got a lot to laugh about.”
“Sure. I know.”
“Don’t get the blues, Stan.”
“Don’t worry.” He put the letter back in the envelope, wishing that he hadn’t reread it. It had been written a long time ago, and there was nothing he could do now to change things. There was nothing he could have done then either. What bothered him was that he hadn’t tried, hadn’t phoned her, written to her, gone to see her.
“Come on, Stan. Bottoms up and mud in your eye, eh?”
“Sure.” He drank the beer. It had a musky odor, as if it had been chilled and warmed too many times. He wondered if he had the same odor for the same reason. “You’re a good woman, Muriel.”
“Oh, can that now,” she said with an embarrassed and pleased little laugh. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
“No? Don’t bet on it.”
“I think you’re swell. I did right from that first night I saw you.”
“Then you’re dead wrong. Stone cold dead wrong.”
“Oh, Stan, don’t.”
“There comes a time when every man must evaluate his own life.”
“Why pick a time like this, a nice sunny Saturday morning when we could hop on a bus and go out to the zoo? Why don’t we do that, eh, go out to the zoo?”
“No,” he said heavily. “Let the monkeys come and look at me if they want a good laugh.”
The fear in her eyes was turning into bitterness, and her mouth looked as though it had been tightened by a pair of pliers. “So you got the blues, you got them after all.”
He didn’t seem to hear. “I let her down. I always let her down. Even last Monday I walked out on her. I shouldn’t have walked out on her like that without an apology or an explanation. I’m a coward, a bum. That’s what Pinata called me, a bum.”
“You told me that before. You told me all about it. Now why don’t you forget it? If you ask me, he had his nerve. He may be a bigger bum than you are for all you know.”
“So now you’re calling me a bum, too.”
“No, honest, I didn’t mean it like the way it sounded. I only...”
“You should have meant it. It’s true.”
She reached down suddenly and pounded her fist on the table. “Why don’t you keep that damned suitcase locked up the way it ought to be?”
He looked at her with a kind of sorrowful affection. “You really shouldn’t scream like that, Muriel.”
“And why not? I’ve got things to scream about, why shouldn’t I scream?”
“Because it doesn’t become a lady. ‘The Devil hath not, in all his quiver’s choice, an arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.’ Remember that.”
“You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you, even if you got to pinch it from the Bible.”
“Lord Byron, not the Bible.”
“Stan, put the suitcase away, will you?” She picked up the chain leash from the floor and held it out to him. “Let’s lock everything up and put the suitcase under the bed again and pretend you never opened it, how about that? I’ll help you.”
“No. I can do it myself.”
“Do it, then. Do it.”
“All right.” He began replacing everything in the battered suitcase, the photographs and letters and clippings, the petrified wood and circus cane and box made of porcupine quills. “I’m fifty-three,” he said abruptly.
“Well, I know. I must say you don’t look it, though. You’ve got a fine head of hair. I bet there’s many a man not forty yet who envies...”
“Fifty-three. And this is all I have to show for all those years. Not much, is it?”
“As much as most.”
“No, Muriel, don’t try to be kind. I’ve had too much kindness given to me in my life, too many allowances and excuses made for me. I don’t deserve a good girl like Daisy. And then to think I walked out on her, didn’t even stay to say hello or to see how she looked after all these years. She used to be such a pretty little girl with those big innocent blue eyes and a smile so shy and sweet...”