“But she has her heart set on living here,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “She likes it. But if she had to, she could give it up. I think in the long run she’ll want to give it up. After she’s had to keep it running without Charley. In some respects, it’s more of a liability than an asset.” Getting to his feet, he wandered around the living room. “It’s nice. It’s really a marvelous house to live in. But it’d take a really well-off person to maintain it. It’s a constant drain. A person could wind up a slave to it, trying to keep it going. I don’t think I’d ever want to do that; I hope to hell I don’t get in that position.” He did not seem to be especially talking to me; I sensed that he was actually thinking out loud.
I said, “Are you and Fay going to get married?”
He nodded. “As soon as I get my divorce from Gwen. We’ll probably get a Mexican divorce and remarriage. There’s no waiting period.”
I said, “Since Charley didn’t leave her very much, won’t you have to go to work full time to support her and the children?”
“There’s the trust fund to support the kids,” he said. “And she’ll be getting enough from the factory and her property in Florida to maintain this place.”
“I really don’t want to give my share up,” I said. “I want to live here.”
“Why?” he said, turning to face me. “My god, it’s got three bathrooms and four bedrooms—you’d be living alone, one person in this huge house. This place was built for five or six people to live in. All you need is a rented room.”
I said nothing.
“You’ll go out of your mind, here,” Nat said. “All alone. When Charley first went to the hospital, Fay almost went crazy alone, and she had the girls to keep her company.”
“And you,” I said.
To that he had no comment.
“I feel I have to stay here,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because,” I said, “it’s my duty.”
“To what?”
“My duty to him,” I said, letting it slip out before I realized what I had done.
Without difficulty, he grasped whom I meant. “You mean because he left half the house to you, you feel you must live here?”
“Not exactly,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him that I knew that Charley was still in the house.
Nat said, “Since you can’t do it, it doesn’t matter whether it’s your duty or not. As I see it, your choice isn’t whether to give up your share. It’s whether you’ll sell it and get something for it, or simply lose it and get nothing. With a thousand dollars cash and thirty-eight dollars every month you could establish yourself very nicely in town. Rent a nice apartment, buy clothes, eat out in good restaurants. Go out in the evenings and have a big time. Right? And meanwhile you’d be using the money he left for psychiatric care. And if you had psychiatric care you’d be a lot better off. Let’s face it.”
He had picked up that phrase, “let’s face it,” from my sister. It’s interesting how one person’s vocabulary affects another person. Everyone who ever had anything to do with her winds up saying that, and also, “in my entire life.” And, “my good god.” Not to mention the really foul language.
“I just don’t want to leave this house,” I repeated. And then, suddenly, I remembered something that I had forgotten. And it was something that Nat did not know. Or if he did, he did not accept.
The world was coming to an end in a month. So it didn’t matter what happened after that. I only had to stay here a month, not forever. Then there would be no house.
I told Nat that I couldn’t decide, that I still had to think it over. He went back home, and I sat by myself in the living room, for most of the night, considering.
At last, about four in the morning, I came to a decision. I got into the bed in the study and slept, sleep being something I badly needed. Then, the next morning, I got up at eight o’clock, took a bath and shaved, dressed, ate some Post’s 40% Bran Flakes and toast and jam—which wasn’t very much to take—and then set out along the road toward the Inverness Wye. There was one job-possibility that I had overlooked that I wanted to try. At the Wye was a vet’s, not one that worked merely with sick dogs and cats, as the ones in town did, but with sheep and cattle and horses as well as smaller livestock. Since at one time I had worked for a vet’s, it seemed to me that I might have a chance, here.
However, after I had talked to the vet, I discovered that it was a family-run affair, the doctor and his wife and ten year old son and father. The ten year old boy did the feeding and sweeping that I had in mind, so I started back toward Drake’s Landing.
At least I had explored every possibility.
Approximately at twelve-thirty in the afternoon I got back to the house. I right away telephoned Nat Anteil’s number.
It was Fay who answered. Evidently Nat was either at work or doing his homework.
“I’ve come to a decision,” I told my sister.
“My goodness,” she said.
I said, “I’ll sell you my half of the house for the thousand dollars down and the rest in payments, if you’ll let me live in the house for the next month. And I have to be able to use the furniture and food and everything, so I can really live there.”
“It’s a deal,” Fay said. “You horse’s ass. You better not eat any of those steaks in the freezer. None of the t-bone or sirloin or New York cut. There’s forty dollars worth of steaks in there.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “The steaks don’t count. But I can eat any other food I find. And I want the money right away. Within the next day or two, no longer. And I don’t have to pay any of the utility bills for the month.”
“There’s things we need,” Fay said. “All the children’s things. Their clothes—good god, my clothes, a million things. I don’t want to move all those things out and then move them back in again. Why do you have to have it for a month? Can’t you go back and stay with those nuts the Hambros?”
So even though she had agreed she was trying to get me out. I felt the futility of trying to make any rational agreement with her. “Tell Nat that I agree,” I said, “if I can stay a month. I’ll work it out with him. You’re too unscientific.”
After a few more exchanges she said good-bye, and we both hung up. Anyhow, I considered that I had agreed, even if it wasn’t in writing. The house would be mine until the end of April—or, more accurately and realistically, until April twenty-third.
19
At nine in the morning, Nathan Anteil met his lawyer in the corridor outside department three of the San Rafael Courthouse. His witness was with him, a plump, scholarly man who had known both him and Gwen for a number of years.
The three of them left the courthouse and went across the street to a coffee shop. In a booth they sat discussing what the lawyer would want done and how. Neither Nat nor his witness had ever been inside a court of law before.
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” the lawyer said. “You go up on the stand and then I ask you a lot of questions that you answer by saying yes; for instance, I ask you, isn’t it true that you were originally married October 10, 1958, and you answer yes; then I ask you, isn’t it true that you’ve been a resident of Marin County for a period in excess of three months, and so forth. I ask you isn’t it true that your wife treated you in a manner involving cruel and unaffectionate behavior that caused you acute humiliation in public and before friends, and that her treatment had the result that you suffered mental and physical privation, resulting in inability to perform your job and that the result of this was that you could not carry on your life and meet your obligations in a way satisfactory to you.” The lawyer droned on, gesturing with rapid, sharp flutters of his right hand. Nat noticed that the man’s hands were unusually white and small, that his wrist had no hair on it. The nails were perfectly manicured, and it occurred to him that this was almost like a woman’s hands. Evidently the lawyer did no physical work of any sort.