As the meeting adjourned, Brendan Mallory said, “Spare a few minutes, Ben?”
It was a command. He went with Mallory to the office of the president on the tenth floor. Mallory was a dapper little man with a narrow mustache and a deceptively ineffectual look. His voice was unerringly brisk and light and casual. But all the hidden force of the man was gathered somewhere and projected through steady bright blue eyes, as intent and merciless as the eyes of a falcon. No man who had endured the special focus of those eyes tended to underestimate Mr. Mallory.
“Sit down, Ben. We never seem to get a chance to chat lately.”
Ben sat in a deep leather chair. Mallory perched on the corner of the desk, arms folded, smiling down at him. “All arguments and no chat,” Ben said, returning the smile, feeling inside himself the special alertness of a blindfolded man on a tightrope.
“I’m very pleased with what you’ve been doing, Ben.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I discussed it with Ed and he agreed we should bring you into the bonus setup, starting this January.”
“I’m very grateful, Mr. Mallory.”
“I wonder if you aren’t pushing yourself a little too hard.”
This, Ben knew, was a direct result of the woolgathering in the special meeting. He carefully broadened his smile, and said, “I don’t feel oppressed, sir. As a matter of fact, I think I do better the heavier the work load is.”
“Everything outside the office is fine?”
“Yes, sir,” Ben said heartily.
“Give my regards to the lovely Virginia, please. Tell her you two are coming for dinner after the holidays. Alice adores you both.”
“We’ll both be looking forward to it, Mr. Mallory.”
“I thought you might be pushing yourself a little too eagerly, because you’ve seemed a little bit drawn and... remote lately, Ben. This has no bearing on your efficiency, but you don’t seem to have the — ah — lift you used to have. That light touch of yours that can take the tension out of sticky situations. And I do believe you’ve become a little less gregarious. I know that lunch with the people you work with all day can be monotonous, but sometimes things are resolved in little unexpected ways.”
Is there anything the little devil doesn’t see? Ben asked himself.
“Maybe I’ve been getting self-important,” Ben said with what he hoped was precisely the right amount of lightness.
“Not you, Ben! That’s a vice you’ll never have. I’m glad things are going well, and it’s been nice to have this little talk.”
“I do appreciate the bonus deal, sir,” he said, getting up.
Mallory shrugged as he led him to the door. “Be assured you earned it, Ben. And because it’s unexpected money, spend it foolishly. It will do you and Ginny good. Sometimes I wonder if you young people aren’t too reliable.”
He gave Ben a parting touch on the shoulder. Not a pat or a slap, but a barely perceptible touch, a curious gesture of reassurance.
Ben decided not to tell Ginny of the bonus. Had he been told the figure, he would have told her. He spent the entire train ride home trying to guess what it would be. He told himself that it would be a glorious $10,000 that would get him even with the board, with some to spare. But that was ridiculously optimistic. He knew the bonus scale of past years, and he knew corporate earnings, and he finally settled on $3500 as being a conservative and reasonable guess.
That evening he went over his financial accounts and saw that his most intelligent use of the money would be to reduce the bank loan by $1500, pay another $1500 on the insurance loan, and leave $500 in the checking account for emergencies.
Had they not previously made an agreement on the cost of the Christmas gifts they would give each other, Ben, in view of the bonus to come, might have refused to set such a small figure — no more than $5, and no cheating, please. After all, they told each other, Christmas is for the kids. And it isn’t the value of the gift anyway. It’s the act of giving.
Something that left a wound deeper than she had any right to expect happened to Ginny Weldon five days before Christmas. She had yet to find the proper $5 gift for Ben and she had begun to feel dismayed at her lack of success.
She was in a gift-shop area, bent on a specific errand, when she happened to notice in a window a beautiful English croquet set in a fitted hardwood box. She walked by the window, stopped abruptly, and turned back. Ben had admired Stan Sheridan’s layout the summer before. They had played a few times at Sheridan’s at afternoon parties on weekends, and Ben had been quite good at it. Afterward he had paced off their back yard and had told her that if they transplanted a few shrubs, there was plenty of room. He had mentioned getting a set quite a few times, saying it would be fun for them and for the kids. But he had never done anything about it.
Ginny knew that this was the perfect present, in spite of the fact that the season was wrong. It was the unusual sort of thing, the fun thing she always tried to find for him. It would be especially for him, but it would be a present for the whole family too. She was filled with a warm glow of excitement and anticipation, and a delight at having found the perfect thing so accidentally. The mallets, balls, and posts were varnished and striped with bright, pure colors in holiday mood.
Her happy sense of the rightness of the gift carried her into the shop and into the hands of a supercilious little clerk who called her “modom” and handed her a mallet from the set on display inside the store. As she held it, smiling with the thought of Ben’s surprise and pleasure, he told her the set was $124.95.
The blunt figures burst the dream. She handed the mallet back to the clerk, said something about thinking it over, and saw him shrug in a slightly patronizing way as he put the mallet back in the open hardwood case.
She walked out, and it took her a few moments to remember the small errand two blocks away. She squared her shoulders as she walked. This year five dollars is the limit. Stick to it, girl. You promised. Don’t cheat, because he won’t. And stop feeling so dreary about it. It isn’t that important.
He had stopped talking about croquet and there was, she knew, a whole list of things he had stopped talking about. As she walked she could see the cumulative weariness of her man, in his face and his posture. And it struck her, a sick blow at the heart, a twist of anguish so intense she was not prepared for it. He doesn’t have any fun, she thought. He is so good and I love him so much, and he doesn’t have any fun any more. Nobody does.
The sound, inadvertent, moved up through her throat, half sob and half cry of protest, and in the instant she realized other people were staring at her with startled curiosity, she felt the tickling run of tears on her face. She turned from them and stood facing a wall of decorative tile that was part of a store front — stood a few inches from it.
There was an insistent tugging at the sleeve of her coat and she looked down into the tear-blurred face, the soft, concerned, gentle face of a small round woman in a derelict fur coat.
“You all right, dearie? Anything I can do, dearie?”
“I’m... all right. Thanks.”
“Sometimes they die around Christmastime, dearie, and it’s God’s will. They wouldn’t do it if they could help it, poor things, but when the next Christmas comes around, it’s dreadful hard. Just get through it, dearie, best you can, and next year won’t be so terrible bad as this one. I know.”
And the woman was gone. Ginny got tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes. In all the ways of pride she pulled herself together. And she went on with Christmas. She could tell herself over and over that it was too like a petulant child to whine about being unable to afford big glossy presents. But the wound had been inflicted, deep enough so that it could not ever heal perfectly.