There was a huge gift-wrapped package in the front hall at Dawn’s house. It was about the size and shape of a door, all wrapped up in colorful paper and miles of ribbon and a big red bow, and a card hung from the bow reading, “Love to Dawn and Orry, from By.”
Dawn frowned and said, “What’s that asshole up to now?”
Rod and Wally and Frank and Bobo had come in with us, and Wally said, “It’s an aircraft carrier. By gave you an aircraft carrier.”
“For God’s sake, open it,” Rod said.
“I’m afraid to,” Dawn told him. She tried to make that sound like a joke, but I could see she really was afraid to open it. I later learned that Byron Cartwright’s sentimentalism was famous for causing embarrassment, but I don’t think even Dawn suspected what he had chosen to send us. I know I didn’t.
Finally it was Wally and Rod who pulled off the bow and the ribbon and the paper, and inside was the wedding day picture, Estelle and me in San Diego, squinting in the sunlight. The picture had been blown up to be slightly bigger than life, and it was in a wooden frame with a piece of glass in front of it, and here were these two stiff uncomfortable figures in grainy gray, staring out of some horrible painful prison of the past. Usually this picture was perfectly ordinary, neither wonderful nor awful, but blown up to life size — larger than life — it became a kind of cruelty.
Everybody stared at it. Wally said, “What the hell is that?”
They hadn’t recognized that earlier me. Dawn wouldn’t have been recognizable anyway, of course, but expanding the original photo had strained the rough quality of the negative beyond its capacity, so that I myself might not have guessed at first the white blob face was mine.
After the first shock of staring at the picture, I turned to look at Dawn, to see her with a face of stone, glaring — with hatred? rage? revulsion? bitterness? resentment? — at her own image in the photograph. She turned her head, flashed me a look of irritation that I’d been watching her, and without a word strode out of the room.
Rod, with the eager look of the born gossip, said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it looks to me like By’s done it again.”
Wally was still frowning at the picture. “What is that?” he said. “Who are those people?”
“Orry? Isn’t that you?”
It was the voice of Frank, the stills man, the professional photographer, who had backed away from the giant picture, across the hall and through the doorway into the next room, until he was distant enough to see it clear. Head cocked to one side, eyes half closed, he was standing against the back of a sofa in there, studying the picture.
At first I didn’t say anything. Wally turned to frown at Frank, then at me, then at the picture, then at me again. “You? That’s you?”
Rod and Bobo were moving toward Frank, squinting over their shoulders at the picture as they went. I said to Wally, “Yes. It’s me.”
“That girl is familiar,” Frank said.
I felt obscurely that Dawn would want to be protected, though I didn’t see how it was going to be possible. “That’s my wife,” I said. “Or, she was my wife. That was our wedding day.”
Rod and Bobo were now standing next to Frank, gazing at the picture, and Wally was moving back to join them. I was like a stage performer, and they were my audience, and the picture was used in my act. Frank said, “I know that girl. What’s her name?”
Rod suddenly said, “Wait a minute, I know that picture! That’s Dawn!”
“Yes,” I said, but before I could say anything else — explain, apologize, defend — Wang came in to say, “Miss Dawn say, everybody out.”
Rod, nodding at the picture and ignoring Wang, said thoughtfully, “Byron Cartwright, the avalanche that walks like a man.”
Wang said to me, “You, too. Miss Dawn say, go away, eat dinner, come back.”
“All right,” I said.
We were joined by Frank’s wife and Wally’s girl and Rod’s friend Dennis in an Italian restaurant that looked like something from a silent movie about Biblical times. Bronze-colored plaster statues, lots of columns, heavily-framed paintings of Roman emperors on the walls. The food was covered with too much tomato sauce.
My story was amazing but short, and when I was done Rod and Wally told stories for the rest of dinner about other disastrous gestures made by Byron Cartwright in the past. He was everyone’s warmhearted uncle, except that his instincts were constantly betrayed by his inability to think through the effect of his activities. As a businessman he was considered one of the best (toughest, coldest, coolest) in his very tough business, but away from the office his affection toward his clients and other acquaintances led him to one horrible misjudgment after another.
(These acts of Byron Cartwright’s were not simple goofs like sending flowers to a hay-fever victim. As with the picture to Dawn and me, each story took about five minutes to explain the characters and relationships involved, the nuances that turned Byron Cartwright’s offerings into Molotov cocktails, and while some of the errors were funny, most of them produced only groans among the listeners at the table. It was Wally who finally summed it up, saying, “Most mutations don’t work, and By is simply one more proof of it. You can’t have an agent with a heart of gold, it isn’t a viable combination.”)
After dinner, Rod drove me back to Dawn’s house, with Dennis a silent worshipper vibrating behind us on the back seat. As we neared the house, Rod said, “May I give you a piece of advice, Orry?” Sure.
“You haven’t known Dawn for a long time, and she’s probably changed a lot.”
“Yes, she has.”
“I don’t think she’ll ever mention that picture again,” Rod told me, “and I don’t think you ought to bring it up either.”
“You may be right.”
“If it’s still there, have Wang get rid of it. If you want it yourself, tell Wang to ship it off to your home. But don’t show it to Dawn, don’t ask her about it. Just deal with Wang.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I agree with you.”
We reached the house, and Rod stopped in front of the door. “Good luck,” he said.
I didn’t immediately leave the car, I said, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“You saw how different Dawn used to be, when she was Estelle Anlic. And if you remember the picture, I haven’t changed very much.”
“Hardly at all. The Navy must agree with you.”
“The reason I came out here,” I said, “was because I had a question in my mind about that. I wanted to know how a person could change so completely into somebody different. Somebody with different looks, a different personality, a whole different kind of life. I mean, when I married Estelle, she wasn’t anybody who could even hope to be a movie star.”
Rod seemed both amused and in some hidden way upset by the question. He said, “You want to know how she did it?”
“I suppose. Not exactly. Something like that.”
“She decided to,” he said. He had a crinkly, masculine, self-confident smile, but at the same time he had another expression going behind the smile, an expression that told me the smile was a fake, a mask. The inner expression was also smiling, but it was more intelligent, and more truly friendly. He said, using that inner expression, “Why did you ask me that question, Orry?”