Resentment drained his strength. He had never approved of Rachael or the marriage; she had maneuvered the kid into it. This proved it.
“That’s what you deserve,” he said.
Art said, “Jesus, we’re glad.”
“Glad!” He was incredulous. “Toss it in the Bay.”
Art repeated, “We’re glad.” He could not understand his brother’s attitude; the viciousness, the cruelty repelled him. “You’re nuts,” he said. “What kind of guy talks like that? You been selling used cars too long.”
“You have a strange idea what being a nut is,” Nat said savagely. “How about your pal Grimmelman and his bombs and maps? I’d call a guy nuts who’s going to blow up the city hall and the police department.”
Art said, “They’re not going to blow up anything. Natural conditions will take care of it.”
“Grow up,” Nat said, irritated and discouraged. He washed his hands of them, his younger brother and Rachael. The hell with them, he thought; he had his own problems. “You can’t expect the world to look after you,” he said. “It’s sink or swim. If you want to keep your head above water, you got to keep fighting.” His outrage swelled. “How do you think this country was founded? By guys sitting around all day, doing nothing?”
“You talk like I committed some crime,” Art muttered.
“Listen here,” Nat said, “a couple years ago I was working for that snow-artist Luke. Now I got a lot of my own. That’s what you can do in a country like this, you can be your own boss and not take nothing from nobody. If you work hard, you can get your own business; you understand?”
Art said, “I don’t want a business.”
“Then what do you want?”
After a long time, Art said, “I just want to stay out of the Army.”
Nat stared at him, dumb with rage. “You slacker, you know if it wasn’t for guys like me going overseas and taking care of the Japs you’d be working for Tojo right now and learning Japanese in school instead of sitting in the can smoking cigarettes.”
“Okay,” Art said. He felt ashamed and apologetic. “Take it easy, I’m sorry.”
“A stretch in the Army’d be the best thing in the world for you,” Nat said. “That’s what you should have done as soon as you got out of school; they ought to make them all go in as soon as they finish school.” Instead, he thought to himself, of letting them get married.
Turning to the Dodge, he began removing the defective battery cable.
In the kitchen of the basement apartment in the wooden house on Fillmore, Rachael peeled potatoes at the sink and listened to the radio. She was tired. During the morning, from eight until noon, she had worked at the airline office. The company was a non-entity, four planes in all, but the ace’s who ran it were nice; they kidded her, and they bought her coffee, and now that she was pregnant they had stopped making passes at her.
Reaching, she took her cigarette from the ashtray on the table. The radio was playing a Stan Getz record. This was the program she listened to each afternoon; this was ‘Club 17.’ But Jim Briskin was not on it. Somebody else was on, and she did not like him; he was not what she wanted to hear.
Outside, on Fillmore Street, a group of men walked by, noisy and abusive. A car honked. Traffic signals clanged. She felt a hollowness inside her. Where was the easy voice, the presence that had comforted because it had not asked for anything? She had grown up in a hostile, quarreling family. Everybody had demanded something; everybody had slashed at her. Jim Briskin had wanted nothing from her. What now? she wondered. What was there to take his place?
When the front door opened, she said, “Dinner’s ready.”
Art closed the door after himself and Ferde Heinke. “Hi,” he said, sniffing the warm smell of food. Putting the silverware on the table, Rachael said, “Did you tell him?”
“Yeah,” he said.
She went over to him and kissed him. Her arms, around his neck, were thin and cold and slightly moist from the dishes. Then she returned to the table. She moved slowly, setting out the plates and cups with care. The set of dishes was a present from Art’s great-aunt, one of the few wedding presents they had received.
Ferde, embarrassed, said to her, “Hey, congratulations about the baby.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Noticing that she was subdued, Art said, “Anything wrong?”
“I turned on ‘Club 17,’ ” she said. “Jim Briskin isn’t on it; somebody else is taking his place.”
“It was in the paper,” Art said. “He’s off for a month because he wouldn’t read a commercial. They suspended him.”
She turned her swift, hard gaze on him. “Can I see it?”
“Grimmelman has it,” Art said.
After a pause Rachael said to Ferde Heinke, “Did you want to stay for dinner?”
“I have to get home.” He edged toward the door. “My mother’s expecting me to get home by six-thirty.”
At the icebox, Art poured himself a glass of beer from the quart bottle. “Stick around—” he said. “We can go over the dummies for the magazine.”
“Why don’t you?” Rachael said. During their four months of marriage, they had not had much company.
6
In the early afternoon the telephone rang. Jim Briskin answered it, and a soft little feminine voice said, “Mr. Briskin?”
“Yes,” he said, not recognizing the voice. He seated himself on the arm of the couch, avoiding the records; they were a stack belonging to KOIF which he planned eventually to return. “Who is this?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No,” he said.
“Maybe you don’t remember me. I met you down at the station the other day. I’m Art Emmanual’s wife.”
“Sure I remember you,” he said, glad to hear from her. “I just didn’t recognize you over the phone.”
“Do you have a second?”
He said, “That’s one thing I have plenty of. How’ve you been, Rachael?”
“Pretty good,” she said. “It sure is awful your not being on ‘Club 17.’ Art got the newspaper where it told about you. He didn’t bring it home, but he told me what it said. Are you ever coming back?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I haven’t decided. We’ll see at the end of the month.”
“That guy, whatever his name is, he’s no good.”
“What have you been doing?” he asked.
“Nothing much.” She paused. “I wondered, we both wondered, if you would like to come over for dinner.”
“I’d like to,” he said, pleased.
“Would you like to come tonight?” On the phone she had a correct, painstaking manner; her invitation was presented with formality.
“Fine,” he said. “About what time?”
“Say seven o’clock. You won’t be disappointed if it isn’t much.”
“I’m positive it’ll be excellent.”
“But if it isn’t,” she said, still serious. “Then it’ll be nice seeing both of you again.”
She gave him the address, and he repeated it back. Then she said goodbye, and he hung up the phone.
Cheered, he shaved and took a shower and put on a clean pair of slacks. The time was two o’clock. He had five hours to fill until dinner with the Emmanuals, the balance of the afternoon and the beginning of evening. Gradually his good spirits left. Time, he thought. It was going to destroy him.
Getting into his car, he drove out toward the Presidio. But his depression remained. He had got to thinking about Pat. That was fatal. That was the one thing he could not let himself do.
For half an hour he drove at random, and then he turned in the direction of Fillmore Street.