“I feel all right,” Lyman said.
“He needs a drink.”
“That’s what I’m here for. I try to do all I can with what I have.” She tossed her head back, the muscles of her neck bulging as she laughed.
We gave her our orders. When she was gone back to the bar to bring the drinks, Mavis poked me sharp in the ribs. “What’s that for?” I said.
“Don’t ask,” she said.
“You mean her? Why hell, I was just trying to buy some insurance.”
“You don’t need any insurance. I paid it last month.”
“I’m talking about Marvella.”
“So am I.”
“No, I mean if you pay her a little attention she’ll bring us our drinks without having to call her.”
“You’re paying too much attention.”
Marvella came back with our drinks on her tray and bent over to set the glasses on napkins on the table.
“Miss Packwood, you do look fine tonight,” I said.
She popped her gum, I paid her, and she left. Mavis poked me in the ribs again. I was beginning to believe that I would have to change sides with my wife so she could damage both sides equally, but it didn’t come to that, because pretty soon Shorty started playing, and after a few fast numbers to establish the band and to warm up the crowd he began a slow danceable version of “Release Me.”
“Come on,” I said to Lyman. “Show us country hicks how you learned to do the box step in Rochester.”
With enough prodding from Edith and Mavis, Lyman finally agreed to stand up and dance. The floor was crowded with farm couples and town folks, the women in bright dresses and matching heels and the men beginning to sweat a little under the arms as they pumped their ladies’ hands in big swings across the floor. Everybody was enjoying himself. Across the room I could see Vince Higgims, Jr., trying to sweet-talk the latest target of his affections, a big solid black-haired girl who didn’t appear overly impressed, and at the bar the middle-aged Wellright boys were in earnest conversation with the mayor. The mayor was squeezed onto a stool between them. He was nodding his head, and Buster was saying, “Am I right?”
And Barry was saying, “You damn right he’s right.”
The mayor kept nodding his head like he knew all too well that Buster was always right.
Things weren’t right on the dance floor, though. Shorty had finished “Release Me” to whistles and applause and had started another slow one, but I couldn’t see Edith and Lyman. I had been watching out for them too, noticing how they slid slow in their customary two-step around the outside edges of the dancing couples so as to avoid being crowded or bumped by the active younger set, and from what I saw they seemed all right. Lyman had looked a little stiff maybe, but then he always did. He had a way of holding his bald head tilted on his neck above that white shirt and bow tie like he was listening for something, or like he was hard of hearing, and Edith as usual had a light hand on his shoulder, the two of them dancing quiet and slow and very serious, as if it required concentration to get the steps right. But they weren’t dancing anymore. They weren’t in the corner booth either; our drinks were still there half finished on the table.
“Maybe they went to the restroom,” Mavis said.
They hadn’t. We checked both restrooms, which were crowded with people who were joking and visiting while they waited their turn at the toilets. We didn’t find them so we went outside thinking they might have stepped out to get the air after being downstairs in the heat and thick smoke. Under a streetlight my car was parked in the graveled lot. That’s where we found them. Lyman was in the back seat crowded far over into the dark corner. Edith was talking to him but Lyman wasn’t talking, at least not while we were there.
“Anything wrong?” I said.
“Lyman wants to go home.”
“Is he sick? Lyman, what is it? I thought you were enjoying yourself.”
He wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t talk. He was in some kind of childish pout.
“He isn’t sick,” Edith said. “He just wants to go home now.”
I looked at Mavis for help. “That’s fine with me,” Mavis said. “Actually, it sounds like a good idea. This husband of mine’s notion about insurance was about to get him in trouble.”
“Sure,” I said. “It’ll save wear and tear on my ribs.”
So that was the end of dancing, and the end too of any other late-night forays to town for the Goodnoughs. Edith told us later what had caused it. It didn’t amount to much but it didn’t have to: Lyman had already begun his approach towards the edge. What happened was they were dancing slow and serious, like I told you, and at the end of Shorty Stovall’s version of “Release Me,” while deciding whether to dance the next one or to return to the booth, one of Happenheimer’s salesmen slapped Lyman on the back. It was Larry Parks, a guy with bangs combed down over his forehead. Parks had apparently drunk enough to believe that it would be a good idea to mix business with Holt Legion, Saturday-night pleasure. Sort of snatch Lyman while he was ripe, you understand, while he was oiled. Only Lyman wasn’t oiled.
Parks said something like, “When you coming in to check out our new cars? We got in a good-looking shipment of Pontiacs last week.”
And that was all. I suppose it was innocent enough, but it was stupid. Happenheimer knew what the score was with Lyman, because I had emphasized it to him myself, in private, the day we test-drove that two-door Bonneville, so you might have thought he would have leaked it to his salesmen. And maybe he had. Maybe Parks was just trying a little dance-floor free-lance in order to improve his commission. I don’t know.
I don’t suppose the details matter. It’s just that his back-slapping attempt at salesmanship didn’t leave the Goodnoughs much. They had been finished with driving, and now any thought of night life was out too. About all they had left for themselves was a trip every six months to Doc Schmidt and a weekly drive to the grocery store. But that didn’t last long either. About a year later, when old Doc Schmidt retired after more than forty years of service to the community, closed his practice and moved himself and his wife to Tucson, Lyman decided he was through with doctors; he wasn’t ever going to another one. That left only the grocery store. You understand what I’m saying? — the goddamn grocery store. Here he had traveled all over this country by himself for twenty years; afterwards with Edith he had seen more of this Rocky Mountain region in six years than I’ll see in a lifetime; and now, in no time, he was satisfied with a seven-mile excursion into town — after cabbage and macaroni and beans.
Well, it didn’t take long for even that to be too much for him. He shuffled a little closer to the edge. That’s right, he refused to step outside for any reason. He wouldn’t leave the house. He was too busy traveling in the parlor.
About four years after his last Pontiac was wrecked, Lyman began to retrace his transcontinental trip. He sent off to Los Angeles and Boise and Omaha and Mobile and Cleveland for brochures, for chamber of commerce pamphlets, for bus schedules and train routes. Without once leaving the house, he was seeing the country again. He was traveling. He had his own old man’s travel bureau established with boxes and maps and a desk in the parlor. He could tell you what train to take from Boston to Chicago, what connections you had to make, what there was to see in the Windy City once you got there, where to stay — do all of that even if he was never going to take that train, make those connections, or see the Sears building himself. He didn’t want to. It was out of the question. If you had offered to pay his way and to sink him in luxury on a chartered jet, he would not have gone. He had limited his world to a space twenty feet square at the west end of the house. There he sat every day beside a lamp, poring like a travel clerk over road maps and glossy city flyers. To protect his eyes, Edith finally bought him a green visor, which he wore loose on his bald head, propped on his old man’s, hair-filled ears. It still about makes me sick to think about it. Not just for him — for her too, I mean.