"He seemed friendly enough." He colored and then smiled. "Except at the end there when he gave me my orders, and that was just a manner of speaking with him. I don't think he really meant it."
"Oh, he was respectful enough—the way the army officers were always respectful when they talked to the chaplains, he thinks of himself as very much of a he-man. You're a scholar, and it's something he doesn't understand, and he's wary of it—and hostile."
"Well, that's not unusual, his hostility, I mean,” he said philosophically. "I’ve had it from previous presidents, and other members of the congregation, too. Doctors, lawyers, successful businessmen. I suppose they wonder why anyone would become a rabbi. 'Is this a job for a Jewish boy?'" He laughed. "Maybe they're right."
"He could make trouble for you,” she observed.
"Of course he can. Other presidents have. From my first year. But it's twelve years now, and I'm still here."
"But it's different now. David." "Why is it different?"
"Because there are new rules now, the board consists of only fifteen. It's like an executive committee. Eight members could vote you out, and they could do it just like that." She snapped her fingers. "Because all you have is a one-year contract."
"It's the way I wanted it,” he said stubbornly. "I don't ever want to stay longer than I'm wanted."
"I know, and I understand, but it makes it a little hard to plan ahead."
3
SLOUCHED DOWN IN HIS RECLINER, ONE LONG CHINO-CLAD leg crossed over the other, a worn laceless sneaker dangling from the upraised bony foot. Ellsworth Jordon reread with satisfaction the report on the selectmen's meeting in the local newspaper.
"But can I make it stick?" he asked of the empty room. "Or will they vote on it at the next meeting? I think, maybe. I can get Al Megrim to hold. I'll talk to him about it next time I see him at the club. But he's only one vote." He tossed the newspaper on the floor and made a tent of his hands by pressing the fingertips together. "Let's see, there's Sturgis, he'll vote against almost anything that'll cost the town money. Same as Blair and Mitchener will vote for it,” he added angrily, he got up and began to pace the room. "So that leaves Cunningham, he's the swing vote." He faced himself in the wall mirror. "He's the key. You realize that, don't you? All right." Satisfied that he had convinced the image in the glass, he resumed his pacing. "So what do we know about Cunningham? He's retired, but he gets an occasional commission as the agent for the Steerite Boat Company of Long Island, and the president of that company was here last summer and was crazy to buy my land on the Point." Once again he stopped in front of the mirror and looked sharply at his image. "Now, what if I were to go down to New York and drop in to see him accidental-like, and mention I might be induced to sell that piece of land if I weren't so upset about his Mr. Cunningham planning to vote for some unnecessary traffic lights—. How do you suppose he'd respond to that?"
The wrinkled face with the scrawny neck in the mirror smiled back at him, then the pale blue eyes narrowed as he thought of what the trip would involve, he'd have to dress up in a regular suit—with a tie, and shoes, he'd have to pack a bag and drive out to the airport, unless maybe Billy could take the morning off from the bank. But then he'd have to arrange to be met on his return, and what would he do in New York after he'd seen his man—what was his name? Leicester? Yeah, what would he do after he'd seen Mr. Leicester?
The usual was out of the question since Hester was in Europe. So he'd have to sit in his hotel room and watch TV, hell, he could watch TV at home. Besides. Leicester might be out of town. "It's not worth it,” he announced, and resuming his seat in the recliner, he picked up his newspaper. "Maybe I'll just talk to Cunningham,” he said.
In recent years. Ellsworth Jordon did not get to New York too often, but whenever he did, he tried to arrange matters so that he would spend some time with Hester Grimes whom he had first met in the fifties when she was twenty-two and studying at the Actors' School, he was working for the prestigious architectural firm of Sloan. Cavendish and Sullivan, and though almost forty, his rank was still that of junior architect, she was Esther Green in those days, thin with jet black hair and large dark eyes, intense, serious, determined that someday she would play the great female dramatic roles—Nora, Lady Macbeth, Joan of Arc.
He was tall and blond and handsome, for all that his hair was beginning to thin and he was beginning to put on middleaged weight, he treated her with a kind of whimsical gallantry which she found all the more attractive because it was not common in the Bohemian circle in which she moved.
In spite of the disparity in their ages, they had been very much in love. For the six months or so that it lasted, it had been a hectic affair, marked by frequently violent quarrels followed by teary reconciliations, then his big chanca came, he was to be sent to Berlin on a major project which would take several years to complete, he wanted her to go with him.
She demurred, she had her own career to think of, and besides, although neither religious nor in any way connected with the Jewish community except by accident of birth, the thought of living in Germany was repugnant to her, the discussion quickly degenerated to an argument, and then, as happened frequently with them, to a quarrel, annoyed by her resistance, he was led to minimize the importance of her ambitions and then even to disparage acting itself as a valid art. "While I admit that it might be a legitimate way of earning a living,” he declared loftily, "it is essentially one that appeals to a childish urge to show off." As for her reluctance to live in Germany, he felt that it showed that she still retained the paranoia of her race and that it proved that she was still bound by a narrow ethnic parochialism.
It ended as so many of their quarrels did with his agreeing with her that they were no good for each other and leaving, as always, presumably never to return. Shortly after he went abroad, she discovered she was pregnant.
Had he still been in the city, she would no doubt hava arranged to get word to him, even if she would not herself have called him, and of course, he would have come, and of course, there would have been a reconciliation, and of course— But he was not in the city; he was three thousand miles awav. Had she had familv, or if her friends and associates had been of the middle class in which she had grown up, she probably would have undergone an abortion, even if it would have involved the services of some quack in a sleazy tenement. Or she might have gone out of town and had her baby in secret and then given it up for adoption. But her associates were all Bohemian and long on ideals, especially where the necessity of living up to them was someone else's. When she suggested that she had even considered having the baby and bringing it up by herself, they immediately hailed the idea and warmly applauded her resolution, she did change her name to Hester Grimes, but that was for professional reasons.
It was almost two years before Ellsworth Jordon saw her again, and then it was on the TV screen, he had just returned from Berlin and was in his New York hotel room watching the late night Damon Parker Talk Show when she appeared, dressed in a low-cut, skintight evening gown to sing a blues ballad in a deep throaty voice, afterward she offered her cheek to be kissed by the master of ceremonies and took her place on the dais with the othea guests to spend the rest of the hour in idle chitchat. From Damon Parker's questions about the progress of her career, it was obvious that though not a "regular,” she had appeared on the program several times before. Later, she told an amusing story of the party she had held the day before for her son's first birthday, although her appearance on the screen had excited him. Jordon told himself firmly that he must close the door on the past and make no effort to see her. But the story of the birthday party made him change his mind. Why, on the basis of simple arithmetic, he boy must be his!