Ralph awakened that dismal, drippy morning at a quarter of noon, rested but hungry, and with an appetite for some of Rossi’s freshly sliced salami. He dressed and went out, without God. He bought some goat cheese too, and a length of Italian bread, and was walking homeward when a taxi went by on Bleecker—Ralph paused for it in crossing Bleecker—and he saw in profile Mrs Sutherland, leaning forward as she opened her handbag. The taxi was indeed slowing at the Grove Street corner, and Ralph walked toward it.
In his head, Ralph had nothing prepared. He might say “Good morning” if he were close enough. He realized that he burned to tell her that Elsie and another girl had apparently spent the night with her husband and left at 6 in the morning, but that would be difficult to blurt out on the sidewalk, possibly within hearing of a passerby. And had Mrs Sutherland, in fact, been out all night herself? Her hair looked more disorderly than usual, and she brushed it impatiently aside before she slammed the taxi door shut. Grove being one-way eastward, Mrs Sutherland now had a hundred yards or so to walk to reach her door. Linderman followed her.
She turned quickly left toward her house door, and Ralph had a glimpse of her rather pale and tired-looking face, her lipstick showing bright red in contrast.
“Oh, Mrs Sutherland!”
She turned and saw him.
“Good morning, ma’am.” Ralph was still walking toward her. Then he saw her sudden frown, her parted lips that drew down at the corners in an expression of anger or horror, almost, and she pressed the bell. She had turned her back to him.
“Mrs Sutherland, one minute!”
Then the door buzzed, and she went into the house.
Ralph turned and walked back toward Bleecker. That had been a mistake, perhaps, and yet what harm had there been in it? Mrs Sutherland did look as if she had been up all night. She must know about her husband’s infidelity, and no doubt it was making her unhappy. He recalled Sutherland saying, “I’m very happily married,” or something like that. All false, a bald-faced lie!
But far worse was Elsie’s involvement! Of all the girls in New York, the loose and willing girls and women, Sutherland was preying upon Elsie!
Ralph’s thoughts were in some turmoil by the time he got to his apartment. He might simply ask Sutherland to desist. Or he could write a letter to him, and if Mrs Sutherland found it, so much the better! A polite letter as before, saying that he was aware of what was going on between Elsie and him, that what he had suspected had now been confirmed by his observation of the hours at which Elsie came and went, and did not Sutherland think that out of respect for his wife and small daughter, he should desist, leave Elsie alone? Ralph wished he had the address of Elsie’s parents so that he could tell them what was going on, and give them Sutherland’s name and address. Sutherland, a married man! And an artist, who probably made her pose nude before his orgies! How Elsie’s parents would rally to his cause! How fast they’d come to find Elsie and take her back home! Elsie had told him enough about her parents to make him feel sure about this. Ralph recalled returning Sutherland’s wallet, remembered how proud he had been to find Sutherland a gentleman who said thank you, and who gracefully offered him a reward. Well, Ralph would do the same thing, if he found Sutherland’s wallet a second time. Principle was principle. And to slip once was the beginning of the end. And vice was vice.
Ralph began a letter to John Sutherland after lunch. He told himself that he did not have to send it, that he could reflect upon it after he had written it, but it did him good to write it and get it out of himself. He wrote a third page and a fourth. He might choose the best of it later, recopy it, and reflect again on sending it.
25
It was an odd Sunday at the Sutherland house. By the time Natalia arrived at noon, Susanne had taken Amelia to the American Indian Museum way uptown, and had also tidied the kitchen. Natalia showered, put on pajamas and dressing gown, and wanted “a little breakfast” plus a Fernet-Branca, before she went to bed. Awakened by Natalia’s arrival, Jack had showered and shaved, dressed, and was feeling quite well. Susanne was back, but busy with Amelia, so Jack prepared Natalia’s breakfast with fresh coffee, which never prevented her from sleeping, when she wanted to sleep. She looked disturbed, or annoyed, and conversation was impossible with Susanne present.
The weather had cleared, and light came through the front windows, sunshine through the back ones.
“I suppose I broke all records last night,” Natalia said. She was eating an English muffin with marmalade. “Staying up.”
Susanne was now playing a card game with Amelia at the far end of the living-room.
“No sleep at all?” Jack asked.
“Well, yes, around six o’clock in the living-room,” Natalia replied. “Bob served marvelous clam chowder after you left.”
Susanne came into the dining area and asked if Natalia wanted her to stay, and said she could either leave or stay, because she had brought some work to do. Natalia told her to do as she liked, because she was going to bed for a while.
“How is Louis?” Susanne asked.
Natalia seemed to close up, though she looked at Susanne and replied that he was looking pretty well, and had asked about her.
Natalia went off to bed with a second Fernet-Branca.
Susanne said she would silently steal away. “I can see Natalia’s uptight about something,” Susanne said to Jack.
“Oh? I think she’s just tired.”
Susanne departed in her raincoat, carrying the old brown briefcase, and she blew Jack a kiss before she closed the door.
Jack was a little sorry to see her go.
“Daddy?”
“Shush, honey,” Jack said, walking toward Amelia’s little figure, which sat spraddle-legged on the living-room floor, blond hair down to her shoulders and beyond, with some kind of game between her feet. “Your mom’s trying to sleep a little, so you be quiet.”
“Did you go to that party?”
“Of course I went to that party. But I came home earlier than your mom.”
Amelia seemed to ponder this. “What’s earlier?”
“Earlier!—Ten is earlier than eleven, for instance. Something earlier comes before something later.” He drifted away, hoping Amelia would not call him again, and she didn’t.
In his workroom, Jack looked at the three photographs of Elsie which leaned against illustration boards on his table—a fourth and latest was in a magazine in the living-room—and he heard his own words again, “I love you.” That was crazy, airy, unreal, his words and his feelings even, as unreal as the Elsie he saw in the photograph in which her face showed largest: she wore a black evening dress with a single shoulder strap, she leaned sideways in an elegant chair, looking up at someone out of sight, and she held a glass of champagne that was about to touch her lips. Her hand that held the glass bore an expensive diamond ring on its third ringer. Elsie had hands that could look lean and slender sometimes, strong and muscular at other times, both to the eye and in photographs. But the look in Elsie’s eyes in this picture was the most amazing to Jack: she looked as if she could be nearly thirty, her upward glance seemed to hold the worldly wisdom of a hundred affairs, plus the knowledge of how to handle the man who had given her the diamond ring. The advertisement was for a jewelry company, and the discreetly small type below the photograph said: Just because she has everything…which made Jack smile now.
Another picture was a cover with the magazine’s name across the top, Elsie smiling, lips closed, with most of the smile in her blue eyes. She might have been sixteen here, a naive teenager.
The third picture was of Elsie getting out of the taxi beneath the Hotel Chelsea’s awning, looking as if she were laughing aloud, the skirt of her white dress blowing out, her eyes on the beholder. Jack remembered that freezing day.
He felt odd, different, as if he were in love, in a quiet way. He pulled out a big sketch pad of cheap paper. He was working on a composition for an oil, and he wanted to begin with the composition just right, even
if the painting came out a bit different. He was still fond of the thin black outline for human figures and for objects too. In soft black pencil he had drawn a partial outline of a man seated in a comfortable armchair, though the armchair was not to look fat or overstuffed. Jack called the picture to himself “Puzzled Man”. The slender man had his feet together, knees apart, and gripped his chin with one hand. Jack had sold a cartoon a few days ago, a one-liner: a dubious male customer was looking at a soft plaid hat the salesman was holding, and the salesman was saying: “Don’t worry, sir, the hat’s got the personality.”
Jack jumped, his left hand rose from the sketch pad at the voice behind him.
“I’m going out for a walk, Jack. Sorry—if I startled you.” Natalia smiled at his surprise. She looked better for her nap.
“‘S’okay, darling. Is it raining?” He saw that she had boots on and her raincoat.
“A little—I won’t be long.”
Then Jack heard the apartment door close. The telephone rang before Jack got back to his work. He answered it in the living-room.
“Hi, Jack, Elaine. How’re you folks today?”
“Oh-h, not bad at all. I hear there was clam chowder after I left.”
“Yes, and lots else. Wasn’t that a party? Looked like forty or fifty, didn’t you think? And that girl—the one you were dancing with—”
“Elsie.”
“Elsie. I can never think of her name, because it doesn’t suit her somehow. Lovely to look at—when she dances!—You said she’s doing well at the modeling now.”
“Indeed, yes!”
“I saw her on one cover, I remember.—Well, I just tried to phone Louis and Bob to thank them, and nobody answered there. Maybe they’re sleeping. So I thought I’d check in with you.” Elaine gave a laugh. “We weren’t home till nearly four. How’s Natalia?”
“Out for a walk or I’d put her on.”
“Let’s get together soon, Jack. Love to Natalia.”
When he hung up, Jack’s eyes fell on the cassette that Marion had given him last night. Given or lent? Jack had forgotten. He would ask, and return it if she wanted it. It was labeled MARION GILL. NIGHT THOUGHTS. SOLO GUITAR. Jack put it into the cassette player.
The guitar began dreamily, as if the player were alone, strumming for pleasure. There were no words. The key changed. There were slow, wistful climbs into treble, then a flurry of notes, as if the player wanted to erase what he had played before. Jack sat down on the sofa, leaned back and closed his eyes. Amelia was in her room, quiet for the nonce, and Jack was glad. This was no song, no composition either, he supposed, just a rambling in musical phrases. The music was unpretentious, but it could create a mood, if one listened.
The telephone rang again. Jack bared his teeth with annoyance, and got up. He switched the tape off.
“Hello, Jack, this is Bob. Am I disturbing you?”
“No, Bob. We—”
“I’d really like to speak with Natalia.”
“She’s gone out for a walk. Are you home?”
“Yes.” Bob sounded tense.
“She ought to be back in a few minutes. I’ll get her to call you. No, hold it! She’s just coming in.” Jack laid the telephone down. “Bob’s on the line.”
Natalia shed her raincoat, and Jack took it from her. “Hello, Bob.”
Jack saw her take the phone to the coffee table and sit down on the sofa.
“Oh-h.—Well, I thought—you know? I knew.”
Jack hung the raincoat on a hanger in the bathroom, on the shower rod. Then he slowly crossed the back area of the living-room in the direction of his workroom.
“…if you want me to come. Mightn’t it be best?” Her voice sounded strained.
Jack drew the curtain of his workroom, and now his eyes did not seek out Elsie or anything else. Louis was dead. Jack was almost sure. Either a heart attack from last night’s indulgences, or suicide in some manner. Jack shoved his hands into his back pockets, and walked back into the living-room. Natalia was still on the telephone, and he did not want to listen, but he walked slowly toward her, went behind the sofa to the drinks cabinet, and poured a Glenfiddich, took it to the kitchen for ice and water. He delivered the drink, and retreated again to his workroom. After a few minutes, he went out again, and there was silence in the living-room.
Natalia stood there with her drink, and looked at him.
“Something about Louis?”
She gave a nod, as if she were thinking about something else. “Yes. Sleeping pills. He—” She turned toward the front windows, and bent her head.
At that moment, Amelia rushed in with a loud, “Mommy!” She had something to show her mother, in her room, “a watercolor”, and it was still wet and she couldn’t bring it in.
“I’ll be your first viewer, I’ll look,” Jack said, and followed his daughter into her room.
This effort was a large black and yellow butterfly, backgrounded by green trees proportionally much smaller. Again Amelia had kept spaces between the yellow border of the black wings, and the yellow dots on the wings.
“Admirable,” Jack said. “Really quite nice. Simple and decorative.” The watercolor lay flat on her low desk.
“When it’s dry, I’ll show Mommy.”
“When it’s dry,” Jack said, and left the room.
Natalia was making another drink. “Bob doesn’t want any help just now.—He’s alone.”
“What happened?” Jack whispered.
“Last night—this morning, Louis said he was going to his room to sleep. This was about nine this morning. They had two bedrooms, comme il faut, you know—as Louis always says. So Bob said this afternoon around three he went into Louis’ room, and Louis was lying on top of the covers with his hands crossed on his chest, still in that Chinese dressing gown, and Bob thought he looked—Well, Bob couldn’t wake him up.” Natalia was whispering, frowning. “And he was even cool. A big overdose.—Bob saw the bottle—empty. That plus the alcohol, you know?” She drank some of her scotch. “So Bob said he spent the last couple of hours,” she went on through a nervous laugh, “loading the dishwasher and straightening the house! He said it was the only way he could have survived. He didn’t answer his phone and he hasn’t told anyone but me.”
Jack felt stunned, even though he had known. “Shouldn’t he call the police?—Or a hospital? You mean Louis is just lying there in the bedroom?”
“Yes!—I told Bob I’d call the police, but he doesn’t want me to.” Natalia writhed slightly, a movement Jack had seen many a time when she was in a situation that she couldn’t manage. She pushed her hair back, restless and tense. “Oh, he’ll probably do it in the next hour.”
But even Jack knew Bob well enough to imagine him pottering around the house in a daze for hours more, dusting the books maybe. “He can’t just spend the night with Louis there, darling. It’s five o’clock now!”
“I know. You’re right.” Natalia frowned at the telephone.
If she called Bob again, he wouldn’t answer, Jack supposed, because he would think it was someone else.
Amelia walked in briskly with her watercolor. “Mommy!”
Natalia stared at it, then her eyes focused, and she saw it. “Nice, honey. Yes.—Can I have it? For my room?”
Amelia looked gratified. “Yes, Mommy.”
The black and yellow butterfly reminded Jack of Louis’ Chinese dressing gown. Natalia and Amelia went into the bedroom to set up the watercolor somewhere, and Jack waited, knowing that Natalia had to come to a decision. She came back and went to the telephone and dialed. After several seconds, she put the telephone down, and said to Jack:
“Doesn’t answer. I think I should go up there.”
“I agree. I’ll come with you. That’s—if you like.”
“You don’t have to,” Natalia said, looking agonized.
“But I insist,” Jack said quietly. Jack went closer, but did not touch her. “It’s tough, darling. It’s a tough thing.—Let’s see if we can
park Amelia at the Armstrongs’, okay?”
He telephoned the Armstrongs. Elaine said it was quite all right, they were home all evening, and Jack said they would be there in about ten minutes. They found a taxi as they walked toward West 11th Street, and had it wait while Jack stuck Amelia in the door. Amelia seemed delighted to be spending the evening with the Armstrongs and their boy Jason. Jack said they’d be back to fetch Amelia before 10 probably, and if not, he’d telephone. Jack had thought of saying, “Sudden invitation for something uptown,” but he said nothing by way of explanation, just turned and trotted back to the taxi.
Natalia had to speak with Bob’s and Louis’ doorman, who knew her, because Bob did not answer the doorman’s call from downstairs.
“He doesn’t know it’s me,” Natalia said. “He’ll let us in. Come up with us if you want to, George.”
The doorman went up with them, and Natalia called to Bob through the closed door, and Bob opened it a crack.
Bob was in shirtsleeves and trousers, houseshoes, and had a dishtowel in one hand. Jack let Natalia do all the talking. They had to telephone the police, that was the correct thing to do. And Bob agreed. Jack offered to speak with the police, but Natalia preferred to do it, and she did it. To Jack’s relief, she did not ask to see Louis, nor did Bob ask her if she wished to. Jack knew where the bedrooms were, somewhere right of the foyer down a hall. Natalia would know exactly. Bob was trembling slightly, and he looked pale. Natalia put on more lights. Within fifteen minutes the police came, followed by some ambulance men. Jack barely glanced into the hall as they carried the covered body out on a stretcher. By this time, Natalia and Jack had persuaded Bob to spend the night at their house. Bob put some things into a carryall.
The doorman George, the one Natalia knew, was upstairs in the hall instructing the stretcher man, who used a different elevator, so that when Jack and Natalia and Bob got down to the sidewalk, it was just in time to see the blanket-covered corpse being borne out of the service entrance toward the ambulance, and to Jack there was something awful about that, as if a corpse was not to be seen by the happy living, the people who walked in and out of the main entrance. Jack thought suddenly of all the little items he had just seen upstairs, a gold pen which he knew belonged to Louis, a book with a place-mark in it on the writing desk, a photograph of Louis on a yacht with hair on his head, in white ducks and striped French sailor’s blouse, a picture of which Jack knew Louis had been proud. Natalia had squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head from the direction of the stretcher.