She stopped talking then, as though talking could never lead to anything but exhaustion, and Michael had nothing to say. He felt more weak than resentful and he knew that no reply would be adequate, so he clenched his jaws to keep from making any reply at all. Once in a while, along the intervals of sidewalk between trees, he looked up at the winking stars in the black sky as if to ask if ever – oh, ever – there might come a time when he would learn to do something right.
Things got better before the end of that spring.
Michael did manage to get the job off his back – or almost. He persuaded Chain Store Age to let him become one of its several “contributing writers,” rather than an employee. He would work on a freelance basis now, visiting the office only twice a month to deliver his copy and to pick up new assignments; he would lose the security of a salary and all the “fringe benefits,” but he was confident he could earn at least as much money this way. And the best part, he explained to his wife, was that he could set his own schedule: he could pack all the Chain Store stuff into the first half of each month, or maybe even less than that, and have the rest of the time to himself.
“Well,” she said. “That’s very – encouraging, isn’t it?”
“Sure as hell is.”
But far more encouraging, for both of them, was that he finished his book of poems – and that it was accepted almost at once by a young man named Arnold Kaplan, who’d been an acquaintance of his at Harvard and was now an editor at one of the more modest New York publishing houses.
“Well, sure it’s a small house, Mike,” Arnold Kaplan explained, “but it beats the shit out of some university press imprint.” And Michael was ready enough to agree with that, though he had to acknowledge that some of the younger poets he most admired – people with steadily growing reputations – were published by university presses.
He was given an advance of five hundred dollars – a fraction, probably, of what Tom Nelson earned for a single twenty-minute watercolor – and because the amount was so meager the Davenports decided to spend it all in one place: they bought what turned out to be a surprisingly good used car.
Then came the galley proofs. Michael winced or cursed or cried out in pain as he pounced on each typographical error, but this was mostly to conceal from Lucy, if not from himself, the vast pride he felt on seeing his words in print.
Another heartening aspect of that spring was that Tom and Pat Nelson continued to give every sign of friendliness. They came to the Davenports’ for dinner twice and entertained them once again at their own little place, where the incident of the rug was never mentioned. Tom read the corrected galleys of Michael’s book and pronounced it “nice,” which was a little disappointing – it would take Michael a few more years to learn that “nice” was about as far as Nelson ever went in praising anything – but then he made it better by asking if he could copy out two or three of the poems, because he said he’d like to illustrate them. When the Nelsons left town for their new home – and by then the very name of Putnam County seemed almost to have taken on the sound of happiness itself – there were easy promises that they would all be seeing one another soon.
A photographer from Chain Store Age offered to take Michael’s jacket photograph free of charge, in order to have a credit line on the book, but Michael didn’t like any of the man’s contact prints; he wanted to throw them all away and hire “a real photographer” instead.
“Oh, that’s silly,” Lucy said. “I think one or two of these are very striking – this one especially. Besides, what’re you trying to do? Get a screen test at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer?”
But their only serious discord came over the “biographical statement” that would be printed beneath the picture. Michael secluded himself to try and get it right, knowing he was taking too long over it but knowing too how closely he had always read such statements by other new poets, knowing how subtly and infernally important these things could be. And this was the finished copy he brought out for Lucy’s approval:
Michael Davenport was bom in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1924. He served in the Army Air Force during the war, attended Harvard, lost early in the Golden Gloves, and now lives in Larchmont, New York, with his wife and their daughter.
“I don’t get the part about the Golden Gloves,” she said.
“Oh, honey, there’s nothing to ‘get.’ You know I did that. I did it in Boston, the year before I met you; I’ve told you about it a hundred times. And I did lose early. Shit, I never even got beyond the third—”
“I don’t like it.”
“Look,” he said. “It’s good if you can work a light, self-deprecating touch into something like this. Otherwise it’s—”
“But this isn’t light and it isn’t self-deprecating,” she told him. “It’s painfully self-conscious, that’s all it is. It’s as though you’re afraid ‘Harvard’ may sound sort of prissy, so you want to counteract it right away with this two-fisted nonsense about prizefighting. Listen: You know these writers who’ve spent their whole lives in college? With their advanced degrees and their teaching appointments and their steady rise to full professorship? Well, a lot of them are scared to put that stuff on their book jackets, so they get themselves photographed in work shirts and they fall back on all the dumb little summer jobs they had when they were kids: ‘William So-and-so has been a cowhand, a truck driver, a wheat harvester, and a merchant seaman.’ Don’t you see how ludicrous that is?”
Michael walked away from her across the living room, keeping his back straight, and didn’t speak until he had turned and settled himself in an armchair that left at least fifteen feet of floor between them.
“It’s grown increasingly clear lately,” he said then, not quite looking at her, “that you’ve come to think of me as a fool.”
There was a silence, and when he looked up into her eyes he found them bright with tears. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, Michael, is that really the way I’ve been? Oh, how hateful. Oh, Michael, I never, never meant – oh, Michael.”
And from the slow, almost theatrical way she came across that fifteen-foot space, he knew even before he got up to take her in his arms that there would be no more fault-finding, no more condescension, and no more trouble in his house.
Larchmont would never be Cambridge, but the smell of this girl’s hair and the taste of her mouth, the sounds of her voice and her impassioned breathing, hadn’t changed at all from times under the Army blankets on Ware Street, years ago.
In the end, though, he decided she was probably right about the jacket copy. The world, or rather whatever infinitesimal fraction of the American reading public might bother to pick up and glance over his book, would never know that Michael Davenport had once lost early in the Golden Gloves.
Chapter Five
In Putnam County, in the fall, you can see pheasant break from cover and take off over long tan and yellow fields, and sometimes there are hesitant deer to be found among the slender trunks and shadows of oak and white birch. Serious hunters don’t much care for the region, though, because it isn’t “open” enough: there are many well-traveled asphalt roads, some with an occasional clustering of houses and stores and public schools, and there is the high, relentlessly solid intrusion of the New York State Thruway.
Near the southern edge of the county lies a lake called Tonapac, once a popular summer resort for middle-class vacationers from the city; the lake itself has long been out of fashion, but the small commercial settlement spawned at one end of it remains intact.
And it was into this drab village that the Davenports found their way one September afternoon: Michael at the wheel of the car and watching for the necessary left turn, Lucy frowning over a road map that lay unfolded on her thighs.
“Here we go,” he told her. “This is the one.”
They passed through a flat section of tidy, close-set little homes, several of whose front lawns displayed plaster Virgin Marys and lofty poles with American flags that hung limp in the windless day, and Lucy said ??
?Well, it’s beginning to look a little tacky, isn’t it.” But then they came to a long, curving stretch of road where there were nothing but low, old stone walls and dense masses of trees on either side, and at last they found what they were looking for: a brown shingled mailbox with the name “Donarann.”
They were here to follow up a real-estate ad that had promised a “charming 4½-room guest house for rent on private estate; beautiful grounds; ideal for children.”
“Driveway isn’t exactly in top condition,” Michael said as their tires rumbled uphill in the ruts and the billowing dust of it, but they were both intrigued by what a long and unenlightening driveway it was.
“Oh, good, you’re the Davenports,” the landlady said, emerging from her own house with a thick bunch of keys in her hand. “Did you have any trouble finding us? I’m Ann Blake.” She was short and quick, with an aging, small-chinned face made almost comical by long false eyelashes; she reminded Michael of the old-time cartoon character Betty Boop.
“I think the best thing would be to show you the little guest house first,” she explained, “in case you might find it unsuitable in some way – I love it, but I know it’s not to everyone’s taste – and then if you do think you’d like it well enough, I’ll take you around to see the grounds. Because really, it’s the grounds that are the main attraction here.”
She was right about the guest house: it wasn’t to everyone’s taste. It was stubby and ill-proportioned, made of stucco in a pale shade of pinkish-gray, with the wooden trim and shutters at its windows painted lavender. Upstairs, at one end of it, French doors led out onto an abbreviated balcony that was overgrown with leafy vines, and from the balcony a frivolous, vine-entangled spiral staircase descended to a flagstone terrace at what proved to be the front door. If you stepped back on the grass to take it all in with a single searching glance, the house had a lopsided, crudely fanciful look, like something drawn by a child with an uncertain sense of the way a house ought to be.
“I designed it myself,” Ann Blake told them as she sorted out her keys. “Actually, I designed all the buildings on this property many years ago, when my husband and I first bought the land.”
But they were surprised to find that the brown-and-gray interior of the house was much more promising: it had, as Lucy pointed out, a lot of nooks and crannies. There was a nice fireplace, there were fake but attractive beams across the living-room ceiling, there were built-in cabinets and bookshelves; and the larger of the two upstairs bedrooms – the one that opened onto the balcony and the spiral staircase, the one both Davenports assumed would be their own – was bright and spacious enough for Lucy to describe it as “sort of elegant in a way, don’t you think?”
Oh, it might be a funny little house, but who cared? It was basically okay; it wouldn’t cost them much; it would be good enough, at least, to live in for the next year or two.
“So,” Ann Blake said. “Are you ready for the grand tour?”
And they followed her out across the grass past a giant weeping-willow tree – “Isn’t that a spectacular tree?” she asked them – and on to a place where broad stone steps began to take them up a hill.
“I wish you could’ve seen these terraces a month or two ago,” she said as they climbed. “Each terrace was ablaze with the most brilliant, heavenly colors: asters, peonies, marigolds, and I don’t know what else; and then here on the other side, all over this latticework, there were masses and masses of rambling roses. Of course we’ve been extremely fortunate in our gardener.” And she looked briefly at both their faces to make sure they’d be impressed by the name she was about to pronounce. “Our gardener is Mr. Ben Duane.”
Beyond the top of the steps and well back from the highest of the flower-garden terraces, Michael discovered a wooden shed that was more than tall enough to stand in and probably measured five by eight feet square. It struck him at once as a good place for working, and he lifted the rusty hasp of its door to peer inside. There were two windows; there was room enough for a table and chair and a kerosene stove, and he could sense the sweet labor of writing here in total solitude all day, through all seasons, bringing a pencil across the page time and again until the words and lines began to come out right as if of their own accord.
“Oh, that’s just the little pump shed,” Ann Blake said. “You won’t have any need to bother with it; there’s a very reliable man in the village who keeps the pump in good repair. If you’ll step over this way, though, I’ll show you the dormitory.”
Years ago, she told them, and she was getting a little winded from walking and talking at the same time; years ago, she and her husband had founded the Tonapac Playhouse. “Did you happen to notice the sign for it as you were driving up? Just across the road from here?” In its time it had been one of the most celebrated summer-stock theaters in the state, though of course no reputation was easy to sustain nowadays. For the past five or six summers she had rented out the Playhouse to one sort of scruffy little free-lance production company after another, and it was a relief to be rid of the responsibility; still, she did miss the way things used to be.
“Now you’ll see the dormitory,” she said as a very long wood-and-stucco building emerged through the trees. “We built it to house and feed the theater people every summer, you see. We hired a wonderful chef from New York, and a good housemaid, or housekeeper as she preferred to be called, and we – Ben!”
A tall old man with a wheelbarrow full of bricks came slowly around the side of the building. He stopped, set the heels of the wheelbarrow down, and shaded his eyes from the sun with one forearm. He was stripped to the waist, wearing only a pair of brief khaki shorts, sturdy work shoes with no socks, and a blue bandana tied low and tight around his brow. When he saw he would be introduced to strangers his eyes and mouth took on a look of pleased expectancy.
“This is Ben Duane,” Ann Blake announced, and after a moment’s futile fumbling for the Davenports’ name she said “These nice people came to look at the guesthouse, Ben, so I’ve been showing them around.”
“Oh, the little guest house, yes,” he said. “Very nice. Still, I think you’ll find the real advantage here is the place itself – the acreage, the grass and the trees, the privacy.”
“That’s just what I’ve tried to tell them,” she said, and looked at the Davenports for confirmation. “Isn’t it?”
“We’re well away from the world here, you see,” Ben Duane went on, absently scratching one armpit. “The world can go about its brutal business every day and we’re shielded from it. We’re safe.”
“What’re the bricks for, Ben?” she asked him.
“Oh, one or two of the terraces could use a little shoring up,” he said. “Thought I’d better get it done before the frost sets in. Well. So nice to’ve met you both. Hope it works out.”
And as Ann Blake led them away she seemed scarcely able to wait until the old man was out of earshot before talking about him: “You are aware of Ben’s work, of course, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes, certainly,” Lucy said, allowing Michael to nod and keep his mouth shut. He had never heard the name.
“Well, it’d be really surprising if you weren’t,” she told them. “He’s one of the real – he’s an ornament of the American stage. His readings from Walt Whitman alone were enough to make him famous – he toured every major city in the United States with that production – and then of course he created the role of Abraham Lincoln in Mr. Lincoln’s Difficulties on Broadway. And he’s marvelously versatile: he even took an important singing part with the original Broadway cast of Stake Your Claim! – oh, what a lighthearted, fun show that was. Now he’s been blacklisted, as I expect you know – one more vile, unspeakable act of Senator McCarthy, you see – and we’re deeply honored that he’s chosen to spend his time of exile here. He’s one of the finest – one of the finest human beings I know.”
They were walking on a gravel road or driveway now, but Mrs. Blake was out of breath again and had to stop for a few sec
onds, with a hand under one breast, before she could resume her monologue.
“So. Now if you’ll look down through the trees, down into that clearing, you’ll see our picnic area. See the lovely big outdoor fireplace? And the long tables? My husband built all those tables himself. We’d have wonderful parties there sometimes, with Japanese lanterns strung up all around. My husband used to say the only thing we lacked was a swimming pool, but I never minded that because I’m not a swimmer anyway.
“And now coming up here, straight ahead, is the annex of the dorm. There were times when we’d have so many theater people, you see, that we needed an extra building. Most of it’s been closed off and boarded-up for years, but one section of it makes a really nice apartment, so we’ve been renting the apartment to a pleasant young family named Smith. They have four small children, and they love it here. They’re the salt of the earth.”
A girl of about seven sat carefully changing her doll’s clothes on the fringe of grass that bordered the gravel road. Beside her was a baby’s playpen in which a boy of four or five stood sucking his thumb, holding onto the railing with his free hand.
“Hello, Elaine,” Mrs. Blake called brightly to the girl. “Or wait – are you Elaine or Anita?”
“No, I’m Anita.”
“Well, you’re all growing up so fast it’s really hard for a person to keep track. And you,” she said to the boy. “What’s a big guy like you doing in a thing like that?”
“He has to stay in there,” Anita explained. “He’s got cerebral palsy.”
“Oh.”
And as they walked on, Ann Blake seemed to feel that some explanation was required. “Well, when I described the Smiths as ‘salt of the earth,’ ” she said, “I suppose I really meant to imply that they’re very, very simple people. Harold Smith is a clerk of some sort in the city – he wears half a dozen ballpoint pens clipped into his shirt pocket, and that kind of thing. He works for the New York Central, and you see one of the ways that dreadful old railroad manages to keep its employees is by offering them free commutation fares from any point along the tracks. So Harold took advantage of that and moved his family out here from Queens. His wife’s rather a sweet, pretty girl, but I scarcely know her because whenever I’ve seen her she’s at the ironing board – ironing and watching television at the same time, morning, noon, and night.