While Mortals Sleep Part 9

Mrs. Faulkner was on her knees, brushing the fragments together with her fingers. "How could you? How could could you?" you?"

"I'm awfully sorry. Can I buy you another one?"

"She wants to know if she can buy me another one," quavered Mrs. Faulkner, again to an unseen audience. "Where is it you can buy a candy dish made by Ted's little hands when he was seven?"

"It can be mended," said Ruth helplessly.

"Can it?" said Mrs. Faulkner tragically. She held the fragments before Ruth's face. "Not all the king's horses and all the king's men-"

"Thank heaven there were two of them," said Ruth, pointing to a second clay dish on the shelf.

"Don't touch it!" cried Mrs. Faulkner. "Don't touch anything!"

Trembling, Ruth backed away from the cabinet. "I'd better be going." She turned up the collar of her thin cloth coat. "May I use your phone to call a cab-please?"

Mrs. Faulkner's aggressiveness dissolved instantly into an expression of pitiability. "No. You can't take my boy's child away from me. Please, dear, try to understand and forgive me. That little dish was sacred. Everything that's left of my little boy is sacred, and that's why I behaved the way I did." She gathered a bit of Ruth's sleeve in her hand and held it tightly. "You understand, don't you? If there's an ounce of mercy in you, you'll forgive me and stay."

Ruth drove the air from her lungs with pent-up exasperation. "I'd like to go right to bed, if you don't mind." She wasn't tired, was so keyed up, in fact, that she expected to spend the night staring at the ceiling. But she didn't want to exchange another word with this woman, wanted to hide her humiliation and disappointment in the white oblivion of bed.

Mrs. Faulkner became the perfect hostess, respectful and solicitous. The small guest room, tasteful, crisp, barren, like all guest rooms implied an invitation to make oneself at home, and at the same time admitted that it was an impossibility. The room was cool, as though the radiators had only been turned on an hour or so before, and the air was sweet with the smell of furniture polish.

"And this is for the baby and me?" said Ruth. She had no intention of staying beyond the next morning, but felt forced to make conversation as Mrs. Faulkner lingered in the doorway.

"This is for you alone, dear. I thought the baby would be more comfortable in my room. It's larger, you know. I hardly know where you'd put a crib in here." She smiled primly. "Now, you will will forgive me, won't you, dear?" She turned without waiting for an answer, and went to her room, humming softly. forgive me, won't you, dear?" She turned without waiting for an answer, and went to her room, humming softly.

Ruth lay wide-eyed for an hour between the stiff sheets. Her thoughts came in disconnected pulses of brilliance-glimpses of this moment and that. Ted's long, contemplative face appeared again and again. She saw him as a lonely child-as he had first come to her; then as a lover; then as a man. The shrine-commemorating a child, ignoring a man-made a pathetic kind of sense. For Mrs. Faulkner, Ted had died when he'd loved another woman.

Ruth threw back the covers, and walked to the window, needing the refreshment of a look at the outdoors. There was only a brick wall a few feet away, c.h.i.n.ked with snow. She tiptoed down the hall, toward the big living room windows that framed the blue Adirondack foothills. She stopped.

Mrs. Faulkner, her gross figure silhouetted through a thin nightgown, stood before the shelf of souvenirs, talking to it. "Good night, darling, wherever you are. I hope you can hear me and know that your mother loves you." She paused, and appeared to be listening, and looked wise. "And your child will be in good hands, darling-the same hands that cradled you." She held up her hands for the shelf to see. "Good night, Ted. Sleep tight."

Ruth stole back to bed. A few moments later, bare feet padded down the hall, a door closed, and all was still.

"Good morning, Miss Hurley." Ruth blinked up at Ted's mother. The brick wall outside the guest room window glared, the snow gone. The sun was high. "Did you sleep well, my child?" The voice was cheerful, intimate. "It's almost noon. I have breakfast for you. Eggs, coffee, bacon, and biscuits. Would you like that?"

Ruth nodded and stretched, and drowsily doubted the nightmare of their meeting the night before. Sunlight was splashed everywhere, dispelling the funereal queasiness of their first encounter.

The table in the kitchen was aromatic with the peace and plenty of a leisurely breakfast.

As Ruth returned Mrs. Faulkner's smile across her third cup of coffee, she was at her ease, content with starting a new life in these warm surroundings. The night before had been no more than a misunderstanding between two tired, nervous women.

Ted wasn't mentioned-not at first. Mrs. Faulkner talked wittily about her early days as a businesswoman in a man's world, made light of what must have been desperate years after her husband's death. And then she encouraged Ruth to talk about herself, and she listened with flattering interest. "And I suppose you'll be wanting to go back to the South to live someday."

Ruth shrugged. "I have no real ties there-or anywhere else, for that matter. Father was an Army regular, and I've lived on practically every post you can name."

"Where would you most like to make your home?" Mrs. Faulkner coaxed.

"Oh-this is a pleasant enough part of the country."

"It's awfully cold," said Mrs. Faulkner with a laugh. "It's the world headquarters for sinus trouble and asthma."

"Well, I suppose Florida would be more easy going. I guess, if I had my choice, I'd like Florida best."

"You have your choice, you know."

Ruth set down her cup. "I plan to make my home here-the way Ted wanted me to."

"I meant after the baby is born," said Mrs. Faulkner. "Then you'd be free to go wherever you liked. You have the insurance money, and with what I could add to that you could get a nice little place in St. Petersburg or somewhere like that."

"What about you? I thought you wanted to have the child near you."

Mrs. Faulkner reached into the refrigerator. "Here, you poor dear, you need cream, don't you." She set the pitcher before Ruth. "Don't you see how nicely it would work out for both of us? You could leave the child with me, and be free to lead the life a young woman should lead." Her voice became confiding. "It's what Ted wants for both of us."

"I'm darned if it is!"

Mrs. Faulkner stood. "I think I'm the better judge of that. He's with me every minute I'm in this house."

"Ted is dead," said Ruth incredulously.

"That's just it," said Mrs. Faulkner impatiently. "To you he is is dead. You can't feel his presence or know his wishes now, because you hardly knew him. One doesn't get to know a person in five months." dead. You can't feel his presence or know his wishes now, because you hardly knew him. One doesn't get to know a person in five months."

"We were man and wife!" said Ruth.

"Most husbands and wives are strangers till death does them part, dear. I hardly knew my husband, and we had several years together."

"Some mothers try to make their sons strangers to every woman but themselves," said Ruth bitterly. "Praise be to G.o.d, you failed by a hair!"

Mrs. Faulkner strode man-like into the living room. Ruth listened to the springs creaking in the chair before the sacred cabinet. Again the whispered dialogue with silence drifted down the hall.

In ten minutes, Ruth was packed and standing in the living room.

"Child, where are you going?" said Mrs. Faulkner, without looking at her.

"Away-South, I guess." Ruth's feet were close together, her high heels burrowing in the carpet as she shifted petulantly from one foot to the other. She had a great deal to say to the older woman, and she waited for her to face her. A hundred vengeful phrases had sprung to mind as she packed-just, unanswerable.

Mrs. Faulkner didn't turn her head, continued to stare at the mementos. Her big shoulders were hunched, her head down-an att.i.tude of stubborn ma.s.s and wisdom. "What are you, Miss Hurley, some sort of G.o.ddess who can give or take away the most precious thing in a person's life?"

"You asked me to give a great deal more than you have any right to ask." Ruth imagined how a small boy might have felt, standing on this spot while the keen bully of a woman decided what, exactly, he was to do next.

"I ask only what my son asks."

"That isn't so."

"She's wrong, isn't she, dear?" said Mrs. Faulkner to the cabinet. "She doesn't love you enough to hear you, but your mother does."

Ruth slammed the door, ran into the wet street, and flagged a puzzled motorist to a stop.

"I ain't no cab, lady."

"Please, take me to the station."

"Look, lady, I'm going uptown, not downtown." Ruth burst into tears. "All right, lady. For heaven's sakes, all right. Get in."

"Train number 427, the Seneca, arriving on track four," said the voice in the loudspeaker. The voice seemed intent on shattering any illusions pa.s.sengers might have of their destinations' being better than what they were leaving. San Francisco was droned as cheerlessly as Troy; Miami sounded no more seductive than Knoxville. said the voice in the loudspeaker. The voice seemed intent on shattering any illusions pa.s.sengers might have of their destinations' being better than what they were leaving. San Francisco was droned as cheerlessly as Troy; Miami sounded no more seductive than Knoxville.

Thunder rolled across the ceiling of the waiting room. The pillar by Ruth trembled. She looked up from her magazine to the station clock. Her train would be next, southbound.

When she bought her ticket, checked her baggage through, and settled on a hard bench to read away the dead minutes, her movements had been purposeful, quick, her walk almost a swagger. The motions had been an accompaniment to a savage dialogue buzzing in her head. In her imagination she had lashed out at Mrs. Faulkner with merciless truths, had triumphantly wrung from that rook of a woman apologies and tears.

For the moment, the vengeful fantasy left Ruth satisfied, forgetful of her recent tormentor. She felt only boredom and incipient loneliness. To dispel these two, she looked from group to group in the waiting room, reading in faces and clothes and luggage the commonplace narratives that had brought each person to the station.

A tall, baby-faced private chatted stiffly with his well-dressed mother and father: yanked out of gray flannels and college by the draft...nothing but a marksman's medal...bright, lots of money...father uncomfortable about son's rank and overparking...

A racking cough cut into Ruth's thoughts. An old man, cramped against the armrest at the end of a completely vacant bench, was doubled by a coughing fit. He waited for the coughing to subside, so that he could take another puff on the cigarette b.u.t.t between his dirty fingers.

A frail, bright-eyed old woman handed a redcap a dollar, and demanded his polite attention as she gave precise instructions as to how her luggage was to be handled: on her annual expedition to criticize her children and spoil her grandchildren...

Again the agonized coughing. Now Ruth caught the stench of the dirty man's breath, brought to her nostrils by a sudden gust from the door. The cough worsened, tearing the breath from him. The cigarette dropped.

Ruth twisted around on the bench so that her gaze wouldn't naturally fall on him. A winded fat man, his red face determinedly cheerful beneath a homburg, begged to be let in at the first of the ticket line: salesman...ball bearings or boilers or something like that...

Again the agonized coughing. Irritated that so disagreeable a sight should make demands on her attention, Ruth glanced once more at the old man. He had slumped over the arm of the bench, twisted, quaking.

The fat salesman looked down at the old man, and then straight ahead again, keeping his place in line.

The old lady, still instructing the redcap, raised her voice to be heard above the interruption.

The young soldier and his correct parents weren't so vulgar as to acknowledge that something unsightly was at hand.

A newsboy burst into the station, started to stride down the aisle between Ruth and the old man, stopped a few feet short, and headed for the other end of the waiting room, shouting news of a tragedy a thousand miles away. "Read all about it!"

Another train rumbled overhead. Everyone was moving toward the ramp now, avoiding the aisle in which the old man lay, giving no sign that it was anything but luck that made them choose another route to the train.

"Buffalo, Harrisburg, Baltimore, and Washington," said the voice in the loudspeaker. said the voice in the loudspeaker.

Ruth realized that it was her train, too. She stood without looking again at the old man. He was no more than disgustingly drunk, she told herself. He deserved to lie there, sleeping it off. She tucked her magazine and purse under her arm. Someone-the police or some charity or whoever's job it was-would be along to pick him up.

"Board!"

Ruth skirted the man and strode toward the ramp. The hiss and chilling dampness from the track level billowed down the ramp to envelop her. Pale lights, wreathed in steam, stretched away in seeming infinity-unreal, offering nothing to compete with her thoughts.

And her thoughts nagged, making her imagine an annoying, repet.i.tive sound-a man's cough. Louder and louder it grew in her mind, seeming to echo and amplify in a vast stone vault.

"Board!"

Ruth turned, and ran back down the ramp. In seconds she was leaning over the old man, loosening his collar, rubbing his wrists. She laid his slight frame out at full length, and placed her coat under his head.

"Redcap!" she shouted.

"Yes'm?"

"This man is dying. Call an ambulance!"

"Yes ma'am!"

Horns honked as Ruth walked against the light. She took no notice, busily upbraiding in her mind the insensitive men and women in the railroad station. The ambulance had taken the old man away, and now Ruth, having missed her train, had four more hours to spend in Ted's hometown.

"Just because he was ugly and dirty, you wouldn't help him," she told the imagined crowd. "He was sick and needed help, and you all went your selfish ways rather than touch him. Shame on you." She looked challengingly at persons coming down the sidewalk toward her, and had her look returned with puzzlement. "You'd pretend there was nothing serious wrong with him," she murmured.

Ruth killed time in a woman's way, pretending to be on a shopping errand. She looked critically at window displays, fingered fabrics, priced articles, and promised salesgirls she would be back to buy after looking in one or two more shops. Her activity was almost fully automatic, leaving her thoughts to go their righteous, self-congratulatory way. She was one of the few, she told herself, who did not run away from the untouchables, from unclean, sick strangers.

It was a buoyant thought, and Ruth let herself believe that Ted was sharing it with her. With the thought of Ted came the image of his formidable mother. The buoyance grew as Ruth saw how selfish Mrs. Faulkner was by comparison. The older woman would have sat in the waiting room oblivious to everything but the tragedy in her own narrow life. She would have muttered to a ghost while the old man hacked his life away. Ted was sharing it with her. With the thought of Ted came the image of his formidable mother. The buoyance grew as Ruth saw how selfish Mrs. Faulkner was by comparison. The older woman would have sat in the waiting room oblivious to everything but the tragedy in her own narrow life. She would have muttered to a ghost while the old man hacked his life away.

Ruth relived her bitter, humiliating few hours with the woman, the bullying and wheedling in the name of a nightmarish notion of motherhood and an armful of trinkets. Disgust and the urge to get away came back full strength. Ruth leaned against a jewelry counter, and came face-to-face with herself in a mirror.

"Can I help you, madam?" said a salesgirl.

"What? Oh-no, thank you," said Ruth. The face in the mirror was vindictive, smug. The eyes had the same cold glaze as the eyes that had looked at the old man in the station and seen nothing.

"You look a little ill. Would you like to sit down for a moment?"

"No, really-there's nothing wrong," said Ruth absently.

"There's a doctor on duty in the store."

Ruth looked away from the mirror. "This is silly of me. I felt unsteady there for just a minute. It's pa.s.sed now." She smiled uncertainly. "Thanks very much. I've got to be on my way."

"A train?"

"No," said Ruth wearily. "A terribly sick old woman needs my help."

[image]

(ill.u.s.tration credit 8)

WHILE MORTALS SLEEP.

If Fred Hackleman and Christmas could have avoided each other, they would have. He was a bachelor, a city editor, and a newspaper genius, and I worked for him as a reporter for three insufferable years. As nearly as I could tell, he and the Spirit of Christmas had as little in common as a farm cat and the Audubon Society.

And he was like a farm cat in a lot of ways. He was solitary, deceptively complacent and lazy, and quick with the sharp claws of his authority and wit.

He was in his middle forties when I worked for him, and he had seemingly lost respect not just for Christmas but for government, matrimony, business, patriotism, and just about any other important inst.i.tution you could name. The only ideals I ever heard him mention were terse leads, good spelling, accuracy, and speed in reporting the stupidity of mankind.