Seven Seats to the Moon Page 19

  J stared glumly.

  “Now, I am willing,” Goodrick sidled closer and leered to see if J had caught his pun, “to give you, for your time and trouble, say, ten thousand dollars? Cash?” If Goodrick had expected J’s eyes to light up, he got a fishy stare instead.

  “First,” said J, “I can’t remember every word that Doctor Willing said to me. How about that?”

  “If you would allow me to use certain techniques, associative probings and so on, to rouse your latent …”

  J said, “Second, I wouldn’t touch any ten thousand dollars from you.”

  “Ah, but you could report it as income if you like,” said Goodrick soothingly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I can call it a fee if you would feel safer paying the tax on it.”

  J said, “Third, I am not inclined to do you any favor in the first place.”

  “Well,” said Goodrick, “I am sorry to hear that. It was a fair offer. There may be other ways. I can’t see why you are being so coy.” He leered as if J had already told him volumes.

  “Who are you?”

  “You wouldn’t be giving away secrets to me,” said Goodrick. “I know all about it. I told you who I am. I told you what I want to know. Just how far he went. Give you any dates, did he? That sort of thing?”

  “I just thought of another way,” said J. “Set up an appointment in some government office, where I can go, knowing that I’m doing this for my country. I’ll meet you there and nowhere else. But if the United States Government wants to pay me ten thousand dollars for an hour of my time, I betcha I’ll have a thing or two to say to it about throwing my money around.”

  “Too much, eh?” said Goodrick. “Who is Annette Woods?”

  “What the hell do you care?” J bristled. (Goodrick’s phrase “too much” had sounded like an insult.)

  “From Chicago?” said Goodrick, slime on his tongue. “Would you want your good wife to hear all about it?”

  “My wife just fed her a darned good lunch at our house,” said J. “What is it she hasn’t heard all about?”

  Goodrick stared. “Have you ever heard of a Tony Thees?”

  It was J’s turn to stare while his brain thumbed through some possible answers, rapidly deciding (as any businessman knows how to do) which answer would both stand up and do J the most good.

  He said, “You must mean Cousin Annie’s boyfriend, the one that chased her all the way out here. I don’t know the man. What’s all this to you?”

  “Thees chased a girl!”

  J was pleased to see astonishment. “Well, I don’t know,” he said with a dismissing wave of his mind. “The girl’s a pseudo-cousin of mine, but I don’t figure her love life is my business. I can’t stand her, anyway. I’ve got work. Say, why don’t you go play Cupid?” He added, with his clown face on, “Just tell the government to charge it to me, as usual.”

  He left Goodrick chewing his thumb.

  J sat down at his desk, thinking he had done okay. He might have just gotten himself out of the middle. Let them chase one another around and tell one another lies.

  What had been Noah’s line of work, he wondered, while he’d built that Ark on weekends and after-hours? What had that man been doing to earn a living, in the meantime, while the earth lasted?

  “That was pretty silly.” Sophia sank down on Nanjo’s bed beside the two big boxes.

  “Mother,” said Nanjo, quavering, “I meant it when I said I didn’t want it. I don’t want it anymore. I really don’t.”

  Sophia, whose head was aching fiercely, leaned back against Nanjo’s headboard and half closed her eyes. “I would agree,” she said, “that you look like a high-class little tart in that thing, especially by the way Susie said it was adorable. Just put it away carefully, Nanjo. We can take them both back.” She rubbed her brow.

  “But why did you buy them?”

  “It was an act,” said Sophia, “for the benefit of my best friend, who doesn’t have to know everything.” She began to allow herself to think about Susie’s tale of an FBI man. Of J and that Annette with their heads together around the corner.

  Nanjo said woefully, “I didn’t think about Cal, the gardener, being there. I’m sorry. I should have, hm?”

  “I know you didn’t think about it,” said Sophia. “I’m sorry, too. But you’re right. You should have.” Sophia knew that normally she would have stopped what had been going on in the backyard with poise and the quiet admonition that although this was not anybody’s fault exactly, it would not do.

  Nanjo was whining, “I was just upset when I yelled at Grandmother. Honestly, I know I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Um, hum,” said Sophia, “and I was upset when I yelled at you. Well, that’s the way it goes, sometimes.” A certain companionable ease was falling on them.

  “Mother, who was that girl who was here?”

  “I don’t believe I know,” said Sophia wearily. But she opened her eyes, drawn to look hard at her daughter and realize that there is such a thing as being too chummy in this world with one’s child. “There’s lots of peace for you to make, Nanjo,” she said gently. “Oh, your grandmother will forgive you. Your father already understands. Don’t ever think he doesn’t. You and I—well—we got rid of the yelling and screaming, anyhow. Peace?”

  Nanjo sank down on the bench to her dressing table, where she drooped and seemed disconsolate. Sophia thought, I can’t help her now. This is no time for a cozy chat about the war between the men and the women.

  She dragged to her feet and picked up the box with her own elegant dress in it, the one she had chosen in order to show off. Show off what? That J had not lost his job, was prosperous? Was Sophia’s? She realized wryly that it was no good blaming Susie.

  She said, “My head is killing me. That’s what you get for blowing your top. It’s getting late. I don’t know where the dickens your grandmother has got to. Dad will be home soon. I’d better pull myself together. Why don’t you do the same?” She touched Nanjo’s head lightly. Nanjo smiled wanly.

  Sophia left the room. Nanjo sat still, staring at the box wherein lay that dress, the fabulous dress, the one she’d been so excited about, the one that made her look exactly like the girl on the book—a smooth-shouldered, high-busted, big-eyed, small-chinned, stupid-looking, nitwitted, good-for-nothing-but-sex, high-class tart.

  Nanjo got up and thrust the box in on her closet floor, kicking it behind the row of shoes. She was chilly. She sat down again, hugging herself. What had Daddy meant, it was too late? Sure, she’d had the usual wrestling matches, but that was all. She didn’t understand. What had he meant, she was fooling somebody? Oh, how could there be peace? Her grandmother was a professional forgiver of everything and everyone, but Nanjo didn’t know how she was going to make peace with her father. Or with any male.

  CHAPTER 21

  Wednesday Evening

  At five o’clock, when Marietta came out of the blue-painted door in the stucco wall around what she called the Retreat, Goodrick was still sitting in his rented car.

  “How good of you to have waited all this time,” cried she.

  “Get in,” he said, his eyes leery. “Where to now, Mrs. Thomas?”

  “But I don’t quite know.” Standing there, the plump woman with the rosy face, the Dutch bob, and the round blue eyes looked childishly lost.

  “I want to talk to you some more,” said Goodrick. He’d had his orders. “She’s either crazy,” he had said to Mr. Jones, “or a liar.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Jones had said. “Pick her up again and find out which.”

  Marietta got into the car, fumbling for her handkerchief. “I understand the rules,” she said. “Of course I do. They must have the hundred dollars for the trial week. Perhaps I could wait at the Wimple. No, I don’t think—”

  Goodrick wasn’t bothering to follow very far. “Now,” he said, turning in the seat to speak confidentially, but in a businesslike way, “you say that J Little was knocked down by a large automobile, bu
t not hurt?”

  “It was a miracle,” said Marietta.

  “He wasn’t hurt, but they took him to the hospital?”

  “But they were so kind, you see.”

  “Tell me again what he says about the other man in his room.”

  “Oh, it must have been a very funny man,” she said, “because everybody was laughing.”

  “That’s what I thought you said. Now, why are you lying to me?”

  Marietta simply erased this from her brain. “Everything so clean and simple and filled with the spirit.” She yearned toward the blue door in the gray wall. “Surely my Own Good Angel sent me here.”

  “What was the man’s name?” said Goodrick.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The man in the hospital. The funny one.” (Dr. Ambrose Willing hadn’t been a comic, that Goodrick remembered.)

  “I don’t … Oh, but I’m sure J would be happy to tell you. Perhaps if you drive me back to Sophia’s and come in, Mr. Goodrick, we can chat and when J comes home.…”

  “He’s not telling all he knows. He’s hiding something, isn’t he?”

  “You would be so welcome,” she said. “So gracious a hospitality there.”

  “Who is the girl?” said Goodrick. “Annette Woods?”

  “Do you mean that pretty thing who came to lunch? Such beautiful manners.…”

  “She got a boyfriend named Tony Thees?” (Mr. Jones had been extremely skeptical.)

  Marietta looked bewildered. Goodrick banged his fist on the back of the front seat. “What did she want with J Little? What does he know that he’s not talking about? Somebody spoke to him.”

  “Oh,” said Marietta, “oh, now I understand. But people don’t talk about such things. Dear J, I was happy for him. We have always been very close.”

  “Is that so?” Goodrick’s teeth became wolf’s teeth in grandmother’s clothing. “Now we’re getting somewhere. You tell me what it is he won’t talk about, I’ll give you one hundred dollars.”

  Marietta’s eyes filled. “Oh, bread,” she said, “upon the waters.”

  “Come on. Come on,” said Goodrick. “What’s his big secret?”

  “Dear J,” she said tearfully. “So good. I knew that one day he would hear an angel speak to him in revelation.”

  Goodrick blinked. “The room-mate in the hospital, he had something to do with this … uh … revelation?

  “Ah,” said Marietta, “angels come in so many disguises. You, yourself, have been an angel unaware this very day.”

  Goodrick bit off a rather large sliver of skin.

  “Listen,” he said in a moment, “I said I’d give you a hundred dollars, and I will, but first you’ve got to help me.”

  “We are all here to help one another.”

  “Can you just try to listen? I’ll give you a phone number. You get J to talking about the hospital and everything that happened there. The man. The room-mate. Call the number, ask for John Jones, and tell him whatever you find out. You do that, old lady, and maybe it’s worth more than a hundred dollars. Heh. Heh.”

  “But dear Mr. Goodrick,” said Marietta, “why don’t you ask J? You see,” she quavered, “my Own Good Angel tells me never to dwell on thoughts of illness. And I obey.”

  “Forget it,” said Goodrick rather violently. “Forget I ever saw you. Don’t mention it. Can you keep a secret?”

  “When you give alms, do it in secret,” said she.

  He started the car. In a few minutes she recognized the route and said, “Of course. So thoughtful. I must pack.”

  Goodrick grunted. She took it for a question.

  “I understand that you wish to do good in secret,” she went on comfortingly. “So I will simply say that my Own Good Angel brought my hundred dollars back to me, which will be true.”

  Goodrick kept silent for a while. Then he said, “You wouldn’t know the truth.… Why should I give you the money when you’re no good to me? Now try again. Did you hear J speak the name ‘Willing’? Or the name ‘Barkis’?”

  Marietta concentrated. “A long time ago? In some novel?”

  “You’re crazy,” said Goodrick.

  He stopped the car a block away from J’s house and dumped her. Marietta’s rosy face, however, turned to him.

  “Bless you,” she began, “and may your Own Good Angel—”

  A shudder rippled down the man’s back. “Listen,” he said, “just let me alone, will you?”

  Goodrick fled.

  Tony said, “Why can’t you get him to meet you somewhere?”

  Annette said, “He wouldn’t come.”

  “Why not?”

  “What are you going to do with him if he does come?” she countered.

  “Get him into my car. I’m not going to snatch him off the street or drag him out of his own car. Softly. Softly.”

  “Where is this deep hole?” She was glaring at him. “In a cemetery?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t know,” said Tony. “What’s the matter with you anyway? How come you goofed the way you did, sweetheart? Wasn’t a bad idea for you to get in there.”

  “Why should he let me in?”

  Tony kept quiet for a moment. He felt blind. It made him uneasy not to have his own eye on. He’d hired help, but he couldn’t tell the help very much. The help was, in a way, blind.

  “Say,” he asked, “what’s the fat lady like, the mother-in-law?”

  “Just a nut.” Annette flung herself on her face on the bed.

  “What does Goodrick want with her? Any idea?”

  “She doesn’t know anything. His wife doesn’t know anything. Let him alone, Tony. Just let the clock go around.”

  Tony’s thoughts began to go around the same old circle, looking for the lesser risk.

  “You want to know what’s uppermost in his mind?” she burst angrily. “His own family, period. He’s so narrow, you wouldn’t believe …”

  “Let’s the both of us date him for lunch. Downtown, where his family isn’t.”

  “What’s the pack of lies we’re going to tell him, then?”

  “Whatever he’ll swallow,” said Tony, “so he’ll get into my car and we can put him in aforesaid hole.”

  “Guess what?” said Annette. “I hate you!” She began to cry.

  Tony gave up. Tears bored him.

  J drove home at the end of the day without looking behind him any more than the careful driver should. The house seemed remarkably quiet. Marietta was there in her favorite chair, but she hadn’t much to say. Sophia was quiet; she had a headache, she said. Nanjo crept about, subdued and too contrite to be true, J feared. When he was told about the purchase of the dress (for no good reason, Sophia said), Nanjo began to beg his permission to take it back. “I don’t want to look like that, Daddy,” she whined. J knew from Sophia’s eyebrow that the dress was going back. “Whatever you think,” he said to Nanjo indifferently. (Was he getting some coals of fire to wear in his waning hair? Or had Nanjo been seriously frightened?)

  He drank his cocktail. It didn’t relax him. The quiet was edgy. Dinner was not tasty.

  Afterward Nanjo came shyly to J’s side and said she was going to study and then go to bed early. “Good night, Daddy.”

  “No date?” said J.

  “Cary asked me, but I said No!” Her eyes begged him to praise her for this.

  J did not praise her. “Good night, Nanjo.”

  “Daddy,” Nanjo’s voice went into a near whisper, “I wish I could take voice lessons. I do sound like a whiny old pig.”

  “We’ll have to look around and see where there’s a good teacher,” he said. “Scoot along, Nanjo.” He couldn’t cope with much more humility.

  But Nanjo had more groveling to do yet. “Daddy, would you apologize to that girl for me when you see her again?”

  “I doubt I’ll see her,” said J absently. “Quite a lot of it was her fault, actually.” He opened his magazine.

  So Nanjo embraced her grandmother, begging forgiv
eness and hearing it pronounced in full flow until Sophia said crisply, “Hop it, toots,” because she had had enough of this unnatural behavior, too.

  Nanjo crept away. J listened to her feet dragging. He sighed and glanced at Sophia.

  Sophia was looking at him in so warm and loving a way that J felt his face poised on the impulse to beam on her, too—whether he understood the wonderful lift, the lightening of the air in the room, or not.

  “You know too much,” she murmured, and he felt absurdly pleased.

  Marietta said, “J dear, there was something I was asked to ask you.”

  “Yes?” J left off rejoicing to be polite.

  Marietta was looking out at the darkness, her head high enough so that her chin was betraying that it had once had a clean line. “You were not ill, after all,” she said. “What was the name of the man in the same room in the hospital?”

  “I’m not sure I knew it,” said J quietly. “Why did you say you’re asking?”

  “But you see, it takes a hundred dollars for the first week,” she said, “and surely my Own Good Angel sent him.”

  Sophia, alerted, signaled J to leave this to her, and with long-practiced skill she extracted from Marietta a confused tale of her encounter with Goodrick. J listened, appalled.

  Sophia said at last, “Mother, there are lots of things you don’t understand. It’s your own fault. You’ve stopped trying. Now, please believe me. That man was never sent by any good angel. You mustn’t have anything to do with him. You must not take his money if he offers it again. You must stay right here, where I can look after you.”

  Marietta began to weep. She could not think evil. The man had been kind, she felt sure. “Of course, I am happy here,” she wept, “so comfortable, and dear Nanjo.…”

  Sophia said, “I think I’ll make up the couch in J’s den for you tonight. Come along and help me. You’d rather be by yourself, I’ll bet.”

  Marietta went, protesting that she didn’t wish to bother and was never really alone.

  J, helpless to be of any use, heard them in the wing of the house. He knew, as Sophia did, that although forgiveness had been asked and forgiveness given, a night of peace and separation might solidify the contract between Nanjo and her grandmother.