Seven Seats to the Moon Read online

  Marion’s eyes were round. “Of course she is right,” she said quite spunkily.

  But Amy said in her blunt way, “Maybe Pops picked up some loot in Chicago. Maybe he’s filthy rich all of a sudden. He’s not usually that casual with a nickel, you know. So come on, Pops. Where did you get it?”

  J, wounded to calm in the middle of the storm, only shook his head.

  Marietta said, “J has always been one of the sweetest and most generous souls …”

  Sophia turned ferociously on her mother and took out some temper in that direction. “It’s one thing to be generous. It’s another thing to be forced to give some perfect stranger in a park one hundred dollars, whether you want to or not. Why can’t you see, Mother, that when you give money away, somebody else just has to pay your bills?”

  J roused himself. This was getting too thick, too bad. He’d have to stop it.

  “Now, now,’ he said, “everybody calm down. Don’t take it so serious. I was wrong not to talk it over. Okay, I’ll just crawl right back into the groove …”

  He had let slip some bitterness. They were all silent. But they didn’t know what he was bitter about! J no sooner had this thought than it began to be verified.

  Amy said, “Oh, gosh, it must be a drag. Poor old Pops. Never mind about the glasses. Money’s not that important. I can earn the price. I bet it’s not all that hard.”

  Nanjo said in a little girl whine, “Daddy, I knew the dress was out of scale. I just had this dream, that’s all. Never mind. Honestly. They’ll give me the fifty dollars back. And I can buy myself something that’ll be okay.” She got up and patted him on the head. “I guess we give you a bad time, sometimes. Could I be excused now, Mother?”

  “Who’s out there?” said Sophia crossly.

  “Just Cary Bruce. We’re just going over to Debby’s. Goodnight, Daddy. Thanks a lot, anyway.” She kissed his crown and went away. Her feet, so often light, seemed to trudge.

  Sophia got up. “J, you are just exhausted. I think you ought to go to bed early and definitely see Doctor Lodge in the morning. This is no time to make decisions.”

  Yes, it is, thought J. It always is. And you blew your top, didn’t you? He couldn’t help a middle-grade glare at her.

  Win rose, murmuring that J mustn’t worry about a thing, and they’d better get the kids home. “I’m so sorry, Dad,” said Marion softly as she glided toward the den to gather her young.

  J knew that signals were flying over his bowed head. He sat and let them fly.

  Avery got up as if he were one of the children being roused, and Amy seized his hand and sprang up. “Come on, Marietta,” she said, “we’ll cart you back to the Wimple for the night at least. Okay, Mom?”

  “I’ll get her out of hock tomorrow,” said Sophia gloomily. “She’ll have to come here, of course. Thanks, Amy.”

  They disentangled Marietta from the sleeping child. It seemed to J that the room was a-twitter with a flock of birds, but he couldn’t speak—so to speak—bird language.

  Amy smacked his brow. “Hey, Pops,” she said, “if you did rob some bank, why don’t you send the money back in the mail? Who needs it, anyway?” Her eyes slipped sideways in a winking sort of way.

  “I’ll do that,” said J heavily. “Anonymously, eh?”

  Amy winced and turned abruptly, and J felt terrible. He never quarreled with his children. He wasn’t a quarrelsome man.

  Marion said sweetly, “Dad, I hope you’ll be feeling better and your old self again in the morning.” And J thought, What is that?

  Sophia went off with them to the front door to wave them away into the night, no doubt with comforting pats and what other assurances he knew not. He didn’t get to go and see them off. He wasn’t feeling well enough. Now what the devil had he done, that they were insisting he wasn’t feeling well?

  Damn it, I would have loaned Win the money and bought every one of them what they said they needed. Don’t they know that? True, I would have done it only after long solemn balancing of pros and cons and talking it over, which only means going around and around and coming out where you came in, dead on the original impulse. But finally I would have handed out the money, the same money, with neat little lectures pinned on. Make a show of taking it out of Nanjo’s allowance to teach her values—which we would forget all about in a month or two. Compromise on Marietta’s board and room, pay for it somewhere, not the Wimple, and she’d have to be grateful just the same. What kind of generosity have we got here?

  Sophia came back. “Ah, J,” she said gently, “now tell me. What’s the matter?”

  “I wish I knew,” said J, his spirit backing away, “what’s the matter with all of you. So I got to thinking. So I thought it was funny. What with everybody rebelling nowadays … I thought what if I took a notion to rebel? I’m not going to do it.”

  Sophia pretended to think that he was only clowning now; perhaps he was. She sighed and sat down.

  “It might be a good idea if you did rebel,” she said. “The other way around. It won’t hurt a single one of them if they have to pull up their socks and do without Santa Claus J Little, you know. The way Amy and Avery operate is ridiculous. I’m sure they’re frugal, but I don’t see why you have got to go on paying for any slightest extra. And Win is old enough to go ahead and take his risks, for pity’s sake. And if he’s overextended, let him retract. That house …”

  Win and Marion lived in a long, low ultramodern house on a hillside in Encino, with a newly built swimming pool and as much service as was convenient or possible. They both drove late-model cars. Marion had a full-length mink. Little Mary went to a private school.

  “People have been known to lose a house and survive,” said Sophia. “If we never lost any of ours, that’s because we never overextended ourselves for show or status.”

  She’d never said a thing like this before. Also, it wasn’t true.

  “Oh, come on,” said J wearily. “Sure we did. Everybody does to some degree. It’s the American way.” The easiest gamble to forget is the one you took and won, he thought. “Way, way behind the times to use your own money.”

  “That’s because very few have got any.” Sophia was beginning to smoke around the edges. “J, I don’t understand what got into you. You didn’t even listen to any details. You worked darned hard for what we’ve got, and you can’t afford …”

  “I guess you’re right,” said J sadly. “I did so well that I can’t afford a simple, kindly impulse.”

  Sophia burst into flame. “No,” she cried, “you can’t! And it may not be so simple or so darned kind, either. And you should know that! And how come you get to play simple kindly old Santa Claus, and I get to play the part of the mean old battleax?” she said, hitting the bull’s-eye of her personal distress. “And I’m going to bed,” she went right on, “before I completely blow my top. This is not a conversation.” She was white. She had a war on within herself, fighting her own temper.

  Let her win, J thought, as he rubbed his hand over his eyes. But, being human, he couldn’t help saying, “Okay, I was temporarily insane. So now we’ll talk it over—and take all the fun out of doing the very same thing four days later, when time’s a-wasting—”

  “Good night,” she said in another voice. He lifted his head. Sophia was wearing a strange look.

  “What’s the matter?” he said quickly.

  “I’m sorry, J,” she said rather coldly, “if there is something you don’t want to tell me. I hope someday you’ll decide you can. Just don’t sit up too late, dear.”

  She kissed the top of his head, and, holding herself stiffly, she went away.

  So there sat J Middleton Little, all by himself, and nobody loved him anymore. Oh, come on, they were only protecting him. From what? J realized that he didn’t really want his children or his female wife protecting him from anything, at least not yet. He didn’t even want to see them wiggle out completely from under his protection. He wasn’t that unselfish. He would have felt warm
and proud and hedged those favors all around with pseudowisdom only to disguise … what? His own pleasure?

  But why shouldn’t he please himself? It might not be wise or even kind, but why wasn’t it simple?

  Sophia got into her bed, although it was too early for sleeping. She was very much frightened. Her heart was thudding, and she could not make it slow down. Oh, what’s happened to him? Oh, what is it? she kept wondering. He surely was in that hospital. I called him there. But that’s such a silly yarn about the rich old woman and the car. J doesn’t lie. But I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s the check from the lawyers. It must be true. Could there be more to it? Was he in some way humiliated? Did they laugh at him? Did he do something foolish for somebody—for a woman maybe—and was he misunderstood? Why isn’t he telling me?

  Thus she came back around to the sudden thought that had scared her so much. Oh, did they find out in that hospital that J has got something horrible, one of those awful slow hopeless … Oh, did J find out that he is going to die?

  When the phone rang, alarm assailed J at once. Police, injury, crisis? It was not late; yet it was late for the telephone. That damn Cary Bruce and his sports car! He hurried around the wall to the entrance area and said a brave, gruff “Hello?”

  “Mr. J Middleton Little?” The voice was faint, far away, almost a whisper.

  “Speaking.”

  “I’m speaking for Doctor Willing.”

  But J had heard the extension click as it was lifted in the bedroom. “Sophia,” he yelled, “get off the phone!”

  Sophia hung up the extension with a punishing wham.

  “Excuse me,” said J into the phone, gathering his wits. “I couldn’t hear. What did you say?” (He had heard the name Willing, but nothing, yet, about Noah or his Ark.)

  “Is everything all right?” said the whisperer.

  “I don’t understand. Who is this? Whom are you calling?”

  “J Middleton Little?” the voice whispered. “I am a friend. Doctor Willing sent me.”

  “If you could speak up,” J kept stalling.

  The voice said out loud, “I was sent by Doctor Ambrose Willing.”

  J didn’t believe it. Oh, ho, no! He knew who this was now. “I’m not sure I know anybody by that name,” he said. “What was it you wanted, Mr. Goodrick?”

  “Very good, Mr. Little,” said Goodrick as himself. “Just testing. Happy to see that you are being careful. Have you told your wife by the way?”

  J didn’t know what to answer. Couldn’t say “No.” “Yes” wasn’t appropriate, either. Did you beat her, as usual? J began to laugh.

  “What say?” said Goodrick sharply.

  “Excuse me,” said J, “but you are one of the weirdest characters I ever met in my life. Why don’t you break down and tell me what this is all about?”

  “Excellent,” said Goodrick. “And you were very wise to make sure nobody listened in on the extension, weren’t you?” He hung up softly.

  J stood there. He was furious! He thought, If that man doesn’t stop nagging me, I’ll … Uh, huh, he’d what?

  J went over to the bookshelves and took down the fat red volume of Who’s Who. He carried it into the family room, sat down, and under “Willing, Ambrose” skimmed a long column of mysterious combinations of initial letters that must stand for honors and credits and memberships and prizes. When he had finished, he knew that Dr. Ambrose Willing was indeed tops. That his field was chemistry. That he had, indeed, no family. That he was sixty-nine years old and at the height of his powers, the harvesttime of his working years. Oh, yes, he did, indeed, deserve to go to the moon and be saved.

  As J sank deeper into the chair, feeling terribly depressed, the silence of the house was split at last. Sophia, who was sitting upright in her own bed, had been waiting long enough. She let her voice blast. “Am I not supposed to know who that was, ever?”

  “Business,” shouted J, almost savagely. “My business.”

  “Forgive me for having so stupidly thought that I was entitled to answer the telephone in my own house!”

  J couldn’t bear this; her rage was justified. But he couldn’t explain. He began to tremble. “Listen, honey, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m sorry. I was just startled.”

  (Oh, please, help me, Sophia? Don’t you be against me!)

  In a moment his wife called in a totally different tone, “All right, J. Never mind. I’m sorry, too.”

  “It was that idiot from the plane,” J called in desperation. “I don’t know what he wanted. I think he’s nuts!”

  “All right,” she said.

  In the bedroom as Sophia lay back, she discovered herself to be trembling. She had heard the voice on the phone say “Doctor” Somebody. What secret business could J have with a doctor? He’ll tell me, she thought. He’ll have to! So do him the courtesy of being patient. Let him work himself up to it. If J has a fight on inside himself to keep some—dignity, oh, let him win.

  She lay as still as she could.

  J, in his chair, was awash in a flood of self-pity. His plight was miserable and unfair. He was an innocent victim. But this is no world for a victim. He only gets it in the neck again. Oh, J was in the middle now, all right. On one side the crude and persistent prying of that Goodrick. On the other the anxious, loving prying of his own wife, which, J knew, he was in for.

  Would there be a day when he could explain?

  J was sensitive to ridicule, perhaps especially so. He had suspected that therein lay the reason for his assumption of the role of the clown so often. (He didn’t mind laughter when he had asked for it.) Now he projected scene and dialogue on the day when people would find out about those ridiculous seven seats to the moon. “Oh, no!” they would cry. “You took such nonsense seriously! You didn’t! Oh, poor gullible old J.” And if he said he knew it was nonsense, but it haunted his mind, they’d pity him and smile.

  J began to feel afloat in a high and chilly region. And if they asked him what he figured to do with those seven seats? Yet how could he say there was a different secret? He didn’t know, and would probably never know, what it was. And if he said that he had stood on a principle, that would only send the smiling pity underground. He thought, I can never explain. Well, he must now (he saw clearly) climb very deliberately and warily back into his harness, his habits, his own garments. He must not cause any more surprises or alarms. He must just be the same old J.

  And the silken threads are made of steel, he thought (mixing metaphors wildly). So it’s back to the mines, old spider! There’ll be no strike tonight! They’d forget about this evening, wouldn’t they?

  Would Sophia?

  Oh, boy, J thought, my name must be Rumplestiltskin. No, no, that wasn’t the right character. He was thinking of some old-fashioned kid’s story. Wasn’t there some poor schmo (in more than one tale) who stuck out his neck and said something reckless, made a big gesture or a boast or some such thing, and then found himself in a jam with his bluff being called?

  Wasn’t there always a fairy godmother, or a little gnome in the forest, or a frog, or some damn thing, who came along to save him from the consequence, the shame, and the humiliation of being human? And wasn’t the human reader always on the side of the schmo? And wasn’t he, J Middleton Little, human being, on the side of himself in this matter?

  All right, he had made a bold and careless gesture of casual generosity. Hadn’t even asked for details. (What did they matter on the scale of the earth and the moon and the fate of mankind?) But ho-ho-ho, how his gesture had bounced back and told J a thing or two!

  All to do with money, he mused. And how they thought he thought about money. Win seemed to think that J, the security-minded, had tried to be too brave for his own temperament. As if J believed in such a thing as total financial security. What J would really like to do was to take all that he had, split it three ways, and hand it over, now. J could start again at the bottom, yes, and take care of Sophia, too. He knew how to do that. He had done it. Onc
e upon a time he had been at the economic bottom, young and penniless. Once upon a time he had had a young wife, a baby coming, and no security whatsoever. Was he not, then, the last man to be afraid? How come his son, Win, believed just the opposite?

  Amy had evidently always thought J was very fond of money and had needed to be told that it was not that important. How come Amy didn’t know what J thought was important? Had he never told her?

  What did Nanjo think? J feared she thought that he (who neither dreamed nor remembered having dreamed) agreed that a dream, costing money, had best be forgotten. Did Nanjo think he had never dreamed of anything else?

  Sophia thought he must be something like out of his mind. “Poor J.” “So tired.” “Not well.” Only Marietta thought he’d simply had a generous impulse—old fool that she was!

  But why in hell had he spilled out all that rigmarole about being in the middle? Oh, worse than laughter, now they pitied him.

  Well, J would just have to sit it out, although Sophia, with deadly intuition, now knew he had a secret, and Goodrick probably thought so more than ever.

  J sure wished some fairy godmother, or little gnome, or frog, or some damn thing, would come along and get him off this spot.

  The moon had risen. A band of soft light fell across the terrace just outside. Illusion, J thought wearily. Reflected light. And I’m fixing to be moonshine, going to settle for my reflection, and be what’s expected of me. Hey, by golly. No, Shine direct! Hey, I am damn well going to have an identity crisis! And there’s a little gnome for you. A nice modern little gnome, too, and it may serve.

  Marion Little had finally got the weary, whining Little kids to their beds. She left the boys’ room, shutting the door on its perfection. Everything two little boys could possibly need was in there. They didn’t appreciate it. As she moved on the soft carpet to the great living room with its wide windows from which the view was a marvel, Marion knew she wasn’t appreciating, either. She could not force herself to do it.

  Win was standing, hands in his pockets, looking out. She didn’t speak, but he spoke as if she had. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask your father.”