CHAPTER SIX
“WHAT was his expression like when he said it?” said Anita. Paul had the comforter pulled up over his face and was trying to get to sleep tightly curled in the dark, muffled womb he made of his bed each night. “He looked sad,” he murmured. “But he always looks sad – real sweet and sad.” For three hours they had been going over the events of the evening at the club, coming back again and again to what Kroner had said by way of farewell. “And he didn’t take you aside for a couple of words at any time?” She was wide awake. “Scout’s honor, Anita, all he said was what he said at the last.” She repeated Kroner’s words judiciously, ” ‘I want you to come see me and Mom sometime next week, Paul.’ ” “That’s all.” “Nothing about Pittsburgh?” “No,” he said patiently. “I tell you, no.” He tucked the comforter more snugly around his head and pulled his knees up higher. “No.” “Haven’t I got a right to be interested?” she said. He’d evidently hurt her. “Is that what you’re telling me, that I haven’t the right to care?” “Gladja care,” he said thickly. “Fine, wonderful, thanks.” In the quasi nightmare of being only half asleep, he visualized the notion of man and wife as one flesh – a physical monstrosity, pathetic, curious, and helpless Siamese twins. “Women do have insight into things that men don’t have,” she was saying. “We notice important things that men let go by. Kroner wanted you to break the ice about Pittsburgh tonight, and you just -” “We’ll find out what Kroner has on his mind when I call on him. Now, please, let’s sleep.” “Finnerty!” she said. “He’s the one who threw a monkey wrench into things. Honestly! How long is he going to stay?” “He’ll get sick of us in a couple of days, the way he gets sick of anything.” “The N.I.P.B. mustn’t leave him much time to go traipsing over the country to insult old friends.” “He quit. Hasn’t got a job.” She sat up in bed. “They fired him! Well, good for them.” “Quit. They offered him a raise to stay. His idea.” He found himself awakened by a subject that interested him. Anita’s hammering at the subject of Pittsburgh had tended to make him curl up tighter and tighter. Now he felt himself relaxing somewhat, straightening out like a man. Finnerty was a magical name again; Paul’s feelings about him had swung a full circle. Morale and esprit de corps, which Paul hadn’t felt in any undertaking for years, had sprung up between them in the course of the exhilarating humiliation of Checker Charley. Moreover – Paul’s thoughts were coming alive as though refreshed by a cool wind – there was enchantment in what Finnerty had done, a thing almost as inconceivable and beautifully simple as suicide: he’d quit. “Paul . . .” “Hmmmm?” “Your father thought you’d be manager of Pittsburgh someday. If he were alive, nothing would make him happier than to know you got the job.” “Umm hmmmm.” He remembered how Anita, shortly after their marriage, had dug up a picture of his father from a trunk and had had it enlarged and framed as her first birthday present to him. The picture was over on his bureau now, where she had put it – where he could see it the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. She had never met Paul’s father, and he hadn’t said much about him to her; yet she’d built up a kind of mythology about the man that could keep her talking knowingly for hours. The myth had it that Paul’s father in his youth had been just as easygoing as Paul, and that the strength that got him to the top job in the economy came in the middle years of his life – came in the years Paul was just beginning. Kroner, too, kept alive the notion that Paul could be expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. This faith of Kroner’s had had a lot to do with Paul’s getting to be manager of Ilium; and now that faith might get him the managership of Pittsburgh. When Paul thought about his effortless rise in the hierarchy, he sometimes, as now, felt sheepish, like a charlatan. He could handle his assignments all right, but he didn’t have what his father had, what Kroner had, what Shepherd had, what so many had: the sense of spiritual importance in what they were doing; the ability to be moved emotionally, almost like a lover, by the great omnipresent and omniscient spook, the corporate personality. In short, Paul missed what made his father aggressive and great: the capacity to really give a damn. “What are you going to do about Shepherd?” said Anita. Paul started to curl up again. “Do? I’ve already done it. Nothing.” “If somebody doesn’t clip his wings, he’s going right over everybody’s heads one of these days.” “Welcome to.” “You don’t mean that.” “I mean I want to sleep.” Her bedsprings creaked as she lay down once more. She shifted her weight about restlessly for several minutes. “You know, it’s a funny thing,” she said. “Hmmmm?” “I’ve always noticed that when Shepherd turned his face a certain way, he looked an awful lot like somebody else. And it wasn’t until tonight that I figured out who it was.” “Mmmm.” “When you see him at just the right angle, he’s the spitting image of your father.”