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“I’m sorry the way things happened, Rudy,” Thomas said. For the first time in his life he pitied his brother.
Rudolph shrugged. “It could have been worse,” he said. “That kid could have been killed instead of just blinded.”
“What’re you going to do now?”
“Oh, I keep myself busy, one way and another,” Rudolph said. “New York’s a great place to be a gentleman of leisure in. When Jean gets back maybe we’ll do a bit of traveling. Maybe even visit you.”
“Where is she?”
“In a home upstate,” Rudolph said, making noise with the ice in his glass. “Not a home, really—more of a clinic—a drying-out place. They have a remarkable record of cures. This is the second time she’s been there. After the first time, she didn’t touch a drop for nearly six months. I’m not supposed to go up there and visit her—some goddamn doctor’s theory—but I hear from the man who runs the place and he says she’s doing very well.…” He swallowed some whiskey the wrong way and coughed a little. “Maybe I can use a little cure myself,” he said, smiling, when the coughing fit had passed. “Now,” he said, brightly, “now that the eye is all right, what are your plans?”
“I’ve got to get a divorce, Rudy,” Thomas said. “And I thought maybe you could help me.”
“That lawyer I sent you to said there wouldn’t be any problem. You should’ve done it then.”
“I didn’t have the time,” Thomas said. “I wanted to get Wesley out of the country as quick as possible. And in New York, I’d have to come out with the reason. I don’t want Wesley to find out I got a divorce from his mother because she’s a whore. And even if I did get the divorce in New York, it would take too long. I’d have to hang around here and I’d miss a good part of my season and I can’t afford that. And I have to be divorced by October at the latest.”
“Why?”
“Well … I’m living with a woman. An English girl. A wonderful girl. And she’s going to have a baby in October.”
“I see,” Rudolph said. “Congratulations. The increasing tribe of Jordaches. Maybe the line can stand some English blood. What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t want to have to talk to Teresa,” Thomas said. “If I see her, I’m afraid of what I’ll do to her. Even now. If you or somebody could talk to her and get her to go out to Reno or a place like that …”
Rudolph put his glass down neatly. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be glad to help.” There was a noise at the door. “Ah, here’s Enid.” He called, “Come here, baby.” Enid came bouncing in, dressed in a red coat. She stopped short when she saw the strange man in the room with her father. Rudolph picked her up, kissed her. “Say hello to your Uncle Thomas,” he said. “He lives on a boat.”
Three mornings later, Rudolph called Thomas and made a date for lunch with him at P. J. Moriarty’s, on Third Avenue. The atmosphere there was male and plain and not likely to make Thomas feel ill at ease or give him the idea that Rudolph was showing off.
Thomas was waiting for him at the bar when he came in, a drink in front of him. “Well,” Rudolph said, as he sat down on the stool next to his brother’s, “the lady’s on her way to Nevada.”
“You’re kidding,” Thomas said.
“I drove her to the airport myself,” Rudolph said, “and watched the plane take off.”
“Christ, Rudy,” Thomas said, “you’re a miracle worker.”
“Actually, it wasn’t so hard,” Rudolph said. He ordered a martini, to get over the effects of a whole morning with Teresa Jordache. “She’s thinking of remarrying, too, she says.” This was a lie, but Rudolph said it convincingly. “And she saw the wisdom of not dragging her good name, as she calls it, through the courts in New York.”
“Did she hit you for dough?” Thomas asked. He knew his wife.
“No,” Rudolph lied again. “She says she makes good money and she can afford the trip.”
“It doesn’t sound like her,” Thomas said doubtfully.
“Maybe life has mellowed her.” The martini was sustaining. He had argued with the woman for two whole days and had finally agreed to pay for her round-trip fare, first class, her hotel bill in Reno for six weeks, plus five hundred dollars a week, for what Teresa had described as loss of trade. He had paid her half in advance and would pay her the rest when she came back and gave him the papers that formally ended her marriage.
They had a good, solid lunch, with two bottles of wine, and Thomas became a little maudlin and kept telling Rudy how grateful he was and how stupid he had been all these years not to realize what a great guy he had for a brother. Over cognacs, he said, “Look, the other day you said you were going to do some traveling when your wife got out of the clinic. The first two weeks in July I haven’t got a charter. I’ll keep it open and you and your wife can come on board, as my guests, and we’ll do a little cruising. And if Gretchen can come, bring her along, too. You’ve got to meet Kate. Christ, the divorce’ll be final by then and you can come to my wedding. Come on, Rudy, I won’t take no for an answer.”
“It depends upon Jean,” Rudolph said. “How she feels …”
“It’ll be the best thing in the world for her,” Thomas said. “There won’t be a bottle of liquor on board. Rudy, you just got to do it.”
“Okay,” Rudy said. “The first of July. Maybe it’ll do us both good to get out of this country for awhile.”
Thomas insisted upon paying for the lunch. “It’s the least I can do,” he said. “I got a lot to celebrate. I got back an eye and got rid of a wife all in the same month.”
II
The Mayor was wearing a sash, the bride was dressed in cornflower blue and did not look pregnant. Enid was wearing white gloves and was holding her mother’s hand and was frowning a little at the mysterious games the grown-ups were playing in a language she did not understand. Thomas was brown and healthy again. He had put back the weight he had lost and his muscular neck bulged at the collar of the white shirt he was wearing. Wesley stood just behind his father, a tall, graceful boy of fifteen in a suit whose sleeves were too short for him, his face deeply ta
Only Dwyer seemed sad, touching the white carnation in his button-hole. Thomas had told Rudolph Dwyer’s story and Rudolph thought perhaps the sight of his friend’s happiness made Dwyer regret the girl in Boston he had foresworn for the Clothilde.
The Mayor was robust and obviously liked this part of his job. He was as sun-darkened as the seamen around him. When I was the mayor of another town, Rudolph thought, I didn’t spend much time in the sun. He wondered if the Mayor was worried about kids smoking pot in dormitories and whether or not to order the police to use tear gas. Whitby, too, at certain seasons, looked idyllic.
When he had first met Kate, Rudolph had been disappointed in his brother’s choice. He was partial to pretty women and Kate, with her flat, dark, humble face, and her stubby body, was certainly not pretty in any conventional terms. She reminded him of some of the native women in Gauguin’s Tahitian paintings. Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, he thought, have much to answer for. With all those long, slender beauties, they have tuned us out from simpler and more primitive appeals.