The Key to Nicholas Street Page 7

  You said not later than tonight, I read, so I have been calling you. I will be back again.

  The queerest thing was that while it was not like any handwriting I would recognize on the spot, it was somehow familiar to me. I stared at it until it swam before my eyes, and I racked my brain trying to think of some other piece of paper with writing like this, but it just wouldn’t come.

  “Morten,” I said, “I am positive I know who wrote this.”

  “Who?” he rapped out.

  “I just cannot recall,” I told him. “And the aggravating thing is that it’s on the tip of my tongue.”

  “Lucille, if you would just think hard …”

  “I am thinking hard,” I said with some annoyance. “If you imagine I’m not as anxious as you are …”

  “Yes, yes, of course, Lucille,” he said quickly, and then pulled the paper from my hand and gave it to Bettina. “Bettina, if your mother knows, maybe you would know, too.”

  Bettina looked at the writing and frowned, and I could almost see the same worrisome thoughts going through her head that were in mine. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ten Eyck,” she said, “the writing is familiar, and yet I can’t place it.”

  “If we waited a little bit while you looked through letters and such things people wrote you,” Morten pleaded, “you think that would help you remember?”

  While all this was going on, Junie, of course, was bouncing with impatience. “Mr. Ten Eyck,” she chimed in, “I haven’t seen that yet. Maybe I could tell you,” and just like that she fairly snatched the paper from Bettina’s hand and looked at it.

  It was the expression on her face that put me right the instant I saw it. Her eyes opened wide, and then the color drained from her cheeks so that she looked the image of death. She looked wildly around at us, and I think she knew what I was going to say because she threw up her hand as if to stop me.

  “Morten,” I cried out, “it was Bob Macek who wrote that!”

  “It doesn’t mean anything!” Junie yelled. “It’s only about a delivery or something. It doesn’t mean anything at all!”

  “It was Bob Macek,” I said, trying to make myself heard over her, “and I know because that’s the writing that’s on my butcher bill every blessed week of the year!”

  Morten knew Bob Macek, all right. I doubt if there was a man in town who followed the baseball games more closely than Morten, or worried about them more.

  “Are you sure, Lucille?” he demanded.

  “I will take my Christian oath on it,” I said.

  Junie was in tears by now with Bettina trying to comfort her, but Morten had no time for nonsense.

  “Listen to me, miss,” he barked at Junie, “what are you to Bob Macek, anyhow?”

  Junie tried to get hold of herself. “I’m engaged to him,” she blubbered. “We’re going to get married!”

  “Oh,” Morten said, and looked uncomfortable. “Well now,” he said, “you must see what a serious business this is. A young fellow leaves a note and runs away. Then the lady is found dead with the note right there, and it says in the note that the young fellow was going to be back. Maybe you can see this is nothing to laugh about.” Which is something Morten could have spared himself saying since Junie was far from laughing.

  She took a long shuddering breath, and glared at Morten. “If you think Bob had anything to do with this, Mr. Ten Eyck,” she said, “you’re crazy.”

  Morten shook his head. “Before I can be as sure as you are, young lady,” he said, “I’ll have to do some talking with our friend, Bob.” He turned abruptly to Richard. “Richard,” he said, “do you think you could identify the man you saw running away as Bob Macek?”

  Richard hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  Morten shrugged. “Well now,” he said, “if your father doesn’t mind I’d like you to take out the car and drive me over to our friend’s house.”

  “It’s all right with me, Morten,” Harry said.

  Junie pulled herself away from Bettina. “If you’re going to see Bob now I’m going with you, Mr. Ten Eyck.”

  “I’d rather not,” Morten said.

  “I don’t care what you’d rather!” Junie flared. “I’m going.”

  She did, too, and when the three of them had gone the rest of us just sat there looking at each other in that living room which was one reeking cloud from those cigarettes Matthew smoked one after the other. I got up to draw back the curtains and let the air circulate a bit, and, sure enough, there on the walk up to the porch were at least a dozen of the neighborhood busybodies—Mort Bennauer, Rose and Howie McIntyre, Freda Lutey, and the Youngs, no less, from around the corner with some of their picked friends.

  “Harry,” I said to him, “I think it would be in order if you went out and told those people to stop making a show of themselves right in front of our house.”

  He shook his head. “I’d rather not, Lucille,” he said. “You take care of it.”

  It needs a little gumption, Lucille, to go out there and face them, so you do it. Well, that was Harry for you, all right, an Ayres through and through. And, as I thought to myself on the way out, there never was one of the Ayres breed who had a backbone, or ever will.

  PART THREE

  HARRY

  CHAPTER ONE

  The first time we met was on a day like this, a glowing Sunday morning with the breath of early summer in the air, and I was in the driveway trying to get down on canvas a view of the street. The houses on either side of the driveway made fine incisive lines against the sky, there was a loop of telephone wire bridging the roofs of the houses, and the fresh green of trees and lawn under the sunlight softened the rigid pattern of lines and gave it depth.

  But I was not doing it justice, I knew that, and I was not made any happier when I realized that someone had come quietly up behind me and was standing there examining my work. Self-assurance was never one of my strong points, and what little I had to sustain me in a hobby at which I was making no progress always vanished like a puff of smoke at the mere idea of anyone’s peering over my shoulder and working up to some nonsensical comment. And, knowing the weakness of my work, I was always more disconcerted by the kind remark than the antagonistic one. Lucille’s “Why, that’s lovely, Harry. So Lifelike,” delivered like a pat on the head, was most disconcerting of all, and with the idea that it was she who was standing there I waited with brush poised for the blow to fall.

  Instead, I was dumfounded to hear a woman say, “Not bad for illustration, Mr. Ayres.”

  I turned to face her, and that was the first time I ever saw Kate Ballou. And it was the way I always see her most vividly in my mind’s eye, a look partly quizzical and partly apologetic on her face as if she had suddenly been made aware that she might have offended me and was not quite sure how to make amends. Then she must have seen that she had not offended me, but only given me a surprise.

  “I’m Kate Ballou,” she explained. “When I bought the house here and told the agent I was a professional painter he said something about your interest in painting. That is, he said something about Mr. Ayres’ interest in painting, and you are Mr. Ayres, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I found it impossible to take my eyes from her face, “I’m Harry Ayres.”

  I already knew from Lucille’s animated talk at the dinner table that the house next door had been bought by some woman from New York, some kind of artist from what Lucille had been able to gather, and I knew from the presence of the expensive car that had taken its place in the garage next to our old sedan that whoever the woman was she had money enough and to spare. But I was not prepared for anything like Kate Ballou. She was beautiful, true, but more than that, there was an apparent obliviousness in her to it. A good-looking woman is not a rarity; a good-looking woman who does not act every waking moment as if her looks were the alpha and omega of her existence most certainly is, and before I knew Kate Ballou I think Bettina was the only attractive woman I knew who had that quality of unawareness. I
n Bettina, however, it was carried far past a healthy point, as was made evident by her refusal to take pains with her appearance, and her agony at any sort of compliment. Kate, I think, had the sort of indifference which is rooted in a supreme self-confidence, as if at one time she had coolly studied herself in a mirror, come to an absolute conclusion about herself, and there let the matter drop. She did not in any way seem to mind the stupid way in which I stared at her, but had an air of accepting this as an inevitable part of our introduction. When I realized I had been examining her in much the same way one would examine a new model who has taken a pose for the first time before a life class, I grew warm with embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed to say, “but I couldn’t help thinking what a fine subject you’d be for a portrait. I mean,” I added hastily, with a dreadful consciousness that in attempting a graceful bow of apology I was tripping over my own feet, “for some artist who knows how to paint. I’m afraid I’m a Sunday painter of the poorest sort myself.”

  True as this was, anyone else I knew would have contradicted it for politeness sake, and I was a little hurt that she did not. Instead, she studied my painting gravely, and then shook her head.

  “There’s no reason why a Sunday painter has to be a bad painter,” she observed.

  I sought some balm for my wounded feelings. “You said it was good illustration,” I pointed out, “so it can’t be all bad.”

  “It’s details,” she said impatiently, “all details. See, this bush here, and this one, and this line of wire, and the house here; all a collection of details, and even though you’ve set them down so nicely they don’t add up to anything. You’ve missed the whole thing.”

  I thrust my brush into her hand. “Very well,” I said, “you go ahead and show me what I’ve missed.”

  In my own defense I must say that only part of the gesture was sophomoric challenge based on hurt feelings. The other part, small as it might have been, was an honest desire to be shown, to have the secret revealed, to be handed the magic key. In that, I daresay, I was no different from any hopeful amateur who dares try his hand at any of the arts, painting or writing, or what have you. In all of us, I think, is the feeling that there is a magic key, and that one day while we are bumbling ineffectually at our picture or poem or music it will be delivered miraculously into our hands, and thenceforth we will do as the successful ones do. And you cannot stop us from believing that, either, for if you do there is really nothing left.

  I think Kate Ballou understood this. For a moment she held the brush as if she were about to thrust it back into my hand, then abruptly said, “I never could resist playing teacher. Now, if you’ll give me something to demonstrate on …”

  “Use my canvas,” I said. I had expected her to do that, anyhow.

  “No,” she said, “no one has any right to touch your picture.”

  “It’s not a very good picture,” I smiled. “Anything you do to it is bound to be an improvement.”

  “It’s yours,” she said stubbornly. “Don’t you see, if someone just draws a single line on it it stops being yours.”

  It was not a compliment. It was not intended to be one. It was a simple statement that something I had done, something I had tried to do, at any rate, was important, was to be respected because it was a reflection of myself. Good, bad, or indifferent, that canvas was a mirror for Harry Ayres, and no one had the right to step in the way of his image. A heady thought, an amusing and bewildering one, after twenty-three years of marriage with Lucille.

  So Kate Ballou did not paint over my canvas, but used, prosaically enough, a cardboard shirt stiffener which she salvaged from the rubbish box next to my kitchen door. She set it into the easel, and then, after carefully preparing brushes and palette, went to work with short savage strokes that seemed to dig the paint into the cardboard. The picture grew before my eyes: a tunnel of cool darkness running between the cliffs of two houses and suddenly plunging into a molten puddle of sunlight. A dark road inexorably leading to a world that shimmered under sunlight. You would go down that road and want to retreat and then follow its course again. It was a very good picture.

  I told that to Kate Ballou, and she nodded. “You see,” she said, “the details are submerged in favor of the total impression. In illustration it’s just the opposite.”

  I looked at my canvas which leaned sadly against the base of the easel. “I suppose,” I said ruefully, “that the logical step is for me to offer my work to some suitable magazine.”

  She smiled. “Is that what you really want out of your painting?”

  “I don’t know what I want out of it,” I admitted. “You’d probably laugh if I told you how I came to start painting in the first place ….”

  “How?”

  “If you promise to keep a straight face.”

  “All right, I promise.”

  “I own a store here,” I explained. “Ayres’ House Supplies on Ewald Street downtown. Hardware, paints, and what will you to make the House Beautiful. And then one fine day I noticed we were getting a lot of calls for artists’ supplies, and not only from summer people but from local talent you’d never suspect of artistic yearnings. So, we laid in a line of artists’ supplies, and since I’m a merchant who boasts of standing behind his merchandise I decided to see how good they were.”

  “Were they good?” she asked solemnly.

  “Very good,” I said. “A lot better than my talent for using them, as I found out quick enough, but since I got so much pleasure from them …”

  I stopped short. I had not meant to start maundering like that, to spread my private emotions like jelly on bread and hand them to her, but I had been tricked into it by her manner, that appearance of humorous interest, as if what I had to say was in any way important. Trust her to somehow understand this.

  “Do you think it’s something to be ashamed of?” she asked.

  “What?” I said, deliberately obtuse.

  “Finding something by accident and then making use of it because it gives you pleasure.”

  “My wife seems to think it all a little childish,” I said. “I’m afraid she may have a point there.”

  I think I had expected her to argue against this; I was disconcerted when she took it at face value. “Then why don’t you give up painting? You’re right about these materials, these brushes and paints, everything; they’re the best money can buy. Do you think you have the right to use them, feeling the way you do?”

  “Since I own them,” I said, “I think I have every right to do with them as I please.”

  She shook her head. “Then it’s my unpleasant duty, Mr. Ayres, to tell you you’re quite mistaken. Before you have the privilege of sticking this brush into that pigment you have to have two things clear in your head. One is a respect for your art, and the other is a respect for yourself. I’m a little fed up with a lot of the amateurs that have come waltzing into my pet preserve lately, the precious primitives whose only asset is ignorance, and God help them if they lose that, and the crackpots who throw confetti on glue, and the club ladies who think painting is, oh, so precious.” She waved the brush under my nose. “This is the stuff that Vermeer used, and El Greco, and Cézanne, and a lot of other people who knew what it was meant for. And I’m electing myself a delegate on their behalf to ask anyone who doesn’t know what it means when he picks up a brush and faces a nice clean piece of canvas to please leave the room.”

  I was trapped in a false position, I was being lectured like a schoolboy in a fashion that had both my dignity and temper teetering precariously, and yet in that moment I felt more wonderfully triumphant than I can ever recall. All the things being said to me were exactly the things I had vaguely framed in my mind again and again and never been able to deliver to Lucille. Just hearing them said, knowing there was someone who shared them with me, even though she stood pink-cheeked and angry before me evidently prepared to resist anything I had to say, filled me with the electric sense of having met an affinity. And u
nderneath it all was more, was something that had to be pushed aside and concealed by a conscious thought. For God’s sake, Harry Ayres, went the thought, you’re forty-six, you’re married, you have two children near marriage themselves. For God’s sake, Harry Ayres, watch yourself.

  “Miss Ballou,” I said, “have you ever given lessons in painting?”

  She was taken aback for an instant, and then her mouth quirked in the flicker of a smile.

  “Why?” she asked. “Was I making noises like an art teacher just now?”

  “Now you’re doing what you warned me against,” I pointed out. “Showing a lack of respect for yourself.”

  She laughed and jabbed the handle of the brush into her chest. “Bull’s-eye,” she said. “As it happens, Mr. Ayres, I did give lessons long, long ago when I was young and defenseless.”

  “Well, would you consider taking on a student now? Whatever hours are convenient and whatever payment you think is fair, of course.”

  “You’re trying to prove to me that I’ve misjudged you, aren’t you?”

  “I’m trying to prove something to myself, Miss Ballou.”

  She looked at me steadily, and then abruptly nodded her head just once in a queer, stiff gesture of approval. “You know, that was very well said.” She placed the brush in its box, and picking up a rag from the pile on the ground she slowly started wiping her fingers free of oil.

  “That was very well said,” she repeated almost abstractedly, and looked at me, frowning a little.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I did not know at first how deeply and hopelessly I was involved with her. After all, the figure that eyed me from Hibbard’s window whenever I passed it on my way to the store was only that of Harry Ayres—good old Harry Ayres. Not Casanova, mind you, not even one of the second-rate idols that Junie worshiped once a week at the Orpheum. Just Harry Ayres who was getting pretty gray on top, who was always a little too long and lean, and was, perhaps, a little slow on the uptake.

  And he lived on Nicholas Street, this Harry Ayres, where all the nice people lived their nice lives without ever being bothered by wild and wierd thoughts of beautiful redheaded women. Of course, he did take lessons in painting from a beautiful redheaded woman, but they were oddly formal little lessons. Always in the bright sunlight, and always right out in the open where the neighbors could see for themselves how nice and proper everything was. And they came right up to see, trust them for that, but all they found out was that the redheaded woman was not only beautiful, but smart, and a mighty fine painter who did all those magazine covers, and even had pictures in a couple of museums. And she made money at it, too, lots of money, which even to Nicholas Street made it as respectable as the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.