Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [12]
I ll bet he comes to our party, said Julian. If he does you can thank me. I ll do my best, but my heart won’t be in the work. She looked at him. Oh, God, Ju, why did you do it? Why do you do things like that? She began to cry, but when he went to her she held him away. It s all so awful and I used to love you so.
I love you. You know that.
It s too easy. The things you called me on the way home whore and bitch and a lot worse they weren t anything compared with the public humiliation. She accepted his handkerchief. I ve got to change, she said. Do you think Mother and Dad know about it?
No, I doubt it. Your father d be over here if he knew. Oh, how should I know? She walked out and then came back. My present is at the bottom of the pile, she said. That made him feel worse. Under all the other packages was something she had bought days, maybe weeks, before, when things were not so bad as they now appeared to be. When she bought that she was concentrating on him and what he would like; rejecting this idea and that idea, and deciding on one thing because it was something he wanted or something he would want. Caroline was one person who really did put a lot of thought into a gift; she knew when to choose the obvious thing. One time she had given him handkerchiefs for Christmas; no one else had given him handkerchiefs, and they were what he wanted. And whatever was in that package, she had bought with him alone in mind. He could not guess from the size of the box what was inside it. He opened it. It was two gifts: a pigskin stud box, big enough to hold two sets of studs, with plenty of room inside for assorted collar buttons, collar pins, tie clasps and Caroline had put in a dozen or so front and back collar buttons. The other gift was of pigskin, too; a handkerchief case that collapsed like an accordion. Both things had J. McH. E. stamped in small gilt letters on the top cover, and that in itself showed thought. She knew, and no one else in the world knew, that he liked things stamped J. McH. E., and not just J. E., or J. M. E. Maybe she even knew why he liked it that way; he wasn’t sure himself. He stood at the table, looking down at the handkerchief case and stud box, and was afraid. Upstairs was a girl who was a person. That he loved her seemed unimportant compared to what she was. He only loved her, which really made him a lot less than a friend or an acquaintance. Other people saw her and talked to her when she was herself, her great, important self. It was wrong, this idea that you know someone better because you have shared a bed and a bathroom with her. He knew, and not another human being knew, that she cried I or high in moments of great ecstasy. He knew, he alone knew her when she let herself go, when she herself was not sure whether she was wildly gay or wildly sad, but one and the other. But that did not mean that he knew her. Far from it. It only meant that he was closer to her when he was close, but (and this was the first time the thought had come to him) maybe farther away than anyone else when he was not close. It certainly looked that way now. Oh, I m a son of a bitch, he said. II In the middle of the front page of the Gibbsville Sun, the morning paper, there was a two-column box, decorated with Santa Claus and holly doo-dads, and in the center of the box was a long poem. Well, Mervyn Schwartz finally got it.
What? said Irma. Shot in a whorehouse last night, said her husband. What! exclaimed Irma. What are you talking about?
Here it is, said her husband. Right here on the front page. Mervyn Schwartz, thirty-five, of Gibbsville, was shot and killed at the Dew Drop
Let me see, said Irma. She took the paper out of her husband s hands. Where? ... Oh, you, she said, and threw the paper back at him. He was laughing at her with a high, soft giggle. Think you’re funny, she said. You oughtn t to say things like that where the