Mr. Bridge_ A Novel - Evan S. Connell [87]
“Well, I’ll shake that lazy thing,” said this voice.
Mr. Bridge, unable to believe what he was hearing, gripped the telephone and waited. He heard mumbling and what sounded like the boy giggling. Then he heard Ruth cursing.
“What is going on there?” he demanded.
Nobody answered.
Finally Ruth said hello. She sounded more asleep than awake.
“This is your father,” said Mr. Bridge with his fist clenched on his knee.
After a long pause she asked, “Daddy?”
“Yes!”
“Is that you?”
“Yes!”
“My God. Are you here?”
“Yes!”
“In Manhattan?”
“I am in Manhattan and I want to know what is going on in the place. Do you hear me?”
There was another pause. Then she said she had not expected him until Friday and asked when he had arrived.
“Last night. Evidently you’ve forgotten the information in my letter. What’s going on there?”
“Here? Oh, that’s Bobby.”
“I do not know what this is all about, but we are not going to discuss it on the telephone. How soon will I see you?”
“Oh God,” she said, yawning. “Let me think a minute. Daddy, I’m half asleep. I was up most of the night.” She spoke to Bobby. Mr. Bridge heard her say “Sweetheart, make some coffee.” Then she was back on the line.
“What kind of a place are you in?” he asked, trying to control himself.
“I’m sorry. Bobby was chattering. What did you say?”
“Is someone in that apartment with you?”
“Bobby is here, Daddy. You just talked to him. Don’t you remember?”
“I warn you, Ruth,” he said, “I shall want a complete and satisfactory explanation of this situation. I do not understand what is going on, but I do not like it one bit. Is that clear? I gather you have some sort of extension to your telephone, or this person has access to your apartment. I want an explanation, and it had better be a good one. Now, at what time shall we meet?”
After another conversation with Bobby she suggested they meet in the Algonquin lobby at six.
Mr. Bridge was in the lobby at five thirty. He expected her to bring Bobby; but a few minutes after six she entered by herself, smiled as though nothing was wrong, and kissed him on the cheek. She asked how everybody was at home. He said they were fine. Douglas was growing rapidly, taller every day. Carolyn was playing golf all the time. And their mother, too, was fine—except for occasional headaches—and very busy with some sort of charity organization in the North End. Everybody was fine. Harriet. Julia. Everybody. And he waited for an explanation of the man in her apartment, but apparently she was not going to mention it. Nor did she show the least sign of embarrassment or guilt.
He began: “Ruth, I consider myself reasonably broadminded. However, you have not told me what this person was doing in your living quarters when I telephoned this morning. I have allowed you to come to New York alone at a very early age. I have begun to think it may have been a serious mistake.”
Ruth slowly tamped out her cigarette while she listened. Then she said, “Bobby affects people that way.”
“Come to the point. I want an explanation and I want it this instant. Not later. Not at your convenience. Now.”
“But you heard him. Couldn’t you tell?”
“I heard something I did not like. Now you are going to tell me what that fellow was doing in your apartment at a quarter to eight in the morning. And be quick about it. My patience is running out.”
“I let him sleep with me last night.”
“I have had just about enough,” Mr. Bridge said. “Just about enough.”
“So have I.”
“You are not yet twenty-one. Until you are twenty-one you will listen to me.”
“For Christ’s sake. Why do you think I left Kansas City?”
Mr. Bridge was stunned. She had never spoken like this.
“Stop living in the past,” she said. “Don’t you know what year this is? This isn’t the first of the century any longer. Do you expect me to live