Turnabout Read online

“I imagine the reason the French build their shirts like this,” he observed, “is because they’re constantly running in and out of doors with husbands and wives and entire hotel staffs running after them. It must be that.”

  “I’m not interested,” returned Sally, “but I do know that that atrocity you’re wearing is neither one thing nor the other. There’s too much of it for a day shirt and too little for a night. It’s simply an unsatisfactory compromise.”

  “Well, at any rate,” replied Tim thriftily, “I’m not letting it go to waste. I’m getting my money’s worth out of it like any French gentleman would do.”

  “I’d even pay good money to have you take it off,” said Sally.

  “Oh, my dear!” her husband murmured, looking at her archly.

  “Shut up,” interrupted Sally. “You’re not amusing. Is there no romance anywhere in that feeble frame of yours? Must I spend all my nights with a comic-strip character—a clown?”

  Tim looked thoughtfully down at his wife.

  “Romance, my child,” he told her, “does not reside in the tail of a shirt. Its seat is here—in the heart.”

  He slapped himself so vigorously just below that organ that the front of his shirt gave a startled flip, and Mrs. Willows hastily closed her eyes. The effect of his little speech was somewhat marred.

  “If I were you,” remarked Mrs. Willows, “I wouldn’t strive for nobility in that costume. It doesn’t quite come off.”

  “Is that so?” he replied unenterprisingly, turning his back on his wife and running his eyes along a row of volumes in the bookcase. “What shall we read to-night?”

  “I don’t feel like reading anything to-night,” Sally Willows replied petulantly. “That’s all we do in this beastly place, anyway. It’s read, read, read, night after night. No change. Nothing. First thing you know we’ll be old. Life will be over. Other wives go places and do things—”

  “Right!” shot back Mr. Willows. “They sure do.”

  “And I don’t mean that either,” Sally went on. “They are seen—not buried alive. What do I see? Where do I go? Cooped up here in this miserable house all day long. No companionship. No relaxation. Same old thing day in and day out, year after year. Then home you come, his lordship from the office. And what do you do? Do you offer me a couple of tickets to a play? Do you suggest going out to a dance or something? Ha ha! Not you. No. You go prancing round the house in a horrid old shirt like a third-rate comedian in a burlesque show. And then you ask me to read. Of all things, to read. Well, do you know, my darling husband, you haven’t even taken me to one honest-to-God night club? Not one. When I married you—”

  Tim Willows swung round to confront his wife, and the tails of his shirt flared alarmingly.

  “If you made a phonograph record of that set lament of yours,” he said nastily, “you could turn the damned thing on whenever you felt like it and save no end of breath. I know it myself by heart. Word for word, sentence for sentence it’s graven on my brain. Now go on and tell me what I led you to expect before you married me—how I tricked you to the altar with false promises. Come to an hysterical climax about my unjustifiable jealousy and then we can both rush out into the night and offend the damn neighbors.”

  He turned bitterly away from the small, furious figure seated on the bed and, going to the window, stood there gazing out into the pinched face of winter. Hardly thirty feet away stood another neat little suburban home—with garden and garage—and in between lay nothing but dirty snow, its flat surface broken by a straggling line of frozen shrubs. Lifting his eyes a little he saw the roofs of other houses. There were thousands of them—too many of them. He felt himself sinking, going down in a sea of neat little suburban homes. In desperation he again elevated his eyes and let them rest on the dark outline of the distant hills. Bright stars were hanging above those hills. The stark limbs of numb trees reached achingly up to their cold beams. And lights studded the hills, the lights of other homes. ‘Way off there people were living and carrying on life. Tim wondered idly what they were like, those people who lived over there. Did they, too, commute? Did they go eternally to offices? Did they have to hang up their pride with their hats and coats and swallow rebellious words in the teeth of secure executives? Was economic necessity always goading them on, marshalling them down windy platforms, cramming them into subways that steamed and stank, and finally plopping them down in front of dreary-looking desks, nervously baited and physically ruffled even before the long day had begun? Was life just going to be like that all the damn time? He had a dim understanding of his wife’s restlessness of spirit. In a way he sympathized with her. Probably their glands were all wrong. They weren’t real people. Not properly equipped for life. Maladjusted to the world. Tim did not know. Nor did he give a hang. Something was all wet somewhere. He, too, would like to try a night club, look at a lot of naked girls. It might be entertaining. Damned if he knew. He’d like to vary the monotony of the daily routine and talk with some interesting people—that is, if they would talk with him. Whom had he ever licked? Never done anything much. Only thought and talked… complained. But as things stood, what could he do about it? He was in no position to create his own circumstances … to pluck friends, funds, and entertainment from thin air. And anyway, what the hell was she grousing about? She was out all the day gallivanting round. She had freedom of action, thought, and speech. What was eating her? God knows, she was not repressed unless she created her own inhibitions through sheer intellectual vacuity. She had her day, her bridge, movies, shopping, teas, lunches, and even men. He was painfully aware of the latter. No, there was little about which she could complain. Perhaps he was wrong at that. What, after all, did he know about this woman? What did she know about herself? They were all in it together. A mess… a cul-de-sac.

  Tim Willows, standing by the window, experienced a feeling of utter frustration. It was a spiritually debilitating feeling—a miserable thing. More profoundly hopeless than a nauseating hangover after a long-distance spree. More hopeless because now the brain was clear and could look into the future. And what a future it was! Tim realized he had just about reached his highest peak. He wouldn’t be earning much more money ever. Less, if anything. And he did not have much faith in breaks. People who waited for breaks, he had found, usually went broke. There she blew, the future, the taunting white whale. Constant bickerings and recriminations paved the way. And the rest—just sour grapes and shabby expedients. Well, it was a good thing they had no spawn, although a baby or two barging about the house might have given them a bit of a kick. At least they’d have something to think about besides themselves.

  “There’s going to be a change,” came coldly from the bed. “I don’t intend to stand this life any longer. Other women work. Why shouldn’t I? If you won’t make a life for me I’ll make a life for myself. I deserve a life. I’m still under thirty and not altogether unattractive. All you seem to care about is reading and writing and bad gin.”

  At that moment she saw herself as the glorified secretary of a huge Wall Street wolf with a boyish smile. She was helping him to ruin thousands of inoffensive lives in one mad and dazzling coup. Then the Riviera and a series of top-notch seductions. Perhaps in the end she would discover that she had always loved her husband. But, of course, she’d have to do considerable experimenting before she found that out.

  Tim’s mirthless laugh smeared a streak across the pleasant picture.

  “You’ve got a damn poor chance of finding life and romance on a desk top,” he said. “And if you’re satisfied with what you do find there you’re a whole lot dumber than I thought you were, and that would make you a little less than a half-wit.” He turned from the window and confronted the charming feminine figure which for him at the moment had lost a great deal of its charm. “What in the name of God are you kicking about, anyway?” he demanded. “You haven’t a damn thing to do, no drudgery or monotonous routine. The Twills, such as they are, still take care of the house. You can pound your ear all da
y long or do what you jolly well please. No cooking, no washing—not even a child. I leave you here in the morning literally drugged with sleep only to find you at night a nervous and physical wreck. Your first words are either a complaint or a criticism. And always in the offing is the threat of a nice, noisy case of hysterics. You hold that in reserve as a last resort because you’ve found out that it’s an infallible weapon. You can win every time no matter how wrong you are, but nothing is ever changed, nothing is ever settled. You don’t even drive me down to the station in the morning. At night you habitually arrive there late through some unavoidable delay. Your excuses are so illogical they fairly sicken me to hear them. I wish to several different sets of gods I could change places with you for a while. Believe me, I do. I’d jolly well find something to occupy my time without looking for work. I’d sit down and write myself a book. It might be a rotten book, but at least I’d have the satisfaction of finding it out. I know I could do it, and in your heart, when you use it, you know I could do it, too.”

  Strange to say, Sally did know he could do it. Even at that heated moment she realized that this husband of hers was a little better than she allowed herself to admit. There was a lot more to him than any of the men she knew. That was just the trouble. There was too much to him. He was not a normal male animal and he wouldn’t act like one. He was a sort of artist without an art, which was much like being a man without a country. An unexpected wave of sympathy almost smothered the retort trembling on her lips. That would never do. They were often like this with each other now, their best words remaining unspoken while their worst ones came tumbling out.

  “I’d like to take you up on that,” she flung at him. “I wish I could change places with you. Oh, how I do! You clear out of it all every morning, go to the city and see something new—eat where you like and what you like—interesting men to talk to—good-looking girls to see—lots of them. And you don’t miss one, I’ll bet. You’ve got a rotten pair of eyes. You’re like a little old lascivious hermit—a twittering dog.”

  “Why like a twittering dog?” Tim Willows inquired. “I don’t quite get that. Twittering dogs and hermits don’t seem to—”

  But the course of Sally’s words was not to be deflected by irrelevant questions.

  “Don’t worry, my darling,” she continued. “I’d change places with you quick as a wink. At least, you do something, move about, create a little world of your own, travel places and stay overnight. I never stay anywhere overnight. No, here I am—chained down. A prisoner. All I need is a striped suit and a number.”

  Mr. Willows smiled fleetingly at this, then stood for a moment looking seriously down at his wife.

  “Sally,” he said gently, “I think you must be mad or else you get a certain backhand satisfaction in being so consistently wrong-headed. You know damn well I don’t enjoy the work I am doing, the mock importance and the hypocrisy of it, the daily drip I have to listen to and the humble pie I have to eat. A week of it would bore you to tears. Don’t know how I’ve hung on so long myself. And I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t exploded occasionally. But I don’t think I’ll be able to hang on much longer. I feel a bust-up collecting itself right in the pit of my stomach. It’s due almost any day now. Old man Gibber gets dottier all the time. He and his Nationwide—”

  “Do all men complain—”

  Sally’s question was never finished. A knock sounding irritably on the bedroom door put an end to further hostilities. As if overtaxed by this unreasonable formality, Mrs. Twill, as was her wont, opened the door just wide enough to permit the inthrust of her head. More than once Mrs. Twill had told her husband that it always made her feel foolish to knock on Mr. Tim’s door, “him being hardly out of the cradle yet.”

  “You’ll feel a whole lot foolisher some night if you don’t knock,” had been Twill’s sage advice.

  For as far back as Tim could remember, the Twills had worked in tandem for one or another member of his family.

  “Would you like to have the Twills help you out for a while?” his grandmother would ask some visiting relation, and upon receiving an affirmative reply the Twills would be packed up and bundled off to another household. In this way they gained a more comprehensive knowledge of the Willows’ family history and private affairs than was possessed by any single member. It had been an old family of old people. Most of them were now beyond the need of servants, but the Twills still went on tenaciously clinging to a world which for them was peopled mostly with memories. It was as if they had been granted a special dispensation by Time to keep on going until the last of the Willowses had stopped. Then their work on earth would be ended and they would be free to follow into another world the family they had so faithfully served, there to begin the whole thing over again under the divine auspices of a chatty, pro-Willows God. Although the Twills were rather more of an obligation than an asset, they were comforting to have about the house. Their chief interest in life centered round Sally and Tim. Sally’s girth they constantly studied with patiently hopeful eyes, but so far no embryonic Willowses had rewarded their watchful waiting.

  “I can’t stop him,” Judy Twill announced tragically.

  “Whom do you want to stop?” demanded Sally.

  “The old fool,” continued Mrs. Twill. “I know he’ll break his neck on those basement stairs. Will you call him up, Mr. Tim? The furnace is stone cold.”

  “The mother of that damned furnace must have been done in by an ice box,” complained Tim as he made for the door, uttering loud and discouraging noises as he went.

  “Do hurry,” called Sally, all other considerations forgotten in her anxiety for the safety of the venerable but pig-headed Mr. Twill.

  “Come out of that, Peter,” shouted Tim down the back stairs. “Don’t you dare put a foot in that basement.”

  Through the floor, hollowly, came the protesting voice of Twill:

  “But I can fix it, Mr. Tim,” it said.

  “God, Himself, couldn’t fix that furnace,” replied Tim. “Don’t you even breathe on the thing. Snap out of it, Peter, and go to bed. Get yourself a drink if you can find one.”

  There was no response to this, but certain noises in the kitchen assured Tim that Peter had changed his mind and found warmth for himself instead of the house.

  “Yes, Miss Sally,” Mrs. Twill was saying as Tim returned to the room. “I certainly agree with you. It’s a shame and scandal he doesn’t wear pants.”

  “I can stand to hear very little more of that,” announced Tim, looking darkly at the two women. “What I do with the lower half of my anatomy is no one’s business.”

  “Oh, is that so?” put in Sally, slightly elevating her eyebrows. “Well, I like that.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Mrs. Twill.

  “Be still,” snapped Tim. “I’m speaking of raiment now. If you mention those pajama trousers again I’ll take them out of the drawer and cut them up into little bits. I’ll burn the—”

  “He was just like that as a baby,” interrupted Mrs. Twill as calmly as if he had not been present. “No matter what we put on him at night you’d find him mother-naked in the morning—bare bottom and all.”

  “You can find him like that almost any time when he’s not at the office,” announced Sally. “But who wants to?”

  “If you all have thoroughly finished,” said Mr. Willows with frigid politeness, “I’ll go down to the basement. Good-night, Judy. Tell that ancient wreck of yours that if he ever attempts to go down there again I’ll put him on the retired list for good.”

  When Judy had withdrawn, Tim Willows looked down long and thoughtfully at his young wife.

  “You know,” he said at last, “my idea of hell is to be chained to a line of smugly secure home owners. Every one of them is stoking a glowing furnace and liking it. Every one but me. I am crouched on my bare knees, eternally doomed to pull cold clinkers from the sneering mouth of that damned thing down in the basement. That would be hell, and I’m already getting a sample of it r
ight here on earth. In fact,” he added as he walked to the door, “everything in this house is a little bit of hell.”

  “Then why not say ‘To hell with everything in the house’?” inquired Sally, with one of her most disagreeable smiles.

  “I do,” replied Tim earnestly. “I most emphatically damn well do.”

  There was a pained expression in Mr. Ram’s eyes as he watched Tim Willows leave the room. High time that steps were taken to show these two mere mortals the error of their ways.

  Chapter 2

  Interlude with a Furnace

  Wedged rather than crammed into the narrow confines of a packing case the great animal slumbered, sighing deeply in its sleep. It looked terribly uncomfortable, this creature, but was either unaware of the fact or ascetically disregarded it.

  “With the entire house at his disposal,” Tim wondered as he stood in the kitchen and looked down upon the dog, “why does he insist on pouring himself into that box? It’s sheer stupidity—an inability to adapt himself to changing conditions.”

  Dopey was a large dog—too large, thought Tim Willows. Dopey would have made a better cow or even a small mule. The man’s sense of irritation increased. Why, in God’s name, why did this dog prefer the slow torture of that box to a pillow-strewn divan, a soft rug, or a comfortable corner in the front room?

  Tim failed to realize that what little mind Dopey owned ran on a single track. He had always slept in that box; why should he not continue to sleep in that box? Night after night and even on dull afternoons, on fair days and foul, in sorrow and disgrace that box had been his refuge, his sanctuary. Other dogs no doubt were just waiting for an opportunity to take that box from him. This long had been Dopey’s secret fear. But it would never be. That box was the one thing in the world that he actually owned. Growth, either physical or intellectual, meant little or nothing to Dopey. He brushed them aside as trifling considerations. He liked the smell of that box. It was familiar, homelike, and soothing to taut nerves.