Young Mr. Keefe by Stephen; Birmingham Page A

father frowned. “Do you really mean that?” he asked.
    â€œOf course,” Jimmy said. “I’ve just started this job. I can’t run off and quit just like that.”
    â€œWant to make good on your own, eh?” Mr. Ames asked.
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œWell, that’s fine, fine,” Mr. Ames said. “But we’ll get him back, won’t we, J. L.?” He winked. “He’ll have his fill of those movie stars before long.”
    Remembering all this, alone in the mountain night, he shivered and took another drink from the Thermos. How little they understood, and how hopeless it was to try to make them understand. Yes, he thought, perhaps Claire was right. None of them had been tested. But this was a test that he was giving himself. Maybe it wasn’t war, but it required bravery of a sort. He had failed in his marriage, but he must not allow himself to fail in his job. He must not take the easy way out, which was home, to Somerville, to the Keefe Company, to the calculated heartiness of Turner Ames, and Miss Maitland’s simper.
    His mother had hoped that Jessica would make him stay. That day at the beach, Jessica had talked about the sailboat races on the lake that summer which he shouldn’t miss. She talked, gaily, about how long her tan would last, the party she was going to give, the people she was going to invite. She talked of the familiarity of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont. Jessica had learned an interesting trick at Foxcroft. Taking the matches from her pack, she placed them side by side along the sea wall. Then she showed him how she could make five out of three, ten out of two, three pairs of four by only moving one, six out of twelve. Her lacquered fingertips moved deftly, carefully through the magic, and the order she desired resulted. “I didn’t say they couldn’t be Roman numerals!” she laughed, as, halfheartedly, he accused her of cheating. That night, once again, he had told his mother, “I am going back to California. I’m sorry, but I am.” She shook her head and said that never in this world would she be able to fathom the reason why.
    He had kept his promise. He had actually cut his vacation short and flown back ahead of time, telling his parents that he had remembered an important piece of work that he had overlooked. Back at his desk, he had tried to keep himself exceptionally busy. One of the firm’s clients was the California Tomato Growers’ Association. He looked at a picture of a pretty girl holding a bushel basketful of tomatoes in her arms. She was wearing a farmerette’s hat. “How many tomatoes can you count in this picture?” he led off the caption, and he wrote a few more words about the special lushness of California-grown tomatoes, tomatoes from the land of eternal sunshine. The picture, caption and all, was then mailed out to a long list of newspapers. A few weeks later, Burrell’s clipping service would respond with the tally. “You’re doing great, Jim,” Bob Maguire, his boss, had said. “There’s a great future for you here, boy.” Jimmy was almost absurdly pleased with the compliment, but, with Helen gone, there was no one to tell it to. He was seeing Claire and Blazer that week-end in San Francisco. But they were a special case; if he told them, they would think he was trying to be funny.
    He poured himself another drink. Probably he was drinking too much, he thought. But there was so little else to do, in the evenings, when he was alone. Bob Maguire was very kind. He and Margie, his wife, invited Jimmy to dinner every few weeks. In their split-level, ranch-type house in Fair Oaks, a newly developed suburb that was burgeoning east of the city—a suburb that was still a treeless, lawnless stretch of redwood and plate-glass houses—they tried to make him feel at home. They knew that he and Helen had separated.