When Andy came in he introduced himself, looked at the letters, told the postal inspectors all about Dorita Hess and told Mary and me to go home. The Post Office inspectors apologized to Mary and me and we didn’t know what to say. The usual answers to an apology, such as ‘Think nothing of it’, ‘A natural mistake’, ‘Don’t mention it’ seemed both inadequate and rather inappropriate. So we just shook hands and left.
A week later there was a very small notice in the Seattle papers to the effect that one Dorita Hess had been arrested, and had confessed to sending obscene matter through the mails.
We never did learn what happened to her, where she was sent or for how long, but every Christmas-tide when I hear ‘God rest ye, merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay!’ I think of Dorita in one of her ten fur coats and many colours of hair, eating sugar doughnuts with her gloves on.
15
‘Just Like Flying’
I KNOW THAT MOST PEOPLE THINK that the worst pitfalls in the path of a working girl are low salaries and sex. I don’t. I think the worst pitfalls in the path of a working girl are shorthand and office parties.
Office work is dull enough, God knows, with all its taking down and transcribing of someone else’s thoughts, usually boring, endless making of copies, and stamping of dates. But office play is much worse. Why don’t people realize that it is as ridiculous to try to get all the people who work together to mix socially as it is to expect everybody living in one apartment house to be best friends?
All the office parties I’ve ever attended were either so proper they were stifling, or so unleashed they were indecent. At the unleashed parties little accountants, who during working hours never unpursed their lips and who called fellow employees of twenty years’ standing, ‘mister’ and ‘miss’, invariably turned into the most rapacious of bottom pinchers, the primmest and most unyielding of all the office females immediately got dishevelled and hysterical, the boss, who had always appeared gentlemanly and above average, turned out to have a wife who told dirty stories and insisted on fixing everybody ‘jusht one more lil drinkie’, and a silvery-haired woman from the book-keeping department told me that the switchboard operator was sleeping with the vice-president, and the traffic manager’s wife’s uterus had turned to stone.
For weeks, even months, after a real bang-up office party the involvees would go shamefacedly around apologizing and being tiresomely humble or else nursing little hurts and slights.
For a long time I worked in offices too small for any office get-togethers, but I was not spared, because my friends, Mary’s friends, Mary, even my sister Dede, worked in bigger places where they had lots of parties. I was dragged to bank picnics, insurance dances, oil company masquerades, construction company country club debauches, canned salmon swimming parties, department store dinners, radio station free-for-alls, electrical sales roller-skating, even ferry boat christenings. These were all distinguished, as far as I was concerned, by either an anaesthetic dullness or a great deal of hysterical activity. Whether or not you enjoyed yourself depended on your idea of fun.
I remember the auto parts Christmas party that the try-to-be-grand wife of the office manager had insisted be formal (which meant merely tuxedos and a dress any length below the calf) and at her ‘home’. Both guarantees of misery. How choked and stuffed the men looked. How overcurled and unsure the women.
There was a large blue Christmas tree in one corner of the crowded living-room and as each couple was herded past it to be introduced, the uncomfortable wives remarked, ‘Oh, what a beautiful Christmas tree. My, I just love blue Christmas trees. They look so frosty’, and the husbands said, ‘I like a plain green tree myself, which elicited a dirty look from the manager’s wife and a nudge or kick from his own.
There were little dishes of nuts and olives and a very few tiny crystal ashtrays placed here and there. The nuts and olives brought forth, ‘Would you wish for some err-derves?’ ‘No, thanks, I wouldn’t care for some’ or ‘Oh, thanks, don’t mind if I do’, and ‘My, it certainly is a lovely party. There’s nothing like seeing folks all dressed up.’ ‘Oh, heavens, no more for me. I’m full up. But they’re lovely err-derves.’
“I’ll just take one almond—I’m on a diet”, I told Charlie, “You can’t wear overalls all your life.”
As the room filled so did the tiny ashtrays. The hostess apparently didn’t notice this but several of the guests did and, carrying them carefully, made self-conscious trips to the neat swept empty fireplace, lost their nerve and carried them back again. A husband spilled ashes on the rug, his wife scrubbed at them with her best handkerchief, looked embarrassed and said, ‘Men!’ As was inevitable after a while there was the unmistakable smell of burning wool and a frantic search which revealed the overflowing ash trays, some marks on the tables and one cigarette stub smouldering on the rug under the edge of the davenport. Immediately the host and hostess were down on all fours rubbing at the burn, checking the burn, measuring the burn and making everyone in the room as miserable as possible. I fully expected them to dust for fingerprints. After a great deal of discussion but no confessions they let the case rest, but I noticed nobody smoked after that.
About midnight some very small glasses of a very raw sherry and several plates of a dry bready fruitcake were passed. Most of the men downed the sherry quickly like straight shots, but they were not given refills. The wives sipped at theirs, remarking, ‘My, what lovely sherry. I think fruitcake and sherry go lovely in the evening.’
After the sherry, gifts were exchanged and the little chambers, and mustard pots shaped like toilets, that had seemed so killing in the trick store and such a sure bet for a big laugh when they were being wrapped, now produced nothing but averted eyes and red faces.
At one everybody started for the upstairs and their wraps and as each couple said good-night, I heard the host and hostess say, ‘Now don’t you worry about that rug—accidents are bound to happen—and a Merry Christmas to you, too.’ I had a feeling that the minute the door closed on the last guest they were going to have a big fight about office parties and that burn on the rug, and I was glad.
The other extreme was a construction company party at a country club outside of town. We were a little late and when we drove under the porte-cochère it sounded as if we were entering an amusement park. ‘Help, somebody help me!’ ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!’ ‘Wheeeeeeee!’ ‘Ouch! Georgie!’ ‘Stop!’ ‘Don’t you dare, Hank!’ ‘Oops, try again’, sprang at us like ‘The News of the World’ at movie theatres. “This is going to be quite a party”, my escort said.
It was a come-as-you-please party, and suits and plain blacks mingled with beige laces and orchid taffetas, as did pin stripes and plain browns with the two dinner jackets. There were two or three bottles of whisky on every table and several under them. Everybody danced every dance and deliberately bumped into each other on the crowded floor. ‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’ our partners yelled at each other, laughing as they clashed us womenfolk together like cymbals just for the hell of it. It was certainly lively. One man fell into and broke the drum—another punched the orchestra leader in the nose because he wouldn’t let him lead the orchestra—another went around filling the men’s pockets with seltzer water.
By the time supper was served everyone was at the wrong table, everyone was drunk, the poor waiters were almost in tears and I seemed to be alone. My waiter, a small sad-looking man, said, “What are they celebrating?” and waved his arm around to include all the staggering, milling, yelling crowd. “Being alive and having a job, I guess”, I said.
A small girl with a thick white skin and half-closed eyes came over to the table, leaned down on her elbows and said, “Boo!” I said, “Who are you?” She said, “I’m the wife of blue prints over there but it doesn’t make any differenshe honey, I jusht came over to tell you that your nose is shiny. Here”, she reached down her neck, drew out a large grey powder puff and slapped it briskly around on my face, covering my nice shiny make-up with a thick
white powder. “Thash better”, she said, putting her powder puff away and swaying as she tried to focus her eyes on me.
I went into the ladies’ room to take off the powder and found it crowded and terrible. The first vice-president’s wife had thrown up in her purse and was sobbing, “I’ve been poishoned.” A small drab girl in a plum-coloured suit was sitting in a corner twisting her handkerchief, looking very green and saying nothing. Several girls were repairing their make-up and exchanging notes. “So what if you’re married?” I says to him. “Who isn’t?” And he says, ‘Honey, I’ve had my eye on you for a year’, and I says, ‘So has your wife and here she comes now.’—God, is he an old wolf!” One older woman was sniffing smelling salts. The coloured attendant who carried a sheaf of one dollar bills in her hand like a bridge hand said, “Anything I can do for you, honey?” I said no, wiped of the powder and left. When I got back to our table my escort had returned and we went home.
I remember a picnic held on the cool green banks of a river which might have been a perfect office party, the exception, if one of the older secretaries hadn’t suddenly jumped into the bonfire after her weenie that had dropped from its stick, which bold action and subsequent drunken ravings as she was being bandaged, revealed that the sick old mother she had been staying home from work to care for over the years, was named Three Star Hennessy.
I resolved never to go to another office party.
Then just after Christmas and the closing of the NRA, Dede announced that her office was giving a skiing party and would I go with her. I enjoyed the mountains in winter, the stillness, the deep blue shadows, the untouchedness, the thin tingling air, the creak of shoes on snow, the funny little marks made by the feet of birds and animals, the round pregnant contours of anything snow-covered, the starlike beauty of a lighted window against the night, but unlike thousands of other Seattle-ites I was not at all enthusiastic about skiing.
Even as a child I had never cared for outdoor activities. ‘Little Houso’, Daddy had called me as he unclamped my hands from a book and shoved me out into the fresh air. I liked fresh air but I didn’t see why people had to be out in it all the time. Anyway, as I’m not good at sports and not very well co-ordinated, I didn’t see any point in forcing the issue.
“No”, I told Dede. “I don’t know how to ski, I don’t want to learn and I loathe office parties.”
Mary, who had by this time married a Danish doctor and spent all her week-ends skiing, said, “Skiing is a wonderful sport. It is the closest you’ll ever come to flying. You must go. It is very healthful, stirs up the blood, especially when you ram into a tree, and I think everybody in the family should learn.”
I said, “But I’m no good at sports and I’ll probably break my leg.”
“Nonsense”, Mary said. “Skiing is all a matter of relaxing and balance. Anybody that can bend their knees can ski.”
I said, “How did Claire do last week-end?” Mary said, “Oh, she broke her leg but it was only a simple fracture of the tibio-astragalus so she’ll be back on skis in no time.”
I said, “How did Margaret make out?”
Mary said, “Well she was going up a steep hill and she had forgotten her climbers or slipped or something—anyway she landed sitting down wedged in a hollow tree stump, and she wasn’t hurt at all but she was terribly mad.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because”, said Mary, “we thought she’d gone back to the practice hill and so we didn’t look for her for about four hours.”
“I can hardly wait”, I said. “Imagine looking forward to spending next week-end breaking my tibio-astragalus and being wedged in an old stump for four hours. Are you crazy?”
Mary said, “Betty, skiing is the coming sport. Everybody is learning, there are excellent instructors at the mountains and the air is wonderful.” I said, “No.”
Then Alison, who loved skiing, was very fearless and at her first lesson had shot down the mountainsides like a bullet, said, “Betty, you should go. Everybody’s skiing and it’s so much fun, just like flying.”
Dede said, “Oh, come on Betty. We haven’t anything else to do and it might be fun.”
So I asked Mary if I could borrow her skiing clothes and she said, “Of course you can. Oh, I know you’ll love skiing. There isn’t anything as exhilarating as flying down the mountains in the early morning, your skis hissing through the powdery snow, your blood singing, your skin tingling. Now remember, the most important thing to do is to learn to fall, then remember to keep all your weight on the balls of your feet and your knees bent.”
I said, “Just lend me your pants and your boots and keep the address of a good bone man handy.”
Mary said, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know”, I said. “Just up until we reach snow.”
So we went. All forty of us to a lodge in the Cascade Mountains. The car Dede and I were in had no chains and after we passed the snowline the back end veered from one side of the road to the other so that one minute we were peering down over the edge of a thousand-foot precipice and the next were crouched against the bosom of a thousand-foot mountain. Everyone else in the car laughed loudly at these antics but Dede and I looked at each other grimly.
Finally, about dusk, the car stopped, we unloaded our luggage and skis and started through the knee-deep snow toward the lodge, which was leering down at us from a pinnacle in the distance. “Just like flying”, Dede said bitterly as she ploughed along, her skis over her shoulder, her suitcase dragging in the snow. It had begun to rain and enormous globs of wet snow slid off branches and plopped on to our heads. Every once in a while when we stepped down into the deep snow we’d find ourselves wading in a stream, the icy water well over the tops of our ski boots, the footing as uncertain as walking on billiard balls.
Finally, after about an hour, it stopped raining, we reached the inn, had a few coffee royals in front of a big fire, and skiing began to seem like a pretty nice old sport after all.
After dinner the moon came out and skiing and tobogganing parties were organized. Everyone was very eager and excited and soon the mountain stillness was threaded with a bright pattern of shouts, screams, laughter and singing. It seemed to make little difference to these true sports enthusiasts that the organizer of the tobogganing party had neglected to notice that the toboggan slide he had marked off crossed the ski run so that sometimes the skiers would have to jump the toboggan, sometimes they landed on the toboggan, their ski poles digging deep into the backs of the tobogganers, and sometimes the toboggans banged into the skiers, knocking them down if they were lucky.
After the first collision, Dede and I went back to the lodge and to bed. But from the screams and yells that persisted until almost morning, the danger of a collision was only the extra thrill that made these already dangerous sports even more irresistible to the other thirty-eight. The bed was hard, narrow and damp but at least it was stationary.
In the morning it was raining again and the little red flags that marked the slalom course hung down wetly and sadly against the grey slushy snow. Occasional large icicles let go and silently disappeared in the drifts against the lodge.
The floor of the ski room was awash with mud and as each wet foolish skier came in to dry off the fire hissed and spat and the air was filled with the smell of hot wool. ‘Oh, you must come out’, the people who had been out said to the ones in front of the fire. ‘You don’t notice the rain and it’s so much fun.’
Finally, uneagerly, Dede and I put on our jackets, caps and mittens, left the nice comfortable fire and went out. It was wet and slushy but the rain had relented to spitty gusts. I put on my skis, adjusted the clamps, gave myself a push and went sailing down a little hill and into a snowbank. “Hey, Dede”, I called excitedly, scooping the snow out of my mouth as I brought my left leg over my right shoulder, “come on, it’s fun.”
Dede slid down the little hill and didn’t fall down until she hit the bottom. She said, “It’s the farthest thing fro
m flying I can think of but it is kind of fun. Let’s follow the path outlined by those little flags.” So we did. We fell down hundreds of times but the snow was soft and it didn’t hurt.
When we came out after lunch we found that the temperature had dropped noticeably and turned the wet surface of the snow to a glare of ice. Now that was fun. We couldn’t steer our skis at all and slid rapidly even on the level. We had built up a large stockpile of confidence by this time, so yelling excitedly we pushed ourselves over banks, down ravines, through the trees, anywhere. “This is one sport I’m going to like and be good at”, I thought exultantly as I slid off a boulder, swerved around a tree and waited for Dede.
When she caught up with me she said, “There’s a hamburger stand over on the highway and it’s within skiing distance if we can make it down that steep icy hill over there.”
“That little thing”, I said confidently skiing over. “Why that’s nothing, and shouting, “Track!” I gave myself a big push, but only one ski took off. The other stayed on the top of the hill and the next thing I knew there was a tearing pain and I found myself suffocating inside my waterproof parka, which had suddenly encased me like a tight cellophane wrapper. “Help, help”, I yelled, tugging wildly at the parka. Everyone was laughing and pointing at me but no one offered to help.
“Help, I’m hurt”, I yelled louder and a girl said, ‘Track!’ and skied right over my arm. Finally a man in a white jacket, seeing me spread over the face of the hill and sensing trouble, brought my leg down to me, undid my ski, helped me out of the parka and said, “Now, you’ve just turned your ankle. Get up and walk on it right away and you’ll be skiing again in no time.”
He helped me to my feet and everything went black. I came to to find him rubbing my face with snow and saying, ‘Just a little sprain and the best cure for it is walking.’