Of recent weeks the expressions that greeted Aimée from the trolley had waxed from serenity to jubilance. Other girls had to work on faces that were stern or resigned or plumb vacant; there was always a nice bright smile for Aimée.
These attentions were noted with sourness in the cosmetic rooms where love of Mr. Joyboy illumined the working hours of all the staff. In the evenings each had her consort or suitor; none seriously aspired to be Mr. Joyboy’s mate. As he passed among them, like an art-master among his students, with a word of correction here or commendation there, sometimes laying his gentle hand on a living shoulder or a dead haunch, he was a figure of romance, a cult shared by all in common, not a prize to be appropriated by any one of them.
Nor was Aimée entirely at ease in her unique position. That morning in particular she met the corpse’s greeting with impaired frankness for she had taken a step which she knew Mr. Joyboy could not possibly approve.
There was a spiritual director, an oracle, in these parts who daily filled a famous column in one of the local newspapers. Once, in days of family piety, it bore the title Aunt Lydia’s Post Bag; now it was The Wisdom of the Guru Brahmin, adorned with the photograph of a bearded and almost naked sage. To this exotic source resorted all who were in doubt or distress.
It might be thought that at this extremity of the New World unceremonious manners and frank speech occasioned no doubt; the universal good humor no distress. But it was not so—etiquette, child-psychology, aesthetics and sex reared their questioning heads in this Eden too and to all readers the Guru Brahmin offered solace and solution.
To him Aimée had applied some time ago when the smiles had first become unequivocal. Her problem was not about Mr. Joyboy’s intentions but about her own. The answer had not been quite satisfactory:
No, A.T., I do not consider that you are in love—yet. Esteem for a man’s character and admiration of his business ability may form the basis of an improving friendship but they are not Love. What you describe of your feelings in his presence does not incline us to believe that there is a physical affinity between you—yet. But remember love comes late to many. We know cases who have only experienced real love after several years of marriage and the arrival of Junior. See plenty of your friend. Love may come.
That had been before Dennis Barlow brought a further perplexity to her conscience. It was now six weeks since she met him on the Lake Island, and that morning on the way to work she had posted a letter which had occupied half her night in writing. It was indeed the longest letter she had ever written:
Dear Guru Brahmin,
You may remember that I wrote to you in May last for your advice. This time I am enclosing a stamped and addressed envelope for a private answer as I am going to say things I should not like to have referred to in print. Please reply by return or anyway as soon as convenient as I am very worried and must soon do something about it.
In case you do not remember I will remind you that I work in the same business with a man who is head of the department and in every way the most wonderful character I can imagine. It is a great privilege to be associated with one who is so successful and refined, a natural leader, artist and model of breeding. In all sorts of little ways he has made it plain that he prefers me to the other girls and though he has not said so yet because he is not the sort to do so lightly I am sure he loves me honorably. But I do not have the same feelings when I am with him as the girls say they have when they are with their boys and what one sees in the movies.
But I think I do have such feelings about another but he is not at all such an admirable character. First he is British and therefore in many ways quite Un-American. I do not mean just his accent and the way he eats but he is cynical at things which should be Sacred. I do not think he has any religion. Neither have I because I was progressive at College and had an unhappy upbringing as far as religion went and other things too, but I am ethical. (As this is confidential I may as well say my mother was alcoholic which perhaps makes me more sensitive and reserved than other girls.) He also has no idea of Citizenship or Social Conscience. He is a poet and has had a book printed in England and very well criticized by the critics there. I have seen the book and some of the criticisms so I know this is true but he is very mysterious about what he is doing here. Sometimes he talks as if he was in the movies and sometimes as though he did nothing at all except write poetry. I have seen his house. He lives alone as the friend (male) he lived with passed on six weeks ago. I do not think he goes out with any other girl or is married. He has not very much money. He is very distinguished-looking in an Un-American way and very amusing when he is not being irreverent. Take the Works of Art in Whispering Glades Memorial Park he is often quite irreverent about them which I think an epitome of all that is finest in the American Way of Life. So what hope is there of true happiness?
Also he is not at all cultured. At first I thought he must be being a poet and he has been to Europe and seen the Art there but many of our greatest authors seem to mean nothing to him.
Sometimes he is very sweet and loving and then he suddenly becomes unethical and makes me feel unethical too. So I should value your advice very highly. Hoping that this long letter has not been too much,
Cordially yours,
Aimée Thanatogenos.
He has written a lot of poems to me some of them very beautiful and quite ethical others not so much.
The knowledge that this letter was in the mail burdened Aimée’s conscience and she was grateful when the morning passed without any other sign from Mr. Joyboy than the usual smile of welcome on the trolley. She painted away diligently while at the Happier Hunting Ground Dennis Barlow was also busy.
They had both ovens going and six dogs, a cat and a Barbary goat to dispose of. None of the owners was present. He and Mr. Schultz were able to work briskly. The cat and the dogs were twenty-minute jobs. Dennis raked the ashes out while they were still glowing and put them in labeled buckets to cool. The goat took nearly an hour. Dennis looked at it from time to time through the fire-glass pane and finally crushed the horned skull with a poker. Then he turned out the gas, left the oven doors open and prepared the containers. Only one owner had been induced to buy an urn.
“I’m going along now,” said Mr. Schultz. “Will you please to wait till they’re cold enough to pack up? They’re all for home-delivery except the cat. She’s for the columbarium.”
“Okay, Mr. Schultz. How about the goat’s card? We can’t very well say he’s wagging his tail in heaven. Goats don’t wag their tails.”
“They do when they go to the can.”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t look right on the greeting card. They don’t purr like cats. They don’t sing an orison like birds.”
“I suppose they just remember.”
Dennis wrote: Your Billy is remembering you in heaven tonight.
He stirred the little smoking gray heaps in the bottom of the buckets. Then he returned to the office and resumed his search of the Oxford Book of English Verse for a poem for Aimée.
He possessed few books and was beginning to run short of material. At first he had tried writing poems for her himself but she showed a preference for the earlier masters. Moreover, the Muse nagged him. He had abandoned the poem he was writing, long ago it seemed, in the days of Frank Hinsley. That was not what the Muse wanted. There was a very long, complicated and important message she was trying to convey to him. It was about Whispering Glades, but it was not, except quite indirectly, about Aimée. Sooner or later the Muse would have to be placated. She came first. Meanwhile Aimée must draw from the bran-tub of the anthologies. Once he came near to exposure when she remarked that Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day reminded her of something she had learned at school, and once near to disgrace when she condemned On thy midnight pallet lying as unethical. Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white, had struck bang in the center of the bull, but he knew few poems so high and rich and voluptuous. The English poets were proving uncertain guides in
the labyrinth of Californian courtship—nearly all were too casual, too despondent, too ceremonious, or too exacting; they scolded, they pleaded, they extolled. Dennis required salesmanship; he sought to present Aimée with an irresistible picture not so much of her own merits or even of his, as of the enormous gratification he was offering. The films did it; the crooners did it; but not, it seemed, the English poets.
After half an hour he abandoned the search. The first two dogs were ready to be packed. He shook up the goat, which still glowed under its white and gray surface. There would be no poem for Aimée that day. He would take her instead to the Planetarium.
*
The embalmers had the same meals as the rest of the mortuary staff but they ate apart at a central table where by recent but hallowed tradition they daily spun a wire cage of dice and the loser paid the bill for them all. Mr. Joyboy spun, lost and cheerfully paid. They always broke about even on the month. The attraction of the gamble was to show that they were men to whom ten or twenty dollars less or more at the end of the week was not a matter of great concern.
At the door of the canteen Mr. Joyboy lingered sucking a digestive lozenge. The girls came out in ones or twos lighting their cigarettes; among them, alone, Aimée who did not smoke. Mr. Joyboy drew her apart into the formal garden. They stood under an allegorical group representing “the Enigma of Existence.”
“Miss Thanatogenos,” said Mr. Joyboy, “I want to tell you how much I appreciate your work.”
“Thank you, Mr. Joyboy.”
“I mentioned it yesterday to the Dreamer.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Joyboy.”
“Miss Thanatogenos, for some time the Dreamer has been looking forward. You know how he looks forward. He is a man of boundless imagination. He considers that the time has come when women should take their proper place in Whispering Glades. They have proved themselves in the lowlier tasks to be worthy of the higher. He believes moreover that there are many people of delicate sensibility who are held back from doing their duty to their Loved Ones by what I can only call prudery, but which Dr. Kenworthy considers a natural reluctance to expose their Loved Ones to anything savoring in the least degree of immodesty. To be brief, Miss Thanatogenos, the Dreamer intends to train a female embalmer and his choice, his very wise choice, has fallen on you.”
“Oh, Mr. Joyboy.”
“Say nothing. I know how you feel. May I tell him you accept?”
“Oh, Mr. Joyboy.”
“And now if I may intrude a personal note, don’t you think this calls for a little celebration? Would you do me the honor of taking supper with me this evening?”
“Oh, Mr. Joyboy, I don’t know what to say. I did make a sort of date.”
“But that was before you heard the news. That puts rather a different complexion on matters, I guess. Besides, Miss Thanatogenos, it was not my intention that we should be alone. I wish you to come to my home. Miss Thanatogenos, I claim as my right the very great privilege and pleasure of presenting the first lady embalmer of Whispering Glades to my mom.”
*
It was a day of high emotion. All that afternoon Aimée was unable to keep her attention on her work. Fortunately, there was little of importance on hand. She helped the girl in the next cubicle to glue a toupee to a more than usually slippery scalp; she hastily brushed over a male baby with flesh tint; but all the time her mind was in the embalmers’ room, attentive to the swish and hiss of the taps, to the coming and going of orderlies with covered kidney bowls, to the low demands for suture or ligature. She had never set foot beyond the oilcloth curtains which screened the embalming rooms; soon she would have the freedom of them all.
At four o’clock the head cosmetician told her to pack up. She arranged her paints and bottles with habitual care, washed her brushes, and went to the cloakroom to change.
She was meeting Dennis on the lake shore. He kept her waiting and, when he came, accepted the news that she was going out to supper with annoying composure. “With the Joyboy?” he said. “That ought to be funny.” But she was so full of her news that she could not forbear to tell him. “I say,” he said, “that is something. How much is it worth?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t go into the question.”
“It’s bound to be something handsome. Do you suppose it’s a hundred a week?”
“Oh, I don’t suppose anyone except Mr. Joyboy gets that.”
“Well, fifty anyway. Fifty is pretty good. We could get married on that.”
Aimée stopped in her tracks and stared at him. “What did you say?”
“We can get married, don’t you see? It can’t be less than fifty, can it?”
“And what, pray, makes you think I should marry you?”
“Why, my dear girl, it’s only money that has been holding me back. Now you can keep me, there’s nothing to stop us.”
“An American man would despise himself for living on his wife.”
“Yes, but you see I’m European. We have none of these prejudices in the older civilizations. I don’t say fifty is much, but I don’t mind roughing it a little.”
“I think you’re entirely contemptible.”
“Don’t be an ass. I say, you aren’t really in a rage, are you?”
Aimée was really in a rage. She left him abruptly and that evening, before she set out for supper, scrawled a hasty note to the Guru Brahmin: Please don’t bother to answer my letter of this morning. I know my own mind now, and dispatched it to the newspaper-office by special delivery.
With a steady hand Aimée fulfilled the prescribed rites of an American girl preparing to meet her lover—dabbed herself under the arms with a preparation designed to seal the sweat-glands, gargled another to sweeten the breath, and brushed into her hair some odorous drops from a bottle labeled: “Jungle Venom”—From the depths of the fever-ridden swamp, the advertisement had stated, where juju drums throb for the human sacrifice, Jeannette’s latest exclusive creation Jungle Venom comes to you with the remorseless stealth of the hunting cannibal.
Thus fully equipped for a domestic evening, her mind at ease, Aimée waited for Mr. Joyboy’s musical “Hullo, there!” from the front door. She was all set to accept her manifest destiny.
But the evening did not turn out quite as she hoped. Its whole style fell greatly below her expectation. She went out rarely, scarcely at all indeed, and perhaps for this reason had exaggerated notions. She knew Mr. Joyboy as a very glorious professional personage, a regular contributor to The Casket, an intimate of Dr. Kenworthy’s, the sole sun of the mortuary. She had breathlessly traced with her vermilion brush the inimitable curves of his handiwork. She knew of him as a Rotarian and a Knight of Pythias; his clothes and his car were irreproachably new, and she supposed that when he drove sprucely off into his private life he frequented a world altogether loftier than anything in her own experience. But it was not so.
They traveled a long way down Santa Monica Boulevard before finally turning into a building estate. It was not a prepossessing quarter; it seemed to have suffered a reverse. Many of the lots were vacant, but those which were occupied had already lost their first freshness and the timber bungalow at which they finally stopped was in no way more remarkable than its fellows. The truth is that morticians, however eminent, are not paid like film stars. Moreover, Mr. Joyboy was careful. He saved and he paid insurance. He sought to make a good impression in the world. One day he would have a house and children. Meanwhile anything spent inconspicuously, anything spent on Mom, was money down the drain.
“I never seem to get round to doing anything about the garden,” Mr. Joyboy said as though dimly aware of some unexpressed criticism in Aimée’s survey. “This is just a little place I got in a hurry to settle Mom in when we came West.”
He opened the front door, stepped back to allow Aimée to pass and then yodeled loudly behind her: “Yoohoo, Mom! Here we come!”
Hectoring male tones filled the little house. Mr. Joyboy opened a door and ushered Aimée in to the
source of the nuisance, a radio on the central table of a nondescript living-room. Mrs. Joyboy sat very near it.
“Sit down quietly,” she said, “until this is over.”
Mr. Joyboy winked at Aimée. “The old lady hates to miss the political commentaries,” he said.
“Quietly,” repeated Mrs. Joyboy, fiercely.
They sat silent for ten minutes until the raucous stream of misinformation gave place to a gentler voice advocating a brand of toilet-paper.
“Turn it off,” said Mrs. Joyboy. “Well, he says there’ll be war again this year.”
“Mom, this is Aimée Thanatogenos.”
“Very well. Supper’s in the kitchen. You can get it when you like.”
“Hungry, Aimée?”
“No, yes. I suppose a little.”
“Let’s go see what surprise the little old lady has been cooking up for us.”
“Just what you always have,” said Mrs. Joyboy; “I ain’t got the time for surprises.”
Mrs. Joyboy turned in her chair towards a strangely veiled object which stood at her other elbow. She drew the fringe of a shawl, revealed a wire cage, and in it an almost naked parrot. “Sambo,” she said winningly, “Sambo.” The bird put its head on one side and blinked. “Sambo,” she said. “Won’t you speak to me?”
“Why, Mom, you know that bird hasn’t spoken in years.”
“He speaks plenty when you’re away, don’t you, my Sambo?”
The bird put its head on the other side, blinked and suddenly ruffled his few feathers and whistled like a train. “There,” said Mrs. Joyboy. “If I hadn’t Sambo to love me I might as well be dead.”
There was tinned noodle soup, a bowl of salad with tinned crab compounded in it, there was ice-cream and coffee. Aimée helped carry the trays. Aimée and Mr. Joyboy removed the radio and laid the table. Mrs. Joyboy watched them malevolently from her chair. The mothers of great men often disconcert their sons’ admirers. Mrs. Joyboy had small angry eyes, frizzy hair, pince-nez on a very thick nose, a shapeless body and positively insulting clothes.