In that state of mind I made a block rejection of a thousand men and women whom I did not want to see, and reduced my friendships to the five or ten, the three or five, and finally the only person I felt like talking to. And that was how I got back in the lives of Charley Ellis and Nancy McMinnies Preswell Ellis.
They had been married about a month, and I was not sure they would be back from their wedding trip, but I got Charley at his office and he said he had started work again that week. He would stop in and have a drink on his way home.
“Gosh, the last time I was in this apartment—” he said, and it was not necessary to go on.
“You ended up getting married, and I damn near did myself.”
“To Julia Murphy?”
“Close. Julianna Moore. In fact, your coming here rounds out a circle, for me. She ditched me today.”
“Are you low on account of it?”
“Yes, so tell me about you and Nancy. I saw the announcement of your wedding, in the papers.”
“That’s all there was. We didn’t send out any others.”
“You lose a lot of loot that way,” I said.
“I know, but there were other considerations. We wanted people to forget us in a hurry, so Nancy’s mother sent short announcements to the Tribune and the Sun. You can imagine we’d had our fill of the newspapers when Preswell was killed.”
“I don’t have to imagine. It was the start of my romance, the one that just ended.” I told him what had happened, a recital which I managed to keep down to about fifteen minutes. I lied a little at the end: “So this morning she called me up and said she’d gone back to her friend Mr. Kenneth Kenworthy.”
“Well, you might say our last meeting here did end in two marriages,” said Charley.
“If he marries her. He’s been married three times and if she marries him she’s going to have to support herself. He has big alimony to pay. I hope they do get married. Selfishly. I don’t want any more synthetic romances. They’re just as wearing as the real thing, and as Sam Hoffenstein says, what do you get yet?”
“Everything, if it turns out all right. You remember Nancy and her theory that nobody should get married without love, the real thing? That story of yours we talked about—‘Telemark’?”
“Yes.”
“Well, to be blunt about it, I really forced Nancy to marry me. All that notoriety—I put it to her that if she didn’t marry me, I’d look like a shitheel. So on that basis—”
“Oh, come on.”
“It’s true. That’s why she took the chance. But what was true then isn’t true now. I want you to be the twenty-fifth to know. We’re having a child.”
“She never had any by Preswell?”
“No, and she wanted one, but his chemistry was all wrong. We expect ours in March or April.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you. Needless to say, I’m an altogether different person.”
“You mean you have morning sickness?”
“I mean just the opposite. I’m practically on the wagon, for one thing, and for the first time in my life I’m thinking about someone besides myself. Get married, Malloy, and have a baby right away.”
“I like to think about myself,” I said.
“That’s bullshit, and it’s a pose. All this crazy life you lead, I think you’re about the lonesomest son of a bitch I know.”
I bowed my head and wept. “You shouldn’t have said that,” I said. “I wish you’d go.”
“I’m sorry, Jim. I’ll go. But why don’t you drop in after dinner if you feel like it?”
“Thanks,” I said, and he left.
He had taken me completely unawares. His new happiness and my new misery and all that the day had taken out of me made me susceptible of even the slightest touch of pity or kindness. I stopped bawling after two minutes, and then I began again, but during the second attack I succumbed to brain fag and fell asleep. I slept about three hours and was awakened by the telephone.
“This is Nancy Ellis. I hope you’re coming up, we’re expecting you. I’ll bet you haven’t had your dinner. Tell me the truth?”
“As a matter of fact, I was asleep.”
“Well, how about some lamb chops? Do you like them black on the outside and pink on the inside? And have you any pet aversions in the vegetable line?”
“Brussels sprouts. But do you mean to say you haven’t had your dinner?”
“We’ve had ours, but I can cook. Half an hour?”
It was a pleasant suburban evening in a triplex apartment in East Seventy-first Street, with one of the most beautiful women in New York cooking my supper and serving it; and it was apparent from their avoidance of all intimate topics that they had decided how they would treat me. At ten-thirty Nancy went to bed, at eleven Charley went in to see how she was, and at eleven-thirty I said goodnight. I went home and slept for ten hours. Had it not been for Nancy and Charley Ellis I would have gone on a ten-day drunk. But during those ten days I met a fine girl, and in December of that year we were married and we stayed married for sixteen years, until she died. As the Irish would say, she died on me, and it was the only unkind thing she ever did to anyone.
• • •
The way things tie up, one with another, is likely to go unnoticed unless a lawyer or a writer calls our attention to it. And sometimes both the writer and the lawyer have some difficulty in holding things together. But if they are men of purpose they can manage, and fortunately for writers they are not governed by rules of evidence or the whims of the court. The whim of the reader is all that need concern a writer, and even that should not concern him unduly; Byron, Scott, Milton and Shakespeare, who have been quoted in this chronicle, are past caring what use I make of their words, and at the appointed time I shall join them and the other millions of writers who have said their little say and then become forever silent—and in the public domain. I shall join them with all due respect, but at the first sign of a patronizing manner I shall say: “My dear sir, when you were drinking it up at the Mermaid Tavern, did you ever have the potman bring a telephone to your table?”
I belonged to the era of the telephone at the tavern table, and the thirty-foot extension cord that enabled the tycoon to talk and walk, and to buy and sell and connive and seduce at long distances. It is an era already gone, and I may live to see the new one, in which extrasensory perception combines with transistors, enabling the tycoon to dispense with the old-fashioned cord and think his way into new power and new beds. I may see the new era, but I won’t belong to it. The writer of those days to come will be able to tune in on the voice of Lincoln at Gettysburg and hear the clanking of pewter mugs at the Mermaid, but he will never know the feeling of accomplishment that comes with the successful changing of a typewriter ribbon. A writer belongs to his time, and mine is past. In the days or years that remain to me, I shall entertain myself in contemplation of my time and be fascinated by the way things tie up, one with another.
• • •
I was in Boston for the tryout of a play I had written, and Charley Ellis’s father had sent me a guest card to his club. “The old man said to tell you to keep your ears open and be sure and bring back any risqué stories you hear.”
“At the Somerset Club?”
“The best. Where those old boys get them, I don’t know, but that’s where they tell them.”
I used the introduction only once, when I went for a walk to get away from my play and everyone concerned with it. I stood at the window and looked out at the Beacon Street traffic, read a newspaper, and wandered to a small room to write a note to Mr. Ellis. There was only one other man in the room, and he looked up and half nodded as I came in, then resumed his letter-writing. A few minutes later there was a small angry spatter and I saw that a book of matches had exploded in the man’s hand. “Son of a bitch!” he said.
His left hand w
as burned and he stared at it with loathing.
“Put some butter on it,” I said.
“What?”
“I said, put some butter on it.”
“I’ve heard of tea, but never butter.”
“You can put butter on right away, but you have to wait for the water to boil before you have tea.”
“What’s it supposed to do?”
“Never mind that now. Just put it on. I’ve used it. It works.”
He got up and disappeared. He came back in about ten minutes. “You know, it feels much better. I’d never heard of butter, but the man in the kitchen had.”
“It’s probably an old Irish remedy,” I said.
“Are you Irish?”
“Yes. With the name Malloy I couldn’t be anything else.”
“Howdia do. My name is Hackley. Thanks very much. I wonder what it does, butter?”
“It does something for the skin. I guess it’s the same principle as any of the greasy things.”
“Of course. And it’s cooling. It’s such a stupid accident. I thought I closed the cover, but I guess I didn’t.” He hesitated. “Are you stopping here?”
“No, staying at the Ritz, but I have a guest card from Mr. Ellis in New York.”
“Oh, of course. Where did you know him?”
“His son is a friend of mine.”
“You’re a friend of Charley’s? I see. He’s had another child, I believe. A daughter, this time.”
“Yes. They wanted a daughter. I’m one of the godfathers of the boy.”
“Oh, then you know him very well.”
“Very,” I said.
“I see. At Harvard?”
“No, after college. Around New York.”
“Oh, yes. Yes,” he said. Then: “Oh, I know who you are. You’re the playwright. Why, I saw your play night before last.”
“That wasn’t a very good night to see it,” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t think it was so bad. Was I right in thinking that one fellow had trouble remembering his lines? The bartender?”
“Indeed you were.”
“But aside from that, I enjoyed the play. Had a few good chuckles. That what-was-she, a chorus girl? They do talk that way, don’t they? It’s just that, uh, when you hear them saying those things in front of an audience. Especially a Boston audience. You know how we are. Or do you? We look about to see how the others are taking it. Tell me, Mr. Malloy, which do you prefer? Writing books, or writing for the stage?”
“At the moment, books.”
“Well, of course with an actor who doesn’t remember lines. A friend of mine in New York knows you. She sent me two of your books. I think one was your first and the other was your second.”
“Oh? Who was that?”
“Polly Williamson is her name.”
So here he was, the serious-minded widower who had been Polly Williamson’s only lover. “That was damn nice of Polly. She’s a swell girl.”
“You like Polly. So do I. Never see her, but she’s a darn nice girl and I hear from her now and again. Very musical, and I like music. Occasionally she’ll send me a book she thinks I ought to read. I don’t always like what she likes, and she knows I won’t, but she does it to stimulate me, you know.”
I had an almost ungovernable temptation to say something coarse. Worse than coarse. Intimate and anatomical and in the realm of stimulation, about Polly in bed. Naturally he misread my hesitation. “However,” he said. “I enjoyed your first book very much. The second, not quite as much. So you’re James J. Malloy?”
“No, I’m not James J. Malloy. I’m James Malloy, but my middle initial isn’t J.”
“I beg your pardon. I’ve always thought it was James J.”
“People do. Every Irishman has to be James J. or John J.”
“No. There was John L. Sullivan,” said Hackley.
“Oh, but he came from Boston.”
“Indeed he did. But then there was James J. Wadsworth. I know he wasn’t Irish.”
“No, but he was sort of a friend of Al Smith’s.”
“Was he really? I didn’t know that. Was—he—really? Could you by any chance be thinking of his father, James W. Wadsworth?”
“I am. Of course I am. The senator, James W. Wadsworth.”
“Perfectly natural mistake,” said Hackley. “Well, I have to be on my way, but it’s been nice to’ve had this chat with you. And thank you for the first-aid. I’ll remember butter next time I set myself on fire.”
On the evening of the next day I was standing in the lobby of the theatre, chatting with the press agent of the show and vainly hoping to overhear some comment that would tell me in ten magic words how to make the play a success. It was the second intermission. A hand lightly touched my elbow and I turned and saw Polly Williamson. “Do you remember me?” she said.
“Of course I remember you. I told you once I’d never forget you.” Then I saw, standing with but behind her, Mr. Hackley, and I was sorry I was quite so demonstrative. “Hello, Mr. Hackley. How’s the hand?”
He held it up. “Still have it, thanks to you.”
“Just so you can applaud long and loud.”
“The bartender fellow is better tonight, don’t you think?”
“Much better,” I said. “I’m glad you can sit through it a second time.”
“He has no choice,” said Polly Williamson.
“I hadn’t, either,” said Hackley. “I’ll have you know this lady came all the way from New York just to see your play.”
“You did, Polly?”
“Well, yes. But I don’t know that I ought to tell you why.”
“Why did you?” I said.
“Well, I read excerpts from some of the reviews, and I was afraid it wouldn’t reach New York.”
“We’ve tightened it up a little since opening night. I think the plan is now to take it to Philadelphia. But it was awfully nice of you to come.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it. I’m one of your greatest fans, and I like to tell people I knew you when.”
“Well, I like to tell people I know you.”
“I suppose you’re terribly busy after the show,” said Hackley.
“Not so busy that I couldn’t have a drink with Polly and you, if that’s what you had in mind.”
They waited for me in the Ritz Bar. Two tweedy women were sitting with them, but they got up and left before I reached the table. “I didn’t mean to drive your friends away,” I said.
“They’re afraid of you. Frightened to death,” said Hackley.
“They’re pretty frightening themselves,” I said, angrily.
“They are, but before you say any more I must warn you, one of them is my cousin and Charley Ellis’s cousin,” said Polly Williamson.
“They thought your play was frightful,” said Hackley.
“Which should assure its successes,” said Polly. “Maisie, my cousin, goes to every play that comes to Boston and she hasn’t liked anything since I don’t know when.”
“The Jest, with Lionel and Jack Barrymore, I think was the last thing she really liked. And not so much the play as Jack Barrymore.”
“I don’t think she’d really like John Barrymore,” I said.
“Oh, but you’re wrong. She met him, and she does,” said Hackley. It seemed to me during the hour or more that we sat there that he exerted a power over Polly that was effortless on his part and unresisted by her. He never allowed himself to stay out of the conversation, and Polly never finished a conversational paragraph that he chose to interrupt. I was now sure that their affair was still active, in Boston. She had occasion to remark that he never went to New York, which led me to believe that the affair was conducted entirely on his home ground, on his terms, and at as well as for his pleasure. I learned that he lived somewher
e in the neighborhood—two or three minutes’ walk from the hotel; and that she always stayed with an aunt who lived on the other side of the Public Garden. Since they had not the slightest reason to suspect that I knew any more about them than they had told me, they unconsciously showed the whole pattern of their affair. It was a complete reversal of the usual procedure, in which the Boston man goes to New York to be naughty. Polly went to Boston under the most respectable auspices and with the most innocent excuses—and as though she were returning home to sin. (I did not pass that judgment on her.) Williamson was an ebullient, arrogant boor; Hackley was a Bostonian, who shared her love of music, painting, and flowers; and whatever they did in bed, it was almost certainly totally different from whatever she did with Williamson, which was not hard to guess at. I do know that in the dimly lighted bar of the hotel she seemed more genuinely at home and at ease than in her own house or at the New York parties where I would see her, with the odd difference that in Boston she was willingly under the domination of a somewhat epicene aesthete, while in New York she quietly but, over the years, noticeably resisted Williamson’s habit of taking control of people’s lives. After fifteen years of marriage to Williamson she was regarded in New York as a separate and individual woman, who owed less and less to her position as the wife of a spectacular millionaire. But none of that was discernible to me in her relations with Hackley. She did what he wanted to do, and in so doing she completed the picture of her that Charley Ellis had given me. In that picture, her man was missing. But now I saw that Hackley, not the absent Williamson, was her man.
It was hardly a new idea, that the lover was more husband than the husband; but I had never seen a case in which geography, or a city’s way of life, had been so influential. Polly not only returned to Hackley; she returned to Boston and the way of life that suited her best and that Hackley represented. There was even something appropriately austere about her going back to New York and Williamson. Since divorce was undesirable, with Williamson, the multi-millionaire, she was making-do. The whole thing delighted me. It is always a pleasure to discover that someone you like and have underestimated on the side of simplicity turns out to be intricate and therefore worthy of your original interest. (Intricacy in someone you never liked is, of course, just another reason for disliking him.)