“Well—I’d say no.”
“And you’d be right. When she was Polly Smithfield he’d always give her a rush at the dances, and it was an understood thing that Junior and I would always cut in. I don’t think we have to worry about Polly and fortune-hunters, or you about how close you came to being Henry Root. I don’t even worry about how close that damn story of yours came to keeping Nancy from marrying me.”
“Oh, that story. ‘Christiana.’ No. ‘Telemark.’ That was it, ‘Telemark.’”
“You don’t even remember your own titles, but that was the one.”
“I may not remember the title, but the point of the story was that two people could take a chance on marriage without love.”
“Yes, and Nancy was so convinced that you were wrong that she had it on her mind. You damn near ruined my life, Malloy.”
“No I didn’t.”
“No, you didn’t. My life was decided for me by Preswell, when he walked in front of that taxi.”
I knew this man so well, and with his permission, but I had never heard him make such an outright declaration of love for his wife, and on my way home I realized that until then I had not known him at all. It was not a discovery to cause me dismay. What did he know about me? What, really, can any of us know about any of us, and why must we make such a thing of loneliness when it is the final condition of us all? And where would love be without it?
(1960)
THE WOMEN OF MADISON AVENUE
Mrs. Dabner walked boldly if not bravely up Madison Avenue, thinking of how she would look to someone in a bus. How often, when she came to New York, she would be in a Madison Avenue bus and see a woman like herself—nice-looking, well-dressed, late-thirtyish, early-fortyish—and wonder what the woman was doing, where she was bound, what she was thinking. “I’ll bet I know a lot of people you know,” she would say to that woman. “I’ll bet we could sit down together and inside of five minutes—why, we might even be related.”
There were always so many attractive women on Madison Avenue after lunch. They would come in pairs from the restaurants in the upper Fifties and the Sixties, say a few words of farewell at the Madison Avenue corner, and go their separate ways, the one on her way to the hairdresser or to finish her shopping, the other deciding to walk home. So many of them were so attractive, and Ethel Dabner liked to look at them from her seat in the bus. But today she was walking, and inside one of those buses, looking at her, possibly thinking how attractive she was, might be the one woman in New York who had good reason to hate her. Ethel Dabner did not like people to hate her, and if she could ever sit down and have a sensible talk with Laura Howell she could make Laura realize that she really had no reason to hate her. But how long since anyone had been able to sit down and have a sensible talk with Laura Howell?
Ethel Dabner turned her head to look at a crowded bus, but what was the use of looking for a woman she had never seen?
At Sixty-fourth Street she left Madison Avenue and was glad to leave it, with its crowded buses and all those women, one of whom could have been Laura Howell. She let herself in the ground-floor apartment and was relieved, though not surprised, to find that she was alone. Half past three, he had said, and that was half an hour away, but sometimes he was early and invariably he was punctual. “I may even be a little late today,” he had said. “I don’t know how long this meeting’ll last, but if I’m still in there at ha’ past three I’ll get word to you.”
“You’ll get word to me? How will you get word to me? You can’t tell your secretary to call me and say you’ll be late.”
“No, but . . .”
“But what?”
“Well, I was thinking,” he said. “I can tell Miss Bowen to call this number and have her say that Mr. Howell would be late for his appointment with Mr. Jenkins.”
“Who’s Mr. Jenkins?”
“There is no Mr. Jenkins, but you’re Mr. Jenkins’s secretary. Do you see? You’ll answer, and Miss Bowen will think you’re Mr. Jenkins’s secretary.”
“ ’Tisn’t worth the bother. You just get here when you can.”
“Well, just so you understand I may be a little late.”
“Honey, I understand. All you have to do is tell me you’ll be a little late.”
He was so careful, so elaborate, so—as he put it—ready for any and all contingencies. The simple thing, to meet her in her hotel, was too simple for him. “I could run into sixty-five thousand people in your hotel,” he had said. “I could just be seen there, without knowing who saw me.” And so there was this apartment, rented by his bachelor son who was now in the army. “I told Robbie I’d keep it for him while he was away, for when he got leave.”
“Who do you think you’re kidding? Doesn’t he know you want it for yourself?”
“If he wants to guess, but he’s on my side.”
“One of these days we’ll be there and the door’ll fly open and there’ll be your son and a half dozen of his G.I. buddies.”
“No. He’ll have a little problem of getting the key. I took care of that contingency.”
“How many people do you know in New York?”
“Half the girls I went to school with and a lot of their husbands. First and second husbands, if it comes to that.”
“All right. You’re in town for a visit. Couldn’t you be calling on someone on East Sixty-fourth Street? Someone they don’t know?”
“I guess I could. I guess so.”
It was a strange apartment for such goings-on. From the beginning she had felt as though they had invaded the dormitory rooms of a sophisticated undergraduate. There were a few college souvenirs: an initiation paddle marked D.K.E., some group photographs, some pewter mugs and silver trophies; but the pictures on the walls were esoteric moderns, the statuettes unidentifiable forms in ebony and aluminum, and hanging above the fireplace a small collection of Polynesian stringed instruments. In the bathroom there was an explicit drawing of a nude, that seemed to have been cut rather than drawn, the lines were so sharp, and the nakedness of the woman offended Ethel Dabner. It was a map of a woman, without mystery, without charm, without warmth or even sensuality, and she hated the drawing and the German who had made it, so much so that she based her dislike of her lover’s son on the fact that he would own such a picture.
She hung her street clothes in Robbie’s closet, in among the plastic-covered civilian suits and the treed shoes. She put on his kimono and went to the kitchen and filled a bucket with ice cubes from the nearly empty refrigerator. Burt would want a Scotch and soda when he arrived, and now she had nothing to do but wait.
If he had been his usual punctual self he would be here now; it was half past three. But in spite of having been forewarned, she was annoyed to find that at three-thirty-two he had not arrived. He was two minutes late, and she had had to fish in her purse for glasses in order to read the time on her wristwatch. Her watch, her rings, her bracelet, her necklace lay on the coffee table, and she thought of taking them to the bathroom and leaving them on the glass shelf, where they would be all together in one place when she was ready to put them on again. But she had no desire to go back to the bathroom; she had a desire not to go back to the bathroom and that nasty drawing.
Every little sound she made was distinct in the silence of the apartment, but in a little while the outside street noise began to break up into individual sounds, notably the sounds of the buses starting and stopping. There were the other sounds, too, but her ear kept going back to the special sounds of the buses, and she thought of the women on the buses, looking out at the women who walked, the attractive, well-dressed women who had decided to walk home after a pleasant, happy lunch with a woman friend. What would she be thinking about, the attractive woman who was walking home? How nice it was to have Jane Jones for a friend? How well Jane looked? She would walk up Madison Avenue, this woman, with a little smile on her face because she w
as thinking of her friend Jane Jones, and that was one of the things that would make her attractive, that smile of appreciation for her friend. People in the buses would look out at her and think what an attractive woman she was, a woman other women could trust.
Fourteen minutes to four, and the telephone rang. “Hello,” she said, then, remembering: “Mr. Jenkins’s office.”
There was a loud laugh at the other end. “It’s me,” he said. “I just broke up the meeting. I told those bastards we had to wind it up by quarter to four, so I’ll be right there, honey.”
“Well, you just hurry, d’you hear?” she said.
“Listen, I’m just as eager as you are,” he said.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I’m just tired of sitting here all by myself in this apartment.”
“Shouldn’t take me but twenty minutes,” he said.
“All right,” she said, and hung up.
So sure of himself, so sure of her, whichever it was she hated it. She hated what he took for granted, then she wanted and needed him, was as eager as he was. And now she found that a decision had been made for her; he had not made it, she had not made it, but it was there and only needed to be acted upon. She got all dressed again and satisfied herself that anyone seeing her from the bus would consider her very attractive and nice. She took the nasty picture down from the bathroom wall and put it face down on the floor and stamped on it. She next put the apartment key on the coffee table near the ice bucket, and for the last time she left the apartment.
In the bus she got a seat next to the window and at Sixtieth or maybe it was Sixty-first Street an attractive, nice-looking woman walking up Madison happened to look in the window and catch her eye. Ethel Dabner smiled and bowed, and the nice-looking woman smiled back.
(1962)
YOUR FAH NEEFAH NEEFACE
This woman, when she was about nineteen or twenty, had a stunt that she and her brother would play, usually in a rail-road station or on a train or in a hotel lobby. I saw them work the stunt under the clock at the Biltmore in the days when that meeting-place was a C-shaped arrangement of benches, and I remember it so well because it was the first time I ever saw the stunt and the first time I ever saw her or her brother. It was more than thirty years ago.
She was sitting there, quite erect, her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette and obviously, like everyone else, waiting to meet someone. She was wearing a beret sort of hat that matched her suit, and it was easy to tell by the way she smoked her cigarette that she had handled many of them in her short life. I remember thinking that I would like to hear her talk; she was so self-possessed and good-humored in her study of the young men and young women who were keeping dates at the clock. The drag she took on her cigarette was a long one; the smoke kept coming from her nostrils long after you thought it was all gone. She was terribly pretty, with a straight little nose and lively light blue eyes.
Presently a young man came up the stairs in no great hurry. He was wearing a black topcoat with a velvet collar and carrying a derby hat. He was tall, but not outstandingly so, and he had tightly curled blond hair—a 150-pound crew type, he was. He reached the meeting-place, scanned the faces of the people who were seated there, and then turned away to face the stairs. He watched the men and women coming up the stairs, but after a minute or so he turned his head and looked back at the girl, frowned as though puzzled, then again faced the incoming people. He did that several times, and I began to think that this was a young man on a blind date who had not been given a full or accurate description of his girl. She meanwhile was paying no attention to him.
Finally he went directly to the girl, and in a firm voice that everyone under the clock could hear he said, “Are you by any chance Sallie Brown?”
“I am, but what’s it to you?” she said.
“Do you know who I am?” he said.
“No.”
“You don’t recognize me at all?”
“Never saw you in my whole life.”
“Yes you did, Sallie. Look carefully,” he said.
“I’m sorry, but I’m quite positive I’ve never seen you before.”
“Asbury Park. Think a minute.”
“I’ve been to Asbury Park, but so’ve a lot of people. Why should I remember you?”
“Sallie. It’s Jack. I’m Jack.”
“Jack? Jack Who? . . . No! My brother! You—you’re Jack? Oh, darling, darling!” She stood up and looked at the people near her and said to them, rather helplessly, “This is my brother. My brother. I haven’t seen him since—oh, darling. Oh, this is so wonderful.” She put her arms around him and kissed him. “Oh, where have you been? Where have they been keeping you? Are you all right?”
“I’m all right. What about you?”
“Oh, let’s go somewhere. We have so much to talk about.” She smiled at all the other young men and women, then took her brother’s arm and they went down the stairs and out, leaving all of us with the happy experience to think about and to tell and re-tell. The girl I was meeting arrived ten or fifteen minutes after Sallie and Jack Brown departed, and when we were in the taxi on our way to a cocktail party I related what I had seen. The girl waited until I finished the story and then said, “Was this Sallie Brown blond? About my height? And was her brother a blond too, with curly hair cut short?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Do you know them?”
“Sure. The only part of the story that’s true is that they are brother and sister. The rest is an act. Her name is Sallie Collins and his name is Johnny Collins. They’re from Chicago. They’re very good.”
“Good? I’ll say they’re good. They fooled me and everybody else.”
“They always do. People cry, and sometimes they clap as if they were at the theater. Sallie and Johnny Collins, from Chicago. Did you ever hear of the Spitbacks?”
“No. Spitbacks?”
“It’s a sort of a club in Chicago. You have to be kicked out of school to be a Spitback, and Johnny’s been kicked out of at least two.”
“And what about her?”
“She’s eligible. She was two years behind me at Farmington.”
“What was she kicked out for?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Smoking, I think. She wasn’t there very long. Now she’s going to school in Greenwich, I think. Johnny’s a runner downtown.”
“What other tricks do they do?”
“Whatever comes into their heads, but they’re famous for the long-lost-brother-and-sister one. They have it down pat. Did she look at the other people as much as to say, ‘I can’t believe it, it’s like a dream’?”
“Yes.”
“They can’t do it as much as they used to. All their friends know about it and they’ve told so many people. Of course it annoys some people.”
“What other kind of thing do they do?”
“Oh—I don’t know. Nothing mean. Not practical jokes, if that’s what you’re thinking of.”
“I’d like to meet her sometime. And him. They seem like fun,” I said.
I never did meet Johnny. He was drowned somewhere in northern Michigan a year or so after I was a member of their audience at the Biltmore, and when I finally met Sallie she was married and living in New Canaan; about thirty years old, still very pretty; but instinctively I refrained from immediately recalling to her the once famous long-lost-brother stunt. I do not mean to say that she seemed to be mourning Johnny after ten years. But fun was not a word that came quickly to mind when I was introduced to her. If I had never seen her before or known about her stunts I would have said that her idea of fun would be the winning of the Connecticut State Women’s Golf Championship. Women who like golf and play it well do seem to move more deliberately than, for instance, women who play good tennis, and my guess that golf was her game was hardly brilliant, since I knew that her husband was a 4-handicap player.
“Wh
ere are you staying?” she said, at dinner.
“At the Randalls’.”
“Oh, do you sail?”
“No, Tom and I grew up together in Pennsylvania.”
“Well, you’re going to have a lot of time to yourself this weekend, aren’t you? Tom and Rebecca will be at Rye, won’t they?”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “I brought along some work, and Rebecca’s the kind of hostess that leaves you to your own devices.”
“Work? What kind of work?”
“Textiles.”
“Well, that must be a very profitable business these days, isn’t it? Isn’t the Army ordering millions of uniforms?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re not in that kind of textiles?”
“Yes, I am. But I’m not allowed to answer any questions about the Army.”
“I would like to be a spy.”
“You’d make a good one,” I said.
“Do you think so? What makes you think I would?”
“Because the first time I ever saw you . . .” I then had been in her company for more than an hour, and felt better about recalling the incident at the Biltmore.
“How nice of you to remember that,” she said, and smiled. “I wonder why you did?”
“Well, you were very pretty. Still are. But the whole performance was so expert. Professional. You could probably be a very good spy.”
“No. That was all Johnny. All those things we used to do, Johnny thought them up. He was the brains of the team. I was the foil. Like the girl in tights that magicians always have. Anybody could have done it with Johnny master-minding . . . Would you like to come here for lunch Sunday? I happen to know that Rebecca’s without a cook, so you’re going to have to go to the club, otherwise. Unless of course you have another invitation.”
I said I would love to come to lunch Sunday, and she thereupon engaged in conversation with the gentleman on her left. I was surprised to find on Sunday that she and I were lunching alone. We had cold soup, then were served crab flakes and some vegetables, and when the maid was gone Sallie took a piece of paper from the pocket of her blouse. “This is the clock at the Biltmore that day. This is where I was sitting. Here is where you were sitting. If I’m not mistaken, you were wearing a gray suit and you sat with your overcoat folded over your lap. You needed a haircut.”