Crowned Heads

by Thomas Tryon

  That afternoon she telephoned Hilda, then Naomi, then Phyllis, and told each one individually—she couldn’t face them in a group—that Robin was forced to stay in Europe on business, that the money people had backed out of the show, and that it was all off, incidentally dropping the news that the trip to Galway was off as well. The girls accepted this news without the furor or disappointment Nellie had anticipated; it was almost as if they’d suspected something. She announced to each of them that she herself was going to visit Roger and Nancy for her birthday, and made a hasty retreat, leaving Hilda to feed the budgies.

  She packed her bag, bought presents for the children, got on the Long Island Rail Road, and went to Garden City. Nothing new, nothing unusual, the same old thing, just one more of Nana’s visits, but as much as she loved them all, she found she did not enjoy her stay; she had too many other things to think about. Mainly Bobbitt—Robin—Bobby—Mr. Thingamabob. She dreaded her birthday party, though she put as good a face on it as she could, kissing the children as they each presented her with a little gift, and wincing when the cake was brought out with one tactful candle: she remembered the boxful she had planned for “Bobbitt”’s cake. She was relieved when it was all over. She was one year older, but certainly not one year wiser. Later Nancy and the children drove her to Roger’s air school for a special “surprise,” as they called it, and again she cringed; she had had the last surprise she ever needed in her life. They heard the sound of a plane, and Nellie watched with the others while it made loop-the-loops and barrel rolls in the sky, then zoomed low over their heads. The pilot held up a thumb, threw the stick, and the plane shot upward, banked, and as it turned and slowed, several puffs of smoke issued from its tail. The plane banked again, and more puffs came out, then again, and gradually the puffs blended together, forming a large white “H.” Oh, dear, thought Nellie, her hand at her breast; she knew what the surprise was to be. The plane looped and turned, dove and rose, with puff after puff exploding into the blue, forming letters, until they spelled out “HAPPY BIRTHDAY NANA.” Well, she told them, that certainly was a nice surprise, relieved that it was over. No one who was as big a fool as she needed that sort of advertising.

  Then the plane landed and the pilot was getting out, and of course it was Roger, all smiles, but all she could think of as she kissed him was “Flying Rodger,” Papa Baer’s failed attempt to continue the career of young Master Ransome. She let them think her tears were ones of gratitude and drove home chattering about how wonderful that planes could write in the sky, but she’d read somewhere that if you put twelve chimpanzees in a room with twelve typewriters they eventually would write Hamlet.

  Everyone laughed at Nana’s joke, though no one quite understood it. She stayed through the week, spending time with the children, and glad that they at least seemed to be leading normal, happy lives, and even if their smiles were not a yard wide, they were genuine. Then she packed her bag again and got on the Long Island Rail Road and went back to the city.

  No sooner back than she was sorry she had returned. Everywhere she looked, there was something that reminded her of Robin, some trifling whimsy he had brought by as a gift. She collected them all and pushed them to the back of a drawer, including the box of engraved stationery he had used to write his notes on.

  One morning’s mail brought just such a one, not, however, on monogrammed stationery. A plain dime-store piece of paper in a matching envelope, it read:

  Dearest Nellie,

  You can imagine how foolish I feel. I told you I’d never grow up, and I haven’t. I just wanted to make things interesting and fun for you, then it all got too much and I didn’t know where to stop it. Please try not to think too badly of me. I only wanted you to love your Bobbitt.

  P.S. I guess they’ll put me back in my rubber room again. Meanwhile I’ll send you something to add to the enclosed until our account is squared.

  The “enclosed” was a certified money order, payable to her, part of the sum he had borrowed. She started to crumple the note, then returned it to its envelope and stuck it with the other things in the back of the drawer. Then she sat down and wrote a check to Madame Potekka for the painting of the violets, and put the picture away; she couldn’t bear to look at it.

  The rest of the summer seemed particularly long; she thought the cool weather would never come. People began arriving back in the city after their holidays, ready for autumn, and she thought over and over again how she had spent these last months, being victimized. It would not do, it simply would not do, and she choked with rage every time she thought of Robin. What made it worse, the Belles wanted to talk of nothing else, were always asking if she’d had a letter, had he telephoned, when was he coming back? She made up one excuse after another, until she ran out of excuses. She was bad company, more satiric than Naomi had ever been during The Belle Telephone Hour, which she gave up for good, then showing her irritation at poker, which caused her to be the continual loser, and she finally said she didn’t want to play anymore, they would have to get someone else. Finally Hilda came to her and asked point-blank what the trouble was. Oh, nothing, she said, she was just out of sorts. They’d seen so much of each other for so long, perhaps it was better to see less of one another for a while. Hilda went away miffed, Nellie felt guilty, and became even angrier at Robin.

  The weeks went by and she found herself bored to tears. She seldom went anywhere, never to the opera or the theater. There were no intimate lunches, no impromptu suppers. No music on the phonograph, the spinet piano—certainly no guitar music—nobody in the empty apartment but the budgies. Oh, she thought, what has happened, how did I get into this, what will get me out?

  Nothing, it seemed. She went to the YWCA and took up a course in yoga, thinking it would calm her, but it wasn’t Eastern mysticism that was going to turn the trick for her. What she had to do was forget. The Galway Ball had been reported at length in the magazines and papers. Nellie looked at her dress hanging in the closet and cried.

  Late in September she ventured by herself into the park again. She had not been there because it held such unpleasant memories, but almost of their own accord her feet bore her to the Alice in Wonderland statues. The nursemaids were on the bench, just as they had been last spring and summer, and the first thing they wanted to know was where was Bobbitt? He was such a nice young man, one observed. “Oh,” Nellie replied airily, “over the moon, I expect.” They didn’t understand that, and she gave them short shrift. There were children playing around the bronze mushroom, where Mr. Thingamabob used to sit, and Nellie overheard the delightful, inconsequential, often wise things they said from time to time. She thought with a terrible sadness of how they must grow up and face the hard realities of life. All too short, it was, and not a moment to be wasted. Oh, Nellie, Robin had said, I don’t think I’ll ever grow up. What he had meant was Oh, Nellie, I don’t ever want to grow up. Foolish boy, foolish man. Everyone had to; it was the way things were. He had lived in a storybook world, had lived the fairy tale children dream of, then one day the fairy tale ended, but he did not live happily ever after. He had grown up in his body and his mind, and if he had been unable to face life’s realities, it was his sorrow, none of hers. Hers were the lies and the cheating and being led down the garden path. Fantasies, she thought, must be very difficult to live with, they take so much imagination; such an effort.

  Then, sitting there on the bench, watching the children, she suddenly realized what her trouble really was. She missed him. She had denied it to herself over and over, but she missed him. When she drove him from her door, all the fun had gone with him. Up in thin air, with Bobbitt. The nursemaid was right: he was such a nice young man. She felt a quick, cold chill. What had she done? Something terrible. She hadn’t understood him at all, hadn’t even tried. She cried a little then, slipping her handkerchief from her bag, lifting her glasses to dab at her eyes and staring at the spots her tears had left. She realized that what he had done wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. After
all, what was a thousand dollars? She had it, he needed it, she would have given it to him under any circumstances. She pictured him again in her mind’s eye, that beautiful, dear child, her Bobbitt. “Oh,” said Missy Priss, sweeping him up in a great armful and giving him hugs and kisses, “I love you, Bobbitt.” “Ditto,” said the boy, giving her kisses back.

  She started home again, thinking her way along, step by step, block by block. Where could he be? What was he doing? How was he surviving? This was the important thing, his survival. She had already begun worrying about him, and when she passed through the door she had slammed—not once, but twice—on him, she felt the greatest regret of her life. Oh, she thought, he must come back. He must.

  But he did not. And something, somewhere, deep down inside her, told her that he wouldn’t. He was gone, irretrievably lost. She listened to the budgies chirp, and wondered what to do. First things first, she thought, and called the girls, each in turn, and invited them up for The Belle Telephone Hour. Before they came she rehung the picture of the violets, and put out all the little things that Robin had bought her. Then she got from the drawer the box of engraved stationery she had hidden away, and got out the typewriter, and sat down and wrote a letter. It began, “Dearest Missy Priss, You can’t imagine how beautiful the autumn is here in Ireland….” She called forth all her powers of description, and when these were not sufficient she got out an old issue of the National Geographic with an article “Splendors of Ireland,” and copied some phrases from it, and when the letter was completed to her satisfaction she found one of Robin’s old envelopes, folded the letter, and slipped it inside. When the Belles arrived, the first thing she told them was that she had had a letter from Robin only that morning, and would they enjoy hearing it?

  It was as chock-full of news as she had been able to concoct, with frequent references to Lady Farquahar and the stables and the shepherds, and when she was done reading the girls sat rapt in silent marvel; my, Naomi said, he certainly can write a letter.

  Well, thought Nellie, pleased with her cleverness, if he can, so can I. Enclosed was a money order he hoped would cover the loan he had gotten from the girls—“sorry to have been so neglectful, but I have been frightfully busy”—and when she cashed “Robin”’s check and paid the girls back she felt a little better. The letters continued—she found she enjoyed making them up—a constant stream of communications from across the Atlantic (she had to use the same envelopes over and over), each filled with all sorts of news and happenings designed to interest, titillate, or otherwise divert during The Belle Telephone Hour, to which she had returned in a natural fashion.

  It was no good, of course; the more she wrote letters from Robin, the more she missed him. She was both sender and recipient, and somehow it didn’t seem fair. Worse, she worried continually. She remembered what Madame Potekka had said, that he was probably in the city, but how to find him was another proposition altogether.

  Then an idea occurred: she would take an advertisement in the personal column; perhaps he would see it. She called The New York Times and inquired about rates, settling for two lines specifying that “RR call NB all forgiven love.” The notice ran a week, without results. She realized that while many people read the Times, it was quite possible that Robin did not. Then she remembered that on several occasions he had been carrying a copy of The Village Voice, and she took out a similar ad, with similar results. Namely, none. It was the same with the Daily News, and when that ad expired, so had her patience, nearly.

  She and Hilda having resumed their companionable walks in the park, they were sitting one day on the bench by the Alice in Wonderland statues enjoying the fine fall weather, which reminded her so of last spring that it pained her. She had gone to considerable lengths to be friendly to the nursemaids whom she had been so rude to that one day, and they were all sitting there talking when Nellie, glancing south across the trees, saw a plane going over, its wings flashing silver in the sun. She watched it out of sight. “Why, you foolish thing,” she said aloud: Hilda and the nursemaids gave her a look. She told Hilda she must get home right away, and they hurried off together, Nellie rebuffing all of Hilda’s questions, but saying it was terribly important. When she arrived home she telephoned Garden City. She talked with Nancy, then the children, but it was Roger she most particularly wanted to speak with.

  The next day the weather was as fair as it had been the day before, and Nellie was out in the park again, just before twelve. She took her place on the bench and waited. Roger was on the dot. At precisely twelve o’clock his little plane could be seen high up over the city and in a moment three puffs of smoke burst from its tail. The puffs formed a single line, and then two loops were added, making it a “B.” Then Roger made a full circle, the smoke coming out in one long curl as the plane turned; the ends of the curl met and formed an “O.” There came another “B” and another, an “I” and then a “T.” Oh, dear, Nellie thought as the plane maneuvered eastward, he’s forgotten the other “T”; but no, the plane zipped back, drew another line, then crossed it. “BOBBITT,” the blue sky read in big puffy letters. People around the boat basin were already pointing upward, and the children were letting their sailboats go. By this time Roger had added below “Bobbitt” another large “O,” and then another “Bobbitt,” and then, below that, the words “I LOVE YOU.” The top line was already melting away as the plane dipped once more and added a neat “N” underneath, with a curl at the end, just the way Nellie made her initial. Then the plane flew away. Nellie hurried home, watching the letters disappear as she went. By the time she reached the apartment they were gone altogether, but she hurried to the elevator, let herself into her vestibule, and went and sat by the phone.

  She sat all that afternoon; it did not ring, except once, at six o’clock, when Roger called. “No,” she told him, “there was no answer.” He must skywrite another message tomorrow.

  Roger did as his grandmother asked, and at noon sharp his plane appeared high over the Empire State Building and began writing again. People in the streets looked up and pointed as the letters were formed: “BOBBITT CALL NELL.” There is nothing Manhattanites love so much as a general confusion or mystery, and they stopped in groups as they came out of the subway entrances or got off at their bus stops, wondering. Bobbitt? Nell? What a novel way of communicating. People out in the park lay on the grass, awakening from a nap or looking up from their books, and in their boats on the lake rowers stopped their oars to watch as the letters hung in the sky. Bobbitt? They nudged their collective memories. Wasn’t that that movie star kid, back—when? Some publicity stunt, they decided, as the puffy white letters dissolved in the sky, and they returned to their naps or their books or their oars. Next day the plane appeared again at the precise hour; the message this time read: “BOBBITT FOREVER.” There was an offshore wind and the letters didn’t last long, but still people were talking. BobbittBobbittBobbitt. Sure, they remembered, some of them, the kid in the London blitz with the match: “’Oo put out th’ lights?” Publicity stunt, they said again. But why? The editor of the Daily News, who had been watching from his office window, remembered Bobbitt, and sent a reporter out to see what he could discover; the paper was always looking for human-interest items for column fillers. No information was forthcoming, however, and the following day there was another, more perplexing message. The plane appeared and spelled out: “BOBBITT TRULY TRUE.” It was signed: “MISSY PRISS.” Next day the same message was repeated, but the plane flew under the message, putting in a little proofreader’s caret, which meant a word had been omitted, and above it Roger wrote between “BOBBITT” and “TRULY” the word “REALLY.” Then the plane zipped back again and let out one long stream underlining the word; the message read:

  REALLY

  BOBBITT TRULY TRUE

  That evening the girls met for The Belle Telephone Hour. Of course they’d all been watching the messages, too; Phyllis had seen one from her window and had called Naomi, who called Hilda. The cat was
out of the bag, and Nellie confessed to her friends the truth about her deception. Robin had disappeared, she didn’t know where. He wasn’t in Ireland, nor was he writing letters from Ireland; Nellie had written them herself. It all came out then: Robin wasn’t rich, his father wasn’t a lord, he had made up all those stories.

  Oh, they said, they knew it all the time. Well, not all the time, but Phyllis had smelled a rat; the Ballymore emerald was in the British Museum, certainly.

  “Why did you let me go on, then?” Nellie asked them.

  They loved her, they said. If she wanted to pretend, why, that was all right with them. Everybody pretended something, sometime. Nobody was ever really what he seemed.

  Phyllis had tears in her eyes as she kissed Nellie. “Oh, we hope you find him.”

  But she did not. The messages went on, and public interest in them continued, and the Daily News featured a picture on its fourth page. Every day Nellie Bannister would go out to the park and look up while the message was being written, and then hurry home to wait by her telephone. Bobbitt never called. Then it occurred to her that he might have lost her unlisted telephone number, so she arranged another message with Roger: “BOBBITT CALL 649-2283.” When she got home the phone was ringing off the hook. First it was a reporter: “Say, lady, what’s the story here?” There was no story, she informed him; it was a purely private matter. Then others called—well-wishers, nosypokes, cranks. Nellie began wishing she hadn’t written her number out for all New York to see. It didn’t seem to matter anyway; there was no word from Robin. Another idea struck her and she again telephoned Roger. The next day, a beauty and not a hint of breeze, she went to the park and watched as his plane made two graceful opposing curves, and when the ends joined they formed a perfect heart. And in the center Roger spelled out: “PLUCK.” The design hung there for perhaps a quarter of an hour, while the entire city looked up wondering what it meant, a heart with “PLUCK” in the middle of it. Each evening, after waiting for the call that never came, Nellie would think out a new message: Once it said, “Bobbitt, Come Home”; another time it said, “Prissy Loves Bobbitt”; a third time it said, “Key Under Mat.” By now pictures of the messages had hit the front page of the News, for the editor realized he had a great story and that people were following it. Suzy Knickerbocker carried an item, also Earl Wilson. Time magazine picked it up, followed by Newsweek and People. Finally even The New York Times took notice of these messages, and printed a story. Finally a reporter from the Long Island paper, Newsday, tracked down the source of the skywriting, Roger himself at his flying school, and he admitted that he was the one making the messages, and that they were for his grandmother, who was trying to locate an old friend. The other papers copied, and the story grew accordingly, “HEARTBROKEN ACTRESS SEEKS MISSING FORMER CHILD STAR,” read the headlines, and “BOY ACTOR MISSING; ACTRESS GRIEVES.”