by John O'Hara
“What?”
“I’ll come out in the car with you at intermission and stay with you, the way we used to.”
“I know, but—that’s what I’d love. It would be fun.”
“We haven’t done that since we’ve been married.”
“Yes we did. At Lake Placid.”
“Yes, but we haven’t here, at home, and I want to, don’t you?”
“Yes, but what about you know, business?” he said. She hated to name the contraceptive devices.
“I won’t bother. We can start having a baby.”
“Do you mean it?” he said.
“I never meant anything so much in my life,” she said. “And there’s one way to prove it.”
“Yes, that’s true. Just by being here. Just by coming out here.” They had arrived at the club parking grounds.
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, my sweet lovely Caroline,” he said.
“Not now,” she said. “I said intermission.”
They got out of the car. Ordinarily Julian would have stopped the car at the steps near the vestibule, where the women got out of chauffeur-driven and husband-driven and beau-driven cars, but tonight they had not thought of it. Julian drove the car in and out of lanes, twisting and maneuvering until he had got as close to the verandah as he could, to make as short as possible the walk through the snow. Arm in arm he and Caroline, their arctics flopping, went up to the verandah and around to the vestibule. Caroline said she would be right down, and Julian went out again to the verandah and all the way around the clubhouse to the men’s locker-room.
It was a grand night for a party. It was cold, and the snow-covered golf course seemed not to be separate from the farmlands that bounded the course on the second, fourth, and seventh holes. In the summer the golf course was so neatly shaved that it made him think of a farmer in his Sunday suit surrounded by other farmers in overalls and straw hats. But now in the night there was no way of telling, if you did not know, where club property ended and real farmland began. As far as you could see the world was white and blue and purple and cold. You learn by living with your mother and father and people that it is bad to lie in the snow for a long time, but when all the world is covered with snow and moonlight it doesn’t look as if it would do you any harm. But it was just a picture now, so it doesn’t do you any harm. Julian took in a deep breath and felt very much like a healthy, clean-living person for so doing. “I ought to get more of that,” he said, and went in to the locker-room.
Many men said hello and hyuh to him, and he said hyuh and hello back at them six or seven times. He didn’t have an enemy in the place. Then he heard someone say, “Hello, Socker.” He looked to see who it was, although he know who it was. It was Bobby Herrmann.
“Hello, Rum Dumb,” he said.
“Yeah, Rum Dumb,” said Bobby in his slow difficult way of speaking. “Jesus Christ. You have a nerve calling me Rum Dumb, I’ll say.”
“Nuts,” said Julian. He was taking off his coat and hat and putting them in his locker.
Everyone seemed to think that the job of kidding Julian was being taken over by Bobby. “Jesus Christ,” said Bobby. “I’ve done a whole lot of things in my life, but by Jesus if I ever sunk so low that I had to throw ice in a man’s face and give him a black eye. My God.”
Julian sat down at the table. “Cocktail. Straight liquor. Highball. What’ll you have, Ju?” said Whit Hofman.
“Cocktail, I guess.”
“Martinis in this shaker,” said Hofman.
“Fine,” said Ju.
“Trying to ignore me,” said Bobby. “Trying to give me the old high hat. The old absent treatment. Well, all right. Go ahead. Ignore me. Give me the old high hat. I don’t care. But the least you can do, English, the least you can do is go in there and pay for an extra subscription to the dance.”
“Huh?” said Julian.
“You heard me. You’re responsible for there being one less man here tonight and the club needs the money, so don’t forget, you sock out an extra five bucks when you pay your subscription.”
“Who is this man?” said Julian to Whit. Whit smiled. “Did he come here with a member?”
“That’s all right,” said Bobby. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Depression or no depression, I think the membership committee ought to draw the line somewhere,” said Julian. “I don’t mind Jews or Negroes, or even a few people with leprosy. They have souls, the same as you or I. But when a man goes to his club he likes to think he’s going to associate with human beings, and not some form of reptile life. Or is it insect? Turn around, Herrmann, till I decide just what you are. Have you got wings?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll get by.”
“That’s just the trouble,” said Julian. “We ought to have state cops stationed at the club entrance, just to keep people like you away.”
“It’s a good thing we didn’t have state cops here last night. As it was it’s a wonder somebody didn’t send for them. Or the God damn marines or something.”
“There you go, talking about the war again,” said Julian. “You never got over that God damn war. That’s your trouble. You don’t hear Whit, or Froggy—”
“That’s all right,” said Bobby. “When there was a war, I was in it. I wore a uniform. I wasn’t one of these God damn slackers playing sojer boy at some college. Lafayette or Lehigh or wherever it was. S.A.T.C. Saturday Afternoon Tea Club. Yes, sir. When old Uncle Sam needed me, I heeded the call and made the world safe for democracy, and when the war was over I stopped fighting. I didn’t do like some people that put on a uniform back in 1917 and then did their fighting by throwing drinks around in the presence of respectable people at a country club, thirteen or fourteen years after the war was over. Nineteen-thirty. That’s what some people are. Veterans of 1930. The Battle of the Lantenengo Country Club Smoking Room. Surprise attack.”
The others were laughing, and Julian knew he was coming off a very bad second best. He finished his drink and rose to go.
“Not driving you away, are we?” said Bobby.
Julian looked at Whit, deliberately turning his back on Bobby. “Something wrong with the can, Whit? Or don’t you smell it?”
Whit gave a neutral smile. “Going in?” he said.
“Let him go, Whit,” said Bobby. “You know how he is when he has a drink in his hand. Of course you’re safer when it’s a cocktail. There aren’t any lumps of ice in a cocktail to give you a black—”
“Well, bye bye,” said Julian. He walked out of the locker room, but as he left he heard Bobby say in a very loud voice, loud enough not to be missed by Julian: “Say, Whit, I hear Harry Reilly’s thinking of buying a new Lincoln. He doesn’t like that Cadillac he bought last summer.” The locker-room loved it.
Julian walked on, through the smoking-room, through the dining alcoves, out to the dance floor, through to the foyer at the foot of the stairs. That was where you waited for your lady. Julian said hello and good evening to a great many people, and waved especially gayly to Mildred Ammermann, who was giving tonight’s dinner. She was a tall, toothy girl, captain of the women’s golf team. Her father was a drunken roué, quite rich in real estate, and nominally a cigar manufacturer. He never came to the club except on nights like this, when Mr. and Mrs. Ammermann would entertain a few of their—her—friends at a smaller table. Mildred, towering above Losch, the club steward, and pointing, daintily for her, with one finger as she held a small stack of place-cards in her left hand, apparently was one woman who had not heard about the business of the night before. It was axiomatic in Gibbsville that you could tell Mill Ammermann anything and be sure it wouldn’t be repeated; because Mill probably was thinking of the mashie-niblick approach over the trees to the second green. Julian derived some courage from her smile. He always had liked Mill anyway. He was fragmentarily glad over again that Mill did not live in New York, for in New York she would have been marked Lesbian on sight. But in Gibbsville she was just a healthy girl. Good old Mill.
“What are you thinking?” said Caroline, suddenly standing beside him.
“I like Mill,” he said.
“I do too,” said Caroline. “Why, did she do something or say something?”
“No. I just like her,” he said. “I’ve been learning how to take it.”
“How?”
“Mr. Robert Herrmann is in his best form, ribbing me about last night—”
“Oh, Lord, where? In the locker-room? Were there a lot of people there?”
“Yes. Whit and Froggy and the usual crowd. He told me I ought to sock out five bucks to cover Harry’s subscription to the dance. And then he started kidding me about the war being over or something. How I waited till 1930 before I did my fighting, and a lot of stuff about calling out the state police.”
“Mm. I suppose we can expect an evening of that.”
“Why? Has anyone said anything to you?”
“No, not exactly. Kitty Hofman came in the johnny while I—”
“God, you women, going to the can together! Why do you always—”
“Do you want to hear what she had to say? Or are you going to go into all that again?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, Kitty, you know how she is. Comes right out with it. She said she heard Harry had a black eye, and I said yes, I knew he had. And she said Whit is worried. Did he say anything to you?”
“No. He didn’t get much chance, with Bobby holding forth. I didn’t wait to talk to Whit.”
“Well, apparently Whit knows Harry has money in the garage.”
“Sure he knows. It’s no secret. As a matter of fact I think I told Whit myself. Yes, I did. I had to tell him, because when Whit heard about it last summer he wanted to know why I hadn’t come to him, and I told him everybody came to him. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“No, you didn’t. But anyhow, Kitty said Whit’s worried, because Harry is a bad man to have as an enemy. I told you that.”
“I know you did. Well, we can’t go on standing here like this. There’s Jean and Froggy. Let’s go over there.”
They went over there. Jean was Caroline’s best friend, and Froggy was one of the group whom Julian regarded as his best friends. He had no single best friend, had had none since college. His best friend in college was with the Standard Oil in China, and he never heard from him except about once a year. With these people Julian felt safe and at ease. Froggy, thirty-four, was not quite five years older than Julian. Froggy had lost an arm in the war, and probably because of that Julian felt less close to him than to the other men of the same age who had been in France. Julian’s war record had been made in college, as a member of the S.A.T.C., and he still had the feeling that he should have enlisted to fight and not to go to college. Year by year the feeling grew less strong, and he believed he did not care any more, but he still did. He always did when he saw Froggy for the first time on any day; Froggy, who had been a beautiful swimmer and tennis player. With Jean, Julian had complete ease. Everything that they ever could have been to each other, Jean and Julian had been. They had been passionately in love all one summer long ago; a demi-vierge affair that left them, when it did leave them finally, with a feeling toward each other which was far more innocent than that of two children, and made them ready really to love someone else. Julian knew, because Jean had told him, that she had “gone the limit” with Froggy the very first night she had a date alone with him, and Julian honestly believed he was glad for her.
Now they talked about people who were visiting the So-and-sos; whether the Reading crowd was coming up for the dance; how swell or how perfectly terrible some of the girls looked; whether Julian had had a flat tire, as they had seen his car stopped on the road to the club; wasn’t it wonderful, or wasn’t it? the way the highway department got the roads clear so quickly; such a lovely corsage; oh, smoke a Camel, you can’t tell the difference; Mill’s father looks worse than ever; there was one thing about the Ammermanns, and that was when they gave a party they didn’t spare the pennies. Then Mill and her mother and father were seen to take their places, standing just inside the ballroom (living-room when the furniture was not cleared away), and forming a little reception line. In less than three minutes there was a milling crowd in the foyer, all waiting to say good evening a bit stiffly to Mr. and Mrs. Ammermann, and a very friendly hello to Mill. The orchestra, Ben Riskin and his Royal Canadians, from Harrisburg, took their places and with two thumps of the bass drum burst forth into (boom boom) Oh, Give Me Something To Remember You By. “Now please don’t drink too much,” said Caroline, and went to find her place at the festive board.
II
The festive board now groaned under the Baked Alaska. The Ammermann dinner party was just about over. Until one o’clock the men, young and old, would see to it that Mill was not left standing without a partner; after that whatever dances she got she would have got without giving the dinner. Tomorrow’s papers would carry the list of guests, and then the dinner would be history. Next Christmas the big dinner at the club Christmas dance would be given by someone else. Whatever she did, Mill Ammermann must not give another large dress-up party for at least a year.
Tonight’s dinner, as almost every guest was able to tell at a glance, was the club’s two-fifty dinner. This was a club dinner dance, and all members were invited. At a dinner such as the Ammermanns’, the hostess could arrange with the steward for the dollar-fifty (roast chicken), the two-dollar (roast turkey), or the two-fifty (filet mignon), and this had been the filet mignon dinner. The Ammermanns had just that much money, and their position in Gibbsville was just that certain and insecure, that they had to give the best of everything. Conforming to custom, the Ammermanns did not supply drinks, nor did they pay the dance subscriptions. A man on accepting an invitation to the dinner was paired off with a woman or girl. The custom for unmarried, unengaged men was to accept the dinner invitation with his card, and then to telephone the hostess and ask if she wanted him to escort someone to the dinner. All this was arranged beforehand, much more subtly than might be supposed. There were certain sad birds among the girls who had to be invited to many dinners, and it was understood by the hostess that certain men would make themselves available to take these sad birds to the dinner. But it was also understood by every hostess that a popular, attractive young man should not be designated the escort of any but popular, attractive girls. Then there was another group of girls, to which Mill Ammermann herself belonged, who got to the dance somehow, usually with a married couple who were friends of hers, or as extra girl on a party of four or six. Mill, and girls like her, could tell almost to the foot how far they would dance, and if they danced more than that distance they could inquire of themselves what was wrong. Usually the answer, to girls like Mill, was that some young husband was sore at his wife and wanted to tell Mill all about it because Mill was such a pal. So understanding. And didn’t misunderstand when you gave her what amounted to a rush. Sometimes, of course, Mill and the girls like her would get a real rush—by a man who had drunk more than usual. Whatever was cruel about the system, there were some things to be said for it; for one thing, by the time a girl was twenty-five she usually was prepared, knew precisely what to expect, of every dance that she went to. Only a very few girls of Mill’s type went to a dance with sadly foolish hopes that this dance would be different from any other. And there was one other unwritten, unspoken agreement among the dancing men: if a Gibbsville girl of doubtful popularity inveigled an out-of-town man to come to a club dance, the Gibbsville men did go a little bit out of their way to see that she made a good showing. They danced with her twice instead of once in a night; with the result that all but the saddest of the sad birds married themselves off to out-of-town men. Of course when they once married their ugly duckling days were forgiven and forgotten; such girls took their places with the most popular girls. But it had to be marriage, not merely an engagement, but the man could be the worst heel, stupid, badly dressed—anything, so long as he was not a Jew.
Not that any Gibbsville girl of the country club–Lantenengo Street set ever married a Jew. She wouldn’t have dared.
By the time a man reached junior year in college he knew how he was situated in the country club social life. Julian, for instance, had known for years that what had happened tonight would always happen: that he would sit at a table between one attractive girl and one sad bird. Always the attractive men, or those who were accepted as attractive in Gibbsville, were given a sad bird as a duty and an attractive girl as a reward. The attractive girls far outnumbered the sad birds. On Julian’s right sat Jean Ogden; on his left was Constance Walker, who danced as though her sex life depended on it. Constance was a distant cousin of Caroline’s.
All during dinner Julian’s thoughts kept returning to Caroline. Constance, prolonging what had long since ceased to be a slightly amusing tradition, always called Julian Cousin Julian, or plain Cousin. He danced once with Constance between courses, and he found himself incredulous all over again at her physical resemblance to Caroline. The two girls were almost exactly the same height and weight, and there was no denying that Constance had a lovely figure. Yes, she had it a little on Caroline, or at least he thought she had; she was fresher than Caroline—to him. He knew that under a bright light the small of Caroline’s back showed an unmistakable patch of down. He knew where the cicatrix of Caroline’s vaccination stood out on her left thigh; but though he had seen Constance many times in a bathing suit, he wasn’t sure that she had been vaccinated at all. He was thinking of this as he danced with Constance, and he was on the verge of asking her whether she was vaccinated when he became aware that he was holding her tight and she was holding him just as tight and for good reason. He felt ashamed of himself and sorry for Constance. It was a dirty trick to get this kid excited. It was a low trick to be excited himself. He slowly relaxed his hold.
But the process of comparing the girl he was dancing with, eating with, with the girl he had married, who was her cousin, gave him something to enjoy in secret. Whenever he was on a party and did not drink too much he needed a secret game to play or a mental task to perform the while he apparently was observing the amenities. Caroline was thirty-one and Constance was still in college and probably about ten years younger than Caroline. The cousins were pretty good types of their respective colleges: Caroline had gone to Bryn Mawr, Constance was at Smith—the plain girl who goes to Smith and competes with the smart Jewesses for Phi Beta Kappa, as distinguished from the pretty girls who go to Smith and write to Yale. Caroline was the perfect small-town girl at Bryn Mawr; from private school in her home town, to a good prep school, to Bryn Mawr and the Bryn Mawr manner, which means quick maturity and an everlasting tendency to enthusiasms. Constance knew everything but Caroline still was finding things out—the capital of South Dakota, the identity of Mike Pingatore, the location of Dalhousie, the handicap system in polo, the ingredients of a Side Car. He wondered why he put so much stress on the education of the two girls, and then he stumbled upon a truth: that Caroline was an educated girl whose education was behind her and for all time would be part of her background, whereas with Constance and girls like her—oh, what difference did it make? Constance was an unimportant little girl. But he was glad he discovered that about Caroline and her education. It was worth remembering, and as happened so often when he made a discovery about her, he wanted to tell Caroline about it, to try it out on her and see if she agreed with it. He knew what she would say. She would say—and it would be the truth—that she had been telling him practically that for years.
