“But didn’t you get some suits made during the occupation, sir?” Colonel Flax asked.
“I did have a couple of suits made over there,” the General said. “There was a tailor in Wiesbaden—Bethge. Frankly, off the record—mind you, off the record, Bentley—that bird would make you up a suit for two cartons of cigarettes.”
“What?” Miss Fineholt said. “For only two cartons of cigarettes?”
Melville Goodwin shook his finger at her.
“Off the record, Myra,” he said. “Well, those suits are with my baggage in Frankfurt. I was yanked over here pretty fast. They may be following me, but they haven’t got here yet.… Anyway, I think they may look pretty Krauty over here.… I’ve really got to get some civvies.”
He stopped, but his mind was already moving away from civilian clothes. They had reminded him of something else.
“Say, Flax,” he said, “don’t forget those orchids for Mrs. Goodwin, will you?”
“No, sir,” said Colonel Flax, and then the General laughed.
“Look at old Flax,” he said. “I’ve run him ragged, haven’t I? Don’t worry; it’s almost over, son.”
He must have been watching Flax and me very closely while we were talking. Then I saw Oscar standing in the doorway, and Mel Goodwin saw him, too.
“Come, dear,” he said to Helen, “soup’s on.”
The house was very quiet after they all had left and Farouche began pushing his rubber ring at me more hopefully. The old routine was returning, but Mel Goodwin’s personality was still in the house. There were echoes of it everywhere, and everything was at loose ends.
“Sid,” Helen said, “what do you think he’s going to do?”
“You know what he’s going to do. He put on his ‘A’ uniform after lunch,” I said.
“I don’t mean that,” Helen said. “What do you think he’s going to do about everything?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t care right now.”
“Well, I care,” Helen said. “I wish people wouldn’t come here and throw their personalities around until I begin to worry about them.”
It was about time that I looked over the script for the broadcast. It was about time I dropped the problems of Melville Goodwin, because I had problems of my own.
“Forget about him. He’s all grown up,” I said, and I wished that Farouche would stop dropping the rubber ring in front of me.
“Farouche needs another ribbon,” Helen said.
“All right,” I said.
I thought we were on another subject, but I was wrong.
“He’s a lot younger than you are in a lot of ways. He’s so innocent,” she said, and I knew she was not speaking about Farouche.
“You shouldn’t have done that about the orchids,” I told her.
“I couldn’t help it,” she answered, and she smiled, and neither of us spoke for a while.
“I wonder why Gilbert Frary sent you so many orchids,” I said.
“Maybe we’d better think about that, too,” she answered, but the personality of Melville Goodwin was still with us.
Once when the dust of events had settled, Mel Goodwin told me quite a lot about that looked-forward-to evening he had spent with Dottie Peale.
Knowing them both, I was able to make for myself a fairly accurate reconstruction of their meeting, in much the same way that an archaeologist can make a model of some vanished Grecian shrine. Mel Goodwin told me about it in one of his embarrassingly confidential moods, and though much of his narrative made me acutely uncomfortable, I still think it fell into an artistic frame instead of being only another errant night away from the reservation. Perhaps because I have always been fond of the Odyssey I kept seeing in the Goodwin chronicle the return of a hero, weary of the wars. I always found myself thinking of Circe and Calypso, of palaces, fine wines, rare napery and of perfume in the air. Actually there was a wine list and Chanel Five and a new gown from Valentina and a silver-blue mink stole and diamond clips. Seen through Mel Goodwin’s eyes, Seventy-second Street must have come as quite a shock. It certainly had been a shock to me when I had first seen it and I had not been to any war.
There had been a traffic jam on the West Side highway so that Williams and the Cadillac had been unable to bring the General to the Park Avenue entrance of the Waldorf before half past five o’clock, and this cut his timetable short, as he had arranged to meet Dottie at about six. He had decided to stay at the Waldorf out of loyalty to the name, though it was not the old Waldorf, and he could have taken an army discount at some other hotel. He had on his “A” uniform and frankly he looked pretty sharp. The clerks and the bellhops made him feel like a VIP, yet at the same time he also felt like a kid. Someone who must have been a manager shook hands with him and took him up to his room himself and was sorry it was not a better one. It looked too good as it was, considering his budget, but he could only stay for a night because he would certainly have to check in next day in Washington. When he had left his canvas bag in his room, he went downstairs to the florist’s shop with an idea of buying Dottie some of those yellow orchids, but he decided against this because it was too late to have the flowers delivered, and he did not want to walk up Park Avenue carrying them in a box. He had a fixed desire to walk up Park Avenue.
It was sunset when he started up the Avenue, and New York was still the magic city it had always been for him, rising into the clouds and pulsing with life and hope, never weary or disillusioned like Paris or London. Nobody had bombed New York, and by God, nobody would dare to touch it. The truth was it didn’t give a damn for the past. It was forever reaching for something just around the corner, and this was his own mood exactly.
I had described Dottie’s house to him vaguely, but he thought that I had been exaggerating until he saw it, and he found himself making a whole new evaluation of everything when he saw the suit of armor and asked the butler if Mrs. Peale was at home.
“Yes, General Goodwin,” the man said, “Mrs. Peale is expecting you. May I take your hat, sir?”
“Thanks,” he said, and he handed Dottie’s butler his cap and gloves and followed him up that broad, noiseless staircase.
“General Goodwin, madam,” the man said.
Dottie was waiting for him in that same monster salon with the travertine marble fireplace and Italian chairs and tapestries, where she had received me when I had returned from the Paris Bureau, and I remembered what she had said to me while I was still looking around at the sights.
“Very cinquecento, isn’t it?” Dottie had said.
“Yes,” I had answered, “unspoiled Borgia with a patina.”
Some months after the armistice Mel Goodwin had been to Italy on a two weeks’ leave, so he was able to take it without gulping, he told me. She held out both her hands to him and turned her cheek for him to kiss it. In a way it was half formal and half informal. He did not know exactly what the technique should be, since that butler was still there.
“Oh, Mel,” she said, “it’s been ages. Albert, would you tell Bernard to bring around the car?”
“What’s the car for?” Mel Goodwin asked.
“You don’t mind if I show you off a little, do you, darling?” she said. “Only cocktails at ‘21’ and then a quick dinner at the Stork and then we’ll come back home.”
He was glad that he had thought to bring some cash with him.
“It sounds all right to me,” he said.
She looked up at him. “I had completely forgotten you were so damned handsome,” she said.
“Why in hell didn’t you answer any of my letters, Dot?” he asked her.
“Because I never dreamed that anything could ever be the way it was,” she said.
“Well, it is the way it was,” he said.
“Darling,” she said, “let’s both be surprised for a minute, shall we?”
“All right,” he said, “that isn’t such a bad idea.”
He had thought of her a great deal and there had been plenty of
time for that sort of thinking. He had thought of her again and again as he had first seen her among those other civilians in Paris in that austerely tailored suit. He particularly remembered how she sometimes called him “sir” in what you might have termed both a kidding and respectful way, but he had forgotten what he called her resilience and her loveliness. Of course she was dressed for the occasion, but if she had been dressed in coveralls like an Army nurse, they would have been becoming. Her gown was made of plum-colored taffeta that was tight on top with a long billowing skirt that rustled, and every fold and flounce of it fell into formation. Everything about her was always a unit, even the diamond clip and bracelet. She always wore clothes the way a regular wore a uniform. You always thought of the individual first if the whole uniform fitted properly, and that was the way he thought of Dottie.
“Do you like it?” she asked him.
“Like what?” he answered.
“Why, my Valentina frock,” she said. “I like the noise it makes when it swishes.”
“That’s right,” he said, “it sounds like a wave running up a beach.”
He was thinking of the waves on the windward side of the island of Oahu, where the crowd used to go sometimes for swimming picnics. Then Dottie began to laugh.
“As long as it’s a beach and not a bitch,” she said.
He had to laugh himself because they were right where they had been before, and you never worried about her language. If anyone else had said it, it would have sounded coarse, but not with Dot.
“Darling,” she said, “I’d almost forgotten how nice it is to see a man again. I don’t mean anyone in pants. I mean a man.” She pointed to a record player that was finished like the Italian furniture. “Turn on that thing over there, will you? I was playing it this afternoon.”
When he pressed the switch down the music was that old waltz from The Chocolate Soldier.
“Aren’t you going to give me some of this dance,” she asked, “my Hero?”
“Don’t kid me, Dot,” he said when he put his arm around her.
“My Hero” was still playing when Albert handed him his gloves and cap.
I had been exposed to similar evenings myself and I particularly remembered one occasion on which Dottie had taken me out to see the town. It was during my brief vacation from the Paris Bureau and on a night when Henry Peale was suffering from a head cold. I had never had the sort of money to go to the places where Dottie wanted to go that night and I was lucky enough to be in a position to tell her so. I had suggested that we go somewhere in the Village.
“Now, Sid,” she said, “of course I know you can’t afford it. Take this, and if we run through it, I’ll pass you some more under the table.” And she handed me a packet of crisp new bills and told me to be sure to give ten dollars to the captain, at which point I told her that I was not a gigolo.
“Now, Sid,” she said, “I know how confusing this is for you because it was for me once, but stop being silly and remember that some people play with different-colored chips. Consider it a social experiment, darling.”
I finally let her give me the money to pay for the party on a social experimental basis and because she was anxious to show me how she was living. I had never before been so aware of the uneven distribution of wealth, and I learned a lot from the experience. As Dottie told me herself, people who played with different chips had different thought processes, but Dottie could still step down from her new environment, and she could see with malicious pleasure what the environment did to me.
“It will come easier the next time,” she said, “when I pass over the cash. Naturally it’s demoralizing, but why shouldn’t I debauch you?”
That was exactly why there had never been a next time. I could see the corrosive influence of making free with someone else’s money, but then I had known Dottie for so long that we were able to discuss the subject without the least embarrassment.
“You’re always so damned difficult,” Dottie said, “but I don’t see why we can’t still be friends.”
I was not the one who was difficult. Friendship was usually complicated if you played with different chips and I had not been sea-green and incorruptible. I had taken the money—once.
In many ways this problem must have been even more confusing for Mel Goodwin than it had been for me. He had never seen much of New York high life on an army officer’s pay, with a wife and two kids who needed food and clothing. He had been to “21” once on a big blowout two days before he had sailed with “Torch,” but he had left the crowd before they reached the Stork. “21” was enlarged now and in front of it were all those iron jockeys that had once been hitching posts. He had never dreamed of going to the bar there with anyone like Dottie Peale and he had never dreamed that people would know who he was when she introduced him. Somehow Dottie made it all like something in those movies you kept seeing at the officers’ clubs. They had double Martinis—he remembered that she always liked Martinis—and he looked curiously around the room at the checked tablecloths and the hurrying waiters.
“Mel,” Dottie said, “why didn’t you come back sooner?”
“Well,” he said, “there are still pieces of an army over there, and I kept thinking the Russkis might act up. I like it with an army. It’s simpler.”
“Do you think I’m complicated?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he answered, “but I don’t mind some complications.”
“What are you going to do now you’re back?” she asked him.
“Dot,” he said, “I wish I knew. I don’t know what they can do with Joes like me, now we’re back.”
“Oh, Mel,” she said, “you don’t sound happy.”
When he helped her into the limousine her skirts made that swishing sound and she laughed. “Listen to the wave,” she said, “running up the bitch.”
Dottie was the only woman he had ever known who could be completely feminine and still talk like a man. He seemed to have known her always by the time they were half through dinner. She was interested in everything he said, not that he could remember clearly what they talked about, except that most of the conversation was about the relationship between men and women and what made such relationships successful.
“You know,” he remembered that she said, “every woman wants to make a man happy. That’s all she ever wants.”
Somehow she brought back to his mind all sorts of things he had forgotten—things about the Point and about when he was a kid—and then they began remembering things that had happened in Paris.
“It was all just something off the map, Dot,” he said, “like the fourth dimension or the Einstein theory or something.”
“Mel, dear,” she said, “do you think we’re off the map right now?”
“Yes,” he said, “because it can’t last, Dot.”
“Why can’t it?” she asked.
“Why, look at you,” he said, “and look at me.”
“It might,” she said. “I’m looking.”
When the waiter brought the check, he brought a pencil with him, and naturally he placed them before Mel Goodwin. What with the champagne and the caviar and everything, it was lucky he had brought that loose cash.
“Hand it over and let me sign it. It’s my party,” Dottie said. “There used to be a song about it, didn’t there?—‘When the waiter came she simply signed her name; that’s the kind of a baby for me.’”
The future must have hung in the balance, and the difference between Mel Goodwin and me was that he lived by regulation.
“Not my kind of baby, Dot,” he said.
The strange part of it was that she seemed surprised, which rather offended him until suddenly she looked wistful.
“God damn,” Dottie said—she was always picking up someone else’s trick of speech—“it’s awfully nice to feel helpless again.” And then she said one final thing and Melville Goodwin told it to me.
“Why can’t things be like this always?”
Calypso must have said it, an
d Circe, and Cleopatra undoubtedly said it to Antony, if not to Julius Caesar.
XXVII
There Could Always Be a Palace Revolution
The details of this encounter were pieced together from what the General told me later, like so many other episodes in his career. I knew nothing of them at the time. In fact after Melville Goodwin had left for New York I believed that he had gone more or less for good. If he had made a strong impression on me, so had other people who had also vanished, and in the last analysis one can only give so much of one’s energy to the affairs of other people. I had no way of knowing that Mel Goodwin’s life and mine were each moving to an almost simultaneous crisis. I could only see long afterwards that coming events had cast their shadows during those days at Savin Hill. The General’s interest in Dottie was of course a recognizable shadow, and I should have known that Gilbert Frary’s oblique talk with me at Savin Hill, and the orchids for Helen were dangerous portents; but then, such shadows are usually difficult to perceive until too late. Whenever I thought of Mel Goodwin at all in the next few days, I simply thought of him as being in Washington caught up again in his own routine, disappearing like other friends and acquaintances from the ETO, now that the war was over.
Actually I had not been paying enough attention to my own affairs. As I told Helen, I had professional pride, such as it was. I had never expected to be a radio commentator, but now that I was one, I wanted to be a good one. I was tired of being only a front and a piece of property. I was delighted to have the assistance of an expert script-writer like Art Hertz, but I was beginning to wish to have a final say myself on the writing. I had noticed that Art Hertz sometimes exhibited pain when I made suggestions or asked for a few minor changes, but I had always accepted this reaction as natural, and I would not have respected him if he had not begun to look upon the script as his own property. Nevertheless I did think he should have admitted it was mine in the final analysis, if only because a great many people thought of me as a commentator who wrote his own opinions on world events.
I had never been as conscious of a sort of opposition on the part of Art Hertz as I was just after the Goodwins’ visit. I should have seen earlier that Art and everyone else on the program knew something that I did not. I should have gathered, I suppose, from Art’s manner that I was not as essential to him as I had been, but at the time I was exhilarated by a sense that I was beginning to pull more of my own weight in the boat and that things in the studio were going pretty well. I was also beginning to enjoy writing the script myself with Art and the rest of them to check up on it and I was finally getting the feeling of writing for the air. A welcome aspect of the situation was the fact that Gilbert Frary had left suddenly for the West Coast without asking me again to accompany him, and with Gilbert away I was not quite the Charlie McCarthy I had been around the studio.
Melville Goodwin, USA Page 46
