Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “You were what?”

  “I made up that story,” said Oppie. “I mean, she comes down here …”

  Morgan Lake stared at him. He opened his mouth.

  Oppie said, “Look, I’ll explain to her. Confess the whole thing was just a joke. She shouldn’t have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Besides she promised me, you know, to keep it dark.”

  Morgan Lake said, “You think you’ll stop it?”

  “Certainly, I’ll stop it,” Oppie said. Morgan had caught on to what had been Oppie’s inspiration. He knew that Mr. Lake would want the rumor stopped, undercut and dissipated. Oppie had thought of this way to do it. And only Oppie, in person, could destroy the rumor in this particular way. He had hoped that Morgan Lake would see that.

  Morgan Lake said, “Stop it, then.” He started to walk away. He turned back and seemed to sway unsteadily. He was not a man to show temper or to shout but Oppie found himself quaking in his boots. “It’s brutal,” said Morgan Lake. “You are a brute, Etting. I don’t think I want you here. I’ll speak to the owner.”

  “Mr. Lake, listen, I know I shouldn’t have started the thing but I’ll stop it! I’m sorry … but I can stop it. You’ll see.”

  But the manager walked away moving unsteadily as if he were a sick man … as if what he felt was not anger, after all, but another emotion. Disgust, perhaps. Revulsion. Even nausea.

  A jittery Oppie Etting got hold of Felice Paull, at once, and told her that he had made up the whole story just to … well, she knew … get Harriet Gregory all excited. Felice took a very dim view of his sense of humor. But she was mollified, just the same. This proved Felice to have been calm and intelligent.

  The counterrumor spread.

  Poor Harriet came flying down to the lobby that evening, weeping and raging. Oppie apologized over and over again. He crawled. He begged her pardon; he was a dog. But he knew she would be big about this. If he hadn’t known she had such a marvelous sense of humor— At last she stopped crying and said she would try to forgive him but, of course, she could never trust him again. He was a treacherous man. Harriet had begun to glimpse a certain martyrdom. She had no idea she was being betrayed, in this very moment.

  The word went around that Harriet Gregory had been made-a fool-of. Some thought it was amusing. Some were indignant and blamed Oppie Etting. But there were those who blamed Harriet, maintaining that they had never been fooled by that silly story.

  Agnes Vaughn said, “How about Leila Hull? She drinks like a fish. What’s on her mind? Maybe she’s Mrs. Quinn.” Agnes ran her thumbnail between two teeth.

  “There’s no such woman,” Felice Paull said complacently. “I checked, remember. It was all just a hoax and I told you so in the first place.” She hadn’t: she now believed that she had.

  Agnes said, “Don’t be too sure.”

  Felice said, “Well! It certainly is neither right nor just to accuse Mrs. Hull when there’s nothing to the story.” Felice let her eyes water with virtue.

  Felice Paull was, unfortunately, one whose virtues antagonized almost everybody. This was why she clung to Agnes Vaughn. Agnes Vaughn didn’t mind an argument or even a row, now and then, and while she took issue with Felice on many subjects, she was not antagonized, in the sense of feeling upset. In fact, she enjoyed herself.

  Furthermore, although Agnes Vaughn never went anywhere or did anything and Felice Paull was quite active, it was Agnes who had the attractive power. She had an imagination. Where Felice was heavy, Agnes Vaughn, in the mind, was quicksilver.

  “You believe what you want,” said Agnes, now. Nobody made Agnes Vaughn feel guilty. Agnes cheerfully was guilty. She preferred a scandal.

  Oppie Etting did not lose his job. Avery Patrick saw no point in throwing him out and getting a new man. Night men were hard to find and a new one might want more money. Forget it. Or else give Avery a better reason.

  Morgan Lake had given the owner no better reason than that Oppie Etting talked too much and started rumors. No account of this specific rumor, about a murder suspect living in Sans Souci, had gone through his lips. Or ever would.

  For weeks the city of Pasadena had been bracing itself for New Year’s Day. Tall ranks of seats on iron frameworks had long been built to bank the path of the Rose Parade, muffling over all manner of buildings. After Christmas, the city held its breath for New Year’s.

  All the widows were back in residence. The Gadabouts had returned.

  (Winnie Lake went off for two days during this period, but she was of no concertn to the widows and they were not permitted to feel the tension she had left behind her.)

  Sarah Lee Cunneen and Bettina Goodenough invited Nona Henry to go to the parade with them. They had places in an upstairs window—very fine. Privileged.

  “My lawyer got them for us,” said Sarah Lee. “Listen!”

  The widows had their connections. They were fond of saying “My.” My doctor, my lawyer. My chiropodist. My butcher. My hairdresser. For they were interconnected with the economy. They consumed.

  Nona was a trifle cool, at first. But in the end, and somehow because Daisy Robinson said to her that personally she wanted no part of the Rose Parade and would not even watch it on a TV screen if she could help it, Nona perversely decided that she ought not to miss this. Yes, she would go.

  It seemed that only the younger and stronger ones were going in the flesh. The crowds would be frightful. It meant rising early. And the night before, of course, was New Year’s Eve.

  New Year’s Eve must be got through too, Nona discovered. A night for dancing. But who could dance, at Sans Souci? Even Georgia had no partner, for Robert Fitzgibbon had been “called away” for a day or two. Georgia would not have left Mrs. Fitz to see the Old Year out alone anyhow. Nona could have shared their tea and cookies but she did not feel like being quiet.

  So when the Gadabouts got up an evening of bridge with Harriet Gregory, Nona made the fourth. They congratulated themselves that they had a game right here in the building, for one did not go forth on New Year’s Eve, since one had the impression that the streets were thronged in equal parts by drunks and policemen, and that people were being massacred by automobiles with statistical inevitability. In the safety of Bettina’s apartment, however, Sarah Lee had stirred up a punch and put a “stick” in it.

  Harriet Gregory was in a bitter mood, haughty about Oppie Etting, venomous about Agnes Vaughn. After two glasses of the punch, Harriet so far forgot herself as to become rather witty and funny. If Mrs. Quinn did not exist she ought to have existed. And if she were here, then Felice Paull would make a good murderess, wouldn’t she though? No, no, how about Agnes Vaughn, herself? Obviously, any husband of Agnes Vaughn’s would have been driven to acquire a girl friend.… They were naughty, the four of them. Nona laughed a lot. “What the hell?” as Bettina said.

  So the Old Year went out, like a candle forgotten in the corner, the year of Nona’s losses. The year of the end of her life.

  She would get up very early and put on warm clothing and sally forth to see this famous parade, and if she was going to be tired and dopey from too little sleep and if there was going to be a bad taste in her mouth from the punch and the cake … oh, well. “Life’s too short,” as Bettina would say, and “What the hell?”

  Chapter 11

  Traffic strangled on its own ingredients in Pasadena on New Year’s Day. The parade area, a wide band across the city’s middle, was closed off to automobiles entirely. People streamed into it on foot, leaving their cars to narrow to the choking point the remaining streets, clotting every foot of curb, stuffing every vacant lot, and even dropping oil on front lawns where some imprisoned householders took a measure of revenge out in simple money.

  By noon, however, the parade was over. Perhaps a million souls had somehow crept out of the tangle and were gone. The football game, not yet begun, had nevertheless drawn to itself and immobilized some thousands of cars. It became possible to drive in the city, if you were young and str
ong, or sufficiently motivated.

  Morgan Lake had watched the more venturesome of his tenants twitter home from the morning’s excitement. Now he anticipated callers, for this, on top of everything else, was the Day of the Grandchildren.

  It happened every year. East of here, the land was peppered with small colleges, and more than one grandchild, driving back to school after the holidays, would be going by, and (importuned by the family, or figuring to acquire a free lunch, or in simple affection) would drop in at Sans Souci. Morgan Lake awaited them with a certain pleasure.

  The first to come was a stocky lad of seventeen, in blue cotton slacks and a blue windbreaker, who had a cheerful ruddy face under a blond crew cut. He bounded in on strong young legs and asked for Mrs. Rogan.

  Morgan Lake listened to the unusual sound of feet running up the stairs.

  The second to come was a trim little girl, seventeen, with long-lashed blue eyes and perfect confidence in her own female desirability, who asked, with automatic coquetry, for Mrs. Robinson. He heard her feet pass by the elevator, too.

  The third to arrive was a girl, eighteen, with a long narrow face, a weary eyelid, a very short hair cut, and an air of pitying sophistication, who asked for Mrs. Fitzgibbon. This one pushed the button and rode up.

  The fourth and last to come was a boy, eighteen, in a rumpled dark suit, with a bristle of black hair and a bad complexion, who asked for Mrs. Paull. He ambled off down the east wing.

  Morgan Lake sat on his stool and smiled inwardly at the thought of so much youth in the building. He thought a little sadly of Winnie. She had come home from her beach party quieted, he thought. He wondered if she would ever get away and go to college. Wistfully he hoped that she would. He hoped so.

  1. Johnny Paull rang Felice’s bell and she opened the door and bore down upon him. No matter how big he grew, he would never match the mass of his grandmother. Right away he was clasped too close to her bosomy bulk. (This he managed to endure.) Then she thrust him off and wanted to know why he was so late. She had fixed lunch for him long ago. It was being held back on the stove. He ought to have phoned. It wasn’t considerate. Her big eyes were hurt already, before he even got in the door.

  He tried to apologize. “Jeepers, Gran, the traffic was fierce, and I didn’t get going too early, I mean—”

  Whatever he meant, she wasn’t listening. She was pressing him to the table. Then he had to eat food that was sickeningly sauced, too rich for his day-after-New-Year’s-Eve condition.

  Then she wanted the dope on the family. He had to remember what he wasn’t supposed to tell her, and it made him sound stupid and that was uncomfortable.

  Then she said his suit needed pressing and she would press the trousers if he liked. He fended this offer away in pure panic.

  Then she got on to Uncle Jeff. Did his father ever hear from Jeff at all? Well, she never did and Jeff was a bad son and none of her fault. Johnny, who privately thought Jeff was O.K., as uncles went, was wounded by his own cowardice, for it was wiser not to defend. So he responded in “yeah’s” and “I guess so’s” and hated himself.

  “It means so much to her,” his folks had said. “Try to stop by.”

  Whatever it was meaning to her, he got away in forty minutes, pleading a need to study, leaving her calling after him at her door, her big eyes swimming.

  Johnny Paull strode through the lobby, the patio, and out to his jalopy, breathing hard. He’d write the folks he had stopped to see her. The old bat, he thought viciously. He had felt obliged, he had done it to please everybody, and he had meant well, but you always got off on the wrong foot with her, right away, and it was never any good, and next year, damn it, he would not stop, and when he got back to the dorm tonight he wouldn’t even speak of it. He spat the taste of his grandmother out of his mouth and roared away.

  2. Terri Fitzgibbon answered her grandmother’s questions in kind. Yes, Daddy was fine. Mother was just fine, thanks, and sent her love. Yes, Uncle Rob had been to see them and looked so well, didn’t he? (Syrup, thought Terri and counted her word a vivid simile.)

  Luncheon was served to three of them. That goony Georgia Oliver was there (and what did Uncle Robert see in her?). She kept hopping up to fetch the hot muffins, the lemon for the tea. And Ursula kept saying, “Won’t you have a little more of this nice crisp lettuce, Teresa dear? Here, let me put a little more salad on your plate. And how is college?”

  “Just fine, Grandmamma.”

  “Do you like your teachers?”

  “Oh yes.” (Terri thought of Mr. Peterson, of whom she had been dreaming those quite frightening dreams, too often.)

  “What courses are you taking, dear?”

  Terri told her. She thought to herself, And if you knew what I’m learning in those courses you’d about flip, I’ll bet. Her lip curled and she put it on the teacup’s rim.

  “I am so happy for you,” said Ursula. “You are getting to be quite the young lady, Teresa. Let’s see …”

  “I’m eighteen,” Terri said.

  “Imagine!”

  (I bet you can’t, thought Terri.) She was bored stiff. She offered to wash the dishes but they cooed, “No, no.” Georgia Oliver would do the dishes, later. She insisted. This was such a treat for Ursula. Was Teresa driving back alone? Was it safe? So far?,

  “I’ve been driving for two years, Grandmamma,” Terri said with a bit of impatience over which she quickly plastered a smile.

  Then that goony Georgia wanted to know if she dated any special boy.

  Terri said, “Well, no special boy …” making it sound as if there were dozens.

  Ursula said, “Don’t be in a hurry, dear, about boys. There is plenty of time.”

  (Terri’s eyes stung. Actually there was not any time. Actually, it was too late, now. Mr. Peterson was married!) “I expect to go for a Master’s degree,” she said haughtily.

  “So ambitious,” cooed Ursula.

  “Not really,” Terri said. “I do have a brain,” she added modestly. (Mr. Peterson had given her an A and she could take English 48 under him next year and … ) Now, they wanted to know where she had gotten her dress. What was the difference to them where she had gotten her dress? She could have screamed! Still, Terri managed to behave like a lady for one hour, and then made her prettiest excuses.

  Ursula let her go with understanding. Of course she would want to get to the sorority house before dark. And were the girls nice, Teresa?

  “Oh yes, Grandmamma, very nice. It was so nice to see you and thanks for the lovely luncheon. Good-by, Mrs. Oliver. So nice to have seen you again.”

  Terri didn’t take the elevator down. She needed the quick romp of feet on stairs. Her own false cooing haunted her ears. So nice!

  She passed Morgan Lake without a thought for the help, here. She hurried out to her little foreign car. Grandmamma was sweet and all that, but so conventional, so boring! She wasn’t aware of the intellectual and emotional problems of this generation. Terri began to cast ahead and see herself arriving, woman of the world, clicking up the stairs at the house, pulling off her little hat, tossing it on her black bedspread. “Hi, you guys.” She’d light a cigarette and kick off her shoes. She’d say to the guys, “Had to stop and see Grandmaw. Ye Gods, 683 clichés later …” she would say and her roommates would grin.

  3. The pretty little girl with the big blue eyes and the turned-up nose said, “Hi, Daisy!” “Linda! Well!” Daisy pecked her cheek. “Come in. Lord, I’m sorry … I haven’t even started lunch. What time is it? Almost one o’clock? Oh well, I thought I wouldn’t start anything until you got here anyhow.” Daisy bared her teeth and made gusty noises while her hands picked her book from the arm of the couch and put it gently on the table. “I was just going to make a sandwich. That do you?”

  “Oh don’t bother much,” Linda said. “I’m not terribly hungry.” She stood on Daisy’s rug, strangely passive, and began to repeat some family messages, quite mechanically, and in a sequence that she had evidently mem
orized.

  Daisy listened to the recital rather impatiently. Then she said, “How are you?”

  “O.K.” the girl said. She just stood there, as if she presented herself for inspection and expected to be inspected.

  “Come on into the kitchen.” Daisy humped her own bones, threw bacon into a frying pan. “Bacon and tomato?”

  “Anything,” Linda said. She leaned on a counter and crossed her feet and looked down at her pretty ankles.

  “Finding school interesting?” asked Daisy. “How are your grades?”

  “Well, I guess I’m probably going to be on probation,” said Linda calmly. “It’s real fun though.”

  Daisy, feeling shocked and also pressed upon and confused, slapped the sandwiches together too fast. They sat down at the dinette table and Linda began to pick daintily at the clumsy pile of bread and underdone bacon and unevenly sliced tomato. She didn’t complain. But Daisy felt put on the defensive.

  Daisy didn’t know what to say to this child. She had no questions about the family. She was an excellent letter writer, herself, and kept up a brisk correspondence. Linda had already delivered the messages, such as they were. So Daisy began to pry into Linda’s academic life some more, but there was little response. The girl seemed to be allowing knowledge to flow over her and making no particular effort to retain any of it. When Daisy ventured to protest her bad grades Linda said, Well, she didn’t want to be a DAR.

  “And what is that?”

  “A Damned Average Raiser,” Linda enlightened her gently.

  Daisy was taken aback. “But what are you planning to do?” Daisy was feeling in herself a surge of energy and purpose that wanted to compensate.

  “Oh, I don’t know …” said Linda vaguely.

  Daisy swallowed down the sermon that rose in her throat. “What interests you?” she demanded.