The So Blue Marble

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  She said, “I know,” but she wasn’t thinking about Gig’s surprised face when he came out of his apartment and saw her, surrounded by bags, opening the door of Con’s apartment. She was thinking of marbles, of the ludicrousness of Con and marbles.

  He asked, “You don’t know who these men are?”

  It wasn’t a question but she answered, “They called each other David and Danny.” She repeated, “David-Danny.”

  He was thoughtful. “There’s Dave Cling-used to be on the Times with Con, but it wasn’t he.” And then he asked, all at sea, “But what did they want?”

  She could tell him now, speak the insane words soberly, “They wanted their marbles.”

  Gig’s mild eyes blinked.

  “Particularly a very blue marble.” She let him take it in before asking, “Does that mean anything to you?”

  He repeated, “Their marbles-a very blue marble.”

  She asked, “Did Con ever play marbles?”

  “My God, no!” He said, “I’ve never heard anything like it. Marbles-blue marbles-”

  “One blue marble,” she corrected.

  He was thoughtful, “Do you think they were crazy?”

  She nodded. “Part of the time I thought so, but”-she had to admit it-”they were saner than I was.”

  ”Were they-”he didn’t know how to phrase it-”did they offer any violence to you?”

  She said they didn’t, then she remembered tight fingers on her wrist, but she didn’t correct herself.

  He wondered, sucking at his pipe, if they should notify the police. She shook her head. “There’s nothing to notify about that I can see. They didn’t do anything. Besides I don’t know who they are.” She yawned. That tumbler was beginning to have effect.

  He asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything of any marbles around here-or one blue marble?”

  She yawned again. “Of course not, Gig. I haven’t gone through Con’s boxes in there, nor the drawers he left filled. But I don’t think I’d find marbles if I did.”

  “I don’t imagine that you would,” he agreed. “It is strange. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard of. What can we do? What can I do?”

  She stood on her feet, a little dizzy from the dose. She said, “You can stay here tonight.”

  “I couldn’t do that!”

  She was firm. “You’ll have to. Or let me stay with you. I won’t be alone, Gig. I’m afraid.”

  He twittered, “I couldn’t stay all night with you, Griselda.”

  “You must. I wouldn’t dare be alone.”

  He didn’t believe the men would return, but he didn’t speak with much sincerity.

  She told him, “You heard what they said.”

  He had heard. But he didn’t think they’d return tonight.

  She was serious, yawning again. “It would be like them to come back tonight They are-” She couldn’t find the word.

  He supplied, “Erratic.”

  “Yes. Crazy.” She started to the bedroom but her toes stopped on the edge of the rug. “You don’t mind looking in there first Gig?”

  He stammered, “N-no. Of course I don’t.” He was a professor and not very tall but his shoulders were brawny.

  Only two rooms at Con’s, an old apartment building in the middle of the city. Shops on the street floor and the first floor. Only four floors of apartments, two to the floor, and the small single above where the superintendent lived. Fourth floor was safe, Con’s on the front, Gig’s on the back. Two rooms at Con’s, the great high-ceilinged living room with the wood-burning fireplace, the extra large closet, the cupboard kitchen; bedroom with the same high ceiling, the like fireplace, a smaller closet, and a great bathroom. No way to get into the bathroom but the bedroom door had a small skylight window opening into a shaft. But in the bedroom a door leading to the backstairs which you must use if the elevator was out of order or stuck. Con had warned of the peculiarities of the elevator but it hadn’t gone wrong in her week of residence. Double bolts on the door to the backstairs. Each night she had peered at those bolts, making certain they were caught. But she hadn’t touched them; she was afraid something might be standing outside. She heard Gig there now opening those bolts and the door. She shivered. She heard him close and bolt again.

  When he returned he said, “It’s perfectly safe. I even looked in the shower curtain and under the bed.” No one could get under that low-set modern bed. He felt the stem of his pipe. “But if you’re afraid I will stay here on the couch.”

  She said, “No, you won’t. You’ll stay in the bedroom. I’ll sleep in a chair and you take the bed. Or if you insist I’ll help you move the couch in there. But I won’t stay alone.” She touched his sleeve. “I’m not afraid of you, Gig. I’m afraid of them.”

  He didn’t look at her. “Whatever you say, Griselda.” He began picking up the empty glasses and taking them to the kitchen. She went in the bedroom but she didn’t close the door between. For his sake she undressed in the bathroom, put on her white satin pajamas and her white tweed man-like dressing gown. She turned down the bed and called to him.

  He came in. He said, “I suppose I shouldn’t have washed the tumblers.”

  She shook her head. “Of course not. Bette comes at nine.”

  ”I mean fingerprints.’’

  Her mouth made an O. “I didn’t think. But it wouldn’t do any good.” She took two extra blankets from the old cherrywood cabinet. “There’s no reason for either of us to sleep in the chair. The bed’s enormous, I’ll sleep inside and you out.” She felt mid-Victorian, but he was such a mouse. She spoke coaxingly, “You’ll be more comfortable than in a chair and you have to teach tomorrow.”

  He was like a little boy. “All right, Griselda.” He took off his spectacles and laid them on the left bed table.

  She put her white coat on the foot of the bed and edged into the right-hand place. He lay far at the left and pulled the blankets over him. He didn’t remove his coat.

  She asked, “Do you think it would hurt to leave one lamp on?”

  He didn’t complain but he did say, “I can’t sleep with a light on.”

  He had been too helpful. She turned out the lamp. It was like being in bed alone, but she could hear breathing. She felt safe. Then she asked, “What did you mean-plenty of things happen to me?”

  He was apologetic. “It seems as if they do. Going to California four years ago to visit your aunt, like any popular society girl, and having the movies insist on starring you. Being really a great star when barely out of your teens-then leaving pictures entirely in one year despite all the offers they made. And now starting out again as a designer-” He broke off, “Con told me this.”

  She yawned. “Uh-huh. But that isn’t really having things happen. I just photograph.”

  He said professorially, “Acting takes more than photography. Although you have beauty.”

  She didn’t answer. People thought she had beauty. She didn’t. Regular features were to be expected in ordinary people, and gray eyes were nothing. Hers looked big and bright because she needed glasses. Without glasses the straining widened the pupils. Her only real beauty was her hair, freak hair, naturally golden. It had retained unaided the gold of a child’s hair, of a princess. She liked the way she wore it now, like a wig it was, turned below her ears, smoothed away from her forehead. Her skin and figure were good but that too was ordinary, to be expected when one swam and danced and rode and didn’t gorge on sugars. Nothing sensational about her. She had hated being in the pictures even that one year, being fussed over.

  He wondered, “Perhaps they had seen you in pictures.”

  She said sleepily, “But they called me by my own name, Griselda-not Mariel York. And I’ve been off the screen three years.”

  He spoke as sleepily, “That’s right.”

  She was almost sliding into deep sleep when he spoke again.

  “I really don’t like staying here. Con is my friend.”

  She broke in ru
dely, “Don’t be ridiculous. You know Con and I have been divorced for four years.”

  PART II

  1

  She opened her eyes wide and startled. She must have expected to see those twin faces but the room was empty and there was sun chinking through the Venetian blinds. The extra blankets were folded neatly on the chair. The sound in the other room was the maid. Bette alone picked her feet up and laid them down with such softness and placidity.

  Then the phone rang again and she jumped a little. It was that which had wakened her, of course. She reached into the lower shelf of the bed stand and took it off the cradle.

  Ann’s voice answered her salutation. “Griselda-I’ve been calling and calling. Don’t you ever get up? It’s almost eleven.”

  Her sister always sounded a little distressed, just as if she weren’t surrounded by servants and all care-lifting attentions.

  Griselda said, “That’s not so late. What inspired you to be up at this hour?”

  Ann was humorless. “You know I take my lemon juice and coffee at nine-twenty every morning, Griselda, and see the children before they go to the park. And there’s the menu to be gone over and the thousand things to do when you keep house-”

  Griselda found a cigarette and held the phone by her shoulder while she lit it. She interrupted then, “I know.” She asked lazily, “Anyway, what’s so important about waking me before eleven?”

  Ann spoke brittlely, “I have a wireless from Missy.”

  Griselda leaped up from her elbow. “You have what?” she shouted and heard Bette’s work stop surprised.

  Ann said, “You needn’t yell. She is arriving today. Her boat docks at three.”

  Griselda spoke quickly, “I can’t take her in with me. There isn’t room. Besides these are bachelor apartments and I’m just borrowing Con’s and he-”

  This time her sister interrupted. “I’m not asking you to take her, Griselda, but you know I haven’t an inch of room here. If I had I’d have asked you to stay with us although you didn’t suggest it or even let me know you were planning a trip to New York. But I’d want you here if I had room-”

  Griselda inserted, “I know it, darling-but Missy-what on earth inspired Maman to send her here, do you imagine?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she just came. Didn’t ask-”

  They would meet for lunch at one at Maillard’s, decide then what to do about the youngest. Griselda replaced the phone and put out her cigarette. Missy had always been a problem, a brat, to speak frankly, even if she was their own sister. She’d been solved by living abroad with their mother, likewise a brat, and the Italian prince stepfather. For how long? Six or seven years; Missy must be about sixteen now, eight years younger than Griselda, ten younger than Ann. Coming to New York, alone, evidently-they hoped alone. And what to do with her? Ann wouldn’t take her, not Ann upset her well-ordered existence. And Griselda couldn’t.

  “And I won’t,” she said cheerfully, aloud.

  Maybe Missy would like to go to camp in Maine, or there was always poor, dear, long-suffering Aunt Charlotte in Pasadena, Father’s sister, and her equally long-suffering husband.

  Griselda wrapped herself in her tweed and went into the living room. Bette was polishing at windows. She said, “Good morning,” in her slight accented voice and her shy smile. “I bring the papers in, Miss Satterlee.”

  ”Thank” you, Bette.” She opened the refrigerator, took out the glass of orange juice, iced now, which the maid had fixed. She didn’t close the box then. She stood with one hand holding it. On top were three ash trays, set out by Bette to be cleaned. And in two were white stubs with small gold D’s engraved on them. Last night was real again. She let the box door swing from her hand. She took the percolator from the tiny gas range, poured black coffee, carried it and the juice to the bedroom. She returned for the papers, Times, Tribune, Mirror and News, and her amber-rimmed glasses on the mantel. An orgy of papers was part of New York. She climbed into bed again, her breakfast on the table beside her. Plenty of time, Maillard’s was only a few blocks down Madison, and Ann’s one meant one-thirty.

  Last night couldn’t have been real. Yet in the ash tray… If she could only write Con. But she didn’t know where, and if she did know, he might think she was trying to make up to him. She lit a match noisily, her cheeks reddened. She would not write Con even if she knew where. It was good of him to offer the apartment. Yes. But what had he said? Impersonal as a cricket. She knew it by heart.

  “Sweet,” he had started. That was sarcasm, or it meant nothing. He called all girls by endearments.

  ***

  Read in the papers that the great Hollywood designer known in private life as Griselda Cameron Satterlee (that Satterlee’s a nice touch) is planning a two months’ visit to her former home in New York, the first in four years. You’re welcome to my apartment if you want it. I’ll be on the border for that long, commenting on the situation there. I’ll leave the keys with the superintendent Get them if you want.

  Con.

  ***

  And the postscripts:

  ***

  1. Sometimes the elevator sticks. Use the back door in that case.

  2. You’ll have to take Bette with the apartment. She’s a nice gal; chars for me and Gig. Six dollars per week.

  3. Gig bunks across the hall. You know, J. (for Joseph) Antwerp Gigland, professor of Persian Art at Columbia. Maybe you don’t know. He’s since your time. But if you want anything, holler.”

  ***

  That was all. It was nice to have the apartment, privacy, comfort, convenience-she hated hotels. And she wouldn’t try to get in touch with him. Not if he had an apartment full of blue marbles and strange twins running in and out at all hours.

  She sipped the strong coffee, read Winchell, Hellinger, Skolsky. She turned the pages idly and their picture stared into her face, one dark, one light. The headline said, “The Montefierrow twins at El Morocco last night.” The outlines said, “Danver Montefierrow (l),” that was the light one, “and his twin brother, Davidant Montefierrow (r),” with his black hair and eyes, “at gay El Morocco last night.”

  She read the gossipy social column. “The Montefierrow brothers returned to Manhattan yesterday after twelve years’ residence on the continent.” There was nonsense about the loss to London night life and Paris and Rome, and of course the Riviera. She didn’t pay much attention to it. They were real. And they weren’t sinister. They were sons of the late William Danver Montefierrow, one-time senator, one-time governor, one-time head of the Madison National Bank, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and two stickfuls more. They were also sons of the late Marie Davidant Montefierrow whose tragic death in Paris three years ago from an overdose of sleeping tablets, and so forth and so on.

  Marie Davidant had been a friend of her mother’s. And much like her mother, too-fluttery, too often married. The twins were normal. Last night was a joke, something of Con’s, or her mother’s idea of an introduction.

  She dressed now, in her red rust tweeds, the coat lined in beaver. March was always bitter in New York and today’s sun after yesterday’s rain meant additional chill. Not like California. She wouldn’t be frightened any more, not of any Montefierrows. She wouldn’t bother Gig again.

  She left the door open while she rang for the creeping elevator. There was a moment when she was encased in it. But she wasn’t frightened now. Nothing to be afraid of.

  2

  Ann was late. Griselda sat in a high-backed chair in the safety of the restaurant, there in front on the Madison side. Maillard’s always smelled of chocolate and looked of dignified dowagers and correct children. She smoked her cigarette and was hungry.

  Ann was so perfect, in black as was always most of smart New York, her gloves white as April orchards. Ann always wore white gloves. She had height and the right face.

  She said, “I’m sorry to be late, Griselda,” as they went up the few steps into the vast room of tables. Everyone looked at Ann, not openly but wishfu
lly. She was perfection. There was art in the removing of her gloves, lifting the menu. There was art in everything Ann did with her hands. It was too bad she was irritating.

  “Is the brook trout nice, Paul? And a mixed green salad and tea. And some of your lemon ice later, mixed with pineapple sherbet.”

  Griselda ordered tomato soup, lobster salad and coffee and felt like a clod. She repeated what she had thought out.

  “I cannot take Missy in, Ann. After all it is mere accident that I’m here. In California-yes, I’d see to her. But this is your home. You are head of the family here.” You had to be final with Ann. Even then you weren’t sure of getting your own way.

  Ann said, “If I had room…”

  No use telling her to move the children into one nursery, or turn Arthur’s dressing room into a temporary guest room. Ann did not disturb her setting.

  Griselda was determined for once. She suggested, not as solution, but because the soup vapor was good to smell. “We might wait until she gets here. Maybe she has ideas of her own. After all she’s sixteen.” She did not add, “I was hardly older when I married.” Her past marriage wasn’t a favorite subject with Ann. Ann had done it right: St. Thomas’, with pews of money and family.

  Ann agreed. “Maybe she’s improved.”

  They both remembered that fat too curly face, all white fur and muff, leaning against the deck rail. Nasty little Missy.

  Ann touched napkin to lips and tasted her dessert. She said, “I can’t go with you to the boat, Griselda.”

  She had known Ann would get her own way. She spoke hotly, “That isn’t fair!” and bitterly, “but you’ve never been fair.”

  Her sister’s fingers poised. “Fairness has nothing to do with it, Griselda. This is Allen’s day for his teeth and I have to take him. Cornelia has a slight cold and Nana has to stay with her.”