The Celebrity

by Laura Z. Hobson

  In an elegantly decorated three-room office on Park at Fifty-Seventh, a stack of new memo pads sat on a desk of off-white mahogany. They were engraved, “From the office of Diana Bates, Executive Assistant to Mr. Johns.” Since moving uptown, Diana had got a typist to assist her on routine work, a twenty-dollar weekly raise, a nutria coat, and a new point of view. Having inadvertently stayed in on a California call eight seconds too long, in her official desire to check the clarity of the connection, she had recently overheard one remark of Jill Goodwyn’s, noiselessly replaced the receiver, and proceeded to Think Things Over. If famous movie stars had to compromise with life and accept the risk of scandal and disaster, might it not be wise to give in at last and embrace the second-best possibility long offered by “Roy Tribble?

  Diana gazed at her off-white desk, the dark charcoal walls, the white Venetian blinds against the glittering expanse of wall-to-wall window. She stared at her new memo pads and saw the buzzer by which she might now summon help.

  The lids on Diana’s beautiful eyes lowered and as if from behind a veil, she delicately dialed Roy Tribble’s number.

  Hulda no longer drove Cindy mad. Hulda no longer indulged in bare feet, sullen looks, or sotto voce rudeness to the Mister or Missus. Hulda never went to market without getting dressed up and never ordered without first demanding loudly, “You seen that movie yet?” Whether the answer was yes or no, Hulda took it as a signal for prolonged discussion, and proved herself an expert on box-office figures at the Palladium and the entire Loew circuit. Whenever the butcher did try to palm off a tough chicken or stringy steak, Hulda resorted to a remark she had made three times a week for over a month. “Mr. Gregory Johns comin’ tonight, won’t eat nothin’ but the best.”

  A New York institution, founded in 1939, and known as Celebrity Service, Inc., received twelve calls in one day from subscribers so conditioned to the ways of The Great that it had not occurred to any one of them to look for Gregory Johns in the telephone book.

  Dedicated to duty, Celebrity Service sought once more to expand the meager information which, unknown to Gregory Johns, had begun to appear in its files last January, when the book columns had announced the B.S.B. selection. The files still showed nothing that had not appeared in the public prints. And this was only a fraction of what they showed on Thornton Johns.

  Thereupon, Celebrity Service, also detouring the telephone book, called the Stork Club and asked for Thornton Johns’ number.

  Diana and Mr. Johns being out to lunch, Diana’s new assistant redirected Celebrity Service to Mrs. Johns.

  Cindy had never heard of Celebrity Service. As she listened to explanations, she scarcely believed that there was anything so glamorous as a firm that bothered only with celebrities. And when she realized that her own husband was listed with them, she could scarcely contain herself. The Social Register, Who’s Who, Burke’s Peerage—all of it was mid-Victorian, stuffed-shirt, old-hat. She, Lucinda Johns, was married to a man who had been crowned in true twentieth-century style.

  From Wyoming, in December, came a thick letter enclosing several clippings and snapshots. Gwen and Howie, who had remained endearingly simple about the book and movie, had been amused by these pieces from the Wyoming press, which declared that Gregory Johns and his family were annual visitors to The Equality State, and would again be staying at the Chisholm ranch at Shell Canyon next summer. “Have a look and laugh,” Gwen wrote.

  Gwen then went on to her news. She had finally talked Howie into gambling on six large cabins instead of two small ones. The stone foundations and outside chimneys were already complete, the log walls were nearly up, and as the snapshots would prove, everything ought to be ready in the spring. Resort advertising in the Saturday Review of Literature had already been contracted for and the new entrance from the main highway was finished and handsome. “If you were a civilized tourist or dude,” Gwen wrote, “wouldn’t you find it inviting?”

  The photographs of the entrance showed tall rough-hewn gateposts with a horizontal fifty-foot beam suspended across them in true Western style. From this beam swung a forty-foot sign which proclaimed THE GOOD WORLD RANCH. Below it, in a smaller but still highly legible square, hung another sign: “Gwendolyn Johns Chisholm, Manager.”

  Precisely one week after Abby announced she was through with apartment-hunting until spring of next year, the Zatkes ended the search for her. Mary Zatke had often made the rounds with Abby; Mary said it would be hateful to have their closest friends give up and move to New York, and the Smiths and the Feins down the street agreed with her.

  But in all of Martin Heights, the only apartment that would be available this year was 3B, across the court from the Zatkes and the Johnses, and one room smaller than each of theirs. A place that would give Gregory a study and Hat a room of her own simply did not exist in that world of Garden Developments. Families that needed six rooms had never concerned its architects and builders; they had always regarded two-, three-, or four-room apartments as the American Norm.

  And then Jake Zatke decided on a year’s sabbatical from teaching, to take advance courses for an M.S. degree. His sabbatical would date from the end of the current semester but budgeting had to begin immediately. Drastic cuts had to be made and 3B offered a fine beginning.

  May and he discussed this thoroughly, saw their landlord, and inspected 3B. Then Mary flew in upon Gregory and Abby,

  Gregory was working, but she told them about 3B anyway. “So you take ours, and knock a door through in that wall, and you’ll have two apartments thrown into one. They’ll let you do the door; Jake asked them. You’ll have to pay for it and restore, the wall when you finally move out—the landlord said, ‘Even for Mr. Johns, we don’t put out a cent on painting or improvements, this rent-control is killing us off.’ But a door won’t cost much, and there’s your six rooms.”

  “And two baths,” Gregory said.

  “And two kitchens and two iceboxes,” Abby cried. “Oh, Mary.”

  “Our living room could be Gregory’s study,” Mary said, “and our bedroom could be Hat’s room, and the extra kitchen could be I don’t know what.” Mary pointed to the wall beyond the sofa where Hat had slept for so many years. “There’s where the door has to go. Jake looked at the girders on a blueprint.”

  For the next ten minutes Abby and she forgot Gregory completely. “I’ll use Hat’s room while she’s away,” Abby said.

  “You’ll use it?” Mary asked.

  Abby laughed. “As my study. Imagine not typing on a bridge table in your bedroom any longer.”

  “Oh, Abby, we’ll plan the room that way. Let’s go look at it now. Whatever Hat wants it to be, she couldn’t object to a nice desk and a big armchair in it too. You could do all your reading for your reviews.”

  Abby could see herself working in comfort at last. The weekly batch of reviews might seem silly to some people now, but Mary and Jake had understood as completely as Gregory. With Hat gone, with Gregory engrossed in his work day after day, she had begun to miss the Monday morning package of juveniles and detective stories, to miss the rush toward her deadline. Even to miss the pride in adding her bit to the family income. When the postman had once again brought her the familiar old envelope with a check for twelve dollars and twenty cents, it had mattered in a way she could never explain.

  Mary was gathering her purse and gloves and Abby followed her across the hall. The moment they were gone, Gregory Johns picked up the telephone. He dialed nervously and gave his name.

  “On that order I gave you last week—”

  “It’s on the way, Mr. Johns. It had to come from the warehouse, but it should get there any minute now.”

  “Damn it. Would it be possible to—”

  The bell on the kitchen door set up a clanging and a voice shouted, “Anybody home for this Frigidaire?”

  The news of their impending expansion was to be kept as a surprise for Hat. She was due home again shortly, for the Christmas holidays, and Abby found the last days of
waiting oddly difficult. Though she had not done so before, Abby at last told Gregory she was sure something had gone wrong at college. After Hat’s one lyric outburst of communication, she had relapsed into her earlier Poughkeepsie style—too casual, too uncommunicative. She rarely mentioned Pat King; she never mentioned her roommate; she was getting honor grades in each of her courses.

  “She’s homesick,” Gregory said uneasily.

  “It’s worse than that.”

  They both went to the train to meet her, and Hat hugged and kissed them as if she had not seen them, for years instead of since the Thanksgiving weekend. All the way out in the car, she talked and laughed and asked questions; it was wonderful they’d been to the theater so much and bought the big Magnavox and the records; she hoped they had some dance records too and hadn’t seen every good play by now; she’d give anything to see Streetcar before it closed, and Mr. Roberts, and of course Kiss Me, Kate, and South Pacific. Lordy, it was good to be home for a big long time.

  And when they reached home, and Hat saw four partially packed cartons and barrels in the living room, she guessed the news and was delirious. Abby explained about the Zatkes. “Before you go back, dear,” Abby said, “we’ll go shopping and pick out everything for your room, plus a desk and big reading chair you and I both like.”

  The gaiety lasted through most of the evening. At last Hat introduced the name of Patrick King. “I’m not dating Pat till next week,” she said. “I wrote you he came up to the Snow Ball, didn’t I?”

  “You rather glided over it,” Gregory said.

  Hat didn’t answer that and Abby put her hand on Hat’s arm. “What went wrong, dear?”

  Hat looked at her parents with a forlorn dignity. “Just everything. Other times Pat’s been up, the girls said he missed being white-shoe, you know, Ivy League men with their sloppy buckskins. I used to think they were all jealous, but for the Ball, Pat had a navy dinner jacket and oh, he sort of stuck out like a smooth character against all those men down from New Haven. And he’s become the most slurpy name-dropper too—it was just horrible.”

  Without further ado, Hat burst into tears. “I hate Vassar, I don’t want to go back there. Please don’t make me go, please let me stay home and go back to Hunter, I just can’t tell you how awful it’s been even before the Ball, with everybody giving me the ice and talking behind my back because I won’t wear sneakers and blue jeans or khakis on campus.”

  It was a long time before they had the full story. Through the pain of seeing her in pain, Gregory and Abby both felt an underlying relief. And a confidence they had not had for a long time. Now was the moment, Gregory thought.

  “Name-droppers,” he said quietly, “aren’t very lovable, wherever you find them, Hat.”

  “Oh, Daddy, Pat King’s so cheap! I can’t tell you—”

  “I don’t mean Pat King.”

  Hat looked at him quickly. For several seconds she said nothing. Her fair skin suddenly colored and she said, “But you’re my own father!”

  “And it’s marvelous to have my own kid proud of me,” he said. “But, Hatsy, boasting isn’t marvelous. It’s cheap, the way you say Pat is cheap.”

  Anger roared up in Hat. He hadn’t called her “Hatsy” since she was a child, but that couldn’t soften this unfair blow. It wasn’t true; she had never boasted; she had only told people—

  Hat glanced at her mother, but though Abby looked unhappy, she seemed relaxed, as if she wouldn’t lift a finger to stop Daddy.

  “You’re going to tell me you never boasted,” Gregory went on. “And that it would be unnatural, when people talk about the book or movie, for you not to join in, and that if you do join in, how can you help mentioning the best-seller lists and all the foreign rights and the Palladium run.”

  Hat refused to meet his eyes.

  “And that leads you on,” Gregory continued, “to the previews and Bette Davis and Gregory Peck and Jean Singleton and Jill Goodwyn and Hollywood in general and before you know it—”

  “Daddy, stop.”

  Now Abby did make a gesture to Gregory; and she went over to Hat and held her in her arms while Hat cried. After a while, above Hat’s shoulders, Abby motioned toward the bedroom: and Gregory left them. Abby talked about Hat’s phrase from long ago; “Timmy says the other boys are dying to meet me”; she asked Hat to consider her sudden scorn for Macy’s and Best’s and sudden love for Doubleday’s and Brentano’s; little by little she took Hat backwards over the road she had traveled so quickly since the night last January when their fortunes had been changed by a telegram read to them over the phone by Jake Zatke.

  “But Daddy is a celebrity,” Hat cried. “I can’t help that, can I?”

  “He really isn’t, Hat.”

  “Of course he is, he can’t help being. He’s famous, and if you’re the daughter of a famous—”

  “His book’s famous.” Abby scarcely emphasized the noun. “And I’m sure he’d be happy if every book he ever wrote became famous. But that’s not the same thing.”

  “But, Mother, it’s such a waste, throwing it all away. Think of all the fun—”

  “Has it been such fun at school, dear?”

  Hat made no answer. There was silence for a long time and then Abby said, “Look, Hat. You’re going to go back to Vassar, and you’re going to be different, and it’s going to take them a long time maybe, but someday your roommate and all the other girls will know that you’ve changed back to the way you used to be, the way you were again in Wyoming, the way they have never seen you. And then they’ll love you as much as Daddy and I do.”

  Long after Hat was finally asleep, Gregory and Abby talked on. At two, they went out to the kitchen where the huge new icebox dwarfed and demeaned all the shabby old equipment, and provided themselves with cheese and crackers and milk.

  “Maybe she had to go through it for herself,” Abby said. “Maybe we did try everything we could. Perhaps we shouldn’t blame ourselves or Thorn or Cindy or the family or anybody.”

  Gregory let the discussion lapse. When he spoke again it was in a different tone. “Pretty soon Imperial Century Studios hand over another thirty thousand, don’t they?”

  Abby welcomed his change of mood. “The second payment’s due on January tenth.”

  “And this time,” Gregory said, “I’m ready for Thorn and his scruples. Next year I’ll be ready too.”

  “Are you going to cancel his three-thousand-dollar loan? He’d never let you.”

  “I know he wouldn’t. This hasn’t anything to do with cash. When we go to. Europe next summer, we’ll take them as our guests again. And in ’51, if we do fly to South America—”

  “But we’ll want to go tourist and stay at inns,” Abby said. “And they’ll want the Queen Elizabeth and the Savoy.” She suddenly looked wicked. “Oh, Gregory, it’s going to cost us lots more than three thousand a year to keep Thorny’s conscience clean.”

  Always considerate, Thorn had not yet risked an interruption to Gregory’s creative mood by mentioning his own work progress. They had scarcely seen each other, he suddenly realized, since the previews. The telephone had become their stand-by; the lazy old evenings spent together seemed a thing of the distant past.

  That’s not too good, Thorn thought. It makes us like nothing but business acquaintances.

  He buzzed through to Diana and asked her to get Gregory. Diana said, “Righto,” and buzzed through to her assistant. “Righto” was a new expression for Diana, Thorn reflected, more pert than her usual style. Diana had once again changed. Her eyes were happy, smiling, warmer in their glance to all their new clients.

  I certainly did something for Diana’s morale, moving her into a smart neighborhood, giving her a raise, letting her make something of herself. Beneficence flooded Thorn’s heart.

  “How’s it coming?” he said a minute later to Gregory.

  “Fine,” Gregory said. “The connecting door is in already. We’re nearly settled.”

  “I mean the ne
w book.”

  “Well, it’s going faster than usual.”

  “How far along would you say?”

  “About halfway, maybe.”

  “Great. Say, Gregory, how about Cindy and me coming out there one of these nights?”

  “Come on. Bring the boys.”

  “I meant next week, after the holidays. Cindy’s driving me crazy with parties and dinners, but after New Year’s—”

  “Any time, Thorn. You name it.”

  Thorn hung up thoughtfully. It might be wise not to bring up Digby’s idea with Cindy there; Cindy always put her foot in anything subtle. The stenotype technique was working brilliantly; there were three hundred pages of recording already. With all due allowance for inevitable repetition, about half of that was clearly usable.

  Thorn reached for a cigarette and wished Digby would come up with as good an idea about an editor for it. Last week Thorn had suggested Ed Barnard, but Digby had summarily rejected the nomination.

  I wonder if Gregory himself—

  This notion so startled Thornton Johns that he burned his fingers with the match he had lighted.

  There would be a sort of justice in it, he thought a moment later. When you consider the larger aspects of everything—the two movie sales I engineered, and his month at Imperial. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars over five years on those three deals alone! Gregory does owe me something. And all I’m taking is a thousand a year commission for five years on Horn. Apart from foreign and digest peanuts.

  The Collector of Internal Revenue was taking nearly sixty thousand this year—on Gregory’s old level that would have been thirty years’ income! In 1950, the Collector of Internal Revenue would take even more—ninety thousand in royalties became payable in February. Digby’s slice of the two movie sales would total thirty thousand on top of fifty-two from B.S.B. before they even began to count their regular profits from book sales on World. Even Hathaway would get fifteen thousand over the same five years.

  God, Thorn thought, if I didn’t have standards.