BUtterfield 8

by John O'Hara

  “And to think we walk while punks like those people ride in a wagon like that. Never mind, all that will be changed, all that will be changed. I guess you know who made the loudest noise in Union Square the day before yesterday.”

  “I guess I do,” said Isabel.

  “I don’t think I like your tone. Somehow, I don’t quite like your tone,” but he began to whistle and she began to sing: “Take me back to Man-hattan, that dear-old, dirty, town.”

  At Madison Avenue they were almost struck by a huge Paramount taxi, and when Jimmy swore at the driver, the driver said, “Go on, I’ll spit in your eye.” And both Isabel and Jimmy distinctly heard the lone passenger, a girl in a fur coat, call to the driver: “Go on, spit in their eye.” The cab beat the light and sped south in Madison.

  “Nice girl,” said Isabel. “Did you know her?”

  “How would I know her? She’s someone from this neighborhood obviously. Downtown we don’t talk that way, not in the village.”

  “No, of course not, except I could point out that the taxi is on its way downtown, in a hurry.”

  “All right, point it out. And then for a disagreeable couple I give you the man and woman in the elevator. Mr. Princeton with the glasses and his wife. I’ll bet they’re battling right this minute in that beautiful big chariot. I’d rather know a girl that yells out of a taxi, ‘Spit in their eye,’ than two polite people that can’t wait to be alone before they’re at each other’s throats.”

  “Well, that’s the difference between you and me. I’d rather live in this part of town, where the people at least—”

  “I didn’t say anything about living with them, or having them for neighbors. All I said was I’d rather know that kind of girl—that girl—than those people. That’s all I said.”

  “Still stick to my statement. I’d rather know the man and his wife. As a matter of fact I happen to know who they are. He’s an architect.”

  “And I don’t really give a damn who they are, but I do give a damn who the girl is.”

  “A girl who would wear a mink coat on a day like this. She’s cheap.”

  “Well, with a mink coat she must have come high at some time.”

  He was silent a few seconds before continuing. “You know what I’m thinking, don’t you? No, you don’t. But I’d like to say it if you’d promise not to get sore? . . . I was just thinking what a powerful sexual attraction there is between us, otherwise why do we go on seeing each other when we quarrel so much?”

  “We only quarrel, if you’ll look back on it, we only quarrel for one reason, really, and that’s the way you talk to me.”

  He said nothing, and they walked on in silence for several blocks.

  • • •

  When Sunday morning came Paul Farley never liked to be alone with his wife, nor did Nancy Farley like to be alone with Paul. The Farleys were Roman Catholic, although when they were married, in the fourth summer after the war, you would not have been able to guess from their dossiers in the newspapers, without looking at their names, that the wedding was taking place in the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer. Of Paul it was said: “He attended Lawrenceville School and Princeton and served overseas as second lieutenant in a machine gun company of the 27th Division. He is a member of the Association of Ex-Members of Squadron A, the Princeton Club and the Racquet and Tennis Club.” Of Nancy it said: “Miss McBride, who is a member of the Junior League, attended the Brearley School and Westover, and she was introduced to society last season at a dance at the Colony Club and later at the Bachelors’ Cotillon in Baltimore, Md.”

  After their marriage they had children, three of them, rapid-fire; but when the third, a girl, died, Nancy, who had wanted a girl very much, came to a decision. It was a major adjustment in her life. Up to that time Nancy had been a girl who always did what people told her to do. A succession of people: her mother, to a lesser degree her father, a nurse, a governess, her teachers, and the Church. The odor of sanctity was faint but noticeable in the McBride household, as Nancy’s paternal uncle had been quite a good friend of the late Cardinal Gibbons; and the McBrides, as they themselves put it, realized their position. It was a religious household, including the servants, and at the time of Nancy’s various debuts the big house in the East Seventies still had its quota of holy pictures, and there was hardly a bureau which did not contain one drawer full of broken rosary beads, crucifixes with the corpus missing, Father Lasance’s My Prayer Book, The Ordinary of the Mass, and other prayer books for special occasions. One of Nancy’s losing battles against the domination of her elders (and they were all defeats) was fought for the removal of a small, white china holywater font which hung at the door of her bedroom. She finally capitulated because a Westover friend who was visiting her was curious and delighted by the sacred article.

  Nancy was the youngest of four children. The first-born, Thornton, was ten years older than Nancy. He was out of a high-priced Catholic prep school, Yale, and Fordham Law School. He was with his father in the law firm and cared about nothing except the law and golf.

  Next in age was Nancy’s only sister, Mollie. She was eight years older than Nancy, and when Nancy was married Mollie was in the Philippines, living the life of an army officer’s wife.

  Two years younger than Mollie was Jay—Joseph, but always known as Jay. He was unable to finish prep school, and had lived almost all his life, from the time he developed a case of T. B., in New Mexico. He was at work on a monumental history of the Church and the Indian in the Southwest.

  There would have been a child between Jay and Nancy, but it had been a Fallopian pregnancy from which Nancy’s mother almost died. This was kept from Nancy not only all through her girlhood, but even after she was married and had her own two children. Nancy did not know about her mother’s disastrous Fallopian pregnancy for the reason that her mother did not quite know how to explain it. It was kept quiet until Nancy’s little girl died in early infancy, and then Mrs. McBride told her. It infuriated Nancy to be told so late in life. It might not have made any difference in her attitude toward having children, but it gave her the feeling of having been insulted from a distance, this taciturnity of her mother’s. People ought to tell you things like that. Your own mother ought to tell you everything about that—and then she would recall that what ought to be and what actually was were two quite different things so far as her mother and sex were concerned. Mrs. McBride accepted the working theory of the Church that sex education of children was undesirable, unsanctioned; and when Nancy was fourteen her mother told her that “this is something that happens to girls”—and that was all she ever told her until Paul and Nancy were to be married. Then Mrs. McBride provided the second piece of information to her daughter: “Never let Paul touch you when you are unwell.” Whatever else Nancy learned was from the exchange of knowledge among school acquaintances, and from her secret reading of the informative little propaganda pamphlets which the government got out during the World War, telling in detail the atrocities which the Germans committed upon Belgian maidens, nuns, priests, old women. These pamphlets did not incite Nancy to turn her allowance into Liberty Bonds, but they made her understand things about her anatomy and the anatomy of the young men with whom she swam summer after summer on the South Shore of Long Island.

  Sex had been healthy and normally strong and only a trifle unpleasant for Nancy up to the time of the death of her daughter. Paul was considerate and tender and fun. Child-bearing, the incomparable peace of nursing the boys, the readjustment after the nursing periods—all were accomplished with a minimum of fright and pain, and sometimes with a pleasure that—especially at nursing time—was heavenly joy, because at such times Nancy felt so practically religious. She wanted to have a lot of children, and she was glad that things were that way: that the Church approved and that there was such high pleasure in motherhood. Then the little girl died and for the first time Nancy discovered that you cannot blame your bod
y alone for the hell it sometimes gives you. Nancy broke with Rome the day her baby died. It was a secret break, but no Catholic breaks with Rome casually.

  • • •

  The man carrying the black Gladstone refused the help of the Red Caps. Who wanted a little thing like that carried for him? A little thing like that. What did they think? Did they think he wasn’t strong enough to carry it? Didn’t he look strong enough to carry a little bag, a little Gladstone like this? Did they think he wasn’t young enough to carry a bag like this? Did they think he—they didn’t think he was old, did they? Huh. If they thought that they had another think coming, by Jove. Ablative of Jupiter. They were young and looked pretty strong, most of these Red Caps, but the man drew a deep breath as he walked rapidly up the ramp and out into the great station. He would wager he was as strong as most of them. He could break them in half, and they thought he was old and wanted to carry his little Gladstone! He thought of how they would look on a chain gang, with the sweat pouring down on their satiny hides. Satiny hides. That was good. Ugh. He wanted to be sick, he wanted to think away from bodies; he patted his belly and pinched his Phi Beta Kappa key and started to curl the watch-chain around his finger, but this was somehow getting back again to the things of the flesh, and he wanted to think away from things of the flesh. He wanted to think of the ablative, the passive periphrastic, the middle voice, the tangent and cotangent, the School Board meeting next Tuesday. . . . He wished he hadn’t thought of the School Board meeting next Tuesday or any Tuesday. He wished he’d always thought of the School Board meeting next Tuesday.

  He got into a taxi and gave the address, and the driver was so slow starting the meter that the man repeated the address. The driver nodded, showing half his face. The man looked at the face and at the driver’s picture. They didn’t look much alike, but they never did. He supposed this was a reputable taxicab company that operated the taxicabs at the station. Oh, well, that wasn’t important.

  “If only I’d always thought of the School Board meetings I wouldn’t be here now, in a filthy New York taxicab, living a lie by being in this city on a cooked-up pretext. Living a worse, worse lie by having any reason to be here. God damn that girl! I am a good man. I am a bad man, a wicked man, but she is worse. She is really bad. She is bad, she is badness. She is Evil. She not only is evil, but she is Evil. Whatever I am now is her fault, because that girl is bad. Whatever I was before, the bad me, was nothing. I never was bad before I knew her. I sinned, but I was not bad. I was not corrupted. I did not want to come to New York before I knew her. She made me come to New York. She makes me trump up excuses to come to New York, makes me lie to my wife, fool my wife, that good woman, that poor good woman. That girl is bad, and hell’s fire is not enough for her. Oh, more fresh air! It is good, this fresh air, even in a taxicab. Fresh air taxicab! God! Amos and Andy. Here I’m thinking of Amos and Andy, and all that they mean. Home. Seven o’clock. The smell of dinner in preparation, ready to be served when Amos and Andy go off the air. Am I the man who loves to listen to Amos and Andy?” The door opened and he got out and paid the driver.

  TWO

  The young man got out of bed and went to the kitchenette and pushed the wall button that unlatched the front door. He was in his underwear, one-piece cotton underwear and it had not been fresh the day before. He rumpled his hair and yawned, standing at the door and waiting until whoever it was that rang would ring the apartment bell. It rang, and he opened it half a foot.

  “Oh,” he said, and opened the door all the way.

  “Hel-lo, darling, look what I brought you.” Gloria held up the parcel, a wrapped-up bottle.

  “Oh,” he said, and yawned again. “Thanks.” He went back to the bed and lay on it face down. “I don’t want any.”

  “Get up. It’s a lovely Spring morning,” said Gloria. “I didn’t think you’d be alone.”

  “Uh, I’m alone. I haven’t any soda. You’ll have to drink that straight, or else with plain water. I don’t want any.”

  “Why?”

  “I got drunk.”

  “What for?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Listen, Gloria, I’m dead. Do you mind if I go to sleep a little while?”

  “Certainly I do. Where are your pajamas? Did you sleep in your underwear?”

  “I haven’t any pajamas. I have two pairs and they’re both in the laundry. I don’t even know what laundry.”

  “Here. Here’s twenty dollars. Buy yourself some pajamas tomorrow, or else find the laundry and pay what you owe them.”

  “I’ve some money.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, take this, you’ll need it. I don’t believe you have any money, either.”

  “Why are you suddenly rich? Isn’t that a new coat?”

  “Yes. Brand-new. You didn’t ask me to take it off. Is that hospitable?”

  “Good God, you’d take it off if you wanted to. Take it off, if you want to.”

  “Look,” she said, for he was closing his eyes again. She opened the coat.

  He suddenly had the expression of a man who had been struck and cannot strike back. “All right,” he said. “You stole the coat.”

  “He tore my dress, my new evening dress. I had to have something to wear in the daytime. All I had was my evening coat, and I couldn’t go out wearing that.”

  “I guess I will have a drink.”

  “Good.”

  “Who is the guy?”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “How do you know I don’t know him? Damn it, why don’t you just tell me who it is and save time? You always do that. I ask you something and you say I wouldn’t know, or you talk around it or beat about the bush for an hour, and you make me so God damn mad—and then you tell me. If you’d tell me in the first place we’d save all this.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you.”

  “Well, go ahead and tell me!”

  “His name is Weston Liggett.”

  “Liggett? Liggett. Weston Liggett. I do know him.”

  “You don’t. How would you know him?”

  “I don’t know him, but I know who he is. He’s a yacht racer and he used to be a big Yale athlete. Very social. Oh, and married. I’ve seen his wife’s name. What about that? Where did you go?”

  “His apartment.”

  “His apartment? Is his wife—does she like girls?” He was fully awake now. “Did she give you the coat? You’re going in for that again, are you?”

  “I think you’re disgusting.”

  “You think I’m disgusting. That’s what it is. That’s started again, all over again. That’s why you came here, because you thought I had someone here. You know where you ought to be? You ought to be in an insane asylum. They put people in insane asylums that don’t do a tenth of what you do. Here, take your lousy money and your damn whiskey and get out of here.”

  She did not move. She sat there looking like someone tired of waiting for a train. She did not seem to hear him. But this mood was in such contrast to her vitality of a minute ago that there was no doubting that she had heard him, and no doubting that what he was saying had caused her mood to change.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry, Gloria. I’d rather cut my throat than say that. Do you believe me? You do believe me, don’t you? You do believe I only said it because—”

  “Because you believed it,” she said. “No. Mrs. Liggett is not a Lesbian, if you’re interested. I went to their apartment with her husband and I slept with him. She’s away. I stole the coat, because he tore my clothes. He practically raped me. Huh. You think that’s funny, but it’s true. There are people who don’t know as much about me as you do, you know. I’ll go now.”

  He got up and stood in front of the door.

  “Please,” she said. “Let’s not have a struggle.”

&
nbsp; “Sit down, Gloria. Please sit down.”

  “It’s no use, Eddie, I’ve made up my mind. I can’t have you for a friend if you’re going to throw things up at me that I told you in confidence. I’ve told you more than I’ve ever told anyone else, even my psychiatrist. But at least he has professional ethics. At least he wouldn’t get angry and throw it all up to me. I trusted you as a friend, and—”

  “You can trust me. Don’t go. Besides, you can’t go this way. Listen, sit down, darling.” He took her hand, and she allowed herself to be guided to a chair. “I’ll call up a girl I know, I was out with her last night, and ask her to bring some day clothes over here. She’s about your build.”

  “Who is she?”

  “You wouldn’t—her name is Norma Day. She goes to N. Y. U. She’s very good-looking. I’ll call her and she’ll come right over. I have a sort of date with her anyway. All right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Gloria was pleased and bright. “I think I’ll take a bath. Shall I? Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You sleep.”

  • • •

  Weston Liggett walked up the platform to where the line of parked cars began, and as he reached the beginning of the line he heard a horn blown six or seven times. A Ford station wagon was just arriving. It was driven by a young girl, and two other girls about the same age were on the front seat with her. Liggett took off his hat and waved.

  “Hello, pretty girls,” he said. He stood beside the right front door. The girl in the driver’s seat spoke to him: