by John O'Hara
“Down with Princeton!” Gloria would say.
“Down with Princeton,” the young men would say.
“To hell with Harvard!” Gloria would say.
“The hell with Harvard,” the young men would say.
“Hurray for our side!”
“Hurray for our side!”
“Bing-go, bing-go, bingo, bingo, bingo that’s the ling-go,” Gloria would sing, and the young men would smile and join in a little weakly, drinking very hard until they could get like her, except that she could do these things while apparently not drunk. She was not invited to the weddings that they were ushering at, and there were times when she was not exactly a pest, but if she would only understand that a telephone call to a broker was important. On wedding days she would be waiting for them when they finally got away from the sailing of the French ships that in those days were well liked, but when they met her she would have a bill for drinks waiting for them that indicated she had been waiting too—since lunch. Not that she was poor. She always had fifteen or twenty dollars for taxis and things, and if you ran short she would hand it right over. It was just that she was unthinking.
She used to see Weston Liggett sometimes. He would come in, sometimes alone, sometimes with a man, sometimes with women. He would stand at the bar, have his drinks and behave himself. The second or third time she saw him she noticed he was looking at her longer than it was wise to do even in the best-regulated speakeasies. “Who is that man you spoke to?” she said to the Yale boy.
“Oh, a fellow called Liggett. He was in college with my brother.”
“Yale?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah. He was one of the atha-letic boys. Crew.”
It meant that he could never pick her up, and she would never speak to him until they were properly introduced. He could see her every day of the year after that, but because they had connections in common she would not have anything to do with him; and Liggett understood that and soon became a strange familiar face that Gloria saw unrecognizingly even when she was alone and he was alone. She might never have spoken to him had it not been for one accident: she got pregnant.
One night in the winter of 1929–30 she went home with the surviving two Yale boys. The others had gone back to the provinces to wait out the crash, but these two remained. This night they were prematurely drunk; the liquor was beginning to be harder to take. Gloria usually got undressed in the bathroom when she stayed at their apartment, and they would lend her pajamas. Up to that point this night was as always. But when she lay down on the sofa Bill said: “Come on over and sleep with me.”
“All right,” she said.
She picked up her pillow and dragged her comforter after her and got into bed with him. She turned her back and settled herself, but she knew immediately that Bill was not going to be pal Bill tonight. He was holding her too close for any doubt about that. She let him worry for a few minutes, and then she turned around and put her arms around him and kissed him. After all, they had been friends a long time, and she liked Bill.
She also liked Mike, who was in the other bed, and not missing a thing. “How about me, Gloria?” he said.
“All right,” she said.
Then they called up another girl, or rather Gloria did. The girls they called would not come over at that hour, but Gloria knew one who would, so long as there was another girl. It was all a lot more than the Yale boys anticipated, and it put an end to the drinking companionship. After that night, which was not unpleasant, Gloria went into another phase of her life; although it was in a way a return to a former phase. The next day, when she and Jane left the boys’ apartment, Gloria went with Jane to a date Jane had, and the man got another man and Gloria never went out with the Yale boys again. She meant to, they meant to, but it was time she was moving on.
It was the summer of that year, 1930, when she met Eddie Brunner. She had gone to the place where he worked with “the major” because she had met the major in a speakeasy and had the sudden fear that he might be Major Boam and she might not be recognizing him. In all her life she had met only one other major, and that was Boam, and it became a terribly important thing to find out if this could be he. What if she had forgotten that man’s face? It was the first time she had thought of the possibility of having forgotten Boam’s face, and when the thought came she had to admit that she might easily have seen Major Boam on the street without recognizing him. This major turned out not to be Boam, but not immediately. When she asked him his name (it was lost in the mumble of a speakeasy introduction) he told her it didn’t make any difference, just call him Major. That was enough to strengthen her fear that it could be Boam without her recognizing him. For the rest of the night she pestered him for his name, and he amiably refused to tell her unless she went to this place and that place with him. His name turned out to be O’Brien or Kelly or some Irish name, but by the time she learned this she had learned too many other things about him.
Many men had the pleasure of sleeping with Gloria in the year 1930, and Eddie was the only one who could have who didn’t. He began by being afraid of getting a social disease, and then when Gloria became a friend he thought he saw something in her that he did not want to sleep with. He saw a kid sister. When they were together, going to the movies, having breakfast, having a couple of beers or a highball at his house, he would feel that he was in the presence of the real Gloria. The other part of her life was shut out. They would talk about the things of their childhood (it is always a wonderful thing to discover with someone through memories of childhood how small America is). “When you were a kid did you count out by saying Ibbity-bibbity-sibbity-sab, ibbity-bibbity-ka-nah-ba, or did you just say eenie-meenie?”
“We said ibbity-bibbity.”
“When you were a kid did you yell at girls named Marguerite like this: ‘Marguerite, go wash your feet, the Board of Health’s across the street’?”
“No, we never yelled that.”
“Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me went out the river to swim. Adam and Eve were drowned and who was saved?”
“Pinch-Me.” Then: “Ouch!”
“Did you go to dancing school?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Did your fella used to carry your ballet slippers for you in the fancy bag?”
“I didn’t have a fella.”
“Brothers and sisters I have none, but this man’s—”
“Oh, God, I could never do those.”
Or long stories beginning: “Once when I was a kid—” about killing a snake or breaking a finger or almost saving someone’s life. They would talk about the stories in The American Boy, both of them having been great admirers of Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd, the stuttering fat boy created by Clarence Budington Kelland; and the Altschuler Indian stories, and the girls of Bradford Hall, and Larry the Bat and Silver Nell—wasn’t that her name? In the Jimmie Dale stories? They were for older people, but after reading them Eddie had gone around sticking gray seals all over the neighborhood. What kind of car did Gloria have? No car, until she was twelve or something like that, then her uncle bought a Haines, which he traded in on a National. Oh, but those weren’t old cars. Eddie’s father had a Lozier, an Abbott-Detroit, a Stutz Bearcat (which he smashed up three weeks after he bought it), a Saxon, an Earl, a King Eight—always buying cars. Of course a lot of Fords, a second-hand Owen Magnetic, and an airplane. He won the airplane as a gambling gain, but he was afraid to learn to fly. Had Gloria played Diabolo? Once, and got knocked on the head. Did you ever sell Easter egg dyes to win a motion picture camera? Did you ever know anyone who won a real Shetland pony by selling subscriptions to some magazine? No, but she had saved bread wrappers and won a pushmobile. What were your words for going to the bathroom? Did you ever really know a boy who robbed birds’ nests? No, that was like people making bathtub gin. Neither of them ever had seen gin made in a bathtub.
“I love you, Eddie darling,�
�� she would say.
“I love you, Gloria,” he would say, but always wanting to say more than that, like: “No matter what they say about you,” or “I wish I’d known you five years sooner,” or “Why don’t you pull yourself together?”
She knew that and it had a sterilizing effect, which was what they wanted, but no good when they had it. “Eddie,” she would say, to change the subject, “why don’t you go to a dentist. You’re going to lose that tooth and it’ll spoil your smile. Go to my dentist tomorrow, now will you promise?”
He would take her home, but they knew she would go right out again, and after these happy evenings that always ended with their knowing they had nothing to look forward to, the next man who had her would say to himself: “Well, I thought I knew everything, but after all the places I’ve been, all the women, a kid, an American kid. . . . ”
Because of the Yale boys she had an abortion, and after that many benders. The night she picked up Weston Liggett for the first time she was coasting along from a bender which had begun after seeing Eddie. She had been home twice during this bender to change her clothes (she long since had had it well understood at home that she did not like to be questioned when she told her mother that she was staying with a friend uptown). A bad thing about days like that was to come out of a speakeasy in the afternoon and find it still daylight, and she would hurry downtown to fill in the remaining daylight with a bath and a change of clothes. The place where she encountered Liggett was a converted carriage house, with no character except for that. It was patronized by kept women and people in moderately good circumstances who lived in the vicinity. Gloria went there when some people she knew telephoned her and said they were all meeting there instead of another place. She went there—it was about nine-thirty in the evening—and discovered she was alone except for a couple, a sort of military grandfather and a young woman out to take him for whatever could be got out of him. Gloria said to the husky Italian who let her in: “I’m meeting Mrs. Voorhees and her party. I’ll wait for her at the bar.” She had a drink and was smoking and in walked Liggett. He sat at the other end of the bar, munching potato chips and drinking Scotch and soda. When he recognized Gloria he picked up his drink and joined her. “We’ve never met, but I’ve seen you so often—”
“Yes, with Billy.”
“I went to college with his brother.”
“Yes, he told me.”
“My name is Liggett.”
“He told me that, too. I’m Gloria Wandrous.” The bartender relaxed then.
“Wandrous. I’ll bet people—it’s so much like wondrous.”
“Yes, they think I made it up, like Gladys Glad and Hazel Dawn and Leatrice Joy, names like that. I didn’t though. It’s spelt with an a. W, a, n, d, r, o, u, s, and it’s pronounced Wan-drous, pale and wan.”
“Not pale and won.”
“Mm. Not bad. Not good, but not bad.”
“Well, I don’t make any pretense of being a wit. I’m just a hard-working business man.”
“Oh, are business men working again? I hadn’t heard.”
“Well, not as much as we’d like to. What I was leading up to was, I suppose you have a date.”
“You didn’t think I came in here every night, the mysterious veiled lady that always sits alone sipping her apéritif?”
“That’s exactly what I thought, or hoped. I thought you came here to get away from the usual places—”
“Place, as far as you and I are concerned.”
“Right. But now look here, Miss Wandrous, don’t dodge the issue. Here is a hard-working business man with Saturday night as free as the air—”
“As free as the air. I have a friend a writer, he’d like to use that some time. As free as the air. That’s good.”
“You won’t go places with me, then?”
“Why go places? Isn’t this all right?” she said. “No, Mr.—”
“Liggett.”
“Mr. Liggett. No, I’m waiting for some people. It’ll probably be all right if you join us. You can sit here till they come and I’ll introduce you to those I know.”
“Oh, you don’t know them. Maybe you won’t like them.”
“That’s possible—here they are, or at least it sounds like. Hello there.”
“Gloria darling, you’ve never been so prompt. Why, Weston Lee-gett. I didn’t know you knew each other. Weston, why, you dog, you’ve broken up my party, but it’s all right. That means we have an extra man. See now. Gloria, this is Mr. Zoom, and uh, Mr. Zoom, and you know Mary and Esther, and, everybody, this is Weston Liggett, a great friend of Peter Voorhees. Didn’t you go to school together or something?”
“Prep school. Look, I don’t want to mess up your party. I’ll—let me buy you a drink, and—”
“There are four more people coming down from my house,” said Mrs. Voorhees. “Elaine and three men, so you really will be an extra man when we all get here. Oh, I wonder what I want to drink. A Stinger, I think. Elaine. If those men knew you were going to be here they wouldn’t have waited with Elaine.”
“They knew,” said Gloria.
“Only by name. Isn’t she lovely, Weston? She’s young enough to be your daughter, Weston. You know that, don’t you? You’re not pretending otherwise, I hope.”
“I’m going to adopt her,” said Liggett. “That’s what we’re here for, a few papers to sign and she’s my daughter.”
“What do you want with two more daughters I’d like to know?”
“Is anybody hungry?” said one of the Messrs. “Zoom.” “I’m gonna order some food. A nice filet mignon.”
“That’s not very nice after the dinner we had at my house.”
“Squop chicken? I never get enough to eat when I eat squop chicken. I told you that when we sat down. You gotta give me that. I told you when we sat down, I said frankly I said this is not my idea of a meal, squop chicken. I’m a big eater. Were you in the Army, Mr. Liggett?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then you know how it is. One thing I said to myself in France. I promised myself if I ever got back home the one thing I was never gonna do was go hungry. When I want to eat I eat.”
“Watch this trick,” said Mrs. Voorhees. The other Mr. Zoom was doing a trick. You balance a fifty-cent piece on the rim of a glass with a dollar bill between the coin and the glass. You snatch the dollar bill out from under the coin and—if the trick is successful—the coin remains balanced on the glass. “Fascinating,” said Mrs. V.
“I can do a better one than that with friction. You get friction in your fingers—”
“Shhhhh. Marvelous! I can’t even get it to stay on the glass, let alone make it stay after you pull the bill away. You have a wonderful sense of—I think I do want something to eat, after all. Waiter, have you any uh, that uh, you know, begins with a Z? It’s a dessert.”
“Zabag—”
“That’s it. I’ll have some. Nothing for you, Mary?”
“I know one with friction. You get friction in your fingers by rubbing them on the table-cloth. Wait till he puts the table-cloth on the table and I’ll show you. And you have to have a fork or a spoon. That’s the idea of it. You lift up the spoon with the—”
