So it seemed fitting, in the course of things, that Barbara Beaumont should be Susan’s first afternoon visitor. If Barbara Beaumont wasn’t the best-dressed woman in the city, she was at least the most dressed. She wore a blue wool overcoat with horizontal stripes in red and yellow, a pillbox hat with a fez attachment, and yellow suede swagger boots. It was the sort of outfit that would have made the pope in full canonicals look drab by comparison. George followed her in, with a kind of box or cage with a brass handle. It shook and rattled and growled in his hand. Whatever was inside was alive, and it wanted to get out. Susan eyed it with some suspicion.
“I am the most loathsome woman in the universe,” said Barbara Beaumont. “I woke up in the middle of the night last night—the sun hadn’t been up more than an hour or two—and I said to myself, ‘Wedding present.’ I had no idea what it meant, however, but then I was looking in the hall closet for something and I came across a pair of Harmon’s trousers—he left them there on Christmas Eve for some reason—and I remembered that he had gotten married.”
She stopped.
“To me,” said Susan.
“Yes,” said Barbara as if she had just been spared the pain of making that observation. “So here I am to make amends for my neglect of that poor, poor boy. I’ve brought you Scotty and Zelda.”
“Scotty and Zelda?”
“Yes,” said Barbara, taking an umbrella from the hall stand and gingerly pushing the catch on the top of the cage George had brought in. “The two most adorable creatures in the universe.”
The latch sprang free, and immediately two small, wiry Scottish terriers flew out of the cage. One was white and the other black. The most adorable creatures in the universe immediately began chasing each other around the living room, yapping and snapping at each other, biting the legs of the furniture, relieving themselves on the radio cabinet, and attempting to extract a morsel of fresh meat from Susan’s leg.
“They’re called Scotty and Zelda because they fight so much,” said Barbara. “I’m sure they’ll keep this place lively. Jack says Harmon says you’re not overburdened with company.”
“Not until very recently,” returned Susan dryly.
Barbara smiled a bland smile.
“The black one is Scotty, and the white one is Zelda. Or else it’s the other way around.”
Susan smiled a blander smile than Barbara smiled. “Yes, I’m sure sex could sometimes prove a confusing issue to you, Barbara. And I thank you for the gift. I’m sure Harmon will love these—creatures.”
“I agonized, positively agonized over exactly the right gift for you, Susan. Believe me, I did. And with that, I must be on my way. It was lovely to see you again. I love what you’ve done to the living room.”
“I haven’t done anything,” returned Susan.
“Exactly. I was so afraid you’d bring in something new and dreadful and tasteless.”
“New and dreadful and tasteless is definitely passé this year,” said Susan. “Shall I show you what I haven’t done to the other rooms, or shall I just call for the elevator and a taxi? I’d be happy to make plane reservations, if you’re going that far?”
“Please don’t put yourself to any trouble. I imagine you’ll have your hands full for a little while with Scotty and Zelda.” The elevator arrived and Barbara sailed into it. One of the dogs overturned several pots of chrysanthemums in one of the corner conservatories, while a scream from the opposite side of the penthouse announced Audrey’s discovery of the other portion of Barbara’s wedding gift to Susan Dodge née Bright.
CHAPTER NINE
HARMON DID WHAT he’d never done before. He put down his foot.
He wouldn’t have Scotty and Zelda in his home. He suggested that Susan open a window and throw them out and let the winds take care of them. On the whole, Susan agreed that the dogs deserved such treatment, but she found herself arguing with Harmon. She wanted to keep them.
“Why? They’re vicious little creatures, and the only reason Barbara gave them to you was that she knew they’d make you miserable.”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever admitted you knew how much Barbara disliked me,” Susan remarked.
“Well,” Harmon said with a little embarrassed cough that was part of every lawyer’s stock-in-trade, even a lawyer as unconventional as Harmon, “Barbara would find objection with any woman I married. She’s a bit like a jealous sister. You know the type.”
“Yes,” said Susan. “In any case, I don’t want to give Barbara the satisfaction of knowing that I hurled her wedding gifts out a twenty-third-floor window. It’s the sort of thing she’d manage somehow to get into Winchell’s column. Perhaps I could take them to obedience school.”
“They need to be outdoors,” said Harmon. Just now the dogs were locked in a dark closet with a number of crates of liquor. “Outdoors where they’re in danger of being run over by automobiles, or bitten by poisonous snakes, or trampled underfoot by a parade of the unemployed.”
“We could take them up to the country,” said Susan.
“Good idea. Lots of dangerous places in the mountains. Bears, cougars. They might accidentally drown while someone was giving them a bath in a cold mountain stream. Or, unthinkingly, someone might hurl them both off a cliff into the river. The difficulty is, we weren’t planning on going back to the country till Easter.”
“I could go up the Quarry alone,” Susan suggested, and didn’t know why she’d never suggested it before, for now it seemed a very happy idea, quite apart from the danger the locale possibly presented for Scotty and Zelda.
Harmon looked at Susan strangely for a moment. He even stopped pouring his third cocktail of the hour, so struck did he appear with the notion. “I suppose you could,” he said at last.
It was the way he said those words I suppose you could that told Susan that her husband did not love her the way she had thought he did. He would be happy to see her go up to Albany on her own, she understood. He would be pleased to remain in the city, temporarily a free man again. In those four simple words, Susan also heard his offhanded resolution to betray their marriage vows.
She was pleased. She didn’t have to feel guilty about wanting to get away from Harmon for a bit. As to the probability of his breaking his vows of fidelity to her, she had assumed he had done that little piece of business already. But simply by the way that he took the thought of her going away alone showed her that he hadn’t.
So it was arranged in the fifth week of their marriage that Susan would ride up to the country for a few days—merely on account of the loathsome pets with which they’d been saddled. Harmon, of course, would remain in the city, where “urgent business” must be prosecuted.
Susan wasn’t certain if Harmon understood how happy she was to get away, but she tried not to make it obvious. He delightfully declared himself utterly miserable just contemplating her departure. “I’ll probably get drunk every night, just because you aren’t here.”
Considering that Harmon got drunk every night, even when she was sitting at the same table in the next chair, Susan didn’t doubt the assertion.
Wearing the same thickly lined gloves with which he shoveled coal into the furnace in the basement, George the elevator man reached into the liquor closet and grabbed Scotty and Zelda. The dogs had teeth like sharks and tore into the gloves, George’s uniform sleeves, and each other. He thrust them back into the cage, where a two-dollar steak temporarily held their attention as Susan snapped the latch. They went into the backseat of the Chevrolet sedan and Susan took off for Albany, armed (for this first solo journey) with a purseful of roadmaps, an atlas of the entire United States, two hundred dollars in cash, a canister of gasoline, two quarts of oil, and the telephone number of General Motors headquarters in Detroit. None was needed. Susan found her way from the East Side to the West Side by looking at the sun. In the same way, she went north to the tip of Manhattan. There was a bridge there, conveniently, and she crossed over into the Bronx. She didn’t take any turns,
and found herself on a road north, and on the road north was a sign that read ALBANY—149 MILES. She passed similar signs with diminishing mileage. Once she got in the vicinity of Albany, memory took over—she and Harmon had made the trip to the speakeasies every night of their stay at the Quarry—and Susan found her way to the Quarry without difficulty. In fact, her only difficulty was with Scotty and Zelda. They barked half the way up, and then were utterly silent. From the smell emanating from the cage, they seemed to be suffering from motion sickness and diarrhea simultaneously.
The first thing Susan did on reaching the Quarry was to take the cage out of the backseat and put it on a piece of waste ground behind a stand of rhododendron. Then she unlatched it and opened the top. Black Scotty and white Zelda were green. Together they raised their paws to the top of the cage, rocked in unison, and pushed the cage over. They crawled unsteadily out, snapped and snarled at Susan in a dispirited fashion, and then collapsed in the dirt beside each other.
“All right, you two little heathens,” said Susan sharply. “Listen to me now, and listen well, because I’m not going to repeat this.”
Zelda made a tiny little snarl, but Scotty laid a black paw on Zelda’s neck and she desisted.
“I have explicit instructions to hurl you both off the cliff and into the river, which is very deep and very cold and where there are no two-dollar steaks for miserable little dogs. If I don’t throw you off the cliff, then I’m to crush you beneath one of these large boulders. And if I don’t do that, then I’m supposed to abandon you in the woods like Hansel and Gretel, and then you’ll be the two-dollar steak for the very nasty black bear that is about to wake from his hibernation.”
Scotty and Zelda made no sound. They did not move. Silence and stillness were, however, remarkable phenomena for the pair, and Susan understood that her speech had gotten through.
“You two are going to be given another chance. One more opportunity to prove yourselves worthy of a continued existence. I may also remind you that no one has ever been able to provide any proof of a doggy heaven. Therefore, I’d advise you to pay close attention. You’re going to be happy with each other and you’re going to be happy with me. When I say frolic, you’re going to frolic at my heels. And when I say, ‘Be quiet, Scotty and Zelda,’ you’re going to pretend that you never even heard of a bark, or a growl, or a snarl. And in return, you’ll be fed scraps from the table, and you’ll get to run around in the woods and frighten the wildlife, and you may even get—I promise nothing, however—a little affection. Have I made myself clear?”
Scotty and Zelda were silent and still.
“Good,” said Susan. “I’m glad we’ve come to this little agreement. So look around for a while, then come to the back door in about an hour, and I’ll have a little food for you. When you’ve proved yourselves worthy, I may even let you sleep in the house.”
Susan took her suitcases from the car and went into the house. From the bedroom window upstairs she looked out, and saw Scotty and Zelda lying forlornly on the gravel in the bleak February sunshine.
“Those dogs have promise,” said Susan aloud to herself.
The Quarry stood on its own hundred acres or so, and the nearest house was the Rhinelander place a mile away. That first night she spent there alone, Susan heard nothing. And everything. Every twig that snapped, every owl that hooted, every board that swelled or contracted, every glass that rattled of its own accord in the distant kitchen. She could not sleep for the intensity of the silence.
She turned on the lamp by the bed and got up. She turned on the light in the hall and went downstairs. She turned on the lights in the living room, the study, and she turned on the moonlight in the yew garden. She opened the French doors, and she called for Scotty and Zelda.
Scotty and Zelda did not come.
“This isn’t a trick,” she promised in a loud voice. “I won’t kill you!”
Scotty crept out from beneath a black yew, where he’d been quite invisible.
Zelda appeared from behind a white pot that contained the twisted black skeleton of a leafless climbing plant.
“You’ve been very good,” said Susan, “considering that you’re probably not used to the country, and not used to the cold, and not used to riding long distances in automobiles. And therefore I’m going to allow you to sleep inside tonight.”
Scotty and Zelda remained where they were.
“Come inside then,” said Susan. “I promise. No tricks.”
Scotty and Zelda slowly crept toward Susan, passing on either side of her and going into the study. She came inside, closed the door, and extinguished the moonlight.
“You’ve never been in here before, so I’ll lead the way,” said Susan. Then, turning out the lights as she went, Susan returned to her bedroom. Scotty and Zelda crept in her path so silently that Susan had to turn several times to make certain they were there.
Susan got back into bed. Scotty and Zelda remained just inside the closed door, but looked longingly at the small coal fire that was still burning in the grate.
“All right,” said Susan. “You may go over there.”
Scotty and Zelda took up positions on either side of the hearth, like the porcelain dogs at either end of the mantel above them.
Susan slept.
Susan wakened to the barking of dogs. She sat up suddenly in bed, pointing an accusing finger at the fireplace. Scotty and Zelda were silent and still, but there was something nervous and uneasy about them. The barking came from outside.
“Sorry,” said Susan to Scotty and Zelda.
Susan went to the window and looked out. A large touring car had stopped in front of the house, and two barking dalmatians ran around and around it.
Richard Grace, Marcellus Rhinelander’s Communist chauffeur, got slowly out of the car with a broom. He used the broom to fend off the dalmatians as he inched to the front door. Susan was already on her way downstairs when she heard the bell.
She opened the door quickly and jerked the man inside.
“Thank you, Mrs. Dodge,” said Richard Grace, leaning the broom into a corner.
“Where did those dogs come from?” Susan wanted to know.
“Oh, they’re Mr. Rhinelander’s,” replied the chauffeur. “He sets them on me, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“It’s a war between the upper classes and the workers, according to Mr. Rhinelander,” said Richard Grace. “And them two dogs is one of his weapons.”
Susan considered this for a moment, and then asked, “May I do something for you?”
“Mr. Rhinelander sent me over with an invitation to dinner tonight, Mrs. Dodge, that’s all, and wants to know if it will be convenient for me to fetch you at seven o’clock this evening.”
“Tell Mr. Rhinelander that I’d be happy—”
“Mr. Rhinelander ain’t just against the workers, Mrs. Dodge,” said the chauffeur abruptly, “he’s got something against you, too.”
“Oh yes?” said Susan uncomfortably. Uncomfortably not because Richard Grace was a chauffeur, but because she didn’t like to receive confidences of any sort.
“He don’t like you as much as he don’t like me,” said Richard Grace, “which, as you may notice from the spotted dogs outside, is considerable. He don’t like you and his daughter don’t like you even more. If I have my way,” he added in an undertone, “Miss Barbara will be one of the first what is swept away in the coming social upheaval. But as that time is not yet, my advice to you would be not to come, Mrs. Dodge.”
“We don’t win wars by running from our enemies,” said Susan as the quickest way to end this conversation. “So please tell Mr. Rhinelander that I’ll be glad to dine with him this evening, and you needn’t trouble yourself to fetch me, Mr. Grace. I’ll drive over myself. But thank you for coming.”
Mr. Grace, taking his broom, edged back out the door and crept toward the car. The dalmatians raced after the vehicle as it headed back toward the Cliffs.
When Susa
n turned from watching this spectacle through the lintel windows, she found Scotty and Zelda waiting patiently for her on the bottom step of the stairs.
“You came down to protect me against those other dogs, didn’t you?”
Scotty bared his teeth. Zelda produced one genteel bark.
“You are both turning into very good dogs,” said Susan, but didn’t think it prudent for further praise.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS THE SECOND unpleasant dinner she’d had in the Cliffs dining room, a long, high chamber with heavily curtained windows looking out on the black winter night. A massive mahogany table with a cloth that looked like a hallway runner ran across it lengthwise. Marcellus Rhinelander sat at one end of the table, and Susan at the other. Two candelabra and a vase of dried autumn flowers kept Susan from even seeing her host unless she leaned considerably to the right or the left.
The meal was another embalmed chicken, a salad of tinned asparagus and third-pressing olive oil, with a tomato pie for dessert. Susan had never had a tomato pie before, and she understood, after she’d tasted it, why it had never become a national delicacy. The wine was good and plentiful.
Marcellus Rhinelander’s conversation was chiefly politics. He deplored the election of Franklin Roosevelt to the presidency, and dreaded the day—only weeks distant—when the man would take office. He deplored the assassination attempt on the President-elect, which had taken place the week before, on two grounds. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks were behind it, as they were behind all the unrest, all the troubles, and all the degeneracy of this country. On the other hand, he was disappointed that Roosevelt hadn’t been killed. Mr. Rhinelander almost gleefully anticipated the total disintegration of the noble experiment that was the United States of America, beneath the hand of that turncoat, that blue-blooded scalawag, Franklin Roosevelt. “A man born with every advantage,” Marcellus Rhinelander reminded Susan, “who has chosen to throw in his lot with Bolshevik scoundrels, the impoverished and the unwashed, and the—the—”
Jack and Susan in 1933 Page 7
