Jack and Susan in 1933

by Michael McDowell

  He faltered for completion of the triumvirate.

  “—the badly dressed?” Susan suggested.

  “More pie?” Grace Grace inquired, and Susan declined.

  Susan hoped she’d be able to leave soon. She didn’t like this man. She declined coffee, but Marcellus Rhinelander pressed. “We’ll go into the study, if you don’t mind, Susan. You don’t mind that either, do you, if I call you Susan? Harmon’s almost a son to me, you know. Almost a son.”

  Susan acquiesced politely but with no glad heart. Somehow this house felt lonelier, even with servants, than did the Quarry when she was there with only Scotty and Zelda.

  Susan sat in a corner of a wine-red sofa and sipped coffee. Without being asked, Grace brought a rose-colored shawl for her shoulders. When Grace was gone, Marcellus Rhinelander poured himself a glass of port and stood at the fireplace, with one arm stretched along the mantel in lord-of-the-manor style.

  “You’re very beautiful,” he said after a moment.

  “Thank you,” said Susan. She didn’t startle. She’d sung in clubs long enough to have heard this remark from a hundred men, in a hundred different tones of voice, but with a single motive prompting the compliment. Not here though. She wasn’t sure what he was getting at. But she did remember the dalmatians that Marcellus Rhinelander had bought for the sole purpose of fretting Richard Grace.

  “I can see why Harmon fell in love with you.”

  Susan made no reply.

  “He’d often proposed marriage,” Marcellus Rhinelander went on after taking a judicious sip of his port. “But somehow, it never worked out.” Marcellus Rhinelander smiled a smile that Susan had seen his daughter smile. “Sometimes Harmon woke up in the morning and couldn’t even remember the girl’s name. Sometimes the girl found someone who was richer. Sometimes Barbara and Jack were able to…to lend a helping hand against an improvident alliance.”

  “I should thank them then,” said Susan, “for keeping Harmon safe till I came along.”

  Marcellus Rhinelander looked at her sharply for a moment. “Perhaps you should,” he said softly. “I suppose you’ve heard—somehow or other—that I had always intended for Harmon to marry Barbara? Perhaps even Barbara herself mentioned it to you. Did she?”

  “Relentlessly.”

  “Jack is a very good fellow. An able lawyer, I think. Barbara loves him. I love him. But I think that on the whole, I would have preferred Harmon as a son-in-law.”

  Susan didn’t understand why he was telling her this. Whether or not it was truth, Susan knew he meant it to sound like truth. Perhaps he wanted her to be truthful and candid in return. His next question confirmed her suspicion. “Why did you marry Harmon?” he asked with the sort of smile and tilt of his head that was supposed to indicate: Oh, it’s late in the evening, and we’ve both had a little too much to drink, and I’m a little world-weary tonight, so why don’t we unbosom the hearts of our hearts to each other, you and I? Or something very like that.

  “Why did I marry Harmon?” Susan asked, just to give herself that second or two she needed to decide how she should respond.

  “Yes,” said Marcellus Rhinelander gently, “why did you marry Harmon?”

  Susan’s decision how to answer the question was not based on how much she’d drunk, her current high level of world-weariness, or the lateness of the evening, but purely on how much she detested Marcellus Rhinelander. She decided, in short, to tell him the honest truth, hoping he’d be so appalled he’d never speak to her again.

  “It’s quite simple really,” Susan said. “I married Harmon because he had a great deal of money and I didn’t have any.”

  Marcellus Rhinelander choked on his port, and he stared at her over the rim of his glass as he took more as soon as he could.

  “I can go into it in more detail if you wish,” Susan said.

  “Please do.”

  “I was tired of having no money for anything beyond shelter and the dress I wore when I was leaning against a piano singing. My only meal was the food I ate in the club where I sang. I was born in a family that was richer than Harmon is now, that was probably richer than you are now. And eventually—when all that money melted away—I learned to get by on two dollars a week. When I didn’t have two dollars, I still got by. And when I had three dollars, I sent one of them to my sister, who’s in school in Massachusetts, and I still got by on two dollars a week.”

  Susan paused, to give Marcellus Rhinelander the opportunity to speak.

  “Go on,” was all he said.

  “I might have found a man to…to keep me—isn’t that the way the French talk about it? I don’t think the moral question would have bothered me very much. I’m afraid that wickedness and moral turpitude mean less to me than that two-dollar-a-week business. But having a gentleman—whether married or single—provide for you is not a permanent solution to the problem. It’s the sort of arrangement that could end at any moment, and when it does end, it always ends suddenly and inconveniently, and you’re older and not as beautiful as you were, and then you might as well put a gun into your mouth. I’ve always worried about the future—it’s a real fault, I think—but marriage seemed to me the only solution to my problem.”

  Susan paused.

  Marcellus Rhinelander still stared.

  “Might I have a drop of that port?” Susan asked.

  He went around and poured her a glass. He refilled his. He didn’t return to the fireplace. He sat down in a deep chair and turned away the shade of the lamp next to him.

  Susan took his place at the mantel.

  “Should I go on, or am I boring you?”

  “Not at all,” he replied quickly. “Please do. Please do go on.”

  “I was singing in cafés. One after another. Pretty dreary business, being part of a floor show. First comes the Spanish dancer with the wobbly knees and the petticoats that haven’t been laundered in three months. Then the crooner, who has a crooner’s voice and a crooner’s mannerisms, and wants to be carried back to old Virginny, and everybody in the audience is all for it. Then comes the colored man who’s painted his face really black and tells jokes about washerwomen and their alligator-bait offspring, and when he goes off to change his clothes—because he’s going to be sweeping up the place when everybody goes home—that’s when I come on, and I sing about love, and cigarettes in the dark, and I sing about crying when I’m happy, and I sing about laughing even though I’m sad, and I look out at the audience, and I see Harmon Dodge, who’s handsome and charming and rich, and just like all the boys who used to take me out and beg me to marry them, only I didn’t because I didn’t love them, and I didn’t need to marry them because I had money myself. Only now I didn’t have any money, and I thought maybe I could get Harmon to ask me, because if he did, then I’d accept.”

  “And Harmon did ask…” said Marcellus Rhinelander.

  “And I accepted,” said Susan. “I told you it was simple.”

  Marcellus Rhinelander leaned forward out of the shadows of the wing chair, reaching for the humidor. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Certainly not,” said Susan.

  She was silent as he did his business with picking the cigar, cutting the end, igniting the long wooden match, twirling the cigar so that it lighted evenly. He leaned back into the shadows.

  “Why are you telling me this?” he said at last.

  “You asked me,” Susan replied. “I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that you wanted the truth.”

  “I’m not certain I got the truth,” said Marcellus Rhinelander.

  “You got what you thought you’d hear if I did tell the truth,” said Susan. “You think I’m a gold digger. You think I seduced the man you wanted for a son-in law. Though I think it only just to point out that Barbara spoiled that little plan first, by marrying Mr. Beaumont of the interminable legs. You think that I have connived, and subterfuged—is there such a word?—and played wanton, played virgin, played coquette, played whatever role was necessary to marry a man
who hasn’t seen a sober sunset or a sober sunrise in ten years.”

  Marcellus Rhinelander didn’t answer. Obviously, it was what he thought.

  “It’s what your daughter thinks of me, too,” said Susan.

  “But it’s not all the truth, is it?” said Marcellus Rhinelander. Susan liked him for that. A little, anyway.

  “No, of course it isn’t all the truth. I’m very fond of Harmon. How could anyone not be? Harmon is very fond of me. I’m already a good wife to him, insofar as I’m the kind of wife that least disturbs his peace of mind. I don’t try to stop his drinking. I don’t tell him to work harder or to bring home more money. I don’t try to make him take me out more—if anything, there are many evenings I’d rather stay home. I don’t ask where he’s been, what he’s been doing, or who he’s been doing it with. I try to appear as beautiful, and as happy, and as in love with him as I can. Certainly, if you’re afraid that I’m spending all his money, you needn’t concern yourself. I don’t accept half what he tries to give me. I didn’t want to be rich— I’ve been that. I just didn’t want my entire life to revolve around that damned two dollars a week. I think Harmon loves me as much as he could love any woman who hangs around more than six weeks or so, and I think I love Harmon as much as I could love any man I married for his money.” Susan swallowed off the last of the port in her glass. “That’s still not all the truth,” she concluded, “but it’s most of it, I think.”

  “I believe you,” said Marcellus Rhinelander. “Now the question is, why are you telling it to me?”

  “Because I want you to believe the worst of me, that is, what you’ve believed all along, so that I’ll never be invited back to another of these dreadful dinners.”

  “Not a chance,” returned Marcellus Rhinelander, blowing out a blue cloud of smoke from his cigar. “We’re having dinner again tomorrow night. Now that I’ve heard the truth, or most of it, I’ve come to the conclusion that you are the best possible wife for Harmon Dodge. And beyond that, I’ve decided I like you.”

  “I don’t like you,” returned Susan. “Not one little bit.”

  “Quite beside the point, really.”

  He called the next day and Susan said that she didn’t want to return to the Cliffs for dinner.

  The Bolshie will pick you up at seven.

  “He might not be a Bolshie if you treated him decently,” said Susan.

  The man’s paid better than any chauffeur on the Hudson. I built a house for him and his wife, and it’s bigger than the house I grew up in.

  “What about the dalmatians?”

  A warning, so that he doesn’t try to assassinate me.

  “In any case,” said Susan, “don’t bother sending him over. Because I don’t want to have dinner with you tonight.”

  I promised Harmon I’d take care of you while you were staying at the Quarry. In fact, you have no business being there alone. When the Bolshie picks you up, I’ll send one of the extra maids over. I’ll send Louise. She can cook and she knows how to handle a gun. Killed a thief over here once; only took her five shots.

  “No, Mr. Rhinelander. Don’t send Mr. Grace, don’t send Louise. I’ll tell Harmon that you’ve done everything possible to make me happy. And if you leave me alone, you’ll be doing just that.”

  She rang off.

  The Bolshie showed up at seven. Susan came out with a broom, in case the dalmatians mistook her political leanings, and told Richard Grace to go back to the Cliffs. Before Richard Grace could reply, the door opposite the driver opened and a young woman with a fierce expression stepped out. She was carrying a suitcase in one hand and a large revolver in the other.

  “I’m Louise,” she said. “I know the place and can find a room on my own.” Before Susan could reply, Louise marched up the steps and into the house.

  The back door of the touring car opened and Marcellus Rhinelander himself stepped out.

  “I told you,” said Susan, “I’m not going to the Cliffs tonight.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t,” said Marcellus Rhinelander. “You’re just that sort of person, aren’t you? So that’s why our Socialist friend here is going to return to the Cliffs and bring back Grace and our dinner. Your husband’s cellar is a trivial thing, Mrs. Dodge, so I’ve taken the liberty of bringing a few bottles that aren’t entirely unpotable. Comrade Grace,” he said, turning to the chauffeur, “if you aren’t too occupied with your plans for a Socialist utopia, could you please bring in that small crate?”

  Louise served the dinner, which was an embalmed duck with a bullion aspic, tinned asparagus again but crowned tonight with limp pimento rings, and for dessert an overly generous portion of frozen prune whip. Susan wondered edgily where Louise kept her revolver.

  The evening was pleasanter than Susan could have predicted. Scotty and Zelda sat quietly on either side of Susan’s chair, and even when Marcellus Rhinelander called them with scraps of the embalmed duck, dripping with aspic, they wouldn’t go till Susan said, “All right.” Having told Marcellus Rhinelander so much truth the night before, Susan wasn’t able to retreat into politeness and avoidances with the man.

  “Don’t talk about politics,” she pleaded with him.

  “You find them boring? Most women do.”

  “I don’t find them boring. I just think you’re entirely wrong. I find your opinions either wrong-headed, reprehensible, or simply bizarre.”

  “Of course they are,” he laughed. “What sort of pompous old fool would I be without them? I’m all alone, my dear Mrs. Dodge. My wife is dead, though I never particularly cared for her, and she certainly never cared for me. My daughter has married and moved away, though one hundred and fifty miles seems rather too short a distance where Barbara is concerned. The few friends I made in my youth are either indicted for crimes, members of the national legislature, or dead—and some of them are all three. What fills my life? Newspapers, and begging letters from relatives I never knew I had, and a law practice that takes a couple of hours of a couple of afternoons every other week. You must never, never tell him, my dear Mrs. Dodge, but I would positively shrivel up and die if Richard Grace ever left my employ. I’ll tell you something else I suspect: If the revolution came, I think I’d see Richard Grace at the door, defending my person and my possessions with his life.”

  Susan didn’t honestly believe this last to be the case, but she didn’t think badly of Marcellus Rhinelander for deceiving himself on this little point. The man’s honestly disarmed her, and she increasingly liked him, even though Barbara Beaumont’s father was not the sort of man you gave your trust to with a whole heart and head. When the man has been trained as a lawyer, you have to be doubly careful. Susan’s mother, who was daughter, sister, and wife to lawyers, had always stressed this maxim. But tonight was tonight, and there wasn’t much that he could do to her in her own home, so she smiled at him and she laughed at his moribund philosophy, and when he asked her, “Is there anything that you regret from your two-dollar-a-week existence, Mrs. Dodge?” Susan once more told the truth.

  “I miss an audience.”

  “Ah, your singing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sing for me. I’ll be your audience.”

  Susan didn’t demurely demur. “I’d love to,” she said. “May I invite Louise and the Graces to listen?”

  “Only if you tell them that I vehemently protested against their presence.”

  “They wouldn’t believe me if I told them otherwise,” said Susan.

  Louise sat by the door as if guarding against the intrusion of persons who did not have a ticket. The Graces sat on an ugly little love seat covered in silk. Marcellus Rhinelander sat opposite, where he could glower at the servants to greatest effect. Though he did offer his chauffeur a glass of his best port, he remarked, “The stuff is almost undrinkable anyway,” as he handed it over.

  Susan accompanied herself with simple chords and didn’t bother bringing down the sheaf of music she’d brought with her from Manhattan. She sang the old so
ngs she knew from before the Villa Vanity. Songs she had sung in duet with her mother back in Boston. Simple songs by Mr. Work and Mr. Foster. Her audience knew the songs and they joined in on the chorus. It even turned out that Marcellus Rhinelander had a rich tenor, and Richard Grace had not a bad bass. Grace was tone deaf, but Louise could do harmony, though she sang everything rather as if she were standing behind one of her husband’s revolutionary barricades.

  Susan, as she sang and urged the others to sing with her, thought about what Marcellus Rhinelander had said earlier about his wife, his daughter, and his friends—and told her to what his life had been reduced. Susan felt the same, as if her own life had been reduced to this. This cold room in this large house between the Catskills and the river, singing the old songs to three servants and a man she probably ought not to like at all.

  She felt reduced, but she didn’t feel very bad about it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HARMON CALLED HER every day from the office to tell her how desperately unhappy he was in her absence. Susan replied that it was very lonely in the country, that her heart was breaking without him, but that the dogs still needed considerable training before they’d be fit to take up a residence in the penthouse.

  Is Marcellus taking care of you?

  “Oh yes,” said Susan vaguely. “He’s even lent me one of his maids.”

  Is it the one with the pistol?