At other times I think it must have been Elmore’s hats. He was the kind of person who is incapable of invading strange territory without instantly adopting its native head-gear. For that reason he had— and wore—a ten-gallon Stetson, a blue beret, a sola topee, a cricket cap, a gondolier’s hat, a green Tyrolean with brush, a huge Panama, said to be woven under water (where it certainly should have remained), and quite a collection of less remarkable hats in velours to match—or contrast with—his vivid suitings.
Well, I don’t know exactly what one could say about Cousin Elmore’s clothes that would do them full justice. To sum it all up in a nutshell, you could sell him any garment simply by telling him that no other man in town owned anything like it.
But Cousin Elmore, while admitting to sartorial splendor, fancied himself not so much Beau Brummel as Samuel Johnson. It was his sense of humor that was the most agonizing thing about him. I don’t mean that he actually had a sense of humor. He was totally without one, although he thought he was killing and would have fought to the death anyone who so much as ventured the opinion that he was not. What Cousin Elmore really had was total recall of every joke he had ever heard from Joe Penner’s radio program, from lodge stag parties, from smoking compartments, and from World War I. What he did not bank on was that everyone else remembered them, too, when reminded, and that few of them had been funny to begin with.
The pun was Cousin Elmore’s bluntest instrument of torture, and he never let any opportunity for injecting a sodden riposte elude him. During his seemingly endless stay in Venice, he was introduced three times to girls named Virginia and each time he said, “Virgin foah short, but not foah long! Hahahahahaha!” When he finally and mercifully left you, he always said, “Abyssinia! Hahahahahaha !” At parties he invariably said, “Let’s all make merry” (with a wink toward any woman named Mary) “and feel rosy” (same for women named Rose). “Hahahahahaha!” He was perfectly terrible, if you see what I mean.
Unfortunately, with the sun and the gin and the shock, Auntie Mame wasn’t seeing much of anything that evening.
“I-I simply can’t get over it,” she said, unwisely belting down the rest of her drink and blinking owlishly through the gloom at Cousin Elmore. “It’s almost as if Beauregard himself had come into the room.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I muttered.
“Ah was always motty fond of Cousin Boragod, Mamie,” Elmore said.
“Oh, but you must think I’m so rude,” Auntie Mame said. “Do let me offer you something to drink. And I might just have another myself. Patrick, be a lamb and do the honors.” With that she toppled down onto a little sofa, whether from drink or emotion I don’t to this day know.
“What’ll it be, sir,” I asked, “whisky or gin?”
“D’yawl have inny sow-ah may-ush bubbun, bub?”
“I’m afraid we can’t get bourbon in Italy,” I said. “But we do have Scotch.”
“Oh,” Cousin Elmore said, gazing at the Scotch bottle, “Vat 69. Ah always thought that was the pope’s tellyphone numbah. Hahaha hahaha!”
I had first heard that joke in 1933 on the day Prohibition was repealed, but I made a manful attempt at a chortle. Auntie Mame tittered inanely. “Scotch then?” I asked.
“That’s right, sonny, Scotch and bray-unch wattah. But not too much wattah. Rusts the pipes. Hahahahahaha!”
I mixed a strong drink for Cousin Elmore, hoping to shut him up; a very weak one for Auntie Mame; and a fair-sized scoop for myself. I needed it. But I put it down after one sip when I heard Auntie Mame say, “But of course, Beau—I mean Cousin Elmore—of course you’ll stay to dinner with us.”
“Why, Cousin Mamie, that’d be motty nice.”
It was not without a certain horror that I saw Auntie Mame, empty glass in hand, sway unsteadily across the floor. “I may just have another. And I’ll mix this one myself,” she said ominously. Then she turned to Elmore Burnside. “And do let me step yours up, dar . . . uh, Cousin Elmore.”
“That’s right, Mamie. Duck cain’t fly on one wing. Ha hahahahaha!”
They were together at the liquor table pouring out what looked like cough syrup when Auntie Mame first got a close-up of Elmore’s hula-girl sport shirt. “What a divine blouse. Hawaii?”
“Ah’m fine, Mamie. How ah yew? Hahahahaha ha!” With that he whacked Auntie Mame across the back with a force that almost sent her sprawling.
“How too funny! Oh, Elmore, you’re killing me!”
“As the actress said to the bishop! Hahahahaha ha!”
Auntie Mame was in paroxysms of laughter. I excused myself, thinking I might be sick. When I came back downstairs they were back at the liquor table again and Cousin Elmore was saying, “Centipede cain’t walk on two laigs. Hahahahahaha!” From the looks of Auntie Mame, I didn’t think she could make it to the dining room on all fours, but she was flushed and radiant and said, “Oh, Elmore, I haven’t laughed so much in years!”
DINNER WAS FINALLY ANNOUNCED.
Auntie Mame and Cousin Elmore, arm in arm, led the way lurchingly into dinner. En route they passed the genuine Bronzino portrait, a crooked reflector lighting the young man’s pale face.
“Who’s that purty Eyetalian gal?” Cousin Elmore said.
“That happens to be a pretty Italian boy,” I said nastily.
“Well, he’s settin’ on the on’y place where yew could tell the diffrunce. Hahahahahaha!”
“Oh, Elmore, you are dreadful!”
“Dreadful?” I murmured.
“It’s a portrait by Bronzino. It’s an Old Master,” Auntie Mame giggled.
“Well, yew kin keep youah old mastuhs. Jess give me a young mistress. Hahahahahaha!”
The two of them could hardly stand up, that remark was so funny.
Dinner was a nightmare. Auntie Mame, glassy-eyed by now, sat between us, and Elmore told one of his favorite stories—a joke we were to hear many times in the future—ending up “Ah, vi-ola! Lucky Pee-ayuh, always in zee middle! Hahahahaha ha!” He spoke of the cold kidney bean hors d’oeuvre as “sheet music”—a sally that was lost on Auntie Mame but which had been a standard thigh-slapper at boarding schools since 1888. Out of grim politesse, I had tried at first to muster up a counterfeit chuckle after each of Cousin Elmore’s sallies. By the time we got to dinner, I hadn’t the strength. Nor, I discovered, was it even necessary to smile. Cousin Elmore was his own best audience; he went into such gales of laughter that he didn’t even notice whether anyone else was amused or not.
Auntie Mame was so far gone by then that she simply giggled all the time and, between snickers, kept herself and Cousin Elmore refueled by ordering two additional kinds of wine. I suppose anesthesia of any sort helped.
That Elmore! What a card! When the fish came in he said, “This is motty good, Cupcake. What is it?”
“It’s uh, it’s, uh—what the hell, darling, it’s Baccala Mario.” Mario was the cook who came along with the house. He named all the dishes for himself.
“Shoot mah shoes, what’s tha-yut?”
“It’s fish balls,” I hissed.
“Best part of the fish! Hahahahahaha!” I’d heard that witticism every Friday at school for seven years, and Auntie Mame had probably heard it seventeen years before that. Even so, she was helpless with laughter and choked on her wine.
“Oh, Elmore, darling. You’re too killing! So like dear Beau. Tell me,” she said, eyes glistening even if they weren’t exactly focusing, “where are you staying?”
“Some wop dump, Tidbit, honey. Heah, Ah got it written down.”
“Well, you’re not going to stay there any longer. You’re moving right in with us. . . . Ouch!” I’d fetched her a kick under the table that hobbled her for three days.
I should have kicked her in the head and harder because she went right on talking about how Cousin Elmore must move in with us for the whole summer. Then, with a fluency that she could never have managed had she been sober, she gave instructions to have Mr. Burnside’s
belongings picked up in the gondola and brought to the palazzo precipitevolisimevolmente. (That is the longest word in Italian. It means quickly.)
At that point the greens came on, and Cousin Elmore, flushed with triumph, said, “What Ah lak best is Honeymoon Salad. Yew know what that is, Dollfeather? Lettuce alone, withoutdressing! Haha hahahaha!”
Auntie Mame rolled helplessly in her chair, sobbing with laughter. “Oh, Beau,” she wailed, “darling!”
I thought grimly, Just one more course to go and then I can get away from Joe Miller and his straight man. How wrong I was.
We had fresh figs for dessert. Cousin Elmore then displayed the only word in Italian he ever bothered to learn. “Fighi, fighi! Hahahahahaha!” Auntie Mame didn’t get it. She just giggled out of habit. But it wasn’t lost on the elderly servant. He dropped a platter and bolted for the kitchen, precipitevolisimevolmente .
“D’you wish coffee?” Auntie Mame said, simpering sweetly.
“Jewish coffee? Hell no, Cupcake, I don’t want no Jewish coffee. Give me gentile coffee! Hahahahahaha!”
Auntie Mame rose and said, with a distressing slur, “Patrick, do shee that Beauregard—Elmore—has an itty-bitty ship of brandy. I’m going slap into—I mean schlitz into something comfy.” With that she lurched out, leaving me alone with that great humorist and traveler in ladies’ underwear, Elmore Burnside.
“What would you like, sir?” I asked as politely as possible.
“Whaddaya sujjest, kiddo?”
“A little straight curare?” I said, with a hospitable smile.
“Naw, none of them fancy dago drinks. Jus’ some brandy. Then siddown. Ah got some stories to tell yew. Real man stuff. Wouldn’t be suitable in mixed company.”
I poured out two brandies—one for Elmore and one in self-defense.
Cousin Elmore’s boy-type jokes were, if possible, older than his coeducational ones and even less funny. “Stop me if yew’ve heard this one,” he said, “but it seems that this fellah with a twitch in his eye gets in a taxi an’ sez . . .”
“Stop,” I said.
Cousin Elmore went right on and finished the joke.
“Now stop me if yew’ve heard this one, kiddo, but it seems that this constipated Scotchman goes inta the drugstore an’ sez, ‘Hoot may-un . . .’ ”
“Stop!” I said. Undaunted, he rambled on until his own orgasm of joy all but shattered the glasses on the dining table. I wouldn’t have minded hearing all these old, old favorites yet again if only Elmore had told them well. He didn’t. He was always leaving out things, always having to regress, always interrupting himself to say, “Oh, Ah should of tole yew that it was a mulllatta whoor. Innyways . . .”
My head was reeling by the time Auntie Mame called, “Come in, boys, I’m lonely,” and rescued me from the old bore’s exclusive attentions.
Auntie Mame was stretched out on a sofa drinking champagne, although she was so boiled she could hardly hold her glass. She looked comfortable all right in a whisper of white chiffon trimmed with coq feathers, which kept getting into her drink, her eyes, her nose, and her mouth.
“Come sit by me,” she said, patting the sofa seductively.
I almost broke a leg getting there before Elmore did.
“Hi-yah, Dollfeather!” Cousin Elmore boomed. He was drunk as an owl, but he was certainly holding it better than Auntie Mame, although she had had a head start.
“Patrick, darling,” Auntie Mame said, handing a glass of champagne to Cousin Elmore, “you must be exhausted. Why don’t you run up to bed?”
“Who, me?” I said, all wide-eyed vivacity. “Nonsense. It’s scarcely two-thirty. I’m having a wow of a time. It’s a riot.” I wouldn’t have left Auntie Mame alone with that old goat—in her condition—for a million dollars cash.
“Now donchew worry about Tidbit an’ I, bub,” Elmore said. “With us things is strickly platonic—play foah me an’ tonic foah her! Hahahahahaha!”
That set off a two-hour recitative of hoary old saws which Elmore described as “slightly riss-kay”—jollifications so ancient that Auntie Mame wouldn’t admit to having heard them if she’d been put to the rack. Instead, she smiled sweetly, made pretty little mouses and finally dozed off, sighing, “Beauregard. Beau, darling.”
Around five o’clock I gave her a jab with my elbow and she awoke with a snort. “Heavens, how late it’s become! I’ve had your things put in the room across the hall from me, Cousin Elmore. Just ring when you want your breakfast. What do you usually like?”
“Me? Why, Cupcake, Ah lak a French Breakfast. Yew know what that is, Dollfeather? It’s a roll in bed with honey ! Hahahahahaha!”
I could stand it no more. “I’ll take you upstairs now, Auntie Mame,” I said. Then I added pointedly, “Remember, you’ve got to get up early in the morning.”
“Ah, yes,” Auntie Mame sighed, rising limply to her feet. “Up with the birds.”
“That’s what Ah always say, Mamie, ‘Up with the birds; to bed with innything.’ Hahahahahaha!”
I snatched Auntie Mame out of the room and practically kicked her upstairs. I pushed her into her bedroom and locked the door from the outside. Then I went to my own room and gobbled down half a dozen aspirins. As I was going to sleep I heard Cousin Elmore in the adjoining bedroom humming “Roll Me Over in the Clover.”
KNOWING EXACTLY HOW AUNTIE MAME WOULD BE feeling the following morning, I had sadistically planned a surprise raid on her bedroom at ten sharp and had set my clock accordingly. But before the alarm ever went off I was awakened by Auntie Mame’s frantic pounding on her door and faint cries of “Patrick! Patrick!”
“What’s the matter now,” I said, opening her door, “delirium tremens?”
“Oh, Patrick, thank God you’ve come! The most horrible thing. Of course it’s silly of me to be so upset—I know it’s only a nightmare—but this ghastly man, got up as I—don’t— know—what in the maddest outfit was out on my balcony calling me Horsefeathers, or something like that. . . .”
“Do you mean Dollfeather?”
“Exactly, darling. How did you know? Well, it was simply too ghastly. I mean, there he was as clear as day talking about Tidbits and Cupcakes in that awful Georgia Cracker accent. Almost like one of the Burnsides.”
“It was one of the Burnsides,” I said levelly.
A terrible look of partial recollection came over her face. “P-Patrick,” she began, bluffing it out, “you know when we came home from Bella’s I had the strangest feeling . . .”
“I’m sure you did,” I said.
“Well I don’t know what got into me. . . .”
“I do. Gin. Gin and Vat 69—the pope’s telephone number; hahahahahaha! And then three kinds of wine at dinner and then . . .”
“Patrick, it was the hot sunshine at . . .”
“Hot sunshine, hell. It was cold moonshine. Cold moonshine and Cousin Elmore. Don’t you remember, Uncle Beau’s cousin—Elmore Burnside.”
“Oh, Patrick. I do hope that one of Beau’s relatives didn’t come here and get the wrong impression and . . .”
“I think he may have.”
“Well, I mean I hope he didn’t go away thinking that . . .”
“Right you are. He didn’t go away at all. He’s moved in right across the hall—to stay. You asked him for the whole summer. He . . .”
The bedroom door burst open and there stood Cousin Elmore, dressed like nothing human in a loose-weave lavender mesh sport shirt through which I could see “Mother” tattooed on the right arm, “K K K” on the left. “Hey, Sig-norina Doll-feather! Heah’s yoah ole cousin, Machiavelli—Machiavelli good chop suey! Hahahahaha ha! How’s about a gondo-la ride, Mamie?”
“Is—is that Cousin Elmore?” Auntie Mame whispered hoarsely.
“It is,” I said.
“Patrick,” Auntie Mame croaked, “call Bella!”
AUNTIE MAME’S FRIEND BELLA THRIVED ON CRISIS. I had just managed to propel Cousin Elmore, punning every moment of the time, into Au
ntie Mame’s gondola with instructions in halting Italian to take him for a long, long ride when Bella’s blue boatmen came churning down the canal, the marchesa herself looking like Gorgeous George as Lohengrin in a full-speed-ahead-and-damn-the-torpedoes stance.
Auntie Mame was waiting, stretched out across her unmade bed, a cold towel pressed to her brow.
“Now, ducky,” Bella said in a businesslike manner, “start from the beginning and tell me all. Tell it straight. No play-acting.”
“Well, Bella, darling,” Auntie Mame whimpered, “the trouble is that I can’t. A slight touch of the sun . . .”
“I can,” I said.
“All right, kid,” Bella said, “you tell. And tell all.”
“A pleasure,” I said. Then I began. “Well, it seems that this Cousin Elmore looks quite a lot like Uncle Beau. At least Auntie Mame seemed to think . . .”
“You should have your mouth washed out with soap, you little liar!” Auntie Mame said, rising to a sitting position. “He doesn’t look in the least like . . .”
“Shut up, ducky,” Bella said. “Patrick knows what happened. You don’t. Go on, kid.”
Granted the floor, I gave it everything I had, tucking in— here and there—some rather devastating impersonations of Auntie Mame and Cousin Elmore. I must have done it pretty well because my monologue was interrupted now and then by baleful moans from Auntie Mame and by Bella’s malign chuckling. “And so,” I came reluctantly to a close, “ at Auntie Mame’s gracious invitation, Cousin Elmore is here with us—two trunks and three satchels—for the whole summer. Summer lucky, summer not. Hahahahahaha !”
“Ohhh,” Auntie Mame gasped, “it was the sun. A touch of the sun.”
“It was not,” I said firmly. “You were boiled by the time you left Bella’s.”
Around the World With Auntie Mame Page 12
