Around the World With Auntie Mame

by Dennis, Patrick

  I WAS GETTING INTO MY DINNER JACKET WHEN Auntie Mame poked her head in at the door and said, “Where do you think you’re going, my little love? Or is it the custom to dine at home in black tie in this provincial backwater?”

  “I—I promised to take Lucia Cantwell to the club dance,” I said with complete honesty.

  “Oh. That’s nice. She’s a sweet thing, in spite of her old beast of a mother. Well, have fun. I plan on a tray in my room. Then I shall dip into the new books from the club library. So up to date! I don’t know whether to begin with The Green Hat or Three Weeks. Try to be home at a reasonable hour, darling.”

  THE HOUR OF MY RETURN COULDN’T HAVE BEEN more reasonable. Twenty minutes later, pumps in hand, I was tiptoeing up the stairs, having deposited Lucia with her lover in the leafy gazebo behind Auntie Mame’s house. I was just congratulating myself on how suavely I’d handled the whole thing when the lights went on and there stood Auntie Mame in her peignoir, a pearl-handled revolver pointed in the general direction of my crotch. “Hands up or I’ll . . . Patrick!”

  “Put that thing down,” I said. “You could hurt someone.”

  “What are you doing home so soon?”

  “Oh,” I said, “Lucia got sick and couldn’t go. Confined to her bed with a temperature of . . .”

  “Patrick,” Auntie Mame said calmly, “you’re lying in your teeth, for I was brushing mine when I saw you and Lucia leave the Cantwells’ house. She was wearing white organdy with a gathered fichu—very pretty. I don’t know where the girl gets her taste. Now tell me the truth.”

  I had little choice. So I told her.

  “Ah, Patrick,” she said, when I was finished, “my fond and foolish boy. How often have I told you never ever to meddle in other people’s lives. Where do you suppose I would be today if I hadn’t made it my business not to make my business of other people’s business, if you follow me.”

  “I think you’d be married to Basil Fitz-Hugh and several other things that you’re not. For God’s sake, they’re nice kids. Just go back to your reading and let them neck in your garden. They’re not hurting anybody.”

  “That was both rude and insulting, Patrick. They are both under age and, as a woman with a difficult problem in child-rearing myself, I feel it my duty . . .”

  “Oh, come off it, Mrs. Siddons,” I said angrily.

  “I feel it my duty to telephone their mothers and tell them. . . . On the other hand, that would necessitate talking to both Mrs. Cantwell and Mrs. Mont d’Or and I’m not quite up to that. However, I cannot countenance their doing whatever it is they’re doing in my garden. You will please to fetch them forthwith, Patrick.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Very well. You give me no other choice. I shall do it myself.” With that she was skittering down the stairs. “Go to your room!”

  “Talking about meddling!” I yelled after her.

  THE MOONLIGHT WAS SO BRIGHT THAT I COULD plainly see Auntie Mame drifting across the lawn toward the gazebo. I also realized that she had seen me just as plainly a few minutes earlier. Then I saw the surprised lovers being shepherded back into the house. It seemed to me that a woman as broad-minded as Auntie Mame, who was always pushing people to the very verge of unvirtue, was acting mighty peculiarly. I waited for a few minutes after the sinners were driven from the garden. Nothing happened. An hour passed; then another. Then I went to bed. It was after two when I awoke to find Auntie Mame shaking me. “What is it now, Mrs. Grundy?”

  “Get up, Patrick! Get up. Put your evening clothes on again and take Lucia home from the dance. I didn’t raise you to be the sort of cad who takes a girl out and doesn’t bring her back. If you’re going to Live a Lie, you’ve got to go through with it. ‘O what a tangled web we weave/When first we practise to deceive.’ That’s Shakespeare and it’s true!”

  “That’s Scott and it stinks. And so do you, you old busy-body.”

  “Enough, Patrick. Dress immediately and then return Lucia to her loved ones.”

  I’D EXPECTED LUCIA TO BE DISTRAUGHT, TEARY, suicidal, and a lot of other things that might be hard to take. Instead, she was absolutely radiant—and just a little drunk— as I steered her homeward. “Oh, Patrick,” she said, looking at me with starry eyes, “your aunt is the most amazing woman I ever met. Absolutely remarkable.”

  “She certainly is,” I said, glumly, pushing open the Cantwell door.

  “Have a good time, Lee-ew-sha?” I heard the old battle-ax call. “Why don’t you bring that nice young man in for some orange squash?”

  “Good night,” I said, and hotfooted it back home.

  WHEN I GOT UPSTAIRS, ALL THE LIGHTS WERE ON and Auntie Mame was waiting in the hall. “Ah, Patrick,” she said, “just in time for a cozy little chat.”

  “I’m just in time to go back to bed. It’s almost daybreak.”

  “Come, my little love,” she said, clutching my sleeve and dragging me into her room. “You know there was such an odd play on Broadway years ago. It was Abie’s Irish Rose. Dreadful, of course, but it ran for thousands of performances.”

  “Well, I didn’t see a one of them, thank God. Now good night.”

  “Sit down, damn you! You started this thing and now I’m going to finish it.”

  “If you’d only finish talking and . . . Finish what?”

  “Why, Sammy and Lucia, darling. Of course. I mean they’re such sweet, levelheaded, attractive youngsters—although with those ghastly mothers I don’t know how they can be. And, oh Patrick, they’re so in love. So in love and so young and so helpless with no one older and wiser to guide them to their ultimate goal—marriage.”

  “Marriage? My God, Auntie Mame, what do you think you’re . . .”

  “Well, you started it all, my little love, aiding and abetting those romantic young . . .”

  “I didn’t start anything. I took Lucia to your mosquito-ridden old summerhouse so she could see her boy friend. Now you’re trying to tuck them into bed. Talk about not meddling and minding your own business . . .”

  “There are times, Patrick, when one’s heart dictates and one must obey.”

  “Your heart isn’t dictating a damned thing. You’re bored silly in this place. At least you were until you found a couple of lives to tamper with tonight. And so now you’re going to set the whole town on its ear by . . .”

  Although she tried gamely, Auntie Mame was unable to suppress a maddening little smile. “Perhaps Shufti is not the most stimulating of communities. But it may become so. Besides, I think that Sammy and Lucia deserve to be . . .”

  “I think you deserve to be drowned in sheep-dip. I won’t lift a finger to . . .”

  “Very well, my little love, then I shall have to plan without you. You may go now.”

  “Good night!” I roared and slammed out of her room.

  I OVERSLEPT THE NEXT MORNING AND AWOKE JUST in time to see what I thought, at first sleepy glance, was Auntie Mame trudging across the garden toward the Cantwell house. Of course I realized that it couldn’t be Auntie Mame because this apparition was wearing a shapeless sack of a dress that seemed to be made of an old chintz bedspread. She carried a Roman-striped shawl over one arm, a basket of woebegone flowers over the other, and her feet were slapping along in what looked like my old saddle shoes. Then in a terrible flash of recognition, I dashed to the closet. My saddle shoes were gone. So, too, was the spread from my bed.

  In a rage, I bathed and shaved and threw on some clothes. “I won’t be home for lunch,” I yelled at Ito. “I’ll eat at the club. Anything to be out of this madhouse.” Ito giggled helplessly.

  I had a perfectly foul meal in the club dining room and then went down to the dressing room to get into my bathing things. A swim should at least cool me off. The first person I saw was Seymour Mont d’Or, struggling feverishly with his shirt buttons.

  “Just going in for a dip?” I asked, almost too embarrassed to look at him.

  “Just coming out! Boy, let me tell you, that aunt of your
s! There’s nobody else like her.”

  “And that’s all to the good. But listen to me, Sammy; don’t listen to her. Don’t . . .” By that time, only half buttoned up, he was gone.

  I put on my briefest pair of trunks, hoisting them well up the thighs and rolling the top down, so that if Auntie Mame was trying to play the Watch and Ward Society for Mrs. Cantwell, I’d at least be a disgrace to her.

  The sun was blinding when I got out to the pool. I made a visor of my hand and squinted at the Cantwell cabana. It was vacant. Then I heard an unmistakable voice trilling, “Hélas! Mais Sari, ma chère, if you think the Schiaparelli bathing suits are brief you should try the ones designed by Pamplemouse,” Auntie Mame shrilled.

  “Pamplemouse, Mame, chérie?” Mrs. Mont d’Or asked, fascinated.

  “Mais oui, bébé, he has un atelier divin on the rue Blondell. Of course he won’t design for just anyone, naturellement, but my dear friend the Duchess du Pont-Eveque— née Miss Patty du Clam—introduced me there. He calls this little numéro Banana Bandanna.”

  I looked and gasped. Auntie Mame had taken a long yellow muffler of mine and divided it, like Gaul, in three parts. One was wrapped about her loins—just; the second served as the most inadequate of brassières; the third—and by far the largest—section served as a turban, even more towering than Mrs. Mont d’Or’s. In addition she was hung with gold, with amber, with topazes and canary diamonds. Mrs. Mont d’Or, in violet and aquamarines, looked conservative beside Auntie Mame. Conservative, but eager.

  “Do go on, Mame chérie,” Mrs. Mont d’Or said. “One feels so, um, passé, so fin de siècle way out here and not au courant with . . .”

  “Yoo hoo, Patrick, mon petit trésor, j’attend,” Auntie Mame screamed.

  “Well, you can damned well attend until enfer freezes over if you think I’m going to be seen with you in that indecent . . .”

  She drowned me out. “Zut! Regardez, Sari, le pauvre petit in that union suit he’s wearing. Droll, hein? How I wish I could get him into something chic et moderne—a kind of, uh, how-you-say cache de sexe.”

  Enraged, I stretched my bathing trunks to cover as much of me as possible. “I have a message for you, Auntie Mame,” I called sweetly.

  “From whom, mon petit trésor?”

  “It’s very urgent and confidential,” I said. That brought her on the run, although I feared for her hastily improvised bathing suit.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Like midnight at Minsky’s. What the hell do you think you’re got up as, anyhow? If Mrs. Cantwell ever saw you in that rig she’d have you run in, and I wouldn’t blame her. It’s the most disgusting . . .”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that old spoilsport. I’ve sent her to Beirut in the Rolls to buy binoculars and our bird logs. And since you weren’t here to fetch and carry for me, I had to send Sammy Mont d’Or on the most important errand. That errand is Lucia and they should be in each other’s arms at this very moment. Meanwhile, I’m having a perfectly marvelous time wowing Maman Mont d’Or with all the latest fashion tidbits. Of course I just make them up, but she believes every word. Do you think I might go in for designing beach wear?” she asked as she posed elegantly at the rim of the pool.

  “Not if you want to keep on this side of the law,” I said.

  “Well, you’re holding up my entire campaign. What’s this important message?”

  “It’s this,” I said, noticing that Mrs. Mont d’Or was engrossed with her lipstick, trying to duplicate the Ubangi mouth Auntie Mame had effected. “Go soak your head!” I gave Auntie Mame a slight shove and was rewarded by a resounding splash. Then I stomped off toward the dressing room.

  “Patrick!” Auntie Mame cried. “Patrick! For God’s sake throw me a towel!” I turned around to look and found the three parts of Auntie Mame’s bathing costume floating, independent of Auntie Mame and one another, toward the shallow end of the pool.

  THE NEXT MORNING AUNTIE MAME WAS UP WITH the birds—literally. I heard a lot of yoo-hooing and hallooing about sunrise and saw Auntie Mame loping toward Mrs. Cantwell in an outfit that only I could describe—because every stitch of it belonged to me—burdened with binoculars, sandwiches, and a guide to our feathered friends. The mainstay of her costume was an old turtle-neck sweater of mine, which reached almost mid-thigh. Beneath it was a dowdy pleated skirt made of the dust ruffle from my bed. She was wearing my best English knee-length hose, my brogues—with tongues—and my pork-pie hat, pulled down to the level of my sunglasses.

  “How radiant yew look, dear Mrs. Burnside—may I call you Mame?” Mrs. Cantwell bawled. “Now, off to gaze at our birdies.”

  “What fun, Lucy!” Auntie Mame called.

  As they stalked up the hillside, I saw Lucia dash out of her house and Sammy dash out of his to embrace in Auntie Mame’s garden.

  “Oh, my poor feet,” Auntie Mame groaned at high noon when she had bade a ladylike farewell to Mrs. Cantwell. She sagged up to her room and kicked my brogues and quite a lot of sand across the carpet. “I’m simply sweltering under this sweater of yours. I . . .”

  Just then Mrs. Mont d’Or’s cockatoo voice cried up from the lawn. “Mame! Mame, chérie! Bon jour! I’ve come to kidnap you. We’re driving to Aley for petit dejeuner! I want you to meet my friends.”

  “Oh God!” Auntie Mame groaned. Then she threw off my hat, fluffed her hair, and leaned out of the window. “Mag nifique, Sari, chérie! I’ll be right down.”

  “What are you going to wear this time, adhesive tape?”

  “I’ll think of something. Even if it’s terrible, I can always tell her it’s next year’s.”

  It was terrible all right. She took off all of my clothes except the turtle-neck sweater. She pushed the sleeves up above her elbows, put on all her bracelets and all her pearls, painted on her Ubangi mouth, and stepped into a pair of high-heeled sandals. “How do I look?”

  “What pretty kneecaps,” I said. “Hey, don’t stretch that sweater down any farther, it’s all out of shape as it . . .” She was gone before I could say more. Below I could hear Mrs. Mont d’Or and her two overdressed friends groaning in ecstasy. “How chic! How divine. Très jolie! Where did you get it, Chanel? Combien?”

  THAT NIGHT AUNTIE MAME, MORE DEAD THAN alive, entertained the Cantwells and Lucia at a New England boiled dinner. She looked a bit like Marie Dressler in a smart shroud made from my best blue dressing gown adorned with a strand of coral beads. She wore no make-up. The turtle-neck sweater was again called into play, this time ripped to shreds and stabbed through with two meat skewers. From time to time Auntie Mame pretended to be knitting.

  Grape juice was served, and Auntie Mame’s conversation was just about as intoxicating. “Ah, when I was a girl at the convent, the dear sisters—Episcopalian, of course, Lucy, dear,” she added hastily, allaying Mrs. Cantwell’s dark suspicions of popery—“were ever so particular about our work with the needle. Ouch!” Her lips formed a short and most unholy word. “In my debutante year I wore the loveliest lace bertha. Daddy would have died if my, um, bosom—excuse me, Mr. Cantwell—had been uncovered.” Over the tapioca she went into a long discourse about the old families being the best families. Ours, it appeared, was the very oldest. Sanka was served.

  Mrs. Cantwell was purring with contentment when Auntie Mame said, “And now, Patrick, you and Lucia may be excused to go to the movies. It’s Little Women, Lucy—so sweet, if a trifle dikey. And we old people will just sit here and reminisce about the good old days—the cotillions, the horse-cars, the hobble skirts.”

  “Such a pity your nice nephew is a few months younger than Lucia,” Mrs. Cantwell was saying as we left.

  “Nonsense, dear Lucy,” Auntie Mame said, “age means nothing in marriage. Why Mrs. Mont d’Or tells me that you’re years older than Humphrey. Don’t be too late, children. No need to worry, Lucy; the Roxy’s just a short way from here.”

  As soon as we got outside, Sammy materialized. Mrs. Mont d’Or had been tol
d that he, too, was going to the Roxy with me—a stag evening.

  “Gee, thanks, pal,” he said. “Pick us up after the movies.” They went off to the garden.

  I went to Little Women—with Arabic subtitles.

  When I got home to tell the lovers that Little Women had finally ended, Auntie Mame’s house and the Cantwell house were dark, while the Mont d’Or house was ablaze with lights. There was no sign of Auntie Mame, but as I was getting into bed she appeared, looking like Sadie Thompson in a naked, scarlet satin rag that was slit to the thigh. It was pretty outlandish, but at least it had never been mine.

  “My God, what have you done,” I said, “decided to take the Cantwells on a tour of the brothels?”

  “Oh, no, darling. They’ve been gone for ages. I had Ito put sleeping pills in their Sanka and they were nodding by nine. So I just slipped into something cool—and the ice—and trotted over to Sari’s for some late revels with the local Fast Set.”

  “How were they?”

  “Deadly. Lots of minor French Colonials, some Belgians, some Greeks, a ve-ry few wealthy Lebanese, some of those Silly Ass professional English, and some shrill international pansies. All rich, naturally, and most of them with eligible daughters!”

  “Was it frightfully gay?”

  “Both. Gay and frightful. I mean they all try so hard. They’re stuck out here a million miles from nowhere with nobody to impress but one another and so that’s what they do all day every day. It’s almost incestuous. And the pretense! Some of them haven’t been back home for ten years, but they’d die before they’d admit it. All they talk about are European resorts and restaurants and night clubs and dressmakers and playwrights that have been forgotten ages ago. They all scream with laughter at the dreariest old saws. They’re not very hard to fool. And their gaiety is so desperate! Actually, they’re just as dreary as Lucy Cantwell’s crowd, but noisier and showier about it.”

  “Is it the Golden Ghetto sort of thing?”

  “No, Patrick, not at all. And that’s what I think is so very sad about Sari Mont d’Or. If she’d simply admit that she’s just a Bronx housewife whose husband struck it rich and forget all this haut monde crap, she wouldn’t be half bad. But no. She’s going to be the Madame Pompadour of this silly little place. Swanking about, tucking in her bits and pieces of fashion magazine French, changing her nice old husband’s name—it’s actually Hyman Julius Goldberg and he asked me to call him Julius—and driving poor Sammy into what she considers a desirable life. There’s nothing of the warm Jewish mother about her at all. She’s as hard as her diamonds and every bit as cold.”