Mary McCarthy

by Mary McCarthy

  Ten

  THE FALL days known as “glorious” were over. Warren Coe’s mother’s death and the storm that accompanied it marked the annual break in the weather. A black frost followed, putting an end to Martha’s herbs and Dolly’s swamp foliage. There were no more fairy-ring mushrooms on the golf course or boletus in the woods. The sky clouded over by noon every day, and the wind whistled about the boarded-up summer cottages. The borders of the ponds grew sodden, with only a fringe of wild cranberry. The bay was gray and choppy. Blue jays and woodpeckers kept desolate house in the woods. It would be like this, said Martha, until May, though there might be days in late November when you could swim heroically in the ponds, and days, if you were lucky, in January, when you could ice-skate through the dark afternoons, coming home to hot rum toddies and big fires.

  But in an ordinary year, there would be only a perpetual March, from the first black frost till the shadbush bloomed in May. Winter here was a limbo—a wind-torn parking area, closed shops and inns, vandalism, and divorces. Nearly everybody who could afford to got away, as the phrase went, after Christmas; the rest stayed on creakily, like a skeleton staff. Already, in early November, the village had a forlorn, rejected look. The last permanent summer people had shut up their houses; the last canned luxury items disappeared from the grocery shelves; the ferry from Trowbridge to the mainland had made its last run for the season—to get off the peninsula, you had to go all the way round. Town boys were breaking into summer houses; police and caretakers made their rounds; mice came in from the fields and big rats from the dump. The fish-man from Digby stopped delivering; the laundromat closed up. The sirens of the ambulance and the fire engine shrieked through the night.

  It was the best time of the year, Sandy Gray told Dolly: with the outsiders gone, you finally got the feel of the place. He had been opening scallops, along with the native women, getting $1.50 an hour. Next month, he was going to decorate bureaus for the New Leeds Craftsmen, on a cooperative basis. In January, he would start work at the fish-storage plant, over at North Digby. He was not doing this for the pay check but for the sake of the kids. With the custody case coming up and their whole future at stake, he had pocketed his principles, temporarily, and put himself in the hands of his lawyer, who told him to find a job and make his peace with society. On the advice of his lawyer, too, he had shaved his beard and had his hair cut. First things first, he told Dolly, who regarded these changes with bewilderment. Would you hire a doctor to save your life and then refuse to follow his prescriptions? “But I liked you better the way you were,” she said doubtfully. “That’s because you’re afraid of change,” he explained, in his gentle, gusty voice. “The true individualist has the courage to wear a mask.”

  When she came in her jeep to pick him up the morning the case was scheduled, he was wearing a leather jacket, a pair of dark trousers, and a white silk evening scarf wrapped about his neck in lieu of a necktie. His lawyer, he said, had warned him to appear on time at the courthouse in Trowbridge, in conventional dress, and to see that his witnesses did the same. Dolly’s costume Sandy had chosen himself from her closet—an unbecoming gray tweed suit she had had made up in England. But it worried him that she had no hat. All the way down in the jeep, he kept fuming with impatience and cursing the stop lights and the midmorning traffic in the villages. The judge, he reminded her, was a stickler for punctuality, and his case was third on the docket. “We have plenty of time,” she shouted, repeatedly, over the noise of the jeep. His fretfulness alarmed Dolly. This was not the Sandy she knew. The loss of his beard had done something strange to him. Whenever she glanced at him, sideways, she had a sense that she was intruding. At the same time, she could not help noticing that his chin was recessive.

  She was going to be a character-witness for him. How this had come about she scarcely knew now. How could she testify to his character when she had been in New Leeds exactly one month? But it was not the length of the association but the frequency that counted, Sandy had assured her. For the past two weeks, she had been with him every day. She had ridden pillion on his motorcycle and washed his hair in her basin and helped him deliver furniture, down the peninsula, for the New Leeds Craftsmen. They had gone to see Miles Murphy, while Dolly had waited outside, in the jeep, because of Martha, and they had taken a bottle to call on Sandy’s fourth wife, to persuade her to testify. They had been sharing a Sunday paper and doing the crosswords together. The fact that she had come here as a stranger, said Sandy, would make her testimony more impressive. She had no axe to grind, and the judge would see at a glance that there was no sexual involvement.

  It was true; there was nothing between them. His second wife, Ellen, was coming back in December; he talked about that constantly, when he was not talking about the children and Barney, his lawyer. Her return, he said, could only mean one thing—she wanted him back. Her second husband had finally made a settlement on her, so that she was free now to remarry. Sandy was fixing up his house, to be ready for her; Dolly had been with him to buy curtains and look at some linoleum for the kitchen. He had even had the plumber around, to get an estimate on putting in heat, which he could pay for by selling some pond frontage to a developer. His excitement touched Dolly almost painfully. She had never been so close to a man, on the one hand, or been so disregarded, on the other. After the first day, he never even glanced at her paintings; as soon as he got to know her, his abrupt honest mind had simply dropped the idea that she could ever do anything serious. And after his first enquiries, he paid no heed to her sex. It never occurred to him, apparently, that Dolly could be jealous, or sad that their relationship would end when this “real woman” came back. He never considered her feelings, which made Dolly feel safe with him, though somewhat depreciated, like a thin dime nestling in his pocket, while he reckoned his future in gold. And yet it was wonderful—upsetting and enlightening—to be treated so objectively. Being with him, she had decided, was like posing naked for a life-class: you had to forget the you.

  But now, as she climbed the courthouse steps, looking up at the huge granite columns of the neo-classic front, she felt as if she were awakening from a dream. She had a slight hangover, and her eyes, which had sunk back into her head, had a bleary glazed look; she kept blinking them to focus on her surroundings, as if she had been playing Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. It was the first time she had had any contact with the law, and the courthouse, with its Civil War cannons, inspired her with terror. It belonged in a dark mill town of the nineteenth century—the kind of town she had been born in. Her sense of proportion protested at its presence here, overlooking a village green, a general store, and a double row of clapboard cottages, advertising rooms for tourists, home-made jellies, and sea-captain’s chowder. “Probate court” they were going to, and the very name evoked her childhood, her two aunts, wills, trustees, tombstones, granite faces.

  With her coat-collar turned up and her hands thrust in her pockets, she stood under the portico, alone, taking no notice of the other people passing in and out, her eyes smarting with tears from the bitter wind. Sandy had hurried inside, to confer with his lawyer. When he came out and joined her, lighting his pipe, he was in jubilant spirits because his ex-wife, Clover, was late. Everybody else—the two lawyers, the witnesses—was present and accounted for, inside the gray building. Clover’s lawyer was pacing up and down the corridor and telling Sandy’s lawyer that he had half a mind to throw the case up. She had missed the morning bus, it seemed, and somebody had called the clerk of the court to say that she was hitchhiking. Her ex-stepmother—one of the old-timers here—was trying to calm the lawyer down by explaining Clover’s character. Sandy’s lawyer was very hopeful; he had finally got an affidavit from the New Leeds dentist about the state of the kids’ teeth. She had been feeding them on candy bars and cookies—too lazy to open a can.

  Dolly put her hands to her ears. She did not want to hear any more. It was all true, no doubt; Sandy had convinced her. But these dreadful details, hammered home, had the
effect of dividing her sympathies. “Why shouldn’t she hitchhike?” she said suddenly, in a clear stubborn voice. “My dear, I don’t mind,” said Sandy, smiling. “It’s what the judge will think. Hitchhiking is illegal in this state.” “But she can’t afford a taxi,” argued Dolly, striving to be composed and reasonable. “She should have thought of that before she missed the bus,” Sandy replied. “Everybody else got here. It’s no good feeling sorry for her. We’re all sorry for her; we’ve all tried to help her. She’s a tragic kid, really—a natural delinquent; no mother, father a drunkard, four stepmothers in a row. The leopard can’t change its spots.” He turned up Dolly’s coatsleeve and glanced at her watch.

  “Look,” he said softly. “There she is now.” On the highway below them, a Nehi truck had stopped. Two children and a woman clambered out, waving to the driver. “Watch!” said Sandy, gripping Dolly’s arm, as the boy and girl raced across the road, without looking either way to see whether any cars were coming. “I wish the judge could have seen that,” he added, when they had safely crossed the road, followed by their mother. An afterthought struck him. “You saw it!” he cried, elatedly, tightening his hold on her arm. “Put it in your testimony. I’ll tell Barney to ask you about it.” “I couldn’t,” said Dolly faintly. Sandy had made her believe that she would not be harming Clover if she merely testified to his character; some of his best friends were going to be character-witnesses on her side, and he did not hold it against them. But now he wanted her to go further, and he dropped her arm impatiently when she tried to explain that she could not magnify this little incident on the road into criminal negligence. “I know, I know,” he said. “You ‘don’t want to take sides.’ ”

  Hurt, Dolly made her way into the building; the court was sitting on the second floor. “Barney” had told her where to go, but she took the wrong staircase and got lost. She hated the lawyer and the effect he was having on Sandy. He kept warning Sandy that the courts favored the mother, and that Sandy would lose the case if he did not “get in there and fight.” He had been very short with Dolly, when Sandy had brought her to his office, to be rehearsed in her testimony. As soon as he heard that she had known Sandy only a month, he had slammed down his pencil. He pretended that Sandy had given him the impression that they had known each other before. When Dolly said no, firmly, he shot her a peculiar look and suggested that they might have known each other “in the big city.” “You being a painter and him being an art critic, it would stand to reason that you’d met.” “No,” Dolly had repeated, lowering her gaze. “I’m afraid your testimony won’t be of much help then,” he said irritably, shutting up a folder. “I told him that!” cried Dolly, indignant. “Oh, well,” sighed the lawyer. “Let’s take down what you’ve got. You never know what the judge will stand for. Unmarried, I take it,” he said, pulling a pad of yellow paper to him.

  Contempt for her scruples, Dolly felt, underscored those last words and the measuring, smooth look that accompanied them. He diagnosed her, she inwardly protested—as if telling the truth were a symptom, like being unmarried, like, if he only knew it, her dainty, fainthearted canvases stacked against the wall, unfinished. She began to feel guilty, as though she had to explain herself. He wanted to know what she was doing here, out of season. Mentioning the Sinnotts, Dolly flushed. Because of Sandy, she had hardly seen them since the play-reading. She did not dare think what they would say if they knew she had let herself get involved in the custody suit. “Sinnott?” said the lawyer. “Oh yes, the girl in the nightgown. She’s back again, I hear.” Dolly nodded. “Come to think of it, you look kind of alike. Same type.” “We went to college together,” murmured Dolly, as if in extenuation. “Uh huh,” said the lawyer, writing. By the time she left the office and joined Sandy outside, on the motorcycle, she felt she had done wrong not to stretch her testimony a little. But when she told Sandy what had happened, saying that she was sorry, he wearily cut her off. “Why should you lie for me?” he said. “Barney didn’t expect that. It was just a misunderstanding.”

  A janitor showed Dolly into the courtroom. Another case was being heard. She settled herself on a bench and peered around. On her left, at a little desk, was a man in a blue uniform with a star. High up, on a platform, at a long table, was the judge, a long-nosed man in a black robe, like a college professor’s. The witness stand, at his right, was empty; the judge was whispering with two men, who, Dolly presumed, were lawyers. On the far side of the room, by the window, stood Barney, looking out. “Divorce case,” a man next to Dolly informed her. When the testimony resumed, and a big black-haired woman took the stand, nobody paid any attention, except the judge and the two lawyers. People kept passing in and out, in desultory style, rather, Dolly thought, like tourists in a European church, where a droning mass was being said in one of the chapels. The proceedings seemed very lifeless; she had to strain her ears to catch what the witness was saying, in a monotone, like a lesson learned. It was a case, apparently, of wife-beating. “Two beautiful big black eyes,” she heard the witness intone, and the lawyer picked up the phrase and repeated it, like a chant. Then, before Dolly knew it, the case was over, and the man in the blue uniform was calling their case: Alexander Gray against Clover Gray. Nearly everybody in the courtroom moved forward, past a brass railing, and Dolly moved with them and took her seat on a wooden bench at the right. Sandy was not yet in the courtroom, and all these people, at first glance, were strangers to Dolly. She found herself sitting next to a tall white-haired man in a sort of cowboy costume, with a sombrero on his knees. Across the room, to her surprise, she recognized the milkman, in a pink shirt and Windsor tie.

  The courtroom door swung open, and Clover sauntered in, accompanied by a small gray-haired man with a briefcase. She had little bright blue eyes, like Christmas tree bulbs, lit up. Her brown hair was pulled up in a horse’s tail, with a big plaid ribbon tied around it. She had on a great deal of rouge, and her lipstick had come off on her front teeth. She wore an old, shapeless winter coat, red knee socks, moccasins, and a plaid skirt and vest. The skirt was much too big for her, and to Dolly’s eyes, she looked pathetically unreal, like a child painted up and dressed in adult clothes to beg on the street at Thanksgiving. The two children had disappeared. She was walking straight toward Dolly, who lowered her eyes and laced her fingers on her lap. “Aren’t you in the wrong pew?” Clover said, in a deep husky voice.

  Dolly started and looked about her in perplexity. “You’re his witness, aren’t you?” said Clover. “These are my witnesses.” Dolly reddened and jumped up, dropping her pocketbook. The uniformed man, the sheriff, was hurrying toward her. Somebody handed her her pocketbook. The whole courtroom stared while Dolly changed places. She stumbled into a seat at the end of the front row, by the witness stand, while across the room Clover took the seat she had vacated. The two “teams” of witnesses, facing each other, made Dolly think of a spelling bee or a give-away program on television. She could not imagine where they had come from, where the lawyers had found them; they were like professional mourners, too, or like floaters rounded up to vote in an election. She could not remember seeing any of them, except the milkman, before. But gradually she began to recognize faces. At the end of the back row, on her side, was Sandy’s fourth wife, Margery, the girl who worked in the grille. Across the room, on Clover’s side, was the oysterman. Next to him was one of the New Leeds Craftsmen; Dolly had not known him, with his hair combed and a shave. All of them were transformed for the occasion; that was what had confused her. In their ordinary gear, she had been seeing them every day at the post office or the First National check-out. But now they wore “city clothes” or, to be exact, parts of them. One man had on striped trousers over bare feet and sandals; another had a necktie and pearl stickpin with a pea jacket. Ancient waistcoats, long earrings, tarnished metal blouses, old fur pieces, a gold watch chain with a Phi Beta Kappa key, velvets, nodding plumes, a motoring veil, proclaimed the community’s notion of a solid respectable front. The man next to Dol
ly wore a white suit, like Mark Twain. But his feet, she could not help noticing, were in leather bedroom slippers. It was the same all along the row: an uneven satin hemline ended in bare legs and tennis shoes; a black tailleur, in a set of espadrilles. A kind of defiance, evidently, had set in with the feet, which refused to render unto Caesar.

  A strange smell rose from the witnesses—a combination of stale alcohol and mothballs. Dolly could still taste last night’s liquor on her own breath, and she wondered whether these perfumes could be wafted up to the judge. Just below her, near the sheriff’s desk, sat a small woman in a plain suit, with a notebook and briefcase. The man next to Dolly leaned over. “S.P.C.C.,” he whispered, cupping his mouth with one hand while his elbow nudged Dolly in the ribs. “S.P.C.C.,” he repeated, opening his red-rimmed eyes very wide.

  Dolly stared miserably at the network of empurpled veins in his cheeks. To her horror, she had begun to feel ashamed of these New Leedsians and to look upon them with the eyes of an outsider—the caseworker, the judge. Nearly all of them seemed the worse for drink, swollen and dropsical, or lean and red, with popping eyes and stiff veins and shaking hands. Several of the men had bits of dried blood on their faces, where they had cut themselves, apparently, while shaving. One young man—he could not have been more than thirty—had stone-gray hair and a face as white as leprosy; his arm was in a sling. And yet they were all in good spirits. It was only she who was depressed and self-conscious. Dolly could hear them discussing the judge. “He always favors the woman,” said a young man in a corduroy coat and turtle-necked sweater. “I had him when Carol divorced me.” “You’re wrong, darling,” said an old woman in slacks. “I had him and he cut off the maintenance.”