Ten North Frederick

by John O'Hara

  “You have, too. It’s just a different kind.”

  “It’s so different that I’m damn glad I don’t have to exert any authority over any of those men. They’d tell me to go to hell. And I’d go.”

  “By a different kind of authority I meant that men like that recognize your ability in your field. It isn’t a question of whether you can boss them around or not.”

  “Oh, that. Well, I’m good at my job, sure.”

  “That’s all you’re supposed to be. If the Governor rushed across the room to light your cigarette—I saw him do that for the lame man—it wouldn’t make you feel any better, or more important. You’re responsible for the education of almost three thousand kids and your budget is almost half a million dollars, for teachers’ salaries alone.”

  “If you only knew it, honey, you aren’t making me feel more important. You’re making me feel less. I’m not responsible for the education of three thousand kids, and nobody knows that better than you. And as far as my budget is concerned, there were men there today that have incomes, personal incomes, as big as my whole teaching salary item. So calm down, honey. I’m just sore at myself for saying I’d be a pallbearer for a man I hardly knew. I don’t like to be used.”

  “Well, they didn’t invite you, Waldemar. They invited the Superintendent of Schools. They thought old Chapin was that important, and why complain? You’re just as annoyed when people like that ignore the school system.”

  They were at their front door. “Naturally I left my door key in my other suit,” said Carl.

  “I have mine,” said Amy. She took it out of her purse and handed it to him and he opened the door and allowed her to precede him. When he had closed the door he put his hand under her bottom and squeezed.

  “Stop goosing me!” she said.

  “You thought you were getting away with calling me Waldemar.”

  She smiled. “I wondered if you noticed.”

  “I warn you, one of these days—right out on the main street. You’ll call me Waldemar, and I’ll give it to you.”

  “You do and you’ll be sorry,” she said. “I wonder how long we’d last here if you ever did.”

  “‘Why did you leave Gibbsville, Pennsylvania?’ Well, you see I was walking along the main drag and my wife called me by my real first name, so I goosed her. She has a nice little ass, only it’s not so little any more.”

  “All right, all right. Do you want a cup of coffee, with saccharin?”

  “Yes. I’ll go upstairs and change my suit. Do you know why superintendents get more money? Because they have to wear suits all the time, and teachers can wear slacks.”

  “And change your tie,” she said.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” he said.

  “Black ties remind me of funerals.”

  Amy Johnson put the kettle on, stashed away her coat and hat, and got out the cups and saucers, the spoons, the top-milk, the saccharin bottle. Carl appeared in the kitchen as the water came to a boil. He was carrying his coat and vest, which he draped over the back of a kitchen chair.

  “If you weren’t a Phi Bete would you wear a vest?”

  “If I had a dollar for every time you’ve asked me that.”

  “But you always have a different answer,” she said.

  “Well, let me think of one for this time,” he said. “If I didn’t have a Phi Bete key, maybe I wouldn’t have a vest.”

  “I’ve had that answer before.”

  “I was afraid so,” he said. “Well, would I wear a vest if I weren’t a Phi Bete? You don’t wear a vest, you never wear your key. Would you wear a vest if you didn’t have a Phi Bete key? There is a switch. You have a key, you never wear a vest. If you didn’t have the key, would you wear a vest?”

  “Have some coffee,” she said. “Are you going to the office right away?”

  “As soon as I drink my coffee and smoke one cigarette.”

  “Why don’t you hang around a little while longer? The children will be home shortly. You’ll probably work late and this would be a good chance to see them.”

  “Maybe I will,” he said.

  “You might as well,” she said. “You’ve already put in a day’s work, but nobody’s going to consider it a day’s work, going to an important funeral. Most people would say a schoolteacher should consider himself darn lucky to be with such important people.”

  “In a way they’d be right,” said her husband.

  “I refuse to give luck much credit. We’ve worked hard.”

  “So have a lot of other men and women we know. Let’s just say I’m lucky to have got this far, but not lucky in that I don’t seem to have the knack of using people. Brice Conley. Think of what Brice Conley would have done today, with all those big shots.”

  “Don’t forget, part of it would have been Dot Conley. She’d have had them all back to her house.”

  “Can’t you see us entertaining that group? The Governor of the state, the partner in J. P. Morgan and Company, and so forth and so forth.”

  “No, but I can see Dot and Brice Conley doing it.”

  “Well, they like to do it, and Brice’s job pays twelve thousand and mine pays nine. We’re doing what we like to do, and they’re doing what they like to do. Three thousand a year difference in their favor, so from the financial point of view what they like to do is three thousand dollars better than what we like to do.”

  “You’ll pass Brice and leave him way behind.”

  “Maybe, but on a day like today I wish I had more of what Brice has and fewer principles.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Carl. He inhaled his cigarette and examined it. “What did you have to do to get a pack of Philip Morrises?”

  “Mm. Wouldn’t you like to know? I got two packs.”

  “You had to do it twice.”

  “No, just once. Anybody can get one pack. I got two.”

  “Oh, proficient,” he said.

  “Very,” she said. “Tomorrow I’m going to get three packs.”

  “All right,” said her husband. “But when he starts giving you a carton, I’m going to complain.”

  “Why should you complain? You’re the one that smokes most of them.”

  “I know, but it’s the principle of the thing. If I could only go out and earn my own cigarettes.”

  “You poor man,” said Amy. “You want some more coffee?”

  “All right,” said her husband.

  She poured the coffee and he watched the fragment of saccharin dissolving.

  “All right, what’s on your mind?” she said.

  “What’s on my mind? Well—Gibbsville, at the moment. It’s an interesting place.”

  “Why?”

  “Of course any town is interesting, but this place is getting to be an interesting experience. It’s the only place where we really started from scratch. In college we knew a lot about college beforehand. Columbia, we’d heard about New York and knew quite a little about it. And the other towns where we’ve worked, either you had some previous connection with it or I did, or both of us did.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I’m finding out about this town. It’s kind of a bastard town. It’s supposed to be a coal town, or at least that’s how it was always described for us. But you never see any miners on the streets.”

  “It’s a coal capital, like Scranton.”

  “Yes. But so many of the so-called first families, they don’t seem to have anything to do with coal. Some of them own farms, some own timber land. Small factories. The steel mill. Silk mill. Shirt factories. It’s a highly skilled town. The other day I saw a list of college graduates that live here, and there isn’t a major college in the East or Middle West that wasn’t represented—with one exception. Do you know what that was?”

  “Yale.” />
  “Lord, no. It’s full of Yale men, but you were close. I couldn’t find one graduate of Harvard College. Penn State leads, then Lehigh, because of so many men with engineering training, I guess. Then the University of Pennsylvania, then Yale, and after Yale I think Lafayette or Muhlenberg.”

  “Anybody from Illinois?”

  “Yes, I told you, all the Western Conference.”

  “Who from Illinois?”

  “A man named Sanders, works for the Power & Light Company. He was in the class of ’22. I haven’t met him yet. He was a Zeta Psi.”

  “What was this list for?”

  “Oh, they’re thinking of starting a University Club. They tried it once before, years ago, and it didn’t pan out because anybody that could afford a club joined the Gibbsville Club. But now the Gibbsville Club has a waiting list as long as your arm and some fellows would like to have a place to go that isn’t the Elks.”

  “To get away from their wives.”

  “Very likely, among other reasons.”

  “And you’re going to join this University Club?”

  “I haven’t said anything either way. In one way the Gibbsville Club would be better for me, but the new one has its advantages too.”

  “As the Superintendent of Schools you join the Gibbsville Club, but as a nice guy you join the new one. Right?”

  “I’ve been told I can get in the Gibbsville Club through a special dispensation.”

  “Does the dispensation dispense with dues and initiation?”

  “It does not,” he said. “But there’s a possibility I might not have to pay anything to be a member of the new club.”

  “Then join that,” said Amy.

  “No, seriously.”

  “I’m being serious. That’s the one you can afford, and it’ll look better for you to be in a club you can afford than one that everybody knows is too expensive.”

  “You know, you’re right,” said Carl. “And tell the Gibbsville Club people—”

  “That you’re getting in the new club for free.”

  “No, then they’ll think I’m hinting for a free membership at the Gibbsville Club.”

  “Well?”

  “No.”

  “If the Gibbsville Club will make it easy for you to join, they must want you, but you can’t afford the expense.”

  “Maybe I can’t afford not to join.”

  “You weren’t a member when they hired you. Problems, problems. But I can’t get too excited over this one. How much does the Gibbsville Club cost?”

  “I think it’s two hundred initiation and a hundred a year.”

  “Well, that solves that problem. Unless you want to make a few speeches and get paid for them, and then join.”

  “They’d probably want me to make speeches after I became a member.”

  “And without paying you. They want you in other words to shell out three hundred dollars to deprive yourself of the opportunity of making yourself a few hundred dollars. The more I think of it, the less I like the Gibbsville Club. What was originally on your mind when we started to talk about Gibbsville?”

  “Let me see. Way back?”

  “Yes, before we got onto this club stuff, which I can tell you I don’t like any part of. Three hundred dollars. Let’s make a list of things we could do with three hundred dollars and see how far down the list this club would be. Insurance, dentist, medical bills, clothes for growing children, vacation money, ten dresses for me, four suits for you, income tax, war bonds, new washing machine after the war. The longer I make the list the lower down the club gets.”

  “They want us to join the country club.”

  “After the war, if we’re still here, then we can discuss the country club. The country club makes some sense. The children can swim there, and play tennis, but let’s wait and see if we stay in Gibbsville, this interesting town.”

  “That’s what I was saying.”

  “I know. We finally got back to it. You were saying something about its being a highly skilled town.”

  “It is,” said Carl. “I imagine Schenectady, New York, is highly skilled, all those electrical engineers and practical men. But this place is interesting because it’s diversified, and we weren’t led to expect that. Do you know how many breweries there are in this town?”

  “A lot.”

  “Five.”

  “That is a lot, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is,” he said. “What I’ve been thinking about is that this town ought to be going places after the war. There’ll be a let-down. There always is after a war. But not as bad as if the coal business were the only thing they had to depend on. There’ll be a big building program, all over the country, and right here. And what does that mean? How does that affect us? Schools. Bigger and better schools, and being superintendent is going to be a bigger and better job. And it’s going to be better, if not bigger, in our field, because with such a high percentage of college-trained and skilled men, education is going to be terribly important. If we were living in a mill town, with most of the people working with their hands, the laboring class—well, you know what that would be. Less interest in education. But every college man wants his children to be college men, and won’t settle for less. And they’ll take an active interest in education.”

  “And think they can do it better than you can.”

  “Let them think it, if they’ll let me do it,” said Carl.

  “This is the first time you’ve waxed so enthusiastic about Gibbsville. How come? Has it been gestating, or is it sudden?”

  “Both. I’ve been looking, studying, taking walks and talking to people. But I guess what got me started today was going to that funeral. A man that never did much, never really accomplished much, and from what I gather wasn’t terribly popular—nevertheless you saw that funeral. Really impressive. I said to myself, ‘What if I died? What kind of a turnout would I get?’ Put aside the morbid aspects, and by gosh it was a stimulating experience. This is a good town, Amy, and we could do a lot worse than spend the rest of our lives here.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, can’t you show a little enthusiasm? I don’t expect much, but a little.”

  “I’ll save my enthusiasm for when you need it. Right now you don’t need any extra.”

  “Oh.”

  “I did a little thinking today, too, if you want to hear about it.”

  “Of course I do,” he said.

  “Well, I put myself in her place, Mrs. Chapin’s. A big, respectable turnout, a lot of important people, crowds in the streets, and everything but a brass band. But what has she got? She has no husband, she has a daughter that I understand is a bit of a nymph, and a son that hasn’t amounted to anything and probably never will. You were stimulated, but the whole thing depressed me, if you want to know.”

  “Oh.”

  “And the worst of it is, I didn’t feel any sympathy for her at all.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “I know why,” she said. “It’s because without knowing her at all I got the feeling that she was the strongest person in that family, and that whatever happened was her own doing.”

  “Her undoing?”

  “Her—own—doing. Her fault. I wouldn’t like to have her for an enemy, but I also don’t want her for a friend.”

  “Well, I guess that’s the girls,” said Carl. He called out: “Carlie? Ing? Come give your father a kiss.”

  “We’re in the kitchen, girls,” called their mother.

  • • •

  In the kitchen at Number 10, Mary Loughlan was engaged in conversation with Marian Jackson, the cook, and her husband Harry Jackson, butler-chauffeur-manservant. Harry was sitting back in the Morris chair, the most comfortable seat in the room, smoking a semi-bulldog pipe and sipping a well-diluted whiskey from a teacup. He was wearing the
trousers of his chauffeur’s livery and a white shirt and black necktie. His wife was sitting with her hands crossed at one end of the large table, and Mary Loughlan was at the other end, turning and turning an empty teacup over and over in her hands. “She hasn’t shown a sign of strain that I’ve been able to detect, which is remarkable considering,” said Mary Loughlan. “True, she’s usually sound asleep the moment her head touches the pillow at night, but—”

  “How do you know that?”

  “How do I know that? The years I’ve been in service. I can tell more by the crushings and the contours of a pillow in the morning how a person slept than most people that occupied the same room and indeed the same bed. Ask Marian if that isn’t true.”

  “It’s true,” said Marian Jackson.

  “There’s very little a person can’t tell if she uses her powers of observation that the good Lord gave her. The condition of a bed in the morning holds very few secrets, and since I’ve been with her and the late lamented, the years were very interesting ones from that point of view.”

  “You should have been a house detective,” said Harry Jackson.

  “In a manner of speaking, that’s what I have been,” said Mary Loughlan. “Ask your wife if that isn’t so.”

  “Yes,” said Marian.

  “I could almost put a date on when they discontinued the relation between man and wife.”

  “Put a date on it,” said Harry.

  “I can’t now, but I could of then,” said Mary. “And it wasn’t when they took to the twin beds. It was some time after.”

  “Did you know that?” Harry asked his wife.

  “Mm-hmm, at the time.”

  “How often did J. B. get up in the night to make his water?” said Harry.

  “There’s no necessity to be vulgar, Harry,” said Mary. “No necessity for that, at all. But I could of told you that, too.”

  “Come on. How many times he got up during the night?”

  “I knew he was having trouble with his kidneys, didn’t I, Marian?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You could tell that from the condition of the bed?”

  “I didn’t say that, but Marian and I knew, didn’t we, Marian?”