by John O'Hara
“This is my son Joby,” she said. “On our way to Frantz’s.”
“For an ice cream soda, I’ll bet,” said Williams.
“No, a comb,” said the boy.
“A comb?” said Williams.
“An ice cream comb,” said Edith. “We call it a comb.”
“Well, enjoy yourself, boy. Give my regards to Joe,” said Williams, and passed on.
“Why has he got such a red face?” said Joby.
“Because some people have that kind of complexion,” said Edith.
“Why has he got that kind of a complexion?”
“Because the sun doesn’t tan them, it just gives them red faces.”
“Where does he live?”
“He lives in Collieryville.”
“Then what is he doing here?”
“I have no idea, I’m sure,” said Edith. “But we’re here, and we don’t live here.”
“I hate him,” said Joby.
“I’ve told you not to say that about people. Why do you hate Mr. Williams?”
“He’s dirty,” said Joby.
“No he isn’t” said Edith. “His clothes are wrinkled because of the hot weather, but he’s not dirty.”
“He is dirty, Mother, and you don’t like him either but you’re just pretending.”
“If you want me to buy you an ice cream cone stop talking about Mr. Williams,” said Edith.
She saw Williams again a few days later, and this time he was riding in a Ford phaeton with a man in a farmer’s straw hat and overalls. She was driving the Dodge roadster on her way from golf at the new country club. The road was narrow and both cars had to slow down. As they passed, proceeding in opposite directions, she bowed her thanks to the farmer and then recognized Williams, who tipped his hat.
The next day she was in her room and she chanced to look in the barnyard and there she saw the farmer, Peter Kemp, their own farmer, in conversation with Williams. He was going too far.
She hurried downstairs and out to the barnyard. He turned when the farmer turned. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Chapin,” he said.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Williams.”
“I hope it’s all right if I try to convince Peter to vote for me?”
“Why yes, if he wants to. Would you care to come over to the porch and have some iced tea?”
“Well, I guess I’ve finished my oration to Peter, eh, Peter?”
“I guess yes,” said the farmer.
“Whenever you’re ready,” said Edith.
“I’ll go with you,” said Williams.
They walked in silence to the porch and Edith told Marian to bring the iced tea, and when Marian departed Edith spoke: “Why are you spending so much time in this neighborhood?”
“Getting votes.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“I’m all over the county getting votes. Most of these farmers vote Democratic and their votes aren’t numerous, but that’s no reason why I shouldn’t try to change their minds,” he said. “I’m not here to annoy you.”
“I don’t know what I could do if you were, but I’d have to do something,” she said.
“I went back to your room, but you were asleep. I didn’t bother you then, and I don’t intend to bother you now, so stop worrying.”
“I admit I was worrying.”
“Admit it? You didn’t have to admit it to me.”
“Just as long as you understand that what happened in Philadelphia—I’m not sorry it happened, but it ended there.”
“Let’s see what the future has in store for us,” said Williams.
“You said that once before,” said Edith. “Joby!” She saw the boy hiding behind a walnut tree, too far away to have overheard anything, but able to see his mother and her guest. “Come here, Joby,” she called, in a less commanding tone. But the boy ran.
“He’s a quick one,” said Williams.
“Quicker than you think,” she said. “Well, I’m relieved that you’re keeping your end of the bargain.”
“I’m a little angry that you’d think I wouldn’t, but it’s understandable. Joe in town?”
“For the day,” said Edith.
“You want me to go,” said Williams.
“Yes,” she said.
He picked up his hat. “I’ll make you a small bet. I bet you’ll try to get in touch with me first.”
“Oh, I’ve wanted to, but it’s out of the question. If we don’t see each other for a long enough time, I won’t even want to. I think I could forget you.”
“No doubt you could, but be careful. If you do forget me, there might be another fellow that wouldn’t be as discreet as I am. You made a big step, Edith, and you’re lucky it was with me.”
“I’m convinced of that,” she said. “Good-bye.”
• • •
After supper—in the country they went back to calling it supper because all of the farmers and farm people called it supper—Joby came to say good night to his father, who was sitting on the porch.
“Well, did you have a very busy day, Joby?” said Joe.
“A man was here,” said the boy. He did not look at his mother, who was sitting on the swing.
“A man was here? Oh, Mr. Williams. Yes, Mother told me.”
“Mother gave him lemonade.”
“Iced tea, dear,” said Edith. “Now run off to bed and don’t try to stretch out your saying good night.”
“Father, what did he want?”
“Oh, now, Joby, I can see through you. You’re stalling your car and holding up traffic. Off to bed. Give me a kiss.”
The boy kissed his father.
“Hey, there, you’re forgetting Mother,” said Joe.
The boy went to the swing and presented his cheek. “I’ll be up to tuck you in,” she said.
“Ann can tuck me in,” said the boy.
And those were some of the occurrences and conversations in the Chapin family in the year 1920. . . .
• • •
Joe kept saying he did not want a fortieth birthday party. He said he did not like parties—a palpable untruth—and particularly a birthday party for himself, and most particularly and especially a large party in honor of his reaching age forty, an age which he said a man should hold as secret as a woman held all of hers. But his protests were not strong enough to stand up against the insistence of Edith and Arthur McHenry.
At first there were going to be forty guests, but the invitation list grew larger and the party plans more elaborate, until Arthur said that with so many people they ought to hire an orchestra, and with an orchestra there would be dancing, and with dancing there ought to be a good-sized orchestra. The original small dinner became a dinner dance at the Lantenengo Country Club. Invitations went out to more than three hundred persons, all adults past college age, which did not cost the college set a party, since they would not be home. On the 29th of January they would be having their mid-years.
“All right,” said Joe. “But one thing I do insist on. I would like it understood that I wash my hands of the whole problem of invitations. I don’t want to see the list, or be asked a thing about it. If you forget to invite somebody’s Aunt Millie, I want to be able to say I had nothing to do with it.”
There were numerous Aunt Millies, because of, and in spite of, Arthur’s and Edith’s triple checking of the list. There were the inevitable few of whom Arthur or Edith would say: “We’ll send him an invitation, but he’ll have sense enough not to come.” (In that category was Lloyd Williams, who did not, however, have sense enough not to come.) The problem of seating the dinner guests was solved, not entirely successfully, with Arthur’s scheme: a card was written for each acceptance, and all the gentlemen’s cards were placed in one pile, and the ladies in another. Each pile was shuffled, then a third pile was created
by Arthur’s placing a gentleman’s card at the bottom, then Edith would place a lady’s card on top of that, then a gentleman’s, until they ran out of ladies (who were in the minority). There were sixteen gentlemen left over, but since dinner was to be served to fifteen round tables of twenty persons each, the surplus gentlemen were easily distributed. The invitations were on flip-over cards with only the Chapins’ name, engraved, the date, and “Small Dance” written by hand, so that many of the guests were not aware that it was a birthday celebration. The entire facilities and staff of the club were taken over for the party, and two special policemen from a detective agency were hired to keep out the uninvited, a precaution ironically required by the fact that liquor would be served in violation of the national and club rules. The club as a club could not sanction the serving of liquor, and the policemen were employed to see that no outsider saw it being served. There were too many members of the judiciary and the district attorney’s staff present to place the party in danger of a surprise raid, even by the most zealous Federal agents. Fewer than half of the ladies accepted the Orange Blossoms that were passed before dinner, but not more than ten of the men refused a drink in the locker room and the smoking room. Gibbsville men were drinking men, and a few of them had proven it by the time the guests were seated. Wine was not served.
The absence of wine from the table controlled the other nuisance which Joe had asked them to dispense with; there were no toasts. In their place there were a few words from Arthur McHenry, who tapped his water glass for attention, and when he got it, said: “Ladies and gentlemen, some of you, but not all of you, may know that this is the fortieth birthday of our host, Joe Chapin. (Applause.) He has threatened to shoot me or anyone else who makes a speech, but I think we can all safely rise and sing, ‘He’s a Jolly Good Fellow!’”
The song was sung, the tables were rapped and hands were clapped, and the orchestra swung into the lovely measures of “Say It with Music,” a new fox-trot. The practice of cutting in was already firmly established at the Lantenengo Country Club, but at the conclusion of the first number Bobby Short, the orchestra leader, made the following announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have been requested to announce that there will be no cut-ins. No cut-ins, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.” Some of the older guests had no idea what he was talking about, but they were of an age that upheld the custom of the dance program, with its small tasseled pencil and its unwritten sadness for the plain girl and the gawky young man. The Chapin dance had a little of the old, a little of the new. Joe danced with his wife, with his partner’s wife Rose, with Josephine Laubach, Peg Slattery, and Alice Rodeweaver, a cousin of Edith’s; and with Jane Weeks, Alec’s second wife, and Betty Harrison, Dave’s wife, who had come from New York for the party; and Betty Donaldson, who had come down from Scranton.
Edith danced with Joe; with Arthur McHenry, Henry Laubach, Mike Slattery, Alec Weeks, her brother Carter, and Paul Donaldson. She sat out her dance with Dave Harrison, who had lost a leg in an airplane accident in France.
The dancing ended at the reasonable hour of one o’clock and nearly all of the guests stayed to the end. It was close to two-thirty when the Chapins, the McHenrys, the Weekses, the Harrisons and the Donaldsons sat down to scrambled eggs in the smoking room. The Donaldsons were staying with the Chapins, the Weekses with the McHenrys; and the Harrisons were staying at the hotel because of Dave’s leg and the hotel elevator. All agreed that it had been a splendid party, over and above such misfortunes as a lady’s lost earring, the early departure of several of the elderly, a man who had lost the keys to his car, another man who had upchucked before quite making the bathroom, Billy English’s being called away in the middle of dinner, the orchestra’s not playing enough waltzes for the older crowd, one whole table’s being served a full course behind the others because it was out of sight in an L, one lady’s insistence on being at the party when she should have been on her way to the delivery room, and in addition to the misfortunes that were discussed at the supper party there were a few others like the lady who lay moaning and taking aspirin in the upstairs rest room, and the stout lady who committed a loud fart over the singing of “Jolly Good Fellow,” and the waiter who had not buttoned his fly, and the small incident of Jane Weeks and her dinner partner in which Jane said: “Are you by any chance a customer of my husband’s firm?”
“No,” said the man.
“Then take your hand off my leg.”
Back at 10 North Frederick the Chapins made sure that the Donaldsons had everything, knew where everything was, didn’t want a glass of milk—and retired to their own room.
“Thank you, Edith,” said Joe. “It was a grand party.”
“Yes, I think it was. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
He was lying with his hands clasped at the back of his neck. “It had a nice friendly atmosphere. Not too pushy friendly, but almost a family feeling. It wasn’t so much me. It was Gibbsville. My father was right. This is a good town, and I’m glad I didn’t decide to live in New York or Philadelphia. I wouldn’t like to feel out of it, the way I would in a big city, and I wouldn’t like to do what Paul does, spends more and more of his time in New York. If you’re going to be a New Yorker, be a New Yorker. If you’re going to be a Scranton man, be one. I wonder what he’s saying about us, right this minute. Probably saying I’m a stick-in-the-mud.”
“No, Paul couldn’t say it. He’s still half-stuck in Scranton. Dave might say it, or Alec. But you don’t care what they say. You don’t really care what anybody says.”
“Well, now that I’m forty, I am a stick-in-the-mud for good, and I’m not the least sorry. Not in the least.”
“All those people tonight, that ought to make you feel anything but sorry.” She entered the bed and turned out the light.
“Forty,” said Joe.
“I’m sure it doesn’t feel very different.”
“No, not unless I look at my friends, Alec and Dave, fellows I don’t see all the time, and ask myself whether I’ve changed as much as they have. In appearance, that is.”
“I can answer that. You haven’t. Dave has been through a lot of pain and suffering. And Alec’s appearance can be blamed on other things.”
“Very handsome fellow, though.”
“If you like his kind of looks. I happen not to believe that an American should try to look so much like an Englishman.”
“It’s not English, Edith. It’s a certain kind of New York–swell look. Of course he does get everything in London, right down to his collar buttons. And he went to Oxford, remember.”
“He rubs me the wrong way.”
“Not while he was dancing with you, I hope . . . I couldn’t resist that. Well, pretty soon that will be all over for all of us, Alec and me and all of us.”
“Yes, all of us.”
“I’m ten years away from fifty, and ten years ago I was a young man of thirty. It’s easier for me to imagine myself fifty than to remember how I was at thirty. I wonder how long I’ll live.”
“Till you’re eighty, at least.”
“Do you think so? My mother and father and my grandparents were all in their seventies or about that when they died.”
“At least eighty,” said Edith. “You may live to be a hundred. You’ve never had a serious illness, you do everything in moderation and they say that’s the secret.”
“Not for everybody,” said Joe. “Think of the old drunks in this town, a lot of them in their seventies. But it isn’t just living to an old age that I’ve been thinking about. Crocodiles and turtles, look at them. And there’s always some man in Turkey that’s just celebrated his one hundred and thirtieth birthday.”
“I think they have a different calendar,” said Edith. “What would you like to do, or be?”
“I would like to be President of the United States,” said Joe.
“You would?”
“I honestly would,
” said Joe.
“Is that a new thought?”
“Not entirely new. At least I didn’t just think of it tonight.”
“Do you think you could be elected?”
“Not in 1924. I’ve never been elected to anything, at least not president of anything. If I ever plan to realize my ambition I’ll have to get started soon. I think Mr. Harding is about fifty-seven now, and he was fifty when he was elected to the Senate.”
“He looks younger than fifty-seven.”
“A very handsome man, even in knickers,” said Joe.
“Yes, he looks like a Roman senator,” said Edith.
“Well, I don’t look like a Roman senator, I’m sure of that, but neither do most of the senators. And I have some qualifications and some I can acquire. I’m more than thirty-five, I’m a native-born citizen. White. Protestant. Republican, and never even a Bull Mooser. I’m blessed with enough of this world’s goods without being a Wall Street millionaire. Married to a fine woman, father of two children. Attorney-at-law. Never connected with any scandal. And a grandfather who was lieutenant governor of one of the largest states and ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. The one thing against me is my own war record, but people are inclined to forget things like that, and anyway, it would take me ten years to get established in politics. By that time my war record won’t seem quite so important, unless my opponent happens to be a war hero. But I wouldn’t run against a war hero. Have you ever heard such boasting?”
“It isn’t boasting. It’s what I’ve always wanted you to do. Not President. I never thought of that. But I’ve always thought you should do more in public affairs. And why not aim for the top?”
“It’s an insane idea, positively insane, and yet it could happen. If I go about it the right way, build slowly and carefully, it could happen.”
On this night, the early morning after his fortieth birthday, she made all her efforts to please him and found that he was also pleasing her, and pleasing her more than Lloyd Williams had pleased her, because this man was her own.
• • •
In the months that followed they had many conversations over strategy and tactics. The little bits were considered carefully in their relation to the grand strategy. An invitation to buy tickets for a church supper no longer received a perfunctory small check. Edith would send the check, but she would send with it a brief note to the effect that she and her husband were delighted to help such a worthy cause. Worthy causes, from the Boy Scouts of America to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, were equally delighted to print the Chapin name high on their published lists of contributors. Joe shrewdly by-passed the Merchants Association, a group of men who were forever identified in Mr. Lewis’s Babbitt. “They want to use me, but I’m out to use them,” Joe remarked, and regretfully declined invitations to speak at their meetings and at the luncheons of the Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions.
