“Vut?”
“They combine sense with sound. I see what you mean now about the old words being absolutely no good for general use. Either dirty or medical. This language two people could talk.”
“Well, then, let’s talk it. We can begin tonight.”
“Aren’t you too tired?”
“No.”
Now it was Tillie’s turn to demur. She begged off by explaining that she had no objection to the revolution as such, but talking sex was not her speed in any case, if he remembered, the way it seemed to be his. She did not want to hurt his feelings or belittle his masterwork, certainly to be a poop, but she was not by temperament given to verbalizing what she was doing, as, she knew in all fairness, some people were. Since she never used the old words either, no offense need be taken at her not moaning their equivalents while engaged in—or, as was more often the case, submitting to—what they stood for.
“But you go right ahead,” she told him. “Make yourself at home in me, on me, or anything else. I’ve emphasized this before. I think everyone should be happy in his own way.”
And he was. He wallowed in his twofold freedom, physical and linguistic. Extolling her soft white yummels, he would bury his face in them, sometimes as though trying to achieve death by suffocation. Or he would lip their little pink phelps as his hand strayed independently downward, across her dimpled woburn to her thrombush, into which he sank at last with many a grateful cry in praise of it. He tended to engage in unbroken staccato exclamations about what he had done, was doing, and would do, in the end crouching over her in a manner that put her uncontrollably in mind, not so much of a philologist, as of a jockey flailing his mount up the homestretch. She sometimes got up in the morning with her whollies black and blue. He was equally conscientious in the more tender and quiet moments, which she said were movements marked lento, an anatomical term with which he said he was not familiar. He tutored her in the most exquisite caresses. With her long red talons, he loved to have her, not quite stroke, nor yet exactly scratch, but ever so gently to scroke, his quonkles.
“Swell?” he said when she threatened to fall asleep in the midst of these labors, giving her a poke. She mumbled agreement, shifting aside to ease the pressure of his hand under her splaything.
Faced with the charge that this was nothing more or less than jabberwocky, he defied you to cite a word that wasn’t. All language was simply jabberwocky that had become familiar. The proof? The speed with which any word could be reduced to absurdity by repetition. Pick a word—pool, spindle, chicken, Tuscaloosa, anything—say it over to yourself a few times, and the meaning will drain out of it faster than water out of a bucket in which a hole has been shot. Bucket, hole, shot … all ludicrous—and strange if you stare at them hard enough on the printed page. Keep it up and you will feel meaning running like sawdust out of yourself.
Tillie nodded as she knitted boots … boots … boots for her expected child. “That’s right,” she said. “In a moment you’re holding your empty sides, a mere semantic rag flapping in the cognitive void.”
“Vut? So in other words, all we talk is gibberish. That’s what’s so fascinating about watching two guys talk in a foreign language. In one way the advantage is theirs, or so they think, because you don’t know what the hell they’re saying, but in another way it’s you who are one up on them, because you can see that in the long run it’s all so much systematic hissing and gasping and gurgling.”
“And gesticulating. In other words, you’re an Existentialist.”
“How the hell do I know? What do they stand for?”
“They don’t ‘stand for’ anything. They just believe man makes out as best he can in a meaningless universe.”
“The universe. I’ve got more to worry about than that,” Pete said, and wandered off to the kitchen for some beer.
He stayed there long enough to scour a broiling pan, a kind of chore he did not mind since he didn’t want her to break her nails any more than she did. She smiled gratefully as she listened, thanking heaven for what it had sent her. When he returned with two glasses of beer, he made sure there were coasters to set them down on, and then when he removed his shirt, it being warm, he first asked her permission. Experiencing the warm maternal feeling she had had for him almost from the first, she took in the Boy Scout look about him, again accentuated by a haircut; the way he licked his lips after gulping from his glass; the careful manner in which he set it down on the coaster.
“You have an awful lot of moles, Pete,” she joshed.
“And the swans have all gone.”
So Tillie awoke from a dream of love to find herself married to a model husband. This was music with which she certainly wanted to taunt Gertrude a little. She wanted her to know what a diamond-in-the-rough she had given her, in case she had thought it merely a polished stone. Or the last streetcar, or the last available lug of a life preserver thrown to a woman past thirty. But opportunity remained lacking because Gertrude failed to return Tillie’s telephone calls, left with the maid. It devolved on Jimmy Twitchell to tattle, helpfully of course, that Gertrude was miffed over not having been invited to the reception. He was tickled only too pink to be able to discharge these painful duties, and when Tillie telephoned him as a last resort to pick his brains about it, he invited himself to tea in order to discuss it in the depth required.
Thank God Pete was out when Jimmy wafted through the doorway in a tight tweed coat with side vents, carrying a porkpie hat and lemon-yellow gloves, trailing some expensive scent. Tillie remembered Pete’s outrage at being asked by Jimmy what cologne he was “wearing,” the night of the blind date. Jimmy marched on into the living room, his black little eyes flicking every which way on the lookout for “horrors.” He was evidently not disappointed.
“What an interesting place,” he said. “Where did you ever find it?”
This was fag stuff, but nobody minded, as they didn’t the malice behind it, because he was so amusing. He drove men out of their minds, but the women loved him, a common enough paradox. He carried the pollen of gossip everywhere, breeding and crossbreeding half-truths and untruths with the facts, hatching and crosshatching the mutual resentments, fears, jealousies and social spites of women he outdid at their own game. He plied his trade with the skill of a court eunuch. He was a liar and a thief, creating scandal where there was none, and keeping his conversational quiver stocked with witticisms stolen from everywhere. Women relished his mischief making, though they knew that an hour after they had been its beneficiaries they would be its butts. An insane snoop, he had insisted on calling partly to see how Tillie lived. It was instantly obvious that he was slumming. She had expected such a reaction to the way her apartment was “done,” and had tried to redeem herself a little by plucking Franck’s D Minor off the phonograph just before his arrival and replacing it with something a little less de trop—Sibelius. She shut that off a few minutes after she had taken his hat and gloves.
“Don’t turn it off on my account, darling,” he said. He was the only man who had ever called her darling, and she rather liked it.
“We can talk better. It’s Sibelius’s Second. Do you like it?”
“I always thought it was marred by a poor score.” He flicked his beady eyes at her in wicked expectation.
Now that the music had ended she could hear his shoes squeaking as he walked about the room, still taking things in. Incredibly natty as he was, his feet always struck you as somehow the neatest thing about him, very tiny and beautifully shod, with what seemed shoes a size too small, as though he wanted to make them appear even daintier than they were. As he strolled around, it seemed the feet themselves, rather than the Oxfords in which they were encased, that were uttering little cries of protest, like pining cats.
“Gertrude is in a snit, you know,” he said.
“I don’t see why. The reception was private.”
“Ah, yes, like a funeral service. Well, I’ll take that back to her, or perish in the attempt. That it
was only for relatives.”
“I wish you would, Jimmy.” It was a slight falsehood, since there had been a few “intimate friends,” but since Gertrude would never realize the category did not include her, as hers would not have included Tillie were the roles reversed, it seemed relatively justified, even called for in the interest of composing ruffled spirits.
“Shall do,” Jimmy said, sitting down to the tea. He flapped a napkin out on his knee. “The main thing is that Gertrude now knows you know she’s ignoring you. So that’s been tidied up. Now we can go on from there. Do show me the silver pitcher with which she said she heaped coals of fire on your head.”
Tillie fetched the wedding gift, and while Jimmy admired it she drew out a few more grains of gossip about Gertrude, an attempt which found him nothing loth.
“Oh, she’s up to the ears in her pet charity again. The Mental Health Ball, you know. She had her picture in the local paper as usual, sitting in her morning room in a stunning suit, ‘addressing’ invitations that all the poor drones, you know, have already addressed. It’s all a mare’s nest, darling, of course. You might get yourself clear out of the doghouse by sending a check as Patrons for the Ball. I think it’s a hundred dollars.”
So that was that. He finished his tea and was off and away, hurrying through the doorway on meowing feet.
Tillie sent the check, though they couldn’t afford it, and though the Ball was in Gertrude’s suburb, not the city, where the Seltzers still lived. She sent it directly to Gertrude, who had, of course, to acknowledge it. She had the grace to do so by phone. They made a date for lunch the following Wednesday, when Gertrude was coming to town to shop anyway.
By now there was another virtue to report in the case of Pete. The apartment building in which Mrs. Shilepsky had continued to live was torn down, and while she looked for another flat she moved in with them. The arrangement was only temporary, of course, but Pete’s good-humored efforts to make her feel at home were commendable by any standards.
“Imagine a guy who likes his mother-in-law,” Tillie said across the luncheon table.
Gertrude did not take this at all well. She seemed, in fact, to freeze up for a few moments. This struck Tillie as an odd reaction to the grades one’s protégé is earning, and, puzzled, she decided that another consultation with Jimmy Twitchell was indicated. She called him on the phone to report what had happened, and it made his day.
“You’ve put your foot in it this time, darling,” he told her. “The subject of mothers-in-law is a sore spot with the Wilsons. Gertrude won’t have Burt’s mother’s toes under her table for one minute, even though they’ll get her money—the old woman’s only sitting on half a million dollars—while your—what’s his name? Pete? While Pete welcomes into the family bosom a mother-in-law without a sou. No wonder Gertrude’s mad. She thought you were rubbing it in. There are fewer burdens in life harder to bear than the irritation of a good example,” he said, not bothering to credit Mark Twain with the aphorism. “What else did you talk about?” he asked, hopefully.
Tillie had not meant to air the conversation with which she had subsequently tried to mend the uncomprehended damage. Now suddenly Jimmy, treacherous as he could be in these matters, struck her with a flash as a possible ally in sailing social waters she clearly could not navigate on her own. No harm could be done by trying to enlist him, certainly. And the moment on the telephone offered an unexpected chance to show Pete off in quarters where he was, surely, held in the lowest possible esteem.
“Well, I tried to change the subject, but we did seem to stay on the subject of husbands, and in the course of something or other, I forget what, I repeated something Pete said that I thought rather amusing. He calls himself a sonofabitch manqué. He wouldn’t mind a little adultery, but he’ll never make the grade. Not the type.” Gertrude would appreciate that it was the “after” Pete talking, the one exposed to Tillie’s influence, not the “before” of the blind first date. The silk purse, not the sow’s ear. To Jimmy she merely said, “Don’t you think that’s rather cute? A sonofabitch manqué?”
There was a brief pause at the other end. Then Jimmy said: “You never miss, do you? With all Burt’s bed hopping—all right, anyway the slap-and-tickle he’s famous for at parties—how did you expect that to go down? Darling, you need an editor.”
That much Tillie had realized at the moment. She knew she’d put her foot in it as soon as the words were out. She also knew how you didn’t need an enemy if you had Gertrude for a friend. In her panic therefore she had seized on every possible means of placating her. By instinct she knew that one thing a woman dearly loves is a compromising confidence from another. Before she knew it she was chattering about how instantly she and Pete Seltzer had hit it off, whatever doubts Gertrude herself might have secretly harbored.
“… and so at last I said, ‘O.K., old boy, the honeymoon’s over. Time to get married.’”
Tillie had looked across the restaurant in blank disbelief at what she had just heard. How much had she had to drink? “Give me another,” she told the waiter hurriedly. “Gertrude?”
Gertrude shook her head sweetly, her eyes shut. She had Tillie in her pocket. She had been fed a plump canary indeed, and could sit back and lick the feathers off her whiskers.
Aghast as she was that she had as much as told Gertrude that she and Pete had slept together before they were married, she at the same time wondered why she cared. People took it for granted these days—that was the whole point of the wisecrack. It was a commentary on the times. The truth of the matter was simply that Tillie by temperament shrank from having anything that intimate known about herself, especially by a woman like Gertrude who could be counted on to spread her secret in turn. She would retail it instantly to Jimmy Twitchell, who would scatter it to the four winds. Seeing at what price she had bought back her drop in the woman’s graces, she immediately reversed herself and tried to recover some of the forfeited self-esteem.
“But getting back to Mother, she’ll stay with us at least until she finds an apartment she can afford. Which may be a long time, because, of course, she doesn’t have a dime,” Tillie added with a touch of pride. “But getting back to Pete, it’s really touching the way he befriends her. And kind of funny too. He never leaves the woman’s side.”
“That shouldn’t be hard in four rooms.”
They both laughed heartily at that as they opened their menus to order. It was high time they had something to eat.
Evenings at the Seltzers’ continued to be everything Gertrude might have cause to resent, could she but be vouchsafed an actual glimpse of them. Mrs. Shilepsky kept recommending Pete to Tillie. “You won’t find them coming any better than that one,” she would say, pointing at him and sometimes tapping him with a finger. “More all wool and a yard wide.” Pete would sit wearing his good-boy smile, looking younger than ever in the high short haircuts that he got with regular frequency now that he realized what they did for you. He would not hear of Mrs. Shilepsky banishing herself to her bedroom after the evening meal, but insisted that she consider this her home as much as theirs. It was an order. Tillie shook her head, unable to believe her luck, as her knitting needles clicked. Pete would work on his library, composed, in the nature of things, of volumes ready to fall apart, some, first editions though he didn’t know it till they were pointed out to him. He would mend the spines with a special glue another bibliophile had told him about, patch torn pages with Scotch tape. Mrs. Shilepsky often joined in with needlework, cozily relating harrowing incidents from her own marriage, whose hell and high water were pleasant to recall now amid the peaches and cream of this one.
“Shilepsky would fly into rages,” she said. “He would throw every dish in the house, one by one, quiet, deliberate like. Oh, never at me. Just at the wall. He would take a cup and—children, listen—wind up before throwing it, just like a pitcher. That terrible? He would be crazy mad. It would be the cold deliberate way he’d do it, so worse than hot words or flying off
the handle. Well, I kept my temper. I would sit there calmly in the chair watching, and broadcast it.”
“Broadcast it?” said Pete softly.
Mrs. Shilepsky nodded, shifting a clove in her mouth.
“Like an announcer in the baseball park. ‘Here comes the windup,’ I’d say, ‘the pitch, and it’s another piece of second-best china smashed to smithereens against the wall. But this Shilepsky on the mound there isn’t second-best. No siree Bob. He’s in good form today, never better.’ Till he was crazy mad. Oh, he was a mean devil. Tillie’ll tell you that. But there were the good times,” she added, and would amuse them with stories to prove it, or by cracking jokes illustrative of the household, or, more particularly, the era.
Mrs. Shilepsky’s jokes were things you had only your sense of humor to see you through. They were mostly vintage anecdotes about public figures of a more robust time, such as William Jennings Bryan who, speaking to a bunch of Iowa farmers from a manure spreader while stumping for the presidency, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first time I’ve ever addressed an audience from a Republican platform.” Mrs. Shilepsky herself finally dug Pete’s double talk, possibly because it was after all not so far in spirit from the spiffy ginks and fancy gazebos of her own day who would tell you their epizootic was sagatiating, when you asked them how they were.
She usually did retire early. Then after a while Pete would stretch and say to Tillie, “Well, shall we put the ears on the kid tonight?”
The reason why Pete clung to his mother-in-law was a long time in dawning on Tillie, but at last it did.
He didn’t know what to call her. Therefore he moved heaven and earth not to have to call her anything. “Mother” he apparently couldn’t swing, as many husbands can’t. “Mrs. Shilepsky” was the reverse, too formal. “Mother Shilepsky” was out. He wasn’t going to sound like a nun in a convent. The mother-in-law’s first name is often a way out for self-conscious husbands, but he could not bend his tongue into the shapes necessary to say “Blossom,” or “Bloss,” as her few remaining friends sometimes called her. So it went. If absolutely forced to a direct salutation, it would be “Say” or “Why, er” or even “Hey.” He was at his wits’ end, on pins and needles against the threat of having some day, under some circumstance, to call the length of the house, or even of the room, to get her attention, and thus address her by some name or other. Meanwhile, if he had something to say to her when she was elsewhere, he would go where she was and then, after a convincing interval in her vicinity, begin, “Look,” or “Oh, by the way.” That was why he was always at the woman’s side, why the two were “so close,” or “absolutely inseparable,” as Tillie sometimes put it in bragging about him to her friends.
The Cat's Pajamas & Witch's Milk: Two Novels Page 19
