It would in the circumstance have been indiscreet to comment too extravagantly on Gertrude’s appearance, so as she joined her at their table she merely remarked how well she looked, then, as if she didn’t know, asked: “What’s new?”
“That’s what I want to ask you,” Gertrude said. The point remained suspended until they had been brought drinks, when, frowning into hers, she said: “I’m sorry about you and Pete. What gives?”
Gertrude still favored her throat by not turning her head on it any more than necessary, thus stretching it into new lines to succeed these temporarily deleted, but twisting her whole body instead. You couldn’t say she was posing every minute, exactly, but you were always conscious of her awareness of being looked at, so strongly so that the question arose in your mind whether she mightn’t cease to exist when not seen, like the cows in philosophy class. That Tillie was a thief catching a thief hardly softened her censure in these matters. She made other envious notations, concerning particularly the baby-blonde Gertrude had had her cropped hair colored, and how gently it collaborated with her gray-blue eyes. And what a sweetly inquiring gaze the eyes could manage for a woman who wanted only the dirt. In her resentment -Tillie gave her more dirt than the facts themselves at the moment would have borne out.
“We’ll probably get a divorce,” she said.
No such thing had been decided on between her and Pete, or even seriously aired, but the old urge to penalize Gertrude had been too much.
“Yes, I know,” Gertrude replied. “Or rather assumed.”
This gave Tillie something of a turn, but she struggled successfully to suppress any sign of it. Indeed, she suddenly saw how she might recover the offensive.
“Then it’ll come as no surprise to you what I’m going to ask,” she said, acting instantly on the inspiration that seized her. “I was hoping you’d agree to testify at the trial. That we’re incompatible.”
Gertrude was, however, herself not so easily thrown, much less put to rout. Either missing the irony or concealing its effect on her, she as smoothly answered, “Oh, I sensed it about you and Pete from the first. That you wouldn’t hit it off. Not from the first, I shouldn’t say, but I knew you weren’t each other’s speed one night when I saw you together at a party, shortly after you were married. Something between you made me sense there was sand in your gears.”
The arrogance of the bitch, Tillie thought. I’ve a good mind to call it off. And after a few weeks of brooding on the superciliousness to which, she now saw, she’d been subjected over the years, the foil she’d been in another of those friendships with which Gertrude surrounded herself, lesser social lights over whom she could queen it, she did call it off. In her own mind, that is, where alone the project was afoot. Pete himself knew of no divorce plans, and there was as much reason to wait with them as to broach them now. He had no one he wanted to marry, judging from what she could gather in the course of their few telephone conversations. He talked mostly about the office, where everything was appaquimpy—the Frisbees climbing all over each other’s backs to get to the top in what was evidently a current shakeup. He seemed apprehensive, and her anxiety for him revived the habit she had developed during Charlie’s illness, that of eking out everything she could to his credit. His word game had been wonderful for them. All three of them would play it together. They would imagine themselves to be the first family, commissioned by the Almighty the great task of nomenclature. There were no names for anything yet, in Paradise. What would they call those things with spreading boughs? The creatures twittering among them? The beasts whose skins they wore and whose haunches they gnawed as they squatted around the first of human fires, in the semantic dawn? Their yard became full of quormels and sleeths and whappinstances, all flumping through the sweem, or manganating in the queeglestocks. She remembered all this as she wandered through the house one night rummaging among drawers and pausing before the pictures on the walls. There was a Roman coin he had given Charlie, bearing the date 339 B.C.—a novelty shop gag. Tacked up over a bureau were some other of the absurdities they had collected, like newspaper photographs with the wrong captions. One specified the foreman of a lumber yard accepting a retirement watch, under a melee of basketball players. There was a snapshot of Pete, wearing a striped blazer perilously close in spirit to those in which comedians blowing saxophones derisively evoke the twenties.
“I’m not going through with the divorce,” she told Gertrude when next they met.
There was certainly no chance of claiming prior divination in this case! Not that Gertrude wanted to. She had something else on her mind. Before getting to it, however, she professed admiration for Tillie’s charity in postponing action to which she had every right, and on grounds more stringent far than mere incompatibility. “You could get it on adultery, you know,” she said.
That made Tillie leap conclusively to Pete’s defense, going so far as to use words of Pete’s that had, at the time, struck her as sanctimonious to say the least.
“You can’t judge a man’s sexual conduct apart from the rest of him,” she said. “We all have different makeups and different needs. There are adulterers who are often good husbands and fathers, and mates loyal unto death who kill each other daily.”
Tillie tried to look Gertrude squarely in the eye as she said this but couldn’t, as Gertrude slid her glance away, curiously resembling, for the moment, Sneaky Pete himself. It did not occur to Tillie till later that she had whitewashed both their husbands. Rather evasively, then, she changed the subject herself, or rather shifted it onto less uncomfortable ground. She recalled what Pete had said about sex in marriage, at the outset of theirs. It was like a medicine. Three times a day for the first week, then once a day for another week, then once every three or four days until the condition has cleared up.
“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” Gertrude said. “Now you may not like this, but I speak as a friend and won’t pull any punches. Some of us are getting a little worried about you. Hate me for it, but you can’t go on living like this. Shut up in that house by yourself, shut off from everybody and everything. I know what you’ve been through, but you can’t crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after you. It’s a form of self-indulgence,” she added, with an air of complexity.
“How do you mean?”
“I mean the world’s full of the misery you got a healthy chunk of, so why not go out and try to alleviate a little of it. You’ve tasted it. Fine, so fight it.”
“How?”
“I’m taking on the Mental Health Ball again this year. You’ve given us money before. We could use your help now, as a volunteer.”
“What would you like me to do, Gertrude?”
“Anything. Head the raffle committee. At midnight we’re going to raffle off a trip to—an all-expense-paid trip to—guess where?”
Tillie knew. But she had “fined” Gertrude enough, she felt, and honestly hadn’t the heart to deprive her of the pleasure of “springing” this.
“Where?”
“Monaco.”
Tillie whistled, raising her eyebrows. Beginning to enjoy her own performance, she next asked Gertrude how she had ever swung it, though she knew that too.
“Jimmy Twitchell knows Princess Grace, and he’s gotten her to agree to receive the winning couple at the castle, after a flight on TWA, also donated. It’s going to be the best Mental Health Ball we’ve ever had, and I’d love it if you’d serve as head of the raffle committee.”
“I’d love to, but I’ll need some, you know, briefing. What do I do?”
“Build a pyramid. You at the top as committee chairman, sub-delegating absolutely everything. I’ll give you a list of potential willing workers. I’ll have Jimmy Twitchell give you a ring and fill you in on the whole Monaco business, so you’ll know what you’re asking your henchmen to ask people to plunk down twenty bucks a ticket for. We’re making it high so we can limit it to two hundred and fifty tickets, which will give us an almost clear profit of five
thousand dollars just on the raffle alone. And, Tillie, I’m glad to see you back in circulation again.”
“Working with Jimmy ought to be fun in itself.”
“Yes, but a word to the wise. Be careful of him. He’s a bitch, and that’s bad in a man.”
It was a point well taken. Gertrude was herself in Jimmy’s bad books at the moment, having had somebody else recently redo her house for her. “Just for a change,” she said, but that did not placate Jimmy. He was all Gertrude, and terribly acid about it, when he bustled into Tillie’s house for tea again. Princess Grace could wait.
“Getting somebody new for a change is one thing, but Cato Spellman!” he said. “I told her, ‘Well, darling, if you want to rough it.’ He made a mess of the Jamberson place, as you probably know, that I had to pull him out of. He asked me to, it was that bad. He had used, of all things, chartreuse and red in the drawing room. One at one end, and the other at the other. Do you know how I got him out of it?”
“No. How did you?” Tillie asked, feeling glad to be back in circulation again herself.
“Mocha.” He let this sink in a moment. “You wouldn’t believe it, but it somehow brought them together. A big. Long. Solid thing of mocha. A settee running practically the length of the room. Somehow it brought them in balance. Of course Cato never forgave me. He hasn’t spoken to me since. Not that I mind. He’s so full of booze, poor thing, he doesn’t do much any more but grow redder in the nose himself. Every time I see him I want to say, ‘Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?’ Well, we shall see what he does for poor Gertrude. How old is she, by the way?”
“I have no idea. How can we find out?” she laughed.
He was really awful, bringing out the worst in everybody, but, Tillie again reminded herself, of more value to the community than most men—certainly than most of the husbands of the women he spent his time with. None of them ever raised a finger for any of the charities to which he gave his time unstintingly. He never refused a request, whether it was to “do” a hall being used for a benefit, or to mince up Main Street scrounging ads out of local merchants for the souvenir program, or donations to be raffled off. He emceed countless fashion shows for worthy causes, having also his background as a clothes designer. True, it was all good business, he adored the limelight, and shared the insatiable thirst of his kind for bashes and whingdings, but even after subtracting all that for cynicism, Jimmy Twitchell remained a pillar of the community. Most husbands were worthless to it.
“There are ways,” he said now, to answer her question. “You may have noticed that the ages of all drivers in traffic violations or accidents, however slight, are given in local newspaper accounts. Even those of the innocent. Area wives, as the horrid Blade calls you, are constantly being unmasked in this fashion. I never miss their Traffic Column. Women parading as thirty-five are suddenly revealed to be forty-eight. So if there’s somebody you want to get the goods on, just ram her in the fender somewhere about town, or as she’s pulling out of her driveway, nothing much, just enough for a police report, and wham! Her age is out in the next edition. Of course the price is giving your own. But enough of this idle chatter. To the business at hand.”
Jimmy explained just what had been agreed on between himself and the Princess in his most recent telephone call, one of several he’d made at his own expense. “She’s been worn to a frazzle by these charities, but I’ve done her a couple of favors over there, and told her she owed me one.” The arch glitter came to his eye. “Call it Grace under pressure.”
Tillie laughed, reaching for her teacup. “Will she receive the winning couple for lunch, is that the arrangement?”
“Yes, and then a tour of the castle.” Jimmy stiffened in his chair, as though racked by a shudder. “I’m sure the same thing went through your mind. The creatures that might win? It’s a chance any charity takes in a case like this—not knowing but what a pair of goons might represent them. Well, we won’t think about that.”
He drew a small black notebook from his pocket and flipped through it.
“Now, you’ll need eight or ten good strong ladies of the parish to get those tickets distributed and kept after. The italics are mine, darling, because it’s absolutely essential that workers be pushed or they won’t sell anything. You’ll get eight or nine tickets back out of books of ten. Gertrude suggests Molly Webster for your second in command, but I think she should be in charge of tables for the ball instead of Laura Colton. Laura’s a dear soul but lacking completely in the tact necessary for anything so touchy as tables.”
“Do people really care that much about the tables they’re put at?”
Jimmy leaned intimately across the one at which they sat, an almost pitying smile on his lips. “Darling, our job is not to decide whether the human race should survive, only to see to it that it does. I. Have seen. Two women. Pull each other’s hair out over precisely this. It was at the Epilepsy do.”
“Tell me about it,” Tillie said, curling up in her chair for one of Jimmy’s stories.
“Well, it was a few days after Christmas, which was wrong in itself because by then people have had so much of their families they’re at the end of their tether. But anyhoo, the chairman of the whole shebang saw that the table chairman had put her at table number two, below the salt from all the ‘honorary’ people at the head table, none of whom had done a lick of work for the ball but whose names are important and doll up the stationery. You know those pictures of Gertrude addressing invitations the grinds have already addressed? Well, what did shebang chairman do when she got a load of the setup but pick up all the place cards and proceed to switch them. This was twenty minutes before the Grand Procession,” Jimmy said with some satisfaction. “Then table chairman saw what had been wrought, and started to switch tables. Shebang chairman no like, and tried to stop her. And first thing you knew there was a tug of war going on between them, each trying to pull a table in another direction. All this grunting and heaving while calling each other all the names under the sun, because there were a lot of old scores being settled, a long feud. Finally one blurted out something that was too much for the other, who thereupon went for her. I mean literally. It was a cat fight such as you’ve never seen. They had to be pulled apart and driven home.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Tillie said, though believing it completely. One of her most vivid childhood memories was of two girls clawing each other to bits in the schoolyard.
“It’s true. I saw it. It doesn’t happen often,” Jimmy added, with a touch of wistfulness, “but it happens. And of course it’s always there underneath, is what I’m trying to say. The lava’s there, and so the volcano can erupt.”
Tillie shook her head. “But to be so petty over something that’s supposed to be a humanitarian cause.”
“It’s charity that suffereth long and is kind, darling, not charities. You never saw the like of them for bringing out the worst in petty jealousies and egotisms. These benefit balls are in their very nature social functions, and a woman instinctively puts her best foot forward, even if it’s only to trip another one up. Would you believe that on a garden tour for Birth Defects one hostess said she wouldn’t throw her place open again because of what another said about her herbaceous borders?”
“Who was it?”
“Oh, well. Mrs. Lamont. Past whom nothing can be put, as you know. So be careful. I guess I keep telling you that because you’re such an innocent.”
“Nonsense. I’m just as much of a bitch as the next.”
“Matinees we say witch, darling.” He paused to consult his notes again. “Ah, one more thing.”
Jimmy took time out to finish his cake and then his tea. She noticed his eyes watching her with what seemed a special interest as he drank off what remained in his cup. He set the cup down, dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, and resumed.
“Now this is important. Every lottery must be registered with the police. It’s a state law. It’s gambling, after all, and must be strictly regulated.
Now listen very carefully, because if this procedure isn’t followed to the letter, you can’t hold the raffle no matter how many tickets have been sold. Two of you must go down to the police station and fill out certain forms, and in a very few days, because there’s a time limit. You fill out forms, swearing to this and that and the other. Who’s in charge, where the drawing will be and when, et cetera, et cetera. You’ll have to identify yourselves, of course, with all that that implies. That includes giving your age.”
“Well, it won’t bother me none,” Tillie laughed, striving to make it true. “I’m forty-five.”
“Yes, I know. Why should you care, since you don’t look it.”
“No, I know. I look forty-four. Who told you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Gertrude may have mentioned it in an unguarded moment. I may have said, in an unguarded moment of my own, that I thought you a fine figure of a woman, and asked the natural question.”
No woman who fancies she has a good figure likes to hear she’s a fine figure of a woman. The two aren’t the same at all. Tillie let that pass, being grateful in any case for the smaller favor. “Then I should take somebody to the police station with me who doesn’t give a damn either.”
“Or somebody you want to get the goods on.”
He spoke with such convincing indifference that one unfamiliar with him would have thought he couldn’t have cared less about the subject, at least at that moment. Tillie, however, sat staring pensively out the window for some time after he had gone.
Jimmy Twitchell in the role of Iago was something she had not visualized before. Sensing his conspiracy now, she said, “No,” aloud. She would not be the instrument of his vengeance. But she forgave herself for imagining, with a sly smile, the scene that might result were she to ask an unsuspecting Gertrude to accompany her to the police station to register the lottery. Did she know the trap it was? To find out, and to measure the scope of her decency, she telephoned to chat about it.
The Cat's Pajamas & Witch's Milk: Two Novels Page 23
