Testing the Current

by William McPherson

  “Jesus X. Christ,” Dr. Randolph shouted. “You’ve seen Mrs. Henderson, haven’t you? You know what happened to her, don’t you? That fiddle-headed old fart put his lamp on her, too!”

  “P.T.,” Mrs. Randolph exclaimed—she always called him by his initials—“P.T.! Stop that talk!”

  “That man’s an asshole and the boy ought to know it,” Dr. Randolph said. “Besides, the boy’s heard worse. Tell the old lady you’ve heard worse, Tommy. Tell her you love it.”

  Tommy laughed. Of course he loved it. He also loved Mrs. Randolph. There was no right answer. No matter what he said, one of them would be mad. So he didn’t say anything. He laughed instead. He always tried to laugh his way out of embarrassing dilemmas, and this was one of them. He might not be much of a fighter, but he was good at laughing, and he had learned that it was possible to win in a tough situation if you pretended there was nothing to lose. Among the grownups he knew, only Dr. Randolph and Mrs. Slade talked like that, and not even Mrs. Slade said the things Dr. Randolph did. When Tommy’s father was angry he would swear, but he never said things like “fart” or “tit” or, as Dr. Randolph once hollered out, banging the dining-room table with his fist, “Piss on a plate!” One time when he was mad at David, Tommy’s father shouted, “Christ on a crutch,” also banging his fist on the table, but when Tommy laughed his father told him to be quiet.

  “Yeah,” Dr. Randolph said, “Mrs. Henderson went under Dr. Scanlon’s lamp and they had to cut off her legs. What do you think they’ll have to do to your neck?” he asked, peering at it and bending it a little to examine the boil.

  Well, Tommy didn’t suppose they’d have to cut it off, but it did make him think, and he decided to put his faith in Dr. Randolph rather than in Dr. Scanlon’s lamp. He was never sorry.

  Neither Dr. Randolph nor Jimmy was home when Tommy ran up to the Randolphs’ door that afternoon for Mrs. Moran’s plant. That was good. Tommy didn’t have time to play. He had to get the plant and run back home to find out what was going on. Tommy knew that something was going on, and he knew it was something he’d be interested in. So when Mrs. Randolph opened the door he told her in one long breath, “My brother’s at home with Margie and he told me I had to come over here and get a plant but I know he’s up to something and I’ve got to get back there to find out what and—”

  “Tommy,” Mrs. Randolph said. “Upon my word! Sit down, my little friend, before you burst. Catch your breath. Have a Coke.” She got one for him and one for herself, and made him sit down across from her at the dining-room table. “Now tell me,” she said, “what’s all this about?”

  “I’m so excited,” Tommy exclaimed. “I’m so excited!” He couldn’t sit still in his chair but bounced up and down. He was afraid that if he stood up he’d spin like a top. “Davey is up to something, I know he is. Oh boy, oh boy! And I have to get back to find out.”

  “Wait just a minute, Tommy,” Mrs. Randolph said. “The plant’s not ready yet. David just this minute called to say you’d be coming by to get it. Why don’t you help me pot it up? And while you’re doing that, you can tell me what makes you think David’s up to something.”

  “He just looks as if he’s up to something,” Tommy said. “He just looks it. And he was trying to get rid of me, so he must be up to something.” Of course he was up to something. Something strange was in the air. David had called Mrs. Randolph? Tommy thought Mrs. Randolph had called him. He’d better hurry. He finished his Coke as soon as he could and waited for Mrs. Randolph to finish potting the plant. She called it a Christmas cactus because that’s when it bloomed. Mrs. Randolph gave away a lot of plants, but there was something funny about this. He wondered if this was some trick on his brother’s part. David was very good at tricks; there was no question about that. Mrs. Randolph took a lot of care with the plant, patting it in place, watering it, letting it drain, making sure that it was firmly set in its pot. Tommy didn’t know there was so much you could do to put a plant in a pot. Finally she finished.

  As soon as she handed it to him, Tommy thanked her and ran across the street, throwing open the door and racing into the living room where he found David and Margie, still on the couch. But this time his brother didn’t look annoyed and Margie didn’t look bored. They seemed flushed with pleasure, excited, happy. Tommy knew he’d been right; they had been up to something.

  “Look, Tommy,” Margie said, extending her hand. “Look what your brother gave me. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Wow,” Tommy said, looking at the ring on her finger, “some headlight!” He liked to use sophisticated slang like that. He picked it up from Life magazine, or from listening to his brothers and their friends—words like “headlight” for diamond ring, and “gams” for legs, and “hell’s bells,” which he’d picked up from his father. That always made his brothers’ friends laugh.

  “You’re engaged? You’re going to be married, then?” Tommy asked. “Oh, boy! I knew it! I knew it! I have to tell Mrs. Randolph.” And he raced back across the street to tell Mrs. Randolph that Margie was sitting on their couch with an engagement ring on her finger, and that he was the first to know it, and that she was the second, even before his parents. His parents. He hoped they would be happy, too. Tommy had heard his father say that Margie was going through her money like a house afire, eating right into her capital, and that wasn’t good but it wasn’t all her fault. It was encouraged by Bob Griswold and President Roosevelt’s New Deal, too. His brother was spending a lot of money, too, Tommy thought; diamonds were expensive. And then he ran back home so as not to miss anything. He forgave David for everything—for the teasing, for the cheating at Steal-the-Pack, for telling on him and getting him in trouble with his mother, for everything. All he wanted was to sit close to Davey and Margie, to feel their warmth and their happiness and his own happiness and excitement, which was, he thought, the most he had ever felt in his entire life.

  “Come on, Davey,” he begged, “take us out for hamburgers. We don’t have to eat here, do we? Rose is cooking. Ugh.”

  With Tommy sitting in the middle, holding their hands, the three of them drove down the River Road to his favorite hamburger stand near the country club, and they had hamburgers with raw onions, and French-fries and Cokes, which were Margie’s favorite foods as well as his. Tommy knew he would like Margie a lot. She hugged him and said he’d be her brother now. “Do you think you can stand having an older sister?” she asked him.

  Stand it? Tommy couldn’t imagine anything better. And then he wondered if he would now be related to Mrs. Slade, and he was sure he would be, in some way, so of course he could go over there to play. You can always play with your relations.

  No matter how Tommy looked at it, David’s engagement was wonderful news, and he and Margie treated him that afternoon not as if he were a child but as if he were their friend. Tommy was very glad his parents were away, because if they’d been home it would have been exciting, of course, but different. It would never have happened on their living-room couch on a Wednesday afternoon, with him practically a witness. He wouldn’t have known about it until later, because David and Margie would have had to tell his parents first, and there would have been a lot of grown-up talk, and he would have been called downstairs and they would have told him, and then they all would have sat around talking but he wouldn’t have had a chance to say anything except congratulations. As it was, Tommy could hardly stop talking, and he didn’t once use the word “congratulations.” He didn’t even mind it when his brother and Margie dropped him off and went up to her house in the evening, leaving Tommy at home with Mrs. Moran. He was anxious to tell Mrs. Moran the news, and he had his own things he wanted to do. He could hardly wait for his parents to come home too, so he could surprise them with the news.

  And were they ever surprised. David had asked Tommy not to tell but to let him break the news, which Tommy did, but barely. When his parents pulled into the driveway in the late afternoon not long before dinner, Tommy began to dance
with glee, unable to contain his excitement. “They’re home! They’re home,” he shouted to David, who had gone upstairs to shower and change after work. His parents came in the house in a flurry of coats and bags and stamping of feet. “You’re home at last!” Tommy cried. “You’re home at last.”

  “There, there, darling,” his mother said, sweeping him into her arms. “It’s all right. Mommy’s finally home, and she won’t go away again for a long time.” She turned to David, who had come down the stairs, to Mrs. Moran, and to Tommy’s father, and said, “I’ve never seen him so excited to see us.”

  Tommy was glad to see his parents. Of course he was. He knew that buried somewhere within their bags would be a present for him, which he always hoped would be something he really wanted but was usually a sweater or a shirt or once a blue jacket and pants that his mother really liked—nothing like the Crayolas John had given him, the fountain pen from his father, the grown-up windbreaker from David, or the beautiful Monopoly set that Margie had given him for Christmas. But Tommy’s excitement had not so much to do with his parents’ returning home—after all, they came and went a lot; there wasn’t anything particularly unusual about that—or with the surprise that might be in store for him, as it did with the surprise that awaited them.

  “Tell them, Davey, come on! Tell them, tell them,” Tommy said. “Tell them the news!”

  “What’s the news?” his father asked.

  “Yes, what’s the news?” his mother repeated. She was still pleased by her welcome. “What is it?”

  “Wait a minute,” said his father. “Hold it until I call the plant.” Tommy thought his father always had to call the plant. Everything came to a halt while his father went to his telephone in the library. Tommy could hear his father’s voice. “MacAllister talking.” He never said “Hello” or “How are you?” when he called the plant; always “MacAllister talking” or “MacAllister here,” as if they might not recognize his voice, and he would get right down to business, asking questions, giving orders: about the stacks or the furnaces whose glowing fires Tommy could see from his bedroom window, reflecting against the sky at night; about the shipping room, the lime kilns or the drum factory, where David worked and hated it. At work his father spoke another language, Tommy thought, secret, a language whose combinations were hard to understand, as if it were a kind of code.

  While his father was on the telephone, Tommy’s mother looked through the mail on the table in the hall. “Is this all, David?” she asked him.

  “Yes,” David said, “that’s all. As far as I know.”

  “You know we saw Madge McGhee in Philadelphia,” his mother said. “She was home for the weekend. She asked about you. She said you never answer her letters.” Tommy always recognized Madge’s letters. She wrote in ink the color of Mercurochrome and called it hot pink, which Tommy and his brother John thought very funny.

  “That’s right,” David said. “I never do answer her letters.” Madge’s handwriting was round and fat and slanted backwards. David would open her letters and drop each page as he read it into the wastebasket, one by one, as if he couldn’t care less, which was, in fact, how he said he felt about them. “I couldn’t care less about her letters,” he told his mother. That was one of Madge’s expressions; she said it all the time.

  “I don’t think that sounds very nice,” his mother said. “Madge is an attractive girl. You ought at least to reply to her letters. It’s only polite.”

  “Hey, Tommy,” David said, “help me carry this stuff upstairs, will you?” Tommy reached for the biggest bag. He had to use both hands and still he could barely lift it. “That’s too big,” his brother said. “Take a smaller one.” So Tommy took the biggest one he could lift, which was the second-biggest bag and also took two hands, and struggled up the stairs with it as his mother went through the mail again and asked Mrs. Moran if that was all of it, and his father continued talking to the plant. Tommy had to take the bag up one step at a time, but he got it there. “Okay, muscle boy, you did it,” his brother said. “Now go get the smallest. And keep your mouth shut, please?”

  “I will,” Tommy said, and he went back for the smallest bag, which his mother kept her jewelry and makeup in. When they got all the bags upstairs, and David had hung up his parents’ coats, and his father had finally gotten off the telephone and fixed a drink for himself and Tommy’s mother, David stood in the living room and told them the news.

  “Well,” he said, as Tommy sat on his hands on the piano bench to keep them still, “Margie and I are going to get married.”

  “Whoopee!” Tommy shouted. “Can you believe it? Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that”—he reached for the word—“splendid? They’re going to get married! I’m going to have a sister! And they’ve already told me I could stay with them in their house sometimes.” Tommy got up and gave his father a little hug, which surprised both of them. Then he gave his mother one. His parents were smiling at him.

  “Well, Tommy,” his father said, “better get a grip on yourself. They’re not married yet.” He turned to David. “Had you thought of talking this over with your mother and me?” Now his father was neither smiling nor frowning, and his voice had flattened. Tommy settled down and looked again at his father. “When did this happen?”

  “I’ll tell you when it happened,” Tommy interrupted. “It happened last Wednesday afternoon, right on that couch”—he pointed to the big soft couch in the living room—“and I knew about it before anyone. I was the first to know.” His voice became softer. “I found them.” He felt awed by the enormity of it. “I found them.” His mother had sat down on the other couch and was looking toward the window. His father started to speak again. “Wow,” Tommy exclaimed, repeating the line he hoped would make them laugh, “some headlight!”

  No one laughed very hard, however, except Mrs. Moran, who had come in at that moment to say that dinner was ready. They went into the dining room and sat down. They talked only a little bit about David’s engagement; they’d discuss it later, his father said. The trouble with being an adult, Tommy often thought, was that you had to spend so much time discussing everything, going backwards and forwards over the same thing but never actually getting anywhere. John L. Lewis was as bad at the end of the discussion as he was at the beginning, and so were the Reuthers, who were ruining Detroit. Tommy did not look forward to that part of being grown up. He wondered what his parents would find to discuss about David’s engagement. He thought you were supposed to celebrate engagements, like weddings and anniversaries and christenings.

  Tommy’s mother talked about their trip East. She loved Lord & Taylor; it was probably her favorite store—not so large as Field’s, but awfully good. They’d gone to a Broadway show and dancing in the Rainbow Room with the McGhees, who’d joined them in New York for a couple of days, before they’d all gone to Philadelphia together. The McGhees lived outside Philadelphia, and they’d had a party for Tommy’s parents. That’s where they’d seen Madge. She went to Bryn Mawr, and most summers she came to the Island with her brother Phelps and with Mr. and Mrs. McGhee, who weren’t her parents but her aunt and uncle. Her real parents had been killed in an auto accident when she and Phelps were little—they didn’t even remember them—and the McGhees had brought them up because Mr. McGhee and their father were brothers. Mrs. McGhee and Mr. Aldrich were cousins—practically everybody seemed related somehow—and that’s how the McGhees started coming to the Island in the first place. Mrs. McGhee had spent her summers there ever since she could remember. They always stayed at the Aldrich cottage now, but Madge didn’t like it much.

  “God,” she used to say, “I wish I could get out of this dump like that bastard Phelps.” Phelps was older and went to Yale. Madge always called him “that bastard” if he wasn’t there, or if he was she would say, “Phelps you bastard,” all in one slow breath, and he would reply very coolly, “Yes, bitch?” Phelps never stayed very long on the Island. He always had to visit friends in Maine or Massachusetts or
Long Island.

  Madge and Phelps were well suited to their names, Tommy thought. They sounded like rich people’s names, not like the names he heard every day. Madge seemed like a glamour girl, the kind they showed pictures of in Life magazine. Tommy’s mother said she was a strawberry blonde. She wore white shorts, played tennis but thought golf was boring, painted her toenails and her fingernails, took sunbaths all the time, smoked cigarettes, and spoke in a rich deep voice like syrup pouring. She talked about nightclubs, college, boarding school, her girl friends who were all debs like herself, boys, weekends at Princeton, and catching trains for New York where she met dates under a clock in a hotel. She spent a lot of time in New York. Philadelphia, she said, was dreary. Dreary. The Island was beyond dreary. It was hopeless. Nonetheless, she seemed to brighten up in the evening, even for one of the ordinary parties that took place, it seemed, every night before dinner at one cottage or another, or at the country club on the shore. She brightened up around Vint Steer, who was David’s friend and Amy’s brother, and around David, too, when he had stopped seeing Margie. It was funny. When David came back from college the summer before and started to work, he and Margie didn’t see each other, despite all her letters. Those letters made Tommy smile.

  Toward the end of that summer, Madge had been David’s girl friend. She’d been Vint’s at the beginning, but everybody was friendly about it. Once when David took her to a dance at the country club, she had worn a strapless dress. Tommy wondered how it stayed up, but his brother John told him not to worry about that, that it didn’t stay up for long. Tommy giggled, and thought how funny it would be when her dress fell down and how embarrassed she would be. When John teased David about her, as he often did that summer, he would call her Hot Pink. “Hot Pink showing pink tonight?” John would ask, laughing wildly. “Hot Pink is hot stuff!” David wouldn’t say a word. But Tommy was glad his brother was going to marry Margie, not Madge. Maybe Vint could marry Madge.