A Season in Purgatory

by Dominick Dunne

  “Do you have any idea how expensive they are?” gasped Grace, on the telephone from Paris, where she was ordering her new clothes.

  “I can afford them,” replied Gerald. He spoke such lines authoritatively, even to Grace. What he wanted was to be done, no further questioning, no further comments.

  Chintz slipcovers were made for the sofas and chairs. Green-and-white-striped awnings shaded the verandas, and the wicker furniture was painted white. Pink geraniums were planted in white painted boxes all along the verandas, and an entire summer garden was planted. Everything was under the supervision of Sally Steers. It was in Watch Hill that the usually compliant Grace began to complain. She thought all the decorating was too much of an extravagance for so short a time, but Gerald insisted. Next year he might buy it, he said.

  “But don’t you like your garden?” asked Gerald.

  “Blue, blue, blue, blue, and I hate blue flowers,” said Grace. “I wanted roses, not forget-me-nots and delphiniums.”

  Gerald understood that her complaints had nothing to do with forget-me-nots and delphiniums.

  At the entrance to the house, Gerald’s new maroon Rolls-Royce was parked. Like the house in Scarborough Hill, the seashore cottage became a house to be stared at and pointed out by drivers-by, but, like the house at home, only the golf pros and tennis instructors hired by Gerald to teach his children came to lunch. Even with Mrs. Steers’s introductions, the Bradleys remained outsiders.

  Gerald was not a weekend father, up from the city on Friday nights and returning to the city on Monday mornings. He was there for long periods, doing his business on the telephone. While watching his children swimming in the pool, he called Dom Belcanto, the singer, in Hollywood, who was thought to have underworld connections. And Senator Zwick, and Charles Arbelli, the editor of the World, and Terrence Noonan, the editor of the Sentinel. Sometimes men came to see him. Some were introduced to his wife and children. Some weren’t. A man named Johnny Fuselli came and went from time to time, meeting behind a closed door in a downstairs room that Gerald used as an office. He drove a bright red car. He was never introduced. He was never asked to lunch, but he always took a swim in the ocean, and we were impressed with his powerful strokes.

  “He’s quite a swimmer, isn’t he? I believe he had Olympic aspirations once, but something went wrong. He probably flunked a urine test at one of the trials,” said Gerald to Jerry. “Moe Dailitz told me the story, but I can’t quite remember.”

  “A little cocaine in the bloodstream perhaps?” suggested Jerry.

  “Something like that. So he went to Vegas and Atlantic City instead,” said Gerald, chuckling over his joke. “The Olympics’ loss is our gain.”

  I supposed Mr. Fuselli was one of the disreputable people Aunt Gert had mentioned to me. Maureen, the elder sister, said he was handsome in a cheap sort of way. She told her mother that all the maids had crushes on him.

  “Who’s Mr. Fuselli?” I asked Constant.

  “One of Pa’s lieutenants, I suppose,” he replied. He elaborated no further. I did not persist in questioning. It was Kitt who enjoyed chatting about the people who came and went in her father’s life. Mr. Crotty, she said, was in cement. Mr. McSweeney in tugboats. Mr. O’Malley in taxicabs. And Johnny Fuselli in crime, she said, breaking out into gales of laughter. “He used to have something to do with slot machines in New Jersey.”

  “Shut up, Kitt,” said Constant. “You talk too much.”

  Gerald wanted his children to excel. He sat by the court and watched them play or stood on the green and watched them tee off, barking out instructions. “You should have used your backhand on that shot, Constant,” he called out. “And returned it to the other side of the court, where Des couldn’t reach it.”

  “You’re right,” said Constant. He pulled up the front of his Lacoste shirt to wipe the sweat off his face. Weegie Somerset, who loved him then, watched from the sidelines, looking longingly at his exposed stomach and chest.

  Gerald always wore a large straw hat to protect his white skin from the strong rays of the sun. Even with protection, his skin turned red with the minimum of exposure, and lotions were always being applied. He sat under an umbrella and removed his terry cloth robe only to go into the pool to swim his forty laps, dropping it at the edge of the pool so that he could put it on again instantly as he was walking up the steps to leave the pool. Grace came to the pool only after the sun had gone down. On my first day there, the afternoon of the celebration in honor of Constant, I was lying on a lounge chair by the pool, reading Gatsby, and I heard the following conversation between Gerald and Mrs. Steers, who seemed unaware of my presence.

  “You’re not a popular man, Gerald,” said Mrs. Steers. “You have no close friends. Haven’t you noticed that? There are many people who are afraid of you, who will invite you to their house for dinner for that reason, but they don’t like you. You’re always on the telephone, but no one calls you up just to chat, No one invites you to play tennis. Do you think your children notice those things?”

  “I have plenty of people to play tennis with,” replied Gerald.

  “Yes. People you pay. Why keep bucking your head against the wall, Gerald? The old guard, what Cora Mandell calls the good families, are never going to accept you, no matter how much money you have, no matter how big your house is, no matter how many sets of Porthault sheets are on your beds.”

  “Give me time.”

  “It won’t happen, Gerald, believe me. You’re an outsider. You always will be. Oh, sure, they’ll take your contributions for the symphony. They’ll let you pay for the repairs to The Country Club after the hurricane damage. They’ll even have you to dinner once a year. But when your son wants to marry one of their daughters, you’ll see what they really think about you. To them, you’re a mick. You’re the butcher’s son who still smells of raw meat, and nothing you ever do is going to change that.”

  Gerald winced. His face turned scarlet.

  “I know, Gerald. That’s the world I grew up in,” she said.

  “So what do I do?” he asked.

  “Get out of there. You are simply in a wrong location.”

  “I can’t.”

  “For part of the year you can. There’s Florida. There’s California. You can buy a big house in Palm Beach, or a big house in Beverly Hills, and make a splash there. Less provincial. Your kids will be assimilated in a way that they’ll never be here.”

  “What about home?”

  “Use it for your country seat. Keep it up. Keep the gardeners. Keep the butler. Visit it a few times a year. It will be a reminder of who you are and what they’re missing. Because, by that time, they’ll be reading about you and your kids.”

  “The butler couldn’t take care of that place.”

  “That is a tidbit problem. What’s that cousin of yours? Sis Malloy? The one who knows where all the furniture goes. Move her in. Put her in charge of the house.”

  “Grace will never want to leave.”

  “Buy the new house first. Then tell her about it.”

  “She won’t want to leave Cardinal.”

  “Cardinals are a dime a dozen.”

  “No, they aren’t.”

  “Then Cardinal will come to visit.”

  Mrs. Steers flew back to New York that afternoon. Cora Mandell, in whose firm she worked, was doing up a house in Southampton and said she needed her help. Immediately. Cora knew what was going on and didn’t like it. It was she who had first been called in to do up the Bradleys’ brand-new Tudor house, and then, because she was so busy, she had turned it over to Sally Steers to do the follow-up work. “Actually,” Cora said, “they’re my favorite upstarts. One step beyond antimacassars, but Grace is really quite nice, when you get used to all that talk about novenas and stations of the cross and holy days of obligation. She’s avid, terribly well meaning, very religious, not very bright, but I like her immensely. But be careful of him, Sally. Gerald Bradley has wandering hands. You’ll feel his hand on your
knee, and higher, under the tablecloth, at the same time he’s talking with Cardinal Sullivan on the other side about Church matters.”

  “I know how to handle that,” said Sally.

  “I hope so. He is irresistibly common, not unattractive in an Irish sort of way, and wildly rich. He is, you will discover, a giver of mink coats from Revillon Frères.”

  In the beginning, the Bradleys were so unused to the splendors of furniture and decoration with which Cora Mandell had surrounded them that when pieces or objects were moved about in the course of family life, their correct positions in the rooms could never be found exactly. Only Sis Malloy, the cousin, could remember, but no one wanted to ask Sis. Twice Mrs. Mandell returned to the house to rearrange things and restore her perfect balance. “Symmetry, Mrs. Bradley,” she said. “Always remember symmetry.” On her second visit, she brought Sally Steers with her to photograph each room, as well as each tabletop, and the photographs were used for reference should things be moved out of place again. Mrs. Steers placed discreet pieces of tape on console tables and mantelpieces to show exactly where the export china plates were to be placed on stands. Often she stayed to lunch.

  “Let me see, let me see, how should I do this?” said Grace. “You here, Des, next to me, and you, Constant, sit by Maureen, and Father Daly, on my right, and Mrs. Steers, next to Father, and Gerald on the other side of Mrs. Steers. And Mary Pat next to Daddy.”

  “You do that so well, Mrs. Bradley,” said Sally Steers. “It takes me forever, and I always end up with a husband and wife sitting next to each other, or two people who hate each other.”

  “Do your miracle with the lobster, Bridey. You know how Mr. Bradley adores your thermidor. Or is it your Newburg? I never can remember, but you know, Bridey,” said Grace. That night the family gathered for a festive evening with toasts and speeches to Constant. Nice old Irish maids in summer pink uniforms passed cheese puffs before dinner. There were eighteen in the group. The men dressed in blazers and white trousers, and the women in linen dresses. The tennis pro was there. The golf pro was there. Some business friends of Gerald’s from Boston. A convent friend of Maureen’s who was being looked over as a possible wife for one of the older brothers. And Weegie Somerset, who was staying with the Utleys down the beach.

  “Oh, take off your jackets. Do. Do. It’s frightfully hot, and the air conditioners are not really working well,” said Grace, who enjoyed her role as hostess. “No, no, don’t you talk, you two. I’ve seated you next to each other at dinner.” After a whispered conversation with Bridey, who appeared on the veranda, Grace moved from group to group and with a timorous wave of her hand toward the dining room gave the signal that dinner would be served.

  After dinner, Gerald suggested to Constant that he read to the family the paper he had written that had so impressed Dr. Shugrue. Constant hopped to his feet and stood in front of the fireplace as his parents, brothers and sisters, and guests settled in chairs and sofas around the room to listen to him. From the inside pocket of his blazer, he removed the twenty typewritten pages that I had mailed his father weeks ago. When he started to read, I forgot that it was I who had written the words. They became his. He talked about his grandfather arriving poor from Ireland, working hard in a butcher shop to make a life for his family. He talked about his parents. “I once said to my mother, ‘When you were young and first married, and the future was still uncertain, not yet defined, did you have any idea that Pa was one day going to be so successful?’ And my mother said, ‘Oh, yes, I always knew. Your father exuded power.’ ” He talked about his brothers and sisters. He talked about family, the importance of family. Like an orator, he held his family spellbound. When he finished, they broke into applause.

  “You’re going to be a politician,” said Gerald. “You are a great speaker, Constant.”

  His sisters crowded around him. His brothers patted him on the back. His mother kissed him. His father hugged him. Weegie Somerset, so quiet in the noisy crowd, smiled proudly. I had no way of knowing then that Gerald saw in me the possibility of becoming the resident hagiographer for the Bradley family, particularly for Constant. Neither Gerald nor Constant looked in my direction. Only Kitt met my eye. She knew. Later, when everyone was preparing to go to the Labor Day dance at the beach club, we walked outside to one of the connecting verandas that encircled the house and sat down side by side on wicker rockers painted white.

  “I like this house, don’t you?” she said. “It’s so old money. People in Scarborough Hill call us nouveau. Did you know that? Constant probably wouldn’t tell you that. Those people at the club think our house is nouveau, too.”

  She reached over and pulled the cigarette I was smoking out of my hand and took several puffs. Everyone still smoked then. There was no talk of fatalities, or very little.

  “If the Blessed Virgin cries when I whistle, imagine what she must be doing when I smoke,” she said.

  I laughed.

  “You don’t laugh very much, Harry. It looks nice on you. You should do it more often.”

  “You sound older than fourteen,” I replied.

  She handed me back the cigarette. “You’re going to discover something about yourself one day, Harry,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You have a real talent for fiction.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You wrote that paper for Constant, didn’t you?”

  I flicked the cigarette out over the railing. It landed in a shrub. I walked down the stairway to the lawn and retrieved it from the shrub and stamped it out on the ground. I didn’t reply. I remembered Gerald’s warning.

  Kitt remained on the veranda watching me. She understood. “But it was Constant’s delivery, though, that was the whole thing, wasn’t it?” she said, retreating from, rather than pressing forward with, her assertion of my authorship. “I mean, he was marvelous.”

  “Yes, yes, it was the delivery,” I replied, anxious to disassociate myself from my own work. “He speaks wonderfully.”

  “He’s always given the best toasts of anyone in the family. Especially after a few glasses of wine.”

  Inside the house, Constant, bored now that he was no longer the center of attention, yawned audibly and got unsteadily to his feet. “Let’s go to the club,” he said. “The music’s already started.”

  That night at the beach club dance, Constant became seriously intoxicated. I had noticed before, while drinking beer with him surreptitiously at school, that his natural charm and wit gave way to a morose side of his character with the first signs of intoxication. I have not often been drunk in my life, but that night I was, too. My purpose was to keep up with Constant, to do what he did. On my own I would not have had so many drinks. Other than my duty dances with the Bradley sisters, I avoided the dance floor, preferring to watch rather than participate. I wandered about staring at people I didn’t know and probably never would. There was not an angry or worried face among them, or so it seemed to me then.

  Finally I went toward the bar and stood there, ordering another drink I didn’t really want. It was the only place a single man could linger without being asked to whirl some young lady around the dance floor. When I went outside to smoke, through the French doors that led to the beach, I heard voices and saw in the darkness two figures pressed up against the back wall of the cabanas. Because of my condition, my memories of the conversation I overheard between Constant and Weegie Somerset are somewhat fragmented. I was torn by guilt at snooping on my friend but troubled by the unpleasantness of the intimate scene I overheard. It was not the whispering of lovers. His voice was harsh, like Jerry’s, devoid of its usual refinement.

  As I turned to walk in the opposite direction, I heard Weegie Somerset say, “Hey, hey, hey. That’s it. That’s enough, Constant. Tongue in the mouth is very advanced for me.”

  “Don’t give me that,” said Constant.

  “Don’t give you what? I’m serious. That’s it, Constant. A little kiss. A little tongu
e. Period.”

  “I know you want it. Here, touch this. It’s hard as a rock.”

  “If I wanted it, Constant, which I don’t, it wouldn’t be out here in the sand leaning against the back of the cabanas, believe me. Now, let go of me. I’m going back inside.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You’ve torn my dress strap.”

  He slapped her very hard. I didn’t see him, but I heard the sound of the slap and then Weegie’s surprised cry.

  “You’re mean when you’re drunk,” she said between sobs.

  “I’m not drunk,” he said.

  She pulled away from him and started for the club.

  “It wasn’t hard,” pleaded Constant. “It was just a tap.”

  I hurriedly returned to my place at the Bradleys’ table in the club. Shortly thereafter, Weegie came in through the same French doors. She turned back to speak to Constant outside. “I can’t take this. I just want you to know I can’t take this.” She left the club in tears. No one knew that night that she would never speak to Constant again.

  “What happened?” I asked Constant the next morning when he awoke.

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  “Don’t say nothing. She cried at the beach club. We all saw her.”

  “Nothing,” he repeated.

  “I was outside, Constant. I went out to smoke. I heard.”

  Constant turned his head to the wall and didn’t answer. Whenever Weegie Somerset’s name came up after that, he remained silent.

  Two weeks later we went back to school for the sixth form. Things were more serious that year. Even though the architectural drawings for the new Bradley Library at Milford were framed in the entranceway to the dining hall, Constant knew that one more infraction on his part would mean permanent expulsion and eliminate his chances of getting into college. He played on the lacrosse team in the fall, skied on the ski team in the winter, and was captain of the tennis team in the spring. He never sneaked into the village to see a film. He no longer hitchhiked places on free afternoons. He went to Communion on Sundays, and he maintained a B average.