Laura Z. Hobson

by Gentleman's Agreement

  “I don’t see anything in it about me,” she said to John.

  John didn’t answer.

  She leafed over several pages, searching, almost fearfully, like a vain woman looking for her own face in a group photograph, hoping it would not be too unkind. “… and I felt suddenly that I knew why this lovely woman in Rumson can never truly fight the thing she says she hates. One part of her does indeed hate it, but that part is at war with another part, a buried part, a part that started in her childhood’s misery because ‘the other girls’ had prettier houses and nicer clothes. Like millions of us, she’d pursued the American dream of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ or catching up with them. And the buried part is still living out her childhood ambition to be one of the ‘smart set’ in her community, the ‘in group’ that belongs. She won’t jeopardize that adored status by becoming an outlandish arguer at a dinner table where somebody takes a crack at Jews; she won’t risk being gauche by ripping through the ‘set of rules’ in the pretty world she lives in. During the shooting war, she worked herself half sick in factories, sold bonds, accepted all the discomfort of ration books and shortages like a good soldier. But during this covert war for this country’s future, this secret war in which antisemitism is one of the most familiar weapons, she is unable to do more than offer little clucking sounds of disapproval. Her own success story paralyzes her.”

  Kathy threw the manuscript down. She avoided John’s eyes. She said, “How about some gin rummy, Aunt Jess?” and at once Jessie went to a built-in cupboard below the bookshelves and brought out cards.

  “But not too late, Kathy,” Jessie said. “You really worry me, losing weight that way. You must get lots of sleep.”

  “It’s so easy to see the flaws in everybody else,” Kathy said to the room at large, as she pulled chairs up to the card table.

  “Sometimes the flaws are really there, Kathy.” Minify looked back to the stacked pages. “In the first one he points out that he’d never gone much beyond the sounds of disapproval himself.”

  “He doesn’t say anything about the real bigots—”

  “Oh, there’s plenty about that in the series. But he showed me an advance copy of the next Fortune survey—damn interesting. Proves something he hunched onto all along.” Minify’s eyes were serious. “The biggest incidence of antisemitism comes from the top-income bracket now.”

  “Really? Not the other way round?”

  “The very people who set the styles for the country in clothes and cars and salads—and mores.” He was enjoying her astonishment. “The middle-aged stuffy ones in the bracket more than the young ones. Survey also shows only nine per cent of the country admits any prejudice.”

  “That’s not so much,” Aunt Jessie said.

  “It’s plenty.” He turned again to Kathy. “What Phil’s trying to do is make the rest of the style setters, the ones who really are against prejudice, come out and fight. Not just the rich ones, everybody.”

  She glanced down at the manuscript as if she were appealing to it to judge her and find her a fighter.

  “There are a hell of a lot more of our kind of style setters,” John went on with a sudden intensity. “Even a handful of us in every community could set a new national style in a few months. Damn it, it’s worth trying.”

  “Ready, Kathy?” Aunt Jessie said. “Shall we play the double spade?”

  Two mornings later, Phil brandished a bulky roll of manuscript at Miss Wales.

  “One and two,” he said. “Edited and ready to go. I’ll get through number three before you can handle this much."

  He chucked the roll over to her. She caught it and began to work the elastic band down the thick column. The rubber squeaked against the paper.

  “How long do you guess for that much?” Phil asked.

  She looked up and said, “This about ten thousand, do you figure?” Her open palms continued their downward stroke on the resisting elastic, and Phil remembered the time years ago when he’d watched a saleswoman roll new gloves on Betty’s stiffly upright fingers.

  “More than that,” he said. “They each run pretty near seven thousand. Minify says not to cut till galley, anyway.”

  “By tomorrow night,” she said with assurance. “I’m pretty fast when it isn’t longhand.” She was smiling at him, eager to begin her ministrations at last. Ever since he’d remained silent when she’d taunted him about Belle’s “running away from it,” her forgiveness had been complete and he’d avoided reopening hostilities. She glanced down at her hands. The tight band was at the lower rim of the roll now, compressing it so that above it the paper fanned out, an inverted cone. Horn of plenty, Phil thought. Full of all the good things, hate and indifference and hypocrisy. And maybe some hope, too. He was watching her.

  She had the band off. She glanced up at him, saying professionally, “And, of course, if it isn’t all thick with pencil corrections and inserts and stuff.” As she talked her hands were busy on the curling wad, rerolling it backward, then flattening it out on her knees. She looked down. He saw her eyes go to the title.

  “For eight weeks?” She looked up, and immediately down to the short first paragraph. He had never changed it. He had made the decision, long ago, to tell it straight, right from his first resistance to the “hell of an assignment.” He didn’t particularly relish remembering that early boredom and resistance, but that was the way it had been.

  He was still keeping an eye on Miss Wales. She was nearing the bottom of the first page. Her head was bent, and he could see only her profile. Below its impassive repose, he saw that her slender neck was coloring. It touched him. She was upset. That he hadn’t expected.

  She turned to page two. Abruptly then she put the manuscript aside.

  “You’re a Christian, Mr. Green!” Surprise, reproof, embarrassment, all these were in the stare, the unbelieving tone. “And I never suspected it; I fell for—why, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Everybody else did, too, what the hell.”

  “I saw you more than anybody else, though, and I never once—” Her face was going rosy also. Her round-eyed pinkness disconcerted him. Odd, this much reaction.

  “What’s so upsetting about that, Wales?”

  “I feel so dumb!”

  “You’re practically telling me, in a funny backhand way, that there is something different between Jews and Christians.”

  “How am I?”

  “By being so floored at not guessing.”

  “Oh, Mr. Green. You’re always doing that, reading things in.” She looked up at him, silently asking him not to badger her now. “I’m so—I feel all turned round somehow.”

  “Take it easy. I’m the same guy I was yesterday.”

  “I—I guess you are.” She blinked rapidly. “But why’d you ever tell people—just purposely—I don’t get it.”

  “You will when you get to page ten or so.” Echo of Kathy’s voice as she knelt to Tom. The Great Benison— Miss Wales felt it, too, in a kind of reverse twist. Threaded through her ordinary surprise was astonished disbelief that anybody could voluntarily abandon that glory! And if he charged her again with antisemitism, the unwitting concession that being Christian was better than being Jewish, she’d accuse him of reading things in. Or echo Kathy once more. “It’s just facing facts.”

  “Anyway, let me have the first one when it’s ready,” he said, “so I can turn it over to the art department.”

  She rose, the automatic response to the tone of finality. She was still flustered. “Hold on a minute, Wales.” She looked up, ready to be offended. “Look, I’m the same guy I’ve been all along,” he said gently. “Same face, nose, tweed suit, voice, everything. Only the word ‘Christian’ is different. Someday you’ll believe me about people being people instead of words and labels.”

  She rolled the manuscript so tightly, Phil thought, she’s throttling the life out of it. She left, and he reached for a cigarette. The first time he’d catalogued himself that way, the magic word had been “Jewi
sh.” He oughtn’t, he supposed, be surprised over this first small episode of “the unwinding”; there should never be surprises when you deal with the irrational. Turning the manuscript over was a milestone as far as the series went, but it meant nothing much about himself. Kathy was right. He had changed. Once you change about things like this, you never unchange. He was through and he wasn’t through. The eight weeks had uncovered things, many things, and not only about being Jewish. They had pried him loose from his own blindfolds.

  He’d learned about being Jewish. But he’d also learned a good deal about being anybody.

  The manuscript of the third and fourth articles bulked thick in the Manila envelope on the desk. He reached for it and took it out. Three days had gone into the editing of the first two, but the rest had come off the machine more readily; they shouldn’t need so much revision. He picked up a pencil. Then he knew that he was too depleted to start in again.

  He leaned back in his chair. The desk calendar caught his eye. Friday, the eighth of February. At this moment they’d have been on a bright beach in Nassau, somnolent beside each other on the sand, secret with the night they’d shared. He stabbed his cigarette at the ash tray; it broke in the middle and shredded tobacco over his fingers. He had to take a walk, get out of here, go somewhere.

  In the corridor he saw Bert McAnny and ignored him.

  That day after lunch he’d gone straight for Bert on his gossip about Belle. It had proved futile, even cheap.

  “But, Phil, this Jeff Brown said it; I didn’t. All I said was that if I were Jewish, I’d be the way you are.”

  “Cut the bouquets, Bert. Strikes me, the very people who make life galling for Jews are the most upright about demanding guts and courage and dignity from them.”

  Now, the sight of Bert merely made him wonder whether Belle would run into anything out there, or whether it would stay in the gossip stage all around her and she unaware of it. Well, she’d have to stand it. She and Dick and the whole of Naismith Motors.

  He drifted down along the corridor. In the “pen,” twenty typewriters rushed along on their dry clacking, the racket interspersed with chiming bells and the shrewish whine of the slung-back carriage. Had Wales already shown the title and first paragraph to her cronies? Was there the same astonished look on all of them, or did any of them take it with the plain, ordinary interestedness they’d feel in any other journalistic stunt?

  The door to Anne’s office was open. Her secretary was in there with her. He said, “Hi,” and started to go past.

  “Phil. Come on in. I found an apartment for Dave.”

  He went in and waited while the two women talked. He watched her conduct the brief business, easy, friendly, bright as ever. Nobody in this world, he decided, could look at her, listen to her, talk to her, and think something was sad and hurt and wrong in her life. She signaled to him once that it would only be another minute and gave him what was surely a lighthearted smile. Since the night at her house he had seen her only at the office or for drinks with other people. Neither of them had made even oblique reference to what had happened.

  “It’s sort of a railroad flat,” she said, the moment they were alone. “But not awful at all—I went and looked at it this morning. Converted tenement on the south fringe of the Village. The father committed suicide last night, and my broker pal practically phoned me before the hearse got there.”

  He shook his head. “You are a gruesome one. What broker pal?”

  “I told you—you never listen to what I say. Clare Spradling. Used to broke uptown in the fancy East Side offices and then started her own business in Village properties. Anyway, listen.” She described the flat, and ended, “But it’s clean and sunny and warm and the only thing they’ll ever get. Should we take it? She’s holding it for me till noon.”

  “What’s happening to the suicide’s family?”

  “Oh, them.” She waved them out of the world. “Want to go see it?”

  “If you say so, grab it. I’ll write a wire for Dave.”

  While she was getting the number, she said, “Clare’s the one gave me that code stuff I told you—the brokers’ little dodges, ‘hundred per cent co-operative’ when they mean gentiles only, remember?”

  “And ‘he’s an Otto Kahn’ if they mean Jewish-but-O.K. Sure, I worked it in in the fourth one, along with Sam’s golf-club boys. I’m through at last.”

  She said, “Great,” and talked efficiently into the telephone. He wrote out a wire for Dave and Carol. They could still make it, and they’d be happy about it. The one letter he’d had from Dave did a bad job of concealing his sharpened desire for the bigger future Quirich-Jones offered. “That’s right, Clare, as is,” Anne was saying, “no repainting and rent from Feb fifteen even if they’re not here. I’m sending fifty deposit by boy; God bless you for smelling the gas or whatever.” She hung up.

  Gratitude made him say, “Come on, I’ll buy you a sandwich at the Ritz.”

  “Decided I won’t attack you again, hey?”

  They walked through the crowds and colors of Fifth Avenue at noon. It was a day such as comes sometimes in early February, taunting in its unseasonable warmth, immediate with spring and gentle winds and beneficent skies forever. Slow and unarguable, the old desire for love, for a close-shared life, struck at him, not with Kathy, not with Anne, not with any one woman. It was concept only, urgency in the blood. He wondered if this tall, slim girl beside him, never pretty, but striking and vigorous and stimulating, knew that hunger also, and for how long she had sought to appease it.

  “Phil, I suppose Dave told you about us? Men always put on such talk about guarding a woman’s name but usually manage to slip the idea across to their best buddy just the same.”

  “Matter of fact, he never did.”

  “Oh. You mean I’m talking too much, as usual?”

  “What difference does it make, if I do know? It’d hurt Carol, that’s all. Wives never understand what it’s like to get back to an appealing girl of your own kind after three years.”

  “I’ll never tell Carol. I’m loathsome about phony women, but—”

  He made a gesture so sharp, she stopped at once. They walked on in silence. Once or twice she glanced at him and then away; he knew it without turning his head., Even his mother, when he’d finally told her it was off for good, had said nothing against Kathy. Nor would Dave when he received the letter about it. Then why should Anne?

  Downstairs in the grill the room was already filling with people. From previous visits there, Phil knew that many of them were from New York’s publishing houses and advertising agencies, that they were radio executives and literary agents and playwrights and authors. In the good downtown restaurants they would be bankers and lawyers and brokers and insurance men. Around Times Square, they would be show folk and garment-industry executives and newspaper management people who did not like “eating in” with lino-typers and copy runners and rewrite men who used the restaurants right in their own buildings.

  “I’m becoming a New Yorker fast,” he said aloud to Anne.

  “Like it?”

  “You do spend more time in restaurants here than in any city out West,” he said. “In New York, you can live through most of the dramatic moments of your life leaning over a table or side by side on one of those damn benches.”

  She was reading the menu and made no answer. He looked about him. He would for a long time, he supposed, be quite unable to enter a peopled place without this fleeting wonder if Kathy might be there. Unconsciously he looked for her in every street group, on every bus, among the women stopping at the windows of the stores strung brightly along Fifth and Madison and Fifty-seventh. He never knew that he was doing it until the mixed disappointment and relief told him he’d been at it again, half longing, half afraid of the shock if he should one day come upon her face to face.

  Anne put the menu aside. She picked up the roll on her plate and crumbled a piece off it. “The thing that’s wrong with me, Phil, is I’ve been
in love for eleven years with a man I can’t ever marry.”

  She spoke without the coloring of any emotion whatever, neither sorrow nor regret, not self-pity or appeal for sympathy. It was purely a handing over of fact for any use he might make of it.

  “I’m thirty-three,” she said, “so it’s been the only thing you’d call love there’s ever been. You take quite a beating, so you begin doing all sorts of things to make it easier for you from time to time. Like Dave.”

  He remained silent, but he nodded as if to tell her he knew all about what one did from time to time to make it easier.

  “And you get tense and nasty and discontented and fairly acid about things. So that’s me. Dave wasn’t kidding when he said I was bitchy—I’d have taken him away from Carol if I could have, divorce and the works. If you’ve been through enough you get callous about other women’s sufferings—they can stand it, too. I know I’m twisted up about everything and I don’t give much of a damn by now.”

  “Sure you can’t ever marry this man you’re in love with?”

  “He’s married and one of those decent ones. He won’t hurt her. O.K. to wreck me and himself. Sometimes the decent men are the most laughable.”

  “You were going to give him up for Dave. Couldn’t you just give him up for good, anyway, and get over it?”

  “I’ve tried that, too. But no matter how much is wrong, so much else is right—if it’s got you, Phil, you can’t just argue it away.”

  Who knew that better than he? “So much else is right.” For a moment he could not speak, silenced by the clamor of that recognition.

  “I’m sorry, Anne. It must be hell.” The captain came up benignly for their order. When he’d gone, Phil turned earnestly to her. “You’re not twisted up about everything.”