by Max Shulman
“Now isn’t that a coincidence?” I chuckled. “I remember reading a Sherlock Holmes story where a man hired people to copy the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. He turned out to be a big crook.”
“But I’m not hiring you to copy the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. I’m hiring you to copy Webster’s New International Dictionary,” Mr. Atterbury pointed out. “Therefore I can’t be a crook.”
“Obviously,” I said.
“When you finish the dictionary, go out and count all the blocks in the city.”
“Right, P.A.,” I snapped.
“Take your time, do a good job, and, most important, remember this: The job is top secret. Don’t let anybody know I retained you.”
“Check, P.A.”
“I’ll be in touch with you. Good-by.”
“Good-by, P.A.”
He stopped as he was halfway out. “Oh, by the way, it’s true that you’re an old friend of George Overmeyer’s, isn’t it?”
“Right, P.A.”
“Fine fellow, George. I hope you’ll be seeing a lot of him.”
“I hope so, P.A. I’ll tell him you send your regards.”
“No, no. No, no. Don’t mention my name to George—or to anyone else, of course. Nobody must know about our connection. Top secret, remember?”
“Check, P.A.”
“Well, good-by.” He started out again, and again he paused. “I suppose you want your tickers turned back on,” he said.
Before I could protest, he had somehow started them going again and was out the door.
I did not work that day. I spent several hours trying to locate the shutoff switch, but all I accomplished was to catch my hand in the mechanism and get an order to sell 500 shares of Commonwealth and Southern at 34½ stamped on my palm where it is to this day.
CHAPTER 10
I got home about five-thirty that evening, kissed the maid, and tiptoed upstairs to see how Miss Geddes was feeling. As I came into her room she was sitting on a chaise longue talking to a tall, thin young woman dressed in the height of fashion. They did not notice my entrance.
“But what can I do, Mavis?” Miss Geddes was saying.
Now I recognized my wife’s visitor: Mavis Atterbury, wife of Payson Atterbury and undisputed social leader of Ivanhoe Gardens. What a charming coincidence, I thought, to have Mr. Atterbury call on me and Mrs. Atterbury call on my wife all in the same day.
“You’ve got to try to make a go of this marriage, Esme,” said Mrs. Atterbury.
“Have you seen him?” asked Miss Geddes.
Well, looks aren’t everything, I thought.
“Well, looks aren’t everything,” said Mrs. Atterbury.
I nodded.
“He’s lonesome,” said Miss Geddes.
Perhaps she said “loathsome.” I didn’t quite catch it. My ears were still ringing from the noise of the stock tickers.
“You’ll get used to it,” said Mrs. Atterbury.
It must have been “loathsome.”
“Many unattractive people learn to turn their handicaps to social assets,” said Mrs. Atterbury. “Do you remember Emily Heath who went to Bennington with us?”
“The one who was drum majorette of the school band?”
“That’s the one. Remember the time she threw her baton up in the air and lost it in the sun and it fell right through the top of her head?”
“Yes. And the doctors couldn’t get it out.”
“That’s right. She had to go around with ten inches of chromium rod sticking out of her skull.”
“Yes, I remember. She was pretty embarrassed about it. Left school finally, didn’t she?”
“She went back home. At first she used to sit all day in a dark room and brood and refuse to see people.”
Understandable, I thought.
“But after awhile,” Mrs. Atterbury continued, “she got to thinking. She took some ribbons and flowers and tulle and tied them to the baton and went out. Everybody thought it was a hat and told her how chic it was. She began to change the decorations on her baton every time she went out, and pretty soon the whole town was raving about her hats. Last month she had an article in Vogue called ‘How I Triumphed Over a Horrible Disfigurement to Become the Millinery Style Leader of Spokane, Washington.’”
“Maybe I ought to stick something in Harry’s head,” mused Miss Geddes.
I blanched.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” said Mrs. Atterbury.
My color returned.
“The thing to do,” she went on, “is to find some characteristic of his that can be used to make him socially acceptable.”
“Like what?” asked Miss Geddes.
“I haven’t met your husband. What would you say is his outstanding trait?”
“He’s real dumb,” replied Miss Geddes promptly.
“That has never been a disadvantage in society,” observed Mrs. Atterbury. “Tell me some more about him.”
“He’s ungainly, crude, gauche—”
“There you have it!” cried Mrs. Atterbury. “A rough diamond. How refreshing it will be to have a passionate, brooding man in our set.”
I knit my brows and brooded passionately.
“Naah,” said Miss Geddes. “He’s a little pip-squeak—a toady. He fawns all over everybody.”
“Even more interesting,” said Mrs. Atterbury. “A smooth rough-diamond.”
“Look, Mavis, it’s hopeless. I’m going to Reno tomorrow and get this thing over with.”
I almost cried out, so distressed was I. I suddenly saw all my recent gains slipping away—this fine house, my splendid office, albeit noisy, Dad Geddes’s suits. And, of course, also my wife, with whom I was enchanted. Distance lends enchantment.
“You mustn’t do it, Esme,” said Mrs. Atterbury. “Divorce is so ugly.”
“You’ve had three,” Miss Geddes pointed out.
“All ugly,” said Mrs. Atterbury. “I’ll never have three divorces again.”
“No, Mavis—”
“Give it a whirl, Esme. Speak to him, take him to parties, try to make him a part of your life.”
“You’re not suggesting that I extend him a husband’s privileges?”
I leaned forward eagerly.
“Of course not. No need to overdo it.”
I shrugged philosophically. I could always take up squash racquets.
“Try it for a little while,” urged Mrs. Atterbury. “Six months. If it doesn’t work out, you can get a Florida divorce. It will be winter by then.”
“Why are you so interested?” asked Miss Geddes.
“Because I’m terribly fond of you,” replied Mrs. Atterbury.
There was no doubting her sincerity, the crossed fingers behind her back notwithstanding.
Miss Geddes pondered for a moment. “I was going down to Florida anyhow next January,” she said thoughtfully. “There’s some alligators down there making a bag for me.”
“Then why not wait until then to get your divorce?”
“All right. I’ll give it a try.”
“That’s my good girl. Now I must rush.”
I stole from the room and ran downstairs, cheering softly, to tell the good news to the maid.
CHAPTER 11
On every second Wednesday during the summer Wrose Wrigley, poetess laureate of Ivanhoe Gardens, held intimate alfresco suppers, during which she favored her guests with recitations of her verse and prose. Naturally only the most cultured were invited to these gatherings; one had either to belong to the Book-of-the-Month Club or to know somebody who did.
I had long yearned to attend a Wrose Wrigley party, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would ever be invited. (My wildest dreams, incidentally, are pretty wild. The other night, for example, I dreamt I was attending a polo match aboard the Queen Mary. All the spectators except me had pencil sharpeners with which they were putting points on frankfurters. So distressed was I at not having a pencil sharpener that I burst into tears, whereupon a nu
de young woman tapped me on the shoulder and informed me that I had just been elected lieutenant governor of Vermont. At this intelligence I became very excited and climbed the young woman, who had now turned into a ladder. Then I woke.… George Overmeyer, a keen student of Freud, to whom I later described this dream, said that its meaning was quite obvious: I had an unfulfilled desire to visit Yellowstone Park.)
But I digress. I was telling how come I got invited to a Wrose Wrigley party. It happened shortly after Mavis Atterbury left my wife’s bedroom. I was eating my dinner when Miss Geddes entered the kitchen. I sprang instantly to my feet. “You there,” said Miss Geddes. “I want to talk to you.”
“And I to you,” I declared fervently, “for conversation is the currency of marriage. Only by speaking freely can the little irritations be dispelled that are so natural to matrimony. I had looked upon our union,” I confessed, “as a long conversation piece, the two of us growing older, but the talk ever flowing until, at length, we are laid to rest in a common sepulcher.”
Miss Geddes swore a mighty oath and poured herself a tumbler of cooking sherry. “Listen,” she said. “Against my better judgment, I’ve decided to give this marriage a try until winter … Stop jumping up and down! From now on you can take your meals with me in the dining room. You’ll escort me when we go out and act as host when we entertain at home … Will you stop?”
Jumping up and down, she meant.
“As far as our friends are concerned, we will behave as husband and wife. However, we will continue to have separate bedrooms.”
I stopped jumping up and down.
“Now go on upstairs and get dressed. We’re going over to Wrose Wrigley’s.”
So casually did she mention the name that its full import did not dawn on me until I was upstairs dressing. Wrose Wrigley! I became so agitated that I had to ring for the maid to button me.
But even with the maid’s assistance my habit was not all it should have been. This I learned when I joined Miss Geddes in the living room. “You don’t wear a turtle-neck sweater with a tuxedo!” she exclaimed sharply. “Kee-rist,” she added and poured herself a hooker of brandy.
In a trice my slight error was rectified and Miss Geddes and I were driving merrily to Wrose Wrigley’s house. I was possibly more merry than she.
We reached the Wrigley house, drove over the moat, and parked in the jousting ground. From the courtyard we could hear the sounds of well-bred revelry. How the mots justes must be crackling, I thought, how delicious must be the badinage—a thrust here, a parry there, an endless contest of wit and literacy, endlessly delightful. I gave a little shiver.
No less a personage than Wrose Wrigley herself greeted us at the courtyard gate. How shall I describe my hostess? Where to begin? Her eyes, perhaps, were her most arresting feature. Minute and milky, they seemed at first glance like a pair of ball bearings; in moments of passion, as I was to discover later, they rolled back into her head and quite disappeared. Her nose was piquantly kiltered. An inscrutable smile played over her dentures. Moles and related tumescences gave her face an attractive irregularity.
Her body can best be described as womanly. A peekaboo blouse revealed a full, checkered bosom (the result, I learned later, of sun-bathing behind a lattice). A multicolored dirndl strained at her commodious hips. Her conical legs ended in the smallest adult feet in the Occident.
It was difficult to guess her age, so I asked her. She replied with a tap of her fan that broke the skin on my forehead. Chuckling rather more than my wife, I followed Miss Wrigley into the garden where the guests were seated.
Many of the guests were people I had met at that memorable party at Miss Geddes’s house, but although the cast of characters, so to speak, was largely the same as had graced Miss Geddes’s party, the nature of tonight’s gathering was entirely different. Where Miss Geddes’s party had frankly been a vehicle for relaxation, this soiree, while no less pleasurable, had behind it a more serious purpose—to promote the arts, to instruct, to edify, to discuss, to shed light on those aspects of American culture that touched the lives of all us members of the middle class.
I was a listener, rather than a participant, in most of the conversation that evening. When I got home I put down as much as I could remember in my diary (Dad Geddes’s diary, actually). Let me quote an excerpt from my diary, a typical sample of the kind of talk that went on at Wrose Wrigley’s party:
MR. OXNARD: I read a mighty interesting book last night.
MRS. HOLLOWAY: I just never get time to read any more, what with—
MR. HERWIG (interrupting): What was the name of the book?
MRS. HOLLOWAY: Name of the book? Lord, I just never get time to read any more.
MR. HERWIG: I meant the book Ed (Mr. Oxnard) was reading.
MRS. HOLLOWAY: Oh.
MR. OXNARD: I forget exactly. Mae (Mrs. Oxnard) would know. Mae?
MR. SUNDBERG: She went to the john.
MR. OXNARD: Well, when she comes back she’ll know. (NOTE: AS it turned out, Mrs. Oxnard never did come back.)
MR. ATTERBURY: I understand there’s a lot of money in the book game.
MR. BENSON: The movie game, that’s where the money is. Why, I hear Gregory Peck spends fifty thousand dollars a year on milk baths alone.
MR. BRADBURY: I’ve got a cousin in the weather-stripping game out in California, he tells me Ingrid Bergman is bald as an egg.
MRS. McEWEN: It’s those milk baths. They clog your follicles.
MR. WHITE: Speaking of follicles, Leopold Stokowski is coming to the auditorium next Friday.
MR. KRAFT: I hear he’s got a cork leg.
MR. ATTERBURY: I understand there’s a lot of money in the cork-leg game.
And so it went all evening long, I sitting there listening avidly and regretting that I had never learned shortarm so I could take it all down verbatim. I put down as much as I could recall when I arrived home, but I’m sure I forgot many an exchange equally as meaty as the one quoted above.
At midnight Miss Wrigley cried cheerily, “Soup’s on!” a colorful term denoting that supper was served. The guests flocked to a gaily festooned table on which peanut-butter sandwiches were arranged to spell out: ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS. “What the hell does that mean?” said several, feigning ignorance of this classic Greek phrase. With many a laugh and cheer, the tasty repast was dispatched.
Supper over, Miss Wrigley lighted candles and announced with a blush that she would now read her latest work. “Good heavens, look what time it’s getting to be!” cried everyone, glancing at his watch. Hastily they made their good-bys and departed.
Thus it became my privilege to be the sole member of the audience at the first reading of Wrose Wrigley’s latest work.
“Dear me, this always happens,” said Miss Wrigley, watching the last of the guests leaping over the hedge. “Well, no matter,” she smiled. “I’ll read to you, Mr. Riddle.”
“Sweet,” I murmured.
“It’s a poem,” she said, “called My Garden.”
“Sweet,” I murmured.
She read in her ringing baritone:
“My garden it is fragrant,
The blossoms they do bloom,
So wild and free and flagrant
Out of the earth’s sweet womb.
“When you pass it, neighbor,
And see the flowers grow
Do you realize the labor
It took to make it so?
“The hoeing and the weeding,
The spraying and the work,
For the art of flower breeding,
It never lets you shirk.
“A gardener is wiser
The moment that he knows
It takes a heap of fertilizer
To make a rose a rose.”
“Jolly!” I cried. “Capital!”
“I write prose too,” she confessed. “Stories, essays, mottoes.”
And now I had a confession to make. “I’d give anything to be able to write,” I said, rubbi
ng my toe in the turf.
“But you can!” she exclaimed. “I’m sure you can.”
I smiled bravely. “No. I’ve tried a million times. I just never know how to start. I think if I could get past the beginning, the rest would come easily.”
“I know, I know. Beginnings used to be difficult for me, too, until I learned the secret.” She slipped her hand inside my shirt and tapped my chest to emphasize her words. “The beginning of a story must excite the interest of the reader, must make him eager to know what is coming.”
“Ah,” I said, comprehending. “You mean the beginning of a story must be arresting and startling.”
“Exactly.”
“Now let me see if I can think of one.” I knit my brows in thought. Miss Wrigley gripped my upper thighs to help me concentrate. Suddenly a perfect beginning occurred to me. I leaped up excitedly, upsetting Miss Wrigley upon the lawn. I brushed her off—twice, at her insistence.
“I’ve got it, Miss Wrigley,” I shouted. “I’ve got the perfect beginning. Listen … ‘Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Four shots ripped into my groin and I was off on the biggest adventure of my life.’”
“Splendid,” said my hostess. “It’s got everything.”
I glowed with pleasure. Now, if I ever wrote a book, I would know how to begin it.
Gratefully I took Miss Wrigley’s hands in mine. “How will I ever thank you for what you taught me tonight?”
She drew me down beside her on the glider. “I can teach you a lot more,” she whispered.
Suddenly—I could scarcely believe it—her lips were on mine and she was wrenching at my clothing.
I tore myself away. “You’re mad!” I cried hoarsely.
“Yes. Yes. Mad for you.” She resumed her advances.
“Miss Wrigley,” I said coldly, “please desist. I’m just not that kind of a boy.”
“Nonsense. You’re a normal human being with normal impulses. Why deny them?”
“May I remind you that I am a married man?”
“But what has that to do with us?”
“Why, everything!”
“I know what you’re going to say about fidelity and all that outmoded rot.”
“Outmoded rot! Why, it’s the very foundation stone of marriage.”
