The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

by Dominick Dunne

  “Now hold still, Urse, or one of these pins is going to stick in you,” said Ethel Mertens, intent on her work.

  “I can’t understand you when you talk with pins in your mouth, Mama,” said the little girl, straining around to look at the fitting in the mirror over the bureau.

  “Turn around to the mirror and let me look at the length of this skirt.”

  “I love this color blue, Mama. It’s my favorite color.”

  “Do you know what people are going to say about you?” asked her mother, satisfied with her nearly completed chore.

  “They’re going to say, ‘Urse Mertens has the prettiest dresses of any girl in Pittsburg, Kansas,’ ” said Urse, and they both laughed, knowing people wouldn’t say that at all, but it was a line they often used.

  “I’ve been thinking, Urse,” said her mother.

  “Oh-oh,” said Urse.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “When you say ‘I’ve-been-thinking-Urse,’ that means changes.”

  “Well, just listen to me. With your daddy gone, there’s no reason for the two of us to stay way out here on the outside of town. How about if we sold this farm and moved into Pittsburg?”

  “Who would buy it, Mama? It’s all falling down.”

  “Well, somebody would. The other day I saw a real nice house on West Quincy Street that Mr. and Mrs. Cremer want to sell. It’d be perfect, Urse. You’d be able to walk to Lakeside School and have friends right on the street. That Fredda Cunningham lives only two houses away, and you said yourself she’s the most popular girl in the school.”

  “But she’s so stuck-up, Mama. She never says hello.”

  “She will, honey. You’ll be best friends in no time.”

  “Won’t you miss the farm, Mama?”

  “I don’t think either of us is the farm-girl type, Urse. Do you?”

  “No, but I thought maybe Daddy might decide to come back if things didn’t work out in Hugoton.” She pulled the new dress over her head so that she wouldn’t have to meet her mother’s eyes in the mirror and avoid a finality she was still not ready to accept.

  “It’ll be easier for us to figure out a way for you to take your music lessons,” said Ethel, helping her out of the dress.

  “We don’t have enough money for music lessons.”

  “Well, there’s something else I’ve been thinking.”

  “Oh-oh. More changes.”

  “I’ve been thinking of going back to teaching. I went to normal school before I married your father, and I was always planning to teach, but when we got married we moved out here, and I never got around to it.”

  “What would you teach?”

  “Social studies.”

  “A lot of changes, Mama.”

  “But exciting, huh?”

  “And we’ll be able to afford the lessons?”

  “That’s the whole point. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  “Oh, yes, Mama,” she said, hugging her mother. “I always said I wanted to be an actress in the movies.”

  Hurt, she wailed, “Sometimes I wish my father was dead!” It was Christmas.

  “Ursula Mertens!” cried her mother, in the tone of voice she used to let her daughter know she didn’t mean what she was saying.

  “I mean it, Mama,” persisted Urse, not allowing herself to give in to the tears that were welling in her sad eyes.

  “No, you don’t,” her mother insisted.

  “Every birthday, every Christmas, is a disappointment. If he was dead, you wouldn’t wonder if he was going to remember or not.”

  “Now listen, you,” said Ethel, putting her arm around her daughter. “We didn’t have such a bad Christmas, did we? Look at all those nice things you got under the tree. Grandma Smiley knitted you that scarf herself, and Aunt Edna and Aunt Lucy are going to pay for your dancing lessons for a whole year, and Paul Crowell sent you that bath powder from his drugstore, and don’t forget the five dollars.”

  “But I didn’t hear from my daddy, not even a Christmas card, and not on my birthday either. It’s like he forgot me already, and I know that he loved me.”

  “You know, there’s still one special thing I haven’t even told you about yet,” said Ethel, her voice filled with enticement, a sound that Urse could never resist.

  “What’s that?” asked Urse slowly.

  “It’s from Mr. Percy V. Jordan.”

  “Who’s Mr. Percy V. Jordan, Mama?”

  “He’s the manager of the telephone company, Urse, not just for Pittsburg, but for the whole region,” said Ethel expansively.

  “Why would, uh, what’s his name again?”

  “Percy V. Jordan.”

  “Why would Mr. Percy V. Jordan give me a Christmas present when I don’t even know him?”

  “He’s coming over after Christmas dinner, and you will get a chance to know him.”

  “Is he your boyfriend or something?”

  “Oh, Urse, I only just met him, over at the high school when they put in the new phone system.”

  “What’s the present?”

  “He wants to drive you and me over to Kansas City next week—”

  “Kansas City!”

  “—and we’re going to have lunch in a hotel, and go to the pictures, and, more to come—”

  “More?” cried Urse.

  “He’s going to have your picture taken at Swanson’s Department Store. Three poses.”

  “I’m going to have my picture taken? At Swanson’s Department Store? Three poses?”

  “That’s right!”

  “Wait until that stuck-up Fredda Cunningham hears about this,” said Urse, delighted with the way the day had turned out after all.

  “Mrs. Percy V. Jordan. How do you think it sounds, Urse?” asked Ethel Mertens.

  “Kind of ritzy,” said Urse.

  “That’s what I think, too. I like the sound of it.”

  “Is it going to change things, Mama?”

  “Only for the better, honey. There’ll be more money, and we’ll be able to do more things, and I’m sure we’ll start getting invited to some of the nice houses. Some of the ladies in this town don’t take kindly to a divorced woman. You know that.”

  “Mrs. Cunningham, for instance,” said Urse.

  “Mrs. Cunningham, for instance,” agreed her mother, and they both laughed.

  “You don’t love him, do you, Mama?”

  “I think he’s a very good man. A nice man.”

  “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  “I’m thirty-one years old. It’s different now than when I was married the first time. I’m looking for different things out of life. I want to be able to educate you and give you all the lessons and things you want, and have a nice house, and parties on your birthday, and friends for you, and when it comes time for you to get married, the nicest boys in town to come and call on you, and maybe even some of the swells from Kansas City.”

  “Is the manager of the telephone company such a good job as all that? He only has two suits as far as I can see, and he doesn’t even live in as good a house as this one. Paul Crowell says he rents the apartment over his drugstore on Broadway.”

  “Don’t you listen to that Paul Crowell, what he has to say,” said Ethel, sensitive to the implied criticism from her former husband’s cousin. “If that’s the way Paul Crowell talks, I don’t want you stopping in his drugstore on your way home from school anymore.”

  “Mama, Paul’s my friend. He charges Fredda Cunningham for her sarsaparilla, but he always says that mine’s on the house, and anyway, if you want to marry Percy V. Jordan, that’s all right with me,” said Urse, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Oh, Urse,” said Ethel, pulling her child toward her, hugging her, no longer holding back her own tears. “It’s going to work out fine. I know it. You’ll see.”

  “And at least we’ll have our own telephone, not a party line anymore,” said Urse.

  “If I decide to say yes, he’s going
to paint the house all white, with green shutters, just like the Cunninghams’, and he said he’d put up new wallpaper in the front room and in the two bedrooms, and he wants to buy us a Frigidaire, and maybe even a new range. And he has a car!”

  “He has funny hair,” said Urse.

  “I think it’s a wig,” said Ethel.

  “Don’t talk to Ma until after she’s had her coffee,” Urse warned Percy V. Jordan, as if that were the explanation for her mother’s peculiar behavior. Ethel’s behavior in her new marriage was difficult for even her daughter to understand. When the excitement of acquisition had diminished—the newly papered rooms; the telephone; the Frigidaire; and the automobile, a Diana Moon—there was the man himself to contend with. Ethel was as sickened when his soft-boiled eggs dripped on his mustache as she was revolted by his bathroom smells. She could not bear to bathe in the tub when his pubic hairs were caught in the drain and refused to wash it herself.

  She continuously nagged and found fault with him, and used scurrilous and defamatory language toward him. She accused him of killing his first wife; accused him of being infected with a venereal disease; and accused him of associating with women of questionable character. One quarrel was so violent that Urse Mertens called the police.

  For her birthday Percy V. Jordan had promised Urse to take her to Kansas City to see the touring Marilyn Miller in Sunny. It was the thing she wanted to do more than anything else. She knew the words to all the songs, and, for once, Fredda Cunningham was jealous of her when she bragged about her forthcoming birthday trip.

  On the birthday morning Percy V. Jordan announced that he had had enough annoyance and abusive treatment from his new wife, that the trip to Kansas City was off, and that he was leaving the premises permanently. Urse Mertens was disconsolate and embarrassed by what she expected Fredda’s reaction would be. When Ethel realized that Percy was in fact leaving her, she flew into a rage and followed him for blocks through the streets of Pittsburg, screaming abuse at him and attempting to tear his clothes.

  Ethel Mertens was hauled into the police station, fired from the faculty of the high school, and divorced by Percy V. Jordan, whereupon her peculiar behavior ceased.

  Urse, shamed, remained more and more a solitary figure. She knew that the marriage of her mother and Percy was over almost before it started, and that it was only a matter of time before readjustments in their lives and life-styles were to occur again, that another starting-over was to take place.

  She hated the feelings of uncertainty about how they would live, where they would live, if they would be able to manage. She wondered if ever there would be security in her life. She thought of Fredda Cunningham and her seventy-five cents allowance every week, come rain or shine, who always had money to go to the pictures on Saturday afternoons, or buy Photoplay, or even a cheese delight, if she wanted one, at Crowell’s Pharmacy, and she directed the anger she felt over her own lot in life into jealousies toward Fredda.

  The following September she entered high school, and her mother got a new job as the dispatcher at the local taxi service. With the defection of Percy from the scene, both were determined that Urse not give up her dancing and music lessons. She got herself after-school jobs to pay for them herself, first as a check-out girl at the Cash and Carry and then as a counter waitress at Crowell’s Pharmacy, serving milkshakes and cheese delights and pouring coffee into thick white chipped cups. Most of all she hated serving Fredda Cunningham.

  One night, just before closing, in walked Billy Bob Veblen, the captain of the football team, the handsomest boy at Pittsburg High. Up to that time Billy Bob Veblen, whom all the girls were mad for, had never even noticed Urse Mertens.

  Her hand was shaking when she poured him his cup of coffee, but not a drop of it slopped over into the saucer. She was experiencing feelings inside of her that she had never experienced before.

  “Where have you been all my life, beautiful?” he asked her, and she felt like she was in a scene in the movies.

  Morose, the two old friends sat in the dining room of the Brook Club, safe from the world, out of uniform.

  “She won’t do, you know,” said Bratsie. “She won’t do at all, as far as they’re concerned. Here, let me pour you some more of this wine. It’s the most expensive on the menu.”

  Junior stared at the glass as Bratsie poured the burgundy too close to the top of the glass. Cahill would have frowned, thought Junior, trying to assimilate what his friend was saying, trying not to feel let down.

  “Mind you, that’s not how I feel. I’m simply doing what you’re not doing, which is anticipating what Alice and the sisters are going to have to say on the matter.”

  “But they adored her,” protested Junior. “Except Felicity.”

  “You’re in uniform, home on leave, and in a few days you go off, possibly never to return; they are humoring you until this little affair is over. They think you are sowing your wild oats. Talk marriage to them, and you will see their attitudes change very quickly.”

  “I love her,” said Junior hopelessly.

  “I know you do.”

  “I have never had sex like this before, Bratsie. It’s not like at Miss Winifred Plegg’s on West End Avenue. I didn’t know what sex was all about,” confided Junior in a rare moment of intimacy. “What am I going to do?”

  “Mistress her for now. And when the war’s over, see how you feel then.”

  He drank some of the burgundy. “I’m not sure I’m going to come back from the war,” he said quietly.

  “You’ve always thought that, haven’t you?”

  “Thought what?”

  “That you were going to die young.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’ve said things like that before.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Would you care?”

  “I would now that I’ve met Ann.”

  “She’ll wait for you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Brats. She won’t.”

  “You’re pissed off at me, aren’t you?” asked Bratsie.

  “I thought you would have supported me more, Brats, you of all people. None of all this,” he said, looking around the paneled dining room, indicating with his hand the world it represented and the men at nearby tables who had been friends of their fathers’, “ever meant anything to you.”

  “You know, Junior, people always joke and say that Alice wants you to marry Princess Margaret. You see, I think she’s serious, only I think she wants you to marry Princess Elizabeth and become the next King of England, or whatever her husband will become.”

  “That’s a nice shirt, Brats,” said Junior, not wanting to talk about it anymore, now that his exuberance was spent.

  “Had it made,” answered Bratsie, glad for a reprieve, looking down at the maroon-and-white-striped monogrammed shirt with white collar and cuffs.

  “Expensive?”

  “Not for us.”

  They laughed. They were talking about a shirt, but they were thinking about other things. As Bratsie went on talking, he removed his cuff links, then his tie, then his jacket. Then he unbuttoned the buttons, pulled out the tails, and took the shirt off in the crowded quiet dining room. For a moment he sat there, bare-chested, as men at every table turned to gape at the spectacle of the half-naked man continuing his conversation with great enthusiasm.

  “For God’s sake, Bratsie, what are you doing?” gasped Junior.

  “I’d give you the shirt off my back,” said Bratsie, rising, hairy-chested, hairy-armpitted, and handing the shirt across the table to his friend.

  “Bratsie!” cried Junior, trying not to look at the other tables and the horrified look of the captain bearing down on them. Bratsie sat down again, oblivious completely to the scene he was causing, and put the jacket of his suit on over his nudity.

  “Mr. Bleeker,” said the captain. “I’m afraid, sir, I must ask you to—”

  “Ah, Casper,” said Bratsie. “My mother asked that I
send you her best regards. She said my father was fonder of you than almost anyone he knew. What we’d like to order is a marvelous bottle of your best champagne. My friend, Ensign Grenville, and I are celebrating his forthcoming marriage—”

  “Bratsie!”

  “But it’s a great secret, Casper, and you must tell no one.”

  He tapped on the glossy white paneled door of his mother’s bedroom the way he used to when he was sixteen years old to tell her he was home from a dance.

  “Come in,” she said, and he entered. She was sitting up in her enormous canopied bed, reading.

  “Mère, I have the most wonderful news,” said Junior.

  She looked at her son’s love-besotted face. “No,” she said, lifting her hand and waving it negatively between them, answering his news before he could tell it to her.

  “Mère, please.”

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s all there is to it. Go to bed, Junior.”

  “Try to remember what it was like when you first met Father, all those stories you have always told us.”

  “What I felt for your father does not apply to this situation,” she answered him, angrily dismissing the comparison of his lust-filled love with her marriage. Her marriage was so totally appropriate. A more perfect match could not have been imagined, from either family, and out of its appropriateness had grown respect, harmony, understanding, and love. Passion had never played a part. At that moment she missed her husband, because he would have known how to deal with this out-of-hand situation.

  Angered, he turned about and left his mother’s room, slamming the door behind him.

  The room was hot. Candles dripped wax on the table, but Madame Sophia did not seem to notice. The card table between them was wobbly, and the leatherette on the seat of his chair was ripped and felt uncomfortable against his leg. Yellow and red wax roses were covered with dust, and a statuette of the Virgin Mary had been broken and pasted together again. Junior noticed that Madame Sophia’s fingernail polish was chipped. Her eyes were heavily made up, and her hair was hidden beneath a magenta chiffon scarf; he felt she might not be sufficiently bathed. A small girl with pierced ears slept on a sofa. He wondered why, if she knew all the answers to the future, she lived in such squalor.