The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms

by J. P. Donleavy

  ‘Gee, Mrs Jones, I got to use your bathroom somewhere.’

  She laughed herself sick over this, knowing small amounts of this laxative could blow your bowels out, bang bang, as she did the guts of the T.V. set with her shotgun. And she convulsed helpless as he turned blue and green and made for the downstairs powder room and once within made it sound in there like the Russian revolution was going on. Which following that day seemed to leave him semi-permanently indisposed.

  But then in the crazy contrasts erupting in her life, she found that she enjoyed like hell sitting on the lawn mower and making like a great racing driver at full throttle shaving off the grass and taking a few wrong turns also knocking down the shrubberies. After a few vodkas she even tried it one midnight careening around with headlights on, all to the great amusement of the girl who was illuminating herself with a flashlight in her window, but not to the neighbours across the road who phoned the police to whom she explained in her best Bryn Mawr.

  ‘I hope you’ll forgive me for suggesting that I rarely make noise and simply on that premise hope that I may be forgiven that which I have just clearly made.’

  ‘You’re forgiven, Ma’am. But just let’s have a quiet night.’

  ‘And you gentlemen I hope will advise those creeps across the road to mind their own fucking business.’

  ‘At your service, Ma’am.’

  When she woke up dry mouthed in the morning staring at the ceiling she realized she might be going nuts and even her analyst was recently worried. Should she now regret not having divorced her husband and dearly made him recompense alimony at least for every year she worked for him as a wife. It did not pay to be a lady. And wake, if she slept, to ask the walls of her bedroom, how do I get through this day. And if I don’t, who’s going to come to my funeral.

  Her analyst now insisting she try to keep alive her remaining remnants of a social life, suggesting, in what seemed a last effort, that she send out engraved AT HOME invitations and get those remaining of her friends to a black tie dinner party to which he and his wife could also be invited. When she demurred on the grounds that her divorced husband had kept all the friends they had, and they were now part of his glamorous T.V. life, he said that she would find that folk flocked to be at such things. Well she would find out. She ordered the invitations from Cartier but did wonder if her analyst asking to be invited was abusing his professional orthodoxy and that he merely wanted to canvas for patients.

  Ah, but she had now to come back to her sober senses or risk permanently going off the rails. However, perhaps still allowing for a little foible here and there. Which was human enough. And as far as her analyst went, everybody wanted to meet people. He’d never seen the house but yet must know of its every nook and cranny since she’d talked enough about it over the months. Without of course mentioning blasting the shit out of the T.V. set for the second time, or the boy gardener doing the same to the powder room.

  And what the hell, she could at least dare to blow a thousand or two of her declining bucks, to give a black tie dinner before she took an overdose of sleeping pills and could then find out where her spirit might then go to dwell. But meanwhile she thought she could count on a handful at least of her inferiors who would be curious and snooty enough to come to see how miserably fucked up, screwed up and hard up she was after her divorce. And her old South Carolina grandmother had once said.

  ‘My dear, anticipation makes you stop looking back in regret but meanwhile, don’t believe all this equality rubbish, your snobberies are the most preciously valuable asset you will ever have in life, cherish them well. Avoid unbrave men and when you’re away from your own trusted lavatory, only go to the cleanest of places to take a pee.’

  And indeed if anything was a trend in and around New York, it was for women to seek out the damn cleanest of clean rest rooms in which the polish and shine might blind you. Then totally unbelievably everybody to whom she’d sent her engraved invitation came just as her analyst said. And producing from the twelve guests a nice noisy convocation over the Louis Roederer champagne and smoked salmon and caviar canapés. With the hired Hungarian cook and someone to serve at table, and the boy gardener recovered from his loose bowels parking the cars, and while doing this only churning up half of the lawn.

  But with the best of her grandmother’s silverware polished to a gleam, and a hired butler for the pantry and taking coats inside the front door, it wasn’t your worst dinner. Except that during opening drinks when she lit the fire something had blocked the chimney and smoked them out of the drawing room into the chilly conservatory. Until the boy gardener in his best bib and tucker, and mumbling fuck this shit under his breath, managed to get it unblocked but not without getting gobbits of soot over her and her cerulean blue chiffon gown.

  ‘Gee, Mrs Jones, I’m really very sorry.’

  Invited, too, was her own lawyer who may have been attending out of a sense of duty and whose wife, a viperess, had just begun suing him for divorce, and he said to her wistfully that his spouse was not a thoroughbred lady like her of course, and as an attorney he expected to be both legally and illegally lashed and trashed. And she was amused that her analyst after exchanging just a few words with her lawyer seemed like a scalded cat to eagerly get as far away as possible, but then with a big toothy grin button-holed everybody else.

  Then running out of Roederer and somehow despite the decently respectable New York State champagne, the evening only managed to avoid the awful deadness of a wake with people’s conversation remaining platitudinously polite. Alluding to what schools they’d attended in preparation for colleges from which they graduated. Nor did it pick up much over the mint sauce and lamb chops and spinach even as beautifully as the latter was creamed. She felt they sensed her panic in the overly energetic attempt she made in the brave effort to hide her lonely and impoverished fate. At departure approaching each couple suggested they would be back in touch with her soon. She did however feel that the effort of the dinner had been worth it all to at least know that she could in fact still graciously entertain. And also to learn that absolutely not one of them, and especially the wives, was anyone she could rely on with her ass backed up as it was quaking to the wall as she protectively held each cheek in each hand.

  There were only two disasters. And happening at the same time and when she was on her way back from the kitchen through the butler’s pantry after seeing what the cook had set on fire, which was nearly everything as melted butter was blazing on the stove. And then an old time admirer, whom she partnered in the tennis at the country club and with whom she’d nearly once had an inebriated two hour stand in a motel, grabbed her and pushed her up against the pantry sink, kissing her.

  ‘Gee Joy, you’re still really something.’

  And she would have allowed him some encouragement only that his sour wife appeared at the swing door and caught them in the act, giving them both glaringly dirty looks and mumbling something indecipherably threatening. Then as this husband and wife took their prompt departure, she headed out the hall behind them to make feeble excuses that Charlie was just helping to put out the kitchen fire, but his wife only slammed the front door and shook a ceramic pot off its pedestal to break on the vestibule floor.

  But the party did produce a cheerful few moments when they all got around the Steinway grand with their liqueurs and a bottle of priceless brandy that was thrown in free by the wine merchant. She belted out the notes on the keys and they sang their favourite Broadway hit tunes and as the brandy made itself felt, old college songs. And her grandmother would have been pleased at the gleamingly dark green ivy league nature of the proceedings, except that she didn’t approve of colleges above the Mason-Dixon Line.

  But in retrospect and further reappraisal all seemed to turn into what she felt was a fairly dismal swan song. With everyone drinking respectably too little and remaining tight assed. And when they heard she was going to sell, they said with more than a hint of nervous laughter that they hoped it wouldn�
��t be to undesirables. But then like puppets all in unison, ten minutes to midnight they got up, proceeded out to their vehicles and with the car doors slamming loudly went home. But not before they got a view across the lawn of the girl in handcuffs up in her window illuminating a degree of her nakedness with a flashlight.

  Ah, but there were to be big ole surprises. And who would have believed it, as she searched everywhere all over the house, to unaccountably find that a Fabergé silver tea caddy marked with the imperial warrant, considered by Sotheby’s as extremely fine, along with an even finer gold mounted Meissen snuff box delicately adorned with boar and stag hunting scenes, and both bequeathed her by her South Carolina grandmother and which were not unreasonable to think were irreplaceable, had disappeared. She didn’t think the nightly hired help or the boy gardener would have a clue as to the considerable if not astronomical value of these objects but she knew someone, who included most of her guests, did.

  She thought that that was the whole point of an engraved invitation and black tie was that you eliminated guests who had a tendency to steal. Or was it white tie that her grandmother had said did that. If she cast around with suspicions she thought immediately of Charlie’s angry wife. But if this unpleasant lady was even being vaguely asked did she see them, she was sure she’d be in a slander and libel suit which would take her to the cleaners.

  Pray dear god, that what really happened is she forgot she hid the damn things before the party. But she hadn’t, they were there. On top of the small games table. Discreetly in the corner. But conspicuous enough under the lamp light. Her uninsured tea caddy and snuff box. Heirlooms, wiped clean and the silver of one polished by her own delicate fingers. And they were the links with her grandmother and more than what people might think were just there to be seen. And demonstrated that even without a husband she still had things that anyone would be more than peacock-proud to own.

  But even finding herself alluding to the descriptive word peacock annoyed her in its use slightly impugning the elegance of her southern heritage. However, she knew that the loss ultimately wasn’t sentimental but financial and also made plain her vulnerability. But if they were gone, and they were, all she was left with were her bitter suspicions as to whom it might have been who had taken them. Then worse, she wasn’t so damn sure. But she was even desperately tempted to become infra dignitatem by giving the names of all her dinner guests to the police, which would produce headlines in the Yonkers Herald Statesmen.

  SOCIAL REGISTRITES

  LOOT PRECIOUS

  HEIRLOOMS FROM

  IMPOVERISHED DIVORCEE

  But she was brought up to be a lady. Yet holy cow, she was fighting for her life all alone. And who knows, and what a laugh, a legal case could produce a real big crowd back in her life. In court house halls of course. Which is no laugh. What the hell, maybe with luck one of her organs would infarct and necrosis set in. Or as she did these nights, examining her breasts she’d feel a fatal lump somewhere. It wouldn’t stop her from being invariably polite, but she could die a dramatically lingering death.

  At least she knew where she wanted to be buried. In the woods of South Carolina. In an old country cemetery out in the quail shooting wilderness of her grandmother’s plantation and next to her in their family plot where chiselled monuments recalling confederate heroes of the Civil War were stained with age. And where one had to tread with care in the long grass. As occasionally it had become a favourite place for snakes to sun and you could step on a cotton mouth mocassin and promptly join those of the departed already resting in peace.

  Although she had always vaguely disliked her name Jocelyn, during the dinner everyone shortened it to calling her Joy. A word now she never wished to be reminded of with so much of it missing in her life. Not only was it the last straw that her objects d’art had gone missing but during her marriage she always regarded them as a financial ace in the hole with which she could suddenly decamp by calling a taxi and merely popping the priceless things in her handbag. Of course then bringing them to Sotheby’s she’d have to go hold her breath in some respectable hotel until they were auctioned.

  But holy ole golly damn if this is what your guests did to you, not only would one be unexpurgated in one’s thoughts but in everything she would now do in her future, including the selection of friends. Which alas the latter hardly seemed presently an option as the only person left with whom she sensed any rapport was the girl wearing her handcuffs in the window.

  And so after chewing it over for forty-eight hours she said to hell with this bunch of so called old friends and reported the theft to the police. There was no doubt that after that she was now infra dignitatem with her black tie dinner guests. Everybody anyway had got so much like each other you could go get a whole new set of acquaintances in five minutes and have to travel less than four miles down the railway tracks to Bronxville. But then at bridge in the country club upon telling her partners, it dawned on her there could have actually been a burglary and that the night she had got the shotgun and ended up blasting hell out of the T.V. someone might actually have been casing the joint and now returned, had just waited till the guests went into the dining room to dine.

  Anyway to hell with them all. She had always regarded the name Scarsdale with some wry humour, separating and reversing the syllables in her mind, and referring to this indeterminate area as the Dale of Scars which she felt best described what the place had wrought upon some of its inhabitants. She was also finding out first hand that the roofer, the plumber or the electrician could all behave like lady killers first and Einsteins next, and then could after a couple of useless visits trying to date her, then try to financially wipe her out with a bill.

  But there was no doubting one god damn good thing. Property prices, just as the realtor Mr Goodway said, had not only kept their value but increased. The house and grounds were anyway a pretty damn nice setup. Lawns bordering the shrubs surrounding the house and several towering trees producing summer shade. And except for its one foot-amputating big snapping turtle, a nice pond too small for canoes but big enough to swim in.

  ‘Mrs Jones I’ve been a realtor for seventeen years and I regard number seventeen Winnapoopoo Road as being sans peur et sans reproche in the category of gracious executive dream homes.’

  ‘Well I hope you’re right Mr Goodway, or else it will be a matter of achever une bête blessée.’

  And as the flattering photograph appeared in the realtor’s brochure, the house was finally described under the heading ‘ravishingly English and steeped in old world charm.’ The further details were equally couched in terms she might not have ventured to use herself. But at least they were in English and that the setting was tranquil and provided with its own little body of water on its full two and three quarter acres of rolling Westchester.

  The house was sold within seventy-two hours as two buyers converged bidding against one another and it was auctioned for ten percent more than the asking price. She wept. But hers had really been just some tiny interlude of life vanishing away in what always remained a very anonymous community. Where no one would ever historically hear or care about whether she’d been there or not. She learned that the more empty rooms you had to go into and get depressed the more depressed you got.

  Yet she still felt young enough within herself to enjoy the occasional frisson that a wild sense of danger gave her. Affluent now she formulated plans to fly first class to Paris in the Spring and stay at the Lancaster Hotel and then following hours long and leisurely at the Louvre from there to venture across the Seine and beseat herself on Boulevard St Germain and have a citron pressé. She would let her reading glasses fall down on her nose as she read the Paris Herald Tribune and do so as if she was so engrossed in her pleasure that she had no time to notice the world.

  Then to London to stay at Claridge’s, that red brick carriage house down a quiet side street of Mayfair. She would be alone and free and not just extra baggage as she had been once on a whirlwind trip when h
er husband who’d gone traitor to his creative principles, was trying to pull off his first deal catering to the low brow consumer. Steve had said then that it cost a fortune but a big independent production deal required to stay at these hotels where the top prestigious Hollywood agents stayed and you would rub elbows with them in the elevator if they weren’t down on the Mediterranean hanging out on yachts as long as football fields.

  Somehow as much as she liked the hotels, she felt Steve’s attitude betrayed his underprivileged background just as did his allowing cartons of milk to be put on the dining room table. And she felt more than a little awkward as he tried to throw his weight around a little and then had it promptly thrown back at him by a waiter’s exaggeration of attention and courtesy. But affluent as she thought she had become following the sale of the house, it was as if no one wanted to know her anymore. Even though she bought herself a new Jaguar car in racing green and had begun to routinely play bridge with the older women at the country club.

  It seemed that in now being merely an apartment dweller in a modest building not that far away from the New York Central train tracks, her status was abjectly diminished. To go out for an evening she even got desperate enough to hire the boy gardener as a chauffeur to take her to the cinema down in Bronxville and wait outside to open the car door for her when the show was over. It wasn’t because she wanted to put on airs but because her loneliness demanded safety.

  ‘Hey, Mrs Jones, can I take you for a beer to the Town Tavern.’

  If the protocol was ruined with the boy gardener suggesting he take her for a beer it was instantly restored when she cut him dead with a severe instruction to be driven home. And all the way there, there was nothing more in this world that she would have liked than to have had a beer at the Town Tavern. Even to chewing a salty pretzel and tasting her favourite pilsner as it coolly descended her throat.