“You mean you’re going inside? Do you really think we—”
“Not the house itself, that’s all locked up. Just the basement. Come along.”
Even the basement looked rich: clean concrete corridors along whose walls were piled the incidental refuse of the broken family (expensive wardrobe trunks, racked pairs of skis, cardboard boxes bearing the trade names of Bergdorf Goodman, Brooks Brothers, Abercrombie and Fitch) – but Alice scarcely had time to notice these things before Maude drew her over to a door that couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. “You’ll have to duck going in,” she said, “but just wait till you see what’s inside.”
The tiny door let them into an enormous, absolutely bare white room that was flooded with daylight. Its walls were of lacquered white wood, flecked all over with hundreds of little gray-black smudges, as if they’d been daubed with licorice, and they were windowless: all the light came from the high ceiling, which was made wholly of wired glass, “What
is
it?” Alice whispered.
“It’s a squash court. Howard was crazy about squash, you see, so his daddy built this whole gigantic thing right into the house.
That’s
the kind of money they had. But Alice, don’t you see what I’m driving at? Look at the lighting; look at the walls. Don’t you see what it
could
be?” Her eyes were gleaming. “A sculpture studio.
Your
studio. You could hold private classes here – my God, you’d have room for three times as many students as you have now, and still have plenty of room for your own work. Wouldn’t it be priceless?”
It would indeed. Alice was instantly able to picture herself at
work here – teaching people as congenial as Maude, doing sculpture of her own that would be better than anything she’d dreamed of in the past. “Well, but how could I possibly – I mean how could I ever—”
“Wait.” And Maude placed a rigid forefinger against her lips. “Don’t say another word. I just wanted you to see this place, and now there’s one more place I want you to see, and then we’ll go home and have a drink. I
told
you I was full of plans, didn’t I? Come on.
“If you’re going to work here you’ll have to live here,” she said. “And I’ve got just the right house picked out for you. The perfect home for the artist in residence.”
It turned out to be an elegant little house of white stucco, attractively set in the extreme northeast corner of the estate, surrounded by trees and beds of rhododendron, with a flagstone path leading up to its front door. “They call it the gatehouse,” Maude explained. “It was built for one of Mrs. Vander Meer’s relatives, but it’s never been occupied; actually it’s still unfinished, but I happen to know Walter Junior’s been planning to fix it up and rent it this year. And why shouldn’t it be yours?”
It was locked, but they could see the whole of its interior by moving around and peering through windows: a big central room with a spectacular fireplace, a kitchen and dining area, two ample bedrooms with a connecting bathroom in the rear. “Can’t you just see it?” Maude demanded. “Wouldn’t it be the absolutely perfect home for you and Bobby?”
By the time they had let themselves out through one of the heavy iron gates and strolled back to the Larkins’ home that afternoon, to have a drink and talk it over with Jim, Alice was completely enthralled with Maude’s plan. It had become her own plan, as firm and settled as any decision she had ever made. She and Bobby would live in the gatehouse; Bobby
would attend Riverside Country Day; they would be among stimulating people like the Larkins, instead of the stuffy mediocrities of Scarsdale, and the whole charming new life would be made possible by her role as “artist in residence.” She would have a generous new income from teaching private classes in the squash court, and if that didn’t wholly solve the financial side of things she might well find other sources: she could sell some of her old garden sculpture – possibly even sell some of it to the Vander Meers – and once she was established in this brisk new environment there was no reason why she couldn’t turn out enough new work to warrant a profitable New York exhibition once a year. Anything seemed possible in Riverside.
Jim Larkin was a little doubtful. “Well, I don’t know, Alice,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to see you get involved in more than you can handle.”
“But she’ll be
able
to handle it, Jim,” said Maude. “That’s the whole point. She’s an exceptional woman. She’s an artist of the first rank, she’s an inspiring teacher, and she’s been hiding her talents under a bushel long enough. This place was
made
for her. She’s going to
thrive
here.”
“I certainly don’t mean to question any of that,” he said, “but before you girls get carried away there’s one or two practical points you ought to consider.”
And Alice was willing to hear him out. Jim Larkin had frightened her a little the evening before by saying he was a communist, but he wasn’t at all like the communists she’d known in New York. He was quick and funny and brusque in a nice way; he seemed embarrassed to be making so much money out of radio but he wasn’t boringly apologetic about it, and he was clearly a man of intellectual substance. Hundreds of books had overflowed the shelves of his study to be strewn in attractive disorder around the living room; he knew Maxwell Anderson
well enough to call him Max, and once he had even hinted at knowing Thomas Wolfe well enough to call him Tom. Alice guessed she liked him very much, enough to be patient while he went over the one or two points they ought to consider.
“In the first place,” he said, “how do you know old Walter Junior won’t take a dim view of having sculpture classes in the squash court?”
“Oh, where’s your imagination, Jim?” Maude said. “We won’t
deal
with Walter Junior. We’ll go directly to the old lady, and I know she’ll approve it. I know she’ll love Alice, that’s a foregone conclusion. And I know she’s dying for some way to express herself besides writing out all those checks to hospitals – I’ll just bet the idea of being a Patroness of the Arts is going to knock her for a loop.”
And Jim chuckled. “Well, you may be right about that. Knock her for a loop. All for art; art for art’s sake. Maybe she’ll be a pushover. God knows if anybody can talk her into it, you can. But still, even assuming that part’s okay, won’t it be a little hard for Alice to swing the rest of it? You can be sure they’re going to ask a nice little rent for that house, for one thing, not to mention the tuition at Riverside Country Day. This is a pretty expensive town for a woman with a limited income.”
“Her income won’t be limited for long,” Maude assured him. “And anyway we don’t know how much rent they’ll ask – they might make it reasonable for her. As for Country Day, you know perfectly well half the children go there on scholarships.” And she explained this point to Alice. “That’s the way most of these smaller private schools operate, you see: they’ve got heavy endowments, but in order to justify their existence they’ve got to keep their enrollments up to a certain minimum. The result is that an awful lot of the kids go free. Ours don’t, but that’s
because Jim makes so much money. I should certainly think Bobby might qualify for a scholarship.”
“Somebody ought to tell you it’s a pretty silly little school, though,” Jim said, and Maude turned on him.
“It is not, Jim. It’s a
fine
school.”
“Oh, come off it, sweetheart. What the hell’s ‘fine’ about Riverside Country Day? You mean it’s ‘fine’ because our kids get to mix it up with the landed gentry? It’s a ridiculous school.”
“Don’t listen to him, Alice.
Please
don’t listen to him when he gets like this.”
“Gets like what?” he demanded. “It is a ridiculous school. Everybody knows that.”
“Jim, darling, will you please keep your voice down? Before the children hear you?” And she turned to Alice in urgent appeal. “Alice, all I can tell you is that our children love it.” But by this time Jim Larkin was laughing, touseling his wife’s hair, proving that it hadn’t been a quarrel at all, or even an argument, but only another surprising facet of this remarkable family, another aspect of the wonderfully free and easy way these people lived. “Sure they love it!” he was saying. “Sure they love it! That doesn’t mean they’re not smart enough to know it’s ridiculous, does it? Whoever said you can’t love ridiculous things? God knows I love you, and you’re the most ridiculous woman I ever met!”
The Larkin children, a boy and a girl in their middle teens, had puzzled Alice the evening before because they seemed so aloof and unmindful of the rudiments of courtesy. They hadn’t been openly rude to her or to Bobby; it was just that they’d seemed withdrawn into some private, unsmiling social pattern of their own. Their demeanor was loose and slumbrous, and they were dressed like workmen in sloppy flannel shirts and blue denim trousers, which had made Alice wonder if, to their expressionless eyes, her own and Bobby’s clothes might look too
careful, too neat and middle-class. But now in the second evening she felt she was beginning to understand them, just as she’d begun to understand Jim. At dinner they teased their father and joined him in teasing their mother, all in a kind of affectionate wit that was precocious without being offensive. And afterwards, with no trace of showing off, they performed an impromptu musicale. Jim started it, slouching over to the piano and hammering out some quick, frivolous popular song by way of introduction; then the girl produced a guitar and the boy a clarinet, and they played and sang delightfully for more than an hour. They were gifted children; they were interesting children; they were children quite capable of loving their school and finding it ridiculous at the same time; they were, she decided, children of exactly the kind she had always wanted Bobby to be.
“Oh, Maude,” she said, riding back to Scarsdale much later that night, “I can’t tell you how much we’ve enjoyed it. It’s just been the nicest weekend we’ve had in years and years.”
“Then it’s all settled, isn’t it,” Maude said. “I’ll speak to Mrs. Vander Meer tomorrow – or I guess I’d better not promise tomorrow; getting into the Big House is like getting an audience with the Pope or something – but anyway I’ll speak to her this week, and try to fix it for you to meet her next weekend. She’ll probably invite us both for tea, and you can take it from there. I just
know
it’s all going to work out.”
And it did.
“Will you have cream or lemon?” Mrs. Walter J. Vander Meer inquired the following Saturday in what was, beyond question, the most magnificent room Alice had ever seen.
“Lemon, please.” Alice felt a drop of sweat creep out of her armpit and slide down her ribs, and at the same moment she saw that the long ash of her cigarette had fallen into her lap. Would
crossing her legs hide it, or would it be better to hide it with her napkin? In either case, how could she hide it when the time came to stand up? “Thank you,” she said, accepting the hot, delicate cup and saucer from Mrs. Vander Meer and trying to keep them from chattering in her hands. Without Maude’s comforting presence beside her, she was sure she would have fumbled and spilled everything on the floor. Maude had carried most of the conversation so far, sparing her from any direct involvement, but now all the talk had stopped and she looked up to find herself under the full weight of the old lady’s scrutiny.
Tall and thin and remarkably erect in her chair beside the tea service, Mrs. Vander Meer seemed to speak from a great distance. “Maude tells me you’re a very courageous woman, Mrs. Prentice.”
And how in the world could she reply to that? “Well,” she said, “that’s very kind of Maude.” And it seemed, from Mrs. Vander Meer’s small, qualified smile, that she’d passed the first test. But she didn’t want to risk a sidelong glance at Maude for fear that Maude might wink at her, or raise and shake her clasped hands over her head like a victorious prizefighter.
“Please excuse me,” Mrs. Vander Meer said. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten to give you an ashtray. Could you hand her that one, Maude? From the table?”
There was nowhere to put the ashtray but in her lap, which was already filled with the trembling cup and saucer; after a little agony of hesitation she set it on the carpet and stubbed out her cigarette in it, and then she was touched with terror. Had anyone ever put an ashtray on the floor in the Vander Meer house before?
Mrs. Vander Meer’s gaze had indeed followed the passage of the ashtray to the floor and now was fixed on it with a little frown; but it turned out to be only a frown of concentration on the difficulty of forming her next sentence. “It’s always seemed
to me,” she said at last, “that it must require a great deal of courage to be an artist, if only because the creative process is such a lonely one. I should imagine it must be all the more difficult for a woman.”
And Alice let the tension of her spine and shoulders subside a little into the upholstery. She had known from the start that Mrs. Vander Meer was imposing, that she was stately and beautiful, that she was an embodiment of every admirable connotation of the word “aristocratic”; now, for the first time and with enormous relief, she began to believe that Mrs. Vander Meer was nice.
“Tell me, Mrs. Prentice. Do you think you might enjoy working here? And living here?”
“Yes, I believe I would,” she said. “I believe I’d enjoy it very much.”
“I’ll be speaking to my son in the morning,” she said. “I’m sure something can be arranged.”
“Oh, you were marvelous!” Maude Larkin said when they were alone and free of The Big House at last. “You couldn’t have been better. I know she fell in love with you.”
But Alice didn’t need to be told: she could still feel the old lady’s approval around her like a warm cloak.
Mrs. Vander Meer apparently did speak to her son in the morning, and her son apparently didn’t find the plan bizarre. An interview with him took place that same week, in his office, again with Maude coming along for moral support; and though Alice found him not very likable – a plump, small-eyed, high-voiced man who seemed to have inherited none of his mother’s qualities – it was clear that she had, as Maude put it, “passed muster” with him as well.