“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”
“I guess so. Of course I can’t do a great deal, because believe it or not I have a job, and the novel.”
“How’s the novel coming?”
“Like Santa Claus. And you know about Santa Claus.”
“I think I’ll leave you.”
“Permanently?”
“A few more like that last one and yes, permanently. Such a lovely day to go to the country.” She got up and stood at the window. “Look at those men. I never get tired of watching them.”
“What men? I’m too comfortable to get up and look at men. You tell me about them.”
“The men with the pigeons. They stay up on the roof all day, every Sunday, and chase the pigeons off. Our maid said the idea is that a man has a flock of pigeons, say eighteen, and the reason he chases them off is that he hopes that when they come back there’ll be nineteen or twenty. A pigeon or two from another flock gets confused and joins them, and increases the man’s flock. It isn’t
exactly
stealing.”
“But you won’t have breakfast at the Plaza?”
“I’ve had breakfast, and I’ll bet you have too.”
“As much as I ever have. Orange juice, toast and marmalade, coffee. I just thought we’d have kidneys and stuff, omelette, fried potatoes. Like the English. But if you don’t want to, we won’t. I just thought it’d be fun, or at least different.”
“Some other time. But I’ll dress and we can spend your money some other way, if you insist.”
“I am not unmindful of the fact that I owe you ten dollars.”
“We’ll spend that first. Now I’ll go dress.”
He picked up a few sections of the paper. “The
Times
!” he shouted. “You’ll never see my stories in the
Times
. What’s the idea?” But she had closed the door of the bedroom. In ten minutes she reappeared.
“Mm. Nice. Nice. Mm.”
“Like it?”
“It’s the best dress I’ve ever seen. And the hat, too. It’s a cute little hat. I think girls’ hats are better this year than they’ve ever been. They’re so damn
cute
. I guess it has something to do with the way they do their hair.”
“I guess it has a whole lot to do with the way they do their hair. Mine’s still damp and looks like the wrath of God, and that’s your fault. I wouldn’t have taken a shower if I’d known we weren’t going to the country. I’d have had a real bath and wouldn’t have got my hair wet. Remind me to stop at a drug store—”
“Darling, I’m so glad!”
“—for a decent bathing cap. Jimmy, before we go, I want to tell you again, for the last time you’ve got to stop saying things like that to me. I’m not your mistress, and I’m not a girl off the streets, and I’m not accustomed to being talked to that way. It isn’t funny, and no one else talks that way to me. Do you talk that way to the women on newspapers? Even if you do I’m sure they don’t really like it all the time. You can’t admire my dress without going into details about my figure, and—”
“Why in the name of Christ should I? Isn’t the whole idea of the dress to show off your figure? Why does it look well on you? Because you have nice breasts and everything else. Now God damn it, why shouldn’t I say so?”
“I think you’d better go.” She took off her hat and sat down.
“All right, I’ll go.” He picked up his hat and walked heavily down the short hall to the door of the apartment. But he did not open the door. He put his hand on the knob, and then turned around and came back.
“I didn’t say anything,” she said.
“I know. And you didn’t move. I know. You know I could no more walk out that door than I could walk out those windows. Will you please forgive me?”
“It will happen all over again, the same thing, the same way, same reason. And then you’ll come back and ask me to forgive you, and I will. And every time I do, Jimmy, I hate myself. Not because I forgive you, but because I hate those words, I hate to be talked to that way, and I know, I
know
the only reason you do talk to me like that is because I
am
the kind of girl you talk to that way, and that’s what I hate. Knowing that.”
“Darling, that’s not true. You’re not any kind of girl. You’re you, Isabel. And won’t you ever believe me when I tell you what I’ve told you so often? That no matter what we do, whenever I see you like this, in the morning, in the daytime, when there are other people—I can’t believe that you’re my girl. Or that you ever were. And you’re so lovely in that dress, and hat. I’m sorry I’m the way I am.”
“You wouldn’t talk to Lib that way. Or Caroline.”
“I wouldn’t talk to them
any
way. I couldn’t be annoyed. Let’s go before I say something else wrong.”
“All right. Kiss me. Not hard.” She put out her hand and he pulled her out of the chair until she stood close to him.
“I
have
to kiss you hard. Me not kiss you hard? Impossible.” He laughed.
“Not quite impossible,” she said. “There are times.” She laughed.
“Now I don’t want to go,” he said.
“We’re going. See if I have my key.” She rummaged in her bag. “Yep. Lipstick, Jimmy. Here, I’ll do it. Me your handkerchief. There.”
He held the door open for her and with his free hand he made as if to take a whack at her behind, but he did not touch her. She rang for the elevator and after it groaned and whirred a while the door opened.
“Good morning, Miss Stannard,” said the elevator man.
“Good morning,” she said. They got in and the car began its descent, but stopped one floor below, and a man and woman got in. The man was precisely the same height as the woman, which made him seem smaller.
“Good morning, Mr. Farley, Mrs. Farley,” said the elevator man.
“Good morning,” said the Farleys.
None of the passengers looked at one another. They looked at the elevator man’s shoulders. No one spoke until the ground floor was reached, then Isabel smiled and allowed Mrs. Farley to leave the car first, then she followed, then Farley nodded to the open door and indicated with his eyes that Jimmy should go first—and was obviously surprised when Jimmy did go first. But the Farleys beat them to the door and the doorman was standing there with the large door of their car open for them. The car, a Packard four-passenger convertible, sounded like some kind of challenge of power, and not unlike the exhaust of a speedboat gurgling into the water.
“And to think we walk while punks like those people ride in a wagon like that. Never mind, all that will be changed, all that will be changed. I guess you know who made the loudest noise in Union Square the day before yesterday.”
“I guess I do,” said Isabel.
“I don’t think I like your tone. Somehow, I don’t quite like your tone,” but he began to whistle and she began to sing: “Take me back to Man-hattan, that dear-old, dirty, town.”
At Madison Avenue they were almost struck by a huge Paramount taxi, and when Jimmy swore at the driver, the driver said, “Go on, I’ll spit in your eye.” And both Isabel and Jimmy distinctly heard the lone passenger, a girl in a fur coat, call to the driver: “Go on, spit in their eye.” The cab beat the light and sped south in Madison.
“Nice girl,” said Isabel. “Did you know her?”
“How would I know her? She’s someone from this neighborhood obviously. Downtown we don’t talk that way, not in the village.”
“No, of course not, except I could point out that the taxi is on its way downtown, in a hurry.”
“All right, point it out. And then for a disagreeable couple I give you the man and woman in the elevator. Mr. Princeton with the glasses and his wife. I’ll bet they’re battling right this minute in that beautiful big chariot. I’d rather know a girl that yells out of a taxi, ‘Spit in their eye,’ than two polite people that can’t wait to be alone before they’re at each other’s throats.”
“Well, that’s the difference between you and me. I’d rather live in this part of town, where the people at least—”
“I didn’t say anything about living with them, or having them for neighbors. All I said was I’d rather know that kind of girl—that girl—than those people. That’s all I said.”
“Still stick to my statement. I’d rather
know
the man and his wife. As a matter of fact I happen to know who they are. He’s an architect.”
“And I don’t really give a damn who they are, but I do give a damn who the girl is.”
“A girl who would wear a mink coat on a day like this. She’s cheap.”
“Well, with a mink coat she must have come high at some time.”
He was silent a few seconds before continuing. “You know what I’m thinking, don’t you? No, you don’t. But I’d like to say it if you’d promise not to get sore? . . . I was just thinking what a powerful sexual attraction there is between us, otherwise why do we go on seeing each other when we quarrel so much?”
“We only quarrel, if you’ll look back on it, we only quarrel for one reason, really, and that’s the way you talk to me.”
He said nothing, and they walked on in silence for several blocks.
• • •
When Sunday morning came Paul Farley never liked to be alone with his wife, nor did Nancy Farley like to be alone with Paul. The Farleys were Roman Catholic, although when they were married, in the fourth summer after the war, you would not have been able to guess from their dossiers in the newspapers, without looking at their names, that the wedding was taking place in the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer. Of Paul it was said: “He attended Lawrenceville School and Princeton and served overseas as second lieutenant in a machine gun company of the 27th Division. He is a member of the Association of Ex-Members of Squadron A, the Princeton Club and the Racquet and Tennis Club.” Of Nancy it said: “Miss McBride, who is a member of the Junior League, attended the Brearley School and Westover, and she was introduced to society last season at a dance at the Colony Club and later at the Bachelors’ Cotillon in Baltimore, Md.”
After their marriage they had children, three of them, rapid-fire; but when the third, a girl, died, Nancy, who had wanted a girl very much, came to a decision. It was a major adjustment in her life. Up to that time Nancy had been a girl who always did what people told her to do. A succession of people: her mother, to a lesser degree her father, a nurse, a governess, her teachers, and the Church. The odor of sanctity was faint but noticeable in the McBride household, as Nancy’s paternal uncle had been quite a good friend of the late Cardinal Gibbons; and the McBrides, as they themselves put it, realized their position. It was a religious household, including the servants, and at the time of Nancy’s various debuts the big house in the East Seventies still had its quota of holy pictures, and there was hardly a bureau which did not contain one drawer full of broken rosary beads, crucifixes with the corpus missing, Father Lasance’s
My Prayer Book, The Ordinary of the Mass
, and other prayer books for special occasions. One of Nancy’s losing battles against the domination of her elders (and they were all defeats) was fought for the removal of a small, white china holywater font which hung at the door of her bedroom. She finally capitulated because a Westover friend who was visiting her was curious and delighted by the sacred article.
Nancy was the youngest of four children. The first-born, Thornton, was ten years older than Nancy. He was out of a high-priced Catholic prep school, Yale, and Fordham Law School. He was with his father in the law firm and cared about nothing except the law and golf.
Next in age was Nancy’s only sister, Mollie. She was eight years older than Nancy, and when Nancy was married Mollie was in the Philippines, living the life of an army officer’s wife.
Two years younger than Mollie was Jay—Joseph, but always known as Jay. He was unable to finish prep school, and had lived almost all his life, from the time he developed a case of T. B., in New Mexico. He was at work on a monumental history of the Church and the Indian in the Southwest.
There would have been a child between Jay and Nancy, but it had been a Fallopian pregnancy from which Nancy’s mother almost died. This was kept from Nancy not only all through her girlhood, but even after she was married and had her own two children. Nancy did not know about her mother’s disastrous Fallopian pregnancy for the reason that her mother did not quite know how to explain it. It was kept quiet until Nancy’s little girl died in early infancy, and then Mrs. McBride told her. It infuriated Nancy to be told so late in life. It might not have made any difference in her attitude toward having children, but it gave her the feeling of having been insulted from a distance, this taciturnity of her mother’s. People ought to tell you things like that. Your own mother ought to tell you everything about that—and then she would recall that what ought to be and what actually was were two quite different things so far as her mother and sex were concerned. Mrs. McBride accepted the working theory of the Church that sex education of children was undesirable, unsanctioned; and when Nancy was fourteen her mother told her that “this is something that happens to girls”—and that was all she ever told her until Paul and Nancy were to be married. Then Mrs. McBride provided the second piece of information to her daughter: “Never let Paul touch you when you are unwell.” Whatever else Nancy learned was from the exchange of knowledge among school acquaintances, and from her secret reading of the informative little propaganda pamphlets which the government got out during the World War, telling in detail the atrocities which the Germans committed upon Belgian maidens, nuns, priests, old women. These pamphlets did not incite Nancy to turn her allowance into Liberty Bonds, but they made her understand things about her anatomy and the anatomy of the young men with whom she swam summer after summer on the South Shore of Long Island.
Sex had been healthy and normally strong and only a trifle unpleasant for Nancy up to the time of the death of her daughter. Paul was considerate and tender and fun. Child-bearing, the incomparable peace of nursing the boys, the readjustment after the nursing periods—all were accomplished with a minimum of fright and pain, and sometimes with a pleasure that—especially at nursing time—was heavenly joy, because at such times Nancy felt so practically religious. She wanted to have a lot of children, and she was glad that things were that way: that the Church approved and that there was such high pleasure in motherhood. Then the little girl died and for the first time Nancy discovered that you cannot blame your body alone for the hell it sometimes gives you. Nancy broke with Rome the day her baby died. It was a secret break, but no Catholic breaks with Rome casually.