“Then,” Sheila said, “would you mind very much waiting in your own room until Billy gets here?”
“Not at all,” Allison said. “G-good night.” She dashed out of the room and ran up the stairway.
“Poor Allison,” Mrs. Flood said,” she’s just high strung.”
“Mm-hmmm,” Sheila said, raising her glass. “Well, here’s to the older generation.”
Malvern said his good nights at ten-thirty. Immediately afterward Mrs. Flood, saying something about Café Dormé, took her leave.
“Will there be anything else, Miz Sargent?” Taylor asked.
“Nothing more, thank you, Taylor, You can lock up now. Oh, and Taylor, Dicky didn’t say
where
he was going tonight, did he?”
“No, Miz Sargent. He just said he’d be out for dinner.”
“
Well, it’ll do him good to get out for a change. Good night, Taylor.”
“Good night, Miz Sargent, Mr. Johnson.”
“Well,” Sheila said loudly, “I’m plumb tuckered out. I hope you won’t mind my leaving you at this early hour, Mr. Johnson.”
“Uh, not at all, uh, Mrs. Sargent,” Peter said.
“Half an hour,” she whispered. “Good night, Mr. Johnson,” she said aloud again. “Just leave a light in the hall when you go upstairs.”
IX.
Billy Kennedy’s shiny new convertible shot northward up Sheridan Road. The car had been a gift from his proud mother as a reward for the remarkable feat of becoming twenty-one years old. As he did everything, Billy drove with style and dash—one hand on the wheel, the other on whichever young woman happened to be favored by his company.
Billy was lithe, agile and quick. But so was Allison. She knew
the road by heart and she knew at just which turning he would have to remove his hand from her leg. Furiously, guardedly, she waited. Fifty yards from the twisting ravine, she got ready. She felt Billy braking the car, she knew that by the time she counted to five, he would have to put his right hand on the wheel. Silently she began counting. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five. In a flurry of skirts, Allison was over the front seat and sitting bolt upright in back. It was quite a trick.
“Hey!” Billy said.
“All right now, damn you,” Allison said, “keep driving. You sit there, I’ll sit here.”
“I suppose you’ve got a gun aimed at the back of my neck.”
“If I had a gun I’d have shot you dead before we got to the dance. I’ve told you to keep your hands off me and I meant it.”
“Aw, Allie. . . .”
“You’re not very bright, Billy, but I thought at least you’d understand a simple, two-letter word like No.”
“You’re just frigid, baby. You need a little thawing out.”
“Maybe so, but I’m not planning to get defrosted by anyone quite as horrible as you.”
“Horrible?”
“Perfectly horrible. You may be the cutest trick in Winnetka, Billy, but to me you’re just like some horny little terrier sniffing at every skirt you see.”
“Then why do you go out with me at all?”
“Do you really want to know? It’s because your mother and my mother are old, old friends and they think that’s sufficient
reason for us to like each other. Somehow it doesn’t work out that way.”
“Baby, if you tried it with me sometime you’d sing a different. . . .”
“When I decide to try this famous
it
you keep talking about it’s going to be with a man I love and respect and
like.
Not with a Class D human being such as you, Billy. Slow down, it’s just around that bend.”
“Couldn’t we park for a little while and talk this over? I could come back there with you and. . . .”
“I’m known as the quiet type, Billy, but if you want to hear me yell down the. . . .”
“Okay, okay, okay. Jennifer Duncan says I. . . .”
“Jennifer has no sense and less taste. So I suggest that you give her your undivided attention from now on. We’ll both be grateful. Dim your lights please. There’s no point in waking up
the whole family—unless
I
find it necessary, that is.”
Billy stopped the car at the front door of the Sargent place and started to get out. “Just stay right where you are, Billy. I can make it to the door fine.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me in for a little nightcap? Which reminds me of a French story. This man goes to a drugstore and asks for. . .”
“I heard that story when I was thirteen, Billy. I don’t think it’s got any funnier with age. Try it on Jennifer, she’ll probably love it even though she flunked French two years in a row. And, no, I’m not asking you in. I’m asking you
out.”
“I believe you’re jealous of old Jennie.”
“Do you? Well that should be a balm to your enormous ego on the long drive home.”
“My ego isn’t the only thing that’s. . . .”
“So long, Billy.” Allison was out of the car and standing in the driveway.
“Not even a good night kiss?”
“This isn’t good night, Billy. It’s good-by.”
“Hey, listen, when I drive some broad all the way out to. . . .”
Allison laughed in spite of her anger. “What a face, Billy! You look just like some little neighborhood bully who’s . . .”
“Ah, you damned teaser, you. . . .” Billy’s face, so serene in repose, so cute and boyish in animation, was not pleasant to see
when he was crossed. It gave a depressing indication of how he
might look thirty years hence.
“Good-by, Billy.”
“Okay, Miss Virginity. When you change your mind, give me a ring.”
“I’ll do that, Billy. Now get going.”
Billy’s car shot forward in a spray of gravel. Allison let herself
into the house and turned out the big French lantern that hung over the front door.
Allison leaned against the newel post and held her head. If Billy Kennedy was sex, she didn’t want any. She’d had a rotten time at the party. She danced well without particularly enjoying it. She was medium popular with boys—neither a belle nor a wallflower—and didn’t care whether she was or not. They were so inane! “My God,” Allison said aloud, “their conversation!” If she ever did meet a man with something intelligent to say—and there were a couple at every dance—some stag was certain to cut in and the talk would once again revert to college pranks, dances, football and other girls’ parties. But at least it was better than being alone with a reptile like Billy Kennedy.
Allison had had enough of Billy. She decided that she was going to have one of her rare heart-to-heart talks with Mother
about him right away. It was funny how blind grown-ups could be about their children’s contemporaries, even someone as smart as Mother. But even at the risk of wounding Mother’s old friend Kitty Kennedy, Allison swore that she would never see Billy Kennedy again—not even ask him to her own coming out party. When Mother heard the whole unabridged account of Billy’s tactics—his pinching and groping, his pressing into her when they danced, the way he helped her on with her wrap, his graphic descriptions of girls he’d had, his blatant propositions. . . . Well, maybe it would come as something of a shock to Mother, but Mother would send Billy packing. Allison turned out the lights in the lower hall and wearily climbed the stairs. There were a lot of rooms in the Sargent house and not many
people to occupy them. Sheila was always doing one or another
over. Shifting someone from one wing to a different one, turning a study into a bedroom, a bedroom into a sitting room, a sitting
room into a dressing room. Over the years only Sheila had stayed
more or less put in a huge paneled bedroom at the head of the stairs, with a large bathroom connecting it to a small sitting room which was connected by yet another bath to what was now Allison’s bedroom. As a very small child Allison had been prey to dreams and night frights. For that reason, she had slept in the sitting room, sandwiched between her mother and her nurse with the bathroom doors open so that Sheila could hear any noise, and so that Allison, if upset, could come to her mother. Grown now, her nurse retired, Allison occupied what had been the nurse’s room, her old sleeping quarters turned into
a big dressing room which she and her mother shared as amicably
as seemed possible for two women. The route from bedroom through bathroom through dressing room through bathroom was
the shortest but one that had not been traveled in more than a decade.
Removing her evening gown in the dressing room, Allison hoped that her mother might still be awake so that she could get this Billy Kennedy thing off her chest once and for all. It
was half past two, but Sheila often stayed up late reading in bed,
Allison squared her shoulders and decided to take a chance on Mother’s still being awake. She tiptoed into her mother’s bathroom and was pleased to see a faint light under the door.
“Mother,” she whispered, “are you still awake?” There was no reply. Probably fallen asleep over
A Passage to India,
she thought. (Sheila was on an E. M. Forster jag at the moment.) I’ll go in and take the book off her lap and turn out the lamp. She might even wake up and. . . Silently Allison opened the door. It was not Sheila’s reading light that was on, but a very dim lamp in a far corner of the room. Allison advanced into the semi-darkness and tripped over something. It was a man’s
shoe. Stunned, she stood stark still, afraid even to breathe. From the alcove where Sheila’s big French bed stood, Allison heard a
rustling of sheets, a deep sort of sigh and then a soft, dulcet snoring. Clutching her robe to her, Allison took another step. There in the bed she saw her mother and Peter Johnson sound asleep.
THURSDAY
I.
“Remember,” Sheila said, “two wrongs do not make a right You have made one serious mistake already. Do not compound it now with another that is, to begin with, criminal and could possibly be fatal. If you do not want to keep your baby, it can be placed for adoption. Many decent couples—no, change that, Floodie—Many
lonely
couples would be eager to give your child a happy home and there are reliable agencies in your city that can arrange for this. What is her city, Floodie? I forget.”
“Seattle, Mrs. Sargent.”
“Oh, yes. Paragraph. I understand how desperate you feel, but I must repeat that I do not know of any doctor who would perform such an operation and, again, that not only would the doctor be guilty of a crime, but so would his patient and so would the person who arranged the appointment. Blah, blah, blah. Sheila Sargent.” She cast a furtive glance at Peter, who was stretched out in a chair reading the Chicago
Tribune,
She felt rather annoyed with him without quite knowing why. His attitude seemed somehow changed—ever so slightly—last night and this morning. “I don’t blame you for reading the newspaper,” she said gaily. “Have you ever heard a more boring pack
of letters? People with grudges against their in-laws, minor etiquette problems, girls with. . . .”
“Just boning up on the local ax murder,” Peter said. “When the
Trib
gets its teeth into something juicy like this, you can easily tell that it’s first cousin to the New York
Daily News.”
“Oh, that terrible Polish man!” Mrs. Flood said. “I see they’ve
found him. Honestly, these foreigners who come over here. No better than animals. . . .”
“Is there much more, Floodie?”
“Quite a lot, Mrs. Sargent. The next one says: I have been going with a married man who says he loves me and wants to
marry me but he can’t get a divorce because his wife is a very
religious Catholic and also a bedridden invalid not expected to live much longer.’ Paragraph. ‘I believed this until I saw his wife out bowling! I also found out that she isn’t any Catholic and. . .”
“Oh, my God!” Sheila sighed. “Another of those. If I had a dollar for every fool woman who believed that her boy friend was hopelessly tied to a Catholic invalid! Honestly, you’d think a healthy Protestant girl—or a practicing Christian Scientist—hadn’t a
hope
of getting married. Tell her to tie a can to the
lying son of a. . . . Say, speaking of sons, has anyone seen Dicky
this morning?”
“Why, no, Mrs. Sargent. I came down to breakfast at the usual time. But he wasn’t there. Not that he ever eats enough to. . . . Oh, thank you, Taylor.” Taylor had come silently into the room and laid the household mail on the desk, “Mail call,
everyone!” Mrs. Flood cried gaily. “I mean the
fun
mail, Oooooh!
Here’s the new
Vogue.”
“Taylor,” Sheila said, “has Dicky had breakfast this morning?”
“No, Miz Sargent. Neither of the young people been downstairs.”
“Then would you please go up to his room and wake him? I mean it’s one thing for Allison to lie abed during the Season but. . . .”
“Yes, Miz Sargent,” Taylor said, retreating.
“Hmmmm,” Mrs. Flood said, peering over her reading glasses.
“O-G’s is having a
big
sale. I do wish I could wear their shoes, but my foot is so tiny that. . . .”
“Is that
The New Yorker
I see there, Floodie?” Sheila asked.
“Oh yes! And
would
you look at the cover! I don’t know where they think of all these clever. . . .”
“Could I, please? Thank you.”
Putting down the newspaper, Peter watched Sheila open
The New Yorker
and turn immediately to the book section. He saw her mouth set unpleasantly and he was reminded—just as un
pleasantly—of the things Dicky had said about his mother the
evening before. Then she closed the magazine and carried it to the desk. “Excuse me, Floodie,” she said, “I just want to put this in the drawer with the. . . . Floodie! What’s happened to the magazines I put in here yesterday?”
“Magazines, Mrs. Sargent?”
“Yes.
Time, Newsweek, The Saturday Review
.
You haven’t. . . .”
“Why heavens, Mrs. Sargent, I haven’t the faintest idea. I
never
read those magazines. Too depressing. I always say there’s so much unhappiness in the world, who wants to. . . .”
“Are you quite sure you didn’t absent-mindedly put them. . . . Yes, Taylor?”
“Miz Sargent, Dicky isn’t in his room. Bed hasn’t even been slept in.”
“Thank you, Taylor,” Sheila said tensely.
“Goodness,” Mrs. Flood continued, “the work was so light yesterday that I finished the letters and the bills before lunch. Then I drove into the village for some . . . well, for a few things I needed and spent the afternoon in my room. If you like, I’ll look in the library, but I can’t imagine who. . . .”
“Would you please, Floodie? And, Floodie, would you give me that big ring of keys I keep in the desk? Dicky may have spent the night in the tool shed working.”
“Here they are and I’ll simply
comb
the library. . . . Unless Allison. . . . But then she
wouldn’t
open your desk.”
“Come with me, please, Peter “ Sheila said.
The tool shed was just as it was when Peter had left it the afternoon before, the purloined magazines out in plain sight.
“So he found out,” Sheila said.
“Yes,” Peter said miserably, “I guess he found out.” He paused
to see what Sheila would say next.
“But
how?”
Sheila said. ‘Where did he get these . . . these smear jobs?”
“It’s not very hard, Sheila. They’re available at any newsstand or drugstore in Lake Forest. Dicky’s not blind and he’s not a shut-in. I suppose when he went out yesterday he stopped off to buy. . . .”
“He didn’t buy
this,”
Sheila said, flourishing a page from the Chicago
Daily News.
“I tore it out of the newspaper and hid it in my desk on Monday. Someone has taken the trouble to show these things to him. Floodie!”
“Oh, stop it, Sheila! Why would a chuckle-headed old chump like Flood do that? She may be a damned fool, but she hasn’t got a mean bone in her body.”
“Allison?”
“Allison wasn’t even here. She was at some beauty parlor with you.”
“Then
who?
Who would have brought these miserable maga
zines out here to undermine that poor child’s confidence? Who could have been so low and vile and. . . .”
“Sheila. Make sense! You can’t expect to hide things from the kid forever. These are big magazines. They’re available in the millions. Anyone with two bits can buy one.”
“But somebody was out here. I know it. Look! Two glasses. Scotch,” she said, sniffing one of them. “And in this one—vodka.
He must have had
two
people out here. Dicky hardly touched a drop.”
“Dicky was stinking.”
“What?”
“I was out here, Sheila, and Dicky was as drunk as a lord.”
“And I suppose
you
brought him
this,”
she said, holding up a copy of
Worldwide Weekly,
“One thing he
didn’t
get out of my desk was your little left-wing
Literary Digest!”
“No, I didn’t bring it to him. Do you think I want to rub the kid’s nose in his own failure? He was reading it when I got
here. It”—he faltered—”it isn’t exactly a twenty-one-gun salute.”
“The
vileness!”
Sheila said, scanning the review and throwing
the magazine down.
“It’s . . . it’s pretty bad. They’re all pretty bad.”
“But I notice,” Sheila said furiously, “that the review in
Worldwide
is the worst of all—the most devastating, the most slanted, the cruelest. Of
course
you couldn’t have
warned
me! Oh, no! That would have spoiled the surprise! It’s so much more fun to break the poor child’s heart—
and mine.
Oh, you
must have had a perfect ball writing this!” She kicked viciously at the copy of
Worldwide.
He grabbed her by both shoulders. “Sheila, for God’s sake
stop it! Get hold of yourself. I never heard of Dicky before Mon
day. And I haven’t reviewed a book since I was in college.
Worldwide
is a big magazine. There are fifteen separate editorial departments on four floors. I haven’t any more to do with the book reviews than you have with Howard Malvern’s crossword puzzles. I didn’t even see this week’s issue until Dicky showed it to me yester. . . .”
“Of course,” Sheila said, sinking into a chair. “Forgive me, darling, I. . . I was just so damned upset and, well, hurt. And when I think of poor Dicky with all these other writers hating him—envying his father and me—closing in on him. . . .”
“Give it up, Sheila. His notices were
all
lousy. That’s not a conspiracy—or even a coincidence.”
“They
weren’t
all bad,” Sheila snapped. “There’s a very good one appearing this weekend. A real rave.”
“You mean the one you wrote, Shelley Sands.”
“Who told you that?” Sheila said, staring at him wide-eyed.
“Your son did. Right in this room. Yesterday.”
“That’s impossible!” Sheila shouted. “The only person who knew about it was. . . .” She stopped, took a deep breath and then began again. “Really, Peter,” she laughed, “I believe you boys
must
have been drinking.”
“One of us was. Go on.”
“Well, I mean really, darling, can you really believe such a fantastic story!”
“I don’t know,” he said. There was a pause. “Anyhow, Sheila, it doesn’t matter very much what I believe. The important thing is what Dicky believes.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the kid’s no fool. He. . . .”
“Well, naturally Dicky’s no fool. The son of Richard Sargent. A Yale graduate. . .”
“He was kicked out of Yale, Sheila.”
Without even hearing, Sheila went on, “Just twenty and already an established writer. A fool would hardly. . . .” The woman wasn’t even trying to make sense, Peter realized.
“Sheila!”
“What?” She was silent.
“Dicky can barely write his own name.”
“How dare you! You have the gall to tear down a gifted, creative. . . .”
“It seems to be the general consensus of opinion,” he said, gesturing to the magazines on the floor. “What did
The New Yorker
have to say this week?”
“Who cares about
The New Yorker!
Shallow, smug, supercilious comic book! Oh, I knew they’d all be lying in wait for poor Dicky. If there’s anything they hate it’s success.”
“And Dicky’s a success, isn’t he? Maybe not a critical success,
but he’s selling like hot cakes isn’t he?”
“You bet he is. He’s on the best-seller list of the
Trib
next Sunday. The book shops can’t keep
Bitter Laughter
in stock.”
“Especially the shops where you have a charge account, Sheila.”
“What?”
“Maybe you over-rated your son’s writing ability, Sheila, but you forgot about his gift for reading. He found your book store bills yesterday at the same time he found the magazines. After that it wasn’t hard for him to figure out who Shelley Sands was. Sheila, how could you do that to the kid?”
“Do? Do? What have I done to Dicky that’s so dreadful?”
“To begin with, you put him up to writing the book in the first place—or so he says.” He watched her carefully.
“That isn’t true. Oh, I talked it over with him. Gave him some ideas, some pointers, saw to it that he met my publisher. And what mother wouldn’t try to help her son get started on the career of his choice?”
“Are you so sure
Dicky
did the choosing?”
“Well, with his name and his background what else would he be? A school teacher, a salesman, a taxidermist—some little nonentity like that?”
“Sheila, it’s not so terrible to be ‘some little nonentity.’ We can’t all be Great Artists. For every famous writer or painter or singer or dancer or playwright there have to be a few hundred bus drivers and plumbers and stock brokers and policemen and ordinary people like that. Not everybody has what it takes to be creative.”
“Well naturally, darling. And that may be true of run-of-the-mill citizens. But with Dicky it’s different. He has background and breeding and education. He has the example of his father before him. He has me to help him—oh, not that I’m a patch on his father—he has a publisher and a ready-made audience. He has unlimited time and money. Why, he even has this perfect writer’s retreat where he can be. . . .”
“In other words, Dicky only lacks two things.”
“And what are they?” Sheila said with a tense little smile.
“Desire and talent.”
“Now, you just listen to me, Peter Johnson. . . .” Sheila fumed.
“Wait, Sheila, please. You’ve got some kind of thing about Dicky, God knows you’re critical enough of other writers. What’s that best-seller about sex in a hick town you were laughing at the other night?
Babylon Corners
or something like. . . .”
“Oh, Peter! You can’t compare Dicky with some big-breasted bumpkin who goes sniffing around the local privies until she has
enough stink to put into a long, trashy, dull novel about sodomy in South Dakota. I mean. . . .”
“No, Sheila, you
can’t
compare the two. That big-breasted bumpkin, vulgar as she is, can write circles around Dicky and that’s because she
wants
to write, while Dicky. . . .”
“Damn you! Who the hell do you think you are? I’ve been around writers ever since I met Dick—and I mean
real
writers. Why, I’ve forgotten more about good writing than you’ll ever. . . .”