Ten North Frederick (43 page)

“That's a very good—uh—point. All men
are
different, and every woman is different with every man. Now that you've found that out through me, I amend what I said earlier. You won't have to go to bed with many men. You know that they're all different.”

“Are all women different?”

“Oh, are they!”

“You must go now,” she said.

“Yes. What are you going to do?”

“Take a bath and go to sleep.”

“You'll wake up,” he said. “Maybe one or two o'clock in the morning. You don't want to telephone me. Operators listen in when they have nothing to do.”

“I'll leave the door unlocked.”

“How long do you think you'll sleep?” he said.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“I'll come in after midnight. If you're awake, I'll stay. If you're asleep, I won't waken you.”

He left her. At one o'clock he opened her door, but there was no mistaking the deep breathing for simulated sleep. He quickly and quietly closed the door and retired to his own room.

They made no effort to see each other when she returned to the farm. There was only one person who detected any difference in her, and that was Joby. Edith became attentive, sympathetic, maternal with him. He did not understand it, he was suspicious of it, there was no explanation for it, and he did not like it. More than ever he turned to Ann, and so it was always, for the remainder of that summer and for the rest of their lives.

It would not have been remarkable for Edith and Lloyd Williams to live a full year without ever actually seeing each other. Lloyd Williams lived in Collieryville, a mining town three or four miles from
10
North Frederick, but separated from the Chapins' home and their life by the accepted differences of money and social prestige; the miners' poolroom, and the Gibbsville Club; sickening poverty, and four live-in servants for a family of four; The Second Thursdays, and the chicken-and-waffle suppers of the English Lutheran Church. Joe Chapin and Lloyd Williams were courthouse-corridor friends and fellow Republicans, but Joe was a Company man and Lloyd Williams was a Union man, who was a Republican because to be anything else in Lantenengo County was futile and foolish. Edith could not have told within two years the day of her first meeting with Lloyd Williams; nor within three the number of times she had spoken to him. She was acquainted with him in the sense that she was acquainted with members of the Gibbsville Police Department, the driver for the Adams Express Company, the tipstaff in the Number
3
Courtroom, a dentist who was not her dentist, and any of the dozens of men whom she knew principally for their respectable occupations and to whom social introduction was not required. But now, after the affair in Philadelphia, she seemed to be encountering Williams with greater frequency. She thought it might be that she was understandably more aware of his existence; but it was more than that. What she was unaware of was that Lloyd Williams was politicking and making himself ubiquitous.

Their first encounter alarmed her. It occurred in Swedish Haven. She saw him, he saw her, and raised his hat and said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Chapin. Is this your boy?”

“This is my son Joby,” she said. “On our way to Frantz's.”

“For an ice cream soda, I'll bet,” said Williams.

“No, a comb,” said the boy.

“A comb?” said Williams.

“An ice cream comb,” said Edith. “We call it a comb.”

“Well, enjoy yourself, boy. Give my regards to Joe,” said Williams, and passed on.

“Why has he got such a red face?” said Joby.

“Because some people have that kind of complexion,” said Edith.

“Why has he got that kind of a complexion?”

“Because the sun doesn't tan them, it just gives them red faces.”

“Where does he live?”

“He lives in Collieryville.”

“Then what is he doing here?”

“I have no idea, I'm sure,” said Edith. “But
we're
here, and
we
don't live here.”

“I hate him,” said Joby.

“I've told you not to say that about people.
Why
do you hate Mr. Williams?”

“He's dirty,” said Joby.

“No he isn't” said Edith. “His clothes are wrinkled because of the hot weather, but he's not dirty.”

“He
is
dirty, Mother, and you don't like him either but you're just pretending.”

“If you want me to buy you an ice cream cone stop talking about Mr. Williams,” said Edith.

She saw Williams again a few days later, and this time he was riding in a Ford phaeton with a man in a farmer's straw hat and overalls. She was driving the Dodge roadster on her way from golf at the new country club. The road was narrow and both cars had to slow down. As they passed, proceeding in opposite directions, she bowed her thanks to the farmer and then recognized Williams, who tipped his hat.

The next day she was in her room and she chanced to look in the barnyard and there she saw the farmer, Peter Kemp, their own farmer, in conversation with Williams. He was going too far.

She hurried downstairs and out to the barnyard. He turned when the farmer turned. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Chapin,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Williams.”

“I hope it's all right if I try to convince Peter to vote for me?”

“Why yes, if he wants to. Would you care to come over to the porch and have some iced tea?”

“Well, I guess I've finished my oration to Peter, eh, Peter?”

“I guess yes,” said the farmer.

“Whenever you're ready,” said Edith.

“I'll go with you,” said Williams.

They walked in silence to the porch and Edith told Marian to bring the iced tea, and when Marian departed Edith spoke: “Why are you spending so much time in this neighborhood?”

“Getting votes.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“I'm all over the county getting votes. Most of these farmers vote Democratic and their votes aren't numerous, but that's no reason why I shouldn't try to change their minds,” he said. “I'm not here to annoy you.”

“I don't know what I could do if you were, but I'd have to do
something,
” she said.

“I went back to your room, but you were asleep. I didn't bother you then, and I don't intend to bother you now, so stop worrying.”

“I admit I was worrying.”

“Admit it? You didn't have to admit it to me.”

“Just as long as you understand that what happened in Philadelphia—I'm not sorry it happened, but it ended there.”

“Let's see what the future has in store for us,” said Williams.

“You said that once before,” said Edith. “
Joby!
” She saw the boy hiding behind a walnut tree, too far away to have overheard anything, but able to see his mother and her guest. “Come here, Joby,” she called, in a less commanding tone. But the boy ran.

“He's a quick one,” said Williams.

“Quicker than you think,” she said. “Well, I'm relieved that you're keeping your end of the bargain.”

“I'm a little angry that you'd think I wouldn't, but it's understandable. Joe in town?”

“For the day,” said Edith.

“You want me to go,” said Williams.

“Yes,” she said.

He picked up his hat. “I'll make you a small bet. I bet you'll try to get in touch with me first.”

“Oh, I've wanted to, but it's out of the question. If we don't see each other for a long enough time, I won't even want to. I think I could forget you.”

“No doubt you could, but be careful. If you do forget me, there might be another fellow that wouldn't be as discreet as I am. You made a big step, Edith, and you're lucky it was with me.”

“I'm convinced of that,” she said. “Good-bye.”

 • • • 

After supper—in the country they went back to calling it supper because all of the farmers and farm people called it supper—Joby came to say good night to his father, who was sitting on the porch.

“Well, did you have a very busy day, Joby?” said Joe.

“A man was here,” said the boy. He did not look at his mother, who was sitting on the swing.

“A man was here? Oh, Mr. Williams. Yes, Mother told me.”

“Mother gave him lemonade.”

“Iced tea, dear,” said Edith. “Now run off to bed and don't try to stretch out your saying good night.”

“Father, what did he want?”

“Oh, now, Joby, I can see through you. You're stalling your car and holding up traffic. Off to bed. Give me a kiss.”

The boy kissed his father.

“Hey, there, you're forgetting Mother,” said Joe.

The boy went to the swing and presented his cheek. “I'll be up to tuck you in,” she said.

“Ann can tuck me in,” said the boy.

And those were some of the occurrences and conversations in the Chapin family in the year
1920
. . . .

 • • • 

Joe kept saying he did not want a fortieth birthday party. He said he did not like parties—a palpable untruth—and particularly a birthday party for himself, and most particularly and especially a large party in honor of his reaching age forty, an age which he said a man should hold as secret as a woman held all of hers. But his protests were not strong enough to stand up against the insistence of Edith and Arthur McHenry.

At first there were going to be forty guests, but the invitation list grew larger and the party plans more elaborate, until Arthur said that with so many people they ought to hire an orchestra, and with an orchestra there would be dancing, and with dancing there ought to be a good-sized orchestra. The original small dinner became a dinner dance at the Lantenengo Country Club. Invitations went out to more than three hundred persons, all adults past college age, which did not cost the college set a party, since they would not be home. On the
29
th of January they would be having their mid-years.

“All right,” said Joe. “But one thing I do insist on. I would like it understood that I wash my hands of the whole problem of invitations. I don't want to
see
the list, or be asked a thing about it. If you forget to invite somebody's Aunt Millie, I want to be able to say I had nothing to do with it.”

There were numerous Aunt Millies, because of, and in spite of, Arthur's and Edith's triple checking of the list. There were the inevitable few of whom Arthur or Edith would say: “We'll send him an invitation, but he'll have sense enough not to come.” (In that category was Lloyd Williams, who did not, however, have sense enough not to come.) The problem of seating the dinner guests was solved, not entirely successfully, with Arthur's scheme: a card was written for each acceptance, and all the gentlemen's cards were placed in one pile, and the ladies in another. Each pile was shuffled, then a third pile was created by Arthur's placing a gentleman's card at the bottom, then Edith would place a lady's card on top of that, then a gentleman's, until they ran out of ladies (who were in the minority). There were sixteen gentlemen left over, but since dinner was to be served to fifteen round tables of twenty persons each, the surplus gentlemen were easily distributed. The invitations were on flip-over cards with only the Chapins' name, engraved, the date, and “Small Dance” written by hand, so that many of the guests were not aware that it was a birthday celebration. The entire facilities and staff of the club were taken over for the party, and two special policemen from a detective agency were hired to keep out the uninvited, a precaution ironically required by the fact that liquor would be served in violation of the national and club rules. The club as a club could not sanction the serving of liquor, and the policemen were employed to see that no outsider saw it being served. There were too many members of the judiciary and the district attorney's staff present to place the party in danger of a surprise raid, even by the most zealous Federal agents. Fewer than half of the ladies accepted the Orange Blossoms that were passed before dinner, but not more than ten of the men refused a drink in the locker room and the smoking room. Gibbsville men were drinking men, and a few of them had proven it by the time the guests were seated. Wine was not served.

The absence of wine from the table controlled the other nuisance which Joe had asked them to dispense with; there were no toasts. In their place there were a few words from Arthur McHenry, who tapped his water glass for attention, and when he got it, said: “Ladies and gentlemen, some of you, but not all of you, may know that this is the fortieth birthday of our host, Joe Chapin. (Applause.) He has threatened to shoot me or anyone else who makes a speech, but I think we can all safely rise and sing, ‘He's a Jolly Good Fellow!'”

The song was sung, the tables were rapped and hands were clapped, and the orchestra swung into the lovely measures of “Say It with Music,” a new fox-trot. The practice of cutting in was already firmly established at the Lantenengo Country Club, but at the conclusion of the first number Bobby Short, the orchestra leader, made the following announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have been requested to announce that there will be no cut-ins. No cut-ins, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.” Some of the older guests had no idea what he was talking about, but they were of an age that upheld the custom of the dance program, with its small tasseled pencil and its unwritten sadness for the plain girl and the gawky young man. The Chapin dance had a little of the old, a little of the new. Joe danced with his wife, with his partner's wife Rose, with Josephine Laubach, Peg Slattery, and Alice Rodeweaver, a cousin of Edith's; and with Jane Weeks, Alec's second wife, and Betty Harrison, Dave's wife, who had come from New York for the party; and Betty Donaldson, who had come down from Scranton.