Complete Stories (63 page)

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Authors: Dorothy Parker,Colleen Bresse,Regina Barreca

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“That will do,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Now why don’t you run along and ask Dellie to take your temperature? And then you can stay in the kitchen and talk to her and Ernestine.”
“Can I take Bonne Bouche with me?” Ewie asked.
“I suppose so,” Mrs. Hazelton said. She picked up the little dog. “But don’t let Ernestine give her anything to eat besides her supper. She’s beginning to lose her figure.” She kissed Bonne Bouche on her hair ribbon. “Aren’t you, darling?”
Ewie joyously received the dog into her arms. “Can we stay in the kitchen to have our supper?” she asked.
“Oh, all right, all right!” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Oo brother!” Ewie said. She started for the door.
“Ewie, what’s the matter with you, anyway?” Mrs. Hazelton said. “I tell you, I’m thinking seriously of changing that school of yours, next year. You have no more manners than a moose. Say good-by to Miss Nicholl, for heaven’s sake.”
Ewie turned toward Miss Nicholl and smiled at her—her smile, that had the rarity of all truly precious things. “Good-by, Miss Nicker,” she said. “Please do come again very soon, won’t you?”
“Oh, I will, you angel-pie,” Miss Nicholl said.
Ewie, cooing to Bonne Bouche, left them.
 
“She’s simply adorable!” Miss Nicholl said. “Oh, lady fair, why do you have to have everything in the world? Well, you deserve it, that’s all I can say. That’s what keeps me from murdering you, right this minute.”
“Oh, you mustn’t do that,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“If I could only have a sweet, happy little girl like Ewie, that’s all I would ask,” Miss Nicholl said. “You don’t know how I’ve always wanted to have a child all my own. Without having any old man mixed up in it.”
“I’m afraid that would be rather hard to accomplish,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “I guess you’d just have to take the bitter along with the sweet, like the rest of us. Well. What were we talking about before Ewie barged in? Oh, yes—what
do
you do in the evenings?”
“Why, after I’m through work,” Miss Nicholl said, “I really feel I’ve earned a little enjoyment. So when I get home, after I’ve cleaned up, Idabel and I—”
“Who?” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Idabel Christie,” Miss Nicholl said. “That has the room across the hall from me. You know—I’ve told you about her.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “I forgot for a moment her name was Idabel. I don’t know how I came to.”
“It’s an odd name,” Miss Nicholl said. “But I think it’s rather sweet, don’t you?”
“Yes, charming,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Anyway, we do all sorts of things,” Miss Nicholl said. “When we’re feeling rich, we go to dinner at the Candlewick Tea Room—terribly nice, and just around the corner from us. It’s so pretty—candles, and yellow tablecloths and a little bunch of different-colored immortelles, dyed I guess they are, on every table. It’s those little touches that make the place. And the food! Idabel and I always say to each other when we go in, ‘All diet abandon, ye who enter here.’ ”
“
You
don’t have to diet,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “You’re one of those fortunate people.”
“Me fortunate! Well, that’s a new picture of yours truly,” Miss Nicholl said. “One thing, though, I don’t want to flesh up, if I can help it. But oh, those yummy sticky rolls, served in little baskets, and that prune spin with maraschino cherries in it! Idabel Christie likes the fudge cup-custard, but I can’t resist the prune spin.”
Only a tiny ripple along her chiffons told that Mrs. Hazelton shuddered.
“Well, of course the Candlewick couldn’t be farther away from this,” Miss Nicholl said. “You’d probably laugh at it.”
“Why, I wouldn’t at all,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Yes, you would,” Miss Nicholl said. “You don’t know about how, when you can have so few things, you have to like the thing you
can
have. We can’t go to the Candlewick very often. It’s not at all cheap, I mean for us. You can hardly get out of there much under two dollars apiece with the tip. Listen to me! I bet you never heard of as little as two dollars.”
“Now stop it,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“There’s another thing about the Candie—we call it the Candie to ourselves,” Miss Nicholl said. “You have to get there pretty fairly early. It’s so small and it’s grown so popular you haven’t a chance of a table after six o’clock.”
“But when you’re through dinner doesn’t that make an awfully long evening for you?” Mrs. Hazelton asked.
“That’s what we like,” Miss Nicholl said. “We have to get up in the morning—we’re woiking goils, you know. Usually, when we go to the Candie, we make a real binge of it and go to a movie afterward. And sometimes, when we feel just wild, we go to the theater. But that’s pretty seldom. The price of tickets, these days!”
“You do?” Mrs. Hazelton asked. “You go to the theater alone together? Oh, I wouldn’t dare do that!”
“I don’t think anybody would try to hold us up,” Miss Nicholl said. “And if they did, there’s two of us.”
“I didn’t mean holdups,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “It’s only I’ve always been told nothing ages a woman so much as being seen at the theater in the evening with just another woman.”
“Oh, really?” Miss Nicholl said.
“Oh, it certainly doesn’t work with
you
,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Prob ably some silly old wives’ tale, anyway. Well, but look. Suppose you don’t go to the movies or the theater. Then what do you do?”
“We just stay home and do our nails and put up our hair and talk,” Miss Nicholl said.
“That must be a comfort,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “To have somebody to talk to whenever you feel like it right there in the house. A great comfort.”
“Well, yes, it is, you know,” Miss Nicholl cried.
“It’s the only thing that could possibly make me give a thought to having another husband,” Mrs. Hazelton said, slowly. “Somebody here, somebody to talk to you.”
“Why, you’ve got Ewie!” Miss Nicholl cried.
“You’ve heard Ewie,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Then some evenings,” Miss Nicholl said, “when we don’t feel like going out or talking or anything, we just go to our own rooms and read. Idabel Christie, oh, she’s a wicked one! She works in a library, the way I’ve told you, and when she sees a book she knows I’d like, she hides it away for me, even if there’s a long waiting list. I suppose I’m as bad as she is, for taking it.”
“I simply must order some books,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “There’s not a new book in this house.”
“Think of buying books, instead of borrowing them from a library!” Miss Nicholl said. “Think of being the first one to read them! Think of never having to touch another plastic jacket! Well, there’s not much use dreaming about buying books, when you haven’t got a decent rag to your back, is there? Oh, what a curse it is to be poor!”
“Mary Nicholl, no one would ever think about your being poor if you didn’t talk about it so much,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“I don’t care if they know,” Miss Nicholl said. “I never heard that poverty was any disgrace. I’m not ashamed of it. However little money I may have, I earn every cent of it. There are some people who can’t say that much for themselves.”
“I’m sure you ought to be very proud,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Well, I am,” Miss Nicholl said. “But I’d like to have just
some
clothes. The coat I’ve got to wear with this suit doesn’t belong to the skirt. The skirt it belongs to—moths ate the whole seat right out of it. That makes you feel chic, going around with your—with the whole seat out of your skirt.”
“I thought what you have on looks awfully nice,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Well, let’s talk about something prettier than my old rags,” Miss Nicholl said. “I bet you’ve been getting yourself heaps and heaps of lovely new clothes, haven’t you?”
“Oh, I’ve picked up a few little things,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Noth ing very interesting. Would you like to see them?”
“
Would
I!” Miss Nicholl said.
“Well, come along,” Mrs. Hazelton said. She rose, beautifully.
“Could I—” Miss Nicholl said. “I mean would I be awfully greedy if I just took what’s left in the shaker of the lovely little cocktails?”
“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “I hope it’s still cold.”
 
Bearing her glass, which the remnant in the shaker could fill only partway, Miss Nicholl followed her hostess to a room dedicated to great deep closets. She stood close as Mrs. Hazelton slid along poles hangers bearing dress after dress, the cost of the least of which would have been two years’ rent to Miss Nicholl.
“But, they’re all new!” she cried. “All of them! Oh, what did you do with the old ones—the ones that weren’t even old, I mean. What did you
do
with them?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Told Dellie to get rid of them somehow, I suppose. I was sick of the sight of them.” It was apparent that the question had not interested her.
Miss Nicholl went to work, and put her shoulders into it. She piled up praises until she seemed to be building them into dizzy towers. Mrs. Hazelton did not speak, but there was encouragement in the way she looked distractedly about, as if searching her stores for something to give.
Higher and higher Miss Nicholl raised her towers; admiration glugged from her lips like syrup from a pitcher, and Mrs. Hazelton seemed again to be searching. Her quest stopped when she opened a drawer and took from it an evening purse covered with iridescent sequins. She insisted upon Miss Nicholl’s accepting it.
Mrs. Hazelton was not an ungenerous lady, but she was not subject to imagination. Her most recent Christmas gift to Miss Nicholl had been a big jar of bath salts and a tall flagon of after-shaving lotion. The four women who lived on Miss Nicholl’s floor shared its one bathroom. They all rose at the same hour in the morning; they retired at the same hour at night. To have commandeered the bathroom for the time required for lolling and anointing would have been considered, in their mildest phrase, piggish. So Miss Nicholl had set the unopened jar and flagon on her bureau, where they looked rich indeed and were much admired by Miss Christie. And now a sequinned purse, perfect to be carried with a ball gown.
Still, a present is a present, and Miss Nicholl positively writhed with gratitude.
 
She took the purse back to the drawing room when they returned from reviewing the wardrobe, and put it in her big black oilcloth handbag which, half a block away, could hardly be told from patent leather. Dellie had been in, removed the cocktail tray, and left no replacement. Miss Nicholl gave a little yelp as she saw darkness beyond the windows, and said she really ought to go. Mrs. Hazelton’s protest was neither voiced nor worded stiffly enough to cause her to change her mind. Mrs. Hazelton seemed, in fact, somewhat languid, almost, if it was conceivable that anyone like her could have had anything to make her tired, a trifle weary.
“Mustn’t take a chance on wearing out my welcome,” Miss Nicholl said. “I always come dangerously near it, when I’m here—I can’t tear myself away.” She looked around the room. “I just want to take the picture of this room away with me. Oh, I simply revel in all this wonderful space!”
“Yes, space is the greatest luxury to me,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
Miss Nicholl made a small laugh. “It would be to me, too,” she said, “but it’s the costliest, isn’t it? Or wouldn’t you know, lady fair? Well, fare thee well. Lovely, lovely time.”
“Be sure to come again,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Don’t forget.”
“I couldn’t do that, ever,” Miss Nicholl said. “I’m that regular old bad penny. I’ll be turning up again before you know it.”
“Well, I’ve got myself rather tangled up, all next week,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “The week after, perhaps. Call up anyway.”
“Oh, I will, never fear,” Miss Nicholl said. “And thanks again, a zillion, for the wonderful evening purse. I’ll think of you every time I use it.”
 
Miss Nicholl was going home by bus; before she reached the bus stop, a vicious rain and an ugly wind attacked her. Such demonstrations worked evilly upon her spirit. As she fought through the elements, she talked to herself furiously, though her lips never moved.
“Well, that was a fine visit, I must say. A half-a-shaker of cocktails, and not even a cheese cracker. You’d think a person could do better than that, with all her money. And pushing me out in the pouring rain—never even suggesting staying to dinner. I suppose she’s got a lot of her rich society friends coming, and I’m not good enough to associate with them. Not that I would have stayed, if she’d got down on her knees and begged me. I don’t want anything to do with those people, thank you very much. I’d just be bored sick.
“And those faded flowers. And that awful Dellie, with never a smile out of her, no matter how democratic you try to be to her. The first thing I’d have, if I was rich, would be nice-mannered servants. You can always tell a lady by her servants’ manners. And that little dog—acts to me as if it was drugged.

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