Complete Stories (65 page)
Authors: Dorothy Parker,Colleen Bresse,Regina Barreca
There is a persistent sweetness about Miss Oddie that will not be downed. In fact, she is so consistently sweet in her attitude toward everything that one cannot help but detect a slight savor of monotony about her. This determined saccharinity of Miss Oddie’s is a phenomenon observable in many extremely unmarried women of a—as the saying goes—certain age; her unused affections have, as it were, turned to sugar; one might say that she has diabetes of the emotions.
Miss Oddie’s habitual attitude is one of apology. She flutters timidly about, asking pardon by her manner for being in a state of existence. It is her laborious efforts to efface herself that render Miss Oddie so noticeable. It is she who insists on sitting upon the uncomfortable chair, who is always last through the door, who persistently holds the umbrella over her companion, reserving the drippings for herself. She will sit in a draft for hours at a stretch rather than trouble anyone to close the window. If by so doing she contracts a heavy cold, she bears it uncom plainingly, sweetly making the best of it.
Her attire admirably expresses Miss Oddie’s personality. She is given to neutral tones, to self-effacing styles, to modest little tuckers, and unobtrusive hats. She wears a tender little smile, which from constant use has become a trifle set, and her eyes are finely wrinkled at the corners, as if from the effects of a constant glare.
It comes, perhaps, from looking too persistently on the sunny side.
MRS. SYDNEY SWAINThe extraordinary thing about Mrs. Swain is the perpetual state of exhaustion in which she exists. No human eye has ever beheld her when she felt fresh and rested. Her head droops with weary grace as she relates, in her soft, tired voice, how completely worn out she is. She is constantly having to go and lie down, and it is no unusual occurrence for her to have to give up everything and go away for a good rest.
Exactly what it is that has so tired her or just what she is resting up for has never been cleared up, for all strain has been removed from her life by the force of Mr. Swain’s inherited money, and she need face no greater drain upon her strength than the lifting to her mouth of her limousine’s speaking tube.
Perhaps it is her maternal cares that have so heavily taken their toll of her vitality. Mrs. Swain’s is what might be called an indirect motherhood, carried on by a chain of nurse, governess and aunt, but she is the nominal head of the system and, as such, has a full sense of her responsibilities. She often observes that no one in the world has any idea what a care young children are.
Which does seem as if she were somewhat misinformed in her statistics.
MISS FRANCES PARSONSMrs. Swain’s goodness to her elder sister, Miss Frances Parsons, is one of the favorite topics of conversation among members of our club. They love to recall how Frances was slaving away in a bank, as secretary to the president, when Sydney Swain married her sister; how the new Mrs. Swain insisted on Frances’ leaving her position and coming to live in the big Swain house; how Mrs. Swain allowed Frances to plan all the meals, to supervise the servants, to assume charge of all the household accounts; how, in addition to even that important position, now that there are two little Swains, Frances has been assigned to the post of resident maiden aunt and, as such, is assured of a home and every luxury and has absolutely nothing to worry about—well, until the children grow up, anyway.
The club members are continually finding fresh evidences of Mrs. Swain’s generosity. When Mrs. Swain got her new fur coat Frances came to the very next club meeting wearing the old one. Now that the Swains take the children with them on their trips to New York, they take Frances along, too, and she stays with them at the very best hotels and goes to all the most exclusive shops with Mrs. Swain and the children.
Her very presence in the club is due to her sister. When one of the members moved out of town, and the club was confronted with the necessity of finding someone to take her place, Mrs. Swain was the first to suggest Frances. It really is a great thing for Frances. She loves society and it gives her a chance to get out once in a while. Frances doesn’t go out in the evening; but then, as Mr. Swain is at the office all day, the only opportunity that Mrs. Swain and he have to go out together is in the evening, and Mrs. Swain is, by her own admission, far too good a mother to leave her children alone with the servants.
So Frances is in the club and, whenever it meets at the Swain house, Mrs. Swain lets her see about the refreshments and buy the prizes. It has come to be a popular saying among members of the club: “Well, Frances Parsons certainly is a lucky girl!”
But there! Isn’t it true that some people never know when they are well off? When Mrs. Throop walked into her room unannounced the other day, there was Frances crying her eyes out, with her head on the cover of that old typewriter that she used to have down at the bank.
MRS. PERCY PUGHMrs. Pugh specializes in youthfulness; she is a professed Peter Pan. She acknowledges, frequently, that she just never will grow up. She gleefully relates somewhat tenuous anecdotes, all a trifle anti-climactical as to point, dealing with occasions when she has been mistaken for her own daughter. The club members listen to these enthusiastic recitals with the not entirely undivided attention one lends to an oft-heard tale.
It is, doubtless, her extreme naïveté that creates the impression of guileless youth in Mrs. Pugh. Her naïveté is like some cherished heirloom, not only in that it has been in the family for years, but in that it is carefully guarded, proudly exhibited, the subject of many quaint narratives, told, it must be added, by Mrs. Pugh herself, who can do them full justice. She is perhaps at her best when retailing the startlingly unstudied things she has said and their effect upon certain staid listeners. She is simply bubbling over—the phrase is her own—with ingenuousness. Though she has had the usual education, she receives every stray bit of information with little cries of wonder that such things can be out in the great, big world.
Mrs. Pugh has constantly to fight against temptations that do not often trouble other women. When she passes children coasting down a hill, she exclaims that she would give anything to coast with them; when her daughter goes off to schoolgirl parties Mrs. Pugh affirms that it nearly makes her cry because she can’t go too. However, she makes the best of things by bringing a prettily childlike manner to her own grown-up entertainments. She claps her hands and jumps up and down in her seat quaintly when the refreshments appear, and she assumes a cunning pout if she fails to win a prize. Into her conversation she injects piquant words of youthful slang, and, while she has never quite dared baby talk at firsthand, Mrs. Pugh frequently makes opportunity to quote literally from remarks of infants of her acquaintance.
It is really a concession on Mrs. Pugh’s part to belong to our club at all. Indeed, it is only her youthful enthusiasm for games that has brought her into the club and kept her there. As she repeatedly observes, her idea of fun isn’t staying indoors with a lot of grown-ups; if she had her way she would be with the young people all the time.
Quite a formidable barrier to her ever attaining her wish is the feeling of the young people in the matter.
MRS. LUCIUS KINGMrs. King has an amazingly wide acquaintance among the newly departed. She never picks up a newspaper without finding some familiar name among the obituary notices; it is an off day for her when she can discover only one or two. It need not necessarily be one of her immediate circle; although the name be only that of some relation by marriage of a distant acquaintance, say, or even that of some person whom she has heard vaguely mentioned at some time, Mrs. King takes as flatter ingly personal an interest as if it were one of her own relatives. Naturally, when the obituary column yields her such a lavish supply of absorbing current events, Mrs. King confines her newspaper reading almost entirely to it, although her attention may occasionally wander over to the front page, if any particularly striking fatalities are reported thereon.
In her attire, Mrs. King strikes a prolonged minor note. She runs to heavy veils, somber draperies, gun-metal ornaments and black gloves. It almost seems as if she were holding herself ready, so that if she were ever called upon to attend a funeral at a moment’s notice, she would be perfectly dressed for the occasion. She carefully hoards crêpe veils and black-bordered handkerchiefs, for, as she so justly says, one never can tell what may happen and it does no harm to be prepared. Mrs. King even carries this admirable truism into her most intimate feminine concerns; carefully put away, in an obscure bureau drawer, is a complete outfit, simple yet becoming, in which she has given explicit directions that she shall be arrayed when her own hour comes.
Mrs. King has a turn of observation which, although it has become almost mechanical to her, is inclined to render those about her somewhat subdued in spirit. For example, at a large social gathering, Mrs. King will look mournfully around and sighingly wonder how many of the assembled guests will still be alive and well ten years hence. At the theater, although the play may be a side-splitting farce, Mrs. King injects a somber note by the reminder that, for all the audience knows, the actors’ hearts may be breaking beneath their gaudy costumes. When asked to make any engagement for the near future, Mrs. King never fails to include in her acceptance the stipulation “if I’m spared,” although it would seem, to the captious, as if that contingency might be taken for granted.
The best of company is Mrs. King when in an anecdotal mood; her listeners never know a moment’s boredom. Her stories keep one on the edge of one’s chair, nerves taut, hair erect, eyes glazed with horror. She enjoys a large circle of friends whose lives have been singularly rich in blood-curdling tragedies. Her tales are all of their hideous experiences—how this one’s husband went suddenly mad at the dinner table; how that one’s child accidentally hanged itself with a jumping rope; how a third, while fainting from the shock of the news of an uncle’s demise, fell into the bathtub and was drowned. Such as these are only the mildest of Mrs. King’s repertory. Never repeating herself, she can wander on for hours along these lines.
After a period of her society, the listener is apt to wonder if Mrs. King ever knew any people who lived normally healthy, pleasant, un-marred lives, terminating restfully in bed. If she ever did, Mrs. King obviously doesn’t consider them worth talking about.
Ladies’ Home Journal,
July 1920
July 1920
As the Spirit Moves
Any day, now, I expect to read in the paper that Sir Oliver Lodge, or somebody else who keeps right in touch with all the old crowd, has received a message from the Great Beyond announcing that the spirits have walked out for a forty-four-hour week, with time and a half for overtime, and government control of ouija boards. And it would be no more than fair, when you come right down to it; something ought to be done to remedy the present working conditions among the spirits. Since this wave of spiritualism has broken over the country it has got so that a spirit doesn’t have a minute to himself. The entire working force has to come trooping back to earth every night to put in a hard night’s labor knocking on walls, ringing bells, playing banjos, pushing planchettes round, and performing such parlor specialties. The spirits have not had a quiet evening at home for months. The Great Beyond must look as deserted as an English lecture platform.
No spirit could object to coming back now and then in the way of business, so to speak, through a professional medium. That sort of thing is more or less expected; it’s all in an eternity, as you might say. But the entrance of all these amateurs into the industry has been really too much. It is the ouija-board trade in particular that is so trying. Now that every family has installed its own private ouija board and expects immediate service on it at any hour of the day or night, the sting has been put into death. It’s enough to wear a poor spirit to a shadow, that’s what it is.
THE AGE OF THE OUIJA BOARDOf course there may not be any particular connection, but nation-wide spiritualism seems to have come in like a lion at just about the time that nation-wide alcoholism was going out like a lamb. The séance room has practically become the poor man’s club. After all, people have to do something with their evenings; and it can always be argued on the side of the substitute pastime that it does not cut into the next morning, anyway. There was a time when ouija-board operating was looked upon only as an occupation for highly unmarried elderly ladies of pronounced religious tendencies; prohibition was regarded in much the same light, if you remember. And now the ouija board has replaced the corkscrew as the national emblem. Times surely do change, as I overheard someone saying only yesterday.
It has certainly been a great little fiscal year for stockholders in ouija-board plants. A census to show the distribution of ouija boards would prove that they average at least one to a family. There is every reason for their popularity as a family institution; their initial cost can soon be scraped together, their upkeep amounts to practically nothing, they take up little space, and anybody can run them. They are the Flivvers among psychical appliances. No home can conscientiously feel that it is supplied with all modern conveniences, lacking one; there is even some talk, I hear, of featuring built-in ouija boards in the more luxurious of the proposed new apartment houses.
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