Complete Stories (72 page)
Authors: Dorothy Parker,Colleen Bresse,Regina Barreca
Mr. Prowse’s policy of going about just as cheerfully as if his wife had no sensibilities whatever is a uniquely annoying one to her. Some of her most effective moods are absolutely frittered away on him. Mrs. Prowse has feelings which are almost always being severely injured; you run a chance of stepping on them if you come within ten feet of her. She is too delicately strung to come bluntly out and say what has hurt her. She seeks refuge in a brooding silence, and you must guess what it is all about.
Misunderstood but FaithfulMr. Prowse is particularly bad at the game. He never seems to realize that anything is wrong. Sometimes she even has to call attention to her mental suffering and its cause. Even then he cannot be drawn into a really satisfactory battle. And it is, you will agree, practically impossible to work up any dramatic interest in married life when one of the principals won’t take part in the big scenes.
It is little wonder that Mrs. Prowse, though never actually saying that her marriage is anything but happy, sometimes intimates that she is not always understood.
She has always been somewhat taken with the idea of having an assortment of tame young men about her—nothing really out of the way, of course, just have them come to tea, and take her to picture galleries, and send flowers, and maybe write verses, which she could drop where her husband would find them. She has even gone so far, in the privacy of her room, as to invent a rather nice little scene, in which she mapped out what she would say to some smitten young tea-hound should he become too serious. It is a credit to Mrs. Prowse to report that her answer was to the effect that she could never forget the vows she made to Mr. Prowse at the altar.
In all the books, as it is useless to tell you, it is no trouble at all for a married woman to gather a flock of attentive young men about her. But Mrs. Prowse has found it rather rough going. The young men don’t seem to fall in with the idea. There was, it is true, a young man she met at a tea who was interested in interior decoration. In answer to her invitation he did call one afternoon—it was just by luck that she was wearing her beaded Georgette crêpe—and told her all about how she ought to live with purples. But when he found out that she really didn’t feel they could have the living room done over for another year anyway he faded gently out of her life.
And that, as a matter of fact, was about as far as Mrs. Prowse ever got along those lines.
As is no more than you would expect, Mrs. Prowse admits but few to her circle of intimates. She is constantly being disappointed in people, finding out that they have no depths. Perhaps the sharpest blow, though one frequently experienced, is in having people whom she had accepted as kindred spirits turn out to be clever on the surface, but with no soul when you came right down to it. Mrs. Prowse often says that somehow she can never bring herself to be intimate with people who are only clever.
And that really works out awfully well, for it makes it mutual.
THE THIRD FLOOR EASTYou couldn’t find, if you were to take the thing really to heart and make a search of the city, a woman who works harder, day in and day out, than Mrs. Amy. She says so herself.
In the first place there are two young Amys to occupy her attention. Everyone in the building is conscious of the presence of the two young Amys, but the Parmalees, in the apartment below, are most keenly aware of it.
It is in the fresh morning, when the Parmalees are striving to fulfill a normal desire for sleep, that the young Amys seem particularly near. The Amy children are early risers, and they have none of that morning languor from which office workers are so apt to suffer. Mrs. Parmalee, whose bedroom is directly beneath theirs, has often said that she would be the last one to feel any surprise if at any moment they were to come right on through.
Of course there is a resident nurse who looks after the little ones, but Mrs. Amy seems to find little or no relief in this. The nurse watches over them all day, and sleeps in the bed between their cribs at night, but, as Mrs. Amy says, she cannot worry over them as a mother would.
It is in worrying that Mrs. Amy accomplishes some of her most strenuous work. She confesses that there is scarcely a minute when her mind is at rest. Her worries even cut in on her nights, and she describes graphically how, tossing from side to side, she hears the clock strike twelve, half past twelve, one, half past one—sometimes it goes on that way up to three.
The past months have been especially trying to her, for the older Amy child has lately started school. He attends the public school around the corner, where his mother cannot help but feel that his time is devoted less to acquiring education than to running a splendid chance of contracting diseases and bringing them home, to share with his sister. During his first term Mrs. Amy has at different times detected in him symptoms of mumps, measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, whooping cough and infantile paralysis. It is true that none of these ever developed, but that’s not the point. The thing is that his mother was just as much worried as if he had had record cases of them all.
Then there are her household cares to prey upon her. Annie, a visiting maid, arrives before breakfast and stays till after dinner, but Mrs. Amy frequently sighs that she is far from satisfactory. Twice, now, her gravy has been distinctly lumpy, and just the other day she omitted to address Mrs. Amy as “ma’am” in answering her. There may be those who can throw off such things, but Mrs. Amy takes them hard. Only the fact that she worries so over the prospect of not being able to get another maid prevents her from marching right out into the kitchen and formally presenting Annie with the air.
It seems as if there were some great conspiracy to prevent things’ breaking right for Mrs. Amy. Misfortunes pile up all through the day, so that by evening she has a long hard-luck story with which to greet Mr. Amy.
All through dinner she beguiles him with a recital of what she has had to endure that day—how the milkman didn’t come and she was forced to send out to the grocer’s; how she hurried to answer the telephone at great personal inconvenience, only to find it was someone for Annie; how the butcher had no veal cutlets; how the man didn’t fix the pantry sink; how Junior refused to take his cereal; how the druggist omitted to send the soap she ordered; how—but you get the idea. There is always enough material for her to continue her story all through dinner and carry it over till bedtime with scarcely a repetition.
Mr. Amy would be glad to do what he could to lighten her burdens, but Mrs. Amy, though she all but hints in her conversation that many of her troubles may be laid at her husband’s door, refuses to let him crash in on her sphere.
He has a confessed longing, for instance, to take the children out on the nurse’s Sundays off. But Mrs. Amy cannot be induced to see it. Her feeling is that he would be just as apt as not to take them in a street car, or to the zoo, where they would get themselves simply covered with germs. As she says, she would worry so while they were gone that she would be virtually no good by the time they got back.
Mr. Amy often seeks to persuade his wife to join him in an evening’s revelry at the movies or the theater, but she seldom consents. Her mind cannot come down to the pleasures before her when it is all taken up with what might be going on at home at that very minute. The house might burn up, the children might run temperatures, a sudden rain might come up and spoil the bedroom curtains; anything is liable to happen while she is away. So you can see how much there is on her side when she tells Mr. Amy that she feels safer at home.
Occasionally the Amys have a few friends in to dinner. Mrs. Amy obliges at these functions with one of her original monologues on the things that have gone wrong in her household during that day alone. They would entertain oftener, but what with the uncertainty of Annie’s gravy and the vagaries of the tradespeople, the mental strain is too great for Mrs. Amy.
Mr. Amy often has to take a man out for dinner, in the way of business. He used to bring his business acquaintances to dine with him at home, but it got on Mrs. Amy’s nerves to that degree that she had to put a stop to the practice.
She said it just bored her to death to have to sit there and listen to them talk about nothing but their business.
THE THIRD FLOOR WESTWhat is really the keynote of the Tippetts’ living room is the copy of the
Social Register
lying temptingly open on the table. It is as if Mrs. Tippett had been absorbed in it, and had only torn herself from its fascinating pages in order to welcome you.
Social Register
lying temptingly open on the table. It is as if Mrs. Tippett had been absorbed in it, and had only torn herself from its fascinating pages in order to welcome you.
It is almost impossible for you to overlook the volume, but if you happen to, Mrs. Tippett will help you out by pointing to it with an apologetic little laugh. No one knows better than she, she says, that its orange-and-black binding is all out of touch with the color scheme of the room; but, you see, she uses it for a telephone book and she is simply lost without it. Just what Mrs. Tippett does when she wants to look up the telephone number of her laundress or her grocer is not explained. And few people have the strength to go into the subject unassisted.
Some day when you happen to be reading the
Social Register
and come to the T’s, you will find that Mr. and Mrs. Tippett’s names are not there. Naturally you will take this for a printer’s error. But it is only too intentional. The Tippetts do not yet appear in the register, though they have every hope of eventually making the grade.
Social Register
and come to the T’s, you will find that Mr. and Mrs. Tippett’s names are not there. Naturally you will take this for a printer’s error. But it is only too intentional. The Tippetts do not yet appear in the register, though they have every hope of eventually making the grade.
As soon as Mrs. Tippett feels that the one about using the
Social Register
as a telephone book has sunk in, she will begin to laugh off her apartment. She says that it is the greatest joke, their living way up here in this funny old house that has been made over into flats. You have no idea how the Tippetts’ friends simply howl at the thought of their living up on the West Side.
Social Register
as a telephone book has sunk in, she will begin to laugh off her apartment. She says that it is the greatest joke, their living way up here in this funny old house that has been made over into flats. You have no idea how the Tippetts’ friends simply howl at the thought of their living up on the West Side.
Whimsically Mrs. Tippett adds that what with so many social leaders moving down to Greenwich Village and over by the East River, it seems to her that the smart thing to do nowadays is to live in the most out-of-the-way place you can find.
Mr. Tippett will enlarge on the thing for you, if you stay until he comes home from business. Mr. Tippett solicits advertising for one of the excessively doggy magazines. There is not much in it, but it gives him an opportunity to come in contact with some awfully nice people. He will put over some perfect corkers about living so far uptown that he goes to work by the Albany boat; or he may even refer to his place of residence as Canada for you.
He bears out his wife’s statements as to their friends’ amusement at the apartment; in fact you gather from the chat that the Tippetts’ chief reason for occupying the place is the good laugh it affords their friends.
The Tippetts are exceedingly well connected, as you will learn just as soon as they get a chance to tell you. Mr. Tippett’s own cousin is not only included in the
Social Register
but has been referred to in the society weeklies—oh, not a breath of scandal, of course!—and often figures in the morning papers under the head of “among those present were.” The Tippetts are deeply devoted to her. She is seldom absent from their conversation. If she is ill their calls are more regular than the doctor’s. When she is away they carry her letters about and read them aloud to you at a moment’s notice. Way back in midsummer they start planning her Christmas present.
Social Register
but has been referred to in the society weeklies—oh, not a breath of scandal, of course!—and often figures in the morning papers under the head of “among those present were.” The Tippetts are deeply devoted to her. She is seldom absent from their conversation. If she is ill their calls are more regular than the doctor’s. When she is away they carry her letters about and read them aloud to you at a moment’s notice. Way back in midsummer they start planning her Christmas present.
The Tippetts are kept busy the year round. Sometimes Mrs. Tippett says wistfully she almost wishes they were not quite so much in demand. Almost every day she has to keep an appointment with some friend, to have tea at one of the more exclusive hotels. She keeps a sharp lookout for any smart people that may be hanging around, so that at dinner she can breathlessly tell her husband whom they were with and what they had on.
It is great fun to be out with Mrs. Tippett. She can tell you who everybody is, where they originated, whom they married, what their incomes are, and what is going the rounds about them. From a close following of the society papers she really feels that she knows intimately all those who figure in their columns. She goes right ahead with the idea, and speaks of them by the nicknames under which they appear in the society press.
Mrs. Tippett is inclined to be a trifle overpunctual; haven’t you heard it called a good fault? She often arrives rather early for her tea engagements, and so, not being one to waste time, she dashes off a few notes on the hotel stationery while waiting.
Mr. Tippett—it may be from three years of close association—has got from her this admirable habit of catching up with his correspondence at odd times. For instance, when he drops in at some club, as the guest of a member, he frequently finds a few minutes to sit down at a desk and scribble off a letter on the convenient paper.
The Tippetts have many obligations to fulfill. They are so fond of Mr. Tippett’s cousin that they try never to disappoint her when she invites them to anything. This means they must spend two or three week-ends at her country place, dine with her several times during the winter, and use her opera tickets once or even oftener. You’d really be amazed at the supply of subsequent conversation that the Tippetts can get out of any of these events.
Besides all this, they usually manage to attend one or two of the large charity affairs, for which tickets may be purchased at a not-so-nominal sum, and they always try to work in one session at the horse show.
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