First Papers (32 page)

Ivarin said, “It would be fine if you could do it yourself, Evan.” He thought, He will choose what I would choose.

A singular contentment invaded him.

L
ONG AFTER HIS PARENTS
had left to meet the Ivarins, Garry’s surprise persisted. This was a new Letty. He had never seen her this way, his parents had never seen her this way.

“It’s cooler in here,” he said as he came back from the front door. “Let’s sit around a while.”

How good it was, this swift bridge between them tonight, this reaching across, one to the other over an idea. It was the first time it had happened. Letty could have been strait-jacketed and drugged while his father told them about the vigilantes, but she would have managed to express her wrath. He was proud of her anger and glad his parents were seeing it too. For the first time they had reached common ground for all four of them to stand on.

“Anyway,” he added as Letty settled back in the big chair near the open window, “I love you too much to want to go to bed. How’s that for a paradox?”

He turned off every bulb in the room for added coolness; the street lamp sent a yellow paleness toward them, like a whisper of light. Outside nothing stirred; the long windows, denuded of their red draperies weeks before in the fast-quickening city summer, stood wide open, but they were like elongated maws, sucking and gaping at air that was diverted elsewhere.

“Who do they think they are?” Letty had cried out at the vigilantes. “Who made them anybody’s keeper?” This wasn’t “politics” but a family matter; it had happened to them, to the Paiges, to her, Letty Paige, who was one of them.

Wasn’t there a lesson for him in that? There was a hitch or delay at Aldrich about converting to explosives, but if the company did go ahead later on and he did pull out, wasn’t it possible that she would be this family-Letty of tonight, and not the distant Letty of the morning papers? After their bad quarrel on the blizzardy morning, he had told her he was “through talking about the news,” and had stuck to it. Over this “clamming up” she had never protested.

Who do they think they are? Who made them anybody’s keeper?
How easy and good marriage must be, Garry thought, if always there were this sharing with your wife of feelings and ideas that were basic to you.

“I talk too much, Letts,” he said suddenly.

“What makes you say that?”

“I pave the way too much.”

She could see only his outline and position; she could not see his expression. But he sounded relaxed and contented. Recently they had been happier, as if God had willed new patience and a new start for them. She still had not gone to Dr. Haslitt, but she had promised to go once the heat was over. She still hadn’t told Garry of her daydream for next fall, not out of secrecy, but only to find out more about it before she did.

“I’ve been mulling over a thrilling idea,” she said, “wondering whether to tell you now or wait a bit more.”

“Tell me now.”

“Oh, Gare, since we’re not having a baby for a while, I want something to do all day. Not just a hobby, but something real.”

“Like what?”

“A shop, an antique shop with beautiful pieces in it, like all of ours here. For sale to people.
My
shop.”

“Why, Letty.” He suddenly reached to the lamp nearest him and relighted it. She looked intense and eager. “When did you think that up?”

“I don’t know. It seems forever. But I didn’t know how you’d feel about it.”

“I’d be proud of you, for having the gumption.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Did you think I’d start spouting ‘Woman’s place is in the home,’ and denounce Mrs. Pankhurst and Carrie Chapman Catt?”

“Of course not. But I thought you’d think I ought to take a job in a store first, instead of starting my own business.”

He gazed at her. Women were no longer a novelty in the world of business, but their “place” was still pretty well limited. Clerks, salesladies, telephone operators, bookkeepers—certainly they could succeed at more enterprising projects than these, but he didn’t know a single one who had ever tried. The Woman Suffrage movement was worldwide and irreversible, and far more than votes was involved, but to have Letty actually practicing what it preached had never occurred to him.

“You’d be a pioneer, Letts,” he said.

She could tell from his voice how pleased he was. “I’ve sort of done some hunting around for the kind of store I’d want.”

“Where? How much would you need to start you?”

She looked off into a space far beyond him. “I wouldn’t want a pokey little place like a little neighborhood hat shop. I’d want to start right out uptown, a fashionable place, a fashionable address, as if it were the best antique shop in New York.”

“Do it,” he said. “I want you to; how much money do you think?”

“Fifty dollars a month for rent, and maybe three hundred dollars for special finds, to restore and put in as stock, and I might even rob
us
for extra pieces—I wouldn’t sell them.”

He laughed as she eyed the sofa, the chairs, tables, crystal ornaments, even the old andirons in the black fireplace.

“Back to crates painted red and your five heirlooms,” he said. It would be like starting their marriage anew.

“Maybe I’d swipe an heirloom now and then,” Letty said, matching his tone. “My show window is going to have nothing but one perfect piece in it. Nothing. No knickknacks, and no price tag showing.”

“Is
that
the Four Hundred style?”

“Mrs. Aldrich told me of
the
antique shop all her friends go to, and I’ve been there. Ten Eyck and Hoque, off Fifth Avenue. Mrs. Aldrich said lots of her friends would switch to me. They love her lowboy!”

“You little close-mouth, you’ve been scheming for a long time.”

She laughed. “I can see my shop whenever I close my eyes. A shining big window and one wonderful chest or breakfront in it and small gold lettering at the side: ‘Mrs. Garrett Paige, Antiques.’”

“I can see it too. I’ll probably drop a curtsy at your front door the first time I go through. Go ahead and
do
it.”

“He has something for me from the train,” Fee shouted as she hung up. “Can I go right over? He said Franny should come too. It was Mr. Paige.”

She did not pause for permission or for Fran. She washed her hands and face at the kitchen sink, sifting grey Dutch Cleanser on her skin as liberally as if she were scouring pots and pans. Then she ran the tines of a kitchen fork backwards through her hair, a private system of combing which satisfied her private standards.

“Come on, Fran,” she said. “I said we’d start this minute.”

“Fee,” Alexandra said, “whatever Evan has for you, don’t forget to thank him,
really
thank him. If you knew what he endured out there—and still he remembered his promise to a little girl.”

“She’ll thank him, Mama,” Fran said with a meaningful glance, one disciplinarian to another. To Fee she said, “If you think
I’m
going to swab dirt around on my face and go!”

Fee moaned, but Fran went upstairs, wishing it were evening instead of noon. When she returned she was in the dress her mother had taken her to New York to buy for Jack Purney’s party. It was crepe de chine, so full and sheer it swirled like chiffon when she danced, and so faint a yellow it looked almost white. She had put her hair up, and used a touch of Ashes of Roses, hoping her mother would not notice.

“Francesca! You can’t go that way.”

Fran’s hands flew to her cheeks, rubbing them unmercifully but Alexandra said, “Not in that dress.”

“Why can’t I?” Fran demanded, abandoning her cheeks.

“You look overdressed and foolish, that’s why. It’s
morning.”

“Oh, Mama.”

“Never mind that ‘oh, Mama’ either. A silk dress like that isn’t for early morning, go put on something else.”

“She’ll take another hour,” Fee protested.

Look who’s turned into a fashion expert, Fran thought, staring at her mother. Aloud she said, “If I can’t wear a decent dress to the Paiges’, I won’t go at all.”

Fee looked from one to the other in an anguish of entreaty. Neither returned her glance. Neither moved nor spoke.

“Mr. Paige might think we’re not coming,” Fee said desperately, “and he might go out, and I’ll just die.”

“You can go alone,” Fran said.

“Wear your polka-dot,” Alexandra said. “It’s new and you look lovely in it.”

“That thing.” Fran sat down heavily.

Alexandra thought, That thing. The million polka dots blinding me when I made it for her, racing the machine like a sweatshop, she was so crazy to wear it. Now it’s “that thing” and only a ball gown will do for Mrs. Astorbilt. Obscurely she wished she had never raised the issue, let Fran wear a hundred yellow crepe de chine dresses. How opinionated, how unyielding daughters became as they grew up. A son never raised such a ruckus over what to wear.

“Can I Mama?” Fee nearly screamed it, at the edge of tantrum. “Can I go by myself?”

“No. That would be an insult to the Paiges. They asked both of you. Call them up and say Mrs. Astorbilt has a sudden headache from her diadem.” She marched out of the room.

“Please, Franny, It’s been a million years since Mr. Paige’s trip on the train, and I can’t bear it if we can’t go over now.”

“All right,” Fran said suddenly. “Stop acting like a sick cat. I’ll be right down.”

In pure hypocrisy, Fee smiled at her; privately she vowed to get even the first chance she got. Mr. Paige had something for Fran too, and she hoped it would be terrible.

Shag sidled in and collapsed at her feet. “You poor thing,” Fee said to him, “you haven’t one decent thing to wear, even your horrible new muzzle for the beach.” Shag was going with them this summer, but at the price of wearing a muzzle whenever he was allowed off his leash.

“I’m ready,” Fran called. Fee flung Shag away from her, and skipped out of the house lest new delays develop.

At the Paiges’, even while they were saying hello, Fee could look only at the two packages on the dining-room table. One was big, wrapped in Manila paper and tied with stout cord, the other little and frilly-silly with a pale-blue bow.

“Do you like Eau de Cologne, Fran?” Mr. Paige offered the little one.

“I love it,” Fran said. “It’s my very very first—ooh, thank you—ooh, it’s from Paris.”

“By way of California,” he said, while Mrs. Paige added, “I had my first when I was sixteen, and you’re almost, aren’t you, dear?”

Fee was oblivious to all of this; if they had been talking in Attic Greek, she would not have absorbed less of what they said. She was staring at the big package, inching toward it, still impatient but no longer desperate, now that she was In Its Presence.

At last Mr. Paige put his hand out and pushed it toward her. “Fee,” he said, “you had me committing crimes for this.” He sounded mysterious and a little ominous, and her curiosity blazed once more. “Petty theft, bribery, premeditated larceny,” he added dolefully.

“Oh, Mr. Paige,” Fee said, clapping her hands just once, holding them stiff upright as if they were welded together by her fiery excitement. “What’s
in
it?”

“Open it yourself,” he ordered. “Enough of my fingerprints are on it already.” At her squeal of delight, he cut the cords with his penknife.

Fee tore away the wrappings. It was a Weber & Heilbroner box, marked “Navy All-Wool Overcoat, $22.50,” but under the lid lay a lightly packed jumble of paper, metal, cloth, a green something and invisibles carefully wrapped in white tissue. She reached for the folded cloth on top, plucking it out as if somebody might snatch it from her. It was a small oblong huck towel, with PULLMAN woven right through it in a center stripe.

“A special one,” Fee cried, “just for trains.”

“No crime involved so far,” Mr. Paige said. “I paid the porter for it.”

“It’s beautiful,” Fee cried. “I’ll never never use anything else as long as I live. Oh, I just love you, Mr. Paige.”

Fran laughed, but it wasn’t nasty and Fee didn’t mind. She pulled out a bronzy-looking matchbox stamped PULLMAN too, and then a nest of a dozen waxy drinking cups, all bearing the magic name. Next came an unknown of shiny brown paper, folded and folded again in sharp-creased oblongs; it opened into a yard-wide expanse of crackling paper bag, with sawtooth edges across the top.

“That’s for women only,” Mr. Paige explained, “to hide their hats from the cinders and smoke flying in from the engine.”

“You blow
that
bag up and explode it,” Franny warned Fee, “and the hook-and-ladder engine will come dashing.”

Fee was already opening something wrapped in the white tissue, and she gasped when a crystal goblet emerged, tall, airy, like an oval bubble on a stem. Then came a smaller one, matching it in shape and in the seal or crest blown into its side.

“Those entailed bribery,” Evan said cheerfully. “They’re on your table in the dining car, Fee, the big one for water, the little for wine.”

By now, Fran was as entranced as Fee, and watched avidly as Fee drew out the next unknown in tissue, something solid and heavy.

“Bribery again,” Mr. Paige said. “My only out-and-out thievery was the drinking cups and hat-bag and matchbox. Bribery is more soothing.”

Fee was solemn as she discovered that this was silverware, piece after piece of it, polished and gleaming. There were a silver knife, two forks of different shapes and sizes, a funny round soup spoon, a teaspoon, and a blunt-tipped flat little knife of a kind she had never seen. Each piece bore the same crest, and gazing down at them, Fee saw herself seated on a throne-like chair at some unknown table, its priceless lace cloth set with these bubbles of glass and pieces of silver, and she a queen dining in a glory unknown.

Evan Paige drew a small card from his pocket and consulting it, he said, “Each place at the table is set for dinner as follows: two knives and three spoons at the right of your plate; two forks and two spoons at the left. Nine pieces of silverware per diner per dinner.” He looked unsmilingly at Fee. “I promised details, didn’t I? Each table also has a thin vase for three flowers, a glass carafe for water, the engraved menu—there it is, under that green netting—and mahogany chairs with leather seats and backs and brass studs outlining the leather. There are no spittoons in the diner; those are in all the other cars.”