Letty Fox (55 page)

A
S EVER
, A
MOS
.

I suppose there was no reason now why poor Mother could not have known about my misadventure, but it was an accepted thing that she did not; and one lives so often and so curiously by accepted things. Again, I had sympathy for Amos, although I knew by now that he had not a strong character; and even the way he spelled “despirited” was so like him, brought him so much to mind, that I had not the heart to expose his weakness to my parents. But I was very pushed to think where I could get two hundred dollars. There was another reason with these—actually, by the kind offices of Solander's friend, the whole wretched affair had only cost me one hundred dollars and I had used the other one hundred dollars partly to pay off a long outstanding bill at a city department store and partly for a fine suit of black marocain, which had set me back forty-five dollars. Whenever I had to explain such miraculous appearances in my wardrobe, it was easy to say I had the suit from Grandmother Morgan or Aunt Phyllis, both generous spendthrifts who would not give me away, in any case. My heart troubled me and I wished I could sell the suit. I telephoned Aunt Phyllis, but she, naturally, had several closets bulging with things she was waiting to discard and only wanted the very latest in clothes; she would not be seen wearing a suit that cost only forty-five dollars. She haunted a circle which knew accurately the price and origin of every suit and dress in town. I had a typewriter, and offered to do some typing for some of the boys; but they showed by their behavior, if not in words, that they expected me to be paid enough by their kisses, or more. When at last Amos came to town, and we met in the Sixth Avenue cafeteria, where we thought we would be safe from my family, and I sat down next to him at the table, with that strange feeling of middle-age and custom and tranquillity which came from our having started a child together, I felt my heart beat hard; for I supposed what I felt were wifely feelings and I was really afraid of what he would say when he found I had only amassed ten dollars for him. These I silently pushed over to him, across the round table. He took them up, stared and looked quite wrung; he said, “What am I to do? I came to New York for the two hundred dollars: I have wasted my fare.”

“I have no money,” I said, bursting into tears.

“We'll have to take it up with Ma-ma,” he said gloomily; “she gets plenty of allowance from your father for you four; I know what divorced women get, and it goes up when the girls are going to college; she can spare it, probably, out of the next two months' allowance.”

“I suppose you think she'll use every ounce of energy getting the cash for your ex-wives,” said I, wiping my eyes.

“Is it my fault?” he asked gloomily. “Besides, I'll put it this way to Mamma. I knew about the baby but couldn't be sure it was mine; only, out of gallantry, I lent you the dough anyhow; I'll say that. Besides—who really knows? Eh?”

“You're so cheesy,” I said, my heart sinking into my boots, not on account of the forthcoming interview, but because men seemed to me, at that moment, a cruel illusion. I had not only been loyal, but had confessed my girlish follies to him in loving nights with him.

“I don't mean you were unfaithful. I mean, it's the best way out, to say we've been living in free love—then no one can get mad with no one. See? Isn't that the best way, honey,” he asked me. “What can we do otherwise?” We talked it over for a long time. I went to his hotel room with him, for I could not at that moment resist him, and I fell once more, which made it quite impossible for me to argue against him. He, at last, went away with my ten dollars, saying that I must do the best I could. Some anger stirred me and I wrote him a letter that very night, saying that I could not understand his claim, for I had resolved to drag the whole thing out into the glare of family publicity, in order to get, out of pity, those dollars that he demanded; but he only wrote back coldly, saying that I was well known as a “party” girl and that he had no means of knowing the child was his. Nevertheless, in all this, I did not dare go to Solander, to expose what kind of man I had fallen in love with; and this shameful correspondence went on for months. At length, he did not answer one of my letters, and there for some time the matter rested. I was so sweet and yet chaste with Bobby Thompson all this time, that he became rather fond of me; we were always together. I, unfortunately, finding him so kind, fell in love with him; I needed a comforter of my own age so badly. To him, I would not have to explain my way of life, nor the way my studies were falling behind, nor my debts, nor anything.

We all had them—the loves, the debts, the agonies: it was so wonderful to just walk with him in the dark, or sit with him in a drug store, or sit in the park, under the trees, and talk pompously or fliply and yet know we had the same troubles weighing us down. Dear Bobby! I longed to be married and in a safe harbor as some of my girl friends were. I felt, it is not far off, this year I will get married, too. Approaching marriage, as I thought, I felt as if I were approaching a splendid great white woman, blushing with youth, I felt quite warm with pleasure. Oh, to be married and understand what life was about; how magical, I thought.

Bobby persuaded me that it would be better for me not to go on in college but to look about for a job. He said I'd get nothing more out of college. He really understood me, and he had no illusions about the academic game. What should I do though? I had to have some project before I dumped this idea in Solander's lap. Should I start off in writing? I returned to my idea of the Whodunit; and inspired by another book (
Verdict of Twelve
by Raymond Postgate), I decided to write one called
The Twelve Uncaught
. Looking back on my secret life, I became troubled, wondered what kind of secrets everyone conceals. Everyone of the
Twelve
, I thought, in every jury, perhaps has an actual crime, or more than one, on Heaven's true account. Has everyone? Has a good, laughing man like my father? It seems impossible. And poor Mathilde? She cannot have committed a crime! But didn't she steal Solander from her sister Stella? That is what Stella says; and perhaps it is true. These were terrible thoughts and I began to feel I was penetrating life's heart of darkness. I did not see it like Edwige Lantar, my wicked young cousin, as Satan's invisible world made visible. No, this life was flesh of my flesh, I knew; I was wicked just as other people were wicked, not more nor less. But what depths and flaws, even what a chaos in me, I now seemed to see! Life was a heavily smoked glass through which to look at the sun. But I never had any dreams of sainthood; I just felt, it was hard to be a model of virtue, in the lovely world of the flesh and the devil, which was, to me, the only true aspect of the world. I know my sister had a different view. But I could not accept it; and even now, when I am nearly twenty-five, the age of inevitable maturity, I cannot accept any view of the world but my own. The others seem disagreeably primitive to me, tentacular, feeble, like something Mesozoic, or H. G. Wellsian—he was much affected by the ancient emanations of the mud banks of the Thames!

This book,
Verdict of Twelve
, I regard as a clue in getting through my labyrinth, for it was given to Jacky by her Prince at Santa Fe, and in it she had drawn a profile of one of her distinguished friends, a remarkable woman no doubt, a poet and painter, who had an adobe palace at Santa Fe and in New York had a studio on Sixth Avenue, where she gave art classes which Jacky attended at night and on Saturdays. Jacky at this time was working as hard as I had ever worked, but only at painting and at literature. She had not my effervescence, but went in stern pursuit of her hobby. She had become more caustic and spoiled in her ways than ever I was. Were we both spoiled brats, or is everyone like that? I suppose parents like it. I'd let my youngsters knock things to pieces if I thought it showed the tumult of invention.

To be honest with myself (a momentary and, with me, morbid pastime), I was jealous of Jacky's progress in the arts. I proposed to leave school and take up commercial art and commercial writing, in order to plunge into life and to beat Jacky to it. She had a cheap sketchbook already full of park and subway sketches, in a manner that had begun to be her own. Some day soon, I thought, she'll sell one of them and there's something lucky about her, she'll at once begin to make good. She won't be satisfied to be a filler-in for a recognized comic-strip artist.

My parents, Mathilde and Solander, were bitterly opposed to my leaving college. Both agreed that if I did so, I had no hope of getting my grandmother's money, until I married for good and all. I was a wastrel, a tramp, bum, ne'er-do-well, in their opinion; I received quite a trouncing on this occasion. I went back to college, sulkily, saw how I was received by the demi-virgins and the pimpled youths, and went straight back to Solander to tell him I could not stomach that society any more.

“Say what you will, Papa,” said I, “you may call me a loafer, I am, but I am not a giggling, hard-boiled virgin; and I have lived with a man, I am a woman. I have got to get out of this cookie shop they call a university. It never would suit me. I've met the products of this renowned bakery, and they are not as smart as I am right now; you know yourself what the general opinion is of the prof and the teacher? Donkeys, things with long ears. And what's the end-all of their teaching, to make me like themselves? Have I got to spend four years at the university trying to educate my teachers? I've done enough of that at high school. I promise that if I'm left high and dry by life, and nothing else happens along that is better, I'll go back to school at a later age; but to a decent school, mind you, not to what is called a university, jammed with adolescents, most of whom don't even know how the sexual act is performed. For that, with work and child-getting, and mental creation, is, Papa, the chief adult activity; and believe me, they don't know what any of those four are, not even this simple and delightful one.”

“Well, what will you do, you bum?” asked my father, laughing.

“I'll write,” said I. “I'll get things in the
New Yorker
, then I'll write a book, and then they'll take me in Hollywood. I'm young, I'm good-looking, and I'm smart. I can learn any technique. I'll forge ahead there. You'll soon see me at one thousand dollars a week.”

“Don't take my breath away with your idealism,” said Solander, laughing heartily.

“Papa!”

“All right, you no-good. You can try it. But if you make this an excuse to be a girl about town, I'll be after you and throw you right back to the universities. Also, remember, you have to make your living; that's the purpose of all this, I understand.”

“Oh, Papa! I already know two men on the
New Yorker
! One wants to marry me but I don't like him, poor fellow; it's his friend I like; and he, naturally, is married, and doesn't want to leave his wife.”

Persia laughed, saying, “I thought there was something too abstract in this proposition, but now it has come down to recognizable Lettish terms.”

I grinned sourly. Perhaps there was something true in what she said; but it was Amos and my foolish weakness for him, and my pangs of motherhood, as well as the man on the
New Yorker
. However, it had been the
New Yorker
fellow who had given me the ideas about Hollywood.

As soon as I was free of college, I asked my father for the money he would have had to spend on me, in the first quarter, to get myself established. He gave me a little of it. I then started going to Jacky's art class. I felt I could easily beat her. Here I met her teacher, the celebrated Lucy Headlong.

L
ucy Headlong was then a woman of about forty, lanky, handsome, with visible jointings, like an old Dutch doll, with graying bronze hair and the skin of a sundried windfall. She was dashing, with a strident voice and expensive arty clothes. She was said to have been a raving beauty as a girl; and even now, her small face, formed on a delicate regular skull (which was beginning to be visible), and her large sea-blue eyes, wonderfully shaped and set, gave her days of beauty. When I first saw her, I mentioned my father and his lively circle. She appeared to take no notice of my conversation, but carried on in the outrageously rude, almost insane manner of an acknowledged chieftain. Yet she directed her wild airs at Jacky and me. It soon became evident that she preferred us to all the others in her class. She had puzzling ways, however, that could cut you to the heart. She was capricious; and just as you fancied yourself her friend, she would swerve blithely, even blatantly, to another member of the class, male or female. I could not place her and had great distaste for her. My gentle Jacky had almost fallen in love with her. “A woman of genius!” Jacky cried joyfully. As for me, I could not help thinking of certain airs adopted in England by girls bred to the upper classes—the high-pitched brutality of voice, the elegant sweetness always at call, the selfish caprice. “She loves no one on earth,” I said to myself, “but her husband and crazy family.”

Adrian Headlong was a columnist, well known for his pure style and his empty head. He was of good social origin, harked back to some hero of our history, like old Chisholm, or the original Chicago porkpacker; and though broken by years, was still quite a figure of a man, sculptured head, long back and legs, broad shoulders, and the proud swinging arms of a gorilla. He had fierce blue eyes, and when he entered a room and stared genially, one felt a presence; “I am Sir Oracle, and when I speak, let no dog bark.” Yes, alas, there was too much of that about Adrian Headlong. Mrs. Lucy adored her husband in a highspirited way.

I soon saw that Mrs. Headlong liked to show us off to the rest of the pupils; she caused us to chatter about England, France, and our foreign schools. We were, for her, young women of her class. As she had at first been attracted to Jacky, but was irritated by Jacky's natural coldness, I set myself to win her; and soon, with my fire, yielding charm, and verve, was able to do so. We both received an invitation to spend a long week end at Arnhem, her country place in Westchester; but as Jacky had a chance to go to the Museum of Modern Art on the Saturday with the man she still adored, Peter Varnish, she refused and I, with enthusiasm, set out from Grand Central to visit my teacher alone.