Love & Mrs. Sargent (23 page)

“Well, I mean you can imagine the shock when I opened the door of the beach house and saw Allison there . . . I mean not dressed and . . . and doing. . . .”

“I certainly
can
imagine. Doing just what
you
wanted to be doing there.”

“Yes, yes. But it did give me a start.”

“Oh, didn’t it just! And you were a perfect
picture!
That’s two times today you’ve flown off the handle. Better get a grip
on yourself, darling. These scenes aren’t like you—without being
rehearsed, that is.”

“Oh, it’s all very well for
you
to be hardboiled and detached. But think of me—a
mother—
seeing my own daughter out there. . . . After all, I’ve brought Allison up with certain standards, a certain moral code. . . .”

“As you were saying downstairs this afternoon. Oh, darling, it was pure Judith Anderson! Biggest camp since
Medea!
Well, I’ll admit that you were awfully good, just extemporizing without even a run-through. Although you did get tripped up on some of your facts.”

“Well, how was
I
to know that Allison had done anything so
underhanded as to steal into my room and. . . .”

“Allison explained that and—I thought—perfectly plausibly. Trust you to overplay, ham it up and leave yourself wide open. And did
she
get off the dig dirty of the day! Hoo-hoo-hoo! I wish you could have
seen
your face! If that Pearl Pulaski hadn’t
come roaring in with the artillery you really would have been up
the well-known creek.”

“I’ll admit that Miss Pulaski’s entrance was not
entirely
untimely. Although it was frightfully embarrassing to have her family involved in that murder on the very day I advised her not to. . . .”

“And while we’re on the subject of Miss Pulaski, darling, I wonder from time to time just how many thousands of other—um—
embarrassments
you’ve left strewn in your wake since you set yourself up as the Dowager Empress of Human Emotions.”

“I. . . I don’t quite understand what you mean,” the Actual Sheila mumbled, glancing away.

“Indeed? Well, I’ll try to be more explicit, darling. You said this afternoon—rather tastelessly, I thought, considering the circumstances—that perhaps in Pearl Pulaski’s case your ‘bird’ had picked the wrong fortune.”

“That was just a joke—ill-advised, perhaps.”

“Ill-advised,
darling? Oh, we were all but rolling on the floor
with glee! I just wonder how many other sorry slobs got the wrong fortune when they bared their poor little souls to you. How many backs get broken because you have the arrogance and ignorance to say ‘God giveth the shoulder’? How many girls
are as sex-starved and frustrated as you’ve been because you say
‘Oh, mercy me, don’t give yourself to a man without a wedding ring!’ Sex has been known to work outside marriage. I needn’t tell
you
that. What about the hick town harpies you scold for meddling in the problems of their friends while you sit behind a two-thousand-dollar English desk and get
paid
for mucking around with the lives of total strangers? How many unhappy unwanted bastard babies do you suppose there are being kicked around: because the saintly Sheila Sargent said. . . .”

“Abortion is a crime. Everyone knows that!”

“You seemed willing to become an accessory to one this after
noon.”

“I was worried sick about Allison, Now I. . . .”

“And now you know you don’t need to worry so Everybody Loves a Baby again.”

“With Allison it’s slightly different. She’s young, inexperienced.”

“What about those pregnant high school kids? Are they so elderly?”

“It’s slightly different with those girls,” the Actual Sheila had said primly. “Allison comes from an entirely different background where. . . .”

“Do
forgive me, darling! I keep forgetting your glib little motto: ‘Common Sense for Common People.’ And of course nothing that you or your children do could
ever
be construed as anything but exquisite—shacking up with a young reporter, getting cockeyed and trying to enlist, being caught on the brink of seduction with a dirty little lecher like Billy Kennedy.”

“Billy Kennedy and Allison will make a
very
good match. I’m
quite pleased about it—
now.”

“Well don’t be, because it won’t happen. And speaking of Common People, Billy takes all prizes.”

“What do you
mean?
His mother Kitty is my oldest friend.”

“Your loyalty is admirable, darling, but let’s face it. On both sides of the family his grandfathers were shanty Irish hod-carriers who did well in the contracting business. Not a Vere de Vere in the pack. Yes, I’m afraid our Billy is common.”

“Talk about
snobbish!”
the Actual Sheila had said indignantly. “A lot of great families have sprung from humble origins. I knew
Kitty’s father
and
Eamon Kennedy’s father and there was nothing common about. . . .”

“I didn’t say Billy’s
grandfathers
were common, darling. They
were
un
-common—wily, hardworking old bog-jumpers with
brains and guts. Billy’s the common one—the pretty playboy of the Middle Western world. Look at all those big, boozy broths of b’ys at 3240 Lake Shore Drive; look at the wild Irish roses propping up the bar in the Buttery on their grandfathers’ legacies. Erin go broke, darling, it’s shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations and Billy’s a prime example.”

“Billy’s got—well—trouble with his inner ear.”

“Darling, come off it! Trouble with
your
upper
brain!
You don’t believe poor Kitty’s convenient alibi for a minute—any more than she believes yours.”

“
Well
mine
happens to be true. Besides, Billy is very charming, ve-ry handsome. I’ve always adored him.”

“I didn’t see you giving him an adoring embrace today, darling.
Maybe you were taken in—up to now—by that cutie-pie face and those bogus manners. Besides, I couldn’t help noticing that
he’s already getting a bit broad in the beam—hardly
anyone
could
avoid noticing today.”

“If Allison’s as smart as I think she is. . . .”

“Careful, darling, she may be
smarter
than you think she is. Even smarter than
you
are, perhaps. You’re very much alike, you know.”

“Oh everybody says that—’Just like sisters!’ Well, if Allison’s so much like
me,
then why isn’t she
like
me? I mean
like
. . .
me?”

“That’s a fascinating bit of sentence structure, darling, but what
do
you mean?”

“Well, I mean here it is Allison’s debutante year. She has more money, more connections, more invitations to really fun things than she can ever possibly use. I break my neck getting her into things, buying her dresses, giving her a huge ball. And
what does she do? She goes shlepping off to every party as though
she thought it were a funeral.”

“Maybe that’s what she does think.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But think of the wonderful older men she could meet going to all those dances. Not little squirts like Billy Kennedy—
there,
I’ve said it and I hope you’re satisfied—but grown-up, interesting men. I
did
meet Dick at my coming-out party. And Allison. . . .”

“And Allison, in this day and age, won’t meet anything but a pack of free-loaders under twenty-five as you, the gracious
hostess, will discover at the cost of something like three thousand
dollars an hour. Really, darling, sometimes I think Allison
is
smarter than you. And I think that
you’re
afraid of her. Any quick confessions?”

“Oh, that’s enough about Allison.”

“As you wish, darling. Where to next? Dicky?”

“Yes,” the Actual Sheila had sighed, “I suppose one really must think a bit about poor Dicky.”

“Good. Shall we beat around the bush for a while or shall we get right down to the question at hand: Why did he go off on a tear?”

“Well,” the Actual Sheila had begun squirming, “it might have been high youthful spirits. He
is
young. Exuberant.”

“Now see here, darling, I have the patience of Job. We also have the whole night ahead of us with nothing more diverting,
alas, than
A Passage to India.
But if you want to get this Deep
Thinking thing over and done with, you’ll have to be a bit more candid. Dicky never had an exuberant
minute.
Was he one of those scabby-kneed, tree-climbing little boys? Was he the heart and soul of the glee club, the debating society, the year book, the football team? He was not!”

“Dicky’s always been delicate.”

“Dicky’s never had a sick day in his life. Thin, yes, but as strong as a bull and. . . .”

“But I mean Dicky must have some kind of split personality.
There must be a very exciting, turbulent side to him that we don’t see here at home. Why, he was a perfect firebrand in school. Just look at his record: North Shore Country Day, Lake Forest, St. Elmo’s, Yale, He was in hot water at every one of them. He must.. . .”

“Darling, will you stop trying to romanticize that poor boy into Tom Sawyer and Harold Teen and Peck’s Bad Boy? If you
can’t remember those hours of interviews with school psychia
trists—all hatty and suity and motherly—I certainly
can.
Every
last man-jack of them said the exact same thing: ‘Moody, broody,
detached and antisocial.’ “

“But so many geniuses are. . . .”

“Whoa, Nellie! Let’s face the facts. Dicky’s grades in every subject were absolutely dead center. Passing but unexceptional. His I.Q. is a bit above average and a good bit below Allison’s, for that matter. His aptitude tests showed. . . .”

“But those cut and dried formulas simply don’t apply to a writer. A writer is. . . .”

“I wonder if Dicky really is a writer, darling. The critics would
seem to disagree.”

“Oh, but Dicky
should
write. Look at his father. It’s something I’ve wanted so desperately. For him to be like. . . .”

“Well, darling, I’ll admit that there you’ve got me. I’ve wanted
it badly, too—so badly that I confess to letting some pretty grim
pages get by just because I was so thankful that he’d finished another chapter.”

“If he’d only
apply
himself a little. . .”

“This is one area where I can’t be of much help. I’m just as guilty as you are because I’ve wanted Dicky to be a famous author just as much as you have. But we did pull some awful boners. I mean hiding those bad reviews. Buying out bookstores on the sly. Thank God we paid cash at Chandler’s and the Chestnut Court. It was morally wrong and
very
amateurishly handled. Real bungling doting mother stuff.”

“I only wanted to encourage him and save his pride.”

“Me, too. And look what happened. But the real question at hand is why did Dicky get plastered all of a sudden. . . .”

“To be absolutely frank—and painfully so—I’ve suspected for some time that Dicky was drinking a little more than was good for him. Nothing definite to go on, of course, but. . . .”

“I’ve
known
it But you’re right. He disguised it pretty well.
Now,
howsomever, it’s out in the open. Let’s say that we gave him a damned good excuse to go on a toot, but
why—
and think carefully about this, darling—
why
do you suppose he wanted to join the army?”

“Could it be b-because. . . . No, it just couldn’t.”

“I think you’re getting warm, darling, keep on going.”

“Well, it’s not very pleasant for a mother to admit.”

“Lots of things are the sheerest hell for a mother to admit, hut they have to be faced eventually. Now get it off your chest.”

“I—I suppose that Dicky really wanted to get away from me. And I can’t
hear
it.”

“Darling, I’m sorry. Truly I am. But I’m afraid you’re right.”

“Well, he’s not going to! I’ll do everything in my power to. . .”

“But what
can
you do to keep a grown man cooped up in that chi-chi tool shed? You know he. . . . What was that noise?”

Abruptly the session had ended. Sheila had got to her feet, gone to the window and peered cautiously through the blinds.

Below her she had heard a garage door close with a soft, muted rumble. Then she had seen a man making his way quietly across the wet gravel. Peter!

In a flash she had been in bed, her hair becomingly fluffed, her peignoir in showy disarray, a book open on her lap. Lying back against the pillows she had listened tensely for the night noises she knew by heart—the sound of the front door being closed and locked, the snap of the light switch, the mounting of the stairs, the creak of the seventh step, the hollow, ringing echo of footsteps in the upstairs hall. Last night all the noises had been heard, but with a difference. They had been muffled,
furtive, stealthy—the unavoidable sounds made by someone who
doesn’t want to be heard.

“P. . .” Sheila had started to call out and then stopped.
Nothing too eager. Nothing indiscreet. Anyhow, he would come to her, come to her and find her decorously reading in bed. She
had giggled to discover
A Passage to India
upside down in her
hands. Righting it, she had begun to read:

CHAPTER XXIII
Lady Mellanby, wife to the Lieutenant-Governor of the

“Naturally Peter wouldn’t come barging right in here. He’d wait to see if the coast is clear. In spite of Allison he still has some discretion.”