Love & Mrs. Sargent (27 page)

“
There isn’t any story for sale, Sheila. There isn’t going to be. I quit my job today.”

“Ah, then chivalry isn’t quite yet dead.”

“That’s right, Sheila. Sick as a dog, maybe, but not quite dead.”

“Get out of here.”

“Good-by, Sheila.”

She turned away. When she looked back he was gone.

Stunned, Sheila stood there for just a moment and then she forced her mind to work in its usual logical orderly fashion. “Dark in here,” she said. “Taylor’s no ball of fire, but even
he
must know the days are getting shorter.” She set to work drawing the curtains, lighting the lamps. She went to the desk and
saw Mrs. Flood’s five-dollar bill on top of the stack of mail. She
dropped it into the petty cash box, signed Mrs. Flood’s final pay
check and put it into its envelope. Then she copied down Mrs. Flood’s address just in case she’d ever have to get in touch with her. “I’m just as glad she
is
gone,” Sheila said. “Her endless chatter, her bogus social graces. The next one is going to be
young, bright,
not
in the Stud Book and preferably a deaf mute.”
She looked at the envelope, reread the address “Care of Porter”
on an unfamiliar North Side street. Probably one of those middle-
middle-class sun-porchy buildings dating from the year Sheila had been
born.

“Poor old idiot,” Sheila said. “I suppose I do owe her some sort of severance pay. After all,
I
fired
her.
I only asked her to stay because she needs the job—needs me.” She sat down and figured out how much Mrs. Flood’s salary would have been up to the end of the year. Then she wrote a check for that and put
it
into the envelope. It was quite a farewell gift. With unemployment compensation it would help to tide the old girl over. It made Sheila feel better about Mrs. Flood.

She glanced at the mountain of unanswered letters. The one on top, written in pencil on lined paper, began: “I am 80 yrs
old and loosing my eye site.” Sheila would get at them tomorrow,
finish the whole bunch alone over the weekend. In fact, she wondered if she might not dispense with any secretarial help. That would be one less person hanging onto her, “Free. That’s what I want to be. Free of all these hangers-on depending on me—sucking my blood.”

“Miz Sargent?” It was Bertha. “I laid out your dress. And Miss
Allison’s, too. Mr. Malvern be here at six. It’s past five now.”

“Thank you, Bertha. I know. Oh, and you can hang Allison’s up again. She’s gone.” Bertha’s eyebrows rose questioningly. “Gone to New York to visit a friend. Dicky went with her. The change will do them both good.” She didn’t like Bertha’s look. Bertha, in fact, could be very tiresome. Sheila supposed that sooner or later she’d have to have a straight talk with the Taylors. Get the house running smoothly again. “And so I’ll be the only one here for breakfast tomorrow. I’ll have it in my room—when I ring.”

“Mr. Johnson gone, too?”

“Didn’t I
say
that I would be the only. . . . Yes. Mr. Johnson has left. After all, he was just here on an assignment. And I’ll be quite relieved to have a little peace and quiet. After all, we’re not running a hotel.” She got up and left the room.

“Yes,” Sheila said, as she reached the top of the stairs, “it will be nice having the place to myself—do things
my
way for a change.” She went into her bedroom and began to undress. For some reason, the room made her think of Peter. “And I’ve had quite enough of
him,
thank you. His moods, his petulance, his immature leftist leanings, his scolding and preaching. Wanting to marry me! Imagine! Sheila Sargent and a hayseed reporter—what a pair!” She rummaged in a drawer for fresh underwear.
“Yes, the timing was just about right. It was frankly an adventure
and nothing else. Much more of him and I could have turned into one of those fool women who write to Sheila Sargent. I suppose that’s why there has to
be
a Sheila Sargent—just someone with her feet on the ground who doesn’t go around kidding herself that. . . .”

She cut short her conversation, put on her ball gown and her
jewelry and examined her reflection critically. Satisfied with the
way she looked, she gazed around the room and decided that she really didn’t like it very much. It was cold, somehow, with all that blue. Maybe she’d just do it over in a rosy red. That would be gay. And then maybe she’d turn Allison’s room into a kind of sitting room again. Quite a suite for just one woman.

She wandered into Allison’s room, busily thinking about bringing that little rosewood desk down from the attic to place between
the windows. The room seemed very, very empty. Allison’s eve
ning dress—the new blue one—lay across the bed with the little mink jacket.

“Really,” she said, “didn’t I
tell
Bertha to hang it up?” She snatched up the dress and the jacket and marched into the dressing room. “Left her new fur jacket behind, did she? She may regret that when winter hits New York.” She opened the
closet and saw that all of Allison’s new clothes were still hanging
there. “She’s going to look awfully dowdy on Fifth Avenue. Drab.” Yes, that was it. Drab. “That’s always been Allison’s trouble. She’s drab.”

Sheila recalled now all of the junior assemblies and fortnightly
dances she had got Allison into, using a tall, eligible older
brother as hostage. The dinner parties she had staged before each
so that the silly stick of a girl would have a string of socially indebted males more or less obligated to dance with her. “And what did Allison do? Did she sparkle? Did she shine? She did
not! Just stood around like a lump, not talking, never smiling. Drab, Now if
I’d
been down on the floor instead of up in the balcony with the mothers. . . . Oh, I can just see her a few years from now—an old maid in a sloppy suit living with a cat and a rubber plant and too many pictures on the walls.”

She closed the closet door and wandered down the hall to
Mrs. Flood’s room. As promised, the mink coat and the old broad
tail were hanging there in lonely splendor. “No fool like an old fool,” she said. She’d think about what to do with Flood’s room later. The
next
secretary—if there had to be another one—would live out.

In Dicky’s rather monastic room she saw the unfinished manu
script of his new novel lying on the desk. She picked it up and glanced at it, turning to the last page.

“
Bon soir, monsieur
,” she said in a mellifluous voice. “You are,
how-you-say, lone-lee?”

“Really!” Sheila said. “How can
anyone
write that badly? Here I give him the plot, the characters, every situation—I offer him a
career on a silver platter—and he can’t even set it down in a string of simple, declarative sentences. Silly, affected, vulgar, dull writing. He only wrote it that way to spite me.” She dropped the manuscript into the waste basket and went into the bedroom recently vacated by Peter, On the desk she saw the farewell note he had begun:

Dear Sheila—
Sorry I have to run out on you while you’re away, but I’ve been
called back to the magazine on an emergency. It’s been great
knowing you and. . . .

She tore up the note and let the pieces scatter to the floor. “You can take a boy out of Kansas, but you can’t take Kansas
out of the boy. And to think I allowed him to . . . well, to take liberties with me. Of course he actually forced himself on me. I mean, what could I do, a defenseless woman alone in the house?” The new cashmere jacket, the ties, the hat had all been left behind, she noticed. “Just as well,” she said. “He was pure Robert Hall. Bond Clothing—two pairs of pants with every suit. Why, I couldn’t have taught him to dress like a gentleman in a
million years. Ingrates, the whole lot of them—taking everything
they could get from me and then throwing it all back in my face. Well, I’m glad they’re gone!”

A light flashed past the window. Sheila looked out and saw the Famous Features company limousine coming up the drive. The clock in the hall began striking six. “Dear Howard, always on the dot.” She went to her room, gathered up her cape, her evening bag, her gloves. “I’d better start thinking of some gracious thing to say when I accept this award tonight.”

She paused at the head of the stairway and looked down at Malvern standing below in white tie and top hat. Grasping the handrail she began to descend. It was then that the Other Sheila began to speak to her again.

“So you’re
really
going through with it, darling?”

“Well of course I am. I’ve got to. The banquet’s at seven.”

“Banquet! Overdone beef and runny baked Alaska! You’d do better scrambling a couple of eggs right here.”

“It’s not the food, stupid, it’s the honor.”

“And
you’re
going to accept it?”

“Certainly. I was an excellent mother. Was it my fault that my children were ungrateful?”

“Grateful for what, having your prefabricated dreams crammed
down their throats? You drove them out of here, you know.”

“That isn’t true,” Sheila said, pausing at the landing, “Howard, dear. Good evening,” she said aloud. How grateful she felt to see him, just to have him there,

“Sheila, my dear,” Malvern said. “You look magnificent. Like a bride.”

“Thank you, Howard,” Sheila said.

“Like a bride!” the Other Sheila sneered. “He’d marry you in a minute and he’s ten times too good for you.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“And if he asks, darling, you’d better say yes. You’ve run out of courtiers. There’s nobody left but Howard. And you don’t deserve him.”

“It’s late, Sheila, and I’m a little worried about the traffic. Are the others ready?” Malvern asked.

“And just what are you going to tell him about those others, darling? Think fast now. Allison’s flown to London to be pre
sented. Dicky’s in Stockholm accepting the Nobel Prize. Floodie’s
run off with Cary Grant. Tell a good one. You’ll soon believe it yourself.
Or—
or you might even tell the truth for once.”

“Why, Howard, as a matter of fact . . . .” she began gaily. Then she stopped. Looking down at Malvern’s adoring face, she knew that she couldn’t tell another lie. She would have to have
someone—just some other living person—to lean on. The tears began to flow. “There aren’t any others, Howard. They’ve walked
out on me—all of them.”

“Sheila, my dear. I don’t understand.”

She was down the stairs and in his arms. “I do, Howard. I
understand perfectly—now. They left me because I was a shock
ing mother; a lying, cheating bully who ran their lives according to what I wanted. And now they’ve gone.”

“Sheila, we all make mistakes. You meant. . . .”

“Don’t say I meant well, Howard. I didn’t. Oh, I thought so.
It all seemed so logical and simple. I thought I could run anyone’s life just beautifully and I was so busy doing it that I made a mess of my own. I was so happy to fool myself into thinking that people needed Sheila Sargent that I never stopped to realize how much I need
them.
Now it’s too late.”

“I need you, Sheila,” Malvern said, taking her into his arms again. “If only you’d marry me.
. . .”

“Howard, that’s the loveliest thing you’ve ever done to me. But could you wait a little while? A year? Two years? Even
longer? Long enough for me to get off by myself and make some
drastic alterations. I want to be worthy.”

“Worthy, Sheila?”

“Yes, Worthy of loving—and of being loved.”

“Sheila, I’d wait a lifetime. I already have.”

“Thank you, Howard. It’s getting late. You’d better start into town. I know how worried you can be. I’ll just have a light supper here and . . .”

“But, Sheila. This Mother of the Year Award. What can I tell them?”

“You can tell them, Howard, that Sheila Sargent is most flattered but that Mrs. Sargent will be unavoidably detained because she’s lost something very valuable and will have to find it.”

“Sheila, what is this? What have you lost and what are you trying to find?”

“My children, Howard. My children—and myself.”