The Group (43 page)

“Was it wicked to have you?” he said smiling. Polly rushed to her parents’ defense. “They didn’t know, then, about my father’s melancholia. That happened later.” He still smiled, and Polly saw the point. Would she wish not to have been born? Unhappy as she was, she could not say that. Even when she had wished to die, she had not wished never to have been alive. Nobody alive could do that. “What strange set ideas you have!” he said. “And you a medical technician. It isn’t as if you had a family history of idiocy. Or hereditary syphilis.” “I always thought,” said Polly, “that from a scientific point of view I ought to be sterilized.” “Good God!” he replied. “What bunkum! Where did you learn that?” “At college,” said Polly. “I don’t mean the professors taught it in class, but it was sort of in the atmosphere. Eugenics. That certain people ought to be prevented from breeding. Not Vassar women of course”—she smiled—“but the others. I always felt like one of the others. There was a lot of inbreeding in my family—people marrying their cousins. The Andrews’ blood has run thin.” “‘The blood of the Andrews,’” he said, glancing at Polly’s arm, where a pad of cotton still lay at the point the vein had been opened. “I’ll prove to you that I have confidence in the blood of the Andrews. Will you marry me?” “But we’ve never even had a date,” protested Polly rather speciously. “You don’t know me. We’ve never—” She stopped herself. “Been to bed,” he finished.

“All right, let’s go to a hotel. You call your father and tell him you won’t be home. I’ve got my car outside. We’ll have dinner first and a dance. Are you a good dancer?” Polly feared this was a “line” he used with all the young nurses and technicians, and yet if he asked them all to marry him, how did he edge out of it afterward? He was quite good-looking, tall and curly-haired, and that in itself suddenly made her suspicious. In real life, it was only homely men who fell in love with a bang and did not leave you to guess about their intentions. He had a breezy manner of talking that she was at a loss to interpret; it
might
come, she told herself, from dealing with sick people. “Are you always such a ‘fast worker’?” she asked teasingly, taking the tone she took with her father in his headstrong moments. “No,” he said. “Not with women. Believe it or not, I’ve never told a woman I loved her before. Or signed ‘Love’ to a letter, except to my folks. And I’m thirty years old. Naturally, now that it seems to have hit me, I don’t want to waste time.” Polly’s misgivings lessened. But she laughed gently. “‘Waste time,’” she chided. “How long do you imagine you’ve been in love with me?” He looked at his watch. “About half an hour,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I’ve always liked you. I picked you out when you first came to the hospital.” So she had been right, Polly said to herself. Her confidence increased. But she was frightened now in a new way. He was different from Gus, straightforward, and she liked that, yet she found herself wanting to parry his onslaught. He was all too eager to commit himself, which meant he was committing
her
. But at the same time his hurry made this whole conversation seem unreal to her, like a daydream. “But we have nothing in common,” she started to object, but this sounded rude, she decided. Instead she said, “Even if I were to marry, I could never marry a psychiatrist.” To her surprise, she discovered she meant this, from the bottom of her heart. Looking for what was wrong with Jim Ridgeley, she found it, alas. A psychiatrist would have a desk side even more wooden than Gus’s; indeed, she had already noticed signs of it. “Good,” Jim Ridgeley said promptly. “I’m going to get out. It was a mistake I made in medical school. I thought it was a science. It ain’t. I’m leaving here the first of the year.” “But what will you do then?” said Polly, thinking that if he left at the first of the year, she would miss him. One side of her was resolutely ignoring his intention of marrying her. “General medicine? But you’d have to start all over again, with your interneship.” “No. Research. There are discoveries to be made in treating mental illness, but they won’t be made in the consulting room. They’ll come from the laboratory. Brain chemistry. I have a job lined up with a research team; I share an apartment with one of them. You can work with us too—as a technician. There’s no future for you here.” “I know that,” said Polly. “But what attracts you about mental illness, Jim?” “The waste,” he said emphatically. “Of human resources. I’m impatient.” “I can
see
that,” she murmured. “Then I suppose I have a bit of the do-gooder in me. Came by it naturally. My father’s a minister. Presbyterian.” “Oh?” This news was pleasing to Polly; it would be nice, she reflected, to have a minister in the family. “If you like, he can marry us. Or we can go down to City Hall.”

The more serious he sounded, the more Polly tried to joke. “And what about
my
father?” she said lightly. “You can use him as a guinea pig, I suppose. To test out your brilliant discoveries. He could be my dowry.” He frowned. Already, she said to herself sadly, he was starting to disapprove of her. “He can live with us and keep house,” he said shortly. “Do you mean that?” “I wouldn’t say it otherwise,” he answered. “And after we’re married, I can keep an eye on him. To tell the truth, Polly, I think most of our patients would be better off at home. The Victorian system was better, with mad Auntie upstairs. More human. The fault lies mostly with the families. They want to get their mad relation out of the house and into what’s known as ‘the hands of competent professionals.’
I.e.
, sadistic nurses and orderlies. The same with old people; nobody wants old people around any more.” “Oh, I agree!” exclaimed Polly. “I like old people. It’s awful, the way they’re junked, like old cars. But if that’s the way you think, why did you say he should be committed?” “The difference between theory and practice. I didn’t like the idea of your being alone with him.” “
He’s not dangerous
,” repeated Polly. “They would never have sent him home from Riggs if he were dangerous.” “Nonsense,” he said. “Most homicidal lunatics who go berserk and murder ten people are found to have been just released from a mental hospital. Your father was let out of Riggs because you had no money to keep him there. If you had, he might be there still.” “You’re very cynical,” said Polly. “You get that way in psychiatry,” he answered. “But let’s grant that your father isn’t dangerous; you probably know more about it than a doctor. He may still be dangerous to himself. If he dips into a depressed phase. He was suicidal at one time, wasn’t he?” “I’m not sure. He talked about it, and Mother was afraid.” “Well.” He looked at her; his eyes were like him—a light brown, with surprising green flecks. “Maybe,” he said, “I told you to commit him partly to see what you’d say.” “Oh!” exclaimed Polly. “You were testing me! Like a fairy tale.” She was disillusioned. “Maybe,” he repeated. “It’s a habit you fall into as a doctor. Watching for the reflexes. But I already knew what you’d answer. I knew you’d say no. I think what I wanted to see was whether I could scare you.” “You did,” said Polly. “No, I didn’t. Not fundamentally. Nothing could persuade you to distrust your father. You’re not a distrustful girl.” “Oh, but I am!” said Polly, thinking of how she had been with Gus. “I
know
my father, that’s all.”

Polly found she had agreed to marry Jim without ever being aware of saying Yes. That night they had dinner and danced, and he took her home. They kissed a long time in his car in front of her apartment. When she went upstairs, finally, she still did not know whether she loved him or not. It had all happened too quickly. But she was relieved that she was going to marry him, and she wondered whether this was immoral. In the old days, people used to say that gratitude could turn to love—could that be true? She had liked kissing him, but that might be just sex. Sex, Polly had concluded, was not a reliable test of love. What bothered her most was the thought that she and Jim had so little in common—a phrase she kept repeating anxiously to herself. Outside the hospital, they had not a single common acquaintance. And as for those old friends, the characters in books—King Arthur and Sir Lancelot and Mr. Micawber and Mr. Collins and Vronsky and darling Prince Andrei, who were like members of the family—why, Jim seemed hardly to recall them. When she mentioned Dr. Lydgate tonight, he confessed he had never read
Middlemarch
—only
Silas Marner
in school, which he hated. He could not read novels, he said, and he had no preference between Hector and Achilles. At least both Jim and she knew the Bible and they both had been science majors, but was that enough? He was more intelligent than she was, but he had not had a Vassar education. And she was insular, like all the Andrews. Why else would they have kept marrying their cousins if not to share the same jokes, the same memories, the same grandparents or great-grandparents even? What would Jim talk about with her brothers, who were only interested in farming now and either discussed feeds and beef-cattle prices or swapped lines from Virgil’s
Georgics
, the way other bumpkins swapped dirty stories? They would have bored Polly stiff if she had not known them all her life. And then there were all the old cousins and second cousins who would come out of their holes for her wedding at the smell of champagne. Not that she would have champagne; Aunt Julia’s greatest “sacrifice” had been dumping the champagne she had been saving for Polly’s wedding. What would a psychiatrist make of the whole Andrews clan? Polly’s mother still described
her
feelings on meeting them as a young bride from New York. “Your father and I,” she now said, “have never been compatible. I was too normal for Henry.” But no one would guess that, seeing her on the farm dressed in overalls with a finger wave in her majestic coiffure. These thoughts had never troubled Polly when she had dreamed of marriage with Gus, which proved, perhaps, she decided, that she had never believed in that marriage. This time, she was trying to be realistic.

When she came in, her father, who was a night owl, was still awake. She felt sure he would notice the change in her, though she had combed her hair and put on lipstick in the car, and she was reluctant to confess to him that she had got engaged in a single night. Luckily, his mind was elsewhere. He had been waiting for her to come home to tell her, as he said, an important piece of news. “He’s going to get married,” she exclaimed to herself. But no; he had got a job. In a thrift shop on Lexington Avenue, where he was going to be assistant to the manageress, who ran it for a charity. The pay was not much, but he had only to sit in the shop afternoons and talk to customers; he would have his mornings to himself.

“Why, that’s wonderful, Father!” said Polly. “How did you ever get it?” “Julia arranged it,” he said. “Julia’s on the board. The position’s usually kept for ‘reduced gentlewomen,’ but she lobbied me through. I believe I’m being exchanged for a club membership. ‘Henry knows wood’ was her slogan.” “That’s wonderful,” Polly repeated. “When do you start?” “Tomorrow. This afternoon the manageress explained my duties to me and itemized the stock. A preponderance of white elephants. The stuff is all donated.” “Is it all bric-a-brac?” said Polly. “By no means. We have second-hand furs, children’s clothes, old dinner jackets, maids’ and butlers’ uniforms. A great many of those, thanks to the late unpleasantness.” This was his name for the depression. Polly frowned; she did not like the thought of her father selling old clothes. “They come from the best houses,” he said. “And there are amusing French dolls and music boxes. Armoires,
étagères
, jardinieres. Whatnots, umbrella stands, marble-topped commodes. Gilt chairs for musicales. Gold-headed canes, fawn gloves, opera hats, fans, Spanish combs, mantillas, a harp. Horsehair sofas. An instructive inventory of the passé.”

“But what made Aunt Julia think of finding you a job?” “I asked her for money. This spurred her to find work for me so that, as she nicely phrased it, I ‘would not have to beg.’ Had I asked her to look out for a job for me, she would have told me I was too old.” “Was this one of your deep-laid plots?” “Quite the reverse. But now that it’s happened, I find myself pleased to be a breadwinner. I’ve joined the working class. And of course Julia plans to exploit me.” “How?” “Well, ‘Henry knows wood.’ I’m to keep a sharp eye out in the event that a bit of Sheraton or Hepplewhite pops in from an attic. Then I’m to set it aside for her quietly.” “You can’t do that!” said Polly firmly. “That would be cheating the charity.” “Exactly my sister’s design. As she confided to me, ‘Some of our younger members have no notion of the value of old furniture.’ Through another of her charities, she says, she picked up a rare Aubusson for a song.” Polly made a shocked noise. “But where is it?” Mr. Andrews laughed. “In her storeroom. She’s waiting for its former owner to die. It might be embarrassing for Julia if the lady dropped in to call and found the rug underfoot.” “But why would anyone give a rare Aubusson away?” “The revolution in taste,” said Mr. Andrews. “It’s the only revolution they’re aware of, these ladies. Their daughters persuade them that they must do the house over in the modern manner. Or they say, ‘Mother, why don’t you buy a flat in River House and get rid of some of this junk? I warn you, John and I won’t take a stick of it when you die.’”

It occurred to Polly while he was talking that if she had known this afternoon that he had found work, she might not have sold her blood at the hospital, and in that case she would not be engaged at this moment. It was another of those kinks in time or failures to overlap, like the one that was responsible for her father’s being here now. The idea that she had nearly missed being engaged terrified her, as though
that
, not this, were her real fate, which she had circumvented by accident, like those people who
ought
to have gone down on the
Titanic
and for some reason at the last minute did not sail. This fear showed her that already she must be in love.

The announcement of Polly’s engagement did not surprise any of her friends. They had always known, they said, that there was “somebody” at the hospital. It was only logical that Polly should marry one of the young doctors. “We were counting on it for you, my dear,” said Libby. “We all had our fingers crossed.” It was as if her friends wanted to rob her of the extraordinariness of her love. The implication was that, if it had not been Jim, it would have been Dr. X in obstetrics or Dr. Y in general surgery. And it could never have been anybody else. She had made the great discovery that Jim was good, and this filled her with wonder—most good people were rather elderly. Yet when she tried to communicate this to others, they seemed bewildered, as if she were talking a foreign language. Even her mother did not appear to understand. “Why, yes, Polly, he’s very attractive. And intelligent, I expect. You’re very well suited to each other.” “That’s not what I mean, Mother.” “I suppose you mean he’s a bit of an idealist. But you were bound to marry someone like that. A worldly man wouldn’t have attracted you.”