Around the World With Auntie Mame (15 page)

“What would you like, sir?” I asked as politely as possible.

“Whaddaya sujjest, kiddo?”

“A little straight curare?” I said, with a hospitable smile.

“Naw, none of them fancy dago drinks. Jus' some brandy. Then siddown. Ah got some stories to tell yew. Real man stuff. Wouldn't be suitable in mixed company.”

I poured out two brandies—one for Elmore and one in self-defense.

Cousin Elmore's boy-type jokes were, if possible, older than his coeducational ones and even less funny. “Stop me if yew've heard this one,” he said, “but it seems that this fellah with a twitch in his eye gets in a taxi an' sez . . .”

“Stop,” I said.

Cousin Elmore went right on and finished the joke.

“Now stop me if yew've heard this one, kiddo, but it seems that this constipated Scotchman goes inta the drugstore an' sez, ‘Hoot may-un . . .' ”

“Stop!” I said. Undaunted, he rambled on until his own orgasm of joy all but shattered the glasses on the dining table. I wouldn't have minded hearing all these old, old favorites yet again if only Elmore had told them well. He didn't. He was always leaving out things, always having to regress, always interrupting himself to say, “Oh, Ah should of tole yew that it was a
mulllatta
whoor. Innyways . . .”

My head was reeling by the time Auntie Mame called, “Come in, boys, I'm lonely,” and rescued me from the old bore's exclusive attentions.

Auntie Mame was stretched out on a sofa drinking champagne, although she was so boiled she could hardly hold her glass. She looked comfortable all right in a whisper of white chiffon trimmed with
coq
feathers, which kept getting into her drink, her eyes, her nose, and her mouth.

“Come sit by me,” she said, patting the sofa seductively.

I almost broke a leg getting there before Elmore did.

“Hi-yah, Dollfeather!” Cousin Elmore boomed. He was drunk as an owl, but he was certainly holding it better than Auntie Mame, although she
had
had a head start.

“Patrick, darling,” Auntie Mame said, handing a glass of champagne to Cousin Elmore, “you must be exhausted. Why don't you run up to bed?”

“Who,
me
?” I said, all wide-eyed vivacity. “Nonsense. It's scarcely two-thirty. I'm having a wow of a time. It's a riot.” I wouldn't have left Auntie Mame alone with that old goat—in her condition—for a million dollars cash.

“Now donchew worry about Tidbit an' I, bub,” Elmore said. “With us things is strickly
platonic—play
foah
me
an'
tonic
foah
her
! Ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
!”

That set off a two-hour recitative of hoary old saws which Elmore described as “slightly riss-kay”—jollifications so ancient that Auntie Mame wouldn't admit to having heard them if she'd been put to the rack. Instead, she smiled sweetly, made pretty little
mouses
and finally dozed off, sighing, “Beauregard. Beau, darling.”

Around five o'clock I gave her a jab with my elbow and she awoke with a snort. “Heavens, how late it's become! I've had your things put in the room across the hall from me, Cousin Elmore. Just ring when you want your breakfast. What do you usually like?”

“Me? Why, Cupcake, Ah lak a
French
Breakfast. Yew know what that is, Dollfeather? It's a
roll
in
bed
with
honey
! Ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
!”

I could stand it no more. “I'll take you upstairs now, Auntie Mame,” I said. Then I added pointedly, “Remember, you've got to get up
early
in the morning.”

“Ah, yes,” Auntie Mame sighed, rising limply to her feet. “Up with the birds.”

“That's what
Ah
always say, Mamie, ‘Up with the birds; to bed with innything.' Ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
!”

I snatched Auntie Mame out of the room and practically kicked her upstairs. I pushed her into her bedroom and locked the door from the outside. Then I went to my own room and gobbled down half a dozen aspirins. As I was going to sleep I heard Cousin Elmore in the adjoining bedroom humming “Roll Me Over in the Clover.”

KNOWING EXACTLY HOW AUNTIE MAME WOULD BE feeling the following morning, I had sadistically planned a surprise raid on her bedroom at ten sharp and had set my clock accordingly. But before the alarm ever went off I was awakened by Auntie Mame's frantic pounding on her door and faint cries of “Patrick! Patrick!”

“What's the matter now,” I said, opening her door, “delirium tremens?”

“Oh, Patrick, thank God you've come! The most horrible thing. Of course it's silly of me to be so upset—I know it's only a nightmare—but this ghastly man, got up as I—don't— know—what in the maddest outfit was out on my balcony calling me Horsefeathers, or something like that. . . .”

“Do you mean
Doll
feather?”

“Exactly, darling. How did you know? Well, it was simply too ghastly. I mean, there he was as clear as day talking about Tidbits and Cupcakes in that awful Georgia Cracker accent. Almost like one of the Burnsides.”

“It
was
one of the Burnsides,” I said levelly.

A terrible look of partial recollection came over her face. “P-Patrick,” she began, bluffing it out, “you know when we came home from Bella's I had the strangest feeling . . .”

“I'm sure you did,” I said.

“Well I don't know what got into me. . . .”

“
I
do.
Gin
. Gin and Vat 69—the pope's telephone number; ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
! And then three kinds of wine at dinner and then . . .”

“Patrick, it was the hot sunshine at . . .”

“Hot sunshine, hell. It was cold moonshine. Cold moonshine and Cousin Elmore. Don't you remember, Uncle Beau's cousin—
Elmore
Burnside
.”

“Oh, Patrick. I do hope that one of Beau's relatives didn't come here and get the wrong impression and . . .”

“I think he may have.”

“Well, I mean I hope he didn't go away thinking that . . .”

“Right you are. He didn't go away at all. He's moved in right across the hall—to
stay
. You asked him for the whole summer. He . . .”

The bedroom door burst open and there stood Cousin Elmore, dressed like nothing human in a loose-weave lavender mesh sport shirt through which I could see “Mother” tattooed on the right arm, “K K K” on the left. “Hey, Sig-norina Doll-feather! Heah's yoah ole cousin, Machiavelli—Machiavelli good chop suey! Ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
! How's about a gon
do
-la ride, Mamie?”

“Is—is
that
Cousin Elmore?” Auntie Mame whispered hoarsely.

“It is,” I said.

“Patrick,” Auntie Mame croaked, “
call
Bella
!”

AUNTIE MAME'S FRIEND BELLA THRIVED ON CRISIS. I had just managed to propel Cousin Elmore, punning every moment of the time, into Auntie Mame's gondola with instructions in halting Italian to take him for a long, long ride when Bella's blue boatmen came churning down the canal, the marchesa herself looking like Gorgeous George as Lohengrin in a full-speed-ahead-and-damn-the-torpedoes stance.

Auntie Mame was waiting, stretched out across her unmade bed, a cold towel pressed to her brow.

“Now, ducky,” Bella said in a businesslike manner, “start from the beginning and tell me all. Tell it straight. No play-acting.”

“Well, Bella, darling,” Auntie Mame whimpered, “the trouble is that I
can't
. A slight touch of the sun . . .”

“
I
can
,” I said.

“All right, kid,” Bella said, “
you
tell. And tell
all
.”

“A pleasure,” I said. Then I began. “Well, it seems that this Cousin Elmore looks quite a lot like Uncle Beau. At least Auntie Mame seemed to think . . .”

“You should have your mouth washed out with soap, you little liar!” Auntie Mame said, rising to a sitting position. “He doesn't look in the least like . . .”

“Shut up, ducky,” Bella said. “Patrick knows what happened.
You
don't. Go on, kid.”

Granted the floor, I gave it everything I had, tucking in— here and there—some rather devastating impersonations of Auntie Mame and Cousin Elmore. I must have done it pretty well because my monologue was interrupted now and then by baleful moans from Auntie Mame and by Bella's malign chuckling. “And so,” I came reluctantly to a close, “
at
Auntie
Mame's gracious invitation
, Cousin Elmore is here with us—two trunks and three satchels—
for
the whole summer
. Summer lucky, summer not. Ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
!”

“Ohhh,” Auntie Mame gasped, “it was the sun. A touch of the sun.”

“It was not,” I said firmly. “You were boiled by the time you left Bella's.”

“That's it,” Auntie Mame said, sitting up again. “It's that gin you serve, Bella Shuttleworth. That poisonous cheap gin!”

“You're a God-damned liar, Mame Dennis,” Bella shouted. In moments of emotion the girls always lapsed back into maiden names. “That was the best English gin—straight from London. And if it's good enough for Neville Chamberlain, it's good enough for you, ducky. But that isn't the point. The problem at hand now is how to get rid of this slob.”

“Exactly, darling, it's up to you to save me,” Auntie Mame said, and fell back on the bed.

The rest of the morning was given over to changing Auntie Mame's compresses, to sporadic plans for the forthcoming Renaissance ball, and to thinking of ways to get rid of Cousin Elmore.

By noon Auntie Mame was just able to dress for luncheon— and a rather important luncheon, at that, since both contenders for her hand were coming. They arrived punctually at one, and Auntie Mame, looking pale and interesting, urged them and Bella to have cocktails while she stuck to Fernet-Branca and murmured something about a slight indisposition. To round out the party, Auntie Mame had also invited a distinguished German rabbi, a French cardinal, and a Greek poetess said to be the biggest thing since Sappho. Lunch was served in the
cortile
and almost everything was pink—linen,
prosciutto
, and wine. Auntie Mame was white, and only toyed with her food, but she turned the color of ashes when, in the midst of a brilliant discussion of Jean Cocteau, she looked up and saw Cousin Elmore making his way noisily across the pavement in his lavender mesh sport shirt and a pair of oxblood Jesus sandals that squealed with every step.

“Looks good enough to eat,” he said, pulling up a chair right next to Auntie Mame. “Ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
ha
!” The discussion of Cocteau came to an instant halt.

However, Elmore Burnside felt right at home in
any
society and was never at a loss for something witty to say. Within five minutes he had managed indirectly to insult everyone at the table. He polished off Auntie Mame's two serious suitors, Axel and Marcantonio, with a long dialect story about an Italian and a Swede improvidentially caught in a Turkish bath on ladies' night. Of Elmore's fifty thousand old jokes, at least forty-nine thousand depended entirely on the most unlikely circumstances. As an encore he told me about Izzy and Paddy Paddy—a
very
long story involving mackerel, ham, circumcision, and rosary beads—and that just about took care of the cardinal and the rabbi. I was a little relieved to discover that, owing to their and Elmore's unfamiliarity with English, they didn't understand it. I shouldn't have been. Elmore retraced his steps and painstakingly explained the whole sordid joke with lots of “
Oi
wehs
” and “Faith and bejazuses.” Auntie Mame went from white to a delicate green.

Another feature of Cousin Elmore's great sense of humor was his love of gimmicks. He wouldn't have been caught dead without some witty appurtenance such as his false nose, his itching powder, his badge that read “Chicken Inspector,” or his electric cane. He doted upon boutonnieres that squirted water, fake roaches that could be slipped into coffee cups, and rubber dog turds. However, one of his favorites was a murky glass bubble which he would insert into one nostril while pretending to blow his nose. When the handkerchief was taken away, the sight was one that made strong men weak.

“Guess Ah caught mahself a li'l ole cold,” Cousin Elmore said, elaborately whipping out his handkerchief. Then he blew his nose and left the glass bubble protruding horribly from his right nostril. My stomach was already churning, but Auntie Mame saved the day. She rose weakly from the table and fainted dead away. Luncheon could not be said to have been a great success.

A WEEK LATER AUNTIE MAME WAS AT HER WIT'S END. She had lost ten pounds and twenty friends and still Cousin Elmore stuck to her like glue. Every ruse she and Bella worked out failed dismally; even the trumped-up cable from the Belle Poitrine (“Come Fill the Cup”) Brassière Company of Buffalo—Bella owned the controlling interest—offering Cousin Elmore the sales-managership at fifty thousand a year left him curiously unmoved and unmoving.

Auntie Mame didn't like Cousin Elmore in the least, but she made the mistake of dismissing him as merely a big, good-natured oaf, who also happened to be the bore of creation. Bore he was, and oaf, too, but no one who really knew Elmore could possibly call him good-natured. Behind his appallingly hearty façade, behind his endless protestations of being just a country boy, Elmore was deceitful, stingy, bigoted, pig-ignorant, and very, very cruel. During the all-too-many times when I was alone with him and he felt free to cast aside the dubious delicacy which he affected in the presence of women, he regaled me with such jolly reminiscences as a lynching party he once organized in South Carolina; how he had dipped a cat in kerosene and set fire to it; how he had once foisted a shipment of faulty girdles on a Jewish merchant and then reported him to the Chamber of Commerce for selling shoddy goods. When I didn't laugh he accused me of being dolefully short on humor.