Complete Stories (55 page)

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Authors: Dorothy Parker,Colleen Bresse,Regina Barreca

BOOK: Complete Stories
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After some time, his team gathered that he was attempting to convey the idea that he was to interpret a song. He did this by opening his mouth and pulling something invisible, possibly music, out of it. Then inspiration came to him; he went through a pantomime as if he were lathering his face and scraping his beard. It was difficult, however, for his comrades to divine his purpose, as the hand that held the glass obscured what the other hand was doing. They sat with their elbows on their knees and their chins in their hands, watching with varying degrees of frustration, until Mr. Bain, the timekeeper, called gaily, “All right, Sherm. Time’s up!”
“What’s the matter with you?” Sherm inquired in a hurt voice. “You all asleep or something?” He turned to the enemy for support. “It was perfectly clear what I was doing, wasn’t it?” he said. “First I acted ‘song,’ and then I acted the name of it. Besides, it wasn’t fair, anyhow.”
“Certainly it’s fair,” Mr. Bain said. “It’s ‘Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba, Chi-Wawa. ’ Every kid in the street sings it. Only what in heaven’s name were you doing to your face?”
“That was shaving,” Sherm said with dignity. “I was a barber.”
Cries of derision arose from all over the room. Sherm retired moodily to the liquor tray.
Mrs. McDermott volunteered to go first for her side. She opened her paper, gave the conventional blank look to the opposition, indicated that she was going to do an excerpt from a poem. In a matter of seconds her side guessed that the selection was:
“ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”
 
This speed was due less to Mrs. McDermott’s dramatic gifts—although she did gyre and gimble quite acceptably—than to the fact that a bit of the “Jabberwocky” is an almost inevitable part of any session of The Game. The contestants are always ready and waiting for it.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” Sherm pronounced bitterly. “I never draw a pushover like ‘slithy toves.’ Oh, no, I have to get ‘Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba, Chi-Wawa’!”
Then Mr. McDermott got up, weighted with the responsibility of retrieving the honor of his team. He read his directions, gave the accepted sign, indicating he was to perform a title of a play, that it was in three words, and it was his intention to do the last word first. He folded his arms and rocked them gently.
“Belly-ache,” Sherm said.
The others of the team fired guesses at Mr. McDermott.
“ ‘Lullaby’? Is it ‘lullaby’?”
“ ‘Child’? ‘Infant’? ‘Baby’? . . . It’s something something baby!”
Mr. McDermott giddy with his quick success threw precedent to the winds and essayed to do two words at once. He rubbed his thumb back and forth over his fingers. Nobody guessed that this was a symbol for money. Nobody guessed anything. Mr. McDermott sought to make matters plainer by moistening his thumb and moving it rapidly across the palm of his other hand in imitation of one who counts bank notes.
“ ‘Money’? Is it ‘money’?”
Mr. McDermott stopped just short of paroxysms in pantomiming to his comrades that they were warm.
“No, it can’t be ‘money.’ How can it be ‘money’? It’s got ‘baby’ in it. He’s doing something about a ‘baby.’ ”
Mr. McDermott counted more invisible money in savage abandon.
“
Billion Dollar Baby
,” Emmy said suddenly.
Mr. McDermott threw out his arms to her and relaxed.
There were cries of “Wonderful! Why, she’s wonderful!” and Bob, beaming with pride, kissed her as if they were alone in the room.
From the sofa opposite, Thelma Chrystie watched them.
“Why, I didn’t do anything,” Emmy said, when Bob released her. “It was just an accident.”
“Oh, no, Emmy,” Thelma said, “there are no such things as accidents. Are there, Bob?”
It was strange that the slow quiet words should have made Bob start as if she had screamed them at him.
Next, Mrs. Bain took her turn. After the conventional preliminaries, she indicated to her teammates that she had been allotted a quotation of eight words, and she was about to dramatize the first one. She vigorously and repeatedly pointed downward. The guesses came in a rush.
“ ‘Floor’?”
“ ‘Carpet’?”
“ ‘Earth’?”
Mrs. Bain pointed insistently, seeming to suggest greater depths.
“ ‘Underground’?”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Thelma said, so rapidly the sentence sounded like one long word.
The players awarded her the highest of all praise, a stunned silence. When they found their voices, their cries ranged from “Marvelous!” to “I’ll be damned!”
“Honestly,” Emmy said, “it’s absolutely scary.”
Thelma smiled at her. “Well, it really wasn’t all guess work,” she said. “I recognized Mr. Lineham’s gentle touch. The quotation was his idea, wasn’t it?”
“Why, yes,” Emmy said. “How on earth did you know?”
Thelma smiled again. “You see,” she said, “Bob and I have played together so much.”
Sherm, who had risen to pay a visit to the liquor tray, found tragedy there. “The brandy’s all gone,” he said. “Now, who could’ve done a thing like that? Oh, well, I’m the Spartan type. I’ll pig it with whisky.”
“Do you want to go next, dear heart?” Bob asked Emmy.
“No, you,” she said. “I want to put it off as long as possible. I’m frightened to death. Why, darling, you look frightened too . . . Look at Bob, he’s absolutely
white
!”
Bob regarded the two remaining slips of paper, hesitating between them.
“Take either one, my dear,” Thelma said, “they’re both just made for you.”
“Hey,” said Mr. Bain, “you mustn’t talk to him. You mustn’t have anything to do with him. It’s against the rules.”
“Ah, yes,” Thelma said. “This year’s rules.” She went over to the liquor tray and filled her glass.
Bob chose one of the slips and, at the command to go ahead, he opened it and read what was written on it. In the customary manner he immediately turned toward the other team, but he did not include the whole troupe in his glance. He looked only at Thelma. She smiled at him her slow smile that showed her beautiful teeth, but there was something different about it; there was something different about all of her. Her glow, her own peculiar glow, was gone; it was as if the radiance that came from within her had suddenly been quenched and, as is always so when a precious light goes out, the new darkness was cold and menacing.
Bob turned back to his team, lifted his fingers to signify a quotation, then dropped his arms. “I—I can’t—do it.”
A great complaint rose from his own ranks. “Oh, Bob, what do you mean, you can’t?” “Sure you can, go ahead,” and over them all, Emmy’s little voice calling, “Why, darling, you can do anything.”
“Sorry,” Bob said, “it’s too hard.”
“What’s so hard about it, Bob, ole boy, ole boy, ole boy?” Sherm said. “Look what I got. I had to do ‘Chi-klobba, Chi-blobba, Chi schmobba.’ Whatever you’ve got, you’re on velvet.”
“How many words?” Emmy said.
He held up ten fingers, then four.
“Look, I quit,” he said, and his voice shook. “It’s all right to play The Game decently, but this kind of stuff I’m damned if I’m going to stand for.”
The opposing side immediately went into action.
Mr. Bain rushed to Bob and snatched the paper from his hand and read the words on it. “Is this what all the excitement’s about? What’s the matter with you, Bob, anyway? It’s a quotation from
Hamlet
. Any school child knows it. It’s perfectly fair.”
“The hell it’s fair!” Bob said. “Nobody has to take this stuff.”
The company sat in silent discomfort. Slow and smooth and sweet, Thelma came and looked at the paper.
“Oh, that’s the one he got,” she said. “Listen,” she said to Bob’s teammates, “I ask you. It isn’t very nice to be called unfair, you know, particularly by someone who for years was your—particularly by an old friend. Here’s the quotation. It’s where they break the news that poor little Ophelia’s dead. ‘Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears.’ ” She turned to Emmy, “Now will you tell me why your husband should get so upset about that?”
“Well, it’s awfully long,” Emmy said, “and it’s hard and—you know.”
She looked pleadingly at Thelma, the tall still woman, the woman of peculiar radiance, the woman who had been so kind to her, the woman she liked best—and she saw a stranger. A stranger who stood outside her house, looked through the window and saw something she herself did not have and hated Emmy for having it.
“Oh, come on,” Mrs. McDermott said. “If he doesn’t want to do it, he doesn’t want to do it. I never thought it was so good anyway. Remember, I told you, Thelma. All right, Bob, you’re out. Let’s finish up the game. Come on, Mr. B, it’s your turn.”
The teams settled down again. Bob, still shaken after his outburst, sat down beside Emmy. She patted his wrist and kept her hand there.
Mr. Bain opened his paper and read on it, “. . . weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.” (It had turned out to be quite a night for
Hamlet
, as are many nights on which The Game is played.)
Mr. Bain performed “weary” according to his own ideas, with no results from his audience; the same was true of his rendition of “stale,” so he let that go for a time and sought an easy role in “flat.” He drew his hands across each other parallel to the floor.
“ ‘Smooth’?”
“ ‘Level’?”
“ ‘Flat’?”
Mr. Bain indicated their correctness and went back to another try at the word “weary.” He laid his cheek on his folded hands like a tired child.
“ ‘Tired’?” they said. “ ‘Tired’?”
“ ‘Sandman’?”
“ ‘Sleep’?”
“Let’s see, he did ‘flat’ before,” Thelma said. Perhaps it was the influence of
Hamlet
that made her speak as if in soliloquy. “But what kind of ‘flat’ was he trying to show? Was it just
flat
‘flat’? . . . Or was it the other kind? . . . A place? . . . Two rooms, perhaps . . . Sanctuary? . . . Where two people might meet sometimes when they could steal away—a secret haven—through the years . . .”
The Game was much quieter than it had been at first. Possibly Bob’s conduct had had a dampening effect on the company. Bob’s side sat silent.
Thelma’s words came across the room to them as her voice went dreamily on. “And if that’s ‘sleep’ he’s doing now . . .
‘sleep’
. . . then I don’t think he means just
flat
‘flat’ . . . I think he means a secret place. . . .”
Slowly little Mrs. Lineham took her hand from her husband’s wrist.
Mr. Bain canceled further speculations by returning to his second word. He pantomimed slicing bread, went graphically on to spread a slice with butter, began to munch it, spat it out with every manifestation of distaste.
“I think that’s bread he’s eating,” Thelma said, “and something’s the matter with it. Maybe it’s stale. Hateful word. Love gone stale. It is ‘stale,’ isn’t it?”
“Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute,” Mrs. McDermott said. “That’s out of
Hamlet
too. ‘Weary, stale, flat’—and something else. It’s one of those gloomy numbers.”
“Oh, I know,” Thelma said. “The last word is ‘unprofitable.’ ‘Weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.’ ”
“As the girl said to the sailor,” Sherm said. He rose and pigged it with a little more whisky.
“Go on, Emmy,” Mrs. McDermott said. “It’s your turn.”
“You don’t have to do it, Emmy,” Bob said, “if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll do it,” Emmy said.
She took the last paper. Mr. McDermott, in sudden recollection, whispered to Thelma, “Oh, that’s the one you did. What is it? You didn’t tell us.”
“It’s something from
Henry V
,” Thelma said.
“Oh, I saw the movie. Laurence Olivier,” Mrs. McDermott said.
Emmy opened the paper and looked at it and stood helplessly before her team. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I just don’t know how to do it. I don’t even know what it means.”
They sought to reassure her by telling her, “Of course, you can do it. Go ahead, just try. We’re all with you, Emmy,” and so on.
Hopelessly she looked again at the paper. “ ‘Give dreadful note of preparation.’ From
Henry V
by William Shakespeare,” she read.
“I can’t,” she told her audience pitiably. “I just don’t know.”
“Come on,” they said. “What is it? Is it a song, a book, is it a person, what? Oh, it’s a quotation . . . How many words? . . . Five. What’s the first word? Go on. You can do it.”
Emmy went through small uncertain motions of taking invisible objects from an invisible container presenting them to her team.
“What’s she doing?”

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