Complete Stories (56 page)

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Authors: Dorothy Parker,Colleen Bresse,Regina Barreca

BOOK: Complete Stories
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“She’s handing out something.”
“Is she giving us something?”
“ ‘Give,’ ” Bob said. “You’re giving, aren’t you, dear heart?”
“Why, the little girl is going great guns,” Sherm said.
“Okay. ‘Give,’ ” Mr. McDermott said. “Next word.”
“Second word?”
“Two syllables.”
“First syllable.”
“You’re doing ‘scared.’ You’re ‘frightened.’ ”
“Is it something you dread? . . . Oh, the first syllable is ‘dread.’ ”
“Is the word ‘dreaded’?”
“Is it ‘dreadful’?”
“Second word is ‘dreadful.’ Why, the girl’s a whizz!”
“Come on, third word.”
“One syllable?”
“What’s she doing?”
“She’s scratching the palm of her hand,” Sherm said. “Something itches. Mosquitoes. DDT.”
“Oh, Sherm, get out of the way.”
“Come on, Emmy. Do it again.”
“Are you writing? Is that what you’re doing on your hand?”
“Writing a book? A book? A novel?”
“A letter?”
“Feelthy postcard,” said Sherm.
“Is it a letter you’re writing?”
“No. It can’t be a ‘letter,’ it’s only one syllable.”
“ ‘
Note
’! It’s ‘note.’ ”
“Okay. ‘Give dreadful note . . .’ ”
Emmy stood with her knuckles pressed to her temple, trying desperately to plan out her next move. “ ‘Give dreadful note,’ ” she murmured. “ ‘Give . . . dreadful . . . note.’ ”
(The players are not supposed to speak, but no one stopped her; she was so little and a bride besides.)
“ ‘Dreadful note,’ ” she said. She looked at Bob pleadingly, as if he could send her telepathic aid. “ ‘Dreadful note’!” she said. “ ‘Give—dreadful—note——’
Bob. Bob! What’s the matter with you? Don’t you feel well?
”
“No, darling, I just . . . Hot in here. I’ll . . . get a drink.”
“Come on, Emmy, forget the bridegroom for a minute!”
“He’s all right. Do the fourth word. Oh, you’re going to do the fifth.”
“How many syllables? Oh, you’re going to do the whole word?”
“What’s she doing
now
?”
“You’re folding something. Is that what you’re doing? Folding clothes?”
“You’re putting them in a drawer?”
“You’re putting them in a bag. You’re packing. Is that the word? Is it ‘packing’?”
“Oh, it’s nowhere’s near it,” Emmy said. “I wish I knew how to do it.”
Thelma drained her glass. “I’ll tell her how to do it,” she said. “Let me coach her. I have to stay out anyway to balance Bob. Come here, dear, I’ll whisper to you.”
“No,” Bob said, “let her alone. Let her do it her own way.”
“Oh, but I need help so, Bobby,” Emmy said, and she went to receive Thelma’s instructions.
“Oh,” she said in a moment, “Do you really think that’s how?”
“It’s the only way,” Thelma said.
“Well, thanks ever so much,” Emmy said. She began to act again.
“You’re taking off your clothes. Is it ‘strip’? ‘Strip-tease’?”
“No, she’s putting something on. She’s tying her head in something.”
“Getting ready to go somewhere?”
“You’re putting your toe in something. Something cold. Is it water? Are you putting your foot in cold water . . . Yes, she’s shivering.”
Mrs. McDermott gasped, “Thelma, make her stop.
Make
her.”
Thelma paid no attention to her. The other side went on guessing.
“Are you getting ready for a swim?”
There was a sound of breaking glass. At first it was accepted that Sherm had been at his late evening activities, but when the company looked, they found Bob had set his glass down so hard he’d smashed it.
“Yes, she’s getting ready for a swim,” Bob said roughly. “That’s right, isn’t it, Thelma?”
“Well, what’s the word?” Sherm said.
“ ‘Preparation,’ ” Thelma said.
“What kind of talk is that?” Sherm said. “ ‘Give dreadful note of preparation.’ What the hell does it mean?”
“Why, anybody would know what it means the way she did it,” Thelma said. “She did it beautifully. She did ‘note’ like a written note. It really means ‘note’ like sound—she did it better. I suppose the word ‘preparation’ put written note in her mind. You know, someone preparing to do something. Someone writing a note to show that they intended to do something, that it didn’t just
happen.
Or maybe it was the word ‘dreadful’ that did it. A dreadful note. A note that mustn’t be seen. A last note, that this person, whoever it was, left to show that she—that
they—
had found out something, something that had been going on for years, something they’d never dreamed of—and just couldn’t bear. And then ‘preparation.’ Wasn’t she cute getting ready to go into the water? Why, you could just see the whole story.”
Wildly Emmy turned to Bob. “What’s she talking about?” she said. “What’s she talking about? Who is the someone she’s talking about? Who went into the cold water? Who was the someone who found out something and wrote a dreadful note to tell what they were going to do, to show that there aren’t any accidents? She said you knew there weren’t any accidents.
Bob, what is she talking about? What’s she saying?
”
“Everything but Alice’s name,” Bob said. There was not a sound as he walked out of the room.
Thelma, dissipating awkwardness as the early sun dissipates gray mists, came over to Emmy, warm and gracious.
“Pay no attention to him,” Thelma said. “He’s just overwrought. Naturally, he’s nervous. His first party in his new house. Don’t worry about him.” She put her arm around Emmy. But Emmy wrenched herself away as if the cool pale flesh sullied her shoulders.
“Don’t you touch me!” she said between her teeth. “Don’t you come near me again, ever, ever, ever!”
Sherm, with his nearly empty glass tilted in his hand, pulled himself up to his full height and weight. He stood over Emmy. “Now wait just a minute, kiddy,” he said. “You’re a good girl, and I like you, but you can’t talk to Thelma that way. Anybody who doesn’t want her around can go take a jump in the lake!”
“Oh, my God!” Mrs. McDermott said. “Oh, my God!”
 
Cosmopolitan,
December 1948
I Live on Your Visits
 
The boy came into the hotel room and immediately it seemed even smaller.
“Hey, it’s cool in here,” he said. This was not meant as a comment on the temperature. “Cool,” for reasons possibly known in some department of Heaven, was a term then in use among many of those of his age to express approbation.
It was indeed cool in the room, after the hard gray rain in the streets. It was warm, and it was so bright. The many-watted electric bulbs his mother insisted upon were undimmed by the thin frilled shades she had set on the hotel lamps, and there were shiny things everywhere: sheets of mirror along the walls; a square of mirror backing the mirror-plated knob on the door that led to the bedroom; cigarette boxes made of tiny bits of mirror and matchboxes slipped into little mirror jackets placed all about; and, on consoles and desk and table, photographs of himself at two and a half and five and seven and nine framed in broad mirror bands. Whenever his mother settled in a new domicile, and she removed often, those photographs were the first things out of the luggage. The boy hated them. He had had to pass his fifteenth birthday before his body had caught up with his head; there was that head, in those pre sentments of his former selves, that pale, enormous blob. Once he had asked his mother to put the pictures somewhere else—preferably some small, dark place that could be locked. But he had had the bad fortune to make his request on one of the occasions when she was given to weeping suddenly and long. So the photographs stood out on parade, with their frames twinkling away.
There were twinklings, too, from the silver top of the fat crystal cocktail shaker, but the liquid low within the crystal was pale and dull. There was no shine, either, to the glass his mother held. It was cloudy from the clutch of her hand, and on the inside there were oily dribbles of what it had contained.
His mother shut the door by which she had admitted him, and followed him into the room. She looked at him with her head tilted to the side.
“Well, aren’t you going to kiss me?” she said in a charming, wheedling voice, the voice of a little, little girl. “Aren’t you, you beautiful big ox, you?”
“Sure,” he said. He bent down toward her, but she stepped suddenly away. A sharp change came over her. She drew herself tall, with her shoulders back and her head flung high. Her upper lip lifted over her teeth, and her gaze came cold beneath lowered lids. So does one who has refused the white handkerchief regard the firing squad.
“Of course,” she said in a deep, iced voice that gave each word its full due, “if you do not wish to kiss me, let it be recognized that there is no need for you to do so. I had not meant to overstep. I apologize.
Je vous demande pardon.
I had no desire to force you. I have never forced you. There is none to say I have.”
“Ah, Mom,” he said. He went to her, bent again, and this time kissed her cheek.
There was no change in her, save in the slow, somehow offended lifting of her eyelids. The brows arched as if they drew the lids up with them. “Thank you,” she said. “That was gracious of you. I value graciousness. I rank it high.
Mille grazie.
”
“Ah, Mom,” he said.
For the past week, up at his school, he had hoped—and coming down in the train he had hoped so hard that it became prayer—that his mother would not be what he thought of only as “like that.” His prayer had gone unanswered. He knew by the two voices, by the head first tilted then held high, by the eyelids lowered in disdain then raised in outrage, by the little lisped words and then the elegant enunciation and the lofty diction. He knew.
He stood there and said, “Ah, Mom.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “you will award yourself the privilege of meeting a friend of mine. She is a true friend. I am proud that I may say it.”
There was someone else in the room. It was preposterous that he had not seen her, for she was so big. Perhaps his eyes had been dazzled, after the dim-lit hotel corridor; perhaps his attention had been all for his mother. At any rate, there she sat, the true friend, on the sofa covered with embossed cotton fabric of the sickened green that is peculiar to hotel upholsteries. There she sat, at one end of the sofa, and it seemed as if the other end must fly up into the air.
“I can give you but little,” his mother said, “yet life is still kind enough to let me give you something you will always remember. Through me, you will meet a human being.”
Yes, oh, yes. The voices, the stances, the eyelids—those were the signs. But when his mother divided the race into people and human beings—that was the certainty.
He followed her the little way across the room, trying not to tread on the train of her velvet tea gown that slid along the floor after her and slapped at the heels of her gilt slippers. Fog seemed to rise from his raincoat and his shoes cheeped. He turned out to avoid the coffee table in front of the sofa, came in again too sharply and bumped it.
“Mme. Marah,” his mother said, “may I present my son?”
“Christ, he’s a big bastard, isn’t he?” the true friend said.
She was a fine one to talk about anybody’s being big. Had she risen, she would have stood shoulder against shoulder with him, and she must have outweighed him by sixty pounds. She was dressed in quantities of tweedlike stuff ornamented, surprisingly, with black sequins set on in patterns of little bunches of grapes. On her massive wrists were bands and chains of dull silver, from some of which hung amulets of discolored ivory, like rotted fangs. Over her head and neck was a sort of caul of crisscrossed mauve veiling, splattered with fuzzy black balls. The caul caused her no inconvenience. Puffs of smoke issued sporadically from behind it, and, though the veiling was crisp elsewhere, around the mouth it was of a marshy texture, where drink had passed through it.
His mother became the little girl again. “Isn’t he wonderful?” she said. “This is my baby. This is Crissy-wiss.”
“
What
is his name?” the true friend said.
“Why, Christopher, of course,” his mother said.
Christopher, of course. Had he been born earlier, it would have been Peter; earlier again, Michael; he had been not much too late for Jonathan. In the lower forms of his school, there were various Nicholases, several Robins, and here and there a Jeremy coming up. But the members of his own class were in the main Christophers.
“Christopher,” the true friend said. “Well, that’s not too bad. Of course, that downward stroke of the ‘p’ is bound to give him trouble, and I’m never really happy about an ‘r’ and an ‘i’ together. But it’s not too bad. Not too. When’s your birthday?” she asked the boy.

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