Authors: Dorothy Parker,Colleen Bresse,Regina Barreca
Complete Stories (7 page)
It came.
“I love flowers,” she said, in one of her little rushes of confidence.
Her husband did not answer. He sighed, his grip relaxed, and he went on reading.
Mrs. Weldon searched the room for another suggestion.
“Ernie,” she said, “I’m so comfortable. Wouldn’t you like to get up and get my handkerchief off the piano for me?”
He rose instantly. “Why, certainly,” he said.
The way to ask people to fetch handkerchiefs, he thought as he went back to his chair, was to ask them to do it, and not try to make them think that you were giving them a treat. Either come right out and ask them, would they or wouldn’t they, or else get up and get your handkerchief yourself.
“Thank you ever so much,” his wife said with enthusiasm.
Delia appeared in the doorway. “Dinner,” she murmured bashfully, as if it were not quite a nice word for a young woman to use, and vanished.
“Dinner, Ern,” cried Mrs. Weldon gaily, getting up.
“Just minute,” issued indistinctly from behind the newspaper.
Mrs. Weldon waited. Then her lips compressed, and she went over and playfully took the paper from her husband’s hands. She smiled carefully at him, and he smiled back at her.
“You go ahead in,” he said, rising. “I’ll be right with you. I’ve just got to wash up.”
She looked after him, and something like a volcanic eruption took place within her. You’d think that just one night—just one little night—he might go and wash before dinner was announced. Just one night—it didn’t seem much to ask. But she said nothing. God knew it was aggravating, but after all, it wasn’t worth the trouble of fussing about.
She was waiting, cheerful and bright, courteously refraining from beginning her soup, when he took his place at the table.
“Oh, tomato soup, eh?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered. “You like it, don’t you?”
“Who—me?” he said. “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”
She smiled at him.
“Yes, I thought you liked it,” she said.
“You like it, too, don’t you?” he inquired.
“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “Yes, I like it ever so much. I’m awfully fond of tomato soup.”
“Yes,” he said, “there’s nothing much better than tomato soup on a cold night.”
She nodded.
“I think it’s nice, too,” she confided.
They had had tomato soup for dinner probably three times a month during their married life.
The soup was finished, and Delia brought in the meat.
“Well, that looks pretty good,” said Mr. Weldon, carving it. “We haven’t had steak for a long time.”
“Why, yes, we have, too, Ern,” his wife said eagerly. “We had it—let me see, what night were the Baileys here?—we had it Wednesday night—no, Thursday night. Don’t you remember?”
“Did we?” he said. “Yes, I guess you’re right. It seemed longer, somehow.”
Mrs. Weldon smiled politely. She could not think of any way to prolong the discussion.
What did married people talk about, anyway, when they were alone together? She had seen married couples—not dubious ones but people she really knew were husbands and wives—at the theater or in trains, talking together as animatedly as if they were just acquaintances. She always watched them, marvelingly, wondering what on earth they found to say.
She could talk well enough to other people. There never seemed to be enough time for her to finish saying all she wanted to to her friends; she recalled how she had run on to Alice Marshall, only that afternoon. Both men and women found her attractive to listen to; not brilliant, not particularly funny, but still amusing and agreeable. She was never at a loss for something to say, never conscious of groping around for a topic. She had a good memory for bits of fresh gossip, or little stories of some celebrity that she had read or heard somewhere, and a knack of telling them entertainingly. Things people said to her stimulated her to quick replies, and more amusing narratives. They weren’t especially scintillating people, either; it was just that they talked to her.
That was the trick of it. If nobody said anything to you, how were you to carry on a conversation from there? Inside, she was always bitter and angry at Ernest for not helping her out.
Ernest, too, seemed to be talkative enough when he was with others. People were always coming up and telling her how much they had enjoyed meeting her husband, and what fun he was. They weren’t just being polite. There was no reason why they should go out of their way to say it.
Even when she and Ernest had another couple in to dinner or bridge, they both talked and laughed easily, all evening long. But as soon as the guests said good-night and what an awfully nice evening it had been, and the door had closed behind them, there the Weldons were again, without a word to say to each other. It would have been intimate and amusing to have talked over their guests’ clothes and skill at bridge and probable domestic and financial affairs, and she would do it the next day, with great interest, too, to Alice Marshall, or some other one of her friends. But she couldn’t do it with Ernest. Just as she started to, she found she simply couldn’t make the effort.
So they would put away the card-table and empty the ash-receivers, with many “Oh, I beg your pardon’s” and “No, no—I was in your way’s,” and then Ernest would say, “Well, I guess I’ll go along to bed,” and she would answer, “All right—I’ll be in in a minute,” and they would smile cheerfully at each other, and another evening would be over.
She tried to remember what they used to talk about before they were married, when they were engaged. It seemed to her that they never had had much to say to each other. But she hadn’t worried about it then; indeed, she had felt the satisfaction of the correct, in their courtship, for she had always heard that true love was inarticulate. Then, besides, there had been always kissing and things, to take up your mind. But it had turned out that true marriage was apparently equally dumb. And you can’t depend on kisses and all the rest of it to while away the evenings, after seven years.
You’d think that you would get used to it, in seven years, would realize that that was the way it was, and let it go at that. You don’t, though. A thing like that gets on your nerves. It isn’t one of those cozy, companionable silences that people occasionally fall into together. It makes you feel as if you must do something about it, as if you weren’t performing your duty. You have the feeling a hostess has when her party is going badly, when her guests sit in corners and refuse to mingle. It makes you nervous and self-conscious, and you talk desperately about tomato soup, and say things like “daffy-down-dilly.”
Mrs. Weldon cast about in her mind for a subject to offer her husband. There was Alice Marshall’s new system of reducing—no, that was pretty dull. There was the case she had read in the morning’s paper about the man of eighty-seven who had taken, as his fourth wife, a girl of twenty—he had probably seen that, and as long as he hadn’t thought it worth repeating, he wouldn’t think it worth hearing. There was the thing the Baileys’ little boy had said about Jesus—no, she had told him that the night before.
She looked over at him, desultorily eating his rhubarb pie. She wished he wouldn’t put that greasy stuff on his head. Perhaps it was necessary, if his hair really was falling out, but it did seem that he might find some more attractive remedy, if he only had the consideration to look around for one. Anyway, why must his hair fall out? There was something a little disgusting about people with falling hair.
“Like your pie, Ernie?” she asked vivaciously.
“Why, I don’t know,” he said, thinking it over. “I’m not so crazy about rhubarb, I don’t think. Are you?”
“No, I’m not so awfully crazy about it,” she answered. “But then, I’m not really crazy about any kind of pie.”
“Aren’t you really?” he said, politely surprised. “I like pie pretty well—some kinds of pie.”
“Do you?” The polite surprise was hers now.
“Why, yes,” he said. “I like a nice huckleberry pie, or a nice lemon meringue pie, or a—” He lost interest in the thing himself, and his voice died away.
He avoided looking at her left hand, which lay on the edge of the table, palm upward. The long, grey-white ends of her nails protruded beyond the tips of her fingers, and the sight made him uncomfortable. Why in God’s name must she wear her finger nails that preposterous length, and file them to those horrible points? If there was anything that he hated, it was a woman with pointed finger nails.
They returned to the living-room, and Mr. Weldon again eased himself down into his chair, reaching for the second paper.
“Quite sure there isn’t anything you’d like to do tonight?” he asked solicitously. “Like to go to the movies or anything?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Unless there’s something you want to do.”
“No, no,” he answered. “I just thought maybe you wanted to.”
“Not unless you do,” she said.
He began on his paper, and she wandered aimlessly about the room. She had forgotten to get a new book from the library, and it had never in her life occurred to her to reread a book that she had once completed. She thought vaguely of playing solitaire, but she did not care enough about it to go to the trouble of getting out the cards, and setting up the table. There was some sewing that she could do, and she thought that she might presently go into the bedroom and fetch the nightgown that she was making for herself. Yes, she would probably do that, in a little while.
Ernest would read industriously, and, along toward the middle of the paper, he would start yawning aloud. Something happened inside Mrs. Weldon when he did this. She would murmur that she had to speak to Delia, and hurry to the kitchen. She would stay there rather a long time, looking vaguely into jars and inquiring half-heartedly about laundry lists, and, when she returned, he would have gone in to get ready for bed.
In a year, three hundred of their evenings were like this. Seven times three hundred is more than two thousand.
Mrs. Weldon went into the bedroom, and brought back her sewing. She sat down, pinned the pink satin to her knee, and began whipping narrow lace along the top of the half-made garment. It was fussy work. The fine thread knotted and drew, and she could not get the light adjusted so that the shadow of her head did not fall on her work. She grew a little sick, from the strain on her eyes.
Mr. Weldon turned a page, and yawned aloud. “Wah-huh-huh-huh huh,” he went, on a descending scale. He yawned again, and this time climbed the scale.
III“My dear,” Mrs. Ames said to Mrs. Marshall, “don’t you really think that there must have been some other woman?”
“Oh, I simply couldn’t think it was anything like that,” said Mrs. Marshall. “Not Ernest Weldon. So devoted—home every night at half-past six, and such good company, and so jolly, and all. I don’t see how there
could
have been.”
could
have been.”
“Sometimes,” observed Mrs. Ames, “those awfully jolly men at home are just the kind.”
“Yes, I know,” Mrs. Marshall said. “But not Ernest Weldon. Why, I used to say to Jim, ‘I never saw such a devoted husband in my life,’ I said. Oh, not Ernest Weldon.”
“I don’t suppose,” began Mrs. Ames, and hesitated. “I don’t suppose,” she went on, intently pressing the bit of sodden lemon in her cup with her teaspoon, “that Grace—that there was ever anyone—or anything like that?”
“Oh, Heavens, no,” cried Mrs. Marshall. “Grace Weldon just gave her whole life to that man. It was Ernest this and Ernest that every minute. I simply can’t understand it. If there was one earthly reason—if they ever fought, or if Ernest drank, or anything like that. But they got along so beautifully together—why, it just seems as if they must have been crazy to go and do a thing like this. Well, I can’t begin to tell you how blue it’s made me. It seems so awful!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ames, “it certainly is too bad.”
Smart Set
, July 1923
, July 1923
Mr. Durant
Not for some ten days had Mr. Durant known any such ease of mind. He gave himself up to it, wrapped himself, warm and soft, as in a new and an expensive cloak. God, for Whom Mr. Durant entertained a good-humored affection, was in His heaven, and all was again well with Mr. Durant’s world.
Curious how this renewed peace sharpened his enjoyment of the accustomed things about him. He looked back at the rubber works, which he had just left for the day, and nodded approvingly at the solid red pile, at the six neat stories rising impressively into the darkness. You would go far, he thought, before you would find a more up-and-coming outfit, and there welled in him a pleasing, proprietary sense of being a part of it.
He gazed amiably down Center Street, noting how restfully the lights glowed. Even the wet, dented pavement, spotted with thick puddles, fed his pleasure by reflecting the discreet radiance above it. And to complete his comfort, the car for which he was waiting, admirably on time, swung into view far down the track. He thought, with a sort of jovial tenderness, of what it would bear him to; of his dinner—it was fish-chowder night—of his children, of his wife, in the order named. Then he turned his kindly attention to the girl who stood near him, obviously awaiting the Center Street car, too. He was delighted to feel a sharp interest in her. He regarded it as being distinctly creditable to himself that he could take a healthy notice of such matters once more. Twenty years younger—that’s what he felt.
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