House Party (27 page)

Felicia had stalked her prey and now she moved in for the kill. Raising her voice so that it would surely carry to the kitchen, she said: "You really mean to say, then, that you're not in
love
with Kathy?"

"Well, yes, that is, I mean
no.
That is, well, jeez—I mean dash it—no, I don't plan to
meddy
her. Not by a long chalk! I mean, she's grand fun and all thet, but
. . ."

Felicia saw Kathy wince. "Then," she said, "you mean that you . . . that you and I . . . that there's a
chance
. . ."

"Felicia . .
." Manning said.

"Oh, Manning, I've been so
alone
in the world—so helpless! No one to look after my investments. Manning, I . . ."

"Felicia!" he groaned. She was in his arms and he was bending her back, back onto the stubble of crab grass.

Kathy swayed at the kitchen window. Her hand groped out wildly and caught up a bottle of whiskey. She filled a tumbler to the brim and raised it to her lips. Then she felt a much stronger hand take the glass away from her. She heard the liquor gurgling down the sink. She turned slowly to see John standing at her side,

"Well, now you
know,"
he said.

"Yes," she whispered. "Now I know. What a . . ."

"Please don't say what a fool you've been. We've both learned a lot of things today. Like to go upstairs for a good cry?"

"I guess—maybe . . .
No!"
Kathy said, turning toward him. "No, as a matter of fact I
don't.
As a matter of fact, I feel kind of, well, kind of . . ."

"Relieved?"

"Y-yes,
relieved.
And now I can see it all just as plain as the nose on my face—a pretty plain nose it is, too. I can see it
all.
That chi-chi little apartment of his in such elegant taste. Of course it was done by some other sap of a woman. Those abrupt telephone calls the night when I had dinner at his apartment—noncommittal conversations that ended so quickly. The way he's fingered every dress, every stick of my furniture as though he were an appraiser. Those evasive answers about what kind of work he does. I guess I know
now
what kind of work he does. That bogus English accent. He's really quite, quite terrible, isn't he?"

"Thoroughly
terrible."

If s only that—well, how can a girl be such a damned idiot as to . . ."

"I expect a lot of girls have asked themselves that about Mr. Stone."

"You know, I think I'm going to get over this very quickly."

"Good. I'm glad you are."

"You know what I'm going to do now?"

"No, what?" he asked.

"I'm going upstairs and I'm going to take off this girdle, and I'm going to put on one of my all-American girl gingham dresses, and I'm going to throw these earrings away and put on some comfortable shoes."

"Will you go to dinner with me some time this week?"

"Yes. John, I will. Then I'll ask you up to my place for dinner. And you know what I'll cook for you?"

"What?"

"Steak and a baked potato—all the obvious man-catching things that you wouldn't dare offer to a creamed sweetbreads type like Manning. I think I'm going to
chase
you, John. I've only chased one man before and thank God he was too light on his feet. But . . ."

"Think maybe you can catch me?"

"Maybe."

"I think maybe you can. And then?"

"And then I'll wait a little while, just to make sure it isn't love on the rebound and then . . ."

John put his arms around her and kissed her very politely and then a little more forcefully and then not politely at all.

"Why, you're
better
than Manning Stone!" Kathy whispered. She giggled.

"Thank you. What's so funny?"

"It's just that you deliver such a comfortable, husbandly kiss that you don't make me feel like a vamp out of an old silent movie. Manning's embraces were always so sort of stagey and . . ."

John kissed her again. "Now go upstairs and put on those sensible shoes."

Going slowly up the stairs, Kathy realized that this wasn't quite the happy ending. There would be moments of self-recrimination. There would be moments of hideous embarrassment over the ass she had made of herself with Manning. There would be moments of wondering in what smart bar at what smart resort Manning would be exchanging his smart chitchat with some dumb dame. John wouldn't be perfect, nobody was. Kathy knew she would have moments of regret that he wasn't taller, more dashing, handsomer. There would probably be times when she'd look at him in his clothes—the gray flannel suits, the white button-down shirts, the conservative ties, and wonder why she had picked a man who looked just like
all
the men she had known
all
her life. But there would be good times, too—secure times, happy times, comfortable times. She'd never have to worry with a man like John. He'd be a good husband, a good father—never the roving eye. She liked him. She trusted him. She would
love
him very soon.

Passing her mother's room, she looked in. "Mother!" Kathy said, "you look dreadful."

"Thank you, dear."

"Mother, you know what I told you last night—about Manning?"

"Yes, dear," Mrs. Ames sighed.

"Forget it."

"What?"

"I said
forget
it. He's not for me. He's not
right
for me."

"I knew he wasn't, darling. I'm glad you found out in time.”

"And, Mother, you know John Burgess?"

"Yes, darling," Mrs. Ames said.

"Do you like him?"

"Very much. He's too good for you-know-who."

"Well, he isn't you-know-who's any more. He's mine."

"Kathy! Not so fast."

"Do you think it would be wrong to marry a man who's shorter than you are?"

"If you'd take off those high heels he wouldn't be," she said quietly. Mrs. Ames was exhausted from the afternoon.

"That's just what I'm going to do."

"Kathy dear?"

"Yes, Mother?"

"He's
not
going to approach me right away is he?"

"No. He hasn't even asked me yet."

"Then how do you know he'll . . ."

"He will.
I
know."

Kathy went on to her room. The first thing she did was take off her shoes. The second thing she did was to get her pint of rye from the suitcase. She poured it into the toilet and flushed it.

Dinner, although delicious, had been a nerve-wracking repast. Sturgis had been rather sullen about serving it, but outraged whenever people got up to give him a hand. The seating had confused quite a number of the guests. It wasn't anything like it had been. Paul, for example, sat as far away as possible from Claire and saw to it that he was securely flanked by Kathy and Betty Cannon. Nor did Felicia sit next to John, nor Kathy beside Manning. They seemed to have reversed positions. Elly was about the only one who ended up next to the man she'd come with. However, Bryan no longer sat on her other side. Instead, she whisked Uncle Ned to that seat and even listened to his hilarious anecdote about being in Marienbad with King Edward.

Nor had conversation flowed freely. Looking down her table, Mrs. Ames was suddenly grateful for Violet's chatter—even for her flirtatious roulades with General Cannon. Felicia was obviously playing the heavy seductress with Manning and such terms as "a little
pied-à-terre
in Paris
. . .
my house in London . . . a chateau at Pouilly-sur-Loire . . ." drifted up the table to a mystified hostess. Manning's manners toward his hostess—toward all the Ames family, in fact—seemed not exactly to have deteriorated, but to have become a little dusty. Uncle Ned, naturally, jabbered along at a great rate, foreign words and foreign titles interspersed glibly.

Bryan looked so crumpled that Mrs. Ames could hardly bear to let her eyes meet his. Claire was white and tense. She ate nothing. She didn't speak until dessert when she turned to General Cannon at her side and said, quite loudly: "Damn you, stop pinching my leg." Then she got up and left the table.

"Wait, Claire," Bryan had said and rushed out after her.

The kitchen afterward, however, buzzed with warmth and affection. Kathy was making a concerted effort to be her natural self—a role in which she had grown a trifle rusty. She had insisted that Sturgis and Nanny eat a staggering meal in the servants' dining room and now she was serving monstrous portions of everything to them. Out of sisterly loyalty, she also continued her elaborate pretense about Elly's cooking and kept saying, louder than was absolutely necessary, "My, I wish we'd had time for you to bake that delicious angel-food cake of yours, Elly." This stunned everyone except Joe, who kept happily sloshing the same old roasting pan up and down in the sink until John took it away from him.

Betty Cannon looked determined and cheerful. She kept saying extra kind things to Paul and expressing an abnormally bright interest in his opinions about workable kitchens. Mrs. Ames moved like an automaton about the room. Once or twice she bumped into perfectly obvious objects. Once she had to sit down. Elly kept glancing at her mother with concern. At last Mrs. Ames rose and wobbled toward the back door. Elly put down her dish towel and followed.

She found her mother standing on the service porch, looking blankly down on the bare lawn. It was just beginning to get dark.

"Mother, darling," Elly whispered. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, dear. Be still. Don't let the others know. It's just that—well, that it's been such a confusing, exhausting, upsetting, perfectly
beastly
day. I . . ."

"Mother, it's
my
fault, isn't it? I mean, the way I opened up on Bryan this afternoon. Darling, I'm
so
sorry! So awfully damned sorry. It was terrible for me, too—he's always been my favorite, and . . ." The tears welled up in Elly's eyes.

"Yes, darling, that
was
the final straw." She held her daughter's hand and stroked it.

"Mother, I'm sorry I said . . .”

"No, darling, you
had
to do what you did. I know that. And it was better that you did it in front of me. But the terrible thing, Elly, is that every word you said about Bryan was true."

"Oh, Mother," Elly said with false jocularity, "Bryan's not such a
bad
egg. I was just sore and shot off my . . ."

"No, Elly, you were
right
. You know that you were right and I know and Bryan knows. That's the awful part of it, darling. If you'd just called him a—well, used some of the coarse words you have the unfortunate habit of using—well, then I'd have thought that it was only a family fight. But
every word was true.

"And it's not much fun for a mother to sit and listen to something like that without being morally able to contradict. I've worried so much about the rest of you—well, not
you
perhaps, except the way you go about falling off things and forgetting things—and so little about Bryan. Now I see that . . ."

"Good evenin' ma'am," a hearty voice said. "Missis Clendenning said I was ta be here at igzackly nine a'clock. An' here I am, ma'am," he said, "five minutes early. Early by name an early by nature. My card, ma'am."

"Who are
you?"
Elly said.

"I'm to arrange for the pyrotechnic displays. My card, ma'am," he said, thrusting a grubby business card still closer.

"The what?” Elly said.

"He means fireworks, darling."

"That's rightie, ma'am, and here I am, five minutes ahead of time. Aurora Borealis Gun Powder Co. 'Pyrotechnic Displays
Un-
limited,' Mordecai Early, Prezz. That's me."

"Wait here," Elly said. "I'll get my aunt. Mother, you must take a rest." She pulled her mother back into the kitchen. "Come on, dear, I’ll get Aunt Violet. Paul can help you upstairs."

"Oh, darling, no. I'll be . . ."

"Paul!" Elly shouted. "I need you!”

"Paul, really, not
all
the way upstairs. Just someplace fairly cool and private where I can rest for just a minute," Mrs. Ames said.

"The morning room, Mother?" Paul asked.

"No. No,
not
the morning room."

"Maybe the terrace?"

"Maybe the terrace, Paul," she said.

"Mother," Paul said, "Do you think Betty Cannon would make a good daughter-in-law?"

"Why, she'd make a wonderful daughter-in-law, she's a lovely girl, but I'm afraid she'd never be able to handle your brother Bryan."

"I
didn't mean for Bryan. I meant for me."

"Paul! For
you?
Why, darling, at three o'clock this morning you were asking me about marrying Claire Devine! Really, child, I don't care how modern you are, you just can't fall in and out love
that
fast!"

"I can fall out pretty fast," Paul said bluntly. "Besides, I'm not in love with Betty."

"Then why do you want to . . ."

"Because I'm going to be in love with her pretty soon. She's nice. I like her. She's got honesty and brains and sense and taste and . . ."

"Yes, dear, she has all of those. She's
lovely.
But . . ."

''We're going to work together. We've got it all planned. We're going to use her bookshop as my office and she's going to . . ."

"Paul. Wait! Let me get my breath."

"Now listen, Mother, I've got it all figured out. First I'm going to get hold of some land and then . . ."

"Oh! Eleanor, it's you," Violet shrieked. "You gave me such a turn! Really, child, I never dreamed you'd be coming in here and . . ."

"Well, I never dreamed I'd find
you
here, necking in the dark."

"Oooh! Elly! You little minx!" Violet giggled.

General Cannon cleared his throat uneasily.

"A Mr. Early is here from the fireworks company."

"Oh, heavens! Almost dark and almost time to start the big surprise. Now, Walter, you wait
right
here. I'll be back! Elly, do be an angel and run tell Nanny to get the children up. I made her give them extra-long naps and then put them to bed extra early just so they could get up and come down to watch. Don't run away, Walter!"

"No, Vi'let," the general groaned.

Felicia stirred languidly on the grass and pushed slightly away from Manning. He certainly knew how to kiss, even if the whole operation was as carefully staged as the Radio City Easter pageant.

"Oh, my darling," he murmured, "to think of being away with you—just the two of us. Venice perhaps, or the Mediterranean,"

"Oh, Manning," Felicia breathed. She found amorous dialogue so much simpler if it could be confined to a meager series of grunts and groans or the calling of a name—as long as it was the correct name, "But Manning, my love, you've got to get things squared away with Kathy. Shell blame me if she . . ."

"But, darling, there's nothing
to
square away. Kathy and I are just good friends. There was no word mentioned about . . ."

"Even so, Manning, Kathy is my
cousin.
I could never forgive myself if she even suspected that I had stolen you from her. Now just go to her and help to cheer her up. She'll be in the kitchen. Just say a few words to her."

"Oh, veddy well," Manning said, getting up and brushing bits of grass off his suit.

"Then come
right
back, I'll be waiting " Felicia lied.

"Righto, darling." Manning moved slowly toward the house. There were very few scenes involving females which he did not revel in playing, but he didn't like the idea of facing Kathy now. She had shown too many facets this weekend for Manning to be at all sure of what he might expect. A tearful Kathy, a pleading Kathy, a hysterical Kathy, a suicidal Kathy—any of these Kathys would be very hard to take, indeed.

The kitchen was practically set to rights. Nanny had gone to rouse the children, Sturgis to fetch Fang, so that the dog, too, might enjoy the fireworks. John and Joe were putting up chairs on the lawn, down near the water so that the guests could view the fireworks in comfort, while Elly and Betty Cannon were wheeling a rickety cart, precariously loaded with bottles and glasses, to the garden.

Kathy was left alone in the kitchen, ritualistically swabbing out the sink. She was surprised and a little bit annoyed to find herself humming. Really, she thought, I ought to be a bit more heartsick. Then she heard the pantry door swing closed and there stood Manning.

"Kathy!" he said.

"Hello, Manning. Enjoy your dinner?"

"It was delicious, uh, darling."

"Good. I'm so glad you were able to tuck into one of my meals. Sort of a Last Supper, wouldn't you say?"

''What's that?"

"Nothing."

"You know, Kathy, it's been great fun knaowing you."

"Oh, and Manning, it's been
divine
knowing you. An education in itself."

There was something in the timbre of this conversation that made Manning uneasy.

"Yes, I'll always think of you, Kathy."

"I'll always think of you, too, Manning."

"I say, you should have given me a chance to help you dry dishes
or something. I'm a great little household help."

"I'll bet you are."

"Now I come out to lend a hand and I find that somehow—poof
—
miraculously you're all washed up."

"That's right, Manning, all washed up."

"Well, isn't there something—some little chore—I could do?"

"No, Manning. There isn't a . . ." Kathy paused. "Yes, Manning, there
is
something you could do."

"What's that, darling?"

"You could help me take the garbage down."

"Garbage?"

"Yes, Manning, you know, table scraps, coffee grounds, melon rinds, that sort of thing. It's an awfully big pail."

Manning shuddered. "Why, not at all. Certainly, darling, just tell me what to do."

"Oh, it's nothing complicated. It's just that the pail is so heavy. All that has to be done with it is take it down the kitchen steps to the service yard. Here, you just stand down there and I'll hand it down to you."

"Aoh, rightao, darling. It'll be a pleasure," He skipped down the steps.

"It
will,"
Kathy said. Using all of her strength, she dragged the heavy garbage pail across the kitchen floor to the back door. Looking down into the darkness she could see the white glimmer of Manning's teeth, the snowy bosom of his shirt.

"All ready, darling?" she asked.

"Heave-ho, darling," Manning said.

"Rightao!" Kathy said. She inverted the garbage pail and listened as the last of its contents smothered her former flame. Then she let the overturned pail fall. It was a perfect shot. Like an out-sized hat, the rank old garbage pail sat on Manning's head, enveloping him to the waist.

"Kathy!" His voice came strangulated and resonant from within the garbage pail.

"Goodbye, Manning, dear," Kathy said gaily. Then smoothing the front of her dress she skipped happily out of the kitchen.

". . . yes, Paul dear," Mrs. Ames sighed, "I
do
see what you're trying to do. I don't know
beans
about architecture, but I can see that it's a good idea. I can also see why
Claire
didn't think it was an attractive notion. And I’ll do my best to help you, really I will. I'll start talking to the lawyers just as soon as they re-open, Tuesday morning. I can find the money someplace. I could even mortgage this house."

"Oh, Mother, not . . ."

"It would be my pleasure, Paul. As for Betty Cannon, well you know how I feel about her. But, darling, please, go to her now. Mother's terribly tired."

"Mother, I can't begin to thank . . .”

"Don't try, dear. Now scoot!" Mrs. Ames leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for how long she didn't know. She opened them with a little gasp and saw a lighted cigar before her.

"Lovely lady," the general whimpered. "Lily. How
could
you?"

"How could I what?"

"Lily, I didn't mean that note for Vi'let, I meant it for
you!"

"Note?"

"Lily, it was so dark, an' she was wearin’ the same kind of coat and scarf. Well, Lily, I ast
her
to marry me an thought it was
you.
An' then she said yes and then it got a little lighter—Lily, I don't see so good—and then I realized it was Vi'let an' . . ."