The Old Man and Me (10 page)

What could I say against her? “She talks so funny, your secretary, Poppie (I, too, could never bring myself to call her by her name to him), she says
watter
for water and
awnge
for orange.”

“Why, Beetle, that’s the way they say it out where she comes from. Kind of cute,” would be his amused reply, and what good was that? And so I would try harder: “But she’s so small. Do you think they stunted her growth? How old is she? Isn’t she awfully old to be that small?” “Now, Beetle, she’s not all that small. It just seems so to you because you’re getting to be such a great big girl. She’s
petite
.” (There it was that horrid word.) “Poppie, she has the strangest table manners. Did you notice last night how she cut up all her meat into tiny pieces first before she ate it?” “All right, Beetle, that’s enough. That will do.” And his tone would tell me I’d gone too far. It was hopeless; it was worse than that, it was harmful. It was putting me in the wrong position: it was putting him on the defensive, only it was she he was defending now, instead of me.

She took me to a matinée one afternoon: a Musical I’d wanted to go to. Afterwards I asked her to let me see where she lived. She objected at first, it was too far, all the way out in Queens, there was nothing to see. But I teased until she gave in. I
had
to find out what it was like.

She was right. There was nothing to see. She had a neat empty little flat in one of those huge developments. She lived alone, with her fitted furniture. All the furniture fitted against the walls, fitted into the corners, fitted like shelves one on top of the other. Everything turned into something else. The sofa turned into a day-bed, a board slid down the wall releasing two legs and turned into a dining-table. The bookcase collapsed into a writing-desk. The flat was utterly tasteless in the real sense, the food sense. It had no flavour; it was bland and unseasoned: one or two scrupulous stiff plants, a few books, a few magazines. There were glass ash-trays and glass-topped everything. There were no signatures, nothing betrayed its origin. I had to go to the bathroom when I got there and she led me to it through her tiny bedroom. I took my time after I came out, looking carefully at everything for some clue. (There was nothing to pick up, nothing to look at, nothing to play with.) It was exactly like the other room except for a silver-framed photograph of a middle-aged man by her bedside table. Not my father. I went right for it.

“Who’s that a picture of in your bedroom?” I asked.

“Nobody.” I saw that she was embarrassed.

“It can’t be nobody.”

“Oh, it’s somebody I used to know. I don’t know why I still keep it.”

“Is he dead?”

“Of course not.”

“How did you know him?” I persisted.

And because she was only factual, never lied: “I used to work for him.”

“Your last job?”

“Yes.” She was unable to wiggle out. Her honesty had refused her an imagination.

So far so good. My perceptions sharpened by my success, I redoubled my attack on her living-room and now I noticed what I hadn’t before: an enormous television set, almost the size of our own, fitted into something or other against the wall. The reason I hadn’t taken it in at first was significant. Television sets were what Poppie mainly sold, they were the particular line his stores featured in those early days of television: the rock upon which his fortune was being built. Therefore, since television sets were ordinary fixtures in our own home, it hadn’t struck me as odd. It
did now.

“What a big television set you have. Wasn’t it awfully expensive?”

“Why, yes, I guess so.”

“It must have cost a fortune. How were you able to afford it?”

She reddened but again she was stuck. “It was a present.”

“From my father?”

“Yes.”

I went cold. So it had come to that. I made her take me home soon after. There was not a moment to lose.

“Did you have a nice time at the show today?” asked Poppie that evening.

“Yop. Great. Oh and your secretary took me out to where she lives and guess what I saw, a picture of her boy-friend. She’s got it right by her bed-table.”

I dropped this last remark casually as if it would have no significance for us. Nevertheless I saw that I had hit home. We continued dinner in virtual silence and Poppie retired shortly after. Goody, I thought; that’s done it.

Poppie was very quiet and thoughtful for the rest of the week. Then on the Friday smilingly he announced he wouldn’t be home for supper that night. He and Pauly (finally he had come out and named her) would be going out to a show and then a night-club afterwards. “And so, Beetle, no sleeping in the guest room tonight”—it was one of our games occasionally to pretend I was a distinguished guest, visiting him for the weekend—“because I’ve invited her to stay over here so she won’t have to go all the way back to Queens so late.”

“Won’t her boy-friend be jealous?” I said, very quickly.

“There isn’t any boy-friend any more,” he answered happily.

“Oh, but I saw—”

“Yes, but that’s all been over for a long time. I’ll let you in on a secret, Beetle, don’t mention it to her, but he was really the main reason she left that job. Imagine the wickedness of some men. I’ll never understand it. A married man with a wife and children carrying on like that, deliberately lying to the poor girl, telling her they were separated and that divorce proceedings had already been started. She left the minute she found out what he was. I don’t know what makes some people behave like that.” Thinking about it made him very angry, I’d never seen him so angry. I held my tongue then, appalled at how badly my scheme had boomeranged.

But now in tears, my head against the icy window pane and with the awful finality of his announced intention of marrying Pauly ringing in my ears, I could hold my tongue no longer.

“That bitch. I know what’s she’s up to. She’s going to try to kick me out of here, you see if she isn’t. Well she’s got another thought coming. Let her try. I’ll beat her to it. I’m not living under the same roof as her for a second I promise you that.” And more, much more, it all came out. And what was Poppie doing, saying through all this? It’s blank. Was he trying to make me listen to reason? Was I refusing? But what could he say? They were guilty. They had done this thing, connived behind my back, reached conclusion without consulting me. Guilty.

“We are going out to dinner now.” I remember Poppie saying that. Saying it in his normal voice, bringing the inevitable closer to its close. He had spoken clearly, into a silence. It was strange and quiet around his words and I remember them very distinctly. They were clear and final and there was a hush all around the room. The screams and cries had been closed off and in the silence I saw Pauly’s frightened face appear for a moment in the corner of the doorway and then disappear again. And then the noise began up again, long shrieks of pain chasing each other round the room, batting themselves against the walls and the window, trying to get out. A haze of screams through which drowning hands strained, and drowning arms strained, pleading. Then the block of haze dissolved and became all runny and ran down my throat. I started to retch. Nothing came up. I choked, coughed, had another coughing fit, and subsided. I sank into a chair; I had to catch my breath. And when I looked again, there was Poppie still standing in the same place he had been standing before, no nearer, still with his face closed against me. He spoke again. Severely. Something about the maid getting my supper. Something about not coming back until late. Something about Pauly staying overnight. Something about behaving myself. Then the doors closed, first mine and then, after a moment, the sickening click of the front door latch.

After a while I went to the window again—the same window, I suddenly remembered, from which I had thrown his diamond ring. I flung it open with the idea of searching for the ring now after three months—perhaps it was still there where it had landed, perhaps no one had picked it up and I would be able to retrieve it, and hock it, and with the money run away for ever. I leaned out straining my eyes fourteen flights below but my eyes blurred no matter how often I wiped them and all I saw was two people I was sure were Pauly and Poppie getting into a limousine. Suppose I threw myself out the window and landed right on top of them. I’d kill myself of course but I might kill them too. And how surprised they would be. But contemplating the act made me dizzy and I reeled back and closed the window standing as far away from it as possible.

There must be something I could do. I lay on my bed and thought. Then almost automatically I wandered over to my desk and got out my diary to record this final disaster. It was a beautiful diary bound in morocco, a present from Poppie into which I had poured all my private thoughts during that year. I opened it to the right date but I couldn’t even pick up my fountain pen. I flipped through the pages. It was all there, the whole agonizing year with its account of my struggle against Pauly. One entry particularly captured my attention. On a day when I had been feeling especially miserable about her I had simply listed her failings. Her nervous cough; her nervous sniff; her pencilled eyebrows; her flat voice with its irritating Mid-Western colloquialisms, “Anymore, I don’t think they’d be interested now” (for “anyway”); her confusion when confronted with a finger-bowl; her clothes when she got Dressed Up; the way she sat bolt upright on the edge of a chair patting her hair; the way she sometimes stood with one foot crossed awkwardly in front of the other as if she might topple over; the way her eyes darted about among a group of people anxiously from face to face unable to settle down; the way she wasn’t able to inhale when she tried to smoke a cigarette, and on and on in endless detail. I studied the list for some time. It comforted me having it all there before me. If only she could see it too! And then I had my idea. The Guest Room. It was Friday; suppose I went to bed in it tonight anyway, as though it had slipped my mind that she was going to stay over. Then, when they woke me up, I would apologize nicely and tootle off into my own room. But—I would have left my diary by the bedside table opened at the exact page for good measure.

I went calmly in to eat my supper feeling nothing but pleasure at the brilliance of my plan.

The whole thing went off without a hitch. The diary was left, was seen, was read. It was a complete success. Except that they got married anyway and my father never forgave me.

Strangely enough Pauly did—to a certain extent. And often I would hear her trying to intercede on my behalf: “She’s only a child—.” Was it because of her essential humility, or that as the victor she could afford to be generous? “She’s only a child,” I would hear her saying from time to time to my father but he was adamant. I was sent off to a boarding school, even more select, more snobbish than the New York one. But this time I got on. No diamond rings. I was pretty. I was bright. I was popular. I was even nice. That’s true. I never got into fights, never lost my temper. I never indulged in cattiness or stooped to bullying. I was known for my calm and my serenity. And life took over. I all but forgot those other two. Except for the casual, wholly factual letter I was required to send off every ten days, I hardly gave them a thought. I made my own way, made my own friends, made my own life. I went home less and less often during vacations. I began staying a lot with Honey’s family. I think everyone thought Poppie and Pauly were my step-parents and I didn’t bother to disillusion them.

And suddenly my father died. I hadn’t seen him for ages. I missed the deathbed: I’d thought Pauly was exaggerating. She’d written me that my father was not feeling well, was very run down, and was going to the hospital for a check-up. Would I be coming home for Easter? I declined politely. We had grown so far apart we three, I simply couldn’t face going back to them, trying to make conversations rise out of the silences. Besides, plans had been made for Honey and me to go to Bermuda. So I declined: was so sorry to hear, unfortunately other arrangements already completed, hoped they would understand, knew he’d get better, would fly back a day or two sooner. Well, he died. I felt—I felt nothing, really. Did I miss him? I don’t think so. The child missed him. But it was as if I had already said goodbye to him five years before. I was cut out of his will. Oh, yes. That is, my college education was to be provided for plus a substantial allowance during that time to be donated by Pauly as she saw fit—and after that I was on my own. Drastic measures and yet I saw the fairness of it. For I had been cut out of his heart five years before. I saw his point. I felt no rancour. Fair was fair. He was dead for me; I for him. I might have contested the will I suppose but I never bothered. Come to think of it I was really most curiously detached about it all.

And, there were always my friends. As I said, the school was select, the girls were rich, and I was popular. So nothing changed for me. I continued living well, high off the hoof. Better actually, with the death of my father the added impetus to their sympathy and generosity. I had a ball that summer. Invitations flowed and flowered into other invitations. I whirled like a dervish and loved every minute of it.

Not so with Pauly. Our lines of communication broke down after the funeral but apparently she went to pieces. Not so surprising, she’d never been a Social Animal, her marriage hadn’t changed that, and I guess she had nothing to fall back on. What
was
surprising though was that after she’d fallen apart
and
pulled herself together she took off for Europe, where, the next thing I knew, she’d become the wife of that distinguished Englishman: C. D. McKee.

And now Pauly too was dead and I was here in this strange land, sleeping in this strange bed, hot on the trail of...how would you say it? My stepfather? My late ex-stepmother’s last husband? Pauly’s widower? No. I’ll say it: The Heir.

The heir to Poppie’s millions, transferred from Poppie to that bitch to him, to be his, to do with them what he wished, said the lawyer in New York apropos of Pauly’s will, until he died: at which time such sums would revert to the nearest of kin of the former husband of the deceased: Me.