Trust: A Novel Part 2

"The daughter? No. Do you?"

"No. No one does."

I went upstairs again.

"Are you back?" said my mother.

"Who did you ask here anyway?"

"Is something the matter?"

"It's a rotten idea, the whole thing."

"I'm sick," said my mother. "I'm sick, go down."

"They can't tell they're drinking champagne," I accused her.

My mother plucked the sheet upward to her face and coughed into it guiltily, warding me off with it. "It must be the poets," she scratched out finally. "You know-My staff."

"Your what?"

"It isn't easy to find people in summer," she broke out in her odd fever-voice. "Practically everyone's out of town. I asked whom I could," she acknowledged finally. She took a harsh breath. "Why won't you go away?"

I waited. "I thought you said something about decent society."

"I'm sick, I have ghosts in my brain. Go away."

"The ghosts are all downstairs," I murmured, getting up and going to the door.

Behind me I heard my mother bore fitfully into her pillow. "So is William's boy," she uttered faintly; her huddled back divulged not how far she had gone for me, but how far she had given me up.

I found them after a while, my mother's "staff," eight pale poets, small light-eyed supercilious lads; two of them were the critical young men I had overheard earlier. I observed that their goblets, which the ingrates were still clutching, had been freshly filled. They had camped down all together, in a cl.u.s.ter, surrounded by idle dancers still vaguely bobbing on the margins of the talk, and ferocious-looking girls with violently curly hair, and girls as plaintive and unaware as b.u.t.terflies, and earnest angry minuscule-nosed balding young men with slipping eyegla.s.ses. The latter, I soon discovered, were a contingent obligingly sent down from Cambridge at the request of my mother. They were all law students, cla.s.smates of William's son. I felt ashamed: my mother, sc.r.a.ping for guests and disquieted by the scarcity of a certain kind of young person, had appealed to William, who had in turn consulted with his son; and to this unimpeachable youth had been entrusted the delicate and infamous affair of collecting dancing partners for me (although I had so far attempted the floor only once, and then with the fat doctor who lived in the duplex below ours, and who had been called up to attend my mother: on his way out, jogging me toward the terrace in his minuet-like foxtrot, he confided his disapproval of all such festivities on the ground that they abused the health; also he warned me against contracting in my travels the Asiatic influenza which had recently spread toGenoa). For this hive of squires, lovers, boy friends, suitors-whatever my mother in her expectant fancies believed them to be-I was, it appeared, clearly indebted to the Harvard Law School. And the neophyte attorneys were easily distinguishable from the parasite poets. The attorneys were glabrous, ambitious, social, and grave, the poets mendacious, flagrantly seedy, thinly optimistic, and (worst of all) poetic. The two factions slyly prospected one another, leering face to face in a nook formed by the newly-built dais-in the lists, as it were-while the musicians, vying nearby but ignored, inexorably pursued their own dread list (they had just arrived at my mother's favorite military tunes). They were all of them yelling-the poets wildly and poetically, the musicians out of resentment for their buried grace notes, the girls in animal grat.i.tude for the fray, the attorneys perforce.

"What's it all about?" I asked one of the poets.

"Oh, it's a fight," said one of the dancers.

"There are idiots present," offered one of the law students in a politic tone.

"Quite," said the poet, glaring. "And I wish they'd go back to Cambridge."

"Don't be so charitable," interjected one of the frizzy-headed girls, who had taken the side of the poets, "Cambridge isn't hot enough."

The embryonic lawyers were losing, outwitted by the nimble poets, who were becoming a little coa.r.s.e in their style of speech: the poets were aggressively circular, intuitive, and periphrastic, whereas their opponents were logical and spoke in syllogisms-hence it was transparent that they would go down. It was less transparent what it was they would go down for-I could make out their cause only in part: in the indirect language of Const.i.tutional Law (a second-year course, it developed), they sedately expressed a hope that the First Amendment might be re-amended in order to prevent the free and unhampered publication of verse pamphlets. I half agreed, for my mother's choice of poets was lamentable-she might better have determined to support a covey of vegetarians, whose dependency would be to a higher purpose and who would have eaten more cheaply in any case. The law students, on the other hand, were as wearisome a crew as ever entered Langdell Hall-one of their Cambridge buildings, apparently a temple of some sort, to which they never ceased referring, on account of the phantom presence in that place of their local divinity, Justice Holmes, whom they seemed to honor by having forgotten his decisions. Like my mother's versifiers, they showed no innocence of spirit. It was not merely that they were as worldly as profligates, but rather that they insisted on their own version of the world, exactly like the poets. I decided to abandon both camps-neither side had any originality. I thought them rank phonies. And so, because I was still in the dark about the meaning of their a.s.saults, and to get away from the noise, I wandered into the kitchen.

The refrigerator was disconnected-someone had removed the plug from the socket, and had inserted instead the attachment belonging to my mother's portable phonograph. The turntable, set at a low-Speed, was doggedly going round and round, tended by a pretty girl in blue shoes.

"When the icebox needs defrosting," I said evenly, "the maid does it."

The girl tossed out an unperturbed smile. "Hey, I found these cute records-they're French lessons. You want to hear? I'm already up to Lesson Four."

"Where did you get the phonograph?" I asked.

"It was sitting right in the broom closet So were the records."

"That's right," I concurred. "Now tell me what you were doing in the broom closet"

"Looking for a broom."

We stared at one another.

"My date is out there bringing back something to eat," my informant took up. "Hie food around here, is out of this world."

"Thank you," I said.

"How d'you like that?" toy friend stated in surprise. "Is this your party?"

I observed that I supposed it was.

"Well then, you see, about the broom. It's what started the fight out there. You know those boys who work on Mrs. Vand's magazine?"

"Pamphlet," I corrected.

"Oh-well, I've never seen it, that was part of the trouble. One of 'em said it's called Bushelbasket-can you believe it?" (I did: the t.i.tle had been invented by my mother as a piece of paradoxical sophistry-"You see," she had maintained, "they've been hiding their light under a bushel all this time-and now here I am, about to help expose it. Also," she had added worriedly, "it suggests abundance ... do you think Cornucopia is better?" But William had favored the former for its humble and homespun sound. "Call it Cornucopia," he admonished, "and those fellows will get the idea that's just what your pocketbook is.") "And then," the girl was going dutifully on, "the editor said-Ed McGovern, that's his name-that he'd had the d.a.m.nedest time with Allegra over the last issue-I guess Allegra is Mrs. Vand."

"I know."

"She your stepmother?"

"No."

"I heard you had a stepmother."

"I have a stepfather," I said. "Enoch Vand."

My friend c.o.c.ked her head; she was very pretty. "Enoch Vand. Haven't I heard of him?"

"Maybe," I a.s.sented, glum with jealousy. "He works for the Administration. He gets to see a lot of Cabinet members, and once in a while his name's in the paper."

"Oh, I never read about politics, it's such a bother. The news changes all the time, who can keep up with it?" She crossed her little blue shoes with their little blue straps and gave me her quick suspenseful glance. "Has he seen the President?"

"Enoch? I guess so."

"No, I mean really seen him. Up close!"

"I guess he's seen him up close," I said, "every so often."

"Are you lucky!" she marveled eagerly. "You know I always feel so out of things on account of my parents are Democrats. And they're so adamant about it!-I heard Mrs. Vand used to be a pinko," she said suddenly.

I blinked. "What?"

"A radical. All that out-of-date political stuff. Ed McGovern says she's still trying to be radical, only she's so old hat it beats him. Like with the capital letters.-You know the story, don't you?"

I hesitantly confessed I did not.

"Well, Allegra took it into her head that she didn't want capitals in Bushelbasket any more, and Ed said he'd be d.a.m.ned if he'd print any poem of his in lower case, like some old fogey. I couldn't see why not, until he told me he was afraid of being taken for a relic, like that antique, Eeyee c.u.mmings." My informant carefully lifted a phonograph record out of its folder and brushed it with a chamois-cloth. "Eeyee c.u.mmings is some kind of old-fas.h.i.+oned author who got famous long ago on account of never using capital letters," she explained politely.

"How long have you known Ed McGovern?" I inquired.

"Oh, I just met him maybe half an hour ago, out there. That's what started things off. I'm telling you," she chided.

"All right," I said, and got out of the way of the barman, who had come for more ice cubes.

The trays were full of water.

"I put them in to freeze over twenty minutes ago," he wailed; "I can't understand this refrigerator, miss."

"Serve the drinks Without ice," I suggested.

"Mrs. Vand wouldn't like it. She told me expressly to watch the ice supply," he mourned.

"The electric plug is out"

"Oh my G.o.d."

The refrigerator began to buzz and the turntable stopped.

"What a pig," remarked my guest to the barman's receding back; she plugged in the record-player and antic.i.p.atorily watched it resume its lazy revolutions. The refrigerator died out into silence. "Fm putting Lesson Five on now," she announced. "The man on the record grunts something in French and then he waits a minute, and you repeat it after him. That's how it works. It's crazy."

"Look," I said, "what happened to the capital letters?"

"Oh, Allegra got her way. Naturally. Ed said he couldn't risk being thrown out, like he fellow before him. Then someone else said maybe she wanted the little wee letters all over because she was too stingy to pay for capitals-and Ed said no, she was too well-heeled to bother being stingy." The girl thrust her frank gaze at me. "Is she that rich?"

At that moment the record began to speak out of the void-mellifluous, consoling and caressing, incorporeal, like the voice of Jesus Christ in the movies.

Et ceci, c'est moins cher ou plus cher? said the voice, and paused hollowly. Y a-t-il l'eau courante, chaude et froide? Another pause, slightly longer, and then, slowly, lingeringly, unctuously, with the a.s.surance of heaven's abiding love, Certainement, it whispered; Les salles de bain ont ete refaites recemment.

"You know why I ask," the girl persisted.

I shrugged.

"Because they said she has gilt monograms on everything. Then one of them yelled he'd take bets."

I repeated dully: "Bets?"

"That she'd even got her broomstick monogrammed!" My companion gleamed joyously. "They sent me after it then."

"You had very little trouble finding your way," I commended her.

"To the kitchen, you mean? Well, my date was here before, you know."

This seemed improbable; I looked at her coolly.

"One of the fellows down from Harvard Law. His father brought him here to dinner once, years ago. His father is Mrs. Vand's attorney." She swooped into a laugh. "You know it didn't have a thing on itl It was just an ordinary broom."

"That must have disappointed everybody," I observed.

"Oh no, just the ones who'd lost. And the ones who'd won said she was B. sn.o.b anyway, and then they began to argue about whether she was or wasn't a sn.o.b."

"Which side did McGovern take?" I quietly wondered.

"He said he knew she was a sn.o.b, because she supports him. I mean she actually feeds him and clothes him, and all he does is write poems for Bushelbasket. It's weird."

"It's weird," I agreed.

"He said patronage is the business of sn.o.bs. It gives them somebody to look down on. Then one of the law-school fellows asked him how he could stand being looked down on all the time, and Ed said, 'Oh, it's a job like any other.' And all the law-school boys started to laugh. They just howled."

"It doesn't sound like much of a fight."

"Well, so then I was going to take the broom back to the kitchen-and Ed said, 'Give me that thing, will you?' and he grabbed it and cracked the other fellow with it-right across the shoulder, you know, and said, 'I dub thee d.a.m.nfool,' or something, and then they all piled up on each other. -Didn't you see?" she exclaimed. "It was right out of a Western."

"I was upstairs. All I heard was a lot of yelling."

"You missed the best part! After that it deteriorated to just a discussion, I don't know on what-I hate discussions, they're such a bother. Then after a while Ed McGovern got up and started to dance with the broom-he kept screaming how it was the effigy of Mary Sh.e.l.ley-so I came on in here."

The tale was ended, and all at once we had nothing more to say to one another.

We listened to the record.

Vous n'avez qu'une heure, cooed the voice, and permitted itself a starchy well-bred silence.

"Christ, what a creamy tone," remarked my companion.

Je rial pas beaucoup de temps, the voice warned.

"I can't understand a word."

Quel dommage! simpered the voice. Voyez-vous la maison du coin? Celle avec une lanterne rouge?

"What the h.e.l.l," said the girl, and stood up impatiently.

Donnez-m'en un peu, the voice pleaded with mannerly piety. Encore un peu, it repeated prayerfully, encore un peu, it intoned, encore un peu...

There was a noise, half rubbing, half knocking, on the other side of the door.

"Stefanie! Come on-open up, my hands are full."

"Oh, give it a kick," advised Stefanie; "the needle's stuck."