“Hi,” I said. “How’s everything going, Mrs. Winlock?”
This was a joke which had worn pretty thin by now, as I saw by Helen’s changed expression.
“I am sorry,” I said. “It just happened unintentionally,” and I kissed her.
“Darling,” Helen said, “what did you have for supper?”
“I don’t remember,” I said. “A glass of milk and a sandwich, I guess, just before I left.”
“Hilda can get you something hot in just a minute.”
“Oh, no,” I said, “that’s all right.”
“You sounded wonderful,” Helen said. “Did you write it or did Art write it?”
“Art wrote it,” I said, “except the piece about my knowing that general. He didn’t know I knew Mel Goodwin.”
“I didn’t know you knew him either,” Helen said, “but it sounded wonderful. Your voice was much better than last night.”
“That’s good,” I said. “George Burtheimer called up from Chicago. I thought it was corny about Mel Goodwin, but George liked it.”
“Why, darling,” Helen said, “that’s wonderful.” Of course she knew what it meant, hearing from the sponsor. “Now you had better go up and see Camilla so she can get to sleep. She’s in bed with a book waiting for you, and don’t stay too long with her. She really ought to be asleep by nine.”
“All right,” I said, “just as soon as Oscar brings me a drink.”
“Sid,” Helen said, “do you always have to have a drink in your hand when you go upstairs to say good night to Camilla?”
“Not always,” I said. “I’m just feeling tired after a long day in the city.”
“Did you see anyone you knew?” Helen asked.
“Yes,” I said, “quite a lot of people. I had lunch with Bill Schultz. He’s just back from London.”
“Oh,” Helen said, “he’s the one you worked with when you were on the Paris Bureau, isn’t he?”
There was no reason why Helen should have remembered him at all because he was a figure from the past that had nothing to do with Helen’s and my life together. It always touched me that Helen was interested in my early struggles.
“That’s the one,” I said. “You made quite an impression on him when we were living on Fifty-second Street.”
“I wish you wouldn’t always conceal all your old friends,” Helen said. “You have a place now where you can entertain them. Why don’t you ask a lot of them out some Sunday?”
“It might be a good idea,” I said, “some Sunday.”
“And even if they break something,” Helen said, “I won’t mind—as long as they don’t leave burning cigarettes on tables.”
“Well, it might be a good idea,” I said, “some Sunday.” And then I saw Oscar carrying a highball glass on an Early American silver tray.
“Is that the Paul Revere tray?” I asked.
“Yes it is,” Helen said. “Now hurry, and don’t let Camilla keep you too long. You know how she strings things out before she goes to sleep.”
I was just starting up the stairs when the telephone rang. I handed my glass back to Oscar and picked up the extension beneath the stairs in the hall.
“Is this Mr. Sidney Skelton?” an operator was saying. “Just a minute please, Mr. Skelton.”
There was a buzzing on the line and nothing else. It seemed to me that if an operator finally caught you, you were always left hanging in space for just a minute. Helen was not even curious about the call, and I did not blame her. Oscar was standing patiently, holding my glass on its silver tray. We were all waiting for just a minute.
“Is this Mr. Sidney Skelton?” It was a man’s voice speaking this time, fresh, vibrant and young.
“Yes,” I answered, “this is still Mr. Sidney Skelton.”
“This is Captain Orde from the Secretary’s office,” the voice said. “I was asked to check to see if you’d returned home yet. Colonel Flax is most anxious to speak to you.”
“All right,” I said, “put him on.”
“Unfortunately he has just stepped out for a few moments,” the invisible captain said, “but he wanted me to check up to be sure you had returned home.”
“That’s very thoughtful of him,” I said.
It was like the old days, listening to Captain Orde.
“He wanted me to ask you please to wait until he returns,” Captain Orde said. “He is most anxious to speak to you on an urgent matter.”
“All right,” I answered, “when will he return?”
“He was just called from his office a few moments ago on urgent business,” Captain Orde said, “but he should return at any moment.”
“What does he want to talk to me about?” I asked.
“I believe the subject deals with General Goodwin, sir,” Captain Orde said, “Major General Melville A. Goodwin, but it would be better for you to hear of it from Colonel Flax personally. He will return at any time now.”
“Well, tell Colonel Flax to take his time,” I said. “I won’t run away from him. Good-by, Captain Orde.”
“What was that about?” Helen asked.
“I really don’t know,” I told her, and I took my drink from Oscar. “You never can tell what’s coming out of Washington.”
Colonel Flax was certainly most anxious to get me, even though he had stepped out temporarily. Someone higher up was obviously pushing Colonel Flax, but I did not see what I could tell him about General Melville Goodwin. It was time to go upstairs and say good night to Camilla.
Miss Otts was in Camilla’s sitting room reading a volume of Maria Edgeworth. She looked tweedy and natural beside Camilla’s dollhouse.
“You should try Miss Edgeworth sometime, Mr. Skelton,” Miss Otts said.
“I read The Parent’s Assistant once,” I said. “My stepmother had it in Natick. There was a story about a little boy, wasn’t there, with a piece of string?”
“Oh, yes,” Miss Otts said. “‘Waste not, want not.’”
“Maybe it’s not quite in tune with the present,” I told her.
Miss Otts laughed, comfortably far away in a world that was all her own.
“That is why I like Miss Edgeworth,” she said.
Camilla was sitting straight up in bed reading Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women for the third time, and her black hair fell over her shoulders in two neat braids. I stood there for a moment adjusting myself to her. I could remember her in her crib, but I had been away so much that I was still surprised that Camilla could talk fluently or that she could have ideas.
“Oh, Daddy,” Camilla said, “you’ve got a drink.”
“You and your mother certainly notice it when I have one, Camilla,” I said. I sat down on the edge of her bed and took an uneasy sip of the Scotch and soda and wondered what Camilla really thought of me.
“I wish you’d shut the door,” Camilla said. “You see, I don’t want Miss Otts to overhear everything.”
“What’s the matter with Miss Otts?” I asked.
“Oh, she’s all right,” Camilla said, “but she talks in a funny way.”
“That’s because she’s English,” I said. “She talks in a very nice way, Camilla.”
“You don’t talk like her and neither does Mummy.”
“I know,” I said, “but we ought to. What did you do at school today?”
“The same old things,” Camilla said.
“Well,” I said, “maybe it’s time for you to go to sleep.”
“No,” Camilla said, and her voice was louder, “we haven’t talked about anything.”
“All right,” I said, “what do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” Camilla said, “about anything, just talk.”
“Well, I don’t know either,” I said. “That’s a nice school you go to, Camilla, and Miss Lancaster seemed very nice the time I saw her.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” Camilla said. “Talk about when you were a little boy.”
“Well, well,” I said
, “when I was a little boy …”
Camilla’s round gray-green eyes, just the color of her mother’s, were fixed on me unblinkingly with that utterly uninhibited stare of childhood. I tried to see myself as she must have seen me, an almost complete stranger who could share not one of her interests. I was also trying to walk backwards into a land that was closed to me forever, and I was not a Eugene Field, who could bring to life a little toy soldier red with rust, or a Robert Louis Stevenson, who could climb up in a cherry tree to look abroad on foreign lands, but then perhaps those two great authorities could only recall childhood in an academic manner. On the other hand, Freud and Jung and all their disciples seemed familiar with the pitfalls and terrors of that land but with none of its beauties, and surely it had certain charms. I sat there in my daughter’s bedroom studying its chintz curtains and the infantile wallpaper designed by some other professional who had forgotten about childhood, and I was very certain that Camilla was enduring my presence politely simply because my being there postponed the hour of her sleeping.
“Well,” I said, and my voice to my own ears sounded painfully sugary, “when I was a little boy I lived in West Newton.”
“Did you have a dog?” Camilla asked.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t, but I did have a pair of roller skates.”
Somewhere in the distance, on the very edge of my imagination, the horns of elfland mingled with the loud metallic sound of those roller skates.
“I wish I had some roller skates,” Camilla said.
Childhood was a time of perpetually unfulfilled desire, and if by chance you finally attained something, immediately you wanted something else.
“They aren’t any good without a sidewalk,” I told her.
“I wish we had a sidewalk,” Camilla said.
“Well, we haven’t,” I told her. “It would look funny around here.”
We were both silent. I moved uneasily. It seemed to me that I had said everything that I could possibly say.
“What else did you have?” Camilla asked.
I tried to think what else I had. I had once possessed a sense of time which was completely gone. Once an hour had been like a day and minutes had been interminable, and now I had an impression again of dragging minutes.
“Now let me think,” I said. “What else did I have? I had a pocket-knife. It had a chain on it and one end of the chain I could fasten on a button inside my trousers.”
“What sort of a button?” Camilla asked.
She had completely broken my train of thought. “I don’t remember, Camilla, but there was a button somewhere.”
“What did your mother do about you when you went to bed?” Camilla asked.
What did my mother do about me when I went to bed? I could see my mother’s face quite clearly. It had always looked drawn and pale in the evening, though I must have been completely oblivious to her worries. I had seen her once just as Camilla now saw me.
“Well,” I said, “she always made me wash.”
“Didn’t your nurse wash you?”
“No,” I said, “there wasn’t any nurse.”
“Didn’t your mother hear you say your prayers?”
“Yes,” I said, “when she wasn’t too tired. She wasn’t very well.”
“What did you say?” Camilla asked, “‘Now I lay me,’ or ‘Our Father’?”
“I guess it was ‘Our Father,’” I said.
“All right,” Camilla said, “then I’ll say that one.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Hasn’t your mother heard your prayers?”
“Yes,” Camilla said, “but I didn’t say that one.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said, but Camilla did not wait. She was out of bed and kneeling beside me. Her pigtails made two straight lines on her flannelette pajamas. I wanted to tell her again to wait a minute, but she had started already.
“Our Father who art in heaven …” she began, hastily, as though she might forget it all if she spoke too slowly.
I should not have been sitting holding a highball glass while Camilla recited the Lord’s Prayer, but when she was in bed again I felt somewhat relieved and rather pleased. I knew that Camilla was finished with me now, and somehow I was sure when I kissed her good night that I had behaved in a satisfactory manner, and the knowledge made me contented.
“Daddy,” she said, “I think I’m going to lose a tooth.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s fine, Camilla,” and I thought of the last tooth I lost in West Newton two weeks before my mother’s death, and no one had done anything about that tooth.
III
And Mr. Gilbert Frary Has Another Good Suggestion
Helen often said that I was the most unsure man she had ever known, and I often told her that with things going the way they were I didn’t see why it was worth while attempting to be sure of anything except of eventual dissolution. Obviously this was not a constructive attitude, and I did not blame Helen for being annoyed by it, because I have often thought that women in general admire and need order more than men. They are pathetically sure of generalities and pathetically certain that every game has an unchanging set of rules and that somewhere there is an answer to every problem.
My own uncertainties usually amused rather than annoyed Helen. In fact she told me once that she had married me because I was so funny about so many things. It had occurred to me, however, during the war, that she might grow tired of me and write me a nice letter saying, as so many other wives had said, that it was all a mistake, and I was still very grateful that she had not, because I had reached a point where I could not possibly get on without her. There had been plenty of other men she could have married when she had been working on that high-bracket magazine. In fact she had been as good as engaged to a lawyer when I had first met her.
It was at a cocktail party in one of those old brick houses down on Eighth Street, and I had thought when we stood together in a corner that it would all be over in a moment, that someone who was more her type would find her and take her away. She was an exceptionally pretty girl with dark hair and fine features, and pretty girls in my experience had always expected too much of other people. I would have left her on general principles two minutes after we had been introduced if she had not asked me very quickly, and in what seemed to me a gauche way considering her pleasing appearance, whether I was doing anything for dinner. I told her that I appreciated her being kind to me but that she would only be bored because I had never been able to get on well with pretty girls who worked on class magazines.
“I wish you wouldn’t hold my looks against me,” she said.
I told her that I was not holding anything against her and that it was not her fault that her looks unsettled me, but that I was not a novelty or a suitable vehicle for escape.
“It’s nice to see someone who is so uncertain,” she said. “It makes me feel absolutely safe.”
I was glad that she felt safe with me, I told her, as long as she wanted to feel that way, but I did not want her to think for an instant that my character needed changing or guidance. I, too, felt perfectly safe with her, because she would lose interest in a little while. There were so many men who had wanted to marry her that I always thought it would be temporary, even after we were married. I could not understand why she wanted to have children. I explained to her that I was not a parental type and that it would be hard on children when she grew tired of the whole arrangement.
“Why don’t you face facts?” she said. “Don’t you know that if a girl loves someone, she wants to have a child by him? The first time I saw you, I wanted you to be the father of my children.”
I have never been able to understand the eccentricities of natural selection. When I thought of that cocktail party on Eighth Street, it seemed to me indecent that any such thought should have crossed the mind of such a pretty girl, and instead of flattering me, it alarmed me, since it showed how sure Helen was about everything. She had been sure that I was the man for her after lo
oking me over for sixty seconds. She was sure that I would amount to something. She had estimated all my latent capabilities, or at least she said she had, and she was right. Helen was always right, theoretically.
The house, the winding staircase, and Camilla in her pigtails, all proved her correctness, theoretically. So far she had been right as rain about everything. Yet as I crossed the hall that evening and entered the living room, many of my old uneasy thoughts returned.
“Helen,” I said. The living room was large enough so that I had to raise my voice. She seemed a long distance away, curled up on the corner of the davenport, looking at the fire. “Did you get those gardenias that Gilbert Frary sent you?”
“Yes,” she said, “Oscar brought them.”
“I thought that was very kind and thoughtful of Gilbert. Didn’t you?” I said.
Helen began to laugh. Her feet were on the floor, and she stood up. She looked like a Pre-Raphaelite painting in a velvet gown that was neither a housecoat nor a negligee nor a dinner dress. I did not know the name for it, but surely Helen did.
“Sid,” she said, and she held out her arms to me, “you’re awfully funny”—and all at once it was all funny, Helen and the house and everything. Holding Helen in my arms and kissing her had many obvious values, but I wondered whether she understood whatever it was in this encounter of our minds and bodies that made me want to laugh. There were still times, like the present, when I could not avoid the illusion that Helen and I had never recited marriage vows. She was so exactly what I had wanted that it seemed like a gay sort of interlude, an unexpected piece of good fortune that should be taken at the flood and remembered in drab days that were bound to follow.
I was funny and Helen and the whole room were funny. She had done the living room over largely, I imagine, because she had grown tired of hearing me refer to us as Mr. and Mrs. Winlock. She had understood what I meant, she said. She had disposed of the Louis Quinze furniture and the Aubusson carpet, because the house should be in our own taste. I was a little vague about our own taste because we had never been surrounded by any old possessions which might have reminded us of any other incarnations. Helen and I had never had anything but a few books and the silver-backed comb and brush upstairs in our dressing room, which her mother had given her when we were married. Now there were English drum tables and piecrust tables, and heavy curtains called toile de Jouy drawn across the tall windows, and the strange thing about it was that the room actually looked as though we lived in it instead of looking, as I thought it would, like one of those period rooms in the Metropolitan Museum. I never could understand how Helen had achieved this effect.
Melville Goodwin, USA Page 4