“I remember how it tickled my nose,” Dottie said. “It made me awfully silly,” and she giggled.
“No it didn’t,” I said. “Nothing ever made you silly.” Suddenly I felt impatient, “Come on, Dot,” I said, “let’s get down to what you want to talk about. Why don’t you tell me why you wanted to see me?”
Dottie put down her champagne glass on the coffee table and sat up straighter.
“Now, Sid,” she said, “that isn’t fair. You know I always love to see you, and we see so little of each other, but … well, all right.… Tell me about Mel Goodwin, Sid. Has he asked about me?”
“I told you he had,” I said. “Why shouldn’t he?”
“Oh, all right,” Dottie said, “tell me some more about him. Tell me how he looks.”
“He looks about the way he did in Paris,” I said, “but you’ve seen his pictures in the papers, haven’t you?”
“I mean does he look well?” Dottie said. “Does he look happy?”
“Didn’t he look happy in the pictures?” I asked her.
Dottie shook her head impatiently.
“Darling,” she said, “I know exactly what you’re thinking and I know you don’t approve, but it’s none of your business, is it, really? I wish you wouldn’t act like a buffer state and pretend you’re so damn conventional. You know you can’t stop my doing anything I want and at the same time you’re the only one I can talk to about this. Darling, I really have to talk to someone. Why is it you don’t approve of my seeing Mel Goodwin?”
We were getting down to plain facts at last, and I always liked Dottie when she was facing facts.
“Because I think it might upset him unnecessarily,” I said. “I know it’s none of my business, Dot, except I rather like him.”
Dottie pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead.
“Pour me some champagne, will you, Sid?” she said. “That’s right. Thank you, darling.… That’s what I wanted to know. I wasn’t sure.… I’m awfully glad he still feels that way about me.”
“Oh, my God,” I said.
Dottie smiled and took a swallow of her champagne.
“Why don’t you pull up your socks, darling?” she said. “Your attitude really makes me a little annoyed. I wish you’d think about me just a little, Sid. Look at me. Can’t you—a little?”
We both looked at each other for a moment without speaking.
“Listen, Dot,” I said, “what else have I been doing?”
“Really, Sid,” Dottie said, “you haven’t really thought about me for years. If you had you’d know how little I really have in my life. I don’t mean materially. To hell with material things! I’m pretty sick of materialism.”
“Since when did you begin getting sick?” I asked.
“All right,” Dottie said, “be nasty if you want to, but at least you might try to think of me. I know you’re fond of me—don’t say you aren’t. Damn it, I was thinking of you the other night and I ended up by taking a Nembutal.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said, “don’t get me mixed up with Mel Goodwin.”
“Don’t be so pleased with your own humor,” Dottie said. “I wasn’t thinking of you in that way. I was only thinking you have everything I’ve always wanted. You’re married, you have a home and children.”
“A child,” I said, “not children.”
“All right,” she said, “a child, and you don’t deserve to have one. You don’t know what it means.”
“Well,” I said, “if I don’t, you don’t either. Since when did you start liking children, Dot?”
Suddenly Dottie began to cry. It was something I had not expected, and I was quite sure that she had not expected it either.
“Oh, Sid,” she said, “can’t you see I haven’t anything? Damn it, I haven’t even got you.”
I would have laughed if she had not been crying. It was exactly like her not to have wanted something when she could have had it and then to end by regretting that she had not wanted it. It was like the ending of a rather badly written story to be there with Dottie Peale and to have her sobbing on my shoulder.
“Oh, God,” she said, “oh, God,” and for once I knew she was not using the name of the Lord in vain. I could not think of anything consoling to say and I patted her softly on the back.
“Oh, God,” she said again, “I’m so sick of always thinking about myself.”
“Dot,” I told her, “everybody has to most of the time.”
It was curious. She was tired of thinking about herself, and yet this was exactly what she continued doing as she lay against my shoulder weeping.
I found myself recalling a poem of Hilaire Belloc’s in his Cautionary Tales—the one about the mischievous little girl who kept calling the firemen for fun, and finally, when she was actually being consumed by flames and shouted “fire,” they only answered “little liar.” On the other hand, her saying that she had nothing left, not even me, though personally annoying, had a ring of complete veracity, and I was glad that my reaction was close to complacency. I wished Helen could see how well I was behaving under the circumstances.
Dottie was not wholly responsible for what had happened to her. She was the finished product of a new age of competitive women and of a feministic epoch. There were no precedents and no rules in this new competitive arena, where bright girls were taught to invade all sorts of fields of endeavor that were once reserved for men. There had been Becky Sharpes at the time of William Makepeace Thackeray, but they had been creatures of convention, and there were no conventions now. The town was full of Dottie Peales, and female institutions of learning were turning out more of them annually, and the feminine periodicals were telling them what to wear in the way of girdles and nylons, even down to what scents they should select to bring them victory. The town was full of Dottie Peales, and there was no reason for them not to have been confused in their values because they had to get along as best they could and they had no mothers to guide them—or at least the guidance of their mothers was very seldom useful. I hoped she did not know that I was sorry for her in such a detached way, but of course she did know.
“Stop pounding my back,” she said. “I’m not asking you to be sorry for me. I’m only asking you to be kind.”
“Now, Dottie,” I said, “how can I be kind unless I’m sorry?”
“Oh, nuts!” Dottie said, and she blew her nose. “Stop sitting here humiliating me.”
“I don’t see how I’m humiliating you, Dot,” I said.
“You’d never say that,” she answered, “if you had ever understood me at all. If you’d ever understood me in the least, you wouldn’t put me in this position.”
“I haven’t put you in any position, Dot,” I said.
“Oh, yes you have,” she answered, “you’ve put me in the position of making me deliberately humiliate myself, and I can’t stand it, Sid.”
It was difficult to follow her logic, but when I was with Dottie, I was accustomed to having things end up by being my fault.
“All right,” I said, and I could not help laughing.
“Stop it,” Dottie said. “God damn it, stop it,” and then she looked at me and blew her nose again. “Well, what’s so funny about it?”
“I just remembered something,” I told her.
“What?” she asked me.
“Well, it was quite a while ago,” I said, “but I remember that you told me once it was all my fault you married Henry Peak.”
“Well, it was,” she said.
I could not help laughing again.
“Darling,” she said, “I wouldn’t take this from anybody else. Can’t you think of me at all, Sid? Can’t you see that I’m unhappy?”
“Yes,” I said, “but then you’ve never been the contented type.”
Her mood had changed and she smiled at me just as though she had not been crying.
“Darling,” she said, “it isn’t asking very much, is it, to talk to me for a few minutes about Mel Goodwin without act
ing as though I were contagious or something? There isn’t any reason for you to assume this protective attitude about him.”
There was no reason at all, and yet I did have this attitude.
“Listen, Dot,” I said, “why not face it? You’re not going to help that poor guy at all by being interested in him.”
“That’s pretty condescending of you, calling him a poor guy,” Dottie said.
“Well, he is when he gets in the ring with you,” I told her. “He just isn’t in your class, Dot.”
“Why, darling,” Dottie said, “that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all day, not that I understand just what you mean by it”—but of course she understood, and we both sat there for a while thinking in our different ways about General Melville Goodwin.
“Why don’t you admit,” I asked her, “that you had forgotten all about him until he became a figure in the news? Why not be frank about it?”
Dottie sighed, and shrugged her shoulders again.
“Well, I remember him now,” she said, “and maybe I’m just as much of an authority on him as you are. Come to think of it, I ought to be. Oh, Sidney, let’s not be so silly with each other. After all, we’re adult.”
This was a timeworn word in certain circles. By being adult she meant that one could be freed from the trammels of convention and face facts fearlessly and now she was facing them in her own way.
“Darling,” she went on, “I want to try to make someone else in this world happy. That’s one of the rules of life, isn’t it?… And I could do a lot for Mel Goodwin.”
“His wife wants to make him happy, too,” I said. “At least she has a few ideas. Why don’t you try to put your mind on someone else. There are a lot of other men.”
Dottie lighted a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.
“He isn’t happy with her,” she said, “in the way he ought to be happy with someone, Sid. She’s always managing him. He told me so in Paris, darling.”
I could imagine without undue effort what Melville Goodwin must have told her in Paris, and I did not answer.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “and you know exactly what I’m going to say. For two days now I’ve been listening to him telling the story of his life. He’s in a different category from you and me, Dottie. He doesn’t know what is going to happen to him professionally. He’s restless just like you, and that’s about all that you and he would have in common. He’s never had the chance to see people like you, Dottie, and he’s a very nice guy basically. You can’t help him. All you can do is upset him. The only way you can help him is to leave him alone.”
I did not know that I was going to be so eloquent, or that I would feel so strongly, but what I had said couldn’t have been more maladroit, because I had only aroused her interest.
“Can’t you think of anything to call him but a ‘poor guy’ and a ‘nice guy’?” Dottie asked. “But as long as you can’t expand your vocabulary, don’t you think that I’m a nice guy, too?”
“You know what I think of you,” I told her. “No. You’ve never been a nice guy.”
“Well,” Dottie said, “for my money you’ve always been a bastard yourself, and you’re getting to be more of one all the time.”
“Maybe that’s why we’ve always been reasonably congenial,” I said. “We’ve lived in a tough world, Dot. We’ve never been to the Point. We’ve never won the Croix de guerre. We’ve never needed to develop a superiority complex, and we haven’t been in any chain of command. Dottie … aren’t you going to leave Goodwin alone?”
Dottie threw her cigarette into the fireplace.
“No,” she said. “Aren’t you going to talk to me about him?”
“No,” I said, and I stood up. “I’d better be going now. I’ve got to get back to the country.”
“Oh, darling,” Dottie said, “when you’re angry, you’re like a hero in a juvenile, and I ought to know, because we’re printing a lot of them.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, and I thought of Melville Goodwin reading the Old Glory series in the Hallowell library.
“Darling,” Dottie said, “I never said I didn’t like boys in books. Please don’t go away. Can’t you and Helen bring Mel Goodwin around to dinner?”
“No,” I said. “When he’s through with us, he has to go to Washington.”
“Well, he can drop in here on his way, can’t he?” Dottie said. “I’m going to call him up right now. What’s your number in the country, darling?”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“God, you’re a chump,” Dottie said. “You act as though I were going to give him a disease, and I know your number anyway.” She walked over to her desk and picked up the telephone and smiled at me while she waited for the operator. “I want to make a person-to-person call,” she began, “to Major General Melville A. Goodwin.…”
There was nothing I could do about it, nothing I could say.
“At least don’t mention your name,” I said. “Good-by, Dot.”
“At least he’s a man,” Dottie said. “Darling, Helen has improved you a lot. Come here and kiss me good-by.”
“No,” I said, “not with the operator listening.”
“Darling,” Dottie said, “you can’t go yet. You don’t know how to run that elevator.”
It was true that I was not mechanically minded, but I could try.
“Just keep your mind on Mel and forget about me,” I said; and while I pressed the elevator button, I could hear her speaking in her gayest, sweetest tone.
“Mel,” I heard her saying, “Sid’s here and we’ve been talking about you all through lunch. Aren’t you getting pretty tired of it out there with Sid? When are you coming here to see me and tell me how you won the war …?”
I had not known what button to push, but at least the car started downward. Actually I had pressed the wrong one, and when the doors opened automatically, I found myself on the floor above the hall with the massive dark oak staircase almost in front of me. I had a glimpse of the Peale parlor with its carved Italian tables, and its gigantic pieces of tapestry-covered furniture, and also of the gold motif of the music room, and the dark splendor of the dining room with its wall of heavily framed Fragonard school pictures. My footsteps made no sound on the Oriental runners. I might have been in the enchanted castle of an old Gothic romance or even Ulysses in Circe’s palace. I wanted to get out of there and Dottie must have rung some sort of bell, because the butler was standing at the foot of the staircase with my hat and coat.
“I got off on the wrong floor,” I said.
“That’s all right, sir,” Albert answered. “I can turn on the lights if you would care to glance at the pictures.”
“Thanks,” I said, “some other time. I’m in a hurry now.”
I wanted to get out of there. I was glad to be back in the clear sunlight of the October afternoon, and even Williams and the studio Cadillac seemed like very old friends.
“We’ll go home now, Williams,” I said.
I told him not to mind the robe, but still he wrapped it around my knees because, as he said, the air was sharper in the afternoon. He was not my chauffeur, strictly speaking, but at least he was not Dottie Peak’s chauffeur. Williams was an excellent driver, and I felt entirely secure speeding along the West Side highway well ahead of the rush hour. Nevertheless I was thinking of a Grant Wood picture I had seen once when Helen had taken me to an uptown gallery—a picture of a car and a truck moving swiftly toward inevitable collision on a winding road, and I thought of the impending doom of Melville Goodwin. All the years of training and conditioning that had formed Melville Goodwin had taught him how to throw the Silver Leaf Armored into combat but not how to cope with Dottie Peale. Her problems had become grotesque, and I was safe from them and there was no longer the old reality to her tears or piety or wit, but I was deeply worried about what she could do to anyone like a Regular Army general who u
nderstood troops. I had never thought until then of Mel Goodwin as a classically tragic figure whom the fates were conspiring to destroy. I thought of him in the garden just before Camilla had asked me suddenly about Samson and Delilah. He was one of those Samsons ready and waiting for some Delilah to give him a haircut, and Dottie Peale was just the one to do it. Melville A. Goodwin was going to get his hair cut, and medals and stars and clusters would not help him. He had killed his lion and had carried away his own gates of Gaza, but he was going to get his hair cut. There would be no light or heavy weapons to help him now that Dottie wanted to do something for him. The Philistines would be upon him and he would not even know that the Philistines were there.
When I reached Savin Hill, they were still at it in the library. The General was still talking to Phil Bentley, and Miss Fineholt was at the desk with her notebooks, and Colonel Flax was listening.
“Hello, Sid,” the General said. “It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, that Sid can bring himself to go away and see pretty widows in New York when they’ve been taking pictures of me all afternoon.”
“I thought it was about time to call in the photographers, Sid,” Phil Bentley said. “We’re getting this thing pretty well cleaned up. We ought to be through by tomorrow.”
Melville Goodwin shook his head impatiently.
“I don’t know why we should have taken up all last evening and this morning with this stuff between two wars.”
“It’s very interesting to me,” Phil Bentley answered. “Nobody ever knows anything about army officers in peacetime. They all go underground.”
“Listen, son,” General Goodwin said, “we have our work and our wives and kids and problems, just like everybody else. How about it, Flax?”
“That’s right, sir,” Colonel Flax answered. “The General is absolutely right. I hope you’ll remember to make that point in the profile, Mr. Bentley. Damn it, service people are just like other people.”
XXII
Brave Days on Officers’ Row
General officers were not what you would call public characters in the sense that Hollywood stars, ball players, pugilists, district attorneys, channel swimmers or nominees for the Presidency were—unless there was a war. Then they appeared unheralded out of nowhere, and suddenly parents, sisters, sweethearts and even the GIs themselves wanted to be reassured about them. They wanted to be told that generals had been fun-loving, mischievous boys, who had led a good honest American life, and to know that they loved jokes, children, dogs and football and had a few good healthy hobbies. Granted that they were military geniuses, it was important to know that they had the common touch. In Public Relations you could get their records from the files but these were not enough. You could see your man through the Point and perhaps you could find someone who could tell a funny story about him when he was a plebe. You could trace his career in some subordinate capacity in World War I, but after World War I his trail vanished into such a maze of technical notations that it finally disappeared from view. There were no large-scale maneuvers or big parades under peacetime appropriations to keep the army in the public eye. The army was simply scattered all over its real estate in almost identical barracks.
Melville Goodwin, USA Page 36