During spring vacation Proctor got a ride as far as El Paso with a Texas junior, and Lundgren decided to put in the time at Jackson Hole. His uncle from Long Beach, the Army colonel, drove him north to Salt Lake City, from where he sent me a postcard with a little bag of salt.
The first three or four days of vacation I spent in bed. I’d get up in the morning and go for the mail, as if I expected something, then come back to bed and read The Bridge of San Luis Rey. One morning I had a card from Proctor, who said he was sailing from New Orleans, and near the end of vacation I had a card from Lawrence. It showed a bullfighter, named Belmonte, down on one knee in the bullring, staring at the bull. It had been mailed from Spain, was signed Lawrence, and on the back it said:
This is no bullshit, old man.
Over the following weekend I packed my books in cartons, which I left in the basement of the dorm, and got off a letter to Mr. Conklin, the Lindbergh man. I said that I was now prepared to take the hop to Paris, or anywhere else. I also wrote a letter to the dean of men, which I planned to mail when I got to Paris, and three days later I heard from Mr. Conklin, Special Delivery. He enclosed a cashier’s check for five hundred dollars and said he would like to see me later, if I made it.
I put the five hundred into traveler’s checks, applied for a passport, which I arranged to have sent to me in New York, and to put in the time as well as save a little money I bought a bus-trip ticket that would take me through New Orleans on the way.
In New Orleans I wrote a letter to my mother, enclosing a postcard for Arlene Miller, that I mailed in Times Square the night before I sailed. I told them both that I would send them a good assortment of foreign stamps.
FOLEY: 10
“I think it’s cooler back here,” Lou Baker said, and as they entered the room, dappled with reflected sunlight, it crossed Foley’s mind that there had been no mention of Lawrence. Not once. He stopped, raised his empty glass, and intoned, “ ‘And the sun is unmentioned but his power is amongst us.’ ”
“Let me give you a refill, old man,” said Proctor.
“I like it,” said Mrs. Pierce, inhaling the sunset. “Don’t you really like it?”
“He’s like a mole,” said Lou Baker. “You wait. The first thing he’ll want to do is blow out the candles. Then he’ll want to know if the shade on the lamp can’t be tipped the other way. Then—”
Peering around quickly, she caught Foley’s eye. Nobody listening. Mrs. Pierce had followed the rays of sunset into the bathroom. One thing to say for Baker, Foley thought, without an audience she shut up. Like a clam. Watched her go into the kitchen, poke something.
“Here you are, old man,” said Proctor and handed Foley his glass.
Foley placed it on the floor, near the wall, and dropped down on the rumble seat. Seat dated from the summer of ’32 when Lou Baker drove Model A coupe to California. Left springs with Foley so she could get into rear of car. Wrecked car near Flagstaff. Dozed off. Blamed it on sudden swirl of dust in the road.
“If anyone had told me,” Mrs. Pierce said and stepped out of the bathroom with her jacket off. Moment she set eyes on Foley began to finger the belt line at her waist.
“If anyone had,” Dickie said, “you wouldn’t have come.” He reared back, sucked the air through his nose, and as she stared, fascinated, he flexed the wings of the nostrils.
“Well, now I never—” she began.
“It’s nothing,” said Dickie, “purely a matter of several thousand years’ inbreeding.”
Mrs. Pierce made her way around him to the kitchen door. Dickie raised his left arm, balanced the drink on his elbow, then removed a silver case from his pocket, flipped it open, removed a cigarette, lit it with the case lighter, and let the smoke curl from his nose. It rose to cloud the right eye, but he creased his left. Style, Foley thought, Look, Ma, I’m dancin’, Babe Ruth tapping the dirt from his cleats with bat handle, and summer nights full of swing creaks, citronella, and Magnavox horn strains of Paul Whiteman’s music, blowing along the North Shore like the flags on the excursion boats. With Richard Livingston the III, hot from the Charleston, cooling off in the breeze that lapped along the pilings, tickling the palm of the girl in the hipless dress whose hand he held. Apple-cheeked, Arrow-collar, jazz-age playboy, knight at arms but not so palely loitering, blasé with life, breeding, and rumble-seat wit—You know the orange juice song? Now don’t tell me, let me guess. Orange juice sorry you made me cry! And she was. Invariably she was.
“Sauce Livingston,” Dickie said, peering into the kitchen, “add pinch of barbital, stir, baste lightly under sunlamp.”
Foley looked around for Proctor, saw him between french doors on the balcony. Old man’s stance, one flippered hand at the rear, stooped so bad he looked a little arthritic, but scar along jowl not so noticeable. Part of the general erosion. Bedrock seam in his face. And still the limp, the gait with the stutter, small chip, fleck in the record dated Xmas, 1927.
“I really think it’s too small,” Mrs. Pierce said in answer to something she had heard in the kitchen. “Don’t you think the world has gotten too small, Mr. Proctor?”
Probably thinks he is lonely, Foley thought. Wants to draw him into party, drain off his sorrows.
“I guess it is a small world, Mrs. Pierce,” Proctor said, a proper smiling answer for children. Way he was stooped, eyes were naturally always on the floor. Look of animal almost human when he glanced up.
“When the world is so small,” Mrs. Pierce continued, feeling that her point had been lost on Proctor, “when it’s so small there doesn’t seem to be room for a simple difference of opinion—”
“Suppose we leave him out of it,” Lou Baker said, coming into the room with a bottle and a corkscrew. She looked at Proctor, but he seemed abstracted, so she turned and gave the tool to Foley.
“I don’t think I did mention him—did I?” said Mrs. Pierce and looked to Foley for confirmation.
It was Proctor, however, who said, “He who dreams of a woman and does not lay with her shall be charged with a sin.”
“Whether we mention him or not,” Mrs. Pierce said, holding fast to a practical subject, “I just want to say that Mr. Proctor gave as good as he got.”
“I would say he gave sterling for plastic,” said Dickie and gave the coonskin hat a quarter turn left.
“That’s what I really meant to say,” Mrs. Pierce replied.
“The kid has brains all right,” said Dickie, as if Proctor were not present.
“If everybody had brains like that,” said Mrs. Pierce, “there would soon be an end to these investigations.”
“Have to hold them in Soldier Field,” said Dickie soberly. “Nobody but the baby-sitter home to watch ’em.”
Mrs. Pierce got that one. “Do you honestly think so, Mr. Livingston?”
“As I understand it,” Dickie said, “the accused is charged—”
“He is not accused of anything,” Lou Baker said and crossed the room to give Foley the bottle. “He was asked to appear—he was not accused.”
“As I understand it,” Dickie continued, “the charge is that the witness has brains. He has brains. Ergo, he is guilty. Am I not right, Professor Foley?”
“Right,” said Foley, put the bottle on the floor, and studied the mechanism of the corkscrew. It resembled, he seemed to remember, something he had once seen for impregnating horses. Mares, that is. “ ‘Hecho en Méjico,’ ” he read off the handle, and the sound of the words, the pause they fell into, suddenly made him think of tortillas, frijoles, and the sad nasal voices of the trio at the La Golondrina, on Olvera Street.
“From Taxco,” said Lou Baker. ‘‘Isn’t it marvelous?”
Also from Taxco, Foley remembered, was the crate, a little larger than a doghouse, made of sticks bound together with rawhide thongs, containing eight broken plates and a piece of wood described on the sales sheet as a spoon. This was followed by a letter in which Lou Baker said that she was now taking up residence in Taxco, where Rafae
l Torres—a Latin lover with obsidian eyes and uncomplicated passions—had opened up for her a vita nova, as she said. What you won’t understand, she said, is that it’s free of all the goddam complications—and, she might have added, free of everything else after about six weeks. Her next card—a week before Christmas—re-established her residence in New York.
“Like papa show you how it works?” Dickie said and took the corkscrew out of his hand.
“He’s not hecho in the right place,” said Lou Baker. “Hecho en Chicago. Sounds like a tango.”
“You know what Bryan says?” said Mrs. Pierce. “Bryan is my husband, and if I’ve heard him say it once, I’ve heard him say it ten thousand times.” Mrs. Pierce paused, and just a fleck of saliva showed at the corners of her mouth. “He says the dumb ones shoot you, and the smart ones shoot themselves.”
With an effort that brought the sweat to his forehead Foley drew on the cork, heard the pop fill the hollow.
“Voilà!” he said and held the cork up in triumph.
“Put it back and do it right,” said Lou Baker. “Your face is all red. You didn’t follow directions. Directions say pulls any cork without effort.”
She stared at Foley, her lips parted, her eyes shouting, Say something. For Christ’s sake, can’t you say something!
“If someone will kindly present me with a decanter,” Foley said, “I will decant.” He held the bottle to the light, rocked it slightly, then sniffed the cork. “There was a mouse in the cask.”
“What you say, madame,” said Dickie, turning to Mrs. Pierce, “interests me very much.”
“Well, I know it interests Bryan,” Mrs. Pierce said. “He says there’s hardly a week that somebody doesn’t—”
“I’m awfully sorry,” Lou Baker said, “to break up this very interesting discussion, but—”
“Seen objectively,” Proctor said, very calmly, “I’m afraid your husband is right.”
“I don’t see it objectively,” said Lou Baker, “I don’t find it interesting, and I don’t choose to discuss it. Shall we eat?” She turned to the tables and lit the candles. On Dickie’s juvenile face Foley saw the unsettling delinquent smile. Mrs. Pierce wagged her head from side to side, a woman accustomed to the arguments of children.
“Just what do you propose to do about it, Mrs. Schweitzer?” Dickie said.
Foley thought that would do it, that would end it, and he pushed up to do what he could, but Lou Baker was still lighting candles, the flames warm on her face. The hand that held the match seemed steadier than usual.
“Serve the lamb hot, the consommé cold, and the wine at room temperature, dear.” Then she turned to them all and said, “Well, let’s eat.”
“If I may interrupt the panel at this point,” said Dickie, sliding the chair under Mrs. Pierce, “to bring you an announcement from Sweet-Bark Dog Food. Mrs. Ida Whiff, of Ridley Park, writes, ‘We had a little dog with a very bad breath till we began to cheat him with Smell-Gawn Puppy Pampers.’ End quote. Stop evading your dog’s friendly lick. He won’t tell you, but we will. Pamper your pet with Sweet-Bark’s Smell-Gawn—”
“All I wish is that Bryan was here,” said Mrs. Pierce.
“Sweet-Bark thanks Mrs. Whiff just loads for her letter, and now we return you to our five-star panel featuring Victor, the mutt with all the answers. Now Victor—”
“I see a paw raised,” Lou Baker said. “One of the mutts in the audience would like to ask a question.”
“Sweet-bark right up,” Dickie said.
Proctor moved the candle several inches to the left, so that he could look at Foley, and said, “What would you say it was, old man?”
“What?” asked Foley.
“The good society?” said Proctor.
“If you mean the goods society,” said Dickie, “we have it. What’ll it be, dry goods or wet goods?”
Lear’s fool, Foley thought, a dog must to kennel: whipped out when lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.
“Sweet as nature’s own armpits,” Dickie said. “Millions of satisfied foul-mouthed users. Ask for Smell-Gawn, yours for three dated carton tops.”
“I could tell you something, but I’m not going to,” said Mrs. Pierce. They looked at her, and she pressed the paper napkin to her face. It came away wet. “I almost forgot that wine was so warming,” she said. “Oh my—”
“We’re on the air now, madame,” Dickie said, “Sweet-Bark’s gold dust is running out of the hour glass—”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you!” Mrs. Pierce cried, and a series of tremors, in waves, shook her shoulders. She opened the damp paper napkin, pressed it to her face.
“We wouldn’t believe what, Mrs. Pierce?” Lou Baker said, and Mrs. Pierce reared back, like a seal out of the water, blurted out, “Tiny—he called me Tiny!” and dropped her head down below the table level, a seal submerged. A bone hairpin fell from her loosening hair to the floor, and they watched the back of her neck discolor.
“He? Who?” Lou Baker asked, as if that might explain it.
“Bryan,” muttered Mrs. Pierce through her wadded paper napkin. “Oh dear me, the poor darling!”
“I guess we’ve all changed, Mrs. Pierce,” Lou Baker said and fingered the stem of her wineglass.
“What you wouldn’t believe,” Mrs. Pierce cried, “is that I’ve got smaller. Back then I was bigger!” and threw up her arms, rocking back on the folding chair. It gave way without a snap, without a sound, except for the gasp she made in going over, and the rattle of the silver and plates on the table she raised in the air. Foley held the table, Dickie went to the aid of Mrs. Pierce. Thanks to the car seat, on the floor behind her, she was not hurt. She remained there, propped upright in her corset, her head lolling on her shoulders, while Lou Baker wiped the tears of laughter from her face. Weaving like a prizefighter’s handler, Dickie fanned the air above her with the small potholder.
“In this corner,” he chanted, “Tiny Pierce, tipping the scales at—well, having tipped them—being expertly handled by Montana Lou Baker, ex-paperweight champ, Bryn Mawr twenty-five.”
Lou Baker said, “Bryn Mawr twenty-seven.”
“Still a master of the little white lie,” said Dickie. He looked around sadly, spotted Proctor, and said, “We will now hear a word from one-shot Lasky—”
Foley was sure that they wouldn’t, but Proctor began, “I’d say the good society—”
“Oh, my God!” said Lou Baker.
“That’s right,” said Dickie, “plus all denominations, races, creeds, colors, notions, and Senator McCarthy. Everyman a superman among equally supermen, so there’s no hurt feelings.”
“Are you a Princeton boy too?” Mrs. Pierce said, peering around Dickie’s legs for a look at Proctor.
“No, ma’am,” said Proctor soberly, “but I was gored by a Princeton bull. I have a lovely cornada, with Old Nassau license plates.”
Lou Baker raised her hand as if to fend off something she saw approaching, then turned the palm inward and drew it slowly down her face. From the pack on the table, not from his case, Dickie took a cigarette, lit it with the candle. When he sucked in the smoke his boyish face had a withered look.
“I have never been so flattered, Mrs. Pierce,” he said. “Cornada Livingston. I like the ring of it.” He let the smoke hang in a cloud around his head.
“I’m ashamed to bring it up,” Tiny Pierce said, “but I—”
“That’s part of the cornada charm,” said Lou Baker. “If you don’t know what it is it is very much better. Professor Foley thought it was an Italian sporting car.” Drawing the fire, Foley said, “I’d heard that Lawrence had hurt himself, so I naturally thought—”
“Lawrence?” said Mrs. Pierce.
“Not the Lawrence,” said Foley.
“I beg your pardon, old man,” said Proctor, “the Lawrence.”
“Charles Lawrence,” continued Foley, “young tennis player. If you followed tennis back then you might remember—”
“Lawrence had a bad horn wound,” Lou Baker said, speaking slowly, with elaborate care. “He couldn’t stand to be ill. He simply couldn’t stand to—”
“This cornada?” said Mrs. Pierce, “you haven’t told me—” She turned to look at Dickie, who said, “Mr. Proctor, madame, is the world authority on bulls, and their droppings. He is the author of the widely unread droppings classic, now out of print.”
Mrs. Pierce turned to Proctor, who said, “The cornada, madame, is a blow below the belt. When it is made by the horn, it is said to be lovely; the man does not like it, but the bull loves it. When it is made by college boys—”
“The bull, madame,” said Dickie, “evacuates. The college boy White Wings swoop down to collect it, analyze it, but come to no conclusions.”
Wetting his fingers on his lips, Proctor leaned over and snuffed out one of the candles. “Cornada Livingston’s analysis,” he said quietly, “is correct. He should have written the book. If he had written the book it would still be in print.”
Beyond the candle Foley saw Dickie’s sweating face. The coonskin hat made him look like a frontier doll. One that would sweat and make water when the frontier dangers appeared.
“I can’t really say,” Foley began, “that the spectacle—” He wiped his face with his napkin.
“You mean the poor horses?” said Mrs. Pierce, then added, “Do I smell coffee?”
“I’ll get it,” said Lou Baker, and Mrs. Pierce went on, “Don’t you think it was the age? Weren’t we all a bit crazy?”
“A bit,” said Proctor, “is not crazy enough.”
“When I think,” said Mrs. Pierce, thinking, “I think we were all too idealistic.”
“Is it idealistic to shoot sitting ducks?” Proctor replied.
The Huge Season Page 19