by Philip Wylie
"With me," Yvonne said. ''I'll break my date. You can escort me to the most conspicuous place in town."
"You?" Paul took his first careful look at her. She undoubtedly satisfied him. But he was not altogether persuaded of the plan. It represented merely a new idea--and, as such, offered a small unexpected degree of optimism.
' I'd like it," Yvonne went on. "For a lot of reasons. I wasn't sure I wanted to keep my date. I think you're nice--even if terribly foolish. And Phil bailed me out of a tizzy the other night--so I could hardly do less for a nephew of his."
"What if I did it--acted blasé as hell--and Marcia was just relieved when she found out?"
"Then, Paul," she said, "nothing would have helped, anyhow."
You could see him grinding his jaw down on that one. He wanted Marcia. He was determined to get her back. Into what he regarded as his love had gone a good deal of unrecognized pride. Furthermore, he had undertaken to recover her by what he thought of as logical steps--ignoring his own hysterical condition--and unaware that his brand of logic did not, would not, could not apply in such a situation.
Yvonne knew that to interest men you talked about them. She started, indirectly.
"Is he a good scientist?" she asked me.
"Terrific!"
I told her of his achievements in school; of his appointment. "He didn't quite make Saipan for the first bomb drop. But he was at Bikini. And he commutes to Eniwetok."
"I guess they're born," she said.
Paul took that up. "Born, hell! Made. You have the urge to study something. You happen to get going on math. In the end, you're a physicist."
I argued that. I thought an argument would change the subject from Marcia-on whom he'd concentrated ever since he'd brought up her name on Thursday. "Aptitude's hereditary. You can't take ten kids--even with high IQs--and turn out ten mathematicians."
"I say you can!"
"So does the Soviet. Marx, Lenin, Stalin. Communism depends on the theory that, given the right environment, people will turn out the way you want--since they start with equal possibilities. If that isn't so--communism doesn't make sense."
"It's silly on the face of it," Yvonne said.
"The geneticists think the communist idea is silly," I agreed. "In fact, they know so."
Paul said, "Nuts."
"Do you," I asked, "know anything about genetics? Are you au courant in this particular affair?"
"No. But--"
"Then stay out of it. Good God! Isn't that like a damned scientist?" I turned to Yvonne. "He'd laugh at me if I tried to argue with him about mesons. He's been briefed to the eyeballs on that. But he'll argue with anybody about genes and chromosomes and heredity--because he hasn't bothered to learn the known facts!"
Paul didn't rise. "Okay!" he said. "Okay. So communism is based on that fallacy.
Others, too. We have a few fallacies to contend with, in this country."
"Sure," I agreed. "I pointed one out to the Reverend Socker Melton, who called on me today. Old friend of pop's. Pointed out that, if we understood the importance of our celebrated liberty--we'd have been ready and willing to go to war the instant we realized that the Soviet holdout was going to force a restriction of knowledge. So what? Do our faults entitle other people to faults? Or vice versa? That's merely the maudlin attitude of Joe Doaks!"
Paul looked at the girl with a mock sneer. "Phil hates the common man."
"Hate, hell. I'm about the last friend he has left. Nearly the only one who refuses to boost common man exclusively, so as to exploit him--consciously or unconsciously.
I'm one of the few who still care enough about poor old common man to criticize him.
Everybody else is a planner or a mere booster--presidential candidates--Stalin--Hitler--
just rah-rah-for-humanity boys. I'm still trying to save common man from himself."
"You chill me," Paul said sarcastically.
"Chill you?" I would have picked up any lead to keep this bicker alight. It wasn't about Marcia.
He spoke to Yvonne. "Phil is the champion lost-cause defender of them all.
"Whatever he's for is sure to fail. He has the mildew-touch. My childhood is pockmarked with embarrassments that came from having people read his stuff--or having them barge over to see us and tell my dad that his brother-in-law was off the beam again."
"I can imagine," Yvonne said.
"Phil was out there hollering for rearmament in the thick of the old pacifist days.
He was an air-power promoter when the brass was folding 'em in like eggs in puddings.
He predicted we'd have to fight the Soviet a dozen years ago--and our boys immediately chummed up with Stalin. He went roaring out for intervention in the last war--bucking isolationists and practically cracking his insides when England and France went in without us. The minute the bomb was shot off--he started battling military control and telling the folks the mess we'd be in--and are in--right now. Once--down in Miami--
where he lives--he started a big health crusade. It's a prize pesthole. But that collapsed in his face, too. What he says is usually right--but what happens always makes him look like a louse. If he's championing common man now--well--draw your own conclusion." He winked at me.
' I'm championing the Better Man, these days," I said. "Breeding the Better Common Man. Another noble prospect doomed to fail in our time."
Paul snorted. ''I'm for training them better. Education."
"And I'm not against education--either. But you can't publish a brick. You can't make--"
"Watch it! The chemists can make anything out of anything."
"Take me," I said. "All my life, I've hired somebody to give me lessons in something."
Paul grinned a little. "You are a hard case. We admit that."
Yvonne laughed. "If he means dancing lessons--he's done all right."
"People," I plugged along on the new topic, "ought to summarize their professional, postschool lessons and see what they've learned. Consider me. In New York, I once took boxing lessons. Can't box for a damn. In Hollywood, I hired a strong man to live with me and teach me to lift weights. I got all beefed up--and then got sick in Poland--and the beef evaporated. I took lessons on the piano accordion for a year, once.
I've also taken piano lessons, saxophone lessons, and mandolin lessons. Ukelele, too, in 1919. Can't play a note. Took golf lessons for years. The last few times I played, I pushed 110. Took tennis lessons. Haven't hit a ball over the net in twenty years. Got a whiz to teach me ping-pong--for five bucks a throw. Can't return the serves of children. Studied a couple of foreign languages, besides the ones in school and college. Can't even say,
'Good morning' and 'Thanks' in 'em, any more. And horses! Great God! Hired cowboys to murder me every day, all day, for six months. Went to a dude ranch in the Carolinas and got briefed in eastern saddles. Hundreds of saddle-hours. And what? Hate to ride. Never do, if I can avoid it. Is that all? I haven't begun! Hired some Olympic champs to give me fancy diving lessons. Got going good--and found out in a couple of years I was slowing up--couldn't snap around any more. Had to quit that. Spent a lot of time in the North Woods. Had an Indian for a guide. Learned to stalk game. Learned to shoot--taught by experts. Can't hit a barn. Don't enjoy hunting. Spent a fortune deep--sea fishing. Don't even rate as an 'Expert' at my club. Bridge lessons--God Almighty, the time I've fussed with that! And what? Some days I'm fair--and some days I can't remember through jacks-
-which is how I was when I began! Learned once to identify all the flora and fauna in the Adirondacks. Moved away and never seen the region since. Couldn't tell bluebells from burdock. Well, maybe those. But--"
"Is all that the truth?" Yvonne asked doubtfully.
Paul chortled. "The funny thing is, it is! Old Phil's spent his whole life trying to discover something he could learn!"
"I draw myself up," I answered, "with dignity. As a modem gentleman, I am the complete sciolist. The most-smattered man you'll meet in your lifetime. There is almo
st nothing that I'm not slightly versed in and pretty poor at. Why--I even took archery lessons, once. Got second prize in Palm Springs--"
"Good heavens!" she said.
"I gave him some lessons in quantum theory, myself," Paul continued. "Rotten student. Wants to know the final formulation and what it means--and detests to brush up his calculus first. He can do magic tricks, too--earned his high school pin money that way. He used to spin ropes--jump through 'em. When I was a very small kid, I looked forward to seeing him. Like a one-man circus. Then I caught on--at about four years old.
Uncle Phil was in kindergarten in about every subject there was. Never got any farther.
Just took different primary courses every year."
"In a minute," I said, ''I'll leave you guys to your libel and go back to my serial.
Somebody taught me how to write fiction, along there someplace--"
Paul grinned and said, "Touché--a little."
I felt better than I had all weekend. Paul surely would calm down with Yvonne.
And she wasn't going to loiter with Gwen that evening.
It left me with nothing to worry about except a no longer very sore spot in my throat--and with no emotion to grapple--except a feeling of being lonelier than God.
I went back to my room and turned the lights on bright and sat down and looked at the roses Dave had sent. They were my flowers-for-the-living and, being alive, they should be appreciated.
There they stood--with lighter green stems and leaves than most roses and perilous, pale-green thorns. The blooms weren't quite full blown, in spite of the heat, and they were as large as any I'd ever seen--as long as my fingers. The many lamps in the room highlighted the curved outer edges of the flowers and left only the deep, inner shadows. The petals were as voluptuous as a woman's skin; they seemed to glow, like an aniline dye in ultraviolet rays. A slightly sharp perfume filled the room--a mnemonic of things that could not be materialized, of tea roses in childhood gardens and people who had been nice to you and died a long time ago. There they stood--stiff and radiant and hopelessly beautiful.
I let myself feel them--feel them the way you let yourself feel when the concert hall goes dark and the baton makes its first, swift oval.
They came from hothouses.
I thought of gardens.
All the gardens I had made or cared about.
Roses of my own, on carefully pruned canes standing in New England mulch.
Rented roses on rose trees in Hollywood. I thought of sweet peas--fragrant rainbows along old fences. Of delphiniums--hybrids taller than my head, rockets frozen at the climax of blue burst. Lilies and phlox and poppies. I thought of annuals--of planting the grains, setting out the frail seedlings--and walking the later carpet--a hundred styles of color: zinnias and marigolds and asters, verbenas and lavender, sweet William and candytuft and pansies, nasturtiums, forget-me-nots and primroses. I thought of foxglove, too, and Canterbury bells. For a long time, of hollyhocks regimented against white clapboard--red, mauve, yellow, pink, purple, orange. Then I thought of sunflowers growing like Jack's beanstalk. Spring flowers and the years I'd spent changing a steep rise of field into a rock garden, plowing, bulldozing, wading in a cold brook to collect the great, flat stones, trucking them home, embedding them one by one in the slope--on aromatic rainy days, in the sweet spring sun, and in the hard dirt of October. A wall here, steps there, an outcrop yonder, and a place for a pool below.
Then the little hill opened into memory's bloom of crocus and narcissus, daffodil, tulip, hyacinth and scilla, the creams and livid whites, pale yellows and money-gold hues, and the many blues of springtime, bright, pastel, lilac. The bells and stars and cups-and the spring scent that is the honeyed promise of summer coming.
Next, I thought of the woodland flowers--flowers before men found them. The precious arbutus, inexhaustible spring beauties, violets, the anemones, the lady-slippers, bloodroot, showy orchids standing in a wet glade beside a moss-shawled log, and pitcher plants--red rubber flowers on the sphagnum belly of weird bog. All summer long the rues and cardinal flowers and gentians; ferns--goldenrod, when the clear air cooled--when night's sky throbbed with wings and carried to earth the enthusiastic, strange twitter of migration.
I, too, migrated.
I came to my other home in Florida--the crashing flowers, the trees bigger than houses and bright as a florist's potted plants: poinciana, bauhinia, spathodia, jacaranda.
Extravagant vines--alamanda, yellow as these roses, trumpet flowers as orange as Mexico's sunsets, pandoreas, solandras, and the holy, nepenthic stephanotis. Jasmine.
Glade hammocks with orchids blooming on stumps like swarms of sucking butterflies--
great white wading birds watching and vultures pinned above in the blue, cloud-dappled sky.
Brief glory of flower-upholstered deserts. Alpine flowers in the high, thin, whimpering air with near snow.
And trees. Great God, the trees!
It was, taken by itself, a many lifetimes.
All good.
All beautiful.
A great magic given to the modern man who thought of beauty never. Or who thought beauty was a ship's engine, or the line of high ferroconcrete, or the color scheme of a porch, or--adoring Christ forgive us, a new car! Something he made, anyhow.
This was some of my lives.
Ricky had shared a number of them with me--created and divided the hours and days in the years of the flowers.
Why should I wonder concerning anything, who knew and loved flowers like this-
-why not, in the continual floral celebrations, take all content from marvel itself?
Men missed it, most of them.
Generals detailed insensate GIs to set square borders of ageratum around the headquarters lawn.
Statesmen wore bachelor's-buttons into their deadlocks. Or maybe carnations.
Dowagers and whores--cattleyas: spilled on avid breasts and icy shoulders.
Millionaires decreed. Gardeners dug. Who looked--who saw?
Business executives had something sent up for the office, daily, and never noticed the color or knew the name. Flowers executed and embalmed to add their priceless prestige to dirty bucks.
Schooboys planted beans and watched the halved cotyledons ascend. Then grew and prospered and spent their lives sawing women in half.
At last, tired relatives recriminated while they embedded melancholy metal pots in the green grittiness of graves.
Who cherished?
Who left them alone in the forest?
Who else--like Ricky--knew each plant to be an individual?
I put a call through.
"Hello, darling," said her clear voice.
Oh, look--love--we've had--centuries together-so beautiful, so various--people, yes--each other, yes--the topaz mornings and the amorous unsleepiness--the vague rainy Thursday afternoons--the incandescent, rose-petal you--the touching--we've had--places--
Havana, for instance--this vaulting steel town--but also flowers, dear. I was thinking how long flowers really lasted. Surely, you won't mind, that the end is here? After entire histories of evolution shared by just the two of us? I knew you wouldn't--now.
I said, "How's Rushford?"
"More important--how are you?"
"Sprung-witted. Weary. And pursuing."
"Nearly finished?"
"I should make it--tomorrow. If I hold out tonight."
"Phil! What's wrong?"
The echo--the electrical overtone--that long way.
"Nothing's wrong, dear. Things are picking up. I picked up a blonde, for instance-
-and Paul's taking her out. So maybe his mental health is improving."
"And maybe you should have taken her out yourself! You sound like somebody playing an ocarina in Mammoth Cave; positively sepulchral."
"The heat. Expanded my sinuses. Gives me that hollow ring. Is it hot up there?"
"Eighty-six tonight. The natives are dying of it."
"It must be a hun
dred here."
"I read about it in the Buffalo papers. Gee!"
"It's pretty lurid. They had a veterans' parade yesterday--and I went over to Fifth to watch--and it was damn near immobilized in the asphalt. It would have been funny--
millions of guys stuck there--blocking traffic all winter--!
If you go out just to get a paper, you need asbestos shoes. Any minute, this joint may run like paraffin."
"I think you ought to knock off and go see somebody."
"Town's evacuated. "Wouldn't be emptier if Molotov was threatening to A-bomb."
"Do you feel all right?"
"Sure, Tud. As all right as you can when you're standing by to swim up out of your own sweat, any minute. How's mother? What new mess has Popcorn made?"
She gave me the country news.
"Won't be too long now," I said.
"Miss you."
"Miss you. Been thinking about the gardens. See you day after tomorrow--barring acts of God."
' I'd rather wait longer--and have you sounding better."
"You wait till I get there and I'll do my own sounding."
"Good night," she said. "I love you."
When I hung up, I was quivering.
I'd come pretty close:
Well, Ricky, I am worried. I went to Tom's. Of course, it's probably going to turn out to be nothing. But until I know for sure I feel--the hell with it! I'm ashamed of being this way!
I sat there, taking divots out of myself and not getting on the green.
I looked at the roses again.
They were just yellow roses--big ones--in a glass vase.
I yanked out the bridge table, batted the bridge lamp around, sat, and bent into it.
6
Yvonne came through the connecting doors about one o'clock. I was still bent-bent enough so it took a moment to turn and straighten after she said, "Hello, Svengali!"
She was drunk. Not happy-drunk, or mean-drunk, either. Nervous-drunk.
"Your pure relation left me," she said.
"Left you how?"
"Left me in this condition. Buy me a Scotch."
I sent the word.
She threw herself on the divan, blew down the front of her rose-pink dress--which was wrinkled now, wet under the armpits, city--smudged at the edges--and fixed her fidgety eyes on me. "We went down to the Palais and danced a bit. He's lousy. We started in having a flock of drinks. He talked. Good God, how Wylies talk! He told me the story of his life--including the full saga of Marcia. He got to that later--at the Club Mauve."