The 50s

by The New Yorker Magazine

  If Francis had believed in some hierarchy of love—in spirits armed with hunting bows, in the capriciousness of Venus and Eros—or even in magical potions, philtres, and stews, in scapulae and quarters of the moon, it might have explained his susceptibility and his feverish high spirits. The autumnal loves of middle age are well publicized, and he guessed that he was face to face with one of these, but there was not a trace of autumn in what he felt. He wanted to sport in the green woods, scratch where he itched, and drink from the same cup.

  His secretary, Miss Rainey, was late that morning—she went to a psychiatrist three mornings a week—and when she came in, Francis wondered what advice a psychiatrist would have for him. But the girl promised to bring back into his life something like the sound of music. The realization that this music might lead him straight to a trial for statutory rape at the county courthouse collapsed his happiness. The photograph of his four children laughing into the camera on the beach at Gay Head reproached him. On the letterhead of his firm there was a drawing of the Laocoön, and the figure of the priest and his sons in the coils of the snake appeared to him to have the deepest meaning.

  He had lunch with Pinky Trabert, who told him a couple of dirty stories. At a conversational level, the mores of his friends were robust and elastic, but he knew that the moral card house would come down on them all—on Julia and the children as well—if he got caught taking advantage of a baby-sitter. Looking back over the recent history of Shady Hill for some precedent, he found there was none. There was no turpitude; there had not been a divorce since he lived there; there had not even been a breath of scandal. Things seemed arranged with more propriety even than in the Kingdom of Heaven. After leaving Pinky, Francis went to a jeweller’s and bought the girl a bracelet. How happy this clandestine purchase made him, how stuffy and comical the jeweller’s clerks seemed, how sweet the women who passed at his back smelled! On Fifth Avenue, passing Atlas with his shoulders bent under the weight of the world, Francis thought of the strenuousness of containing his physicalness within the patterns he had chosen.

  He did not know when he would see the girl next. He had the bracelet in his inside pocket when he got home. Opening the door of his house, he found her in the hall. Her back was to him, and she turned when she heard the door close. Her smile was open and loving. Her perfection stunned him like a fine day—a day after a thunderstorm. He seized her and covered her lips with his, and she struggled but she did not have to struggle for long, because just then little Gertrude Flannery appeared from somewhere and said, “Oh, Mr. Weed…”

  Gertrude was a stray. She had been born with a taste for exploration, and she did not have it in her to center her life with her affectionate parents. People who did not know the Flannerys concluded from Gertrude’s behavior that she was the child of a bitterly divided family, where drunken quarrels were the rule. This was not true. The fact that little Gertrude’s clothing was ragged and thin was her own triumph over her mother’s struggle to dress her warmly and neatly. Garrulous, skinny, and unwashed, she drifted from house to house around the Blenhollow neighborhood, forming and breaking alliances based on an attachment to babies, animals, children her own age, adolescents, and sometimes adults. Opening your front door in the morning, you would find Gertrude sitting on your stoop. Going into the bathroom to shave, you would find Gertrude using the toilet. Looking into your son’s crib, you would find it empty, and, looking further, you would find that Gertrude had pushed him in his baby carriage into the next village. She was helpful, pervasive, honest, hungry, and loyal. She never went home of her own choice. When the time to go arrived, she was indifferent to all its signs. “Go home, Gertrude,” people could be heard saying in one house or another, night after night. “Go home, Gertrude.” “It’s time for you to go home now, Gertrude.” “You had better go home and get your supper, Gertrude.” “I told you to go home twenty minutes ago, Gertrude.” “Your mother will be worrying about you, Gertrude.” “Go home, Gertrude, go home.”

  There are times when the lines around the human eye seem like shelves of eroded stone and when the staring eye itself strikes us with such a wilderness of animal feeling that we are at a loss. The look Francis gave the little girl was ugly and queer, and it frightened her. He reached into his pocket—his hands were shaking—and took out a quarter. “Go home, Gertrude, go home, and don’t tell anyone, Gertrude. Don’t—” He choked and ran into the living room as Julia called down to him from upstairs to hurry and dress.

  The thought that he would drive Anne Murchison home later that night ran like a golden thread through the events of the party that Francis and Julia went to, and he laughed uproariously at dull jokes, dried a tear when Mabel Mercer told him about the death of her kitten, and stretched, yawned, sighed, and grunted like any other man with a rendezvous at the back of his mind. The bracelet was in his pocket. As he sat talking, the smell of grass was in his nose, and he was wondering where he would park the car. Nobody lived in the old Parker mansion, and the driveway was used as a lovers’ lane. Townsend Street was a dead end, and he could park there, beyond the last house. The old lane that used to connect Elm Street to the riverbanks was overgrown, but he had walked there with his children, and he could drive his car deep enough into the brushwoods to be concealed.

  The Weeds were the last to leave the party, and their host and hostess spoke of their own married happiness while they all four stood in the hallway saying good night. “She’s my girl,” their host said, squeezing his wife. “She’s my blue sky. After sixteen years, I still bite her shoulders. She makes me feel like Hannibal crossing the Alps.”

  The Weeds drove home in silence. Francis brought the car up the driveway and sat still, with the motor running. “You can put the car in the garage,” Julia said as she got out. “I told the Murchison girl she could leave at eleven. Someone drove her home.” She shut the door, and Francis sat in the dark. He would be spared nothing then, it seemed, that a fool was not spared: ravening lewdness, jealousy, this hurt to his feelings that put tears in his eyes, even scorn—for he could see clearly the image he now presented, his arms spread over the steering wheel and his head buried in them for love.

  · · ·

  Francis had been a dedicated Boy Scout when he was young, and, remembering the precepts of his youth, he left his office early the next afternoon and played some round-robin squash, but, with his body toned up by exercise and a shower, he realized that he might better have stayed at his desk. It was a frosty night when he got home. The air smelled sharply of change. When he stepped into the house, he sensed an unusual stir. The children were in their best clothes, and when Julia came down, she was wearing a lavender dress and her diamond sunburst. She explained the stir: Mr. Hubber was coming at seven to take their photograph for the Christmas card. She had put out Francis’ blue suit and a tie with some color in it, because the picture was going to be in color this year. Julia was lighthearted at the thought of being photographed for Christmas. It was the kind of ceremony she enjoyed.

  Francis went upstairs to change his clothes. He was tired from the day’s work and tired with longing, and sitting on the edge of the bed had the effect of deepening his weariness. He thought of Anne Murchison, and the physical need to express himself, instead of being restrained by the pink lamps on Julia’s dressing table, engulfed him. He went to Julia’s desk, took a piece of writing paper and began to write on it. “Dear Anne, I love you, I love you, I love you…” No one would see the letter, and he used no restraint. He used phrases like “heavenly bliss,” and “love nest.” He salivated, sighed, and trembled. When Julia called him to come down, the abyss between his fantasy and the practical world opened so wide that he felt it affect the muscles of his heart.

  Julia and the children were on the stoop, and the photographer and his assistant had set up a double battery of floodlights to show the family and the architectural beauty of the entrance to their house. People who had come home on a late train slowed their cars to see the Weeds b
eing photographed for their Christmas card. A few waved and called to the family. It took half an hour of smiling and wetting their lips before Mr. Hubber was satisfied. The heat of the lights made an unfresh smell in the frosty air, and when they were turned off, they lingered on the retina of Francis’ eyes.

  Later that night, while Francis and Julia were drinking their coffee in the living room, the doorbell rang. Julia answered the door and let in Clayton Thomas. He had come to pay her for some theatre tickets that she had given his mother some time ago, and that Helen Thomas had scrupulously insisted on paying for, though Julia had asked her not to. Julia invited him in to have a cup of coffee. “I won’t have any coffee,” Clayton said, “but I will come in for a minute.” He followed her into the living room, said good evening to Francis, and sat awkwardly in a chair.

  Clayton’s father had been killed in the war, and the young man’s fatherlessness surrounded him like an element. This may have been conspicuous in Shady Hill because the Thomases were the only family that lacked a piece; all the other marriages were intact and productive. Clayton was in his second or third year of college, and he and his mother lived alone in a large house, which she hoped to sell. Clayton had once made some trouble. Years ago, he had stolen some money and run away; he had got to California before they caught up with him. He was tall and homely, wore horn-rimmed glasses, and spoke in a deep voice.

  “When do you go back to college, Clayton?” Francis asked.

  “I’m not going back,” Clayton said. “Mother doesn’t have the money, and there’s no sense in all this pretense. I’m going to get a job, and if we sell the house, we’ll take an apartment in New York.”

  “Won’t you miss Shady Hill?” Julia asked.

  “No,” Clayton said. “I don’t like it.”

  “Why not?” Francis asked.

  “Well, there’s a lot here I don’t approve of,” Clayton said gravely. “Things like the club dances. Last Saturday night, I looked in toward the end and saw Mr. Granner trying to put Mrs. Minot into the trophy case. They were both drunk. I disapprove of so much drinking.”

  “It was Saturday night,” Francis said.

  “And all the dovecotes are phony,” Clayton said. “And the way people clutter up their lives. I’ve thought about it a lot, and what seems to me to be really wrong with Shady Hill is that it doesn’t have any future. So much energy is spent in perpetuating the place—in keeping out undesirables, and so forth—that the only idea of the future anyone has is just more and more commuting trains and more parties. I don’t think that’s healthy. I think people ought to be able to dream big dreams about the future. I think people ought to be able to dream great dreams.”

  “It’s too bad you couldn’t continue with college,” Julia said.

  “I wanted to go to divinity school,” Clayton said.

  “What’s your church?” Francis asked.

  “Unitarian, Theosophist, Transcendentalist, Humanist,” Clayton said.

  “Wasn’t Emerson a transcendentalist?” Julia asked.

  “I mean the English transcendentalists,” Clayton said. “All the American transcendentalists were goops.”

  “What kind of a job do you expect to get?” Francis asked.

  “Well, I’d like to work for a publisher,” Clayton said, “but everyone tells me there’s nothing doing. But it’s the kind of thing I’m interested in. I’m writing a long verse play about good and evil. Uncle Charlie might get me into a bank, and that would be good for me. I need the discipline. I have a long way to go in forming my character. I have some terrible habits. I talk too much. I think I ought to take vows of silence. I ought to try not to speak for a week, and discipline myself. I’ve thought of making a retreat at one of the Episcopalian monasteries, but I don’t like Trinitarianism.”

  “Do you have any girl friends?” Francis asked.

  “I’m engaged to be married,” Clayton said. “Of course, I’m not old enough or rich enough to have my engagement observed or respected or anything, but I bought a simulated emerald for Anne Murchison with the money I made cutting lawns this summer. We’re going to be married as soon as she finishes school.”

  Francis recoiled at the mention of the girl’s name. Then a dingy light seemed to emanate from his spirit, showing everything—Julia, the boy, the chairs—in their true colorlessness. It was like a bitter turn of the weather.

  “We’re going to have a large family,” Clayton said. “Her father’s a terrible rummy, and I’ve had my hard times, and we want to have lots of children. Oh, she’s wonderful, Mr. and Mrs. Weed, and we have so much in common. We like all the same things. We sent out the same Christmas card last year without planning it, and we both have an allergy to tomatoes, and our eyebrows grow together in the middle. Well, good night.”

  Julia went to the door with him. When she returned, Francis said that Clayton was lazy, irresponsible, affected, and smelly. Julia said that Francis seemed to be getting intolerant; the Thomas boy was young and should be given a chance. Julia had noticed other cases where Francis had been short-tempered. “Mrs. Wrightson has asked everyone in Shady Hill to her anniversary party but us,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Julia.”

  “Do you know why they didn’t ask us?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you insulted Mrs. Wrightson.”

  “Then you know about it?”

  “June Masterson told me. She was standing behind you.”

  Julia walked in front of the sofa with a small step that expressed, Francis knew, a feeling of anger.

  “I did insult Mrs. Wrightson, Julia, and I meant to. I’ve never liked her parties, and I’m glad she’s dropped us.”

  “What about Helen?”

  “How does Helen come into this?”

  “Mrs. Wrightson’s the one who decides who goes to the assemblies.”

  “You mean she can keep Helen from going to the dances?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Oh, I knew you hadn’t thought of it,” Julia cried, thrusting hilt-deep into this chink of his armor. “And it makes me furious to see this kind of stupid thoughtlessness wreck everyone’s happiness.”

  “I don’t think I’ve wrecked anyone’s happiness.”

  “Mrs. Wrightson runs Shady Hill and has run it for the last forty years. I don’t know what makes you think that in a community like this you can indulge every impulse you have to be insulting, vulgar, and offensive.”

  “I have very good manners,” Francis said, trying to give the evening a turn toward the light.

  “Damn you, Francis Weed!” Julia cried, and the spit of her words struck him in the face. “I’ve worked hard for the social position we enjoy in this place, and I won’t stand by and see you wreck it. You must have understood when you settled here that you couldn’t expect to live like a bear in a cave.”

  “I’ve got to express my likes and dislikes.”

  “You can conceal your dislikes. You don’t have to meet everything head-on, like a child. Unless you’re anxious to be a social leper. It’s no accident that we get asked out a great deal. It’s no accident that Helen has so many friends. How would you like to spend your Saturday nights at the movies? How would you like to spend your Sundays raking up dead leaves? How would you like it if your daughter spent the assembly nights sitting at her window, listening to the music from the club? How would you like it—” He did something then that was, after all, not so unaccountable, since her words seemed to raise up between them a wall so deadening that he gagged: He struck her full in the face. She staggered and then, a moment later, seemed composed. She went up the stairs to their room. She didn’t slam the door. When Francis followed, a few minutes later, he found her packing a suitcase.

  “Julia, I’m very sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. She was crying.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I don’t know. I just looked at a timetable.
There’s an eleven-sixteen into New York. I’ll take that.”

  “You can’t go, Julia.”

  “I can’t stay. I know that.”

  “I’m sorry about Mrs. Wrightson, Julia, and I’m—”

  “It doesn’t matter about Mrs. Wrightson. That isn’t the trouble.”

  “What is the trouble?”

  “You don’t love me.”

  “I do love you, Julia.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Julia, I do love you, and I would like to be as we were—sweet and bawdy and dark—but now there are so many people.”

  “You hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, Julia.”

  “You have no idea of how much you hate me. I think it’s subconscious. You don’t realize the cruel things you’ve done.”

  “What cruel things, Julia?”

  “The cruel acts your subconscious drives you to in order to express your hatred of me.”

  “What, Julia?”

  “I’ve never complained.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing.”