The Puzzleheaded Girl

by Christina Stead

  Strangest of all were her grey eyes. They looked casually away into the distance, taking her far away, or they looked with hypnotic pinpoint intentness into his eyes, as if someone else were there, not this timid girl; someone indifferent, wise, uncaught.

  It was his habit to walk up and down, up and down and go to bed long after midnight. His wife Beatrice was up several times before that with the sickly child. He admired her uncomplaining devotion, he admired her and her mind; but he was irritated by the disorder. He had no sympathy with the child. But his wife had said, “What did we get married for?” This was reasonable, customary. Yet he thought, “If you loved me, you would not need anything else.” “My life is empty,” she would say; “marriage sucks life out of a woman.” She was not happy with the child, but she was busy, her life was not empty; and it seemed to him as if his life were empty. He felt he was not loved and never had been. “She has been very patient with me, since she does not love me,” he said to himself.

  Miss Lawrence always carried books on art and painters, ostentatiously perhaps, to mark that she was interested in better things than the office; but she read the books; and almost every day, Debrett encouraged her. She would listen in silence, as if not quite in agreement; but when he made social comments or deductions, she would lower her eyes or look out of the window. She was polite and yet odd. She lingered too long when bringing papers to executives; at a glance or word, she went out delicately, gravely or even with a slight smile; sly perhaps? She made few mistakes, typed well; if corrected, she pouted. A spoiled and favoured child? A coquette? She rarely spoke to the other girls; liked no one but the senior, Vera Day, who was kind to her. For weeks she wore the same navy-blue skirt; but presently she had a white shirt-blouse as well as the tan, and a beret and a short grey tweed cape; a singular outfit, though she looked neat.

  Arthur Good, who originated the Farmers’ Utilities Corporation, was dark, pale-skinned, middle-sized, slender, a joyous unprincipled schemer who turned out legal and illegal manoeuvres day and night. He saw loopholes everywhere. Arthur was of Italian origin, he had married an Italian girl, had, at twenty-five, already deserted her and was living with a serious French-Canadian girl he would never be able to marry. He was amused at Honor’s delicate dawdling and once or twice ran his hand lightly down her hip and touched her stockinged knee. She drew back, ran out of his office. “Like a young cat, lascivious and scared,” he said, “not for Artie.” As for Tom Zero, he at once realized that she was attracted to him and he was abrupt with her, bored and hostile. He had a fair wife and two small fair children. She was out of place in the commonplace activity of his office.

  “I know where you live,” said Gus Debrett mildly; “I know that street. I was up there only the other day. I had to go to a meeting near there. I looked in at your place but did not see your name on the letter boxes. Are you a sub-tenant? A lodger?” She answered indirectly as usual. She lived alone with her father. And then, in an undertone, a spurt of talk. She wanted to live nearer to Greenwich Village. She wanted to find a room in that district, but everything was dear; she hadn’t the money and she hadn’t friends. She didn’t know where to look. Where could she look? She knew no one but her brother, Walter Lawrence, the painter, who shared, with an actor, an old studio at the corner of University Place. They would not take her in.

  Debrett listened eagerly now. Her brother was a painter who had just made his name by winning a prize and a fellowship, his was one of the new names in the city. “That is why you are interested in painting! It’s your brother’s influence? But perhaps you yourself paint?”

  No; and she didn’t agree with her brother’s views. “He gives himself airs, people are running after him; but he hasn’t a theory.”

  “Are your parents very proud?”

  Her mother was dead.

  “It must be rather difficult for you,” said Debrett in a low voice. “I suppose you have to look after the house and your father when you go home from work.” She did not reply, sitting up straight, gazing out the window and untranslatable feeling flickering in her face.

  “Well, if things are difficult at any time, tell me; I’ll do what I can.”

  She said nothing.

  “I wish you knew my wife; she is very understanding, a great friend to women and she would know how to help you. But she’s at her mother’s at present, as you know,” he continued to smile, “since you write my letters to her.” The girl listened indifferently; Debrett, supple and enthusiastic, began to talk about his wife’s nature, her intelligence and goodness. “She is very loyal and thoughtful; she understands people better than I do…In the meantime, perhaps her friend, Myra Zero, could have a talk with you. We all want to help you.” He talked on and on, quixotically, looking at her with his beautiful dark eyes sometimes gay, sometimes mournful. He paused. After a moment, she said, “My brother talks too much: he has an opinion on everything.” “Well, you had better go now, if you want to.”

  Their business was growing. They added carbide to their commodities and were selling it in quantities in coal-mining districts. They had to buy more office machines, including a Moon book-keeping machine. An instructor was sent along with it. Debrett thought this a good chance for Miss Lawrence to earn more money. She had been with them all the winter; cold spring had come, and she had added very little to her office clothing; the cape but no coat, the same shoes, often sodden, and her hair worn simply as a little girl. Debrett called in Maria Magna, who set the girl to the machine. She learned quickly and got it right in an hour or so. Tom Zero, coming into the office, glanced over her shoulder and said to Maria Magna, “I see the new girl is getting to work on the book-keeping.” “Yes, I think she’ll do it,” said Maria Magna, a little warmth in her voice for the first time. But when the instructor had gone, Miss Lawrence rose from the machine and, going over to Miss Magna, said she could learn the machine, but she would not, she would have nothing to do with accounts, money machines and sales. “I came here to make a living, but I won’t mix in business.”

  Miss Magna bustled in to Mr. Debrett with this story. “Tell her to come in.” She appeared at once.

  “I understand that you’re good on the new machine but you don’t want to work it?”

  “No. I won’t do it.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to earn my living in an office, but I won’t mix in business. I hate and despise business and anything to do with making money.”

  “Do you think it’s wrong?”

  “It is the enemy of art.”

  “And you feel yourself an artist?”

  “No. But I want to live with artists and live like them. I don’t want to be like those earthy girls out there, like Maria Magna and Vera Day. I prefer to die of hunger. Or go away.”

  “But you have no money.”

  “No. But it doesn’t matter. I can get along without money. In the Village, artists get along without money. They all help each other. It’s a different kind of living. This is a terrible world here, everyone working for money, no one working for anything good.”

  “My God, I think so myself. Things ought to be different; and one day they will be.” But, as always, when a word was said that was, however remotely, challenging on social matters, she shut her mind. “You don’t think so?” She raised her brown head in its childish hair and he saw the maiden breasts move as she drew in a breath. “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said primly.

  “Well, you must feel you’re an artist; that you have some other plan for living,” he pressed her.

  “I don’t know; I don’t know what these things are,” she said vaguely. Tears came into her eyes. “I don’t know why I am here.”

  “You’re a good girl,” he said getting up and about to go to her, but glancing at the half-glazed partitions which divided the offices. “Well, go out now and do your work. You do your work well.”

  “Yes, but I hate it,” she said, frowning. She had dried her tears.
“It’s unworthy. It’s not worthy of man.”

  “Man?”

  “Mankind, people. Artists don’t think like this; artists don’t fight for money.”

  “That’s the old Bostonian highmindedness,” he said respectfully. “You don’t meet it often in Manhattan.”

  With a flick of her short skirt she was out of his office. He saw her a few minutes later sitting in the middle of the clerks’ room, a high window lighting her hair, as she bent over the telephone book. This surprised him, for she did not like the telephone and made a fuss about taking her turn at the switchboard; although, as at the Moon machine, she was competent. What was she looking at? He also liked to read the telephone book, pictures, data and conclusions forming in his memory as he read. He was stirred by her curious protests which he felt had a meaning; and he was puzzled. Later on, Tom Zero came to him and remarked, “What about this new girl? Let’s get rid of her. She’s not obliging, she makes too much fuss.”

  “She’s a sort of miracle in our age and town,” said Debrett. “She’s terribly poor and needs money, but she won’t learn the machine because it’s too close to gross money-making. She can do figures but she despises them. Her brother’s Walter Lawrence, the painter, supposed to be one of our best painters, and she hero-worships him. We have to be human. Can you imagine a girl who needs fares and clothes, and probably even bread, giving up a raise on principle?”

  “Well, if you’re interested in her, all right, but I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m a happily married man and I’m only interested in my fellow human being, when I see an ingenuous or a pure soul struggling with the world, man or woman; but it strikes me that women struggle oftener. Men don’t fight moral battles.”

  “Moral battles arise when two sets of ethics clash, they’re not in themselves admirable,” said Tom Zero. “She’ll adjust herself, I suppose. Let her do her work and keep her morals for home. Some buyers are in town today from Market Wheeling, Ohio, the brothers we wrote to. They want to go out tonight, want someone to show them around, the theatre, a nightclub, you know? Will you do it?”

  “No, I won’t,” said Debrett. “You know what they want. They want an obscene show; that’s what these hicks want in New York.”

  “Well, someone has to do it,” said Zero “I can’t. Myra has people to dinner. Scott has an opinion to write and he wouldn’t anyway; Good has his father-in-law visiting, trying to patch up his marriage; and the others are tied up, too.”

  “Well, I’m tied up. Beatrice expects me to be home if she phones. She’s not happy. The baby gets her up at six or four; her mother nags her. I’m her only friend. I have to go to my meetings; but she wouldn’t understand that sort of night out and I wouldn’t understand it myself. Let them hire a guide.”

  “No, it’s a courtesy we owe them. I’d like you to do it. You’re a sociable man.”

  “If that’s the price of my staying here, I’ll hand in my resignation. I won’t do it.”

  “Don’t get heated. Who will, though?”

  “Try the sales staff, try the carbide men. Why not Big Bill? He’s amusing and foulmouthed, known in every whorehouse from coast to coast. They’ll like him.” said Debrett, already laughing.

  “Yes, you’re right. If he’s in the house.”

  He went out but turned as he grasped the door handle and shot a sharp glance at the mild man sitting at the desk. Debrett nodded gaily.

  When he reached home, Zero said to his wife, “Pity we didn’t invite Gus to dinner. He’s lonely. Beatie’s out of town.”

  “Oh, she’s only gone off to her mother at Morristown.” After a moment, she said, “Any particular reason?”

  “How does Gus manage?”

  “Oh, he scrambles for himself, I guess. He’s never home when she is at home. Why, what about Gus?”

  “Well, let’s ask Debrett some night soon.”

  “Wait till Beatie comes home.”

  “All right.”

  “You have to pick your company for Gus Debrett. He doesn’t care what he says. It’s all right with us.”

  “He’s diplomatic in business. He’s a good wangler.”

  “But all his outside friends are mavericks.”

  “Is that what Beatie says?” asked Tom with a smile.

  “Oh, Beatie’s very loyal.”

  He smiled. “I see. Just the same, is that adult? To be always at her mother’s?”

  “Well, it saves Gus money, Beatie says. And I suppose Beatie’s family help them out.”

  Zero laughed. “I’m sure they don’t. More likely, Debrett has to lend them a hundred dollars to eat occasionally.”

  She said irritably, “Everyone knows how the Honitons spend.”

  “Yes,” said Zero laughing. He added “I believe if they both died in an accident tonight, God forbid, the Debretts would have to pay for the funeral expenses and be torn to pieces by screaming creditors as well.”

  “Still, it’s her mother and she wants to be near her,” said Myra. “What’s your drift? You know how devoted Gus is.”

  “Too devoted.”

  “Explain that, Tom.”

  The guests began to arrive.

  The next day Miss Magna reported that one of the visitors from Market Wheeling had been idling in the office, jaunty with the girls, when he passed his hand over Miss Lawrence’s shoulder. She sprang at him and hit him with what she had in her hand—a file. “Send her in to me,” said Tom Zero, holding Miss Magna with his eye. The girl came in softly. “I hear you hit one of my clients,” he said insultingly. She scowled. He looked at her curiously. “Come here.” She approached. He looked up at her, observing her charm. “Why?”

  “No one can touch me,” she said. They were close. His face flashed. He said gently, “Well, go and behave yourself,” and touched her hand with his fingers. She took his oval fine hand and looked into his face. “I’ll have a letter for you later on,” he said. She went. Later he gave the letter to another girl. She seemed to take no notice.

  The Zeros had an apartment on the sixth floor of a new brick building in the East Eighties. Over the sidewalk was a blue awning with the number on it in white. There was a square-tiled entrance hall with palms, behind which two staircases rose; an elevator, a doorman in blue uniform. The doorman sat at a small table near the entrance, his back to the radiator. He was supposed to examine callers and announce them through a house-phone, but he let those pass he summed up as respectable; and so he let pass a ladylike girl who said she was expected at Mrs. Zero’s.

  Myra Zero opened the door. The girl, in a new raincoat and hat, stood there without saying a word, looking at her. “Who do you want?” “I’m Miss Honor Lawrence.” “Yes.” “Are you Mrs. Zero?” “Yes.” The girl stepped eagerly forward and Myra, in surprise, stepped back; the girl was inside. She herself shut the door and began taking off her gloves. “How do you do? You know of me, don’t you?” she said politely. “I don’t know you.” “I work for your husband, Mr. Tom Zero.” “Is something wrong?” “Wrong?” “Come in,” said Myra with reserve, looking the girl up and down: brown velvet skirt, brown kid shoes and handbag, brown felt hat, no cosmetics, self-possessed. She looked around and said casually, “I didn’t think it would be like this.” “No? Won’t you sit down?” She sat and looked around her critically. “I thought I ought to talk to you.” “Why?” Myra said with a slight start. “I have such a long walk to work—my father won’t give me the fare. You see, I have to give him everything. Someone gave me a skirt. He doesn’t think I ought to have money for myself. He says, What is it for? And I won’t explain. I’m too proud. It’s a long walk. Then I have to go back and cook at night. If I go out the door afterwards, he’s angry, very angry. And men do speak to me. I don’t like that. If I could find a room, nearer the office, I’d make some friends. I thought you could advise me. My sister’s married and doesn’t come near us. She sent me this skirt. My mother died years ago. My brother—” She was looking at the paintings on the wall
s, and stopped, eyeing one of them.

  “I’m sorry your mother is dead.”

  “Oh, she died years ago. She wasn’t sick. She was miserable. We used to go and sit with the neighbours. Mother would never ask for anything, and neither did I. She wouldn’t allow me to. When my father came home, he unlocked the door and we could go in. Or we sat on the stairs. But the neighbours asked us in and made us eat something. Father was afraid we would eat before he came home. My father locked all the windows and nailed them down. It was hot in summer and I liked sitting on the stairs. I have to scrub the floor and wash the things with water and no soap—” She told this in an interested tone. She then said trustfully, “I never told anyone all this before. I suppose it’s a bit unusual. But I never knew there were happy families. I thought that was all a lie. I didn’t know there were rich people either.” She once more looked around the room. “Well, you see, he takes my money, to pay for the food and rent he gave me as a child. The others have left home, so I will never be through paying. I must leave. But I don’t know where to go. I thought you might know. Perhaps somewhere here,” she continued, looking out the window towards the other houses. “All the houses in the city! When I’m walking I look at them all and think, There are plenty of rooms in there, or at least someone who could give me a bed. My father takes all my money. He puts it away somewhere and he doesn’t want to buy food. I don’t want to think about it. I never think about it. But I want to leave.”

  “You’re in trouble,” said Mrs. Zero. “I’ll make some coffee while I’m thinking about your problem.” She went out and presently came back. “Do they know at the office that you’re here? Does my husband know?” Miss Lawrence was looking at the paintings. She turned her head slowly, “I asked for the afternoon off.” “To visit me, you mean?” “Yes.” “Did my husband tell you to come here?” “No. But I heard you were a good woman.” “Who told you that?” “They were saying in the office that Mr. Zero is a good man.” “And that means I’m good.” “Yes. He’s a very good man.”