Girl on the Best Seller List

by Packer, Vin

  Milo remembered something that had happened once about a year ago. It was while he was reading in the Chronicle of the Abbey of Fontevrault, just after he had made his sculpture of St. Augustine. It was a story about the death of a nun who had after death appeared to one of her sisters in religion, saying, “Understand, my love, that I am already in great peace; but I do not know how to enter paradise without you. Therefore come quickly so that we may go in together.”

  Milo had made the mistake of sharing with Gloria his pleasure in this passage. When he had finished reading it to her, she had let out a hoot of laughter. “You see?” she had said.

  “What’s funny?”

  “It’s all so much crap, Milo! They’re a couple of goddam lesbians.”

  “Of course,” he had said sourly, closing the book. “Of course.”

  “Those saints and all those holy characters were sick, sick, sick!” she laughed. “Jesus! What if I ever wrote a letter like that to Fern Fulton? Do you know what people would say?”

  “No,” Milo said tiredly, on his way to his room now. “That I was queer,” said Gloria after him, “and youknow it!”

  There was no more, it seemed, the simple act of loving without caring why. There was all the fallout from Freud, filtering down on all peoples.

  Behind him Roberta Shagland said, “What are you doing here on a Saturday, Coach?”

  Everyone knew that Milo was at the school every Saturday. Milo knew, too, that she was here for the meeting with the school board, about the change in menu for the cafeteria.

  He said, “I’m here every Saturday.”

  “All work and no play,” she laughed.

  He laughed too, but too generously. He said, “But what brings you here?”

  “The school board,” she said.“We’re going to discuss a change in menu for the cafeteria.”

  “Oh?” He acted surprised.

  “Well, we could use a change.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s the tennis champ, Coach?”

  He didn’t like her to call him Coach. He would never tell her that, but it seemed too nicely to indicate an authority that was not valid. “The young Lewis boy is pretty good,” he said.

  “Do you play, Coach?”

  “Not tennis. I was never very good at it.”

  That was an untruth. At Cornell he had been very good at every sport, but most successful at team sports, or solo sports like skiing. At competitive sports that involved two players, Milo had the unsportsman-like tendency to let the other fellow win, for no reason. He remembered that whenever, during a game of tennis, it was his part to call across the net, “Take two,” he felt like adding, “or three, or as many as you like.” He was good at it, but tennis was not his game.

  Roberta Shagland said, “I love the game.”

  He could not help it that it came to his mind: a picture of her in a white tennis skirt, then beneath the skirt the white sneakers, and above the sneakers — those ankles! He wanted to make it up to her that he had had that thought. He said, “You look very nice today.”

  The change in subject seemed to fluster her. She blushed.

  He said, “I don’t think it will rain, either.”

  It was preposterous to have said that. It made her all the more confused.

  He said, “I mean, for my track meet.”

  “Oh, I know you meant that,” she hastened to say. “I know what you meant.”

  He said, “Perhaps you’ll come to the meet.” There it was — the invitation.

  Roberta Shagland hiccupped. “Excuse me.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Yes, I’d like to see a meet.” A hiccup. “I never have.” Another.

  “You ought to have a glass of water,” he said. “I’m going inside now.”

  “Drink it very slowly,” he said. “That usually does the trick.”

  It was such banal repartee. He felt so sorry for her, and somehow responsible for her hiccups. He was more embarrassed by them, he was certain, than she was.

  But it was she who fled.

  She said, “I’ll see you later.”

  He looked after her and felt a little sad. He wished he had been somewhere where he could have gotten her the glass of water.

  • • •

  He watched the tennis players a little longer. He began to feel more relaxed, not as depressed as before. With the lessening of anxiety, came determination; tonight he would carry it out. He wouldn’t postpone it any longer, he was sure of that. Even though he was sorry for Gloria, even though he had an obligation, so long as she lived, to care for and about her, his plot would deliver him…. Revenge? That was a strange word in the light of what he was planning to do, but it was also strange, he decided, that love and hate should have the same opposite. A lot of things were strange in life, and, as he turned away from the tennis court and walked toward the school, Milo decided that not the least of these was the word “love” in a tennis game. It meant zero….

  Ten

  If Stewie had any backbone, he would probably have been arrested half a dozen times already for indecent acts, but his record was as lily-clean as his long hands always were, and he was too dull to be a menace, so he was an embarrassing bore. Women didn’t even feel inclined to mother him, as often happens with Stewies in life; and men, of course, were nervous around him because he was silly and never immoral, so that they could not punch him in the nose, or report him, or even exclaim, “Goddam fairy!”, because he really wasn’t anything anyone could cuss away in a few words; he was just that suspicious species of male which hangs in Limbo, like an unspoken threat.

  — FROM Population 12,360

  LOUIE STEWART liked it best back in the prescription department of the drug store his mother owned. There it was quiet and Louie could think constructively. But before he went there, it was necessary to sit at the soda fountain, order a lemon Coke, and decide which Thought he would choose. Louie had a “thought system,” to avoid random thinking, which was wasteful. And Louie detested waste. He worshipped order.

  One of the things that drew him back to the prescription department even more than the quiet was the unique atmosphere of perfection. Louie loved the rows of bottles, the motley pills — each one counted, each one assigned, all in their places. He believed evil stemmed from disorder, and one of the reasons hechose his thoughts each day was so that he could organize his mind, and keep it from straying toward wickedness.

  That noon as he poked the straw down between the ice cubes in the glass, he was experiencing the same confusion which had been plaguing him for weeks. His thinking ran ahead of him like a wild and unruly child, and he found himself dwelling on Gloria Wealdon’s novel. It was very nearly an obsession with him now. He kept it hidden behind the pill bottles, the way someone would hide contraband. Already the pages had the slackness of a well-perused reference book; the cover was torn from constant handling, and when Louie was searching for a certain part in the novel, he was able to find it in seconds.

  Louie was long like a big skinny spider, with red hair and the inevitable freckles splashed across his countenance. He was thirty-five. When he was a child, arithmetic had been his hobby, and as he grew, he had expanded it to algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and ultimately, calculus. His ambition, at thirteen, had been to be an accountant, but when he had told his mother, she only nodded and went right on sipping her sweet vermouth aperitif and turned a page of her Henry James novel. He felt ashamed for having said it, and he took it back instantly: “I was kidding. Don’t you know when I’m kidding, Mums?” Then she smiled, put her book on her lap, and they talked about what his day had been like.

  After that, he changed his ambition to a Thought; he listed it along with the others as: The Thought of Being an Accountant.

  When he chose it, he imagined himself bent over the huge ledgers with their long-lined yellow paper, and the neat rows of figures under Losses, Gains, Leakages, and Economies. He enjoyed this Though
t a great deal; he saved it for special days, believing that if he indulged himself too often it would be spoiled.

  Still, he admitted that his mother had been right. He was much better off working in the drug store. One day he would be sole owner, and when he was, he would put into practice some of his own ideas. One he had devised was for doctors’ prescription pads. Their handwriting was so consistently wretched that Louie had worked out a system for pads with the prescriptions already printed upon them. The doctor need only sign his illegible name. It was a deliciously complicated system because of the variety in prescriptions and, in addition, Louie had devised a number system, along with a letter system, which encompassed the most common formulas, as well as directions for their use, such asone a day, two before meals, ortake when drowsy.

  With Louie dispensing these pads to the doctors, it would mean more business, since they could only be used at Stewart Drugs. It was a grand and practical idea, and while Louie wished his dear (vital!) mother no harm, it was annoying to have to wait for the day when he could put it into effect. Meanwhile, he said nothing about it to her, for fear of ridicule. He kept it as one of his Thoughts.

  Louie’s mother was usually right about what was good for Louie. He would be the first to say so, and he would add to it that his mother was usually right about what was good for most people. She had saved the Fultons’ marriage back in 1953, hadn’t she? Louie had been only twenty-six then, but he still remembered hanging over the banister upstairs, dressed in his pajamas, listening on those nights his mother had “talks” downstairs with Freddy Fulton.

  “But I love her, Min,” he remembered Fulton saying. “I am truly very deeply in love with Edwina.”

  “You’re romantically in love.”

  “Of course.”

  “Romantic love is the worst kind, Frederick. It’s ephemeral.” “Not ours.”

  “No, no one ever thinkshis is, but take my word for it. Frederick, you have the child to think about.”

  “I know.”

  “And your wife as well.”

  “The only thing that makes me hesitate, that makes me ask for your advice, Min, is my daughter. She’ll need me. I can’t imagine Fern raising her properly or giving her any kind of happiness.”

  “Your daughter will need you both, Frederick. Edwina Dare doesn’tneed you.”

  “She loves me.”

  “Frederick, romantic love thrives on obstruction; it’s the only kind of love that does. You complained earlier that your business is failing. It is not your business, it’s your integrity. Regardless of how well-kept your secret has been in Cayuta, your emotional involvement is showing. You lost the Lindgren account because you weren’t on your toes. I suppose that’s the reason the bank refused your loan.”

  “I love her, Min.”

  “How much? Enough to give up your daughter and your firm? To break your wife’s heart and spirit? And you know I’ve always admired Fern’s spirit. I hope your daughter inherits some of it.”

  “I’ve never thought of Fern as having spirit.”

  “Confusion doesn’t scare her, Frederick, even when it’s her own inner confusion. She speaks it out, acts it out. I suppose it seems too obvious a way for you, but I like it. Sometimes subtlety is merely a façade to pretense.”

  “I want to thank you, Min, no matter how I decide.”

  “And should you decide to abandon your Edwina, Frederick, I’ll advance you the capital the bank refused.”

  Louie still remembered it all — how his mother had placidly piloted Fulton’s moods from rage to agonized whimpering to self-pity to ultimate resigned acceptance of her advice, advice which was really more of a proposition. There were three conditions attached to her loan: that Fern Fulton was not to know he had been persuaded by her to keep his marriage intact, that he was to convince Edwina Dare to leave Cayuta, and that for the period it took Fulton to repay the loan, the products of his pharmaceutical supply company were to be sold to Stewart Drugs at cost.

  • • •

  After Louie finished his lemon Coke, still without having chosen his Thought, he ordered another. He tried not to, because it was not part of his ritual to have two, but his anxiety about everything lately made him relent. If only he could get it across to Doctor Mannerheim that what he hated about that novel, was that there were errors all through it, misspellings and misprints and words running together! He got a grip on himself after he felt his hands squeeze the glass too hard; his teeth began their grinding, and he thought, easy now, fellow, eeee-zee! In his mind he pictured a mathematical formula.

  Then he felt better. It was a way he had of bringing himself under control — by factoring.

  The soda jerk handed him his second lemon Coke, and Louie spun around on the red leather chair and faced the door. When he saw the woman coming into the drug store, Louie’s mind began to whirl. He held tight to the glass and fought desperately for control.

  After Gloria Wealdon left Stewart Drugs that noon, with the anti-acid prescription Louie had filled for her, she put her car in the lot behind the Cayuta Hotel. She went inside through the restaurant entrance.

  At a side corner table, Min Stewart was waiting for her.

  As Gloria crossed the thick saffron carpet, she felt suddenly sure that her stocking seams were crooked. She was conscious of the hangnail on her thumb, and aware of the fact that even though she had dressed carefully, following all the rules Pitts had set forth, she was somehow slovenly.

  She did not mean to say, “Hi! How’s it go?” It just happened, vulgar-sounding and hicky.

  Min was sipping a vermouth cassis. She nodded and smiled thinly.

  Gloria had tried to fix her features in a disdainful, superior pose, but as she sat down, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror behind Min. She looked like someone with a stiff neck, who had just bitten into a bar of soap.

  “A Martini,” Gloria told the waiter. “Dry, with a lemon peel. How are you, Mrs. Stewart? You wanted to see me about something?”

  Min Stewart managed another wry smile. “There is no necessity to discuss it immediately. How was your New York visit?”

  Another rush of ill-chosen words escaped from Gloria Wealdon: “I think you ought to get it off your chest right off the bat.”

  “Very well, then.” Min Stewart patted her silver hair, touched a long, manicured finger to the pearl choker at her neck, and brought the finger down to rest on the sleeve of her soft, brown wool suit. “I would like to talk about my son.”

  “I just spoke to Louie a moment ago, in the drug store.”

  The remark went unacknowledged. That fact made heat rise to Gloria Wealdon’s neck. What was it about a person like Min Stewart that gave her the right to be so pompous? Why was Gloria Wealdon always in the position of playing the fly to her spider.

  Min Stewart, pausing to sip her drink, said, “He’s under doctor’s care.”

  “He looks good.”

  “Yes, Louie does lookwell. But he doesn’t feel well. Doctor Mannerheim is treating him.”

  “Oh?” Gloria smiled wryly.“That kind of doctor.”

  She imagined that the idea of a psychoanalyst treating a Stewart, from Min Stewart’s viewpoint, was synonymous with a Rosicrucian’s converting Princess Margaret.

  Except for a slight tightening of the lips, Min Stewart was oblivious to any innuendo. “Doctor Mannerheim,” she said, “feels that your novel has upset Louie.”

  “That’s the way the ball bounces,” Gloria said. It seemed that her choice of words when she spoke to Min Stewart made her all the more the clumsy person Min thought she was.

  “Is it?” said Min. “Jay feels that something in the novel triggered a neurosis in Louie. He isn’t sure of the nature of the neurosis; he feels Louie isn’t either. For my own part, I am not concerned with the nature of it, merely with its dismissal.” Min took another sip of the vermouth and set down the tiny, long-stemmed glass.

  She said, “Jay feels it will take some time for Louie’s problem
to be resolved. I disagree with him.”

  “What has this got to do with me?”

  But Min continued: “I believe that psychoanalysis, as valuable as it is, in many instances too readily offers a crutch to people whose problems might be solved quite simply.” She paused, and slipped off the suit coat from her shoulders. Gloria looked to see if there was a label in the lining. Of course, there was not.

  In her novel, Gloria had written about this eccentricity of Min’s. She had not ascribed it to Min, because Min did not figure in the story, nor was there any character with a personality similar to hers. Yet she had described a woman purchasing an Emeric Partos coat from Bergdorf Goodman and requesting that the labels be removed. Like Min, Gloria’s character did not believe she should be a vehicle for advertising.

  Gloria repeated: “What has this got to do with me?”

  Min Stewart smiled the way someone would smile at a restless child. “ ‘Adopt the pace of nature,’ “ she said in cryptic-sounding tone, “ ‘Her secret ispatience.’ … Do you know who wrote that, my dear?”

  “I suppose Shakespeare,” said Gloria.

  “Emerson.”

  “I wouldn’t know about him.”

  “It’s from ‘The Over-Soul,’ “ said Min.

  The waiter brought Gloria’s Martini, and there was a respite then while lunch was ordered.

  • • •

  Gloria’s stomach ache had not left her. It irritated her that she should have this problem again upon her return to Cayuta. Throughout her New York stay, no matter the circumstance, she had not experienced a nervous stomach. She had thought the security she had felt with the publication of her novel had put an end to all that. Yet ever since her visit with Fern that morning the pain had been constant. In a way it was like those dreams she had had while she was writing her novel, dreams of being back at college and steeling herself for final examinations, frenzied nightmares of anxiety that she would fail all her subjects.