Love & Mrs. Sargent

by Patrick Dennis

  A man’s voice, loud and urgent, burst in. “We will return to Memory Movie Matinee after this brief message: Feel a cold coming on? Feel head-achey, irritable, all run down? Don’t wait until a pesky cold gets you down. Get Hay-Spray today. Yes, folks, Hay-Spray, that amazing new nasal spray containing . . .”

  Dicky reached out and pressed the remote control button. The room was quiet. Glassily, he stared at the television screen. A chesty young man appeared, stripped to the waist. His face indicated extreme agony. Silently, violently, he sneezed. Suddenly his skin seemed to melt away and Dicky was treated to a sort of X-ray image showing the unfortunate young gentleman’s sinuses, his inflamed throat, his lungs—all filled with a terrible, dripping, sludge-like mucous. Then a dainty hand wearing a prop wedding ring as wide as a watchband held out a plastic spray bottle of Hay-Spray.

  Dicky lifted his glass and looked into the vodka. It was a welcome change. He had heard the commercial so many times that he knew it by heart. He knew, for example, that Hay-Spray had been developed in the laboratories of a world-famous nose and throat specialist; that it had brought welcome relief to millions of hay fever and cold victims; that its soothing, medicated film went to work on all eight sinus cavities as well as delicate membranes of the throat and lungs. From the corner of his eye he saw Hay-Spray permeating the nooks and crannies of the model’s head and torso. Dicky knew that Hay-Spray was hell on bacteria and he watched the silent television screen where a lot of spermatozoic-looking little squiggles were being mowed down by a single whish of Hay-Spray. He knew, too, that in a recent independent survey, three and a half doctors out of every four recommended Hay-Spray and he knew that he would next see the young model, by now wearing a white shirt and a dimpling boyish grin, tying his necktie jauntily while the owner of the delicate hand would be saying, “Darling, shouldn’t you be in bed?” Dicky took another swallow of his drink and turned the sound back on. “In bed?” the handsome young model was saying. “Not on your life! Thanks to amazing new Hay-Spray, I could lick my weight in wildcats!”

  Dicky heard the door of the tool shed open. He sat up with a start. “M-Mother?” he said, squinting through the gloom.

  “No, Dicky. It’s Allison.”

  “And now,” the television set blared, “to return to Act Seven of todays Memory Movie Matinee, She Paid the Price, starring lovely. . . .” Dicky reached out and turned off the set. The room was in darkness.

  “Writing in Braille these days?” Allison asked as she moved around the room turning on lamps.

  “I was just thinking,” Dicky said, getting unsteadily to his feet.

  “Thinking about She Paid the Price? That must have been a very profound thought since the movie was made before either of us was born.” She pressed a hidden button and a walnut panel slid majestically across the television screen. “I don’t know how you can watch that stuff, Dicky—you, the intellectual of the family.” Her voice was slightly tinged with sarcasm. It had always taken Allison and Dicky just a little time to warm up; a guarded moment or two of lofty self-assertion before they relaxed and admitted to themselves how very dependent they were upon one another. “Mind if I sit down in this gracious model room, or am I interrupting a cosmic moment in the writer’s. . . .”

  “Oh, come off it, Allie. Sure, sit down. Drink?”

  “No thanks. I have to sparkle tonight—as usual.”

  “Well, I hope you won’t mind if I do.” Dicky slid back the jalousies that concealed the bar from the rest of the room. He reached in, grasped the Smirnoff bottle and inverted it over his glass. The vodka gurgled up to the rim of the glass and a bit of it splashed over and onto the walnut Formica of the counter top.

  “Dicky!” Allison said. “Do you think you should?”

  “I’m practically certain.” Dicky bent over and sipped from the brimming glass with a slight slurping noise. It was more drink than he really wanted—too much and too strong—but it was the end of the day and the end of the bottle and he liked the two to coincide. That was so neat, so efficient, so methodical. Picking up the glass, he stumbled slightly and vodka splashed onto the blue tweed sofa.

  “Dicky!”

  “Have no fear. Colorless, odorless, will not stain fine fabrics, cannot be detected on the breath. Sure you won’t join me? I have other things—scotch, bourbon, brandy, perhaps a pretty pousse cafe?”

  “Dicky, how many has it been? Four? Five?”

  “About that,” he said evasively, “who counts?”

  “Don’t you think it might have some effect on your writing?”

  “Ha! Look at De Quincy, Scott Fitzgerald, Thorne Smith. . . .”

  “Yes, they’re all dead.”

  With a certain sozzled grandeur, Dicky crossed the room, opened the bottom drawer of the desk and dropped the empty bottle in. It struck one of the others and shattered.

  “Dicky!” Allison said, running to him, “did you cut yourself. . . ? Oh, Dicky! All those empty. . . .”

  “My graveyard,” he said, kicking the drawer shut. “Please show a little respect for the dead. Blow ‘Taps’ or something.” He lost his balance and lurched against his sister.

  “Dicky! Stop it!” Allison said sharply.

  “I’m sorry, Allie.” He sat down abruptly and wondered why he was so much drunker today than most days. Of course there had been about three inches left in yesterday’s bottle. “It must have been the wine jelly with lunch,” he said.

  “Just how long have you been doing this?”

  “Guess.”

  “I—I think I can. I first began to notice that you were, well, you weren’t like your usual self last spring, just after Mother’s publisher accepted your book.”

  “Ah yes. Good old Boysen Berdell Associates. Daddy’s publisher, Mummy’s publisher and now Baby’s publisher. It’s downright incestuous. Sic semper Sargentis! If only you could marry Mr. Berdell.”

  “He’s already married.”

  “Right again! Let’s see now, little lady, you’ve already won Dr. Eliot’s Vive Foot Shelf bound in genuine simulated leather, a lifetime supply of melba toast and ten gallons of Tabasco sauce. Now, young lady, would you like to try for the bathmat made of real human hair?”

  “Dicky. . . .”

  “Remember, ladies and gentlemen, none of our contestants have been coached or prompted in any way. The questions are all buried in Fort Knox under the personal guardianship of the Secretary of State. But this charming young minx seems to know all the answers. Yes sir, folks, here is lovely Allison Sargent, recent graduate of Roycemore School and glittering debutante of Chicago’s brrrrrrilliant social season. Now, this question is in sixteen parts. Ready? First. . . .”

  “Dicky, this isn’t awfully funny, you know.”

  “Perhaps, You’re, always right, anyhow. The student of the family. Good at names and dates. . . .”

  “Dicky. It must be wonderful to have a big New York publisher take your novel. I don’t blame you for celebrating. But to drink for six. . . .”

  “Celebrate? Are you out of your little pink mind? I wouldn’t wipe my ass on the best page of the whole God-damned novel.”

  “Dicky!”

  “Well, what did you think of it?”

  “What did I think?”

  “Yes. Here, I’ll pour us each a drink and we’ll sit down and have a bit of Good Book Talk. Our very own literary cocktail party.”

  “No, Dicky.” Allison took the drink from him, carried it to the tiny kitchen and poured it into the sink.

  “Hey!”

  “Instead of a cocktail party we’ll have a Kaffee Klatsch. Do you have any coffee out here?”

  “How the hell would I know? I suppose so. That faggoty designer put in everything except a missile base. Why shouldn’t my books be brilliant? I’ve got everything a writer needs, a Silex, a Toastmaster, a rotisserie, a steam room. . . .”

  “The steam room is a feature you really could use, Dicky.”

  “Never been in the bloody thing.”


  “I found the coffee. You’ve never used it, either.”

  “Good for you! Sees all, knows all. Now to continue our literary discussion: So just what did you think of my book?”

  Embarrassed, Allison spoke into the copper hood above the stove. “Why, Dickie, I. . . . Well, it’s hard for me to judge, I mean you’re my brother and. . . .”

  “And my book just isn’t up to one of Daddy’s. Isn’t that right?”

  “It’s not the same thing at all, Dicky. Daddy didn’t write novels.”

  “That doesn’t really answer my question. I’ll rephrase it: What did you think of Bitter Laughter, Miss Sargent?”

  “Dicky, I can’t be objective about my own brother’s. . . .”

  “Well, let’s say I am not your brother, would you be breaking down the door of the Main Street Book Store to get a copy?”

  “Probably not. I don’t know. I’m not in the habit of smashing shop doors.”

  “Or if your dearest friend were undergoing a general hysterectomy in the hospital, would you rush a copy of Richard Sargent, junior, to her bedside?”

  “Dicky, I don’t know. To begin with, I don’t know how a general hysterectomy would differ from a specific one. . . .”

  “My little semanticist! You should be writing the books.”

  “And something else I don’t know, Dicky, is what’s making you act this way. Oh, you can hold a lot, all right. And you’ve been pretty clever about hiding it. Those window-pane glasses to cover up your soft-boiled eyes. That faint odor of Green Mint Mouth Wash. . . .”

  “The poor man’s stinger, my dear.”

  “And while you haven’t ever seemed exactly, well, cockeyed there’s been something about you that’s—I don’t know exactly how to say it—kind of embalmed. Anesthetized.”

  “Ah, anesthetized. How well you put these things, Allison.”

  “But, Dicky darling, what is it? You can tell me.”

  “All right,” he said quietly, “I will tell you. Ever since I sold that lousy book to Berdell—or ever since he agreed to publish it because of Mother’s books and Daddy’s books. . . . And do you know what day today is, dearie? It’s three days after publication day.”

  “So?”

  “So with my friend here, Pierre Smirnoff, Purveyor to the Czars, I think maybe I can deaden the blow.”

  “What blow?”

  “The blow when Fanny Butcher writes in the Trib something such as like father, un-like son.’ When some big shot in New York writes ‘It is unfortunate that talent, like blue eyes, will sometimes skip a generation. . . .’ And they’ll be absolutely right, Allie. It’s a rotten book.”

  “Dicky. Please don’t. Didn’t Mother say what a clever idea it was to write about going to that silly prep school and the. . . .”

  “Mother can make any idea sound clever. Look at the crap I’m supposedly working on now. . . .”

  “You mean The Grand Tour?”

  “Exactly. Mother can make four Yale kids in Europe sound like a lark—chaperoned by the hearty assistant professor and all the rest of it. Well, it wasn’t. I had a lousy, stinking time and it’s a lousy, stinking book and. . . . Hey, your coffee’s acting up.”

  “It’s not my coffee, Dicky. It’s for you. You’re to drink every drop of it, pitch black and scalding hot. Or else. . . .”

  “Or else I suppose you’ll go blabbing to Mother.”

  “Why should I do that? Poor Mother’s got troubles enough.”

  “What’s she got to worry about?”

  “Only that some reporter from Worldwide is moving in with us in about half an hour. That’s all. Well, I knew I could count on you. You’ll make dandy copy!”

  “Oh, Jesus!” He held his head in his hands and moaned.

  “Now, listen, Dicky,” Allison said, taking him by the shoulders, “you can’t let Mother down this way. Not after all she’s done for you. Here, start getting undressed.”

  “What for?”

  “Today’s the day you can break in that steam room. Lift your rear, please, so I can get these pants off you.”

  “Miss Sargent! Have you no delicacy? Hey, quit!”

  “I’ve seen you naked ever since I was born. You’re no treat to me.” She yanked his chino trousers off and tossed them on the sofa. “Now get the rest of your things off while I try to start this pressure cooker.” Allison slammed into the bathroom. A second later a huge brown bath sheet flew out. “Here, wrap up in this. I don’t want you catching cold, either. Have you got any aspirin or something like that?”

  “I have something much better—my Happiness Pills.”

  Allison appeared at the bathroom door. “Oh, Dicky, you’re not taking something, too. I mean like. . . .”

  “Only Ritalin, child. A harmless, non-habit-forming little yellow pill that sharpens the senses, speeds up the reactions and makes one a stimulating companion at dinner.”

  “Then take two. Come on. I’ve got a fine head of steam going.”

  Allison tidied the room, laying out the window-glass spectacles, the clothes her brother had just removed. While he moaned and groaned in the steam room, she emptied the ashtrays, washed his glass, turned off the flame under the coffee, emptied the ice bucket with a clattering of cubes.

  “For God’s sake,” her brother yelled over the hissing of the steam, “isn’t this enough? I feel like a plum pudding. I can’t stand any more.”

  “All right, Dicky. Now turn on the cold water. Not hot, not warm, but cold, and stay under just as long as you can hear it and then a little longer. Then have another cup of coffee and come straight to Mother’s office. Floodie’s all alone in there acting like a. . . .” Dicky’s roars of anguish drowned out the rest of her instructions. She turned off the light in the kitchen and closed the shutters.

  “Don’t be long, Dicky,” she called. “Please.”

  “I’ll be right along, Allison. And thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it, Dicky.”

  “Hey, Allison?”

  “Yes,” she said wearily.

  “You know what?”

  “No, what?”

  “I was just thinking: You’ve really got it made. Nothing to do all day. No chapters to write and rewrite. Just go around to dances and parties and be popular until some sap takes it into his head to support you, forever and ever. Boy, that must really be the life.”

  “Yes, Dicky,” Allison said. “It’s really the life.”

  IX.

  To Sheila’s dismay, the cluster of sleeve-pluckers lurking at the door of the hotel was thicker than usual. There they were, timidly importunate, volubly tongue-tied, lying in ambush to trap the lion.

  Sheila recognized the standard brands and dealt with them accordingly. There had been the garrulous old biddies who spoke to her only so that they could claim to know—”that is, I’ve met”—Sheila Sargent.

  Four women had thrust out copies of her books to be autographed. One of them had brought along three, each to be inscribed to people whose names seemed to be composed entirely of consonants.

  “Would you mind spelling that for me?” Sheila had said. “I’m one of the worst spellers in. . . .”

  “Oh, I’ll betchure not, Miss Sarjint. It’s to Mr. and Mrs. Vilhjalmer Bjornqvist. That’s B-J-O-R-N-Q. . . .”

  The fourth had proffered an elderly twenty-five cent edition, its cover limp and dog-eared, its yellowed pages all but falling to the floor.

  A merry old soul had said, “I’m sure you don’t remember, but Mr. Harrington and myself had the pleasure of meeting you and your late husband at the Notre Dame-Army game in 1938.”

  Sheila hadn’t the faintest recollection, but she had a genius for thinking on her feet, for talking a lot and saying little, for taking a safe gamble and for tossing the conversational ball right back and giving the pitcher a chance to send a nice, slow one over home plate. Army-Notre Dame would have meant November; November would have meant cold weather and the woman had already announced her name. At least she d
idn’t look like the sort of woman who would be living in flagrant concubinage with a man named Harrington.

  “But of course I remember, Mrs. Harrington. I nearly froze to death. Do you still have that wonderful coat?” Sheila didn’t imagine that the woman could have appeared at the stadium in a dimity dress, nor had she expected that her last remark would have struck quite such a response.

  “Oh, that old raccoon coat. Well, it’s so awful looking I don’t blame you for remembering. And you know the runny thing is I still do have it. I wore it to Marymount, then my daughter at Mundelein and now my granddaughter. It’s just a disgrace to look at but for football games. . . .”

  Sheila had fast footwork and she knew enough to keep moving when she was in a crowd like this one. “You’re absolutely right. There’s nothing wanner than an old raccoon and, for football, nothing smarter! I still envy you. And it was marvelous to see you again.” With that she was on the sidewalk, leaving Mrs. Harrington pink and purled with pride and pleasure. After all, was there a prison sentence attached to making another woman feel that she was more than a forgotten face in the crowds

  The door of the Lincoln was open, Taylor standing in the lordosis position he equated with Military Bearing. Sheila was just a step from solitude, silence and a cigarette when the last of the ladies caught her.

  “M-Mrs. Sargent, I wonder if I could. . . .”

  “Yes?” Sheila said, beaming.

  “Well, you see this—this friend of mine has this husband that drinks and. . . .”

  Sheila took in the woman with a practiced eye. Her ear had already told her quite enough. From time to time she received letters inquiring about abortions—rarely for the person who signed the letter, but always for A Friend. “A friend of mine has gotten a girl in trouble and as he is a married man. . . .” “A friend of mine has discovered that she is pregnant and, as she is not married. . . .” Instinct told Sheila that this woman was speaking of her own husband and was not clever enough to say “My sister’s husband,” or “My daughter s husband “