Auntie Mame

by Patrick Dennis

  After that she tried to peddle aluminum kitchenware from door to door on Riverside Drive but no one bought any, and on the day the sales manager tried to seduce her, she slapped his face and got fired.

  In July she was the secretary to a shoestring producer—she didn’t know shorthand but she could write fast and peck out rather casual-looking letters on the typewriter. But after three weeks he had produced nothing, including a pay check.

  In August Auntie Mame wrote a Greek drama in thirty scenes with a chorus of two hundred voices. She took it to Annie Laurie Williams, the agent, who said it had some pretty good stuff in it, but somehow it never got produced.

  One morning in September Auntie Mame, after a lot of lying, was a switchboard operator for an insurance company. She nearly electrocuted herself and was home in time for lunch.

  Then came a brief fling in the real estate business. In 1931 everyone was moving out of large expensive flats and into small cheap ones, but Auntie Mame charmed a friend into buying a big apartment only to discover that the building was empty and that the innocent tenant was carrying its entire maintenance himself. She turned over her commission to help him struggle through bankruptcy. Then some trouble with her own mortgage made her wary of all real estate.

  By the time I was ready to go back to school, Auntie Mame was really cornered by her creditors. She even had to undergo the humiliation of allowing the Trust Company to reimburse her for my living expenses.

  Her letters to me read like suicide notes. But in early October, I got a letter that was full of the old fight:

  Darling boy—

  Guess what! Auntie Mame’s going back on the stage again! Vera telephoned and we lunched. So I told her what ghastly luck I’ve been having and we got to reminiscing about the old days when we were both in the chorus of Chu Chin Chow. How we laughed over the house detective in that Indianapolis hotel room mix-up!

  Well, to make a long story short, Vera is opening in a new play and she let me read for a supporting role. I’m to play Lady Iris, an English aristocrat. We’re like girls again, trouping together after all these years!

  But, my little love, this is the best. We open in Boston next month, so that you can see your Auntie Mame’s big comeback on the very first night. Can you wait! Off to rehearsal!

  Vera Charles was my Auntie Mame’s best friend, most of the time. She was never a great actress, or even a very good one, but she was a great star. Vera was what is known as a Woman’s Actress. Matinee audiences adored her.

  Mr. Woollcott once wrote, “Vera Charles is the world’s only living actress with more changes of costume than of facial expression.” They never spoke after that, but it was true. She was always a Lovely Patrician from an Unidentified Balkan Kingdom, there was always a Husband Who Didn’t Understand Her, and Another Man. It was lousy drama, but great theater, and hausfraus in heaving busloads would return, spent, to Montclair, tears of love and envy still damp on their cheeks.

  On the great day of Auntie Mame’s opening, the headmaster let me out of hockey practice and I rushed into Boston, where Auntie Mame was quartered at the Ritz. She was in the bathtub when the bellboy let me into her suite, and I could hear her singing, “I am Chu Chin Chow from Chi-na, Shanghai, China.”

  She emerged from the bath, rosy and warm. “Darling! I’m so glad you’ve come. Careful, you’ll muss my hair. Now, my little love, Auntie Mame wants you to run out and get her some menthol cough drops. I’m just going to lie down in a darkened room with a brisk astringent on my face—a bit of tightening, you know—relax my throat, and run over my lines. Then we might have a bit of clear broth and some melba toast right here before I go to the theater. La, the excitement of being on the Boards again! Vera’s given me a lovely bit of business with her in the last act. Oh, and don’t let me forget my jewel box. I looked so underdone in my ball gown at dress rehearsal.”

  We dined at six and then Auntie Mame telephoned her friend Vera, to wish her luck. We got to the Colonial Theater at seven and I sat alone in the first row waiting until the house filled up with eager Boston matrons, their unwilling husbands, and a lot of irreverent-looking Harvard boys.

  Finally the curtain went up. It was Vera’s same old show. Twelve minutes after the first act had begun, Vera entered dead center in a beautiful beige suit with fisher furs and paused graciously for the wild ovation. The first act ran to formula, but Auntie Mame never appeared.

  In Act Two Vera was superb in almond green velvet, and the ladies moaned orgasmically when she changed into a floating delft-blue negligee. Still there was no sign of Auntie Mame.

  When the curtain rose on the third act, Vera and the Other Man were alone on the stage. The applause for her evening dress was tremendous. A gala party was supposedly in progress offstage. There was lilting waltz music and a babble of gay conversation, and I suddenly heard a familiar voice call, “Oooooh, some more champagne, Lord Dudley!” There also seemed to be a distant and faint tinkle of bells.

  Vera looked a little uneasy, but went on with her speech. “But, Rrrreginald,” Vera said in her incomprehensible Mayfair accent, “tew dew sech a thing—tew desh oaf tewgethaw lake thisss—would be med; quate, quate enchentingly med.”

  “Oooooh, Lord Dudley,” I heard Auntie Mame’s unmistakable voice cry from the wings, “I could dahnce the night away!” Again the mysterious tinkling of bells. It struck a jarring note among the offstage noises of titled people at play. There was a snicker from the balcony.

  Vera touched her rigid coiffeur, and began again.

  “Naow, Rrrreginald, it would be medness. Ay belung tew one wuld, yew tew anothah. We maight faind heppiness faw one brief maowment, but we’d hate awselves—yais, and each othah, tew—faw what we’d done. Naow, it’s bettah thet we paht now; now whale we cheddish this ecstasy we’ve knaown. Come! Haold meh, kiss meh—one lahst tame and thane gudbay. Huddy, Rrrreginald, Ay heah the othahs coming.”

  The music struck up again and a lot of festive couples spun in through the archway. The ringing of bells grew much, much louder, and a flash of red whirled onto the stage. “Ooooh, Lord Dudley,” Auntie Mame called, “you waltz divinely!”

  Vera staggered. The bells rang even more insistently. In a voice that one associates with hog-calling, Vera shouted, “Aaow, come in avery-one! Ay’ve sumthing tew tale yew ull.”

  The titled guests moved forward and stood in artistic groupings facing Vera. By now there was a positive clangor of chimes. The balcony tittered. I stared at Auntie Mame. She looked lovely in a pretty, flame-colored dress, but around her wrists she’d festooned a bunch of bracelets fashioned from large silver Siamese temple bells—the gift of some forgotten admirer.

  Now there was a ripple of mirth in the orchestra and Vera was so startled that she blew up the next line. It didn’t matter, anyhow, because the bell-ringing and the laughter would have drowned out a foghorn. Vera stepped forward to the footlights and delivered her line again, square into the rafters: “Ay sayed Ay’m nut gaowing to meddy Rrreginald efter ull. May place is at haome with Prince Alexisss. Ay must gaow beck—beck to may wuld.” Then she turned toward Auntie Mame and shot her a look that would have paralyzed the average Bengal tiger. “Lady Irrriss,” Vera said to Auntie Mame, “would yew be gude enough to rrring for my wrrrap?”

  “Certainly, Princess,” Auntie Mame said with a deep curtsy. Her Siamese bell bracelets pealed deafeningly.

  Vera’s speech about ringing had been an unfortunate one, but the balcony loved it. There were roars of laughter and a great deal of stamping.

  Then the bells started again and Auntie Mame, much flustered, advanced toward Vera bearing a mountainous chinchilla cape, Auntie Mame’s bell bracelets were somewhat—but not fully—muffled in the folds of fur for a moment.

  “Do let me help you, Princess,” Auntie Mame said in her resounding voice. She held out the cape which unfolded like a Venetian blind, thus releasing the bells to their full volume. I star
ed with horror when I saw that Auntie Mame was holding Vera’s cape upside down.

  “Thenk yew, Lady Iris,” Vera roared, sweeping the cape around her. An awful look came across her face, though, as she gathered the hem of her cloak around her shoulders and saw that its collar was trailing behind her on the floor.

  I was moved to a kind of hysterical giggle myself until I noticed that Auntie Mame seemed to be attached to Vera’s upside-down chinchilla wrap. Vera moved forward to deliver her last line and Auntie Mame followed, her outstretched arm mysteriously connected to the small of Vera’s back. Then I understood. One of her Siamese bell bracelets had got caught in the fur.

  Vera moved forward again. Auntie Mame followed, accompanied by the chorus of bells.

  Finally Vera stood stock still. “Let go!” she grunted.

  “Vera,” Auntie Mame squeaked, “I can’t!”

  The house rocked with unsuppressed hilarity, whistles, and stamping. Vera bellowed her last line with Auntie Mame still trying to wrench herself free and the curtain fell, enveloping them both—kicking and clawing—in its yards of dusty velour.

  I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. Vera, in the harsh accents of her native Pittsburgh, called Auntie Mame every vile name I’d ever heard, and a lot I hadn’t. Auntie Mame was prostrate. She laid her head on the cluttered dressing table, and shook with sobs. “But, Ve-e-ra,” she moaned, “these are the only bracelets I have left.” Vera screamed at her like a fishwife. “You dirty, cheap society bitch! Try to louse up my opening, will ya! I hate you! You and all your no-good kind.” Vera continued to yell and scream until the manager removed her forcibly from the room and slammed Auntie Mame’s notice on the dressing table.

  Auntie Mame wept long after the theater was dark. She kept repeating and repeating, “But they’re the only bracelets I have left. The only bracelets I have.” It was nearly two o’clock when I hung her old mink coat around her and half carried her out to a taxi and into the Ritz. Weeping uncontrollably, she let me help her to bed. I never knew that a human body could contain so many tears, and when I held her hand it felt as though it were on fire. Then I got scared and called the hotel physician.

  The next day I took Auntie Mame all the way back to New York in an ambulance. She was still sobbing and burning with fever. She squeezed my hand until I thought all my bones were broken and she moaned over and over, “But Vera, they’re the only bracelets I have left. Everything else is gone. The only bracelets I have, Vera. The only ones.”

  Back in New York Norah put her to bed, unconscious and running a terrible temperature. Norah and Ito, like many domestic servants during the depression, were working only for room and board. But they worshipped Auntie Mame. Norah even paid for the ambulance and my ticket back to school. I stood miserably in Auntie Mame’s bedroom twisting my St. Boniface cap in my hands. When I left, she was still delirious and still moaning about the bracelets. Norah sat beside her, stroking her feverish hand. “Now, you hush, dearie, you hush. What a pretty lady like you needs is a nice man. You hush up, lovey, and get rested so you can find a good, steady man.”

  I was so worried about Auntie Mame that I could hardly study. But at Thanksgiving she sent a short formal note which said, “I have accepted a position with the R. H. Macy Company. I am to sell roller skates at least until Christmas and there are excellent opportunities for advancement. The personnel director tells me that Macy’s is very anxious to obtain college-trained people of the better type.”

  From then on her letters grew gayer. She told touching and amusing stories about life in the toy department during the Christmas rush; about a decayed Austrian baroness who sold mama dolls, and a former M.I.T. professor who was demonstrating Gilbert chemistry sets. Auntie Mame confessed girlishly that the training program had been a little confusing and that keeping track of a sales book nearly drove her mad. “But,” she wrote, “I’ve evolved the perfect system. I send all of my roller skates out C.O.D. That’s the easiest way for me and it’s also easy for the customers, since it saves them from having to spend a lot of hard-come-by money right then and there. They buy now and pay later—really very economical.” She said that her feet hurt and she hated wearing black all the time, but that it was fun and she couldn’t wait to see me at Christmas vacation.

  I was kind of lonely with Auntie Mame away all day, and she looked pale and tired when she came home every night. But she was very gay about the store and all of her C.O.D.s.

  Auntie Mame still had a lot of unpaid bills, and I overheard her talking on the telephone the Sunday before Christmas. She was crying and she said, “… but of course I can’t raise that kind of money before January. We’ll simply lose the house, that’s all.” Later I heard Norah tell her that Shaffer’s insisted on payment in full before the first of the year or they’d sue. Auntie Mame cried some more and said, “Eighteen dollars a week and that miserable monthly pittance—why, I can’t even buy Patrick a Christmas present.”

  I didn’t care. I’d saved all of my allowance and sold my microscope to buy Auntie Mame’s present. Remembering her unfortunate bells, I’d bought her the biggest rhinestone bracelet twelve dollars would buy. I figured that with a real mink coat—even if it was a little sprung in the seat—the bracelet would look genuine and Auntie Mame would be happy again.

  But the awful blow fell on the day before Christmas. I was wrapping Auntie Mame’s present when I heard the front door close. Then I heard Auntie Mame’s high-heeled slippers trudging into the living room. But there was no effusive yoo-hoo.

  I tiptoed down to the living room and there was Auntie Mame sitting on a low hassock, her mink coat around her shoulders. Her face was cupped in her hands and she was crying silently.

  “Auntie Mame,” I said, “why are you home so early?”

  “Oh, Patrick,” she wept, “I’ve, I’ve been f-fired. Thrown out of Macy’s!”

  She sat there in the living room rocking back and forth and crying helplessly while I stood in misery next to her.

  “Patrick, Patrick,” she gasped. “It wasn’t my fault. He, he wouldn’t take the skates C.O.D.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” I asked.

  “The Southern man,” she choked. “He seemed so nice and gentle and pleasant and good-looking. And he ordered twenty p-pairs of skates. And then,” she broke down again, “and then I tried to send them to him C.O.D. and he wouldn’t let me. He wanted to pay for them and t-take them with him. And—and I told him I only knew how to do C.O.D.s. And then he … Oh, Patrick, he was rich, too—a lovely camel coat and a Cavanaugh hat—and he was staying at the St. Regis and surely they could have paid the C.O.D.—it was only fifty-one dollars …”

  “But, Auntie Mame, what happened, what did he do?”

  “Oh, Patrick, he was this nice Southerner, and he bought all these roller skates, and he seemed so warm and friendly and I told him I’d send them C.O.D., and then he said they were for an orph—an orphanage and he wanted to take them with him, and then I told him I only knew how to send things C.O.D., and Miss Kaufmann was in the—the ladies’ room and couldn’t help me with my—my sales book, and then this man said maybe he could help me write up the cash sale, and …” She started to sob again, “then he came around the counter and started to help me with the sales slip, and—oh, Patrick, I was really learning for the first time how to do a cash-and-take—and he was so pl-pleasant and we were laughing and writing up the sale just fine, and then the section manager came around and said ‘Wh-what’s going on here, Miss D-Dennis?’ and then the Southern man started to laugh and told him what the trouble was, and then the section manager said it was in-incredible that a Macy employee couldn’t write a p-proper sales slip, and then he took me by the arm and dragged me up to Personnel and told them I was the dumbest clerk in the wh-whole t-toy depa-a-artment.” She broke down and wept miserably.

  “Go on, Auntie Mame. What did the Southern man do?”

  “He—he wasn’t the
re, the section manager took me away so fast. And I had the best sales record in r-roller skates.”

  “But what did they do, Auntie Mame?”

  “They—they said they were going to make an ex-example of me and they fi-i-ired me right then and there.”

  The living room grew dim in the early twilight of December. But still Auntie Mame sat there in dumb misery, sobbing softly and rocking to and fro. At six o’clock Ito came in to light the lamps and at one minute after six Norah bustled in and tried her best to comfort Auntie Mame, but she wouldn’t move, wouldn’t speak. She just sat there and sobbed.

  I didn’t think Auntie Mame should be left alone for fear she might Do Something, so I went over and sat glumly in a corner. The mink coat had slipped off Auntie Mame’s shoulders and she sat there in her plain black little shopgirl’s dress, her face very white and tears rolling down her cheeks.

  Then the doorbell rang. In a moment Ito came in, very correct in his white jacket. “Mister Burnside, come see Madame.”

  “T-tell him I’m not at home,” Auntie Mame said flatly.

  “I tell him you no receiving, Madame, but he say e-ssential. He come from store.”

  Auntie Mame looked up. “Oh,” she said urgently, “then I must see him. Perhaps they want me back.”

  Ito ushered in a big stranger—very tall, very handsome. He was wearing a camel’s hair coat and a brown hat.

  Auntie Mame stared at him blankly—stunned. “It’s you! Aren’t you satisfied with having cost me my job? Have you come to persecute me more? Perhaps drive me out of my home?”

  “Please, ma’am,” the stranger said, “I’ve been all over that old store tryin’ to find out who you were and where I could get in touch with you. When that floorwalker fellah came back, I asked him where you’d gone and he said you’d been fired. I said that was all wrong. Then I told him it was my fault and I asked him what your name was, but he said it was against Macy’s policy to give out the names of the help. I said they had no business firin’ a nice little lady like you. I told him. I said, ‘Man, I never had such a good time in all my born days buyin’ anything.’ The hirin’ office wouldn’t tell me who you were, either, but finally I asked a little old German woman sellin’ dolls an’ she said you was Miss Dennis. She didn’t know your first name or where you lived or it never woulda took me so long. Ma’am, I been through every Dennis in the New York phone book.