“Hello?” I said cautiously.
“Darling, darling boy! Here I am!” Auntie Mame sang.
“But where?”
“At the St. Regis. I just landed this morning and I’m only here for a day or so. Didn’t I write to tell you I was coming?”
“No, you didn’t,” I said.
“Well, I meant to.”
“How was India?” I asked inanely.
“Divine, darling. Absolutely divine! I can’t wait to tell you about my important work there. Why, Nehru said that I’ve done more to get India’s mind off communism than any single …”
“I’ll bet even Pakistan looked pretty good to them while you were there,” I said.
“What, darling?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, darling, I want to see you. You and Pegeen and your sweet little baby. Here you go and have this lovely little boy and I’ve never laid eyes on him, what with helping to tidy up Europe and Asia for all these years. Couldn’t you put him in a basket and bring him down?”
“Auntie Mame,” I said, “he’s seven years old. He’s so big he could put me in a basket and …”
“Heavens! How the time flies when one is busy. But do come! I’m giving a little welcome home party for myself.”
“When?”
“Why, just as soon as you get here. I’m having some of the most interesting people—a real international flavor! Hurry, darling, do. I can’t contain myself until I see the three of you.”
“Well, try. We’ll be along in about an hour.”
“A bientôt, love!” She rang off.
“Now what?” Pegeen asked.
“It was Auntie Mame.”
“So I gathered.”
“She’s at the St. Regis. She just got back. She wants us to come right down.”
“I knew it was too good to last,” Pegeen said. “The last seven or eight years have been so peaceful.”
“Well, come on. Put on your hat. Let’s get going. She wants to see the kid, too.”
“Had you planned to sweep into the St. Regis in that old bathrobe?” Pegeen asked.
“Oh, God, I forgot. Well, get the kid ready and by that time I’ll be dressed.”
“But just remember one thing,” Pegeen said, looking unusually serious. “She may be a real character, a sketch, a charmer, and all that sort of thing, but she’s not going to get her hands on my child. She can see him and say kitchy-coo and how big he is and how much he looks like you and all the things that aunts are supposed to say, but she’s not …”
“Oh, Pegeen, she won’t even want to. She’s already got a dozen irons in the fire, without messing around with children.”
When we got to the door of Auntie Mame’s suite, Pegeen said once more: “Now just remember.” I rang the buzzer and the door opened. Ito, his head swathed in a turban, salaamed.
“Ito!” I said, grasping his hand. His hair peeping out from under the turban was grizzled, but Ito giggled delightedly and I could see that only his costume had changed.
“You come in. Madame having affair. Madame very anxious see little boy.”
Our kid’s eyes were almost popping out of his head. He tugged at my hand. “Is he like Punjab in Little Orphan Annie?”
“No, Mike,” I said, “he just works for your aunt.”
For a short stay in town, Auntie Mame had taken a considerable number of rooms and they were filled with a kind of UN delegation. There were lots of Indian men in business suits and turbans and Indian women in floating saris. Mike had never seen anything like it before in his life.
About the first person I bumped into was Vera, her hair dyed an aggressive golden. On her sixtieth birthday she had conceded that her ingenue days were over and she was now playing young matrons of thirty-five and still packing them in at the matinees. Death having taken its toll in the Fitz-Hugh family, the Honorable Basil was now a belted earl and Vera was very much her ladyship. What with being authentically British, her interpolations on the English language had soared to a new art form. “Pittrick, dalling,” she said, extending a hand, “fency fainding yew haa eftah ull these years. But yew’ve aged sao, daa boy.”
“Hi, Vera,” I said. “Seen anything of Auntie Mame?”
“Aoh, but yais, dalling. End she looks revishing. Haow well she keddies huh yaas.”
“But where …”
Coming toward me was a vision I knew could only be Auntie Mame. She was wearing an elaborate sari, extravagantly draped to make the most of her still slim figure. Her hair, which had all gone to gray, was rinsed to a delicate periwinkle blue. She wore a lot of kohl around her eyes and a caste mark on her forehead.
“Hello, Fatima,” I said.
“Patrick! Darling, darling boy!” She threw herself into my arms and covered my face with kisses. “And Pegeen!” She and Pegeen, whose relationship had been brief and little more than politely cordial, exchanged a chaste kiss. “And now where is the baby?”
“He’s right here,” I said, laying a hand on Mike’s red head.
“Darling!” she said dramatically, “I’m your Auntie Mame!” She put her arms around him and kissed him.
“Your Great-Auntie Mame,” Pegeen said.
“And he’s named Michael for the Archangel Michael!” Auntie Mame trilled.
“No,” Pegeen said flatly, “for my father, Mickey the Mick.”
“Oh, but Patrick, he’s just divine. He looks exactly the way you did when you were a little boy, except that he has Pegeen’s beautiful, beautiful hair. Even more beautiful than Pegeen’s, I think.” She pressed her nose against Mike’s and looked into his eyes. “I’ve never seen hair the color of yours, my little love. It’s so red!”
“I’ve never seen hair the color of yours, either,” Mike said. “It’s … it’s so blue!”
Auntie Mame gave out with a silvery laugh. “You are an observant young man, aren’t you?”
“What did you say?” Mike asked her, wide-eyed.
“I said, you’re observant, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what that means.”
“Heavens, child. Has your father done nothing for your vocabulary?”
“My what?”
“Your vocabulary. That means the words people use when they speak. And, darling, a large and flexible vocabulary is the hallmark of every truly cultivated person.”
“I don’t understand most of those big words.”
“Of course you don’t, my little love. How can you, if you’re never given a chance to use them? I’m going to get you a vocabulary pad, just as I did for your father, and every time you hear a word you don’t understand, you simply write it down and then I’ll tell you what it means and how to use it in speech. That’ll be ever so much fun, won’t it?”
“I—I guess so,” Mike said.
“Listen, Auntie Mame,” I said nervously, “if you’ll be dusting right out of town again, I don’t think you’ll have much time to be building Mike’s vocabulary or …”
“Who knows? Although I’m needed in India, I do say that blood is thicker than water and … Oh, Michael, darling, do you know about India? Do you know where it is?”
“Sort of,” Mike said.
“Ah, my little love, if only I could show it to you—the color, the splendor, the mystery!”
“I like mysteries.”
“So do I, my little love. And to see it all through your young blue eyes. Do you know that there are jungles with leopards and lions and you can see elephants right on the streets?”
“Like the circus, Auntie Mame?” Mike said, brightening.
“Yes, darling, like the circus. Only much better, because you can touch them and ride on them.”
“Ride on an elephant?” Mike squeaked.
“Why, certainly, darling. When I was staying with the Maharajah of Ghitagodpur we went everywhere on elephants. I ha
d an elephant of my own all the time I was visiting him.”
“Your own elephant?”
“Of course, darling. I’ll bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, boy! Maybe when you’re in India again I could get on the train and come and visit you. I’ve been on a train alone before. I went all the way from Verdant Greens to Grand Central Station to have lunch with Daddy and go to a play.”
“Why, of course you could come and visit me, my little love. Although I usually fly when I go to India.”
“In an airplane?”
“On a broomstick,” Pegeen murmured.
“Gee! Well, maybe I could visit you pretty soon. School’s out now and …”
“Mike,” I said, “stop fishing.”
“I’m sorry, Auntie Mame,” he said. Then he added: “That’s a very pretty dress.”
“Thank you, darling! I can see you already have quite a way with the ladies. Yes, the sari is the most truly becoming costume a woman can wear. I have dozens of them in my trunk and … oh, and I have something else there, too. Something I think a little boy like you might enjoy.”
“What is it, Auntie Mame?” Mike said.
“It’s a scimitar, darling.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it’s a kind of curved sword. I found it one day while I was poking about in the bazaars. It’s really a Moslem weapon rather than Hindu, but the tracery on the handle intrigued me so that I …”
Mike wasn’t understanding much of what Auntie Mame was saying, but once he heard the word sword, he could hardly contain himself.
“Would you like it, darling?”
“Oh, boy! Would I!”
“Don’t you think it’s kind of dangerous for a child of …” Pegeen began.
“Oh, my dear, it’s so dull you couldn’t cut cheese with it. But it does have glamour. Why don’t you two just circulate, and I’ll take this darling little boy into my room and …” Auntie Mame and Mike were gone before I could say a word.
“Now listen,” Pegeen said. “Just remember that this family reunion is one thing, but that crazy woman isn’t going to get her hands on Mike. He’s a perfectly normal, unexceptional little boy—although his I.Q. is high—and I want to keep him that way. She’s not going to ruin him with a lot of …”
“Well, I don’t know quite what you mean by the word ‘ruin,’ ” I said with some indignation. “She raised me, didn’t she? Do I do anything that strikes you as eccentric? It seems to me that we’ve led a perfectly happy, commonplace sort of …”
“Exactly. And that’s the way I want to keep it.”
We circulated among Auntie Mame’s old friends from her New York days and her new ones from her Bombay nights. It was a party in the Grand Manner, recalling Auntie Mame’s crushes of the late twenties. Everybody you ever heard of was there, and I must admit that, compared to the standardized cocktail gatherings and dinners in Verdant Greens, it was brilliant. It even gave me a momentary twinge of nostalgia for the old bootleg-gin days in Beekman Place and the gracious rooms in Auntie Mame’s house in Washington Square—long since torn down. Even Pegeen was impressed, despite her dark suspicions of Auntie Mame.
“Well, Pegeen,” I said, “say what you will, but you’ve got to admit that the old girl can still drag ’em in.”
“She could charm the birds off the trees,” Pegeen said. “That’s the trouble with her. I like her, I really do like her, but … My God!”
I followed Pegeen’s horrified stare to see Mike and Auntie Mame emerging from her bedroom. His head was bound up in a white turban and he dragged a huge scimitar behind him.
“Look, darlings! Look at my little Indian boy! Now salaam for them, Michael, just the way Auntie Mame taught you to.”
Mike salaamed. All the Indian gentlemen salaamed right back and the Indian ladies giggled shrilly and fluttered their saris. “Of course, we’re Parsis,” one of them said to me, “and we’ve been Christianized for five generations, but the little American boy with the dear Miss Mame is so …”
“Well, it’s all settled!” Auntie Mame said matter-of-factly, coming to us.
“What’s all settled?” I asked.
“Our trip back to India. All he needs is a couple of inoculations and we’ll be ready to leave at the end of the week. I must say he’s an adorable child. You’ve done a splendid job on him, Pegeen. Perfectly splen …”
“What trip to India?” I thundered.
“That’s right, Daddy. Auntie Mame and I are going on a big airplane and visit a king who has elephants and shoots tigers and plays polo and I’m going to meet a kind of religious man who teaches Auntie Mame how to breathe and concentrate—that’s a new word, Daddy—and he’s going to teach me and … What did you call that man, Auntie Mame?”
“Yogi, darling, but I wouldn’t bother your father with that just now …”
“That’s it, a yogi, and we’re going to …”
“You’re going to do no such thing,” I said calmly.
If I’d slapped him he couldn’t have looked more wounded. “B-but Daddy …”
“Mike, dear, it’s just out of the question,” Pegeen said. “I mean the distance, the danger. I wouldn’t be happy with you away.”
“You were happy with me away last summer,” Mike said. “You said you couldn’t wait to get me out from under your feet and off to crummy old Camp Yahoo. You said …”
“Mind your manners, Mike,” I said.
“B-but Daddy …”
“Patrick, darling, how could you deprive the child of this adventure?” Auntie Mame said. “It’s almost like slamming the door of knowledge in his face. Here he has this perfectly splendid opportunity to see one of the most interesting countries in the world—filled with color and history and mystery and political unrest—really see it from the inside as no tourist ever does, and you …”
“Auntie Mame,” I began, “it’s just that he’s so young and …”
“It’s awfully good of you,” Pegeen said. “It’s one of the most generous things I’ve ever heard of, but …”
“Mother,” Mike said. His lower lip was trembling and his eyes were bluer than Auntie Mame’s hair. “Couldn’t I please go? I’ve never been any place away before except Bermuda and Maddox Island and Camp Yahoo. Please couldn’t I go?” Well, Mike has a way of breaking your heart with a single look.
“Mike, I-I … Well, let me talk it over with Daddy.”
“A splendid idea,” Auntie Mame said briskly. “Couples should talk over their problems. Get them right out in the open and face them fairly and squarely. If everyone did that there wouldn’t be so much wrangling and divorce. Go right into my bedroom and have this out now.” She pushed us into her room and shut the door.
“Well,” I said.
“Well,” Pegeen said, “I just don’t know. On the one hand I can see just about ten thousand strong objections to the whole fantastic scheme. Your aunt is frivolous and scatterbrained and possessive and dominating, and Mike is an impressionable little boy …”
“There’s also a lot of danger in India,” I said. “Poisonous insects and reptiles, I believe. Yet I’ve never been there and I’ll admit that it sounds …”
“Of course it’s a wonderful opportunity for Mike. I’d be the last to deny that. It’ll be an experience that he can carry with him for the rest of his life. But still …”
“Well, I know he couldn’t get into much trouble. Auntie Mame is dependable in her own peculiar fashion. Yet it’s so far away and …”
“That doesn’t worry me so much, Pat, it’s just that … Well, if I say no and stick to it, I’ll feel like a terrible heel and all of his life he can confront me with …”
“Well,” I said, “if anybody says no, it’s going to be you. I think his heart would snap right in two. He does like Auntie Mame and of course he …”
“Oh, all right!” P
egeen sighed. “She’s really got us where the hair grows shortest. We’ll say this: He can go, but only on one condition, that he be back here by Labor Day. One thing he’s not going to do is miss a lot of schooling while she …”
“And he’s not going to learn yoga either,” I said. “I want to make that very clear.”
“No yoga whatsoever,” Pegeen said. “I know that this is just crazy but …”
The door eased open and the two of them stood there—Mike in his turban and Auntie Mame in her sari. Mike gave us the big blue eyes treatment. “I can go?” he asked. I knew they’d been listening, but I wasn’t going to give Auntie Mame the satisfaction of confronting her with it.
“Yes, you can go.”
“Gee!” Mike was all over us, kissing Pegeen and me.
“But just one or two points I want made crystal clear, Auntie Mame,” I said.
“Yes, darling?” she said with dewy-eyed innocence.
“He’s got to be back by Labor Day in time for school …”
“Oh, but naturally, Patrick, Labor Day in the suburbs is always such fun!”
“… and he’s not to be put in touch with a lot of crackpot swami stuff …”
“There’s a sweet little Episcopal Church where I’ll send him every Sunday morning. However, to deprive him of the chance of meeting an intellect such as my guru’s and not to allow him to draw strength and wisdom from …”
“And, last of all, you’re to behave yourself with Mike.”
“Behave myself? I? A woman past forty behave? What do you …”
“You know exactly what I mean. No nonsense. Just get him to India and back and no side trips to scenic Tibet or opium dens or …”
“So like your father, Patrick dear. Sometimes I think I’ve accomplished nothing with you.”
“That’s just what I want you to do with Mike. Nothing. He’s living a conservative, quiet life in a conservative, quiet atmosphere. He’s going to a good conservative school and …”
“I’ll just bet he is. Can you have him ready to leave Friday?” Auntie Mame asked Pegeen.
“Friday? Well, I …”
“Bully! We’ll take the noon plane.”
“You mean I can really go?” Mike said.
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