After two years of stewardship, however, the Reverend Mother announced that she felt God wanted her back into medicine. As various plans were being discussed, a fortunate set of circumstances solved the problem. With a substantial bequest from the American Tonsil, Adenoid & Vas Deferens Society, the Ms. Prudence MacDonald Memorial School of Nursing was established. The Reverend Mother Emeritus (who was, after all, Lt. Col., Army Nurse Corps, Retired) was ideally qualified to serve as both chief of nursing instruction and house mother, and was appointed to the post. She divided her time equally between the two responsibilities. . . .
Standing impatiently inside the plate glass doors of International Headquarters, Jimmy de Wilde finally sighed with mixed relief and exasperation. The Reverend Mother Emeritus was arriving at last. But she was arriving in the Confederate gray Cadillac limousine of her most persistent suitor—Col. Beauregard C. Beaucoupmots, publisher of the Picaroon-Statesman.
Not only was the colonel shamelessly bent on taking the Reverend Mother Emeritus to bride (or, as he put it, “away from all those fruitcakes”), he had learned of the Reverend Mother Emeritus’ one eensy-weensy imperfection—a fondness for the grape—and exploited it whenever and wherever he could.
The limousine glided to a halt. The chauffeur rushed around the front of the car to open the door. The Reverend Mother Emeritus emerged. She was wearing a dress of light pink (Jimmy de Wilde recognized the color as “Tutti-Frutti Rouge”) that began six inches beneath her chin and ended six inches above her knees.
Over it, she wore an ankle-length mink coat, a little birthday present from the colonel. The only symbol of her religious affiliation was an eight-inch gold cross suspended around her neck and supported by her ample bosom; on it, spelled out in diamonds, were the words “MOTHER” (on the horizontal portion) and “EMERITUS” (on the vertical).
She held a large-sized brandy snifter in her hand. She sipped at it, then raised both hands above her head, her arms spread wide.
“Bless you, Brother Jimmy!” she said enthusiastically. “Have you been a good boy while Reverend Mother’s been away?”
“I see you’re with him again, Reverend Mother,” Jimmy de Wilde said in a pronounced fit of pique.
“The Colonel was good enough to meet me at the airport,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said. “Say ‘Hello Jimmy,’ like a good boy, Beauregard!”
Beauregard said nothing. The Reverend Mother Emeritus bent and looked into the car, giving Jimmy de Wilde just cause to worry that her mammiform protuberances were about to escape their fragile binding.
Colonel Beauregard C. Beaucoupmots was resting, his mouth ajar, against the plush upholstery of his limousine. His eyes were closed and he was snoring quietly.
“Oh, Beauregard!” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you!”
“How about mercy-killing?” Jimmy de Wilde asked.
“Luther,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said to the chauffeur, “will you take care of the colonel? Duty calls, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the chauffeur said.
“Hand me that brandy bottle,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said. “The colonel won’t be needing it for a while, and it’s been a long, long trip.”
She swept into the International Headquarters Building with Jimmy de Wilde skipping along in her wake.
“And how was Las Vegas?” Jimmy de Wilde asked.
“Brother Chester is doing splendidly,” she said. “When I see what an effective evangelist he is, I’m just sick to think of all the years he wasted clipping poodles. Did I tell you he got the entire membership of Local 135, International Brotherhood of Hotel Front Desk Clerks, at one fell swoop? We had a lovely mass baptism in the Pool of the Vestal Virgins at Nero’s Villa.”
“Anything else?” Jimmy de Wilde asked.
“I wouldn’t want it to get around, Jimmy,” she said, “but Mother Emeritus made a killing at the 21 tables.” She dipped into her purse and came out with a wad of hundred-dollar bills, which she fanned for his edification. “More than enough, Jimmy, to get the Ms. Prudence MacDonald Memorial School of Nursing out of the red.” She smiled at him. “To coin a phrase, Jimmy, when Reverend Mother is hot, she’s hot!” She tossed the money to him. He tossed it back.
“They don’t need it,” he said.
“What do you mean, they don’t need it?” she asked. “When I left for Vegas, the larder was bare.”
“That awful de la Chevaux person was here,” Jimmy said.
“Horsey was here?” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said. “What did he want?” Horsey de la Chevaux normally gave the GILIAFCC, Inc., as wide a berth as he gave the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and other such Protestant insanities.
“Horsey and the ugly ape, that terrible François Mulligan person,” Jimmy said. “They came to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For what happened to Brother Duane.”
“What happened to Brother Duane?” she asked suspiciously.
“They were beastly to him, Reverend Mother,” Jimmy said. “They shaved off all his hair—with a dull knife—and then they set him adrift in the Gulf of Mexico, miles and miles from shore, in a lifeboat.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea,” Jimmy said innocently.
“Then what was Brother Duane doing out miles and miles from shore in the Gulf of Mexico?” the Reverend Mother Emeritus asked. But even as she spoke, realization dawned. “Jimmy, you know what I’ve said about you fellows going out to those offshore drilling platforms!”
“They sent a helicopter for him,” Jimmy said. “He didn’t just swim out.”
“Tell Mother Emeritus all, Jimmy,” she said, with more than a hint of menace in her tone.
“All the ad in the Picaroon-Statesman said was that Chevaux Drilling Platform number seventy-eight needed people to work in their massage parlor. It didn’t say anything at all about the people having to be girls.”
“But what happened when they came to pick up Brother Duane?” she asked. “Couldn’t they tell— Jimmy, did Brother Duane go out to the drilling platform in drag?”
“He looked gorgeous!” Jimmy said. “They should have taken that into consideration. He was trying to please, for heaven’s sake!”
“How badly did they hurt him?”
“Well, they cut off all his hair, as I said. And you know how he just works and works to have a lovely head of hair. And, before the Coast Guard found him floating around out there in his birthday suit, he got a very nasty sunburn.”
“Well, you were both wrong,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said. “You should have known better than to let Brother Duane do something like that, Jimmy. And the Knights should have simply asked him to leave. . . . How did they find out, by the way, if he looked so gorgeous?”
“How do you think, Reverend Mother, if I may be so bold?”
“You’re both in the wrong!” she said, blushing ever so slightly.
“That awful de la Chevaux person didn’t think so,” Jimmy said, a trifle righteously. He took a check from his back pocket and waved it at the Reverend Mother Emeritus. “That should feed the girls for quite a while,” he said. “Even considering their somewhat revolting capacity for food.”
“Under the circumstances,” the Reverend Mother said, “I will have a word with Brother Duane. . . . Where is he, by the way?”
“In his room,” Jimmy said. “He says he’s not coming out until his hair grows back in.”
“Call up Wild and Wonderful Wigs,” the Reverend Mother said, “and ask them to send someone over. Let Brother Duane have whatever he wants, and deposit the rest of the check to the nursing school’s account.”
“Oh, Reverend Mother!” Jimmy de Wilde said. “You have the wisdom of Solomon.”
“Solomon who?” the Reverend Mother inquired.
“Oh, never mind,” he said. “But now that that’s over, there’s something else.”
“Oh?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know what all the details are, Reverend Mother, but the bottom line is that some Cubans in Miami—who must be delightfully loaded, financially speaking, of course—are going to present the nursing school with an endowment to set up the Doctors Pierce and McIntyre Memorial Scholarships.”
“Tell me more,” she said.
“All I really know is that they sent a check for twenty thousand dollars, to show good faith, together with a letter saying that as soon as we send them some cost figures—how much it costs per student nurse from the day she enters until the day she graduates— they’ll give us the rest.”
“How interesting!”
“May I suggest, Reverend Mother, that we come up with the figures just as soon as we can? I’d like to send them to Miami before they change their minds.”
“Send them? Jimmy,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said, “I wouldn’t think of sending the figures. I’ll take them to Miami myself.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” he asked.
“I think it’s a splendid idea,” she said. “If their offer is on the up and up, it seems to me that the least we can do is make them honorary disciples of the God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Inc., and present them with a suitably inscribed holy relic.”*
(* It had been, for some time, the custom of the GILIAFCC, Inc., to present to people who had done some service to the GILIAFCC, Inc., a miniature replica of the mausoleum and statue of Blessed Brother Buck. The statues were carved from marble left over from the actual mausoleum and statue, and were highly valued by most recipients. The archbishop of New Orleans, for example, had been so touched by his holy relic that he had immediately sent it to the Vatican Museum, where today it occupies a special place in that portion of the museum devoted to pornography and pagan art.)
Jimmy de Wilde suspected that the Reverend Mother Emeritus was being carried away either with enthusiasm or on the wings of the brandy she had shared with Col. Beaucoupmots, but he said nothing. His long experience with the Reverend Mother Emeritus had convinced him that she generally knew what she was doing.
“As a matter of fact,” the Reverend Mother said, “I’ll take Prudence with me. She’s been married to Ace long enough now to be entitled to a separate vacation. And I’m sure these Cubans, whoever they are, would like to see Prudence in the flesh.”
“There’s no accounting for tastes, I suppose,” Jimmy de Wilde replied.
Chapter Six
Walter Kosciusko Waldowski, Doctor of Dental Surgery and one-time Captain, Dental Corps, U.S. Army Reserve, sat, his totally bald skull gleaming in the reflected light from the chandeliers, in the bar of the Ritz Hotel on Place Vendôme, in Paris, France, staring into his sixth beer and ruminating on the injustice of life.
He had done, he knew, all that could reasonably be expected of a husband, father, and dental surgeon. When Wanda Waldowski, his only child, a comely blonde of nineteen, had returned from the University of Michigan to their Hamtramck home, heart-broken, her spirit crushed by the termination of her engagement, he had not only offered her his broad fatherly shoulder, but had agreed with his wife, Wilma, that what the child needed was a change of scenery, something to take her mind off her romantic tragedy.
He had, at the time, thought this would mean that Wilma and Wanda would drive to Chicago and spend a lot of money shopping. He had had no idea that the change of scene they’d had in mind was two weeks in Gay Paree. But even when that announcement had been made, he had gritted his teeth and forced a smile. Two weeks in Gay Paree obviously meant two weeks away from his dental practice, and, more important, from the South Hamtramck Polish-American Social and Civic Betterment Club, where Dr. Waldowski operated and participated in the longest running seven-card stud poker game in the history of Hamtramck (or, for that matter, in the history of Poles in America)—but for his daughter’s sake, he would go to Gay Paree.
He had, without complaint, taken seven different tours of Paris, all of them quite cultural and educational and of absolutely no interest to him whatever. Wanda seemed to be perking up a little, and he was willing to pay any price necessary to see her smile again....
Dr. Waldowski’s initial reaction to the shattered engagement had been a very strong urge to go to the university, invade the football dormitory, and choke to death the defensive tackle who had toyed with Wanda’s affections. He had been dissuaded from this notion by his wife, who had said that it would be unseemly conduct for a dental surgeon who had, as the bottom line, a daughter to marry off. Certainly, Wilma had pointed out, no respectable family would be willing to see their son married to the daughter of a choker of defensive tackles.
Dr. Waldowski had reacted with nothing more than a wince when he’d seen the bills for the clothing his Wilma had bought their Wanda to take her mind off her tragic loss. He had left Hamtramck; he had come to Gay Paree.
And then, yesterday, he had made the supreme sacrifice—he had agreed to take wife and daughter to the opera. His interest in grand opera was on a par with his interest in the moral pronouncements of politicians; if at all possible, he would rather not hear either.
But for Wanda, he had been prepared to make even this sacrifice. He would get tickets to the opera, he told his wife and daughter, and he would put on what he referred to as his “boiled shirt and waiter’s jacket,” and he would silently undergo the experience, without one word of complaint.
“And awake, Walter,” Wilma had said. “Wide awake.”
“Sitting on the edge of my seat, Wilma dear, with a smile on my lips,” he had assured her. “Anything to take Wanda’s mind off you-know-what.”
There was only one small problem. There were no tickets to the opera available. This was one problem Dr. Waldowski hadn’t considered. He had thought that it was 5-2 that he could come by tickets the way he normally came by tickets—that is to say, by flipping a coin, double or nothing, with the ticket seller. If that failed, he would have to buy tickets the way ordinary people, those without sporting blood, did; in other words, to buy them at face value. Dr. Waldowski hadn’t been able to imagine a situation in which an opera performance would be sold out. It wasn’t, after all, generally speaking, a contact sport. But even in that eventuality, he’d believed that he’d be able to deal with a ticket scalper. Ticket scalpers, as a rule, had a little sporting blood, and that would bring him back to flipping a coin, double or nothing, and reopen the possibility that he could come by three tickets free of charge.
With that in mind, he had gone to the Hotel Ritz’s concierge and told him he wanted three of the best seats in the house for that night’s performance at the Paris Opera.
“Zat,” the concierge, a formidable gentleman, had said, “is ab-zo-lutely out of zee question, M’sieu.”
“It’s M’sieu le Doctor to you, Jack,” Walter had replied. “And what do you mean, out of the question?”
“Tonight, M’sieu le Docteur,” the concierge had said, “zere is zee performance magnifique.”
“I don’t care what the opera is, Jack, just get me three tickets.”
“Out of zee question, M’sieu le Docteur,” the concierge had said, with what Walter had thought was barely disguised delight. “I have said zat already. I will say it again. Tonight is a performance magnifique.”
“What the hell is a performance magnifique?”
“Tickets for a performance magnifique, M’sieu le Docteur, are twice as much money as tickets to a performance ordinaire.”
“O.K.,” Dr. Waldowski had said, taking out his sheaf of traveler’s checks, noting that the sheaf was much thinner than it had been, and ripping off two checks. “How much? As we say in South Hamtramck, you’ve got me by the short hairs.”
The concierge had thrown up his hands in exasperation. “M’sieu doesn’t understand me! Perhaps m’sieu is not too bright. One more time. Zair are no tickets. Period.”
“You mean they have a full house?” Walter Waldowski had asked in disbelief.
“When Cher Boris sings, M’sieu, zair is always zee full house.”
“What, or who, is Cher Boris?”
“M’sieu has nevair heard of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov?”
“You got it, Jack,” Walter Waldowski had said.
“M’sieu will permit me to say zat I am un-surprised,” the concierge had said. “And permit me a small word of advice. When zee concierge of zee Ritz says zair are no tickets for a performance magnifique, m’sieu would do well to believe zat zair are no tickets.”
And with that, flapping the tails of his frock coat, the concierge had walked away.
In the somewhat naive belief that the American Embassy had been established in Paris to cater to the pressing needs of American taxpayers, Dr. Waldowski had then summoned a taxicab and ordered that he be taken to the embassy.
That had been a difficult experience. For one thing, the embassy had been entertaining at an afternoon the dansant et les cocktails staff members of other embassies, and as the third assistant deputy under-secretary for tourist relations to whom Dr. Waldowski had finally gotten to speak had said, “Under those circumstances, it’s really bad form for a lousy civilian like you to come here at all, you know.”
After Dr. Waldowski had caught his attention by grabbing him by his Sulka necktie and suspending him two feet off the ground, however, the third assistant deputy under-secretary had been good enough to explain the circumstances.
The man to whom the Ritz concierge had referred as “Cher Boris” was Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, who four years before had been declared a National Treasure of the French Republic. He was the world’s greatest opera singer.
“I thought Caruso was the best,” Dr. Waldowski had said.
“Caruso has, I believe, gone to the Great Opera House in the Sky,” the third assistant deputy undersecretary for tourist relations had replied. “The point is that tickets for a performance magnifique, which is any performance at which Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov sings, are quite impossible to obtain. I, myself, have never heard him sing, and we diplomats, you know, are much more important than you lousy taxpayers.”
MASH 10 MASH goes to Miami Page 6