by Marjorie Lee
"Done what?"
"Thought it was funny. The other time you didn't say it; but you laughed."
"Well, it is funny."
"You—" She hesitated. "You sort of—puzzle me."
"You puzzle me," I retorted.
She lowered her eyes and dug her foot deeper into the snow. Then she looked up again. "Will you ask him to come back?"
"Probably."
She turned and went to the car. On her way she stopped. "Do it now, will you? Right now?"
I sighed; and then I nodded.
The stiffness went out of her and she grinned. "Good!" she called. "And I'm sorry about that kiss," she added over her shoulder. "Next time I'll bring my violin!"
I called him. He was home within an hour. "I need you," he said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the next few months we saw the Brownes with the regularity of a metronome. While Marc usually left our Bacchanalian revelries for bed at reasonable hours, there were times when Frannie, Brad, and I hung on until dawn. What this routine did to Brad's chances of retention by Maclntyre was something none of us dared dwell upon.
There was one Saturday when we all piled into Marc's station wagon at nine in the morning and drove off for a spree in New York. After a mostly liquid lunch at "21" we did the art world. Fifty-Seventh Street had already begun spewing its treasures about the city and the walking distance between galleries was enough to wear our pumps down to sneakers.
Frannie looked marvelous. In black suede spike heels, a narrow gray skirt and matching cashmere sweater, she was an ad out of Seventeen. Slung casually over her shoulders was a nutria coat which seemed to embarrass her inordinately. "I've only got it," she explained carefully, "because my mother made me nag it out of Marc the year we were married. She said even a shop girl wouldn't be caught dead without a fur coat and that it was essential to teach husbands that wives don't Live Naked Like Fish!"
"It's stunning," I told her; and she, borrowing the punchline of the joke about the Negress in Bergdorf's, said, "It’s stunning all right—but do you think it makes me look Jewish?"
"I'm willing it to Marian Deitz," she added. "She needs Wordly Goods to substitute for Lack of Love. Not that nutria would do it. Marian would need wall-to-wall mink; and even then she'd say it wasn't laid right."
"Will it to me," I kidded.
"Do you lack love, Jo?" she asked, suddenly serious.
It was fun looking at contemporary pictures with Frannie and Marc. Marc had the combination of a good eye and a knowledge of history. He could spot a phony a mile away and was able to point out derivatives of earlier schools which failed because too little had been added.
What Frannie's pronouncements missed in soundness, they made up for in originality. "Pure art's gone," she intoned. "It gave up its own identity when it started playing Trilby to psychiatry. There aren't any painting painters anymore. They're all just a bunch of Free Associators stretched out on canvas couches... And" she finished proudly, "that's absolutely mine. I've never read it anywhere!"
"We believe you," Marc said.
Steeped to the ears in culture, we knocked off at four for drinks at the Weylin Bar. Cy Walter was there. He remembered Frannie from other times and played all the things she asked for. There was one she requested twice; and, in a low voice which carried feeling rather than tone, she sang it for us. There were four lines in it which often came (and I suppose always will come) back to me: "Let me love you. Let me show that I do. Let me do a million impossible things—So you'll know that I do..."
We had dinner at Nicholson's; and then we braved an icy wind to the Byline Room and listened to Mabel Mercer. Frannie's records, good as they were, had not prepared me for Mabel in person. It was one thing to hear her tears on plastic and another to have them drip on my arm. We had a table directly beneath the wooden platform on which she sat in a straight-backed chair, hands folded in her lap, singing of: the loneliness of ivory towers; the ends of love affairs; mornings of orange juice for One; lucky stars above, but not for her; telephones that ring (but who's to answer?); summer days that wither away too soon, too soon; plans that would have to be changed; farewells (sweet) and amens; and various other sobbing manifestations of the Universal Female Neurosis which seemed to be her stock in trade.
We stayed for the last show and then taxied back to the car. Brad, Marc, and I fell asleep and Frannie drove. What with a sudden fall of snow on the Henry Hudson Parkway and a staggering case of myopia, she landed us in Westchester at five forty-five on Sunday morning.
There was something else we owed to the Brownes: an invitation to a party in Meade's Manor given by a couple named Sondheim. The evening had been themed A Winter Picnic; and, as picnics go, this was a memorable one. The absence of grassy leas by rippling rivulets or stretches of coral sand was more than made up for by two-inch pile broadloom, the expanse of which, from livingroom to diningroom to library, offered ample sitting-space for over eighty picnickers. After a siege of drinking ("Mother of God," Frannie reported, returning from the bar, "they've got a separate bartender for each brand!") every couple was given a small pink damask tablecloth to spread on the floor and two box suppers. These, it was said, had been imported from Chambord via refrigerated truck, and contained, among other homey-type victuals, a stuffed squab and half a lobster.
"What's the Sondheim guy like?" Brad asked Jeri who was sitting near us. "Rich," she answered.
"And not exactly Liberal," someone else put in.
"Fuck Liberals!" Frannie roared for the edification of twenty surrounding guests. "This is the first square meal we've had in years!"
Towards the end of dinner a man named Fred Sitkin played the piano and a girl named Something Harris sang along. She was excellent. Frannie could barely eat. In a while she got up and went over to make a request. It was the same song she'd done herself with Cy Walter at the Weylin Bar. When Mrs. Harris came to the lines: Let me do a million impossible things—So you'll know that I do—Frannie became rapt enough to stop chewing altogether.
It was interesting to watch Frannie in a group from which she was (or at least kept saying she was) trying to break away. It occurred to me that the emphasis she placed on the difference between these people and herself was a ruse of the mind: a defense against some deeply rooted and distorted fear that she was not acceptable. It was not Meade's Manor alone, I decided, which would play upon this insecurity: it could have been South Philadelphia or Sioux City, Iowa: any locale at all, in fact, which, through the ungrounded cliches of society, had been invested with a connotation of homogeneity. Meade's Manor, for that matter, was probably closer to being her personal milieu than any of the others in which she might try to puddle so anonymously.
While this particular dot on New York's map had somehow gained for itself a reputation for hide-bound Jewish conservatism, its younger generation had attempted, just as Frannie had, to break from old beginnings. Though a few of them were, as Frannie put it, still trying to keep cool with Coolidge, there were many more who were clearly emancipated.
"They're nice," I told her during the evening. "They're smart and interesting and warm and aware..."
"Reverse Racist!" she countered, separating them from me and from herself in one fell swoop. "The perfect love object for you would be a Crippled Communist Jewish Negro!"
"Why do you come to their parties?" I asked. "If they're so impossible why don't you forget it and stay home?" She flushed.
Bill Brecker, an ex-obstetrician turned researcher, overheard us and ambled over. "Frannie comes to take notes," he said with a smile. "One of these days she's going to write a book called Appointment in Meade's Manor and immortalize all of us!... Have you seen the rest of the house?"
While we were upstairs exploring Frannie came up to freshen her lipstick. "Ever run into this period?" she asked through stretched lips. "Authentic Early Mother-in-Law..."
"Love that girl," Bill sighed when she had left. "Someday she'll fork over the twenty-five-an-hour and then t
here'll be no stopping her."
"Not Frannie," I told him. "Frannie's just an oriented spectator. She'll never join."
"You wait. It's just a matter of time."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Oh, I know Frannie," he answered. "She's an old flame of mine."
"Really?"
"Really. She was seven and I was nine. We used to live across the street from each other in Chicago and both of us had the misfortune to have nurses. They used to sit together in a little park near the Edgewater Beach Hotel and every now and then they'd go back to Frannie's house for coffee. I don't know why I say Frannie's house because it wasn't Frannie's house at all. It, plus everything else, was Frannie's mother's."
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, I don't know. It was just a feeling you got. She was quite a dame. Pretty as hell and very busy knocking around; she'd just gotten her divorce. So we'd go up there and she'd be dressing to go out on a date and we'd watch her. We'd watch her watching herself. Lucy Weatherby, at her mirror. You know Lucy? John Brown’s Body? Well, anyway—when she was all done she'd turn around and stand in front of us and say, 'How do I look? Tell me how I look, chickens.' And Frannie'd get this funny little expression on her face and say, 'You look beautiful.' And if I didn't say anything, she'd push it; you know: 'Come on, Billy, don't you think I'm beautiful? Don't you think Frannie's mother is the Cat's Meow?' Well, the truth is: I thought Frannie was a hell of a lot more beautiful than her mother was. I was real sunk when we moved to New York and I couldn't see her anymore; because, to me, Frannie was the most beautiful thing that ever lived. But a kid of nine didn't say things like that out loud in those days. Manners... Mothers had to be respected. Or maybe that's cover-up stuff. Maybe I kind of sensed how sore she'd be if anyone ever told her her daughter was one up on her. This was a dame who had to win, you see..."
Later when we'd gone downstairs again, I bumped into Frannie at the bar, swapping daggers with Marian Deitz "... and if Jeff could afford a swimming pool," she was saying, "you'd simply use it to drown yourself!"
"Hey, Fran," I said, breaking in to forestall bloodshed, "that Brecker guy is made for you!"
"Who, Bill?" she asked. "Love that man. We were kids together in Chicago. Someday he'll get his head shrunk and then there'll be no stopping him!"
We went soon after that. It didn't take long to find Brad. He was in the kitchen with Mrs. Harris, saving George Sondheim and four bartenders the trouble of replenishing the ice cubes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was in the early Spring that the Brownes gave a party of their own: the party, as I was later to think of it. I was in on most of the preparations; and since Frannie felt compelled to leave everything for the last day, a storm of organization the likes of which I had never before seen shook the rafters.
We finished working with only an hour left for me and Brad to go home and change; and when we got there I made the mistake of taking a bath: that left Brad waiting, and while he waited he poured himself a beer-mug of martini. By the time I got out of the tub he was lying on the bed trying his damnedest to pass out. He had been negative about the party from the very beginning. It bruised his ego, I suspected, to have to face the fact that Frannie and Marc had managed to retain at least seventy-five of their friends in spite of our self-granted priorities on them. "If you really want to know," he had said on the way home, "I don't feel like going back. Who wants to waste an evening on that bunch of jerks?"
"Maybe they've invited Mrs. Harris," I said.
"That bitch?"
"Oh ..." I said. "I gather, then, that the lady was not for yearning?"
"Was that Frannie's?" he asked. "Most of your bon mots these days are Frannie's."
"It was mine," I answered. "There are still a few things left in this world that are mine." I heard the grate in my voice, though I'd have been hard put to explain exactly what the words meant. I'm just tired, I told myself. And I had reason to be. I'd worked like a slave for Frannie—under a weight of responsibility which should far more logically have been the hostess' rather than the guest's. And while I'd often felt her casual domestic incompetence to be one of the many paradoxical facets of her charm, I was getting slightly fed up with playing stand-in. There had been a night a few weeks before when I'd put the kids to bed—which could only be accomplished after I'd sorted out three sets of pajamas from a mountain of laundry in the basement. And then I'd read to them: one of the Oz books, by special request. Frannie had been reading them Gertrude Stein on the theory that Stein's complexity was actually based on the Absolute of Simplicity. But they'd begun to complain. "It hasn't got plots," they said.
In any case, when I found Brad on the bed that evening I wasn't as miffed as I might have been. Let him sleep it off, I figured; and if he wakes up later we'll go.
But he didn't come to; and at about ten the phone rang.
"Where are you?" Frannie wanted to know.
"Brad's out cold."
"Wake him!"
"I've tried. I get nowhere."
"Well, come alone."
"Oh, Frannie, I don't know. I'm pretty beat myself."
"Now look, Jo, you've just got to. There are over half a hundred creeps here already and I can't face it by myself." I could hear the dull roar of voices in the background; the clink of glasses; and the record player.
"Don't give me that," I said. "You're a great hostess when you want to be."
"I'm not! I'm afraid of people! And anyhow, I'm throwing this brawl for you—in a way. Isn't your birthday pretty soon?"
"My birthday's in August," I said, "and kindly don't remind me of it."
She was quiet for a second. Then: "I'll drive over and wake him. I need you both. The whole thing's one dimensional without you."
Within twenty minutes her car drove up and she barged in the back door followed by Jeff Deitz. I wasn't surprised that it was Jeff instead of Marc: first of all, she'd had to leave Marc there to carry on for her; and secondly, she had a funny thing about Jeff. In spite of his status as Most Unpopular Camper with many people, Frannie had often spoken in his defense. She had even gone so far as to give him an Italian tie for Christmas; and when Jeri, the Ever-Interested, had asked her why, Frannie had answered with the usual loaded non sequitur: "How would you like to be married to Marian?"
Now, halfway up the steps, she turned. "I have your permission?"
I looked at her. It hadn't occurred at me.
"At this late date, Jo, surely you don't think I'd—"
She stopped short because Jeff was there.
I laughed. "Get him," I said. "At this late date, surely I don't!"
"How's it going?" I asked Jeff as we waited.
"Stinks—what else?"
"No fun?"
"Fun, shmun. I can't see it. Three cases of liquor, Marc shelled out for. For what? So they'll get invited back and then owe everybody all over again?"
I fended off his down-beat comments for several minutes, and then Frannie and Brad appeared—Brad all combed and freshened. "How's for Suburban Switchies?" he suggested gayly. "You go back with Jeff, Jo—and I'll cart Frannie."
"Make sure you just cart her," I said as we got into separate cars.
"Oh, Jo," Frannie sighed with a laugh. "You ought to have your paranoids removed!"
On the way back Jeff talked mostly about his job. "What's all the noise about a guy's having to own his own business?" he asked. "I'm doing all right. And when things slack off for a month or two it's not my baby; I can sleep. I don't get it: if you don't run your own show around here you're sick or something. What I earn is more than nine tenths of the nation. Is that bad? To hear Marian talk you'd think we were living in the slums!"
"We've all got problems," I told him. "But when you get right down to basics, Marian couldn't live without you, and you know it."
"That's what you think!" he said. "Ever notice her at a party? Marian's a very, very attractive girl. That silver-blonde hair of hers is real, you know. And so are tho
se other two nice things she's got! You'd be surprised how many solid citizens have called her up in the afternoons to make a pitch. You can say what you want about her, but whatever it takes along those lines, she's got it!"
He was doing the same thing inside of himself that I so often did about Brad: using a thin-skinned, half-baked Pride of Possession to overcome a multitude of sins. She's a bitch all right, he was saying silently; but she's my bitch. And whatever happens on the side—look at me, fellas, look at met I'm the guy who takes her home!
We got back to the Brownes' sometime after eleven; and I didn't get much chance to wonder where Brad and Frannie were. Almost immediately I was surrounded by parents. There were two couples with kids I'd recently accepted; and a few more who were thinking of starting and wanted to feel me out on policy and attitude.
When Frannie and Brad did come in I didn't get a chance to talk to her. She simply waved to me on her way to the powder room.
CHAPTER NINE
Some weeks later Frannie caught the German measles. There had been a run of it in Meade's Manor and someone had probably brought it to the party.
A couple of days after its inception I left my desk with a volunteer assistant and went to visit Frannie. She was sitting up in bed in one of Marc's clean shirts. The stark whiteness of it played up the grim red rash that covered her face and arms.
"Hi," I said, tossing her the giant Hershey bar I'd picked up on the way as a Get Well present "How are you?"
"Terrible."
"It's awful with adults," I said. "How come you weren't immune? Didn't you ever have it as a child?"
"No. It's one of the few childhood miseries I was spared."
I sat down on the edge of the bed. "Is there anything I can do?" I asked. She shook her head and began gnawing at her nails. It made me break inside to see her looking that way: she was so sick, so damned beat. She reminded me of kids I'd had to drive home from school because they'd come down with something. It was their eyes that always killed me. They looked out at you with a kind of startledness, as if somebody had given them a slap they didn't deserve.