Jack and Susan in 1953

by McDowell, Michael

  “Miss Mather is very beautiful,” said Rodolfo, when Jack had returned to the couch.

  “Pardon?” asked Jack in surprise.

  “Susan says she is also very rich.” Jack didn’t answer. “Very beautiful and very rich. Not all men are so fortunate as to marry a woman like that.”

  Rodolfo smiled blandly at Jack.

  The blood that had been draining slowly through his neck suddenly reversed direction and sped back up into Jack’s face. More came up from his heart. He feared his feet would go numb again because it felt like so much blood was rushing upward to fill his cheeks and make his forehead bead with sweat. Sodium pentathal. Lie detectors. The rack and screw. None of those could get the truth out of Jack Beaumont as quickly and as undeniably as his own blushes.

  If Rodolfo had been guessing, then he now knew that he had guessed correctly. Jack felt cornered in his own house—as if he’d asked the Spanish Inquisition over for tea or opened the door to Hitler’s storm troops.

  It also occurred to Jack that Libby, despite her promise of discretion, might have placed an engagement announcement in the paper. The morning Times lay on the floor next to the couch. Jack stifled an urge to leap up, grab the paper, and search out the appropriate page to see if his name were publicly linked there with that of Elizabeth St. John Mather.

  Instead, he took another swallow of scotch.

  “It is an interesting question,” said Rodolfo.

  “What question?” said Jack.

  “Who gets to the altar first.” Rodolfo smiled. A smile that said, I am a romantic Cuban, and my outlook on life is essentially romantic. You are a reserved American man, and do not show your feelings. Ah, well! At heart, you’re no less romantic than I…

  Jack didn’t buy a bit of it. Rodolfo had come here on a fishing expedition, to find out whether Jack still cared for Susan and to find out if Jack had any intentions toward Libby. By Jack’s blushes, Rodolfo had got answers to both questions: Jack was still in love with Susan—whether or not he admitted it to himself. And Jack stood in danger of being married to Libby Mather—whether or not the actual proposal had been made.

  Jack blushed again, for himself, and the contradiction in those two statements.

  Then Rodolfo said: “I am glad that things have worked out this way.”

  “What way?” said Jack.

  “That you are in love with Miss Mather as I am in love with Susan. So easy. So convenient. We do not step on one another’s feet.”

  Jack said nothing.

  “Love…” began Rodolfo, and then shrugged with a smile.

  “Love what?” said Jack.

  “Love will make a man do what he would not do under another circumstance. Not here, perhaps, but in Cuba,” said Rodolfo, “a man may die for love.”

  “Is that so?” said Jack, idly noticing that his drink was more than half gone already. He pondered the question of whether he should ask Rodolfo to leave politely or ask him to leave in some other fashion—with a threat of instant death if he did not, for instance.

  “A Cuban man may even kill for love,” Rodolfo added blandly.

  That was definitely a threat.

  Good, thought Jack, that’s something I can deal with. But Jack made no immediate response. He wanted to hear how far the Cuban would go.

  No further, as it turned out.

  “I must leave, and allow you to recover,” said Rodolfo. “I would not like Miss Mather to think that I had delivered up her bridegroom as damaged goods.”

  Jack smiled a smile he hoped was as false as Rodolfo’s. Jack saw Rodolfo to the door, and had to grab Woolf by the scruff of the neck to keep him from blithely following after Susan Bright’s Cuban suitor.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SUSAN BRIGHT WORKED every Sunday morning, and sometimes evenings as well, quite alone in her small apartment, translating Russian pamphlets, documents, and letters supplied her by the U.S. Army. Even at the best, this was tedious work, but Susan was quick at it and accurate, and so the army used her even though it had a flock of its own specialists. Money earned this way bought Susan hats, the prices of which were in reverse proportion to their size—and hats this year were very small indeed. The work kept her atomizer filled with Duchess of York perfume. And once every two weeks, the translations paid for a trip to the hairdresser’s.

  She’d already made an appointment for late Saturday afternoon at Monsieur Marcel’s—a new shop on East Forty-eighth Street—when Rodolfo asked her to accompany him on Saturday night to dinner at the Cuban consulate. Susan had been to the United Nations and had seen diplomats, but she had never sat down to table with a consul. She decided that she would ask Marcel to cut her hair in whatever was the newest fashion, no matter how peculiar it looked.

  She cut her last tour short so that she could get to her appointment on time. The group of fifteen—from the Midwest, mostly—never realized that they had missed two large galleries of Florence and Siena…

  Marcel’s, from the street, consisted of a tiny door and a tiny window with two bewigged wooden heads staring sullenly out—as if the blades they were advertising were guillotines rather than scissors. Directly inside the door was a small reception area occupied by a red-haired receptionist, a young dragon-in-the-making, who was a martinet about tardiness and never let in anyone who hadn’t had an appointment. It was rumored that the dragon was in frantic and useless love with Monsieur Marcel.

  The layout of Marcel’s shop was distinctive; it got bigger as you went farther back. And the place went so far back, that by the time you ever got to see Monsieur Marcel himself you had the feeling you’d already crossed Forty-seventh Street and were burrowing on toward Forty-sixth. First there came two long corridors of changing rooms, where smiling women with cold hands took your coat or your jacket and whatever else you were carrying, gave you a check for them, and then helped you into a large, loose, green smock with large green buttons down the front. (It had been recently reported that these green smocks had now been seen at Palm Beach, as quaint cover-ups for bathing costumes.) The corridors widened into a large room filled with sinks and hair dryers and the sound of rushing water and the thunder of blowing hot air and women talking, talking, talking. A dozen ill-paid female assistants with pruned fingers massaged the scalps of a dozen women in smocks while a dozen more women sat beneath dryers reading about Mamie Eisenhower’s plans for redecorating the White House and other such articles of absorbing interest.

  Then finally, behind absurdly large double doors of oak, was the inner sanctum of Monsieur Marcel himself. A half-dozen tall raised comfortable chairs were arranged in a circle, facing outward—like some sitting-room Stonehenge—and a half-dozen women, staring at themselves in the mirror-lined walls, were all taken care of simultaneously by Monsieur Marcel and a single assistant. (Monsieur Marcel was a tall man and didn’t like to stoop when he was designing. Designing was Monsieur Marcel’s own word for what he did.) Monsieur Marcel wore black trousers, a white shirt, and a black silk tie. His skin was very white, and his hair was black and slick. Monsieur Marcel looked like a black-and-white photograph. Monsieur Marcel’s assistant looked as if he might be a younger, adoring brother, who tried his best to look and act exactly like his elder sibling. The assistant had red cheeks, however, which gave him an air of health, but spoiled the resemblance.

  Susan arrived half an hour before her appointed time. The dragon eyed her suspiciously, checked the appointment book twice, answered the telephone and tried to make it appear that Susan herself was the object of the conversation, and finally allowed Susan to pass through the narrow door behind her desk.

  Susan smiled at the young woman who helped her into a smock, picked out a recent issue of Collier’s, and then stepped into the shampooing room.

  The place was always a madhouse of laughter, chattering voices, and running water. The odor of perfume, shampoo, and lotions seemed to take up what little space wasn’t occupied by the noise.

  On the worst days, a shampoo, cut, an
d set could take five hours. Four of that was waiting. One girl employed by Monsieur Marcel did nothing but make coffee all day long.

  Susan read all the articles in Collier’s, then picked up a discarded copy of Vogue, paying particular attention to the ads. She asked herself what she would buy if she had a million dollars to spare. Not much.

  Only two and a half hours of waiting. Not bad.

  Her hair was shampooed by a girl whose nails were too long and who went after Susan’s scalp very much after the fashion of a cat attacking a scratching post. With a light green towel turbaned on her head, she was led into the inner sanctum. There she waited another ten minutes for an empty chair.

  Monsieur Marcel’s chaos was organized. When one of the six women in the ring was finished, she got down from her perch and sailed majestically out—the pinnacle of coiffured fashion. Susan climbed into a chair as yet another woman came through the door, to wait her ten minutes till a chair was free.

  “Susan!”

  She didn’t even have to turn, she knew the voice. And in the mirrored wall she could see the reflected visage of Elizabeth St. John Mather.

  Susan, pretending she hadn’t seen or heard, did not immediately respond. Then she arranged herself comfortably in her smock, prepared a tight little smile, looked up again, and said, “Hello Libby. What a coincidence.”

  Before the two young women could engage in any further conversation, Monsieur Marcel was behind Susan, asking wearily, “Which do you want? The Botticelli, the Bellini, or the Michelangelo?”

  The fashion of the day was Italian cuts. A shaggy sculpture of curls, with deep waves on the crown, and spit curls to frame the face. While waiting in the shampoo room, Susan had seen eight women walk out with the same hairdo.

  “What’s the difference?” asked Susan.

  “Well,” said Monsieur Marcel, “the Botticelli and the Bellini are exactly the same. The Michelangelo comes with silver streaks.”

  “Then the Bellini,” said Susan.

  Monsieur Marcel peered at Susan’s face in the mirror. “Turn,” he said, and she gave him her profile. “It will look very good on you,” he announced. He held out his left hand and from one side of the chair his assistant placed in his grasp a comb. He held out his right hand and the assistant came around the other side to place in his hand a pair of scissors. The assistant melted away. Monsieur Marcel began cutting. Monsieur Marcel didn’t converse with his customers; Susan didn’t mind.

  “Monsieur Marcel,” said Libby, having risen from her chair and now standing in front of Susan, braving the hairdresser’s iciest, most forbidding smile. “Do you mind if I talk to my friend while you design?”

  “Very much,” said Monsieur Marcel politely.

  Crushed, Libby backed away.

  “Thank you,” Susan said quietly to Monsieur Marcel. Susan had never seen Libby obsequious before, but really thought that she preferred Libby brash.

  In five minutes, Monsieur Marcel had finished. Susan liked what she saw in the mirror; the Bellini suited her.

  “Now,” said Monsieur Marcel, “we’ll let it rest for a moment or two and then we’ll come back to you for a final shaping.”

  Then, as luck would have it, when Monsieur Marcel had finished with the woman in the next chair and sent her packing, Libby Mather took her place.

  “I’m dying to talk to you,” Libby whispered as she climbed up onto the perch. “Poodle,” she instructed Monsieur Marcel, “basic poodle.”

  Monsieur Marcel unwrapped Libby’s turban, tossed it at his assistant, and went to work on Libby’s head. Italian haircuts didn’t suit blondes, and Libby had the sense to know it.

  In ten minutes Monsieur Marcel had finished temporarily with Libby and moved on. Libby immediately leaned over toward Susan, and caught Susan’s eyes in the mirror.

  “I couldn’t believe what happened to Jack yesterday, I couldn’t believe it. And you were there, you saw the whole thing. I was so upset when I heard—so upset.” Libby was whispering, because Monsieur Marcel didn’t approve of conversation in the inner sanctum. It distracted him from design.

  “Jack was lucky,” said Susan quietly. “Next time he runs out into the middle of a busy street he might get killed.”

  “What a terrible thing,” said Libby sadly, shaking her head. “Do you think Jack is mad at your friend?”

  “My friend?”

  “Mr. Havana.”

  “Rodolfo?”

  Libby nodded vigorously.

  “I don’t know if Jack is mad at him or not. How would I know what Jack thinks about anything?”

  “You used to be so close,” said Libby. “And it’s funny—isn’t it—how all of a sudden you’ve come right back into his life after four years? Where have you been hiding all this time?”

  “I haven’t been hiding anywhere, Libby. I guess we just haven’t been traveling in the same circles.”

  “But now we’re running into each other everywhere,” said Libby.

  “Things happen that way,” Susan replied vaguely.

  “Well,” said Libby, “if Jack isn’t mad at Rodolfo then I want to invite you and Rodolfo over to my place next Saturday night.”

  Susan looked at Libby curiously. “I’m not sure it would be a good idea, Libby—the four of us…”

  “Oh,” said Libby with a careless wave of her hand, “the four of us and about four hundred others. If Jack and Mr. Havana don’t want to talk to each other, they won’t have to.”

  “You’re having a party for four hundred people?” Susan asked, trying to calculate the cost, even assuming that Libby was exaggerating by a factor of four. Four was Libby’s usual standard for exaggeration, Susan remembered.

  “Well, about a hundred really. My closest and nearest and dearest friends, they all have to be there. And I want you, too,” she added, as if Susan didn’t quite fit into the category of closest and nearest and dearest. “And Mr. Havana,” as if Rodolfo were quite beyond the pale. “Everybody has to be there…”

  “They do?”

  “Of course,” said Libby. “When I announce my engagement.”

  Susan opened her mouth to reply, but before she had a chance to say anything Monsieur Marcel interrupted their whispered tête-à-tête with a weary, “Ladies… please…my designs are suffering.”

  It was an unfortunate coincidence that the Cuban consulate was on East Sixty-sixth Street. It was nearer Fifth Avenue than Jack Beaumont’s apartment, but the address made Susan think of Jack when she did not wish to do so.

  There were seventeen at dinner, and Susan was universally admired. For once, with Monsieur Marcel’s Italian haircut, Susan had managed to mount the crest of tasteful fashion. She wore her best black dress, and her most translucent pearls. With her white skin and inky black hair she was a feminine version of the austerely black-and-white Monsieur Marcel. Susan Bright, moreover, spoke excellent Spanish, and foreign diplomats are very impressed to meet an American who knows some language besides English.

  In turn, Susan was impressed. The Cuban consul treated Rodolfo intimately, drawing him aside several times before dinner, and disappearing with him into a study for half an hour after dinner. Susan herself was treated like—there was no other way to describe it—like a prospective daughter-in-law.

  The consul’s wife was a handsome, middle-aged woman, who dressed very much as Susan’s mother used to dress when Susan was a young girl. Susan liked her for that. While Rodolfo was closeted with the consul, the consul’s wife stood with Susan in the bowed window of the drawing room. They drank cups of black coffee laced with rum. Beyond the lace curtains was Sixty-sixth Street, and from where Susan stood, she could see a little bit of Central Park. The consul’s wife said to Susan, “We are very fond of Rodolfo. I hope he is good to you, for you are a very nice girl. I have met your uncle in Havana. He is a kind man and he spoke to me of you. He said that one day, you will inherit all his estates. Then, Miss Bright, you will be extremely rich indeed.”

  CHAPTER NINE
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  JACK’S BRUISES PROGRESSED through a spectrum of color in the course of the weekend. He watched the changes in his mirror. He grew to be great friends with Woolf because Woolf was always there beside him as he gazed at his damaged reflection. He tried to get Susan on the telephone, but she was either never at home or not answering. Libby commiserated fulsomely on the phone with Jack’s pain, but she did not visit him. She was busy planning the party for the following Saturday night, and anyway nothing could persuade her to visit that dreadful apartment on that terribly uninteresting street. Jack went out with Woolf on Sunday morning and bought all the papers that he could find and took them back to his apartment and read them through. Woolf amused himself by tearing to shreds each section of newspaper as soon as Jack finished it. When Jack had finished reading the papers it was dark out and the room was covered with shredded newsprint, and Jack had nothing to do except think about the fact that in one week he would be engaged to Elizabeth St. John Mather, the fifth richest single woman in America, while he was still in love with Susan Bright, who had no money.

  Jack made himself a pitcher of Clammy Marys—clam juice, vodka, and tomato juice, with a dash of Worcestershire sauce—and sat in the darkness and tried to figure out what was best to do, what was possible to do, and what he would probably end up doing after nothing else worked.

  Jack went to work Monday morning with strict instructions for Woolf not to do anything awful in his absence. It was fortunate that most of Jack’s bruises—now a rich shade of aubergine—were hidden beneath his suit. He was unable to hide the stiffness of his gait, however, and he told everyone at the office he had fallen out of a window over the weekend.

  Jack tried to get hold of Libby as soon as he got to his desk—not to tell her over the telephone that he had no intention of marrying her, but to set up a dinner, over which he would tell her that he had no intention of marrying her. Libby wasn’t home.

  Late Monday afternoon, Jack telephoned Susan, not to tell her he was still in love with her, but to set up a dinner, over which he would tell her he still loved her. Susan wasn’t home.