Mary McCarthy

by Mary McCarthy

  This trait, to Dolly, was both wonderful and terrible. It was the distillation of all she feared and mistrusted, admired and envied. John and Martha were like parents to her, though they all three were nearly the same age. They could not help thinking for her (no one could, apparently), and if she let them, everything sparkled with high spirits and certainty. In these bright October days, they were living, the three of them, in a sort of idyl, full of games and laughter. They made a charming picture—Dolly had studied it, as though in a mirror or in the still glass of one of the roseate ponds: the dark young man and the two fair-haired girls. In the mornings, John worked on a brochure he was doing for the Historical Society, while Martha wrote and Dolly painted, on a schedule he had devised. Nearly every afternoon, they met for a swim or to go musseling or mushrooming. On especially good days, they picnicked on the beach, with a hamper of fried chicken and a cranberry pie. They often had dinner together, cooking over Dolly’s fire or eating, more formally, in Martha’s pink dining room. They read poetry and argued heatedly about books and pictures; Martha spun theories out of John’s and Dolly’s perceptions. Late at night, armed with a star book and a flashlight, they went out to have Dolly identify the stars for them. There was the promise of a French play-reading at the Coes’, about which the Sinnotts appeared to be squabbling.

  John did not want them to go, and Martha protested that it would be unkind not to. She had already cast Dolly in the role of the queen, Bérénice, and was sketching out a costume for her, though there was no plan of dressing up. Dolly was troubled by these arguments between the Sinnotts, quick and laughing as they were. In the ten days she had been here, she had become aware of a change in their relation. She could see, behind the screen of persiflage, that John was worried about money and that Martha’s play was not going well. Several times it had been on the tip of her tongue to offer them a loan, but the fear of intruding kept her silent. They were going, she sensed, through a period of testing, in which no outsider, even a second cousin, could help. Dolly often wondered, especially since Martha’s visit, whether it had not been a mistake on their part to try themselves out here, of all places, where there were so many bad memories for Martha to live down. But it was precisely like the Sinnotts to seek out the severest conditions. They would not compromise, Dolly knew, any more than they would drink instant coffee; they demanded the supreme test.

  She herself had no doubt about their power of survival; it was her own she questioned as she lay awake at night in her bunk-bed, listening to animals that John assured her were only squirrels. Influenced perhaps by their example, she too felt that she had reached a point of decision. But her own little bark was not even launched yet on the unknown waters that beckoned her, while John and Martha were already at sea, having chosen to sink or swim. It was an awful choice; Dolly could see why they were scared, even though, for once, she thought she knew better than they did and could promise them that it would be all right for them in the end. But they would not believe her if she told them. “You only see the surface,” Martha had said once, gloomily, when they had all had a lot of red wine at dinner and Dolly had been telling them what a beautiful life they had made here. “Are you different when you’re alone?” Dolly had asked in alarm. No, said the Sinnotts; they had fights, sometimes, but it was not that. It was something else, said Martha. “All this,” she declared, with a sweeping gesture that took in her long, shadowed dining room. “We made it, but I can’t believe that it’s real.”

  She did not want Dolly to stay on here. Only till Thanksgiving, she told Dolly firmly. After that, Dolly would not like it. The winds would begin to blow and it would be too unpleasant to go sketching and the people would get on her nerves. But it was just here that Dolly disagreed with her. Despite what Martha said, she felt determined to extend her stay through the winter. She did not want only the “best part,” as Martha called the fall season; she wanted the whole thing. And it distressed her to be told, repeatedly, by both John and Martha that it would be fatal for her to get to know the people here. She had heard it from them the first night, in their white parlor, when her head was swimming with the information that was being pressed on her. Sandy Gray’s name, she ruefully remembered, had led the list of persons especially to be avoided, if, as Martha said, she had come down here to work. That was the point, both the Sinnotts had averred, talking very fast and underscoring each other’s words. If you came here to work, there were only a few people you could safely see: the Coes, a couple called the Hubers, who were much older, and one or two others whose names Dolly could not remember. The rest were death, said Martha, stamping out a cigarette.

  “But why?” Dolly had murmured, sleepy and confused. “They don’t work,” said the Sinnotts, with an air of having explained the universe. Dolly did not understand. There were lots of nice people who didn’t work, she protested, feeling a wayward loyalty spring up toward this criticized group. The Sinnotts shook their heads. The local drones were different, they explained: they had turned New Leeds into a hive of inactivity. They not only did not work but they proselytized for sloth. They had even converted the natives. “Do you know,” cried John, “what the carpenter told me the other day when I called him in to look at some sills? He said, ‘Believe it or not, we try to do a good job.’ ” Dolly laughed dubiously; she could see that the Sinnotts were very much excited. These people here, they continued, had no object in life except to see each other incessantly, over a bottle. They did not read; they did not travel, farther than Digby or to Trowbridge, the county seat, when one of them was arrested for drunken driving or had to appear in a divorce case. They did not even keep house or take care of their children any longer. Their wants were reduced to a minimum—shelter, something to eat, blue jeans and a Mackinaw, and a bottle of Imperial. They were like people of the future, said Martha—a planner’s nightmare of what the world would be like when work had been abolished and everybody took a vitamin pill instead of bothering to cook.

  “But why shouldn’t they live like that if they want to?” Dolly had been saying to herself, over and over again, in a plaintive voice, alone in her shack, as she answered the Sinnotts on behalf of these New Leedsians whom she had never been permitted to meet. “Why should they work if they don’t have to?” She herself was industrious, even in her pleasures, like a sober little girl making mud pies, but it seemed to her that it was unfair of the Sinnotts to expect the rest of humanity to be like them. Moreover, she was curious, which was, she felt, her right as a woman. She was restive, living in an idyl, with two omniscient beings cautioning her not to open Pandora’s box, not to light Psyche’s taper, not to eat the apple.

  “Yes!” she cried, jumping up, when Sandy Gray proposed that she come for a walk in the woods with him.

  “Why shouldn’t I if I want to?” she said aloud, rubbing her pale curls thoughtfully, as if she were just waking up. She let him lead her off up a hidden trail, leaving her easel where it was and her brushes unwiped. It was a wonderful walk. He knew the woods better than John and Martha; he showed her foxholes and deer tracks and where a skunk had its den. They explored an old logging trail, very much overgrown. He helped her climb over trees that had been blown down by the last hurricane. Brambles tore her stockings and a hornet stung her, but he hurried down to a little stream and made a mud plaster to put on her cheek. They scaled a high ridge, going cross-country, and found a place where you could look out and see seven ponds. Outdoors, he was a different person, courteously doing the honors as if nature were his home. His hand was always ready, at her elbow, to guide her up a steep spot when she needed it, and he looked the other way when she had to stop to take the stones out of her shoes. They talked about the difficulties of painting from nature, which was always changing just as you got your colors set, and about chess and the Great Barrier Reef. Just before lunch-time, they saw a fawn.

  “It looks like you,” he said, turning to scan her with a short, gusty laugh. “The startled fawn.” Dolly colored; it was not the first
time she had heard this allusion made. Nevertheless, she liked him, she said to herself, as she peered into the little mirror that was tacked up over the kitchen sink. She was a sight. There were burrs in her hair and her face was streaked with mud, but her cheeks were glowing. He was still there, in the living room, drinking a glass of white wine while she fixed them some lunch: Portuguese bread and hard salami and tomatoes and cheese. He was telling her about his children, who had been handed over to his third wife by a court order when his fourth wife left him. He was suing to get them back. His lawyer was going to show that she was living with a French Canadian truckdriver, down on the bay front, in a house made of cement blocks, and using the maintenance money to buy her paramour presents. “Which one?” called Dolly, slicing the salami. “You mean the fourth or the third?” He meant the third, he said, but the fourth wife was here too, working at the counter of the grille. All his wives were here, except the second one; the first was in the graveyard, up by the high school—a very fine woman, he observed, used to be a singer, older than he was, one of the pioneer artists to settle in New Leeds. For some reason, the dead woman’s presence seemed obscurely shocking to Dolly. Remembering the Sinnotts’ stories, she did not dare ask what she had died of, lest she hear that she had burned up or fallen down a stairway. “What about the second one?” she murmured, setting down the plate of bread and cheese before him and slipping into the place opposite.

  A dour expression darkened his face. “Ellen,” he said, slowly, munching a piece of bread. “You’ve heard about Ellen?” Dolly shook her head. “You must have,” he exclaimed. “Your friend Martha must have told you.” Dolly shook her head again. Fear tightened her throat; it was the first time Martha had been mentioned between them, and there was something ugly, a sneer, in the way he pronounced her name. Yet why should he like Martha, she asked herself; after all, Martha did not like him. “That beats all,” he remarked. “Why?” said Dolly, faintly, after a silence. “They were best friends,” he said. “Thick as thieves.” “Oh?” Dolly quavered, filling his glass with wine and pouring milk for herself. “I loved Ellen,” he said, chewing. “She was the only one I loved.” “But what happened?” said Dolly. “She left me,” he retorted. “Seven years ago.” Dolly drew a quick breath. “Martha Murphy,” he said, “put her up to it. I have proof. I found the letters. I pieced them together from the wastepaper basket.” “Letters?” “From Martha to Ellen—general delivery,” he said impatiently. “Urging her to leave me, for her soul’s sake. Ellen was weak. She didn’t want to leave me. She did it because she was told she ought to. Everything Martha did, she copied.” Dolly bit her lip; she could see the possibility of this all too clearly. On the other hand, she could see that Martha might have had reasons. The more he spoke of Ellen, who had been young and blond and beautiful and was disowned by her parents when she married him, the more Dolly felt that the marriage had been unsuitable. “Where is she now?” she inquired, pushing a bowl of grapes toward him. “In Mexico.” She had gone through her own money, it seemed, and was living with a Mexican on the alimony from her second husband. But Sandy Gray still loved her and still wanted her back. Now that he was between marriages, he had started writing to her again, and she had answered. . . .

  Dolly glanced at him thoughtfully from beneath lowered brows. Here was a man, she perceived, who was living on hope. Ellen, his children—he expected to get them all back at once and start a new life. He had no idea, apparently—she thought with pity—that anything was ever finished. He was still toying with the notion that he might have sued Martha for alienation of affections, along with his mother-in-law, who had also written letters. Miles Murphy had told him he should have done it when he went to him as a therapist. The word, therapist, prickled Dolly’s sensibilities. He had a number of jargon terms that embarrassed her and she did not care for his Americanisms, which sounded awfully queer in his Australian voice. And his table manners were disturbing. He talked earnestly, with his mouth full, and particles of food kept falling into his beard. All that was unimportant, she said to herself, watching him spit the grape seeds out onto his plate. He had a fearsome sincerity that made good manners seem false.

  This sincerity appalled Dolly, for his sake. He was living here in the woods like a mole in a tunnel. The outside did not exist for him, evidently. He was utterly free of self-consciousness—the consciousness, that is, of how he might look to others. It made Dolly feel guilty even to question his hopes, to peep at him through the eyes of the judge in Trowbridge or through the eyes of the woman, Ellen, whose snapshot he took out of his black breast pocket to show her. She held the snapshot at arm’s length, narrowing her eyes to appraise it in the light of his expectations. It was a pretty blond girl, thin, with a long bob and a pearl choker, wearing a sun dress. Dolly felt as if she knew her; she had known the type in college—the strained, squirrelly debutantes who dropped out in the sophomore year to make a reckless marriage. She will never come back to you, she said to herself, remorseful for her percipience. “She’s lovely,” she said aloud, handing back the photograph. He nodded, stowing the picture away with a little pat of satisfaction.

  He remained, musing, at the table, drawing on his pipe, while Dolly washed the dishes. He did not offer to help her, and she was grateful for this. There was not room for two in the little kitchen, Dolly had found; when John Sinnott washed up for her, they kept bumping into each other. She did not want to be at such close quarters, indoors, with Mr. Sandy Gray. In the house, his clothes gave off a slightly sour, musty smell, like that of an unaired closet. His fingernails were clean—she had looked to see—but she could not rid herself of the notion that his white soft skin was dirty, underneath his clothes, which she could not imagine ever going to the cleaners’ and coming back on hangers, like middle-class apparel. If he bathed at all, she conjectured, it must be in the pond. She could picture his long white form immersing itself naked, as if in a baptism, with a cake of Ivory soap.

  “Would you like a swim?” His voice came suddenly from the sitting room. Dolly started. More than once, she had had the uneasy feeling that he could read her thoughts. “No, thanks,” she answered, in a muffled voice. He would expect her to take her clothes off. Even the Sinnotts had been surprised, the first afternoon, when she produced her gray wool bathing suit. “You don’t need that here,” said Martha, but John had been more tactful and left his underdrawers on, in the water, while Martha had swum nude. After that, they had both brought bathing suits, whenever they came, which Dolly felt was an imposition on them, for the whole point of New Leeds—she could hear Martha saying it—was that you could go in naked.

  “Good!” came the voice from the sitting room. “Most people swim too much here.” Despite her relief, Dolly again was troubled; she felt that her friends were being criticized. And what was wrong with swimming? She dared not ask. “The natives never swim,” the voice answered her silent inquiry. “It’s a city person’s fad, like cooking in the fireplace.” “Good Lord!” said Dolly, raising a stricken hand to her cheek. “Wasn’t that what they were used for, originally?” she ventured, hanging up the dish towel. “Hell, yes,” he said. “They did it from necessity. Now it’s phoney, an artifice. ‘Oh, I adore these old fireplaces,’ ” he quoted in falsetto.

  Dolly came reluctantly into the sitting room. Her fireplace was not old, but her two wire broilers and an asbestos glove stood beside it, bearing witness against her. She could not make out whether he had seen them. And his point of view was mysterious to her; she could not locate where he stood, with such an uncompromising air. New Leeds, he declared, was being ruined by an influx of smart people with money and artificial standards. Dolly rubbed her eyes. Who did he mean, she asked herself wonderingly. The Sinnotts, if he meant them, had no money. And who else could answer to this description? She could only suppose that he must be referring to her. “Who?” she interrupted. “Who are you talking about?” He smiled. “My dear girl,” he said. “You must have met them and been entertained in their h
omes.” Dolly shook her head. “I don’t know who you mean,” she said stubbornly. He puffed on his pipe. “The Coes,” he said finally. “The Hubers.” And he named off the very people whom Martha had said she could see. Dolly pressed her lips firmly together to stifle the laughter that was bubbling up. “The Coes!” she cried faintly. “You’re dreaming.” She started to add that she had been served a drink in a jelly glass in their establishment, but prudence closed her mouth just in time; she did not want him to find her with an artificial standard showing. “The Coes are all right,” he conceded. “But they’re rich people and they want to set the tone. They’ve formed a choice little group: your friend Martha, of course, and poor old Miles, when they can snag him.”

  Dolly laughed uncomfortably. “I thought you liked Mr. Murphy,” she protested. Sandy Gray nodded. “Miles was my friend,” he said somberly. “Now I don’t know him any more. Or he doesn’t know me. It’s this damned change. He’s got a new woman and he’s gone respectable. He drives around in a Cadillac, wearing a sports jacket. If I ask him to drop in to see me, he explains that his white-wall tires won’t take these back roads or his wheels will get out of alignment. Or he’s busy with his philosophical work. There’s something slick and hard about the guy now that he’s got his life fixed up. ‘First things first,’ I said to him the last time we met and he stared at me like a boiled lobster.” Dolly smiled bleakly at the comparison; she felt touched and troubled by what she was hearing. “Perhaps he is busy,” she suggested. The fact that she herself had seen him the other day at the Coes’ weighed heavy on her conscience. “First things first,” Sandy Gray repeated. “Let me give you an example. I went down to see him last month, on my motorbike. I had the idea that I might get him to testify for me, professionally, as a psychologist, about the kids’ condition. Miles knows Clover, my third wife, from way back; she grew up here; her father wrote for the pulps. He knows she’s an unfit mother; she used to take care of his kid for him when he was living with Martha. I figured he could drop in to see her now and report what he found to my lawyer.” Dolly’s brows furrowed; a deep sense of horror overcame her; her stomach felt queasy. Her sympathies, by instinct, flew to the mother’s side and repelled the idea of spying on her. But she immediately felt rebuked by another inner voice that told her she was being conventional. Many fathers, she knew, made better parents than many mothers; it was only tradition that shrank from the facts. Moreover, there was spying and spying; in a good cause, she supposed, it was justified. “I told him the whole story,” Sandy Gray was relating. “And he sat there at his desk, in that damned windmill, listening, tapping his foot and doodling on a piece of paper. “So what happened?” said Dolly. “Did he refuse you?”