Ten North Frederick

by John O'Hara

  “Is it cold?” said Edith.

  “Not so very,” said Ann.

  “How did you like Miss Plaisted?” said Edith.

  “Was that her name? She just said Ronnie. I’m Ronnie is how she introduced herself. She was English, wasn’t she?”

  “I believe so. A friend of a girl I went to school with.”

  “At Hannah Payne’s?”

  “Yes,” said Edith.

  “Oh, I didn’t like her or dislike her. Did they go?”

  “Yes. Too bad you couldn’t meet my friend, but they were in a hurry,” said Edith.

  “What was your friend’s name?”

  “Barbara Danworth. I haven’t seen her since I was your age.”

  “Miss Whatever-Her-Name-Was Ronnie wanted to go for a stroll, but I told her there were snakes and she said she wasn’t afraid of snakes but I said I was. I’ll bet she never saw one of the big rattlers, and she’d never heard of copperheads.”

  “What else did you talk about?” said Edith.

  “Nothing. She asked me how old I was, and when I told her she said I looked older. That was all. She said she had a great friend in Italy my age. I didn’t care whether she had a friend in Italy.” Ann was abruptly silent.

  “What are you thinking? Something else she said?”

  “Oh, I didn’t like her.”

  “You didn’t? Why?”

  “Something else she said,” said Ann.

  “What? Tell me. They’ve gone, and I’m quite sure they’ll never be back.”

  “It’s none of her business.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Oh, she said to me, ‘You know you have glorious fronts.’ Do you know what fronts are? Here.” The girl dived and swam under and above the water, and Edith knew that she was doing it to put an end to conversation.

  The irony of the unrealized threat was as frightening a part of it as any of the facts, and Edith felt punishment—or a strong enough threat of it to be the same—of a Divinely ironic nature. If the Deity wanted to mete out an elaborate and belated punishment, that was the way He would do it. She came back from her swim without the absolution she had hoped the cold water would give her, and she was glad that Joe was miles away from her, removed from the panicky confession she might have made if he had been near. It was not so much a fear of the severity of his judgment; he was tolerant enough of all aberrations, since he had been affected (so he complacently believed) by none of them. But an outburst of revelation was something she had avoided all her life, simply because utter frankness was not in her nature. Why it was not in her nature was not a secret she kept from herself: she gave only what she had to give, to get more in return. A revelation of her old relationship with Barbara would have been greater than any admission she could have got in return, for Joe had long ago admitted that in prep school he and other boys had watched each other masturbate. She had not matched his rather mild confession with any admission of her own (and he had accepted her claim of total purity). Now, at this late date, to have to admit the totality of her schoolgirl affair and the year’s time it lasted, would have been to give Joe some kind of advantage that she had resisted giving him all her life. He was a man, her husband, who would hold it over her even now, and she would be compelled to relinquish some of that ownership of him that she needed for her soul. But most dangerous of all—if anything had happened to Ann. If through that ugly irony anything had happened to Ann, Joe’s revenge on Edith would have been as calculated and as thorough as his love for the child was complete and instinctive. In the recent years of his going after the prize he wanted, he had, without knowing it, gained new respect from Edith. The travel, the conversations with new acquaintances, the maintenance of an attitude, all were chores or partook of the nature of chores. They were demanding, making demands on his patience, his good nature, and on his strength. But he made himself perform the tasks because he had an objective. If his objective were the punishment of his wife, he could call upon the same kind of reserves; the persistence and even the physical resources that would enable him to achieve her painful destruction. She was thankful (without quite being grateful) that Joe was away in Montrose and safe from her desperate candor. She would be all right again in the morning, she knew, but she also knew she was in for a bad night. And insanely, crazily inconsistently, she realized she was wishing she could talk to Lloyd Williams. There was no one else she wanted to turn to, but Edith of the good sense had the good sense not to turn to him.

  After the children were in bed and the house was quiet for the night and she was alone with herself, she wondered whether she might not be getting a little afraid of Joe. If that were so, Joe was in danger. She had always been suspicious and mistrustful of the world, but she never had been afraid of anyone before. She had always been able to despise people without being afraid of them.

  • • •

  At the corner of Christiana and Main, Barbara’s red Fiat was halted by the traffic light.

  Peg Slattery, crossing Christiana Street, said to her seventeen-year-old daughter Margaret: “Look at those freaks.”

  “The younger one is pretty,” said Margaret.

  In Veronica Plaisted’s characteristic, evenly semi-circular search of the pedestrians’ faces, the one face that stopped her, for perhaps two seconds, was the face of Margaret Slattery, the embodiment of innocence.

  The traffic light changed, the red Fiat moved on.

  • • •

  It must not be inferred that during the two years of Joe Chapin’s travels about the state, he and Mike Slattery were, in Mike’s phrase, on the outs with each other. Within a few weeks of his being shown the door out of Joe’s office Mike was collecting money for the party. He saw Joe at the Gibbsville Club and went to him.

  “Joe, can I put you down for the same as last year?” said Mike.

  “Why, yes, Mike.”

  “Maybe a little more?” said Mike.

  “No more, but no less,” said Joe.

  Although the two men were momentarily alone, the conversation was conducted almost as though others were present.

  “Thank you, Joe. I’m glad there’s no hard feelings.”

  “None whatever,” said Joe.

  “Once in a while it’s good for a couple of friends to fly off the handle. It clears the atmosphere, instead of letting the thing fester. Thank you for the contribution, and if you want to know something, I had you down for it. It’s a kind of a compliment. Only a small man would withhold his contribution, and you’re not that.”

  “Thank you, Mike.”

  “And I’m not soft-soaping you.”

  “Of course you are, but I don’t mind it,” said Joe.

  Although Mike Slattery was quick and shrewd, and, oftener than not, accurate in his judgments of men, there were some subtleties that escaped him. He was ready and willing to admit the differences between himself and Joe Chapin. He did not pretend to be a society man, a blueblood, an aristocrat—any of the things he would call Joe Chapin. In their judgments of Mike, many men made the mistake of forgetting that Mike wanted power, and not the badges of power. Men wasted valuable time in wondering about what Mike wanted because they thought he must want what they themselves wanted. For example, Mike made many more trips throughout the state than Joe Chapin made, but Mike’s trips were furtive, stealthy excursions, with their purpose achieved in offices and hotel rooms and private residences, and no mention whatever in the newspapers. His driver, Ed Markovich, wore a felt hat and a business suit on their trips. Mike owned a succession of automobiles—Packards, Studebakers, Cadillacs—but he never owned the typical politician’s limousine. He always bought sedans, and they were always black. Unless he wanted to take a nap on a long ride, Mike would ride on the front seat with Ed so they would look like two businessmen, not chauffeur and employer. (And Ed might conveniently be mistaken for the owner.) The hotel room
s often were taken under Ed’s name rather than Mike’s, and telephone calls almost always were made by Mr. Markovich. It was Mike’s theory that the job of state senator was one that gave a man standing, got him a title, but was not a job that many people wanted. He believed that after a man had served in the lower house of Legislature, he went home and tried to get nomination for Congress. If he was content to stay in the State Assembly he probably was lazy or actually or potentially a thief. And since Mike was the man who usually put the fellow in the Assembly, the fellow had the good sense or the gratitude not to go after the only job Mike wanted. It was no disgrace to be a senator and continue to be one for one term after another. But Mike’s power was not, of course, limited to his legislative vote. His power was a personal attribute: first of all, his word could be relied on, except when there was a policy switch for tactical purposes, and such switches did not come under the head of the doublecross. In the second place, Mike was persuasive with a gift for making the object of his conversational attentions feel important, and accompanying the gift was a certain sincerity; Mike liked to talk to people. Thirdly, he was humorous and sociable and he created the illusion of sentimentality, although in fact there was room in his heart only for his family and his Church. In the fourth place, he was clean; he shaved every day, he bathed every day, his linen was clean, his shoes were polished; and his speech was clean and unprofane. His virility was never in question, but his record with women was spotless, and he had never taken a drink in his entire life. But he laughed at dirty stories and he had a bartender’s knowledge of and willingness to serve liquor. Fifth, he played the piano, and could carry a tune in his true tenor. Sixth, he had a good memory for faces and names and figures, and what he did not remember he knew how to find out. And the memory was not limited to people and things that were pleasant to remember. And, finally, it was almost impossible to deceive him about men’s motives. He was a practicing skeptic, although a patient one, who would listen while a man lied and wait until the man was ready with the truth.

  • • •

  Mike had a working understanding of the mind of Joe Chapin, and where he failed of complete understanding was in the inability to sense that Joe was just as vindictive as he was. No matter how long they lived, no matter how closely they might work together or what gestures of friendship they might make, the fact, which Mike missed, was that Joe was incapable of pardoning Mike’s impertinence in the scene after Joe’s fruitless trip to Washington.

  Peg had warned him. “Don’t take your eye off Joe Chapin,” she said. “You treated him as if you were bawling out a Hunky ward-captain, and nobody ever treated him that way before, that I’ll guarantee you. I’ll bet those nostrils were quivering. In olden days he would have hit you with a riding whip.”

  He had worried along those lines himself, but he would not admit as much to Peg. When the meeting at the club came to pass so nicely, he was sure Peg was unduly alarmed. But he followed her advice: he kept his eye on Joe Chapin.

  Mike’s friends all over the state informed him of Joe’s appearances, and Mike did not deceive himself that Joe had developed an overwhelming passion for golf or the legal profession. But Joe’s refusal of the judgeship and his haughty behavior in the Gibbsville mayoralty matter, and the fact that Joe had sought an appointive job from Washington—all made Mike believe that Joe would not seek the mandate of the people. Joe was up to something, of that there could be no doubt; but whatever it was, he must have learned that if it was political, he would finally have to come to Mike. In the meantime, Mike got reports as to the dates and places on Joe’s itineraries, against the day they might be useful. He could, he knew, have asked Joe point-blank, or more adroitly questioned him as to the meaning of the trips. But he would no more have expected a forthright answer from Joe than he would from Mr. Coolidge, who was refusing to say what he really meant when he said he did not choose to run. If you went back far enough, Joe was a New England Yankee too, and probably could be just as stubborn and uncommunicative as the President. Mike wished he knew what Joe wanted if only because he wished he knew what his own answer would be. There would be almost as much pleasure to be had in granting Joe a big favor as in turning him down.

  • • •

  Gibbsville Country Day was in the tradition of the private school that prepared the sons of gentlemen for preparatory school. It was possible to stay at G.C.D. from the fifth grade through senior high-school year, but almost no boy did so. In Buffalo there was Nichols; in Pittsburgh, Shady Side; in Wilmington, Tower Hill; in New York, Buckley and Allen-Stevenson. In Gibbsville the well-born boy went to Miss Holton’s until it was time to go to G.C.D., remaining there until it was time to acquire the polish and the label of Andover, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, The Hill, Mercersburg—among Gibbsville parents, the most popular of the noted prep schools. Gibbsville alone could not have supported a G.C.D., but it attracted the sons of the quality from the nearby mining and farming towns, and it struggled along year after year, with the annual deficits made up by private subscription by men who believed in the private-school idea. Scholastically, G.C.D. was sometimes a little better and never any worse than the public grammar and high schools. It did not field a representative football team (which was in its favor with the mothers) but it had a baseball team that played, and was always beaten by, Gibbsville High and the high schools of the nearby towns. Once or twice in a decade G.C.D. would beat G.H.S. in a dual track meet, and there were always some good tennis players at G.C.D., but the boys were aware that in most team sports they were outmanned by the public schools. The students of G.C.D. were known to the public-school boys and girls as Willie-Boys and Sissies, and the only support they got was from their sisters and cousins at Miss Holton’s; but it probably did no harm to have G.C.D. take its beatings from G.H.S., and it probably did no harm when a G.C.D. boy gave a G.H.S. boy a bloody nose. It balanced things to have the rich reminded that they were outnumbered and to have the poor reminded that a rich boy could also use his fists.

  The original G.C.D. building was a converted mansion at 16th and Christiana, once the home of the Rutter family, of the Rutter Brewery. When Jacob Rutter built his house he bought a block of land, with a stand of trees, and he had what amounted to a private park within the borough limits of Gibbsville. The Rutter line died out with Jacob and for more than a year the house was not occupied, until the gentlemen who were organizing Gibbsville Academy, predecessor of G.C.D., bought the property. Half of the block was promptly sold for middle-class home sites, leaving adequate grounds for the school.

  Joby Chapin was in one of the last classes to start at the Rutter house, just before the school removed to the new plant farther out on West Christiana Street. The school made real estate money on the move to the new plant, which had all modern facilities, and there was even some talk about making G.C.D. a boarding school, but the objections were too numerous and the enthusiasm too slight. Classes always got smaller after the first high-school year, when the boys were usually sent to the established prep schools. By the time a boy reached senior high-school year his class was so depleted that he was practically being tutored, which would have meant an expensive education if the teachers had been better paid.

  The trustees of Gibbsville Country Day would have liked an Oxon. or a Cantab. for headmaster of the school, a pipe-smoker with a blazer and with cricket in his conversation. But Fred M. Koenig had his defenders. Frederick Miller Koenig, as his name eventually appeared in the Daybook, the school annual, had gone to Kutztown Normal for two years, taught for two years for money to pay his college bills, graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Lafayette, which was an acceptable college, taken his M.A. at Princeton, which gave him a Big Three label, and had been a lieutenant in the Service of Supply in France (which gave him an army record and some European travel). He was teaching English and French at Gibbsville High when he received the call from Gibbsville Country Day, a call to which he responded with dignified alacrity. He was a Re
ading boy, who had met his bride-to-be at Normal, and since his bride-to-be was the daughter of the third-largest grocery store in Gibbsville, the post at Gibbsville High had always been on his mind and in the mind of his father-in-law. The Country Day job meant $200 above the high-school pay, but more desirable than that was the quick prestige.

  Fred Koenig’s strongest supporter on the G.C.D. board was Joe Chapin, who had originally been in favor of a Rhodes Scholar, any Rhodes Scholar. But when none was to be had, Joe suggested they look into Koenig’s record, Koenig having been suggested to Joe by his father-in-law, F. W. Huntzinger, a McHenry & Chapin client and one of the most respectable Lutherans in Lantenengo County. Koenig always remembered that Joe Chapin had been his sponsor, and when Koenig took over at G.C.D., Joby was marked for special consideration. Indeed, for special special consideration, for as Joe Chapin’s son, Joby was automatically special, without Joe’s intercession in Koenig’s behalf.

  Koenig was always so careful not to show any favoritism that he became self-conscious about it. He would pass Joby in one of the halls, and say “Good morning, Chapin,” so stiffly that a duller boy than Joby would have sensed the self-consciousness. And Joby was not a dull boy. He had long since learned the relative positions of the citizens of Gibbsville: there were people like Harry and Marian Jackson, who worked for the family but were not afraid of you. There were people like Uncle Arthur and Aunt Rose McHenry, who gave you presents, but did not care much about you one way or the other. You stood up when they came in the room. There was Uncle Cartie Stokes, to whom Harry and Marian were respectful, but to whom your father was not respectful. There was Peter Kemp, the farmer, who worked all the time and worked for your father and mother but to whom your father and mother were respectful, not in the same way that Harry and Marian were respectful to Uncle Cartie, but still in a different way from the way your father and mother were polite to Harry and Marian. There were the people in the Main Street stores: if they did not know your name, they treated you like just another kid: if they knew your name, they called you Mister Chapin, although you were only twelve or thirteen years old. There were men and women, usually older than your father and mother, who liked all children. And there were people like Mr. Koenig, who was known to be fair, but whose treatment of you was cold and almost rude while at the same time he was a little afraid you would think he was cold or rude. In a boys’ school the reputation for fairness is a master’s greatest asset, greater than a reputation for efficiency (“he knows his subject”) or for jolly good fellowship or even for athletic prowess. Among the boys at G.C.D., Mr. Koenig was said to be strict but fair, but Joby did not agree. Mr. Koenig was strict but the fairness was doubtful.