Her voice was controlled but sharper, and something told him that she was ceasing to be part of a production.
“Yes, my dear, you’re here; you made it,” he said.
“But you don’t know why I’m here, do you?”
“It doesn’t matter why, as long as you’re here,” he said. “And Emily, if I may say so, and if I may get in a word edgewise, you are looking especially lovely this afternoon.”
“Oh, Tom,” she said, and her voice broke, “please don’t say that.”
“Why, Emily,” he said, “I meant it as a compliment.”
“God damn you and your God-damned compliments,” she said. “I have been lonely as hell all day and you don’t love me any more.”
When she finished, she began to cry. He was used to Emily’s crying in a number of different ways, and this was the poor-little-Hoosier-girl way that had no artistic point of reference. She was crying for something they both had lost and momentarily he shared her desperate unhappiness. He crushed his cigarette in an ash tray and crossed the room to where she was sitting and knelt beside her chair, quite aware of what he did because he had directed such crossovers frequently enough. He could almost hear himself telling someone else to take it more slowly, to give it time, but he shared her grief because he had long ago faced the truth that had made her cry.
“Now, Emily,” he said, “don’t get your face all undone. I love you as much as I love anyone.”
The devastating thing was that his speech was absolutely true, and when he saw her looking at him through the tears that had already puffed her cheeks, he knew that they were alone there, clasped together by a hideous loneliness that shocked him so deeply that he could think of nothing more to say, and Emily was the one who spoke first.
“Go into Mulford’s room,” she said, “and get some Kleenex. She’s the kind who must keep Kleenex somewhere.”
Miss Mulford’s office was impeccable. Her typewriter was collapsed into the secretary desk; the loose papers were in folders. The only trace of her that remained, now that she had gone home, appeared in the books on the window sill in front of the desk, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Who’s Who in America and the Columbia Encyclopedia. He found the Kleenex tissues in the desk’s upper left hand drawer and he brought the entire box out to Emily, a crude gesture perhaps, but he did not want to make the trip twice.
“There,” he said.
But Emily still was weeping.
Where had everything gone, he was thinking—love and skill and wish to live and everything? The thought, as Emily sobbed, filled him close to panic. It was like the ending of the whole strange day. Where in hell had everything gone? Where, for that matter, did anything go?
The late Dr. Albert Einstein, or others vaguely in the Einstein category, had advanced the theory that time, being immaterial, was indestructible—and perhaps it was. Perhaps everything that ever happened still existed on a sight and sound track in interstellar space. There was that star, three thousand light-years away from the planet upon which he was situated. If one could only make one’s way to it like a hero in science fiction, and be equipped with a suitably powerful telescope trained upon the earth, one would not be witnessing a contemporary scene, but earlier and archaic recordings, such as the geometric civilization in Athens or the Minoan eccentricities of Crete. Yet, granted that the past was indestructible, exactly where was it now? Was it in good order, in keeping with theories of relativity? He did not believe it was. The past in his experience was in a tangled mess like ticker tape, unwinding from the staccato recording machines and pouring in sinuous coils into wastebaskets that stood beside them. The past was twisted and slithered. Instead of being instructive and nostalgic, it interfered with the definitiveness of the present, forever impeding and very seldom helping present logic or decision. That was what the past was doing to him now. The past that he and Emily had spent together was snarled around them, no less tangible because it was invisible. It did not help the situation in the least to know that he did not want any of the ticker tape or that he regretted most of it.
“Emily,” he said, and he touched her radiant head gently because of the indestructible recollections—and her hair had an unfamiliar tactile quality, the latest contribution of forward-moving beauticians. There had been no lacquer finish when he had first met her. Emily had been Emily, happier, younger, with an unsophistication that no Arden’s Maine Chance could conjure back. “Emily, dear, stop being actively unhappy,” he said. “You and I have both lived long enough to know that active unhappiness doesn’t resolve anything. It’s only going to make you have to do your whole face over, dear, and believe me, it really was lovely when you came in.”
“Don’t try to be so damned diplomatic polite,” Emily said, and she choked back a sob, “and don’t pat me. I’ve always hated head patters; it’s so tentative.”
“I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been quite in that class, my dear,” he said.
“I never said you were,” she answered. “Oh, Tom, why can’t you love me the way you used to when you used to say that you loved me more than you loved Hopedale? I know she was a bitch to you twenty different ways at once, but still you did use to say you loved me better.”
He laughed, and he sat down on the arm of her chair and took her hand. It was something that she could still make him laugh.
“My dear,” he said, “I still love you better than I loved Hopedale, and don’t forget that I told you that I love you as much as I do anyone. It isn’t our fault that love has varying values. We can’t help things like that, Emily—and besides, there’s always affection.”
“Hand me another Kleenex,” Emily said. “You haven’t been affectionate for years.”
“Now, Emily,” he said, “I don’t know that I’ve ever been what you would call affectionate, even in my most unforgetful moments. I’m talking about affection, dear, as a general state of mind.”
“I never did expect you to love me as much as you loved the first one,” Emily said.
He handed her another Kleenex. Her remark served to throw them together more effectively than any other which he could imagine. The vanished memories and the people and the possibilities and the might-have-beens, left them unbelievably alone.
“Emily, dear,” he said, “let’s not get off the beam. There’s a whole lot to affection, and I know I’ve neglected you, and I know you don’t like it here and that coming here has been a self-indulgence on my part. Please stop being unhappy. Listen, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“A surprise?” she asked. “What surprise?”
She blew her nose and tossed the Kleenex toward the open fireplace. It did not reach there. As long as he had known her, Emily had been tossing olive stones and crumpled notes toward fireplaces. At least Emily was no longer sorry for herself.
“Oh, Tom,” she said, “I hope you’re not going to build a greenhouse or anything. Tom, dear, promise me it isn’t going to be a greenhouse.”
He stood up and smiled down at her with a sense of considerable achievement.
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “I’m going to send this whole show to the warehouse, Emily.”
“Tom,” she said, “are you talking about our life together? Do you mean you’re asking for a divorce?”
“Now what under the sun put that thought into your head?” he asked. “I was just using a professional expression. When a show doesn’t work, you send the property to the warehouse and all the backdrops and everything. Well, dear, I know you haven’t been happy here, and maybe this whole effort has been sentimental and preposterous. Anyhow, I’m going to put up the whole place for sale. That’s all I mean about the warehouse.”
“Why, darling!” Emily said. “Darling! Then perhaps we can go back to Easthampton again.”
It was reassuring to be able to estimate again with accuracy which way her mind would work.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll have to see how things turn out before I get pushing
on the old treadmill at Easthampton again.”
“Why, Tom,” she said, “you know you always loved it there in spite of yourself.”
Why was it, when women knew that men were against something, they always said they liked it in spite of themselves? Easthampton, he was thinking, was much like the environment here that he was preparing to leave. The aura of the stage had arrived there early. The late John Drew had once sunned himself in the then primitive solarium of the men’s part of the bathing pavilion. The late Augustus Thomas had written plays in its neighborhood. The Barrymores had appeared there at odd moments; and as a final proof of validity, the hucksters now trod assiduously upon the heels of art. Everyone who loved the old town said it was more attractive than Southampton. But then, one should remember that Easthampton had More to Start With. When John Drew had first seen that village, it had still been dreaming of its past, the simple, homespun past when it had been a semiprosperous whaling and fishing village that America’s great god of literature, Melville, would have understood. Queequeg, his harpooner, might once have walked Easthampton’s streets, as well as the ghost of the author of Home Sweet Home, who had once penned his lyric there. Easthampton had More to Start With than Southampton, and even the hucksters knew it. In spite of all the new shops and of all the new parvenus who annually pressed their way in with their new Jaguars, Easthampton still had More to Start With.
It had what were now called “the Dear Old Things,” that were now preserved with a revered fetishism that was basically moving. There was the Village Green, with the Dear Old Pond, in which perhaps they had once ducked dear, old scolding women. There was not in the world, even in England, a more lovely village green. Then there was the Dear Old Windmill, with its hand-made wood machinery, rather well preserved in spite of time. Then there was the Dear Old Cemetery, where those Dear Old People who had once ground corn in the Dear Old Windmill were now laid to rest. The dead never, never would have dreamed of with what loving care the hucksters and the huckstresses and an occasional contributor to the New Yorker magazipe, and the theatre folk, were to snip the grasses of their dear old graves with their quaintly carved inscriptions which a huckster or a huckstress might sometimes quote over the Martinis. The living knew now that it was their manifest destiny to fight against signboards, night clubs and the encroachment of chain stores. Even the weariest huckster, just off the copy desk of Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn, and in Easthampton for a week end with his boss, knew that modernity must never impinge on the dear old things that made Easthampton, excepting always the Jaguars, the Cadillacs, the matched irons and the laminated woods which in their way were a modern expression of loving art that exactly paralleled the Dear Old Things.
“I know,” he said, “you are right, Emily. I did love Easthampton in spite of myself. I suppose I had better face the fact, Emily, now that it is too late to change, that I am partially a huckster at heart.”
“Darling,” she said, “please don’t get on the subject of hucksters again. It always made me frightfully nervous when you started huckstering everything and saying our cabaña was located on Hucksters’ Row.”
“I agree with you,” he said. “After all, John Drew liked Easthampton and Home Sweet Home was written there. I admit we shouldn’t have moved away.”
“Tom,” she said, “please don’t start getting difficult. Without wishing to rub it in, this does go to show that I was right about one thing, wasn’t I? Just one little drop of rightness; just one teeny, weeny little thing?”
“What teeny, weeny little thing?” he asked.
She smiled at him and gave his hand a loving, reproving pat. It might have been a more definite pat than she had intended due to the extra flagellation caused by her bracelets and her ring.
“I told you, didn’t I,” she said, “that I knew what would happen when you sprung this place on me, darling—and I do understand the restiveness in artistic temperaments. Arthur always said I did. I always said, didn’t I, that buying this place and making a big antique shop of it would be just like another play? I always said that, just as soon as you got it fixed the way you wanted it, you’d grow tired of it. I don’t like to be right all the time, dear, and I know very well that you are right when you occasionally say that rightness does not go hand-in-hand with femininity. But I was right about this, wasn’t I? I did tell you exactly what would happen, didn’t I?”
He glanced down at her hand resting over his. From the very first time he had met her, he had recognized that her hands were overlarge for the rest of her, but now Emily had grown up to them. Her hand looked surprisingly young considering her age—no wrinkles, no enlargement of her finger joints, and with beautiful enameling on the nails.
“Yes,” he said, “I do recall that you made that point on several occasions, Emily.”
“Well, don’t say it in such a cross way,” she said. “It spoils all the fun of knowing you don’t know everything. I knew you’d get just as bored with everything around here as I am, and those high-school children were pretty nearly the last straw.… Tom, there isn’t anything that is worrying you, is there?”
Her voice was sharper, reminding him that Emily could be perceptive at the most unexpected times. He realized as soon as she asked the question that it was time to give her the exact reason for his putting the place on the market. He would have to tell her eventually. It was time, but he drew away from inevitability. He had had enough that day, although he was ashamed of the hesitation.
“Nothing’s the matter particularly,” he said. “Maybe I’m feeling a little tired. I’ve been waltzing around with the third act. Maybe I’m not as resilient as I used to be.”
Her voice was still sharp.
“Isn’t it going well?” she asked.
Where had everything gone? he was thinking again. Where in hell had everything gone? He should not have been suspicious. He should not have harbored the idea that she might be hoping that his work was not going well. He wished that he had not heard that morning’s conversation.
“As a matter of fact, I’m not worried about it any more,” he said.
“But you were before, weren’t you?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me, dear?” She laughed briefly but disarmingly. “What’s the use in being married to the Dean of American Playwrights and everything, if he can’t let you just a teeny, weeny bit behind the scenes and if he won’t tell you when he’s worried, and won’t let you share even a little in his work?”
She always was at her worst when she was in the teeny, weeny stage, but it was a time to repress impatience, and he was still sorry for her—for them both, with a dry sort of self-pity. Instead of answering, he patted her head again.
“There,” he said, “maybe I should have been a patter.”
Emily shook her head, but her plaintiveness was gone.
“Dear old Arthur,” she said. “Arthur liked my critical judgment; he used to say he depended on it.”
It was no time to explain to Emily that any girl was a good critic when she was also an old man’s darling.
“Now, Emily,” he said, “haven’t you had enough good news for one day? It’s dangerous to want everything.”
“You mean about selling all this?” she said.
“Yes, and about being right all along,” he said. “Let’s not forget the right part.”
“Tom,” she said, “don’t be horrid. Don’t spoil everything.”
“I’m not being horrid,” he said. “Honestly, you were dead right, Emily.”
Her face brightened, and the traces of her tears were negligible.
“If you only knew how sweet you are when you admit something,” she said, “maybe you’d admit a whole lot more.” Her hand closed over his. “Pull me up and let’s go back to the house. Alfred gave you the word, didn’t he, about the Bramhalls coming to dinner? And Dick always dresses, you know.”
“I know,” he said, “but I still haven’t got it quite clear how the Bramhalls came into the picture.”
“It was one of those times,” Emily said, “one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t times, darling. Marion called up and almost insisted that we go there, and you know how sensitive Marion is. Of course they’re not as interesting as some of our more glamorous friends. And you know how hard it is when Marion starts insisting, because you’ve mentioned it yourself, and I know how really fond you are of all the Bramhalls, even though you do call them the flotsam from your first marriage. Well, I knew, darling, that you’d simply explode if I accepted, because I do know something of the writing mind, if only through osmosis. I knew you’d blow your top if you had to drive twenty miles at the end of a working day. So I explained this to Marion and asked them to come here instead. I apologize, but there wasn’t anything else to do. You’ve known the Bramhalls so long; in some ways I think they are our nicest friends.”
“Yes, it was the only thing to do,” he said, “and of course I like them, but I wish they weren’t such neutralists.”
“Neutralists?” she said.
“About Rhoda,” he said. “They’ve been such perfect corkers—ambassadors of good will, I mean. They’ve always loved Rhoda, and they’ve always loved me, and they’re going to keep on loving us both, no matter what. And I’ve never seen them but Marion doesn’t make that speech, even if you fed her only one weak drink. They’re such perfect corkers that I can’t even be rude to them because they’d go and tell Rhoda.”
“Why, Tom,” she said, “I never knew you felt that way about them. I always thought you simply adored the Bramhalls.”
“Maybe I only feel so temporarily,” he said. “Maybe I don’t feel like making an effort tonight. Maybe I don’t want to move into someone else’s world.”
“But that’s what you always say you like to do,” she said, “move into someone else’s world. You often say it is all that keeps you going.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s so, but still it’s an effort sometimes.”
“It won’t be any effort at all tonight, not with Walter here,” Emily said. “He gets more and more loquacious. He positively rambles. Come on, let’s get going.”
Women and Thomas Harrow Page 17