by New Yorker
Mamie, probably conscience-stricken, had laid out Barbara’s party clothes very neatly on the cot. With brisk efficiency, Mrs. Flynn scrubbed the child’s face and hands, changed her clothes, and then put on her own party dress, the black one with the sequins. Leonora always noticed what she wore and scolded her if there was any sign of slackness. “You have to be careful,” Leonora had said once. “You could so easily look like a down-at-the-heels chorine, like all you little blondes.”
Excited by the adventure of being out after dark, Barbara chattered unceasingly all the way to the party. She and her mother walked hand in hand through the snow, the two little blondes. They were late and Leonora’s rooms were full of people and of a pleasant, spicy smell from the Christmas tree that glittered bravely in the dining room. There were a few uniforms, ladies of all ages, a contingent from Harlem, and a hired butler with canapés on a tray, but there were no other children.
“You don’t mind Barbara, do you?” asked Mrs. Flynn at the door. “If you do, we’ll go straight home and I’ll understand perfectly. But I simply couldn’t leave her alone, and Mamie wanted to go out, and—”
Certainly Leonora didn’t mind. She was busy and distrait persuading somebody to stop playing the piano so that somebody else could sing carols, and Mrs. Flynn wandered away, the chronically unsociable Barbara clinging to her skirt. They found a soft sofa and a plate of sandwiches, and then a boyish Army lieutenant came over and talked to them. He had wings on his uniform and Leonora had called him Bobby. Mrs. Flynn decided wistfully that at his age she had probably been a freshman in college.
“How about taking a closeup gander at this Christmas tree, kid? Want to?” he asked the baby. Without argument, surprisingly, Barbara clambered off the sofa, took the lieutenant’s hand, and trotted away with him. For the next hour Mrs. Flynn enjoyed herself. Once, when she looked around for her child, she saw her sitting on the floor under the tree, completely happy with Bobby, and obviously he was equally happy with her. They were drinking together; Barbara had milk, Bobby an Old-Fashioned. “I’m racing you,” Barbara was saying, holding up her glass. Poor little tyke, Mrs. Flynn thought. She never sees any men.
“Home? All right, pumpkin, I guess we can go now,” said Mrs. Flynn at seven o’clock to her clamoring daughter. They made their way slowly through the increasing crowd, Barbara clinging stubbornly to the lieutenant, whose flushed face and rich breath testified to numerous Old-Fashioneds. Thus they all three emerged together on Park Avenue.
“You come, too,” said Barbara shrilly, overexcited by the lateness and tugging at the lieutenant’s gloved hand. “You come home with Mummy and me.”
Bobby raised his fine-drawn brows. “How about Mummy having dinner with me?” he asked.
Mrs. Flynn took her married status seriously and with a certain amount of old-fashioned decorum. She didn’t believe in going out alone with men.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t leave Barbara by herself in the house. Thanks just the same.”
“There are women, aren’t there?” Bobby asked. “What do you call ’em, seaters or sitters or something?”
“Mrs. Soper,” said Barbara brightly. “Mrs. Soper’s a sitter and she’s coming tonight when Mummy goes out.”
Over Barbara’s red-capped head Bobby looked reproachfully at Mrs. Flynn. Somehow, by this time, they were all walking chummily down the street hand in hand, Barbara in the middle.
“Well, yes,” Mrs. Flynn said, embarrassed, and angry with her daughter. “I’ve got to go to a party—that’s true. It’s a big one with a buffet supper. I suppose you could come along if you want. But surely you have something better to do?” She resolved to introduce this boy, if he should accept, as a long-lost nephew from California, but she did not say so aloud. Perhaps he would refuse to go to the party and make everything easy. Meanwhile, it was cozy, walking along like this, with Barbara and Bobby, the kids. It was nice.
“That’s funny. For some reason, I always thought of him as a liberal.”
MYSTERY SANTA
It having been sharply suggested that we have steadily ignored Santa Claus in these columns since 1930 and that we’d better mend our ways, we swing quickly into line with a few words about Captain X, in some ways the greatest of New York Santas. The Captain is at present serving his third season at Altman’s. Previously he was three seasons at Lord & Taylor’s, and by now he’s pretty much of a celebrity among the children.
The funny thing is that nobody knows much about this Santa. Unlike most of the others, he’s not an actor by profession, willing to talk about himself to the first inquirer. Nobody even knows his name. He was really a captain, it’s been established—a British one in the Boer War. He looks very military when he arrives in the morning: clean-cut and erect, always dressed in rugged British-looking tweeds. It’s also known that he lives somewhere in Greenwich Village, and that during the non-Xmas season he’s a writer, making a fairly good living by turning out “confession” stories for the pulp magazines under noms de plume. He won’t divulge these names, either. Every once in a while some associate at the store asks him. “What’s your name?” “My name is Santa Claus, and I live at the North Pole,” the Captain always replies. That’s all he’ll say.
Captain X’s performance as Santa Claus is a good deal more varied than those of his rivals. He doesn’t just sit in a sleigh all day, as some of them do, but does all sorts of things: stages an entrance through a chimney three times a day, cuts out paper reindeer, cares for Prancer’s reindeer baby in a little bassinet he keeps beside him, and calls up everybody in “Mother Goose” on the telephone. This year he also calls up Jack Frost and says, “No, no, no! We don’t want Grade B snow, we want Grade A snow.” The children eat it up. Another of the Captain’s ideas, which we suspect is based on a grudge against the Telephone Company, is to tell the children to call him up when they get home. “Call me at Iceland 0000,” he says, “and don’t let the operator tell you there’s no such number.” He’s made plenty of trouble that way.
The Captain is paid a good deal more than the forty-five dollars or so which seems to be the usual weekly wage for department-store Santas, and under the NRA he’s listed as a “professional,” not as a “clerk,” the way some Santas are. The people at Altman’s admit he’s an artist, but they wish he weren’t so temperamental. Weeks before the Santa Claus season begins, he brings in duplicate lists of the props he’ll need for his work, and distributes them among the various departments. He’s terribly particular about his costume—insists upon having two wigs and two sets of whiskers, so he can always have one set clean and freshly curled, and demands a specially soft pillow for his stuffing. (All departmentstore Santas use pillows for stuffing, we hear, except Lord & Taylor’s present incumbent, who’s temperamental too, and insists on a whalebone abdominal frame.) Captain X doesn’t mix with the clerks in the toy department at all. In the evening he changes quietly into his tweeds and glides away, toward Greenwich Village.
—WILLIAM SHAWN, FRANCIS STEEGMULLER,
AND HAROLD ROSS, 1934
“We could get away afterward and go dancing,” said Bobby. Lightly he swung Barbara across a snowdrift. “There you are,” he said, putting her down gently. “You and those bells on your mittens. Some mittens.… She’s cute, all right.”
“Her father is in Japan,” Mrs. Flynn said.
Bobby walked along silently until they reached the apartment.
“Where were you most of the time?” she asked, digging in her purse for the door key. As always, when she was with these uniformed, thin-faced youngsters, she felt apologetic for the smug safety that had been hers. She felt guilty of contentment.
“The Pacific.” He mumbled his words a little. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m glad it’s over. I’d like to be back there right now.” They looked together at the dark sky.
“Right now,” sang Barbara, “right now, right now.”
Mrs. Soper, the baby sitter, was waiting in the hallway, glum and philo
sophical, as usual. Mrs. Flynn set her to preparing Barbara’s supper, then moved around the apartment running bath water, picking up small garments and hanging them up, putting out bottles and glasses. She was uneasy, afraid that Bobby expected more of the evening than he was going to get if he stayed with her. How could she make that clear to him? His quiet behavior rebuked her for being evil-minded. Barbara sat on his lap and listened raptly while he read to her, leaning against him with half-closed eyes.
Nobody could have looked at Bobby now and continued to feel uneasy. A warm, innocent excitement pervaded the room. Mrs. Flynn, tying on her best apron, felt sentimental twinges at seeing Barbara in a man’s arms and then laughed bitterly at herself. Ed was not the daddy to read page after page about the brownies to his little girl. It was no use hoping he would turn into that sort of man, either.
Then Bobby looked up at Mrs. Flynn and his blue gaze bypassed the maternal smile in her eyes. He looked straight into her mind, she told herself, panic-stricken. He spoke harmlessly enough, though.
“The infant here has just about passed out. How’s for us getting under way?”
“Oh, we can’t go yet. She’s got to take her bath. I’ve got to put her to sleep—”
“What about the old lady?”
“That won’t work. Barbara expects me to put her to sleep. Look here,” Mrs. Flynn said desperately, “can’t we call this off? You’ll be awfully bored at my friend’s party. There’s still time to go back to Leonora’s. There’s lots of time.”
He shook his head. “I won’t be bored with you.” Deliberately, ardently, he said it, still staring into her mind through her eyes. “I’ll wait till you’ve put the kid to sleep,” he added. Mrs. Flynn took Barbara to the bathroom. Bobby was possibly ten years younger than herself, she thought in confusion. Why wouldn’t he give her an opening and let her make the situation clear?
After they came out of the bathroom, Mrs. Soper carried in the baby’s tray. Her expressionless face only added to Mrs. Flynn’s unhappy state. Was the baby sitter getting ideas? “There you are, Barbara,” said Mrs. Soper, putting the supper down on the small table. “Now eat it all up like a good girl, because Santa Claus is watching you.”
“No he isn’t. Is he, Mummy?” Barbara turned her face up toward Mrs. Flynn appealingly. “Is Santa Claus here in this house right now?”
“Well, I don’t see him,” Mrs. Flynn said, temporizing.
“But is he coming?”
“Sure he’s coming.” Bobby, who was standing at the other side of the table, pouring out a stiff drink, spoke up. “He’s got to bring your toys. What did you ask him for, honey?”
Barbara, eating porridge, made no answer.
“She’s sort of funny about Santa Claus,” said her mother. “She won’t talk about the stuff he brings.”
Bobby dropped to his knees beside the child’s chair. “That so? What’s the matter, honey, don’t you want anything for Christmas?”
“No,” said Barbara, eating porridge.
“But wouldn’t you like a nice doll?”
“Yes.” She nodded vigorously and spilled porridge on her bib. “I want Mummy to buy me a doll and a dog and a boat, like at school.”
“But don’t ask Mummy. This is Christmas, when Santa brings everything. Ask Santa Claus,” said Bobby. Barbara said nothing. Mrs. Soper served her with chopped fruit, then shuffled from the room. Immediately Bobby stood up and away from the chair, seized Mrs. Flynn’s hand, and gripped it firmly while he leaned over and looked deep into her eyes.
“I don’t care about anything,” he said in low, tense tones, “but this. I mean drinking, and beautiful women like you. See?”
“Oh, dear. Bobby, don’t.” Mrs. Flynn felt her face growing red and her heart beating ridiculously hard. “No, no, you’ll have to understand—”
Barbara hammered on the table with her spoon, and the two adults jumped. Bobby sauntered away a step or two and lit a cigarette. He seemed quite sure of himself, quite collected. Mrs. Flynn wasn’t either sure or collected. It’s all wrong, she was thinking. We petted them and spoiled them and now we treat them like problems. And they are problems. Last year this child was a hero, a saviour—now he’s a potential enemy of society, perhaps a permanent misfit. As soon as he’s demobilized it’ll begin. Without the war he’s just another nuisance.
“Enough!” Barbara cried. “Mummy, I’ve had enough. I want bed.”
“Wait here while I see to this,” Mrs. Flynn said to Bobby, her voice dry and curt.
He nodded and grinned like a cheerful conspirator. “Don’t be too long, will you?” He kissed Barbara.
Mrs. Flynn, sternly bidding her pulse to quiet down, carried the child in to bed. Mrs. Soper knew the routine. She would now wash up in the kitchen and wait there until Barbara was quiet so she could begin to sit, officially, at so much per hour. Mrs. Flynn forgot her pulse. She closed the bedroom door behind her, turned down the covers on the baby’s cot, lit the night lamp and doused the others, took Barbara into the bathroom; it was all as familiar as sunset. But tonight, for some reason, Barbara hung back instead of running to bed.
“Mummy,” she said, “will Santa Claus come now?”
“Gracious, no, pet. Not for three days more. He only comes on Christmas Eve. I told you that, darling. On Christmas Eve my Barbara hangs her stocking right up there on the mantel. That big red stocking we used last year. Do you remember? And Santa Claus will come down the chimney.”
Barbara’s eyes, large and sombre, were fixed on the fireplace. “Why?”
“Why? Why, to fill your stocking with presents, pumpkin.”
“Why?”
“Why what? Because he’s Santa Claus! Come on, pet. Bed.”
Barbara still lingered, plucking at a button on her small pajama coat. “How does Santa Claus come?” she asked in a tiny voice. “How does he, Mummy?”
“He comes in a sleigh.” Mrs. Flynn exerted all her patience. “I told you a dozen times. A sleigh is a big sled with bells on it. You know, ‘Jingle Bells.’ Reindeer pull the sleigh through the sky, and they come down to our roof and Santa comes down the chimney with toys for Barbara Flynn, for my good little girl. Come on, darling.” She picked up the child and kissed her soft, fragrant cheek. “Come to bed, sweetheart.”
Then Barbara cried out passionately, “I don’t want!” She threw her arms around her mother’s neck, gripping her in a frenzy. “I don’t want him!”
“But darling!” In alarm, Mrs. Flynn felt the small heart pounding, the delicate cage of ribs pushing in and out with the baby’s rapid breath. “What is it, dearest? What don’t you want?”
“That old man!” cried Barbara. “Santa Claus. I don’t want him, Mummy. I don’t, Mummy.”
“You don’t want Santa Claus to come?”
“No!” It was a defiant wail.
“But, darling, don’t you want toys or anything?”
“No! No! I don’t want him.”
“But, sweetheart, Santa Claus is nice. He’s a nice old man. He only wants Barbara to be happy. He wants to give her things.”
“I don’t want him. Tell him not to come. Tell that old man, Mummy.”
Mrs. Flynn stood there, the child clinging to her neck. She glanced around wildly and saw the telephone. “All right, Barbara,” she said. “Listen now; listen to Mummy.” She sat down at the telephone and settled Barbara firmly in her lap, then pretended to dial a number, holding down the plunger. “Hello,” she said after an adequate pause. “Is this the North Pole? Is this Santa Claus? … How are you, Santa? This is Barbara’s mother. Santa, Barbara and I have been talking it over and we’ve decided that we would rather not have you come to see us this Christmas. Yes, that’s what I said. Thanks just the same, Santa. Goodbye.”
A faint shadow of pleasure crossed Barbara’s face as she listened, holding her breath. Her body relaxed. Obediently, wordlessly, as her mother hung up the receiver, she crawled into bed. Then she turned her head on the pillow and whispered, �
�Hold me.”
In the half-light, Mrs. Flynn gathered her, sheet and blanket and all, into the ceremonial, traditional good-night hug. Her eyes closed, Barbara whispered, “No Santa Claus!”
“Absolutely,” said Mrs. Flynn. She whispered, too. “No Santa Claus.”
Barbara sighed and slept.
Mrs. Flynn’s hat was on, her face was made up. She had changed her slippers and put on her coat. Tiptoeing, she left the bedroom and closed the door gently. Her thoughts buzzed back and forth between past and future—the scene just finished with Barbara, funny, pathetic baby, and the scene there would be with Bobby. And he was a pathetic baby, too.
“God grief! He thinks be is Santa claus!”
How could she turn him away without being terribly ungracious, without hurting him. I’m tired, she thought plaintively, I’m too tired to go out with a hero, and dance and drink and listen. I’m too tired to pay Society’s debt to our boys all by myself. Through the door into the kitchen she saw Mrs. Soper fulfilling her contract, rocking in the rocking chair while she waited for the company to get out of the living room. Mrs. Soper, sitting.
Mrs. Flynn, still thinking desperately, unhappily, went into the living room. Bobby was stretched full length on the sofa, asleep. A half-filled glass balanced uncertainly on the carpet near his dangling hand. He slept not like a drunken man but like a tired boy. His face was terribly pale.