by Joanna Scott
As they settle her on the sofa, she is the first to see her children, unharmed and unconcerned, scuffing up the drive, slumped and disheveled like bums, bums who come to rifle through your trash bins and camp in your own backyard, godless bums! If she didn’t see them with her own eyes she wouldn’t believe it. But already she’s too tired to announce their arrival, too tired to call out to them, and certainly too tired to beat them, which she’s never done before but would do now if she had the strength, for she is furious, or would be were it not for this artificial tranquillity that distracts her from the rage she wants to feel, forcing her into a dreamless sleep and leaving her to wake the next morning to a household restored to order, everything in place, and she, devoted wife and mother, more dependent than ever upon a serenity that she is certain will fail her.
FREEZE-OUT
In a sunlit room overlooking Riverside Drive, Sir Maxwell Smedley-Bark, retired major general of the British army, is reading about himself. In Sir Maxwell’s decided opinion, reported correctly on the front page of the newspaper and continued on page twenty-six, “Propaganda is a mighty weapon, especially in the hands of the Spanish insurgents, who have hoodwinked the international community and cast Señor Franco as the villain, when in fact he is very quiet, unassuming, and congenial.” That’s what he had said to the reporter during the interview yesterday, and here it is printed word for word. The public trusts him to know what he’s talking about. After all, he spent two months in Spain, covering 3,200 miles, from Málaga to the Bidasoa. “I look upon General Franco as the champion of Christianity against communism in Western Europe,” the quote continues. And for those who might wonder about his sympathies, there’s this: Sir Maxwell secured a promise from Franco himself that “no Protestant in Spain will ever be molested for his religion.” How about that for a diplomatic plum!
As the direct descendant and namesake of Sir Maxwell Bark, the renowned Scottish poet, his inherited gift with language has served him well in the public realm, and he is spending the golden years of his life traveling around the world in pursuit of peace, a rare treasure indeed! In Spain he spoke with civil authorities, prisoners and soldiers, priests and military personnel on up to Franco himself, who proved a remarkably agreeable fellow as well as a tobacco connoisseur, which made for a delightful after-supper smoke.
Here in New York on business relating to the Bank of England, Sir Maxwell was laid up in the hospital for nearly a week with an intestinal infection. As soon as he had sufficiently recuperated, he’d moved into this bank-owned flat and agreed to an interview. As it turned out, a parade in honor of veterans had thumped and trumpeted along Riverside Drive all morning long, sending up fanfare through the open window while Sir Maxwell held forth.
“The churches are full. There is absolute law and order and peace behind Franco’s lines.” At some point, perhaps before this last declaration, perhaps afterward, he’d wandered over to the window to peruse a military band passing below, and with his back turned to his visitor he’d recited one of his great-grandfather’s verses:
Come, Mother, lift your wee treasure high,
Innocent aloft glanced by the flashing eye
Of he who urges our good men to war...
But poetry apparently meant nothing to the journalist, who had omitted the lines from his transcription. Like most journalists, he’d wanted controversy and slogans. Sir Maxwell had given him both. “The world is fooled! Propaganda is so frightfully clever. Franco is no dictator, nor is he a fascist. You can see the light of understanding in his eyes.” The light of understanding! Sir Maxwell has a way with words, and if he can’t devote himself entirely to poetry, he can, at the tip of a hat, use poetry to enhance his opinions.
He imagines General Franco’s pleasure when he hears about the interview. He imagines his own name spoken with admiration around the world.
IN THE KITCHEN of the Brown family house on Rogers Avenue in Marwood, New Jersey, two old women drink their thin coffee laced with Schenley’s Supreme and chatter about yesterday’s adventures: they had gone into the city to watch the parade and then to meet the French liner Normandie in hopes of catching a glimpse of Gloria Swanson, who was said to be returning from Europe. Well, they hadn’t seen the grande dame herself, but they’d had plenty of fun matching three longshoremen dime for dime in craps. Then they’d gone to the matinee at the Booth, two hours plus spent in such scientifically cooled comfort that both sisters had promptly fallen asleep at intermission and slept through to the end.
“Aunties,” their niece, Clara, says the next morning, addressing them as usual in the plural, “have a bite before you go.” She slides a plate of buttered toast into the center of the table and sits down to join them. “Let’s just pray the weather holds out.”
“My bones are telling me” says the younger of the two old sisters, but the elder interrupts—“Your rattling bones”—leaving the younger to insist, “My bones are always right”
“Unless they’re wrong.”
“And today will be fair.”
“That’s the order.”
“Fair skies and warm.”
“Too warm.”
“Warm enough.”
They reach for the plate of toast at the same time, their fingers brush, and the elder slips a piece from the middle of the stack, leaving the top pieces for her sister. They munch in silence, crumbs collecting in the cracks of their lips while their niece, mother of six grown children, stares through the screen door into the backyard, her expression wistful, as though she were halfheartedly searching the yard for evidence that the past had really happened.
“Don’t let Tony forget the watermelon.”
The aunts plan to spend today at Belmont Park, where Clara’s brother Tony will treat them to lunch and share tips when they go to place their bets. It will be a good day because every day they remain alive is a good day. And as it’s the birthday of their niece, it will be a special day.
“You’ll bring Gabriella back with you this evening,” Clara reminds her aunts. Gabriella, Clara’s youngest child, is turning twenty today, and the entire family is gathering to celebrate. Twenty happy years. By suppertime there will be little children darting about the house, tangling themselves in their uncle Trip’s legs and causing him to fall headfirst into the rack covered with strips of fresh noodles while Clara’s husband and Tony and the aunts play cards and Clara’s own boys—fathers themselves now—lob a football back and forth in the yard. Amid the mayhem, Gabriella will drift quietly, her silence giving her beauty an ethereal lightness, as though her true self existed in heaven and the form she took in this world were just a reflection.
Beautiful, serene Gabriella, with nothing to say. The aunts like to compare her to a feather hidden underneath corn kernels in a popping machine—lovely and soft and silent. With thick black hair and black lashes shading penny-colored eyes, all she has to do is blink at a man and he’ll melt. The trick, the aunts agree, will be to help her find the suitor with the deepest pockets and the best disposition. But there is time for all that, plenty of time. Gabriella is still a precious girl, as marvelous as a fairy child with gauzy wings hidden inside her dress.
“And remember, don’t let on,” Clara says to the aunts, for the party tonight is supposed to be a surprise.
“Don’t spill the beans, sister,” says the elder aunt.
“Don’t let the cat out of the bath,” remarks the other.
“The bag!” the first corrects, and the two old women snort merrily.
READING ABOUT ONESELF is comparable to dining on frogs’ legs and calves’ brains, Sir Maxwell thinks as he rolls his newspaper into a tube. The idea of such exposure might be distasteful in theory, but in fact it makes him feel that the effort of life has been worth the trouble. He is deservedly proud. But pride, when it goes unfed, is a poor defense against impatience. A hungry man cannot remain a proud man for long. How long has he been waiting for service in this New York chophouse? Too long. Yet the restaurant is half empty
. With the aplomb so typical of the serving class in this country, the waitress assigned to his table gazes right past him every time he raises his hand.
He is just about to complain to the maître d’ when the girl arrives with a pitcher of fresh water laced with lemon slices. All right, then—he will complain directly to her, and he is about to do just that, in his severest baritone, but he stops short. She is looking at him in a puzzled way, apparently anticipating a reprimand that will only baffle her. He is looking at her in awe.
He knows what he’s feeling, what is happening, for it has happened before, but each new time the feeling strikes him as starkly unfamiliar. He wants to look down to assure himself that the floor is still beneath his feet, but he can’t tear his eyes from the face of this chophouse waitress, who is, without a doubt, the prettiest girl he has ever seen, at least since the last prettiest girl he’d ever seen, who was...he can’t even remember who the last one was, in the face of this present beauty.
Immortal lady born to live in blazing glory...
He becomes aware that his jaw is hanging stupidly. As he snaps his mouth closed, he snaps his desire into focus. In the brown pools of the girl’s eyes he sees two foolish graybeards, himself doubled into a knight doomed to be spurned and yet loving her all the more for her poisonous indifference, a man who in that instant experiences the most profound humility he’s ever felt—or so it seems, bound as he is by the intensity of the moment, this emotion supplanting any sense of repeated history so he understands as if for the first time his terrible insignificance, sixty-seven years adding up to nothing.
He is known as a man with a romantic disposition. But he keeps forgetting the meaning of love and feels it now as a confusing external pressure, a force that will flatten him at the moment when he allows himself to give up hope. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to think about his potential for self-deception. He can only believe that he has never before truly loved another human being. Truthfully, his wife had been no more than an ornament. Even Magdalena, his Sevillan joy, had meant little to him in the end—the pain he felt upon leaving her had been sweet, the memory of his pleasure a kind of souvenir he could revive from time to time. But there will be no souvenirs from this brutal experience, only terror as suspicion hardens into the certainty that the waitress will remain separate from him, unmoved by his suffering, though it wouldn’t matter even if she did come to love him, for she could never love him enough.
Paladin cursed by eerie love doth seek
His blessed cushat dove in stormy bleak
Tossed by the wind. Hear the doleful sound
Of solace sought and never found.
His only hope is to confess, without delay, his love for her. It would do no good courting her with an account of his honors, mere hindrances to him now, like an elaborate costume on a drowning man. Perhaps, though, the girl will take pity on him when he describes this newborn terror and the transformation that has occurred in him. Love at first sight. It’s one of the sublime experiences available in life, awful and inspiring and, from a distance, ridiculous. He can’t help it if he’s worthy of ridicule, nor does he care what his friends might think of him if they were here. The only one he cares about is the girl before him. Why, Sir Maxwell mustn’t keep her waiting any longer, he must tell her exactly what he wants without startling her, the lovely creature, without wasting another precious minute—
“I’ll have the lamb chops, miss. Pink. And bring me a whiskey sour. Don’t dawdle now. I haven’t all day!”
Stupidity’s deadly weapon—spontaneity. How could he have spoken to her like that, as though she were just an ordinary waitress and he weren’t devastated by love? What an idiot, courting her with tyranny and a sneer and thus destroying any shred of interest that might have been stirred by kinder words. Come back! But she is already heading into the kitchen, lost to a first impression that can never be undone, her indifference calcifying into contempt even as she walks away to fetch him what he wants.
His only solace is his imagination. He pictures her in the kitchen spitting angrily into his drink, giving him a chance to taste her sweet soul. He’d rather taste the salty surface of her skin, her breasts, her lips, the nectar of her sex—he tries to imagine stepping out of time into the dream world where she would make herself available to him, tries to picture her in place of his mistress Magdalena lying naked on the bed. But the real place he’s in oppresses with its dim electric chandeliers, so he closes his eyes against the scene, opens them again a lifetime later, and finds before him his drink. He eats the speared cherry first, then sips the whiskey, taking in only enough to wet his tongue, for he wants to make this drink last, along with the others that will follow, each full glass an excuse to keep him sitting in this restaurant. He’ll sit here all afternoon, all evening, all night, and into the morrow. He’ll sit here until he turns to dust.
CLASS C, one-thousand-dollar purse on the Widener course, and with Stout on top of Deep End there’s no telling what will happen. Jolly Jack breaks too quickly and drops, while Suntime holds on gamely, but it’s Deep End the aunts have put their money on—against the advice of their nephew Tony—for Deep End is a handsome, high-stepping horse, a plucky sprinter who last week ran third and usually does even worse but today has that look of ambition in his eye. Indeed, he seizes the lead at the quarter post and holds it, increases his advantage at the last sixteenth, coming under the wire a half-length ahead of Suntime. And that’s at twenty-to-one odds at the last call-over!
Lucky as gypsies, these two sisters, with their fistfuls of cash. They count their money dollar by dollar and then send it back, putting it all on Dundrillon in the second heat, though the four-year-old gelding unfairly carries 151 pounds. Dundrillon runs sixth, the aunts are penniless again, and there’s not even time to watch the next race, for they’ve promised Clara that they’d pick up Gabriella and bring her along to the birthday party.
“So long, aunties!” Tony calls, after giving them each a dollar for train fare. Although he’s a professional picker, he, like his aunts, usually comes out no better than even at the end of the day. Right now he’s down fifty bucks. His mustache, sticky with sweat, looks like it’s been dipped in molasses.
“Don’t be late,” the younger aunt says.
“And don’t forget the watermelon,” the older one reminds him. But Tony has turned his back and is too busy studying the call-board and jotting down numbers in the margins of his paper to reply, so the aunts blow him a kiss and hurry off to the train, bumping each other with their broad hips as they turn and letting out such peals of laughter that a husband and wife nearby shake their heads grimly at the sight of these two old spinster sinners who are obviously long past saving.
SIR MAXWELL CUTS INTO THE LAMB, finds it brown in the center but does not complain. In fact, he’s glad that the chops had been plucked late from the griddle, for this gives him a chance to make up for his harsh order with penitential silence. He is a gentleman; he will accept whatever hand life deals him, whether it be an unreachable girl or overcooked lamb.
He leaves a fair amount of meat on the bones in hopes that the waitress will notice the cook’s error. But the girl is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the busboy, a freckled lad of sixteen or so, clears the table, brushing bread crumbs off the linen cloth with a series of quick strokes that suggest a powerful disdain. Has the waitress already warned the busboy about the peevish old man at the corner table? Perhaps all the workers in this restaurant have heard from her that the gentleman who ordered the chops is a scoundrel, and so all of them have agreed to treat him with cruel civility.
“Dessert, sir?”
“Eh, what’s that?”
“Dessert?”
“No. Yes. Where’s my waitress?”
“Should I send her over?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, yes! No! Tell me, what’s her name?”
“Marshall Johnson, sir.”
“Marshall? What kind of name is that for a girl?”
To Sir
Maxwell’s astonishment, the busboy makes an about-face and stalks off, treating the major general to a double dose of contempt. Can it be so? Is the entire establishment of this restaurant conspiring to make a fool of him? On any other day Sir Maxwell would ensure that rudeness was adequately punished, but today he wishes to avoid creating a scene and is quite dismayed when he sees the maître d’ approaching.
“I say,” he bursts out, just as the man is about to speak, “an apology isn’t necessary.”
“But it is,” replies the maître d’, a thin, reptilian fellow who smells faintly, Sir Maxwell thinks, of bus exhaust.
“I’d rather forget the matter.”
“In all deference, sir, my boy Johnson deserves an apology,” the maîe d’ persists. “In this country, you should understand...,” and he goes on to explain certain expectations Americans have, whatever their station—most important, that boys expect to be addressed as boys and girls as girls. But Sir Maxwell can’t quite follow the gist, for he’s still pondering the maître d’s reference to “my boy Johnson,” and in the private struggle of misunderstanding he wonders whether the waitress, so quaintly named Marshall Johnson, is actually a he.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he says, motioning with his hand as if to wave away a gnat, for he can’t think clearly with the man rambling on.
“Otherwise, sir, I’ll have to ask you to leave,” the man says, standing tall, obviously emboldened by the threat.