The Group

by Mary McCarthy

  Harald was histrionic; Lakey had found the right word for him. Yet that was why, with his intellect and learning, he would make such a marvelous director. Kay had been giving a lot of thought to Harald’s problems during her lonely evenings while he was at the theatre, and she had decided that the main thing that acted as a drag on him was his strong identification with his father. He was still fighting his father’s battles; any psychologist could see that. No wonder, then, that Kay felt impatient with that relation. “Anders” and “Judith”!—she had come to loathe the very names of the old pair, if Harald only knew it. She would almost rather commit suicide herself than make Judith’s “quick-and-easy meat loaf.” The sight of her mother-in-law’s labored pencil recipes, enclosed in letters from “Anders,” made her cold and hard as nails. Ever since she had seen “Judith’s” handwriting, she could not abide Harald’s chile con carne, though it was still a big success with company, who did not know the source and thought it was something glamorous he had learned in the theatre. She had no doubt that “Judith” used oleomargarine; she could see a white slab of it on their humble oilcloth with a cheap plated-silver butter knife (the kind you sent in coupons for) lying by its moist side!

  Turning off the coffee (Maxwell House), Kay made a face. She had a ruthless hatred of poor people, which not even Harald suspected and which sometimes scared her by its violence, as when she was waiting on some indigent in the store. Objectively, of course, she ought to pity old Anders, a poor Norwegian immigrant who had taught manual training in the Idaho public-school system and then had studied nights to become an algebra teacher and finally risen to be principal of a high school in Boise, where he made an enemy of the vice-principal, who brought about his dismissal. Harald’s play told the story of that. In the play, he had made his father a college president and put him at odds with the state legislature. To her mind, that was very unconvincing and accounted for the weakness of the play. If Harald wanted to write about his father, why glorify him? Why not simply tell the truth?

  According to Harald, his father, in real life, had been framed and railroaded out of his position because (shades of Ibsen!) he had discovered some funny business about the high-school bookkeeping. But if he had really been as innocent as Harald claimed, it was peculiar that all through Harald’s adolescence he could not get reinstated in the school system and had to support the family doing odd jobs of carpentry, non-union, while Harald went to work as a newsboy. Harald said it was all part of a conspiracy in which some crooked city officials had been involved too, and that they had to crucify his father to keep the real facts from being known. But then a reform party got elected (Harald’s father was a sort of populist radical whose god was some man called Townley), and he was taken on again, as a substitute teacher; meanwhile, in high school Harald had made a big name for himself, being quarterback of the football team and star of the dramatic society and editor of the school paper. A group of Boise ladies had raised a scholarship fund to send him to Reed College, in Oregon, and then to Yale Drama School, and he could still have a job, any time he wanted, running their Little Theatre for them—you should see the silver water pitcher they had sent from Gump’s in San Francisco for a wedding present. But Harald would not go back to Boise till his father’s name had been vindicated. He meant till his play had been produced; he expected all of Boise to read about it in the papers and recognize poor old Anders, who was now a regular teacher again (half-time algebra and half-time manual training), in the wronged president of a big state university. The play was called Sheepskin, and Harald had merged in it the story of his father’s life with some of the story of Alexander Meiklejohn at Wisconsin, not admitting to himself that his father and Meiklejohn were horses of a different color.

  What worried Kay most, though, was that Harald was identifying with failure. One of her first thoughts, when she heard the news this afternoon, was that Harald might be repeating his father’s pattern. She wondered how many people who knew Harald, besides herself, would think of this. This made it important to get the true facts into circulation, for it would hurt Harald’s career if he got the name of a troublemaker, of a person who went around wanting to be fired, needing to fail. She did not think Harald should be soft about telling what the director had tried to do to him; knowing the director’s proclivities, everyone would realize how he had been subtly provoking Harald to finally give him a piece of his mind; if it had not happened today, he would have goaded him till it did.

  The doorbell rang just as they were finishing their coffee. Listening to the Blakes on the stairs (Norine had a heavy walk), Kay thought fast. Whatever was said about the Apartment, she was going to keep mum; let the others talk. And tomorrow morning, first thing, she would slip down to Forward House and order the upholstery job. She could always pretend that she had done it today, before she heard the news, and had not mentioned it on purpose, seeing how upset Harald was. She could even make up a story of trying desperately to cancel the order (that would be tomorrow morning) and being told it was too late—the material had already been cut. And it could have happened that way; it was just chance that she had decided to take the samples home to show Harald, instead of settling on the one she wanted—the Fireman Red—herself. If she had, it would be too late.

  Kay opened the door. “Hi!” she said. “Greetings!” She spoke in a low, muffled voice, to prepare them, as though Harald, just behind her, lighting his pipe again, were sick or a specter or something—how were you supposed to act when your husband had joined the ranks of the unemployed right in the middle of the depression? For a moment, thinking of it that way, she felt a wild surge of fear, like what she had felt that first instant when she heard Harald’s key scratching at the lock and knew what he was going to tell her. But something inside her hardened immediately and she had a new idea: now Harald would be able to work on his play and get that out of his system; the dinette would be perfect for a study for him, and he could build in shelves for his papers below the china cabinet. There was no reason, now, that he could not do all the carpentry and build in the bed too, the way they had once planned, and make a bookcase for the living room. Behind her, Harald spoke. “Morituri te salutamus. I’ve got the sack,” he said. “Oh, Harald,” said Kay eagerly. “Wait till they’ve got their things off. And tell it the way you told me. Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”

  Five

  HARALD AND KAY WERE giving a party to celebrate Harald’s having sold an option on his play to a producer. It was Washington’s Birthday, and Kay had the day off from the store. The group had made a point of coming, in their nicest winter dresses and hats. Harald, poor fellow, had been out of work for months, it seemed, ever since September when, according to Polly Andrews, a director had molested him. They had not paid the rent for months either; the real-estate people were “carrying” them. When they got the check for the option ($500), the telephone was about to be shut off. It was a mystery what they had been living on, even with Kay’s salary. On faith, hope, and charity, Kay said, laughing: Harald’s faith in himself gave his creditors hope, which made them extend charity. And she told how Harald had proposed that they invite a select group of their creditors to the party: the man from the real-estate office, the man from the telephone company, Mr. Finn from the Internal Revenue, and their dentist, Dr. Mosenthal—wouldn’t that have been a howl?

  Kay had been showing the apartment to everyone who hadn’t seen it. Two rooms, plus dinette and kitchen, plus a foyer, plus Kay’s pride and joy, a darling little dressing room, so compact, with closets and cupboards and bureau drawers built in. Pure white walls and woodwork and casement windows, a whole row of them, looking out on a sunny court with young trees and shrubs. The latest models of stove, sink, and icebox; built-in cupboards for dishes, broom closet, linen closet. Every stick of furniture was the latest thing: blond Swedish chairs and folding table (made of birch with natural finish) in the dinette, which was separated from the kitchen by a slatted folding door; in the livin
g room, a bright-red modern couch and armchairs to match, a love seat covered in striped gray-and-white mattress ticking, steel standing lamps, a coffee table that was just a sheet of glass that Harald had had cut at the glazier’s and mounted on steel legs, built-in bookcases that Harald had painted canary yellow. There were no rugs yet and, instead of curtains, only white Venetian blinds at the windows. Instead of flowers, they had ivy growing in white pots. In the bedroom, instead of a bed, they had a big innerspring mattress with another mattress on top of it; Harald had nailed red pegs to the bottom one to keep it off the floor.

  Instead of a dress, Kay was wearing a cherry-red velvet sleeveless hostess gown (Harald’s Christmas present) from Bendel’s; they had an old colored maid from Harlem passing canapés in a modern sectioned hors d’oeuvre tray. Instead of cocktails, they had had Fish House Punch, made from One Dagger Rum, in a punch bowl with twenty-four matching glass cups they had borrowed from Priss Hartshorn Crockett, who had got it for a wedding present when she was married in Oyster Bay in September.

  On that occasion, only four of the group had been able to make it. Today, mirabile dictu, the only one missing was Lakey, who was now in Spain. Pokey Prothero had flown down from Cornell Agricultural in a helmet and goggles: Helena Davison, who had spent the summer and fall in Europe, was in town from Cleveland. Dottie Renfrew had come back from Arizona, where her family had sent her for her health, with a marvelous tan and an engagement ring—a diamond almost as big as her eyes; she was going to marry a mining man who owned half the state.

  This was quite a change from Dottie’s modest plans for working in a settlement house and living at home in Boston. “You’ll miss the concerts and the theatre,” Helena had remarked dryly. But Dottie said that Arizona had a great deal to offer too. There were lots of interesting people who had gone there because of T.B. and fallen in love with the country—musicians and painters and architects, and there was the riding and the incredible wild flowers of the desert, not to mention the Indians and some fascinating archaeological digs that attracted scientists from Harvard.

  The party was almost over; only one mink coat was left in the bedroom. At the high point, there had been five—Harald had counted them. Kay’s supervisor’s, Harald’s producer’s wife’s, Connie Storey’s, Dottie’s, and a mink-lined greatcoat belonging to Connie’s fiancé, that apple-cheeked boy who worked on Fortune. Now Dottie’s lay in solitary state, next to Helena’s ocelot and a peculiar garment made of old gray wolf that belonged to Norine Schmittlapp Blake, another member of the Vassar contingent. Harald’s producer had left after half an hour, with his wife (who had the money) and a star who had replaced Judith Anderson in As You Desire Me, but the Class of ’33 had practically held a reunion, there was so much news to keep up with: Libby MacAusland had sold a poem to Harper’s; Priss was pregnant; Helena had seen Lakey in Munich and met Miss Sandison in the British Museum; Norine Schmittlapp, who was there with her husband (the one in the black shirt), had been to the Scottsboro trial; Prexy (bless his heart!) had had lunch on a tray with Roosevelt in the White House. …Helena, who was Class Correspondent, took a few terse mental notes. “At Kay Strong Petersen’s,” she foresaw herself indicting for the next issue of the Alumnae Magazine, “I saw Dottie Renfrew, who is going to marry Brook Latham and live in Arizona. ‘The Woman Who Rode Away’—how about it, Dottie? Brook is a widower—see the Class Prophecy. Kay’s husband, Harald, has sold his play, Sheepskin, to the producer, Paul Bergler—watch out, Harald. The play is slated for fall production; Walter Huston is reading the script. Norine Schmittlapp’s husband, Putnam Blake (Williams ’30), has started an independent fund-raising organization for labor and left-wing causes. Volunteer workers take note. His partner is Bill Nickum (Yale ’29). Charles Dickens take note. Polly Andrews reports that Sis Farnsworth and Lely Baker have started a business called ‘Dog Walk.’ It keeps them outdoors, Polly says, and they’re swamped with applications from people who don’t have butlers any more to take their canines walking in the Park. …”

  Helena puckered her little forehead. Had she mastered (mistressed?) the idiom of the Alumnae Magazine Class Notes? She and Dottie were in the living room, waiting tactfully to get their coats to leave. Harald and Kay were in the bedroom with the door closed, having “words,” she supposed. The party, to quote the host, had laid an egg. The main body of guests had decamped just as the old colored maid had appeared, all smiles, with a Washington’s Birthday cake she had brought for a present. Harald, reddening, had shooed her back to the kitchen, so as not to let people see, presumably, that they had been expected to stay longer. But Kay, who had always been a blurter, had let the cat out of the bag. “But Harald was going to read his play!” she cried sadly after the departing guests. The whole party had been planned around that, she confided. Now the maid had gone home with her satchel, and the only guests remaining, besides Helena herself and Dottie, were a radio actor, who was helping himself copiously at the punch bowl, the two Blakes, and a naval officer Harald had met in a bar, whose sister was married to a famous architect who used ramps instead of stairs. The actor, who had wavy hair in a pompadour, was arguing with Norine about Harald’s play. “The trouble is, Norine, the line of the play is sheer toboggan. I told Harald that when he read it to me. ‘It’s very interesting, the way you’ve done it, but I wonder: is it a play?’” He gestured, and some punch from his cup fell on his suit. “If the audience identifies with a character, they want to feel he has a chance to win. But Harald’s view of life is too blackly logical to give them that sop.” Across the room, Putnam Blake, a thin, white-faced young man with a close collegiate haircut, an unsmiling expression, and a low, tense voice, was explaining what he called his “Principle of Accumulated Guilt” to the naval officer.

  “Mr. Blake,” said Dottie with a twinkle, “has a system for finding rich people to give money to Labor. He was telling about it earlier. It sounds terribly interesting,” she added warmly. Glancing at their watches, at Norine and the actor, and at the closed bedroom door, the two girls drew near to listen. Putnam ignored them, dividing his attention between his pipe and the naval officer. Using Gustavus Myers’ Great American Fortunes, Poor’s Register of Directors, and Mendel’s Law, he was able to predict, he said, when a wealthy family was “due.” As a rule, this occurred in the third generation. “What I’ve done,” he said, “is take the element of chance out of fund-raising and put it on a scientific basis. I’m simplifying, of course, but roughly speaking the money guilt has a tendency to skip a generation. Or if it crops out in the second generation, as with the Lamont family, you will find it in a younger son rather than in the firstborn. And it may be transmitted to the females while remaining dormant in the males. This means that the guilt tends to separate from the chief property holdings, which are usually transmitted from first-born male to first-born male. Thus the guilt, being a recessive character, like blue eyes, may be bred out of a family without any profit to the Left.” A ghostly quiver, the phantom of a smile, passed across his lips; he appeared eager to take the naval officer into his confidence, like some crazy inventor, thought Helena, with a patent, and it was as if some bashful ectoplasmic joke hovered in the neighborhood of his Principle. “I’m working now,” he continued, “on the relation between mental deficiency and money guilt in rich families. Your ideal contributor (the Communists have found this), scion of a fortune, has a mental age of twelve.” Without altering his expression, he gave a quick parenthetic little laugh.

  Helena quirked her sandy eyebrows, thinking of the Rich Young Man in the Bible and idly imagining a series of camels with humps of accumulated guilt lining up to pass through the eye of a needle. The conversation at this party struck her as passing strange. “Read the Communist Manifesto—for its style,” she had heard Harald telling Kay’s supervisor (Wellesley ’28). She grinned. “Take her,” said Putnam suddenly to the naval officer, indicating Helena with a jab of his pipe. “Her people live on the income of their income. Father is first vice-presiden
t of Oneida Steel. Self-made man—first generation. Bright girl, the daughter—only child. Does not respond to fund-raising appeals for labor victims. Charities confined, probably, to Red Cross and tuberculosis stamps. But if she has four children, you can expect that at least one of them will evince guilt characteristics. …”

  Impressed despite herself, Helena lit a cigarette. She had met Mr. Blake for the first time this afternoon and for a moment she felt he must have clairvoyance, like a mind reader in a movie house or, more accurately, a fortune teller. His confederate, of course, was Kay, drat her. She rued the day she had told her, as a curious fact, that her parents lived “on the income of their income”—i.e., plainly. But Kay had had to turn it into a boast. Already this afternoon Helena had heard her telling Harald’s producer that “Helena’s parents have never felt the depression.” “What was the name?” inquired the producer, turning to examine Helena, as they always did. Kay supplied the name of Helena’s father. “Never heard of him,” said the producer. “Neither have most people,” said Kay. “But they know him down in Wall Street. And he’s crazy about the theatre. Ask Harald. He saw a lot of the Davisons when his show was playing Cleveland last year. Her mother is president of one of the women’s clubs there, quite a remarkable woman, always organizing classes and lectures for working-class girls; she scorns groups like the Junior League that don’t mean business. …”