The Group

by Mary McCarthy

  There was only one point on which all Polly’s acquaintances, odd or not, agreed, and that was that she ought to be married. “You pretty girl. Why you no marry?” said the iceman, adding his voice to the chorus. “I’m waiting for the right man,” said Polly. And this, despite the wisdom she exercised on herself, was secretly the case. If she made it difficult for him to find her, that was part of the test he had to pass. “How are you going to meet anybody, Polly?” her classmates cried. “Living the way you do and never going out with a soul?” She was familiar with the arguments: that the way to meet a man was through other men, that you did not have to love a man or even to like him a lot to agree to go to dinner and a theatre with him, that he only wanted your company, which was little enough to give. But Polly’s own strong desires made her doubt this, and she did not think it right to start a relation you were not prepared to go further with; it did not seem to her honest to use a man to meet other men. So she had stubbornly refused all attempts to arrange male friendships for her—the extra man invited to dinner and prodded into gallantry. “Dick will take you home, Polly. Won’t you, Dick?” “No, thank you,” Polly would interpose. “I’ll take the First Avenue bus. I live right next to the bus line.” Even Mr. Schneider and Mr. Scherbatyeff had been guilty of similar efforts; a series of young Trotskyites had been produced by Mr. Schneider, to meet Polly and drink a glass of “schnapps” in his room, while Mr. Scherbatyeff had served up a nephew who was learning the hotel business in Chicago. Above all, Polly had declined to be coupled with Libby’s awful brother, known as “Brother,” who was always eager to take her out.

  “It is your pride, little girl, that makes you act so,” said Mr. Schneider one evening when she had reproached him for trying to find her a “man.” “Maybe,” said Polly. “But don’t you think, Mr. Schneider, that love ought to come as a surprise? Like entertaining an angel unawares.” The deep cleft in her chin dimpled. “You know how it is in mystery stories. The murderer is the least obvious suspect, the person you never would have guessed. That’s the way I feel about love. The ‘right man’ for me will never be the extra man specially invited for me. He’ll be the person the hostess never in her born days would have chosen. If he comes.” Mr. Schneider looked gloomy. “You mean,” he said, nodding, “you will fall in love with a married man. All the other suspects are obvious.”

  Sure enough, it had been like that with Gus. “You two are the last people,” Libby had said the next day, “that I would have expected to hit it off. Did he ask you out again?” Polly had answered no, truthfully—he had only taken her phone number—and Libby was not surprised. “He’s awfully hard to talk to,” she remarked. “And not your cup of tea at all. I’ve been thinking about you, Polly. You’re the type older people find attractive. Older people and other girls. But a man like Gus LeRoy would be blind to your looks. That’s why I nearly went kerplunk when you walked out of here with him last night. You might not think so to talk to him, he’s so quiet, but he’s the dernier cri in publishing; you should see the authors on his list. Authors that are personally devoted to him and that he could take with him tomorrow if he left Ferris. Of course a lot of them are Communists; they say he’s a secret Party member and has orders to bore from within at Ferris. But, like it or lump it, some of our best authors are Communists this year.” She sighed. Polly was silent. “Did he talk about me?” asked Libby suddenly. “A bit,” said Polly. “Oh, what did he say? Tell me all.” “He said you were doing awfully well as an agent. I think he used the word ‘crackerjack.’” Libby was disappointed. “He must have said more than that. Does he think I’m attractive? He must or he wouldn’t have come to my party. I’m afraid I rather neglected him. Did he mention that? I had eyes only for Nils. You know, the baron.” She sighed again. “He proposed last night.” “Oh, Libby,” said Polly, laughing, “you can’t marry the ski jumper at Altman’s! I hope you refused.” Libby nodded. “He was in a rage. Berserk. Will you promise not to repeat it if I tell you what happened?” “I promise.” “When I turned him down, he tried to rape me! My new Bendel dress is in ribbons—did you like it? And I’m a mass of bruises. Let me show you.” She opened her blouse. “How horrible!” said Polly, staring at the black-and-blue marks on Libby’s thin chest and arms. Libby rebuttoned her blouse. “Of course he apologized afterward and was no end contrite.” “But how did you stop him?” said Polly. “I told him I was a virgin. That brought him to his senses at once. After all, he’s a man of honor. But what a Viking! Lucky you, out with Gloomy Gus. I don’t suppose he even tried to kiss you?” “No,” said Polly. “He called me ‘Miss Andrews’ with every other sentence.” She smiled. “Poor fellow,” she added. “Poor fellow!” exclaimed Libby. “What’s poor about him?” “He’s lonely,” said Polly. “He said so when he asked me to have dinner with him. He’s a nice, solid man and he misses his wife and child. He reminded me of a widower.” Libby raised her eyes to heaven.

  Polly was telling the truth. She had begun by being sorry for Gus. And the way he had called her “Miss Andrews” all through dinner had amused her—as though there were a desk between them instead of a restaurant table. That desk, she had fancied, was part of him, like an extra limb or buttress; he had a special desk voice, judicious, and a habit of tilting back in his chair that had immediately made her see him in his office. He had told her, as a joke on himself, the story of Libby fainting on his carpet. “I thought the girl was starving, Miss Andrews, so help me God.” He looked ruefully from under his eyebrows at Polly, who burst into laughter. “When did you find out different?” she asked finally. “Not for quite a while. Her boss told me, as a matter of fact. Seems the MacAuslands are among the powers-that-be in Pittsfield. Is that true?” “Yes,” said Polly. “They own one of the principal mills. That’s how I first knew Libby. My family live in Stockbridge.” “Mill owners?” Polly shook her head. “Father was an architect who never built anything except for his relations. He lived on his investments till the crash.” “And now?” “Mother has a tiny income, and we have a farm that we work. They work,” she corrected herself. “And what do you do, Miss Andrews?” “I’m a hospital technician.” “That must be interesting. And rewarding. Where do you work?” And so on. Exactly, Polly thought, like a job interview. This whole desk side of Gus, which impressed Libby, had touched Polly’s heart. She sometimes felt she had fallen in love with a desk, a swivel chair, and a small scratchy mustache.

  Still, to fall in love with a desk and be presented with a couch was daunting. She often now tried to picture him on the psychiatric couch and failed. Did he smoke his pipe and fold his arms behind his head? Or did he chain-smoke cigarettes, dropping the ashes into an ashtray on his chest, as he sometimes did in bed? Which voice did he use—the desk voice, which creaked like the creaking of the swivel chair, or a softer, lighter voice that matched his boyish smile, slim ankles, soft red lips, and the ingenuous way he had of wrinkling his nose at her, bunny-like, to signify warm affection?

  When he had first told her about the analyst, his voice had trembled, and there were tears in his eyes. He had got out of bed, wearing Polly’s Japanese kimono, a relic of Aunt Julia’s Oriental travels, which came down just to his knees; nervously, he lit a cigarette and flung himself into her armchair. “There’s a thing I’ve got to confess to you. I’m being psychoanalyzed.” Polly sat up in bed, clutching the sheet to her in an instinctive movement, as though a third person had entered the room. “Why?” she demanded. “Oh, Gus, why?” Her voice came out like a wail. He did not tell her why, though he seemed to think he had. What he told her was how he had happened to start going to the doctor.

  It was all his wife’s idea. After Gus had walked out on her, because she had been “running around” with a Party organizer, Esther—that was her name—had decided she wanted him back. She had tried all the old methods—tears, threats, promises—without shaking Gus’s determination not to return home. Then one day she came to see him in his office in a calmer frame of mind and with an enti
rely new proposal, which was that they should both go to analysts, to see whether their marriage could be saved. To Gus, after the scenes he had been through, this had seemed a reasonable offer, and he was struck, above all, by the change in his wife’s attitude. She pointed out that analysis would help her in her work with children; quite a few of her fellow-teachers were being analyzed for no other purpose than that, and the school principal strongly recommended it for the whole staff. It would probably help Gus too, in his work with authors, make him better able to deal with their conflicts, so that even if he and she decided to divorce when they were finished, they would have gained a great deal from it professionally. Gus told her he would think it over, but before she left his office he had already resolved to give it a try. He too would have liked to save his marriage, on account of little Gus, and his hopelessness about it had been based on the notion that neither he nor Esther could be changed. If he had not been hopeless, he would have gone back long ago, for he missed Esther and there was no one else in his life. The idea of gaining an “insight”—a word Esther used freely—attracted him too, Polly could see; he was grateful for the insights of Marxism and, manlike, was eager to add a new tool to his thinking kit.

  All this Polly understood. What she could not understand was why he kept on going to the doctor now, when there was someone else in his life. Now that he no longer had a doubt about divorcing Esther, why didn’t he stop? Was it because of the promise he had given? But if so, that implied to Polly’s mind that there still was a possibility that the analysis might return him to Esther, all mended, like some article that had been sent for repair. Or was he continuing to go, as she sometimes felt, from sheer inertia? Or because the doctor had discovered something seriously wrong with him, as when you went to get a cavity filled and learned you had a huge abscess?

  Gus had asked her if she minded that night when he had broken the news. “Of course not,” she had answered, meaning that she loved him just the same and always would. But in fact she did mind, she had found. It gave her a very unpleasant feeling to have Gus come to her every day “fresh from the couch.” She wished he could have his “hour” in the morning, before work, or at lunchtime. This way, she could not help wondering what they had been talking about, whether it was her, horrible thought, or Esther, horrible thought too. She hoped it was about his childhood; it was all right if it was about his childhood. The odd thing was that he never seemed shaken or upset when he arrived from the analyst’s; he was always as matter-of-fact as if he had come from the barbershop. He was much more excited on certain Fridays when he got excused from the analyst to audit a meeting of the Book and Magazine Guild. In his place, Polly was sure she would have been in turmoil if she had just spent an hour ransacking her unconscious. Or indeed her conscious. Gus was not allowed to read Freud while he was in analysis (another rule), but Polly in her lunch hour had been perusing the literature available in the psychiatric section of the Medical Center library. Though the psychiatrists at the hospital were violently anti-analytic, at least they had the books of Freud and his principal followers. She was trying—rather slyly, she felt—to find out which of the neuroses or psychoneuroses Gus could be suffering from. But he did not seem to fit any of the descriptions of hysteria, anxiety hysteria, compulsion neurosis, anxiety neurosis, character neurosis. He was most like a compulsion neurotic, in that he was set in his ways, punctual, and reliable, but she noticed that he did not do any of the things that compulsion neurotics were supposed to do, like being sure to step on the cracks of the sidewalk or not to step on them, as the case might be. On the other hand, anxiety patients had difficulty making decisions, and it was true that Gus had been of two minds about enlisting to fight in Spain and had vacillated a bit about leaving his wife. But a real anxiety patient, according to the books, was one who could not make up his mind whether to take the B.M.T. or the I.R.T. to work, for instance and Gus always took the bus. Moreover, with all the neuroses, the patient’s sexual life was supposed to be disturbed. Polly had no point of comparison, but Gus’s sexual life, so far as she could see, was completely unruffled; he was always eager to make love and seemed to have had a lot of practice, for he did it very authoritatively and had taught Polly how with great tenderness, like a man teaching a child to fly a kite or spin a top or button its buttons—he was obviously a good father. It was bliss, Polly thought, making love with him.

  The more Polly read and studied Gus, the more convinced she became that the only thing wrong with him was that he was spending $25 a week going to a psychoanalyst. And she asked herself whether that could be a disease, a form of hypochondria, and whether you would have to go to an analyst to be cured of it.

  But if she could not match dear Gus, like a paint sample or snippet of material, with any of the charted neuroses, the opposite, she found to her dismay, was true of herself. She seemed to be suffering from all of them. She was compulsive, obsessional, oral, anal, hysterical, anxious. If her sexual life was not disturbed now, it certainly had been. A sense of guilt transpired from her Sunday-night washing ritual, and she allayed her anxiety by the propitiatory magic of ironing and darning. The plants on her window sills were the children she could not have. She was addicted to counting; she collected buttons, corsage pins, string, pebbles, hat pins, corks, ribbons, and newspaper clippings; she made lists, including this one, and was acquiring a craving for drink. The fact that she viewed this alarming picture with humorous fascination was itself a very bad sign, proving a dissociation from herself, a flight into fantasy and storytelling from an “unbearable” reality. The whole Andrews family, Freud would say, lived in a world of myth.

  Joking aside—and there were times when, reluctantly, she had to put joking aside—Polly realized that she was in a deplorable state. Whatever the clinical name for it. Sunday nights she knew that she was terribly unhappy. Again. Love had done this to her, for the second time. Love was bad for her. There must be certain people who were allergic to love; and she was one of them. Not only was it bad for her; it made her bad; it poisoned her. Before she knew Gus, not only had she been far, far happier but she had been nicer. Loving Gus was turning her into an awful person, a person she hated.

  That person came to a head on Sundays, like a boil, because Sundays Gus saw little Gus and his wife. She was perfectly conscious of the connection, unlike the patients she read about who could not seem to put two and two together. She was jealous. On top of that, she was conscience-stricken, for, to be truthful, she did not approve of divorce where there were children. Unless the parents came to blows in front of them or one of them was an evil influence. Look at what her own mother has suffered from her father. And yet they were together. Esther had committed adultery repeatedly and she did not sound like a pleasant woman, but Gus had loved her enough to have a child by her. If Polly were not the “other woman”, she would advise Gus to go back to her. At least on a trial basis. No, that was equivocating. Forever.

  At the word, Polly’s blood ran cold. She wrapped a dry towel round her damp head and began to darn a hole in the toe of a stocking. It was not she who had asked Gus to marry her, but the other way around. Yet that was no excuse. She was acting like Cain in the Bible and pretending that the divorce was Gus’s business and she had nothing to do with it; she was not Gus’s keeper. But she was. She told herself that it had never entered anyone’s mind but Esther’s that Gus should go back to her. That was not true, though. It had entered Polly’s. Not all at once, but gradually. During the week she forgot about it, but on Sundays, when Gus was not there, it came creeping back. As if, once she had entertained it, she could never turn it away. And in this it behaved exactly like a temptation. She longed to tell Gus about it, but she was afraid that he would laugh at her or perhaps that he wouldn’t. This thought was her Sunday secret. And the whispering of conscience (if that was what it was), far from directing her mind to good resolves, made her still more jealous—just short of the point where she mentally slew little Gus. Here something stayed her hand, alw
ays, and instead she slew Esther and lived happily ever after with little Gus and his father.

  Polly put down the darning egg. She went to the window and felt her blouses to see whether they were dry enough yet to iron. They were. She wrapped them in a towel and coiled up her hair and stuck two big pins through it. If she ironed, she said to herself, Gus would call to say good night to her, as he sometimes did. She had come to feel that this call was a reward she earned, for if she moped and did not do her ironing or mend her stockings and step-ins, often, as if he knew, he did not call.

  She had discovered a sad little law: a man never called when you needed him but only when you didn’t. If you really got absorbed in your ironing or in doing your bureau drawers, to the point where you did not want to be interrupted, that was the moment the phone decided to ring. You had to mean it; you had to forget about him honestly and enjoy your own society before it worked. You got what you wanted, in other words, as soon as you saw you could do without it, which meant, if Polly reasoned right, that you never got what you wanted. Practically every other Sunday Polly gaily found she could do without Gus if she had to; climbing the stairs with a stack of blouses still warm from the iron, she would feel quite happy and self-sufficient and think that it might be almost a deprivation to get married. And she wondered if Gus, a block away, puttering around his kitchen, smoking his pipe, listening to the news on his radio, was thinking the same thing. Whether they were not, really, a bachelor and an old maid who were deceiving themselves and each other about the urgency of their desire to mate.