The Group

by Mary McCarthy

  “But what happened? Why are you here?” “First tell me where I am.” “You don’t know?” said Polly. “I suppose it must be an insane asylum,” Kay answered. “Though the nurses keep saying, ‘Oh no, dear. Nothing like that. It’s just a place for nervous people to rest.’ I made such a fool of myself last night when they brought me in here. I asked where the telephone was, right away. I felt like talking to somebody. They said there were no telephones in the rooms. So I said, ‘Why not?’ but they wouldn’t give a reason. I ought to have guessed then, but instead I decided that this must be some cheap wing of the hospital, a glorified ward, and that Harald had put me in here to save money—you know how he is. Then I asked for a radio, and they wouldn’t let me have one. ‘Why not?’ I said. They alleged that it was against the rules. That was very peculiar, I said: I had a friend who had had a baby right here in New York Hospital a year ago, and she had had a radio. I remembered it distinctly.” She grinned. “They must have thought I was crazy. Right after that, they took my belt away.” “They do think you’re crazy,” Polly interposed. “You’re in the Payne Whitney Clinic. It’s a private mental hospital, attached to Cornell Medical Center. This is the admissions floor, where they sort the patients out.”

  Kay drew a deep sighing breath. She closed her eyes. “All right. Now I know. I had to hear it from somebody to believe it.” “But tell me how you got here,” urged Polly softly, stroking her friend’s bent head. Kay opened her eyes. “Will you believe me?” she said. “Somebody’s got to believe me.” “Of course, I’ll believe you,” said Polly warmly. She had come to the shocked conclusion that there must have been some mistake—as sometimes happened in hospitals. Petersen was a common name, at least in the form of “Peterson,” which was the way it had been spelled on Kay’s chart. How awful if Kay had come in with an appendix and they had sent her here through a mix-up! But that left the black eye to be explained. “It was Harald,” said Kay dully. “He beat me when he’d been drinking. When was it? It seems so long ago, but it must have been yesterday morning. Yes, yesterday morning.” “He was drinking in the morning?” “He’d been out all night. When he came in at seven in the morning, I accused him of being with a woman. I know it was silly of me, to accuse him when he’d been drinking. I ought to have waited till he was sober.” Polly checked a laugh; Kay’s self-criticism was always revealing. “But I was a bit hysterical, I guess. We’d had some people in for cocktails, and we all got quite high. Then when they left, about seven-thirty, and I was making dinner, I needed a cucumber pickle for a sauce. So I sent Harald out to get one at a delicatessen, and he never came back. I realize it was stupid; I could have used India relish. But the recipe called for a cucumber pickle. Anyway, he didn’t come back till morning. I ought to have pretended to be asleep—I see that now. Instead, I confronted him. I said he’d been with Liz Longwell—you don’t know her, but we played poker with them. She was Bryn Mawr, ’29, and her husband’s away, trying a case in Washington. Whereupon Harald said he was tired of my dirty mind, and he hit me. You know, I saw stars, the way they do in funny papers. It was silly, but I hit him back. Then he knocked me down and kicked me in the stomach. What should I have done, Polly? Picked myself up and waited for him to be sorry the next day? I know that’s the right technique, but I haven’t got the patience. I jumped up and ran into the kitchen. He ran after me, and I picked up the bread knife. I purposely didn’t take the carving knife because he’d just sharpened it and I didn’t want to scare him too much. Just enough to bring him to his senses. I waved it and said, ‘Don’t you come near me!’ He knocked it out of my hand. Then he pushed me into the dressing room and locked the door. I waited there for a while, trying to get control of myself and hear what he was doing. Finally, I heard him snore. It never occurred to him that it was getting late and that I had to go to work. I knocked on the door; then I pounded; then I took time out to put on my clothes and pounded some more. I was crying and sobbing. And not a sound came from the other room; he’d even stopped snoring. I couldn’t see through the keyhole because he’d left the key in the lock. He might have been dead.

  “Finally I heard the doorbell ring. Two elevator boys were there, asking what was happening. Harald got up and talked to them through the door, telling them to go away. But they could hear me crying inside; I couldn’t stop.” “Oh, poor Kay!” “Wait!” said Kay. “You haven’t heard what happened next. The elevator boys went away, and the next thing I knew the police had come. Harald opened the door, as cool as you please. He’d lain down on the bed in his clothes and after that little bit of sleep he must have seemed sober, though he had liquor on his breath. The police came in—there were two of them—and wanted to know what was going on. I was so terrified I’d stopped crying. But then through the door I could hear Harald telling them that we were rehearsing a scene from a play.”

  Polly caught her breath. “Did they believe that?” “At first they didn’t. ‘We’d like to hear your wife’s story,’ they said. ‘She’s dressing,’ said Harald. ‘When she’s dressed, she’ll confirm what I’m telling you.’ Then he offered to make a pot of coffee, which was an excuse to get them to follow him into the kitchen. He put on the percolator and left them there at the table in the dinette. Then he came into the living room and quietly unlocked the dressing-room door. ‘Are you almost dressed, darling?’ he called. ‘Some gentlemen from the police want to talk to you.’ I had to make up my mind fast; I knew he was counting on me to back him up and the very thought that he could, after what he’d done, made me mad. But I had to help him. After all, he has a police record, though they didn’t seem to know that. I washed and put on a lot of powder and came out. This black eye didn’t show then. I backed up his story. My husband, I explained to them, was a playwright, and I’d been trained as a director; we were doing a scene from a play he’d written.”

  “What did they say?” “First they said it was a funny time of day to be rehearsing a play, but I explained he’d been working late at the theatre—the elevator boys had seen him come home—and that I was doing the woman’s part with him before going to work at the store. Then they asked to see the script. I was sure we were done for. But Harald—I must say this was masterful of him—thought very fast and whipped one of his old plays out of the cupboard. At the end of the second act there’s a violent scene between a man and a woman. He handed it to the lieutenant, open at the right place, and asked whether he’d like to hear us do it. The lieutenant said no. He read about half a page; they finished their coffee and left, telling us not to rehearse again in a residential building. ‘Hire a hall,’ said the lieutenant, with a big wink at me. Harald promised them tickets to the play when it was produced.”

  “You must have carried it off very well, Kay,” declared Polly admiringly. “That’s what I thought,” said Kay. “But as soon as they were gone, instead of thanking me for saving him from being arrested, Harald started abusing me again. He said that as usual I’d got everything twisted and that it was he who saved me from being arrested. Did I deny having attacked him with a butcher knife? It was a bread knife, I told him. ‘A small point,’ said Harald. When I said that I’d just waved it, he smiled in his superior way. ‘You should have seen your face, my dear. It’s a sight I’ll never forget. “I met Murder on the way. It had a face like my wife Kay.”’” “Did he really quote Shelley?” Polly marveled. “Was that what it was? Yes, he did,” Kay replied, rather proudly. “Harald is awfully well read. Anyway, he said that if I didn’t remember lunging at him with the knife, I was suffering from amnesia and ought to have psychiatric treatment. At that I started crying again; it seemed so hopeless to argue with him. I ought to have just gone to work, realizing that he was tired and still under the influence of liquor. But I cried and cried, which gave him an excuse to say I was hysterical. He put on his hat and coat. He was going to Norine Blake’s, he said, to see if she would let him sleep a few hours in peace in her bedroom—she still has the same place she used to have with Put. ‘If you go to
her, I’ll never forgive you,’ I said very dramatically, barring the way. He just stood there and looked at me, up and down. This was more of my insane jealousy, he said. I had sunk so low as to suspect my best friend. ‘Doesn’t that tell you something, Kay, about yourself?’ Well, I did feel rather cheap, though I hadn’t meant sex. I’d never suspect Harald of sleeping with Norine—she’s not Harald’s type. But I was jealous of his going there—giving Norine a chance to tell everybody that Harald had come to her because at home I didn’t give him any rest. To me, that was more disloyal than adultery. But he was just the same, saying that he would send Norine over to calm me down—I could hardly accuse him of fornicating with her if she were with me. I didn’t particularly want to see Norine but I agreed that she could come.

  “In a little while she turned up and said that Harald ad begged her to quiet me, that he was frightened by the state I was in. I admitted that this wasn’t the first fight we’d had; we’ve been fighting all the time lately.” “Has he beaten you before?” asked Polly gravely. “No. Well, yes. But a long time ago, and I’ve never told anybody about it. Norine said that I ought to go to a hospital for a few days to get a complete rest; I couldn’t rest so long as Harald and I were cooped up in this two-room apartment. If I would rather, she said, I could come and stay with her. But I didn’t want to do that. She’s such a terrible housekeeper, and besides it would be like a proof that Harald and I had separated. She made tea, and we talked, and at lunchtime Harald came back with some sandwiches from the delicatessen. That made me think of the cucumber pickle and my sauce, and I started crying again. ‘You see?’ Harald said to Norine. ‘At the sight of me she bursts into tears.’ I didn’t explain about the pickle, because Norine would have thought I was crazy, sending him out because of a recipe. She thinks my cooking is compulsive. We talked all afternoon, and they convinced me that I ought to go to a hospital, where I could just rest and read and listen to the radio. Then when I was rested, Harald and I could decide what we wanted to do about our marriage. The thing, though, that really settled it was hospital insurance. As soon as Norine heard I had Blue Cross, she was on the telephone, checking up with her doctor about whether I could use it if I had a private room. He said yes, if I paid the difference. So before I knew it, she had it all fixed up for me to go to Harkness. I didn’t want to go to Harkness; New York Hospital is so much more attractive—I loved the room Priss had with those rough-weave yellow curtains and pure white walls; it had such a modern feeling. Harald said to humor me, and Norine called her doctor back; he told her he didn’t practice at New York Hospital but he could get another doctor to admit me. We waited, playing three-handed bridge, till they called and said they had a room for me. By that time, it was night. I packed a bag, and Harald took me in a taxi; when we asked at the main door, they rang up and sent us around to this other building. We thought it must be an annex. Harald brought me in and went into an office to fill out forms while I waited in the lobby. A nurse came and took my bag and said that Harald could go now; the doctor would see me in a minute, and then I’d be taken to my room.

  “By then, I was looking forward to it; I did feel awfully tired, and at the thought of a milk shake in bed and an alcohol rub and nurses looking after me and not having to get up in the morning, I was glad that Harald and Norine had persuaded me. Maybe it would help to get away from Harald for a little while, though he could come in the afternoon and make cocktails, like Priss’s husband—you remember. Sitting there in the lobby, I was just beginning to wonder where the gift shop was and the florist and the circulating library when a tall doctor came out of an office to talk to me. He seemed awfully curious to know how I’d got the black eye. I laughed and said I’d run into a door, but he didn’t get the joke. He kept on pressing me till finally I said, ‘I won’t tell you.’ I didn’t see why he should know what had happened between Harald and me. ‘We shall have to ask your husband then,’ he said. ‘Ask him!’ I said, sassily, and I rather wondered what Harald would say. But by then of course Harald was gone. The doctor had the nurse take me upstairs into this depressing room, so drab, with no private bath, no telephone, no nothing. I decided, though, not to make a fuss then, but to go to bed and ask to have my room changed the next morning. While I was thinking that, the nurses got to work and searched me. I couldn’t believe it. They went through my pocketbook too and took my matches away. If I wanted a cigarette, they said, I would have to get a light from a nurse. ‘But what if I want to smoke in bed?’ Against the rules, they said; I could only smoke in the lounge or if a staff member was with me in my room. ‘I’d like a cigarette now,’ I said. But the nurse said no; I was to go to bed immediately. By this time, of course, I’d caught on to the fact that this couldn’t be the regular hospital, but I kept getting these shocks. I was determined not to let them scare me but to act as naturally as I could. When the nurse left, I climbed into bed and was just starting to read the morning paper, which I’d never got around to, when suddenly the light went out. I told myself it must be the bulb and I rang. Eventually the nurse opened the door. ‘My light’s out,’ I told her. ‘Can you fix it, please?’ But it seemed she’d turned it out herself, from a switch outside the door. I told her to turn it on again, and she refused. So there I was, alone in the dark.”

  Polly squeezed her hand. “All that was routine,” she said. “For the admissions floor. Until a psychiatrist has seen a new patient, they take precautions.” “But I saw that doctor last night.” “He wasn’t one of the regular psychiatrists. Just a resident, probably, on night duty.” “Why was he so inquisitive about my black eye? That’s the part I still can’t understand.” “The assumption is that any injury is self-inflicted. When you wouldn’t answer him, he thought you were trying to hide that.” “But why should I want to give myself a black eye?” “Patients do,” said Polly. “Or they may get one throwing themselves in front of a car or down the stairs or off an embankment. When you see the psychiatrist this morning, after you’ve had your breakfast, you must tell him the truth about your eye. Even so, he’ll probably want confirmation from Harald.” “Confirmation from Harald!” Kay repeated indignantly. “What if he were to lie? Anyway, I don’t want to see a psychiatrist. I want to get out of here. Right away.” “You can’t get out,” said Polly. “Until you see a psychiatrist. If you tell him the whole story, he may be able to release you. I’m not sure, Kay. You’d better send for Harald right away. I’ll phone him as soon as we get this test done. I’m afraid that if he committed you, he will have to take you out himself. Otherwise, the procedure’s rather long.” “Harald committed me?” cried Kay. “He must have,” said Polly. “Unless you committed yourself. Did you?” “No.” Kay was positive. “That must have been those forms he filled out in the office,” she said. The two girls’ eyes dilated. “But that means,” Kay said slowly, “that he knew what kind of place this was when he left me.” Polly did not speak. “Doesn’t it, Polly?” Kay urged, her voice rising. “I said to you just now that he betrayed me. But I didn’t mean it, I swear. I thought we both thought it was part of the regular hospital.” “Perhaps,” suggested Polly hopefully, “Harald didn’t realize what he was doing.” “No.” Kay shook her head. “Harald never signs anything without knowing exactly what it is. He prides himself on that. He always adds up the bill himself in a restaurant and makes the waiter tell him what each item is. Sometimes I could go through the floor. And he reads all the fine print in a lease. So he knew.” She sank her chin in her hand; her black eye stood out livid in her face, which had slowly drained of color. She looked gaunt and old. Polly glanced at her watch. “Come!” she commanded. “Let’s do your metabolism. Afterward, we can talk.”

  Polly wanted time for reflection. While Kay was breathing into the big cylinder and she herself was watching the gauges, the room was still. She was very worried for Kay. The grim thought flitted across her mind that Harald, for some reason of his own, wanted Kay out of the way for a period and had deliberately put her in here, using Norine as a
cat’s paw. Or could Harald and Norine be lovers who were plotting Kay’s destruction? But such things did not happen in real life, not any more. And what could they gain by such a maneuver? Grounds for divorce? But if Harald wanted a divorce, Kay would surely give it to him.