The Group

by Mary McCarthy

  Her eyes fixed on Stephen. “This your only offspring?” Priss explained that she had had a series of miscarriages, but she still hoped to have more children, for it would be sad for Stephen to grow up as an only child. “Adopt some,” said Norine. “It’s the only way. If the elite can’t breed, it has to graft new stock or face extinction. Do you know that the Vassar graduate has only 2.2 children?” Priss was aware of this statistic, which had caused concern in alumnae circles—Vassar women were barely replacing themselves while the rest of the population was multiplying. “What does your husband do?” Norine demanded. “He’s a pediatrician.” “Oh,” said Norine. “What school?” Priss began to tell her where Sloan had been trained. Norine cut her off. “What school of thought. Behaviorist? Gestalt? Steiner? Klein? Anna Freud?” Priss was ashamed to say that she did not know. “He’s a medical doctor,” she said apologetically. Then she essayed a personal question of her own.

  “What does your husband do, Norine?” Norine chuckled. “He’s a banker. With Kuhn, Loeb. He comes from old moneylending stock. From Frankfort originally. But they had a Diaspora and they’re scattered all over the place. The black sheep of the family became a Zionist and went to Palestine. They never mention his name. Freddy’s parents were trying to pass,” she went on somberly. “Like so many rich German Jews. They sent him to Choate and Princeton, where he had a searing experience with one of the clubs. When the club found out ‘Rogers’ was ‘Rosenberg,’ he was asked to resign.” Priss made a clucking sound, to which Norine replied with a short laugh. It was as if this incident gave her a peculiar kind of relish.

  Priss glanced at little Ichabod, who, she observed, had been circumcised, and felt guiltily glad that Stephen did not have a Jewish father. It struck her, awful as it sounded, that if you wanted to give your child the best start in life, you would not marry a Jew. But Norine, she supposed, was dauntless on his behalf; Priss felt in awe of a person who could fasten a name like that on a baby. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll be called ‘Icky’ in school?” she said impulsively. “He’ll have to learn to fight his battles early,” philosophized Norine. “Ichabod the Inglorious. That’s what the name means in Hebrew. ‘No glory.’” She rocked the carriage.

  “How old is he?” “Three months.” Priss wished Norine would raise the hood of the carriage; she feared the mid-morning sun was too strong for his little head, which had scarcely any hair yet. “Isn’t he awfully young for a sun bath?” Norine scouted the thought; she had been exposing him to the sun daily since she had brought him home from Mount Sinai. Nevertheless, she slightly raised the hood, so that his face was in the shade. “It’s O.K. here,” she observed contentedly. “No nursemaids or English nannies. The place I was yesterday, they made an awful stink because he was nude. They were afraid their starchy girls would get ideas from his little prick—weren’t they, Ichabod?” Her big hand patted his penis, which stiffened. Priss swallowed several times; she glanced uneasily in the direction of Stephen, who, happily, was chasing his ball in the grass. She was always terrified of arousing Stephen; she hated retracting his foreskin when washing him, though Sloan said she should, for hygienic reasons. But she would almost rather he was dirty than have him get an Oedipus complex from her handling him. Lately, without telling Sloan, she had been omitting this step from his bath.

  “Have you got a watch?” Norine asked, yawning. Priss told her the time. “Are you nursing?” she asked, stealing an envious look at Norine’s massive breasts. “My milk ran out,” said Norine. “So did mine!” cried Priss. “As soon as I left the hospital. How long did you nurse?” “Four weeks. Then Freddy slept with the girl we had looking after Ichabod, and my milk went on strike.” Priss gulped; the story she had been about to relate, of how her milk had run out as soon as they gave Stephen a supplementary bottle, was hastily vetoed on her lips. “I ought to have seen it coming,” Norine went on, lighting a cigarette. “We hadn’t had real sex together for a coon’s age. You know how it is. At the end of your pregnancy it’s verboten and it’s verboten for a month after the kid’s born. Freddy got very randy. And he felt he had a rival in Ichabod. Then we hired this Irish slut. Straight off the boat. She was a cousin of Freddy’s mother’s waitress. A real Mick. Eyes put in with a sooty finger and no sexual morals. In the old sod, she’d been sleeping with her uncle; she told me that. Naturally Freddy couldn’t keep his hands off her. She had a room next to the nursery, where Freddy slept on a cot; I kept Ichabod in bed with me at night—it bushed me to get up for those 2:00 A.M. feedings—and Freddy said he disturbed him.” Priss was sorely tempted to put in a word of guidance—did Norine not know that under no circumstances, not even in a crowded slum home, should a baby be permitted to sleep with an adult? But her shyness and fear of stammering impeded her. “Freddy,” Norine continued, “was sneaking into her room. I found out when I was making her bed. There was Freddy’s semen on the sheet. What got me was that she hadn’t had the grace to use a towel. I pulled the sheet off the bed and confronted Freddy with it while he was eating his breakfast and reading the Wall Street Journal. He said it was partly my fault. Instead of treating her like a servant, I’d waited on her hand and foot, so that she felt she had a right to sleep with the master: she was just as good as me. Making her bed, for instance. It was up to her to make her own bed. He’s right; I’m no good with labor. He had to put her out of the house himself. While he did, I washed the sheet in the washing machine; he said I should have left it for the laundress. We quarreled, and it affected my milk.”

  “They say a shock can do that,” said Priss. “But at least Ichabod got his immunities.” Norine agreed; the damage, she said absently, would be psychic. She reached into the carriage and found a rubber pacifier, which she thrust into his mouth. Priss gazed at this article, nonplused. “Is that to keep him from sucking his thumb?” she asked. “You know, Norine, pediatricians today think it’s better to let them suck their thumbs than try to break them of the habit. What I did with Stephen was distract him gently every time he put his thumb in his mouth. But that p-p-pacifier”—the word seemed to stick in her throat—“is awfully unsanitary. And it can change the shape of his mouth. You really ought to throw it away. Sloan would be shocked if he saw it. It can be just as habit-forming as thumb-sucking.” She spoke earnestly, amazed to see a girl of Norine’s education so ignorant. Norine listened patiently. “If a kid sucks his thumb,” she said, “it’s because he’s been deprived of oral gratification. He needs his daily quota of sucking time, and he can’t get it from the bottle. So you give him a rubber tit. Don’t you, Ichabod?” She smiled tenderly at Ichabod, who indeed wore a look of bliss as he drew on the rubber teat. Priss tried to avert her eyes from the spectacle. For a child to find heaven in a dummy breast was the worst thing she could think of—worse than self-abuse. She felt there ought to be a law against the manufacture of such devices.

  Stephen approached the carriage. “Wass sat?” he asked curiously. His hand went out to touch the pacifier in the baby’s mouth. Priss snatched his hand away. He continued to stare eagerly, evidently interested by the noises of content Ichabod was making. “Wass sat?” he repeated. Norine removed the pacifier from the baby’s mouth. “You want to try it?” she said kindly. She wiped it with a clean diaper and offered it to Stephen. Priss swiftly intervened. She reached into the stroller and drew out a lollipop wrapped in waxed paper. “Here!” she said. “That ‘pop’ belongs to the baby. Give it back to Mrs. Rogers. This is yours.” Stephen accepted the lollipop. Priss had discovered that a system of exchange worked very well with him; he would docilely trade a “bad” thing, like a safety pin, for a “good” thing, like a picture book, and often seemed to be unaware that a substitution had taken place.

  Norine observed this little drama. “You’ve got him trained,” she said finally, with a laconic smile. “I suppose he’s trained to the toilet too.” “I’m afraid not,” said Priss, embarrassed. She lowered her voice. “I’m at my wits’ end, honestly. Of course, I’ve never punished
him, the way our mothers and nurses did, when he has an ‘accident.’ But I almost wish I could spank him. Instead, I’ve done everything you’re supposed to. You know. ‘Observe the time of day when he has his movement and then gently put him on the toidey-seat at that time every morning. If he doesn’t do it, take him off, without any sign of displeasure. If he does do it, smile and clap your hands.’”

  Norine had touched on her most sensitive point. As the wife of a pediatrician, she was bitterly ashamed that Stephen, at the age of two and a half, was not able to control his bowels. He not only made evil-smelling messes in his bed, at naptime, but he sometimes soiled his pants here in the Park, which was why she sought out this isolated bench, rather than take him to the playground. Or he did it—like last weekend—in his bathing trunks on the beach at the Oyster Bay clubhouse, in front of the whole summer colony, who were sunning and having cocktails. Sloan, even though he was a doctor, was extremely annoyed whenever Stephen did it in public, but he would never help Priss clean Stephen up or do anything to relieve her embarrassment. Last weekend, for instance, it was her young sister Linda who had come to her rescue when Stephen had got away from her and capered down the beach with his full bathing trunks. Linda had captured him and carried him into the clubhouse, where she helped Priss by washing out his pants while Priss washed him. Meanwhile Sloan had sat under an umbrella ignoring the whole episode.

  Afterward he had told her that she and her sister had made an unnecessary hullabaloo. Yet it was the only sphere where he could say she had failed with Stephen. He did not wet his bed any more; he ate his vegetables and junkets; he was obedient; he hardly ever cried now, and at night he went to sleep at his appointed time, surrounded by his stuffed animals. She could not see where she had erred in training him. Neither could her mother. Together, they had retraced the whole history, from the first mornings she had set him on the new toidey-seat strapped to the regular toilet. Immediately, he had changed the time of his movement. It jumped from nine o’clock to ten to seven and all around the clock, with Priss and the young girl she had had helping her chasing it in vain. Whenever they judged, from his expression, that he needed to “go,” they would clap him on the toidey, so that he would associate the two ideas. But no matter how long they lay in ambush for him or how patiently they waited once he was on the seat, usually he disappointed them. Often, as soon as they took him off, he would do it in his crib.

  When he was smaller, Priss had tried to think that he did not understand what was wanted of him, and Sloan had authorized her to grunt and make pushing grimaces, to encourage him to imitate her. But her grunts produced no results except to make her feel foolish. She tried leaving him on the toidey alone, so that he would not suppose it was a game the two of them were playing. She tried leaving him there longer, but Sloan said five minutes was enough. On the rare occasions when—by pure chance, it seemed to Priss—he “performed,” she moderated her pantomime of approval, so that he would not sense it as a punishment when she did not smile or clap.

  Sloan’s belief was that Priss’s nervousness was to blame, just as it had been with her nursing. “He senses your tension when you put him on the toilet. Relax.” Yet Sloan himself would have been far from relaxed if he had had to clean up Stephen’s bed when he had fouled his toys and stuffed animals. Sloan always said that the right way was to avoid even the appearance of censure when that occurred. “Just be matter-of-fact. Act as though nothing had happened.” But that would be a lie. By this time, Stephen must know, though she had never reproached him by word or sign, that she did not really like him to do Number Two in his bed. In fact, it had become clear to her that not only did he know but enjoyed the knowledge. Particularly on a day when she would lead guests to his room after a luncheon party and find that “it” had happened. Seeing the ladies flee from the scene of the crime, he responded with gurgles and crows. Priss suspected there was a streak of rebellion tucked away in Stephen, which expressed itself by thwarting her in this particular way. As if he had read a handbook on pediatrics and knew that this was one naughty action for which he could not be punished; instead, he could punish her.

  This thought was too morbid to be discussed, even with her mother. Could a two-and-a-half-old plot and carry out a scheme of revenge? And for what? Alas, in her darkest moments, Priss feared she knew. For the bottle he had got too late, for the schedule he had been held to, on the minute: six, ten, two, six, ten, two. Perhaps even for this “sucking” Norine talked about that he had missed. For never having been picked up when he cried, except to have his diaper changed or be given a drink of water. For the fact, in short, that his father was a pediatrician. Everyone, including Mrs. Hartshorn, who had begun as a skeptic, now exclaimed over how well the new regime had worked; they had never seen a two-year-old so strong, so big, so well behaved and self-sufficient. Priss’s friends, when they came to dinner, were amazed to observe that Stephen went to bed without any discussion. Priss sang to him; he had his arrowroot cookie, his drink of water, and his kiss. Then he was tucked in, and out went his light. He did not call out to have it turned on again or ask for his door to be left open. “He was trained as an infant,” Sloan would say, passing the hors d’oeuvres. “Priss never went in to him, once he’d been stowed away for the night. And we accustomed him to noise. He’s never had a pillow.” Not one of Priss’s friends could match that; they had tried to follow the broad principles, but they had weakened on some detail, with the result that their young disturbed the parents’ cocktail hour with pleas for drinks of water, light, attention generally; they were afraid of the dark or had food crotchets or refused to take naps. The point, Sloan said, was to have the force of character to stick to the system absolutely, except in cases of illness or on trips. Stephen had got a good start in life because Priss had never compromised. This was what Priss endeavored to think herself, encouraged by her friends’ admiration. Yet at times she furtively wondered whether when Stephen made messes in his pants he was not getting his own back for being alive at all.

  “I hope you’ll be luckier than I’ve been,” she said sadly to Norine. “Have you started toilet training yet? Sloan has a theory that we waited too long. If you begin early enough, he says, there’s no reason a baby should be harder to train than an animal.” Norine shook her head. She did not plan to train Ichabod. He needed the fun of playing with his own excrement, just as he needed sucking. “When he’s ready to use the toilet, he’ll ask for it. Probably when he starts nursery school. The pressure of the group will encourage him to give up his anal pleasures. You’ll find, when you put yours in nursery school, that he’ll make the great renunciation.” She did not plan to wean Ichabod either—that is, from the bottle. He would wean himself when he was Stephen’s age, and, if he did not, tant pis.

  “Where in the world did you get such ideas?” Not, Priss was certain, from a reputable pediatrician; Norine must have got hold of some quack. They were based on anthropology, Norine explained. Scientists had been watching the habits of primitive peoples and drawing valuable conclusions. The Pueblo Indians, for instance, who were the crème de la crème of the Indian world, did not wean their children till they were two or three years old. Most primitive peoples did not bother about toilet training at all. “But they have no toilets,” said Priss. Norine nodded. “That’s the price of our culture. If you have a flush toilet, you make a fetish of it. Have you read Margaret Mead? A great woman, that.”

  Needless to say, Ichabod was not on a schedule. He created his own schedule. He was picked up whenever he cried and was fed “on demand.” “What about baby foods? Are you going to give him baby foods?” Norine did not know. But she was against feeding a baby a restricted diet. “Babies are tough,” she said. “They’ll choose their own diet if you offer them a variety of foods.” Priss said that she thought girls today were perhaps making it too easy for themselves by opening a jar of baby food, instead of pureéring fresh vegetables at home and pressing beef in the ricer for beef juice. The question did not appe
ar to interest Norine. Indeed, the discussions that raged in pediatric circles—how soon to start orange juice, evaporated milk versus Borden’s, bottled baby foods versus homemade, enemas versus glycerine suppositories, the merits of Pablum, the new three-hour feeding schedule for hungry babies (Priss and Sloan had pioneered that!)—seemed never to have reached her ears. Ichabod, she repeated, would make his own decisions; already he had shown a taste for Italian spaghetti—she made a practice of offering him scraps of food from her plate. She did not possess a baby scales or a bathinet. He was bathed in the washbasin. She stared reflectively at Stephen. “How old is he? Three?” “Two and a half next Saturday.” Norine pondered. “In his day, of course, you were still hipped on scales and clocks and thermometers. The age of measurement. God, it seems a long time ago!” She yawned and stretched her big frame. “We had a late night last night. Some Jesuits for dinner. And somebody playing the drums. Then Ichabod burned the candle at both ends.”

  Priss girded her loins for combat; it was plain to her that Norine was talking through her hat. “The age of measurement is just beginning,” she said doughtily. “For the first time we’re establishing norms. In all fields. You ought to keep up with the latest developments. Have you heard about Gesell’s studies at Yale? Finally we’re going to have a scientific picture of the child. Gesell shows us what to expect in terms of achievement of a one-year-old, a two-year-old, a three-year-old. When he publishes his findings in p-p-popular form, every mother will have a y-yardstick.”

  This time Norine smothered her yawn. “I know Gesell’s work. He’s a fossil relic of behaviorism. His daughter was ’35.” “What does that prove?” demanded Priss. Norine declined to argue. “You still believe in progress,” she said kindly. “I’d forgotten there were people who did. It’s your substitute for religion. Your tribal totem is the yardstick. But we’ve transcended all that. No first-rate mind can accept the concept of progress any more.” “You used to be such a radical,” protested Priss. “Don’t you admire some of what Roosevelt is doing? TVA, rural electrification, the Farm Resettlement Administration, crop control, Wages and Hours. Granting that he’s made some mistakes—” “I still am a radical,” interrupted Norine. “But now I fathom what it means—going back to the roots. The New Deal is rootless—superficial. It doesn’t even have the dynamism of fascism.”