A Special Providence

by Richard Yates

  The Larkin children, a boy and a girl in their middle teens, had puzzled Alice the evening before because they seemed so aloof and unmindful of the rudiments of courtesy. They hadn’t been openly rude to her or to Bobby; it was just that they’d seemed withdrawn into some private, unsmiling social pattern of their own. Their demeanor was loose and slumbrous, and they were dressed like workmen in sloppy flannel shirts and blue denim trousers, which had made Alice wonder if, to their expressionless eyes, her own and Bobby’s clothes might look too careful, too neat and middle-class. But now in the second evening she felt she was beginning to understand them, just as she’d begun to understand Jim. At dinner they teased their father and joined him in teasing their mother, all in a kind of affectionate wit that was precocious without being offensive. And afterwards, with no trace of showing off, they performed an impromptu musicale. Jim started it, slouching over to the piano and hammering out some quick, frivolous popular song by way of introduction; then the girl produced a guitar and the boy a clarinet, and they played and sang delightfully for more than an hour. They were gifted children; they were interesting children; they were children quite capable of loving their school and finding it ridiculous at the same time; they were, she decided, children of exactly the kind she had always wanted Bobby to be.

  “Oh, Maude,” she said, riding back to Scarsdale much later that night, “I can’t tell you how much we’ve enjoyed it. It’s just been the nicest weekend we’ve had in years and years.”

  “Then it’s all settled, isn’t it,” Maude said. “I’ll speak to Mrs. Vander Meer tomorrow – or I guess I’d better not promise tomorrow; getting into the Big House is like getting an audience with the Pope or something – but anyway I’ll speak to her this week, and try to fix it for you to meet her next weekend. She’ll probably invite us both for tea, and you can take it from there. I just know it’s all going to work out.”

  And it did.

  “Will you have cream or lemon?” Mrs. Walter J. Vander Meer inquired the following Saturday in what was, beyond question, the most magnificent room Alice had ever seen.

  “Lemon, please.” Alice felt a drop of sweat creep out of her armpit and slide down her ribs, and at the same moment she saw that the long ash of her cigarette had fallen into her lap. Would crossing her legs hide it, or would it be better to hide it with her napkin? In either case, how could she hide it when the time came to stand up? “Thank you,” she said, accepting the hot, delicate cup and saucer from Mrs. Vander Meer and trying to keep them from chattering in her hands. Without Maude’s comforting presence beside her, she was sure she would have fumbled and spilled everything on the floor. Maude had carried most of the conversation so far, sparing her from any direct involvement, but now all the talk had stopped and she looked up to find herself under the full weight of the old lady’s scrutiny.

  Tall and thin and remarkably erect in her chair beside the tea service, Mrs. Vander Meer seemed to speak from a great distance. “Maude tells me you’re a very courageous woman, Mrs. Prentice.”

  And how in the world could she reply to that? “Well,” she said, “that’s very kind of Maude.” And it seemed, from Mrs. Vander Meer’s small, qualified smile, that she’d passed the first test. But she didn’t want to risk a sidelong glance at Maude for fear that Maude might wink at her, or raise and shake her clasped hands over her head like a victorious prizefighter.

  “Please excuse me,” Mrs. Vander Meer said. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten to give you an ashtray. Could you hand her that one, Maude? From the table?”

  There was nowhere to put the ashtray but in her lap, which was already filled with the trembling cup and saucer; after a little agony of hesitation she set it on the carpet and stubbed out her cigarette in it, and then she was touched with terror. Had anyone ever put an ashtray on the floor in the Vander Meer house before?

  Mrs. Vander Meer’s gaze had indeed followed the passage of the ashtray to the floor and now was fixed on it with a little frown; but it turned out to be only a frown of concentration on the difficulty of forming her next sentence. “It’s always seemed to me,” she said at last, “that it must require a great deal of courage to be an artist, if only because the creative process is such a lonely one. I should imagine it must be all the more difficult for a woman.”

  And Alice let the tension of her spine and shoulders subside a little into the upholstery. She had known from the start that Mrs. Vander Meer was imposing, that she was stately and beautiful, that she was an embodiment of every admirable connotation of the word “aristocratic”; now, for the first time and with enormous relief, she began to believe that Mrs. Vander Meer was nice.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Prentice. Do you think you might enjoy working here? And living here?”

  “Yes, I believe I would,” she said. “I believe I’d enjoy it very much.”

  “I’ll be speaking to my son in the morning,” she said. “I’m sure something can be arranged.”

  “Oh, you were marvelous!” Maude Larkin said when they were alone and free of The Big House at last. “You couldn’t have been better. I know she fell in love with you.”

  But Alice didn’t need to be told: she could still feel the old lady’s approval around her like a warm cloak.

  Mrs. Vander Meer apparently did speak to her son in the morning, and her son apparently didn’t find the plan bizarre. An interview with him took place that same week, in his office, again with Maude coming along for moral support; and though Alice found him not very likable – a plump, small-eyed, high-voiced man who seemed to have inherited none of his mother’s qualities – it was clear that she had, as Maude put it, “passed muster” with him as well.

  There were two more people for her to pass muster with: a Mr. Frank Garrett, the real estate agent, and a Dr. Eugene Cool, who was the principal of Riverside Country Day. And neither of them, according to Maude, presented any obstacle. “Treat Garrett like an employee,” Maude advised her. “After all, that’s all he is. He’s just a little Yonkers mick who knows damn well he’s lucky to be making a living at all; he’d do pick-and-shovel work if the Vander Meers told him to. As for old Cool, just keep calling him ‘Doctor’ instead of ‘Mister,’ and let him talk about the virtues of progressive education for half an hour, and you’ll have him eating out of your hand.”

  But neither of those interviews was a success. Mr. Garrett, who didn’t look even faintly capable of pick-and-shovel work as he sat behind the wide desk in his office, told her that the rent for the gatehouse would amount to more than she had ever paid for living quarters before.

  “And that will include the utilities, will it? The heating and so on?”

  “No, it won’t, Mrs. Prentice. Utilities are extra.”

  “I see.”

  And she had nothing to say but “I see” to Dr. Eugene Cool, a few days later, when he explained that Riverside Country Day would be unable to give Bobby a scholarship. The best that could be arranged was what he called “a partial scholarship,” and that meant she would pay almost as much as full tuition.

  Everything now depended on the income she hoped to earn in the squash court; but a surprising number of her students declined to transfer from the Arts and Crafts Guild. Some said Riverside was too far from home, others said they couldn’t afford the fees. In the end she received commitments from only eight students out of a possible fifteen.

  “Well, that’s a nucleus, anyway,” said Maude Larkin, without whom it would have been a nucleus of seven. “We can recruit plenty of others from around here – probably a lot more interesting students than that damn Scarsdale crowd anyway. Really, dear, I’m sure it’ll all work out once you get settled.”

  But Jim wasn’t sure at all: “How’s she ever going to get settled, with bills like that coming in? If I were you, Alice, I’d think twice before you take on any of this. You’re much better off in Scarsdale.”

  He didn’t seem to understand that there was no turning back. The new life would be possible, in spite of eve
rything. It had to be: Alice was committed to it now with a desperate optimism that left no room for argument. She had faith in the essential rightness of it.

  There was still the problem of making it all sound feasible to George. She had told him only that her work at the County Center had led to the establishment of new, private classes in a studio of her own, which might soon make her self-supporting, and that this would require their moving to Riverside, which she’d described only as “Quite a small, nice community, with a fine school for Bobby.” Now she had to confess that the rent would be much higher than in Scarsdale, and that the fine school was in fact not a public one; soon he was exploding with questions on the phone.

  A private school? A private estate? What did she mean, private estate? Vander Meer? Walter J. Vander Meer? Good God, didn’t she know those people were millionaires? And in the end it was deadlock.

  “Alice, it sounds to me like you’re biting off an awful lot more than you can chew. I don’t like any part of this.”

  “I’m not asking you to like it. I’m not asking you to interfere in any of my affairs, and I certainly don’t have to ask your approval. It’s none of your business.”

  And she gained courage, after she’d hung up on him, from the very firmness with which she’d made that final statement. It was none of his business. It was entirely her own, and Bobby’s. If it wasn’t the kind of venture George Prentice could understand, that only proved how incapable he was of understanding her at all. Nothing could stop her now.

  They made the move in September of 1937. They hung Sterling Nelson’s purdah over the fireplace and found attractive settings for Sterling Nelson’s paintings and furniture, and soon their home was far more than rich and cozy – it was interesting, in a way none of their homes had been before.

  Maude and Jim Larkin came over to praise the house, bringing friends of theirs who praised it too, and it wasn’t long before Bobby began bringing boys home from school – boys whose manners were as cool and strange as the Larkin children’s, and whose parentage Maude was quick to endorse.

  “The little Jennings boy? Oh, that’s R. Philip Jennings; he’s very big at Time and Life.” Or: “The Ferguson boy? Oh, they’re a marvelous family. Horace Ferguson was old Vander Meer’s private secretary for years until he got to be a partner in the firm; now he sort of tells Walter Junior what to do. His wife’s kind of a bore, but Horace is really sweet; Jim’s quite fond of him, even though they argue politics all the time.”

  And soon there were evenings in the homes of these people – evenings in which she was instantly accepted as the Larkins’ friend, Alice Prentice the sculptor; the men were flattering and solicitous and the women expressed interest in becoming sculpture students.

  One of the first things she did was get a good supply of personal stationery printed up –

  ALICE PRENTICE

  BOXWOOD

  RIVERSIDE, NEW YORK

  – and she wrote enthusiastic letters to everyone she knew who might be glad of her good fortune: her New York friends, several people in Scarsdale, and all of her sisters: The longest and most enthusiastic letter was for Eva – Mrs. Owen Forbes of Austin, Texas – and Eva was quick to reply:

  “… I can’t tell you how much I admire your spirit, dear. You are indomitable. I know it will be a wonderful new life for you and Bobby. Owen joins me in sending …”

  The phrase “You are indomitable” occurred to her more than a few times during her long mornings in the squash court, for she was producing a good deal and working like a professional. Art did require a congenial environment. The squash court and the new life of Boxwood, with its aura of wealth and ease, seemed to have freed her talent from a kind of bondage. Ideas that had seemed intractable in her makeshift Scarsdale studios now proved capable of swift and competent fruition. Casts of some of her old garden figures were grouped in the far end of the studio, respectable relics of a period she had outgrown; but much of the experimental work she’d done in Scarsdale was now hidden from view under muslin cloths because it no longer pleased her. She had taken up a new medium: direct stone carving. It was a thing she had tried several times before, in an amateurish way, but only now was she beginning to discover its potentialities. There was something more vital, more elemental about stone; it made modeling seem artificial. She didn’t abandon clay – some pieces had to be modeled – but in both media she was moving into a brave new freedom of expression. She felt she was approaching a mastery of sculpture for the first time in her life. Willard Slade would have been proud of her. Even her less successful efforts were promising; she was developing pieces worthy of submission to the Whitney Annual, as well as to other lesser exhibitions, and she felt that she might have enough finished work to warrant a one-man show in New York by spring.

  And the teaching, three afternoons a week, was anything but a conflict: she found it stimulating, and she moved among her students with a calm authority she had never been able to achieve in White Plains.

  “All sculpture is a matter of form in relation to form,” she would say, and coming to pause over someone’s half-finished piece she would find an example. “Now, you see, this shape doesn’t fully relate to this shape – not in a really dynamic way. Perhaps if this shape were made more forceful, if we could feel its thrust into this shape, we might find a more satisfying statement.” Then, moving on, she would say, “We have to develop a sense of mass in our work; we can never allow ourselves to look at the composition from a two-dimensional viewpoint.…”

  She had never known teaching could be such a pleasure, nor had she ever more consistently enjoyed the feeling that she was holding her students spellbound.

  Once, in the middle of a particularly full afternoon, she looked up from her criticism to find that Mrs. Vander Meer had come quietly through the tiny door and was observing the class.

  “Please don’t let me interrupt you, Mrs. Prentice,” she said. “I just wanted to come and watch. I must say it’s most fascinating.”

  By the beginning of the winter she was running into debt: the class had gained only three new pupils, and the bills were mounting.

  But at Christmas time she received a formal note requesting the pleasure of her company at the home of Mrs. Walter J. Vander Meer, and an excited talk with Maude, who had also received one, confirmed that it was indeed a social triumph: only a very few people were ever asked to the Big House Christmas parties, and “the rest of the town practically commits suicide every year.”

  Maude and Alice bought new evening dresses for the occasion, and the occasion itself left nothing to be desired. Yuletide logs were ablaze in great fireplaces, making hundreds of tiny reflected fires in crystal and silver; white-coated servants carried trays of hot hors d’oeuvres and punch, and Mrs. Vander Meer moved slowly and regally among her guests. Jim Larkin looked crude and out of place in his tuxedo – he kept saying things like “Where the hell’s the food?” and “Why don’t they put out any decent booze?” – so Alice was glad that he and Maude weren’t standing nearby when Mrs. Vander Meer came over to her and extended one elegant hand.

  “I’ve seen so little of you since you moved in, Mrs. Prentice,” she said. “I hope everything’s been satisfactory?”

  “Oh, yes, thank you. Everything’s been fine.”

  “Has the squash court been adequate for your purposes?”

  “Oh, much more than adequate; it’s a wonderful studio.”

  “I’m so glad. Have you met Dr. Hammond?”

  And there was a tall, emaciated, beautiful old man who turned out to be the rector of Trinity, the Riverside Episcopal church. Mrs. Vander Meer drifted away and Alice spent almost an hour talking with Dr. Hammond, aware from time to time that Mrs. Vander Meer was observing their conversation with approval. She found herself saying: “I’ve always been fascinated by the Episcopal service” (which wasn’t really a lie: Episcopalians had been the people she admired most in the town of her childhood, and more than a few times in recent years she had spe
nt tearful Sunday mornings in the dark, cool nave of St. Luke’s in New York), and before he cordially withdrew she had promised to become a member of his parish.

  “I saw you were really hitting it off with old Hammond,” Maude said on their way home. “That’s playing your cards right. He and the old lady are thick as thieves – she calls him her ‘spiritual adviser.’ If they both weren’t so ancient I think the whole town would suspect the worst.”

  “He seemed very kind,” Alice said with some severity, and she didn’t care if Maude laughed or not. It was one of the first times – there would be others later – when she had reason to wonder if Maude might in some ways be a trivial person.

  From then on, she and Bobby never missed a Sunday at Trinity. Mrs. Vander Meer was always there in her private pew near the front, sometimes with Walter Junior and his wife and sometimes alone; Alice and Bobby would make their way down the aisle to take their places at a respectful distance, under the red and purple stained glass windows and the heavy tones of the organ. Dr. Hammond made a slow pageantry of the service. She found it hard to follow his sermons – she would allow her attention to wander to the shapes and colors of the altar, the windows, the choir loft, and sometimes she would plan pieces of ecclesiastical sculpture in her mind – but she joined wholeheartedly in the psalms and hymns, and certain of the ritual prayers, intoned in Dr. Hammond’s deep and melodious voice, would always make her weep.