Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

At the tarnishing mirror Lady Good twisted and preened, the dress held up in front of her. “I think I shall go right now and try it on,” she said, but couldn’t tear herself from her image.

  “Yes, yes,” sighed Mr. Tanning, “you’ll be surprised how many opportunities come to put it on.”

  “Oh dearest, it’s so lovely!”

  “Or, I might add, take it off …”

  “Benjamin!”

  Just then, however, hearing a step in the hall, Lady Good sped to her room.

  It was Xenia, in hairnet and smock, ready to begin work. She gave Benjamin a good-morning kiss. Francis strolled to the far end of the room, pleased that his father, today of all days, had chosen not to pose.

  “Ah,” she coaxed, “not even a very short session? There’s a tiny place at the corner of the mouth that I wanted—”

  “I said,” Mr. Tanning broke in with an authority that seemed to impress even himself, “that I just don’t feel up to it. Can’t anyone in this God-damn house give me some plain consideration?” And out he went, reappearing instantly in the doorway long enough to add, “Don’t mind Grandpa. He’s feeling sorry for himself.”

  A frightened look had come over Xenia’s face. “Oh God, what’s the matter?” she breathed.

  Francis could have told her. Who wouldn’t be worn and vexed, forever pampered as the old man was, sought after, drained by people he cared nothing about? His son felt unusually close to him that morning. Before long the Maxons, the Feuermans, and Wally Link would be setting out gleefully from New York, with tanks full and tops down and no doubt whatever of Benjamin’s eagerness to see them. As it happened, Benjamin was eager to see nobody except Prudence Good. Damn friendships, damn contacts, Francis could imagine his father thinking, and above all—at a moment when even Sir Edward had had the tact to remove himself—damn Xenia and her demands!

  Sir Edward was a different story. “I’d feel a hundred percent better,” Mr. Tanning had brooded only a day ago, “if Prudence’s husband were less of a nice guy and more of a son of a bitch.” Whatever that meant. Didn’t the old man know about Sir Edward? Wondered Francis at the time, and now thanked heaven he hadn’t repeated the remark to Xenia. A similar one having been made about Charlie Cheek, “There you are!” she had cried, “here’s proof Irene’s your father’s mistress!” That was nonsense enough—couldn’t she see how sick and old Mr. Tanning was?—but if she were further to imply that Prudence—! Although Xenia had done no such thing, Nonsense! thought Francis in a fury, nonsense and damn her! She couldn’t be expected to understand so fine a person as Lady Good.

  “I haven’t the vaguest notion,” he said distantly in answer to her question. “I doubt that anything’s the matter unless he wishes not to be bothered for a little while. I’m surprised you can’t make an effort to respect that.”

  Tears sprang into Xenia’s eyes. “Have the human kindness, Francis,” she whispered, “to remember I’m a guest in this house. More than a guest, a friend—yes, in spite of what you think—a friend whose life, whose whole career is at stake!”

  “Xenia, for pity’s sake!”

  “I can turn only to you! If you turn from me, if Ben does—”

  So that explained her distress! Xenia believed he had just been telling his father what had taken place the night before. In a calmer hour Francis might have smiled to see that she was as conscience-stricken over the whole miserable business as he himself. Instead, “How can you think such a preposterous thought?” he shouted. “What do you imagine I’m capable of? Answer me!”

  Xenia stared at him, her face streaming and white. “You are capable, Francis, of anything,” she said quietly, and turned to go.

  By then he, too, had begun to weep. Fumbling with the screen door, he escaped towards the sunken garden, away from the sea, whispering to himself, “I must go, I must go …” And when Lady Good reappeared in her finery to strike a not altogether humorous attitude on the threshold, she found the ocean room deserted.

  It was one of those days for tears. The next to succumb was Natalie Bigelow.

  At four o’clock, back from the village, a picture with hair now sleek and golden as a greengage plum, she had literally stumbled over her packed suitcase. No maid answered her ring. Xenia and Lily were in the pantry. Mrs. McBride had gone to rub her patient’s feet. Still thinking nothing bad, Natalie groped her way back to the ocean room, where Prudence was playing patience. Did she know why a suitcase had been packed?

  “How very peculiar, Natalie dear!”

  “Well, I think so,” laughed the victim. “I guess I’ve outstayed my welcome, after all.”

  “Now you’re being silly. Besides,” Lady Good grew complacent, “Benjamin said nothing about it to me.”

  “Pardon me,” Francis interposed from a distant sofa, “he told Louis Leroy that he wanted the Underwoods to have Natalie’s room, and that she’d be sleeping at the Inn tonight. I assumed,” he couldn’t resist adding, “it had all been settled between them.”

  There was a brief silence. “That,” said Natalie gaily, “answers my question, doesn’t it?” But as she started out her shoulders began to tremble. Before Lady Good had time to rise and embrace her she was heart-brokenly sobbing.

  It caught Francis off guard. He had always thought of Natalie as a good sport who, having got what she wanted from life years ago, no longer cared much how people treated her.

  Nerves, he decided at first—accustomed to that view of his father whereby the old man brought nothing to pass, good, bad, or indifferent, and couldn’t therefore be credited or blamed for what went on. Still feeling he was needed, Francis got up and approached the women.

  “Darling,” Lady Good was saying, “you shall sleep in my room tonight. We’ll send Ned to the Inn.”

  “We’ll do nothing of the sort!” cried Natalie, coloring, swallowing. “He wants me out, I’m getting out. I’m definitely not a gal who has to be told twice!”

  “Natalie, dear, think! He can’t have meant—”

  “Prudence, my pet,” through clenched teeth, “I’ve known him twenty-five years.”

  “Francis, did Benjamin—?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Certainly he did!” Her wonderful half-blind eyes flashed. “But would he have the guts to tell me to my face? I should say not!” Whereupon Natalie broke away. By the time she returned, struggling with her suitcase, it was to confront a circle swelled by Xenia, Lily, Mrs. McBride, and Louis Leroy whom, in a dulcet whisper, she requested to call a cab.

  “Natalie,” begged Xenia, “take my room!”

  “Don’t do it!” exclaimed Francis. He gave Xenia a look to show he knew what had prompted her offer, then hurried to intercept Louis. “I’m driving Mrs. Bigelow to the Inn.”

  “Thank you, my sweet.”

  “And I’m going to speak to Benjamin,” Lady Good announced, decisively pivoting.

  “If you do,” said Natalie on a note that froze her in her tracks, “I’ll never forgive you.”

  Lily simpered. Francis picked up the suitcase.

  “But the dinner party,” said Mrs. McBride.

  “Don’t worry.” Natalie smiled over her shoulder. “I’ll be here for that. I’m a gal who fulfills her obligations to the letter.”

  Francis relaxed only when the Cottage began to writhe in the rear-vision mirror. In silence he headed for the Inn. He felt a gradual dancing clarity. Natalie’s nerves, indeed! No, Benjamin was at fault, Benjamin—his lips kept forming the words—was thoughtlessly, stupidly at fault.

  For Benjamin had to have his own way. He no more considered Natalie’s feelings, in packing her off to the Inn, than Lady Good’s, in forcing on her an embarrassingly lavish gift. Benjamin consulted nobody. Whatever he decided to serve—whether caviar or humble pie—the victim was meant to choke it down and be grateful. Nobody had ever had a chance to refuse the brutal bounty. Here the car just missed crashing into a tree.

  I must be terribly mixed-up, thought Francis, remember
ing how often he’d represented his father to Xenia and others as sick, old, irresponsible. Not since childhood had he felt such direct antagonism towards Benjamin—but all at once an odd, elated antagonism, more like an acknowledgment of Benjamin’s reality; as if what had happened the previous night—and for the moment Francis didn’t mind despising himself for it—as if what had happened in Xenia’s bed had actually given him a kind of strength. He smiled, but it was so. Strength enough, at least, to admit that Benjamin was strong. Father and son seemed now to drop a charade kept pointless by fear, on the part of each, that the other could bear no intenser relationship. Something caved in. They might have been living adversaries, laughing now across a chasm. Yes, Benjamin was strong, thought Francis with a glance at Natalie’s swollen eyes. He had learned, however, a way of opposing Benjamin.

  Or thought he had.

  They were at the Inn. Stopping the car, full of tenderness, Francis reached for Natalie’s hand, as he had reached twelve years before for his mother’s when they had driven away from the Cottage together. But his gesture, while signifying nothing darker than “Never mind, I shall be loyal and loving,” was met by such poor mechanical gratitude, the squeeze, the sniffle, the reach for Kleenex and rouge in order to hide her misery from whom it didn’t concern, that Francis withdrew as if he had touched ice. Staring once again at the world through glass, he heard the dim chime of that earlier lesson: one couldn’t hope to triumph where Benjamin had already done so.

  During dinner an accordion player, hired by Enid, went from table to table.

  This man, swarthy and balding, had been seen at parties thereabouts for close to a quarter century. Off and on, that night, he accompanied Wally Link (who loved to fit old songs with exhaustive lyrics all about life at the Cottage—a bard of yore, Mrs. Gresham called him); but most of the time the musician spent gazing with meaningless impudence down the bodice of whoever had requested “Some Enchanted Evening,” which he sang as if she alone, all summer, had flattered him by naming a little-known number they both loved. By the meal’s end, with nobody asking for it, he sang this song to some who hadn’t glanced in his direction.

  Whenever his gaze lit on Lady Good she turned pink. Her gown was an astonishment, dewdrop and gossamer, but it might have been cut from the very tissue of sin, she wore it so cheerlessly. A cable had come, while she was dressing, from Jamaica; Sir Edward was needed. He had read it quickly, shrugged and told her to do as she wished—his duty was clear. Prudence then fled to Benjamin, who, tying his tie, had shrugged and told her he couldn’t advise her in such a matter. Did nobody care whether she stayed or went? Finally, just before dinner, it hadn’t helped to discover that the only other “important” gown at the party was being worn by Irene Cheek, who under the stress of compliments had given way to baby-talk. “I’n’t it pwetty?” she gurgled, “’s Iwene’s birthday pwesent fum Cousin Benji!”

  “When was your birthday?” Francis thought to ask.

  “Week before last,” she replied, snapping her fingers for Louis to bring her a cocktail. Francis and Lady Good exchanged a bleak look. Evidently Mr. Tanning had decided, all by himself, that evening gowns made highly acceptable gifts.

  And so Lady Good was the next to weep.

  She feared that everyone was making fun of her. “If, as he swears, he’s grown tired of Irene,” she was murmuring by the end of dinner, “why is he afraid to tell her so? It’s fair neither to her nor to me. How do I know that he has tired of her?” It truly hurt Francis to see her caring so deeply. Why, Irene wasn’t worth the smallest tear fallen into her ice cream. “If I were that silly doll-faced Mrs. Maxon pirouetting in a frock of natural chamois—in this weather!—I should know the line to take. I’d wiggle my hips and paint my eyes. As it is—oh, make that man stop!”

  “Thank you,” Francis said to the accordion player. “We’re trying to talk.”

  “He’s getting to behave more and more like Benjamin as the years go by,” tittered Mrs. Sturdevant across the table.

  “Do you mean me?” inquired Francis, startled.

  “Oh dear me, no,” she put his mind at rest, “not you, no, no—the accordionist! The way he flirts with all the old women—tell me, Lady Good,” the blue-haired smiler pursued naively, but at the top of her lungs, “I’m crushed over Sir Edward’s having to leave, but you won’t rush back with him, will you?”

  “I’ve not yet made up my mind,” said Lady Good, instantly regaining her poise in the face of an overt challenge. “It may be that I shall accompany Benjamin to Boston next week.”

  Francis raised his eyebrows. He had been invited to Boston himself. And Mrs. McBride, of course. The Cottage would be abandoned, a sinking ship.

  “You mean, to the hospital,” said Mrs. Sturdevant, looking wise.

  And so it went.

  Wally Link had seen a flying saucer. But he was such a prankster that nobody believed him. The more shrill and red-faced he grew, the more Mrs. Gresham and Natalie and Charlie Cheek pounded the table, howling with laughter. Only Miss Tagliaferro nodded, paled, lowered her eyes—there was a higher form of life; the earth was being watched by Venus. When the accordionist struck up a waltz, Francis asked her to dance.

  “Careful now, Cutie-Pie!” Charlie Cheek called after them. “That boy Francis is up to no good!”

  The poor man no longer even pretended to be on the wagon.

  “Do you know the Cheeks well?” said Francis. Xenia had told him to be nice to Miss Tagliaferro.

  But it emerged that she was only a freelance writer whose name somebody had given Irene. As if this weren’t interesting enough, she added, “I was fired a few hours ago.”

  “Really?” Heads were falling right and left, thought Francis, remembering Natalie. “Fired, you mean,” he went on, “by Mrs. Cheek?”

  “No.” Miss Tagliaferro shook her silken mane. “By Mr. Tanning. He didn’t think we were getting anywhere.”

  “With the biography?”

  He was just keeping the ball rolling, yet she gave him an odd arch look. “With the biography,” she smiled.

  “Well, were you? Getting anywhere, I mean. With the biography.”

  “Not really. There’s so much material, what with all the claims on his time …” She seemed to be taking it in her stride.

  “Fancy, Enid,” said Francis, pausing on his jerky progress past her table, “Miss Tagliaferro’s lost her job.”

  Enid was genuinely sympathetic. Nevertheless, brown and beautiful in a full Chinese robe, she exchanged a significant flicker with her brother. “Poor Cousin Irene must be very disappointed,” she said. “It’s a pity when little plans don’t materialize.”

  “I’ve got a feeling Mr. Tanning hasn’t told her yet,” said Miss Tagliaferro.

  Indeed? All three looked involuntarily towards the old man, who was in the act of kissing Mrs. Underwood’s wrinkled cheek, while her husband grinned. “But gee, don’t feel sorry for me,” continued Miss Tagliaferro with an angel’s smile. “Your father gave me a beautiful big check and a few inside tips on the market. I can’t help it, I love him, that’s all.”

  “Ah, so do I!” said a familiar voice behind them, as Xenia swept by in the arms of Sir Edward Good.

  At last, with a din of spoons striking crystal, the speeches began.

  Dr. Samuels rose first. Mr. Tanning had asked him to explain briefly a treatment his patient was to undergo next week in Boston. It was one with which the doctor had been experimenting for a number of years. He wanted to say at once that it involved serious risks. But after much observation and many tests right here at the Cottage—he hadn’t been playing golf the whole three weeks—he felt reasonably sure that Mr. Tanning would respond to it.

  His listeners composed themselves into an earnestness. It was right that they had been chosen to hear the worst.

  As simply as possible: one fine morning Mr. Tanning would swallow perhaps a shot glass full of some colorless liquid, faintly flavored with iodine. This treat was to be served
in a leaden casket, sipped through a leaden straw, in a room equipped with a special toilet that didn’t empty into the city sewer. For two days no visitor could be admitted. Benjamin, in a word, was going to be radioactive.

  “What? No mushroom cloud?” laughed Charlie Cheek tactlessly. The others sat sobered.

  Only a fraction of the atomic cocktail, Dr. Samuels went on, is retained by the system, and of this all but an infinitesimal amount is absorbed by the thyroid gland. The gland, alas, is destroyed. The patient’s throat swells up and he can go through some painful hours. But within six or eight weeks the miracle happens: he no longer suffers any heart pain whatsoever.

  That was all. A few guests looked troubled, as though it meant Benjamin was going to live forever. Then Wally Link had them sing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” in honor of Dr. Samuels.

  “I know,” said Larry Buchanan, rising, “that the prayers and good wishes of all of us here will follow the grandest guy I ever hope—” and so forth, fluently, for five minutes at the end of which Harold Feuerman rephrased it, adding a sentiment or two of his own, these last deftly echoed, when her turn came, by Mimsey Maxon. “I cannot understand,” whispered Lady Good through clenched teeth, “how Benjamin endures such fatuity.”

  For he was listening soberly, hanging on their words, and when at length, with a creak and a groan and a tardy flourish from the accordion, he stood up to thank them, a telltale brilliance trembled in his old blue eyes. Number five, said Francis to himself. But Mr. Tanning was always crying. Xenia had said it proved he was still potent, emotionally.

  “An old man is always saddened,” he began, “when those dear to him take their leave. No matter how long they stay away he wants them to feel present and cherished in his heart. We see too little of our loved ones, unless we make an effort. I’d never have known my own father if I hadn’t made an effort. He was a country doctor. Some mornings he’d hitch his buggy and not come home till midnight. The days I went along, it meant giving up a swim or a baseball game. But I never regretted making the sacrifice.”