The Under Secretary went up to him. “Sorry if I’m a little late,” he said, and held out his hand, at the same time looking at his pocket watch. “Not so very, though. How are you, Charles? Fred, you got my message?”
“Yes, sir,” said the maître d’hôtel. “I put you at a nice table all the way back to the right.” He meanwhile had wig-wagged a captain, who stood by to lead the Under Secretary and his guest to Table 12. “Nice to have seen you again, Mr. Browning. Hope you come see us again while you are in Washington. Always a pleasure, sir.”
“Always a pleasure, Fred,” said Browning. He turned to the Under Secretary. “Well, shall we?”
“Yeah, let’s sit down,” said the Under Secretary.
· · ·
The captain led the way, followed by the Under Secretary, walking slightly sideways. Browning, making one step to two of the Under Secretary’s, brought up the rear. When they were seated, the Under Secretary took the menu out of the captain’s hands. “Let’s order right away so I don’t have to look up and talk to those two son of a bitches. I guess you know which two I mean.” Browning looked from right to left, as anyone does on just sitting down in a restaurant. He nodded and said, “Yes, I think I know. You mean the senators.”
“That’s right,” said the Under Secretary. “I’m not gonna have a cocktail, but you can.… I’ll have the lobster. Peas. Shoestring potatoes.… You want a cocktail?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll take whatever you’re having.”
“O.K., waiter?” said the Under Secretary.
“Yes, sir,” said the captain, and went away.
“Well, Charles, I was pretty surprised to hear from you.”
“Yes,” Browning said, “I should imagine so, and by the way, I want to thank you for answering my letter so promptly. I know how rushed you fellows must be, and I thought, as I said in my letter, at your convenience.”
“Mm. Well, frankly, there wasn’t any use in putting you off. I mean till next week or two weeks from now or anything like that. I could just as easily see you today as a month from now. Maybe easier. I don’t know where I’ll be likely to be a month from now. In more ways than one. I may be taking the Clipper to London, and then of course I may be out on my can! Coming to New York and asking you for a job. I take it that’s what you wanted to see me about.”
“Yes, and with hat in hand.”
“Oh, no. I can’t see you waiting with hat in hand, not for anybody. Not even for The Boss.”
Browning laughed.
“What are you laughing at?” asked the Under Secretary.
“Well, you know how I feel about him, so I’d say least of all The Boss.”
“Well, you’ve got plenty of company in this goddam town. But why’d you come to me, then? Why didn’t you go to one of your Union League or Junior League or whatever-the-hell-it-is pals? There, that big jerk over there with the blue suit and the striped tie, for instance?”
Browning looked over at the big jerk with the blue suit and striped tie, and at that moment their eyes met and the two men nodded.
“You know him?” said the Under Secretary.
“Sure, I know him, but that doesn’t say I approve of him.”
“Well, at least that’s something. And I notice he knows you.”
“I’ve been to his house. I think he’s been to our house when my father was alive, and naturally I’ve seen him around New York all my life.”
“Naturally. Naturally. Then why didn’t you go to him?”
“That’s easy. I wouldn’t like to ask him for anything. I don’t approve of the man, at least as a politician, so I couldn’t go to him and ask him a favor.”
“But, on the other hand, you’re not one of our team, but yet you’d ask me a favor. I don’t get it.”
“Oh, yes you do, Joe. You didn’t get where you are by not being able to understand a simple thing like that.”
Reluctantly—and quite obviously it was reluctantly—the Under Secretary grinned. “All right. I was baiting you.”
“I know you were, but I expected it. I have it coming to me. I’ve always been against you fellows. I wasn’t even for you in 1932, and that’s a hell of an admission, but it’s the truth. But that’s water under the bridge—or isn’t it?” The waiter interrupted with the food, and they did not speak until he had gone away.
“You were asking me if it isn’t water under the bridge. Why should it be?”
“The obvious reason,” said Browning.
“ ‘My country, ’tis of thee’?”
“Exactly. Isn’t that enough?”
“It isn’t for your Racquet Club pal over there.”
“You keep track of things like that?”
“Certainly,” said the Under Secretary. “I know every goddam club in this country, beginning back about twenty-three years ago. I had ample time to study them all then, you recall, objectively, from the outside. By the way, I notice you wear a wristwatch. What happens to the little animal?”
Browning put his hand in his pocket and brought out a small bunch of keys. He held the chain so that the Under Secretary could see, suspended from it, a small golden pig. “I still carry it,” he said.
“They tell me a lot of you fellows put them back in your pockets about five years ago, when one of the illustrious brethren closed his downtown office and moved up to Ossining.”
“Oh, probably,” Browning said, “but quite a few fellows, I believe, that hadn’t been wearing them took to wearing them again out of simple loyalty. Listen, Joe, are we talking like grown men? Are you sore at the Pork? Do you think you’d have enjoyed being a member of it? If being sore at it was even partly responsible for getting you where you are, then I think you ought to be a little grateful to it. You’d show the bastards. O.K. You showed them. Us. If you hadn’t been so sore at the Porcellian so-and-so’s, you might have turned into just another lawyer.”
“My wife gives me that sometimes.”
“There, do you see?” Browning said. “Now then, how about the job?”
The Under Secretary smiled. “There’s no getting away from it, you guys have got something. O.K., what are you interested in? Of course, I make no promises, and I don’t even know if what you’re interested in is something I can help you with.”
“That’s a chance I’ll take. That’s why I came to Washington, on just that chance, but it’s my guess you can help me.” Browning went on to tell the Under Secretary about the job he wanted. He told him why he thought he was qualified for it, and the Under Secretary nodded. Browning told him everything he knew about the job, and the Under Secretary continued to nod silently. By the end of Browning’s recital the Under Secretary had become thoughtful. He told Browning that he thought there might be some little trouble with a certain character but that that character could be handled, because the real say-so, the green light, was controlled by a man who was a friend of the Under Secretary’s, and the Under Secretary could almost say at this moment that the matter could be arranged.
At this, Browning grinned. “By God, Joe, we’ve got to have a drink on this. This is the best news since—” He summoned the waiter. The Under Secretary yielded and ordered a cordial. Browning ordered a Scotch. The drinks were brought. Browning said, “About the job. I’m not going to say another word but just keep my fingers crossed. But as to you, Joe, you’re the best. I drink to you.” The two men drank, the Under Secretary sipping at his, Browning taking half of his. Browning looked at the drink in his hand. “You know, I was a little afraid. That other stuff, the club stuff.”
“Yes,” said the Under Secretary.
“I don’t know why fellows like you—you never would have made it in a thousand years, but”—then, without looking up, he knew everything had collapsed—“but I’ve said exactly the wrong thing, haven’t I?”
“That’s right, Browning,” said the Under Secretary. “You’ve said exactly the wrong thing. I’ve got to be going.” He stood up and turned and went out, all dignity.
March 13, 1943
William Maxwell
Kate Talbot’s bantam rooster, awakened by the sudden appearance of the moon from behind a cloud on a white June night, began to crow. There were three bantams—a cock and two hens—and their roost was in a tree just outside the guest-room windows. The guest room was on the first floor and the Talbots’ guest that weekend was a young man by the name of Arnold, a rather light sleeper. He got up and closed the windows and went back to bed. In the sealed room he slept, but was awakened at frequent intervals until daylight Saturday morning.
Arnold had been coming to the Talbots’ place in Wilton sometime during the spring or early summer for a number of years. His visits were, for the children, one of a thousand seasonal events that could be counted on, less exciting than the appearance of the first robin or the arrival of violets in the marsh at the foot of the Talbots’ hill but akin to them. Sometimes Duncan, the Talbots’ older boy, who for a long time was under the impression that Arnold came to see him, slept in the guest room when Arnold was there. Last year, George, Duncan’s younger brother, had been given that privilege. This time, Mrs. Talbot, knowing how talkative the boys were when they awoke in the morning, had left Arnold to himself.
When he came out of his room, Mrs. Talbot and George, the apple of her eye, were still at breakfast. George was six, small and delicate and very blond, not really interested in food at any time, and certainly not now, when there was a guest in the house. He was in his pajamas and a pink quilted bathrobe. He smiled at Arnold with his large and very gentle eyes and said, “Did you miss me?”
“Yes, of course,” Arnold said. “I woke up and there was the other bed, flat and empty. Nobody to talk to while I looked at the ceiling. Nobody to watch me shave.”
George was very pleased that his absence had been felt. “What is your favorite color?” he asked.
“Red,” Arnold said, without having to consider.
“Mine, too,” George said, and his face became so illuminated with pleasure at this coincidence that for a moment he looked angelic.
“No matter how much we disagree about other things,” Arnold said, “we’ll always have that in common, won’t we?”
“Yes,” George said.
“You’d both better eat your cereal,” Mrs. Talbot said.
Arnold looked at her while she was pouring his coffee and wondered if there wasn’t something back of her remark—jealousy, perhaps. Mrs. Talbot was a very soft-hearted woman, but for some reason she seemed to be ashamed—or perhaps afraid—to let other people know it. She took refuge continually behind a dry humor. There was probably very little likelihood that George would be as fond of anyone else as he was of his mother, Arnold decided, for many years to come. There was no real reason for her to be jealous.
“Did the bantams keep you awake?” she asked.
Arnold shook his head.
“Something tells me you’re lying,” Mrs. Talbot said. “John didn’t wake up, but he felt his responsibilities as a host even so. He cried ‘Oh!’ in his sleep every time a bantam crowed. You’ll have to put up with them on Kate’s account. She loves them more than her life.”
Excluded from the conversation of the grownups, George finished his cereal and ate part of a soft-boiled egg. Then he asked to be excused and, with pillows and pads which had been brought in from the garden furniture the night before, he made a train right across the dining-room floor. The cook had to step over it when she brought a fresh pot of coffee, and Mrs. Talbot and Arnold had to do likewise when they went out through the dining-room door to look at the bantams. There were only two—the cock and one hen—walking around under the Japanese cherry tree on the terrace. Kate was leaning out of an upstairs window, watching them fondly.
“Have you made your bed?” Mrs. Talbot asked.
The head withdrew.
“Kate is going to a houseparty,” Mrs. Talbot said, looking at the bantams. “A sort of houseparty. She’s going to stay all night at Mary Sherman’s house and there are going to be some boys and they’re going to dance to the victrola.”
“How old is she, for heaven’s sake?” Arnold asked.
“Thirteen,” Mrs. Talbot said. “She had her hair cut yesterday and it’s too short. It doesn’t look right, so I have to do something about it.”
“White of egg?” Arnold asked.
“How did you know that?” Mrs. Talbot asked in surprise.
“I remembered it from the last time,” Arnold said. “I remembered it because it sounded so drastic.”
“It only works with blonds,” Mrs. Talbot said. “Will you be able to entertain yourself for a while?”
“Easily,” Arnold said. “I saw Anna Karenina in the library and I think I’ll take that and go up to the little house.”
“Maybe I’d better come with you,” Mrs. Talbot said.
The little house was a one-room studio halfway up the hill, about a hundred feet from the big house, with casement windows on two sides and a Franklin stove. It had been built several years before, after Mrs. Talbot had read A Room of One’s Own, and by now it had a slightly musty odor which included lingering traces of wood smoke.
“Hear the wood thrush?” Arnold asked, as Mrs. Talbot threw open the windows for him. They both listened.
“No,” she said. “All birds sound alike to me.”
“Listen,” he said.
This time there was no mistaking it—the liquid notes up and then down the same scale.
“Oh, that,” she said. “Yes, I love that,” and went off to wash Kate’s hair.
· · ·
From time to time Arnold raised his head from the book he was reading and heard not only the wood thrush but also Duncan and George, quarrelling in the meadow. George’s voice was shrill and unhappy and sounded as if he were on the verge of tears. Both boys appeared at the window eventually and asked for permission to come in. The little house was out of bounds to them. Arnold nodded. Duncan, who was nine, crawled in without much difficulty, but George had to be hoisted. No sooner were they inside than they began to fight over a wooden gun which had been broken and mended and was rightly George’s, it seemed, though Duncan had it and refused to give it up. He refused to give it up one moment, and the next moment, after a sudden change of heart, pressed it upon George—forced George to take it, actually, for by that time George was more concerned about the Talbots’ dog, who also wanted to come in.
The dog was a Great Dane, very mild but also very enormous. He answered to the name of Satan. Once Satan was admitted to the little house, it became quite full and rather noisy, but John Talbot appeared and sent the dog out and made the children leave Arnold in peace. They left as they had come, by the window. Arnold watched them and was touched by the way Duncan turned and helped George, who was too small to jump. Also by the way George accepted this help. It was as if their hostility had two faces and one of them was the face of love. Cain and Abel, Arnold thought, and the wood thrush. All immortal.
John Talbot lingered outside the little house. Something had been burrowing in the lily-of-the-valley bed, he said, and had also uprooted several lady slippers. Arnold suggested that it might be moles.
“More likely a rat,” John Talbot said, and his eyes wandered to a two-foot espaliered pear tree. “That pear tree,” he said, “we put in over a year ago.”
Mrs. Talbot joined them. She had shampooed not only Kate’s hair but her own as well.
“It’s still alive,” John Talbot said, staring at the pear tree, “but it doesn’t put out any leaves.”
“I should think it would be a shock to a pear tree to be espaliered,” Mrs. Talbot said. “Kate’s ready to go.”
They all piled into the station wagon and took Kate to her party. Her too-short blond hair looked quite satisfactory after the egg shampoo, and Mrs. Talbot had made a boutonnière out of a pink geranium and some little blue and white flowers for Kate to wear on her coat. She got out of the car with her suitcase and waved at them from the front st
eps of the house.
“I hope she has a good time,” John Talbot said uneasily as he shifted gears. “It’s her first dance with boys. It would be terrible if she didn’t have any partners.” In his eyes there was a vague threat toward the boys who, in their young callowness, might not appreciate his daughter.
“Kate always has a good time,” Mrs. Talbot said. “By the way, have you seen both of the bantam hens today?”
“No,” John Talbot said.
“One of them is missing,” Mrs. Talbot said.
· · ·
One of the things that impressed Arnold whenever he stayed with the Talbots was the number and variety of animals they had. Their place was not a farm, after all, but merely a big white brick house in the country, and yet they usually had a dog and a cat, kittens, rabbits, and chickens, all actively involved in the family life. This summer the Talbots weren’t able to go in and out by the front door, because a phoebe had built a nest in the porch light. They used the dining-room door instead, and were careful not to leave the porch light on more than a minute or two, lest the eggs be cooked. Arnold came upon some turtle food in his room, and when he asked about it, Mrs. Talbot informed him that there were turtles in the guest room, too. He never came upon the turtles.
The bantams were new this year, and so were the two very small ducklings that at night were put in a paper carton in the sewing room, with an electric-light bulb to keep them warm. In the daytime they hopped in and out of a saucer of milk on the terrace. One of them was called Mr. Rochester because of his distinguished air. The other had no name.
All the while that Mrs. Talbot was making conversation with Arnold, after lunch, she kept her eyes on the dog, who, she explained, was jealous of the ducklings. Once his great head swooped down and he pretended to take a nip at them. A nip would have been enough. Mrs. Talbot spoke to him sharply and he turned his head away in shame.
“They probably smell the way George did when he first came home from the hospital,” she said.
“What did George smell like?” Arnold asked.
The 40s: The Story of a Decade Page 73