Genius

by Patrick Dennis

  To see Caroline was one thing. To hear her, however, was quite another. Her voice and diction, never attractive to begin with, had developed into a perpetual whine. No sentence was ever quite begun or quite finished. One simply listened for an occasional noun or verb from someplace in the middle of what Caroline was saying and tried to deduce her meaning. “. . . class of people . . . Assembly . . . hardly ever go now . . .” “. . . Jews . . . Bala Cynwyd . . . Main Line ruined . . .” “. . . Nat Burt . . . perfect traitor . . . wife went to Miss Hewitt’s . . .” “. . . Liv Biddle . . . couldn’t read it . . .” (The literary references, if indeed that is what they were, were delivered for my benefit, for Caroline was scrupulously polite, and thoughtfully included everyone in her sparkling conversation.) Her mind had also developed, if that is the word I want, into a very efficient filing system. Names, addresses, genealogies, social connections, schools, and scandals that had occurred within the past three decades were tidily tucked away in a series of pigeonholes behind her alabaster brow, waiting to be plucked out at a moment’s notice. Caroline remembered me. She was one of those women who never forget a name or a face, a time or a place. By some electronic miracle she was able to press the Dennis button and have at her fingertips a mysteriously perforated and slotted card that contained all pertinent information about me. “Yes . . . American Field Service . . . Chicago . . . school with your sister . . .”

  Caroline had also worked up an efficient classification system whereby, without even appearing to interrogate, she could ask fewer than half a dozen questions and immediately place anyone in his proper social niche—assuming, of course, that the answers were true and delivered in correct English and a good accent without any hemming or hawing. Neatness counted and, as always, acquaintanceship with any Morris connection earned extra points. My wife passed with flying colors. (“Vassar . . . know Liz Wadsworth . . . Connie Irwin . . . maiden name . . . cousin of mine . . .”) I was so proud of her! It was easy to visualize Caroline presiding at a dinner party, tenderly stroking a Philadelphia Chippendale high boy, or heading the Ways and Means Committee of some socially impeccable Worthy Cause, but to imagine her going to the bathroom or having a baby or performing any truly basic function was almost impossible. And the picture of her flopping passionately into Starr’s bed—even all those years ago—still refused to come into focus.

  Nor could I imagine many steamy moments with Mr. Strawbridge. He had several first names, but Bunny—a most ill-fitting apellation—was all he was ever called. He was about forty-five but looked much older. He had gone to chunkiness rather than to fat. He had also gone to Episcopal High, Lawrenceville, and Princeton. He was in banking, I think, and had also served some very minor function as some sort of sub-under-assistant secretary in the Eisenhower cabinet. Mr. Strawbridge—I can’t call him Bunny—was perfectly willing to talk in short, telegraphic sentences punctuated by reticent chuckles, but Caroline was not anxious to hear him say much of anything and terminated his every statement, no matter how brief or vital, by whining, “Oh shut up, Bunny.” I can’t say that I got to know him very well.

  Caroline had processed Lady Joyce and found her passing. One could almost hear the mechanism of her classification system clicking away: English, one point in favor; title, one point in favor; widow, one point in favor; married to Starr, one point against; divorced from Starr, one point in favor; actress, one point against; attended Roedean, one point in favor; flat in Belgravia, one point in favor; acquainted with Caroline’s friend Lady Dullard, one point in favor; and so on. Henry Maitland-Grim was summa cum laude with Caroline. Bunty had obviously been found wanting but was to be tolerated because of peerage associates and marriage to Henry.

  Bruce was getting the fish eye from his prospective mother-in-law, although he seemed to be filling in all the blanks on Caroline’s simplified short-form questionnaire perfectly. But if Caroline was of two minds about her daughter’s choice of mates, Bruce had nothing but adoration for both the Strawbridges. Filial love all but oozed from every pore. “Of course, we want to get married as soon as possible, Mrs. Strawbridge. Down here would be nice, but if you prefer . . .”

  “. . . Philadelphia . . . reception at home . . . much more suitable . . .”

  “Mummy, I don’t want a big wedding.”

  “. . . your grandmother’s veil . . . the bishop . . . lovely lawn going to waste . . .”

  “After all, heheh, Caroline,” Mr. Strawbridge offered, “it is Emily’s wedding, heheheh.”

  “Oh, shut up, Bunny . . . some sort of trousseau . . . announcements engraved . . . believe you said Yale, Bruce . . .”

  It was not the time or the place to tell Starr that Aristido González was nowhere to be found.

  Starr was very much onstage. He was looking brown, lean, and distinguished. Caroline betrayed more than a flicker of interest every time he spoke—and that was often. He bubbled over with talk of his new film, how sensational it was going to be, how good Emily had been in it, on and on and on. I hadn’t the heart to tell him the news. Nor was I able to get him alone once that night. My wife and I were spirited to El Paseo with the Maitland-Grims, while Starr was transported by Bruce. At the party there was no hope of speaking to him at all.

  Bruce had certainly done things with a high hand. He had taken over the whole restaurant and even hired a small band to play when Mr. Shelburne was not presiding at the piano. The buffet put to shame even the cornucopias laid out at Casa Ortiz-Robledo, and champagne flowed in rivers. Bruce was winningly modest about it and kept saying, “It’s just a little impromptu sort of thing with a few people I called at the last moment.” It was those last-moment people, I think, who rather detracted from the air of well-to-do refinement.

  Clarice Pomeroy and Catalina Ximinez were invited—they more or less had to be—but they did very little to the tone of the evening. In fact, when Caroline first laid eyes on Clarice, her firm jaw literally dropped all the way to her sternum. “You say you are marrying Leander . . . amazing . . . very interesting . . .”

  One would have expected a woman as possessive as Clarice to be a bit annoyed with two former Mrs. Leander Starrs in the same room, but she seemed to welcome both Lady Joyce and Caroline Strawbridge with open arms—perhaps because of the social aura surrounding each of them. “After all, sweetie, there’s no reason we can’t be civulized about it.”

  The other people at the party left really a lot to be desired, and I could sense that Caroline’s automatic grading system was working overtime adding up negative points. I had never before met any of Bruce’s Mexico City chums, in fact, I didn’t even know he had any. He had—a couple hundred of them, and all the very sort of people he had disapproved of so when I first met him at Bunty’s luncheon party. The Van Damm visiting list seemed to comprise every phony in the Federal District. They were not as blatantly vulgar as the people who came to Clarice’s parties, and yet they were more so, for they all had pretensions to intellect or breeding instead of just good, dirty money. It was the kind of gang that turns up at art openings. There was an almost tangible trampishness about the women and a sort of epicene quality to the men. They were youngish—about Bruce’s age I guessed—and very pose-y in a gauche way I can’t quite describe. The air was thick with the names they dropped. Fashionable people, places, shops, addresses, and vices made up almost all of their conversation: “Bergdorf . . . Alfa-Romeo . . . Portofino . . . Elsa . . . no, darling, Cap Ferrat . . . Mainbocher . . . the Winston Guests . . . Onassis . . . Hobe Sound . . . but of course he’s gay . . .” They were the kind of people who talk the way the people in “People Are Talking About” are supposed to talk, and it sounded every bit as genuine and original. However, they were all deeply impressed by Starr, by Mr. and Mrs. Strawbridge, by Lady Joyce, by the Maitland-Grims, and even by Emily. Emily didn’t seem to have met any of them before, and she looked rather uncomfortable when it came to making conversation with them. It struck me quite suddenly that Bruce was either very naïve or not nearly as dis
criminating as he had always appeared to be. I felt that he had made a tactical error in laying on so large a party composed of such a motley bunch. The part of wisdom, I thought, would have been a little black-tie dinner in the private dining room, far more geared to the Caroline Drexel Morris Starr Strawbridge ethos than this crush of the half-world. However, that was Bruce’s problem. Oblivious of Caroline’s disapproval, he was in his element, presenting Starr and the Strawbridges as though he had invented them. It was an easy party to leave.

  “Starr,” I said, as my wife and I pushed our way past him on the way to the door, “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Yes, dear boy, in the morning. So you see, my dear,” he said to the ghostly-looking young brunette who was hanging on his every word, “there we were doing this picture about pearl divers when this monsoon blew up and . . .”

  “Starr . . .”

  “Run along, dear boy. We’ll talk in the morning before I go off to cut the picture. Good night, mes chers. Well, as I was saying, this monsoon blew up . . .”

  It was hopeless.

  While we were waiting for the doorman to find a cab, Bill Shelburne appeared with a suitcase. “Skipping town?” I asked.

  “Just going up to New York for a couple of days. Business. Maybe catch a couple of plays. If I did a party like this every night, I could afford to stay there for a year. As it is, I’ll be back on the weekend.”

  “Just who were all those people?” I asked.

  “Aren’t they friends of yours?”

  “Friends of mine? I never saw any of them before and hope I never do again.”

  “That’s funny. The Van Damm boy said . . . Oh-oh! Mind if I take the first cab? The plane leaves at . . .”

  “Be my guest,” I said, opening the taxi door for him. “Have a good trip.”

  When we got home, Lopez was stamping up and down the patio, a trail of cigarette butts behind him.

  “Lopez,” I shouted, “where . . .”

  “Where da hell have alla yez been at? Jesus, I been waitin’ here since . . .”

  “I’ve been trying to get you on the telephone all day. González . . .”

  “González has run off wit da whole God-damn picture.”

  “He’s what?”

  “Dat’s why I been tryin’ ta find Starr, fa Crissakes. I went ta da lab late dis aftanoon wit’ da stuff we shot yesterday. Da whole picture’s gone. Dat big slob went around dere on a Sunday, gottum ta open up da place, paid for da lab work, loaded all da cans of film inta his car, an’ disappeared. He’s gone an’ so’s da whole God-damn movie.”

  “And so’s the money,” I said dismally.

  “Poor Starr. I tole him . . .”

  “Poor, poor Starr.”

  XV

  “Go directly to bed. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars” was the message I got from the brief and unhappy interview with Lopez. I did so.

  “But what’s the matter?” my wife kept asking.

  “Don’t ask me, please. It’s so terrible I don’t even want to talk about it. In the morning, yes, but not just now.”

  Lopez apparently kept his impatient vigil in the patio and I know that he found Starr. Flushed as the great director must have been from his triumph at Bruce’s party, he was not beyond grasping the terrible facts of life that Lopez had to offer. Sleeping as soundly as we both do, at something past four in the morning we heard the air split with an animal cry that sounded eerily like a mother who has just learned that her newborn child has been fed to werewolves. For all of the human and animal noises emanating from Casa Ximinez during the hours of darkness, Starr’s wail of anguish had a wild, unearthly quality that turned my blood to ice water. “What was that?” my wife said, sitting upright.

  “Starr, I’m afraid.”

  “But what is all this?”

  “Don’t ask me now. I’ll tell you in the morning.” Then I turned over and fell into a tortured slumber filled with nightmares of González in the role of a great athlete racing across a map of the world with a bag of gold under one arm and a very old fat woman who looked like Clarice Pomeroy under the other.

  Dawn dawned. With the best intentions in history I told my wife a carefully bowdlerized version of what had happened. But instead of being the Good Little Woman who is also a Pillar of Strength, she burst into tears and dashed up the stairs sobbing something about poor Starr. I tried to tell myself that Leander was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg and deserving of no sympathy—after all, look at what he had done to me—and that the González flit by moonlight, or sunlight or whenever he had chosen to abscond, was purely poetic justice. Somehow, I couldn’t make it hold water. Starr, for all of his vagaries, had intelligence, taste, charm, and—don’t ask me why—even a certain sweetness. There should have been a comedic value in his finally having been bilked after gypping so many others. Somehow, there was not.

  With great bravery I decided to leap out of bed and knock at his door to be of some usefulness, even if it only amounted to holding the crying towel and, from time to time, wringing it out. With even greater cowardice, I did not. Instead, I wrote long letters to each of our children, wrote to my parents, my mother-in-law, my sister, my niece, my business manager, my agent, my old friend Ned in Atlanta, Georgia—to more people than I had written during the past year. It was after eleven when all of the senseless letters were finished. Then I realized that Starr would have to be visited.

  I rustled, rather than knocked, at his door. St. Regis answered. His eyes were red from weeping, traces of brown mascara and blue liner made a curious gallstone smudge from cheekbones to eye sockets. “I’m ever so sorry, Mr. Dennis, but my imployer is out.” Then he broke down entirely. Emily came to the door. “I suppose you know,” she said, gazing frigidly upon me, as though I had introduced the iniquitous González into the family. “I suppose you know that Mr. González has disappeared with all of Daddy’s money and the movie.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid I do know.”

  “Well, don’t be too upset,” she said. “And please don’t worry. I’ll see that Mummy and Bunny are kept busy all day. D-daddy hasn’t e-e-even gone to b-bed. He really is o-out.” Then Emily fell sobbing upon St. Regis’ neck. Leaving that touching scene, I quietly closed the door and tiptoed away.

  The telephone was ringing when I got back to our own place.

  “Quien habla?” I said, being accustomed to wrong numbers.

  “Patsy? It’s Bruce.” We had now, apparently, progressed from Sir to Pat to Patsy. I wondered when he was going to start calling me Pretty Lamb, as my maternal grandmother did up until the day I had my curls clipped.

  “Hello, I was just about to call and thank you for a lovely evening,” I lied.

  “Good thing you didn’t, Patsy. My phone’s out of order. I’m calling from a booth in Sanborn’s. I wondered if you could have lunch with me.”

  “That’s very nice of you, but as a matter of fact, I . . .”

  “It’s terribly important. I need your advice.”

  “Well, I’m rather busy, but . . .” Bruce had used the magic words. Who is ever too busy to give advice? Like him or not—and I mostly didn’t, albeit without reason—my curiosity had been piqued, and there is nothing so devastating to indifference, dislike, or even loathing as a good nudge in the mind-somebody-else’s-business zone.

  “Oh, I know you are, chum”—really, chum, we certainly were on cozy terms—“but this is terribly important. It’s a question of taste.”

  That was the real hooker. If superior knowledge can’t pull a sucker in, superior taste can. “Well,” I paused, feeling my hair and beard, “I should pay a call on the barber, but . . .”

  “Where do you usually go?” Bruce said, a trifle like the mother of a very plain subdebutante asking the mother of six eligible sons about summer resorts.

  “Corner of the Reforma and Calle Napoles,” I said almost coyly.

  “Then shall we meet at Focolare? One o’clock, say?”

  “Fo
colare. One.”

  *

  Focolare is my least-favorite restaurant in all of Mexico. At almost all times there are plashing fountains the very sound of which make me feel that I ought to go to the bathroom, whether I need to or not. When the waterworks are shut off, a whole band of musicians comes trooping down a great staircase like show girls in some old Ziegfeld Follies to fill the air with every corny Latin-American melody ever composed on Seventh Avenue. Visiting school teachers adore it. During lunch it is filled with up-and-coming young Mexican businessmen who order Scotch because it is expensive and therefore chic, and then douse it with ginger ale, Seven-Up, or Coca-Cola to make it more palatable to them. I arrived a bit early, but Bruce was waiting for me at the bar among the young businessmen, nervously breaking up Fritos and fried-shrimp chips.

  “It’s noisy here in the bar,” he said before I could even sit down. “Shall we get a table?” I needn’t have answered. In the very perfunctory Spanish that all Americans who live in Mexico eventually learn to speak, Bruce asked to have the bar chit put onto the luncheon check and guided me, glided me, to a table directly in the spray of a fountain.

  Bruce was rather too grand over the menu, trying to force upon me, as a first course, bits of fish and flesh that I didn’t want, a well-manicured hand gesturing airily. To show my own pretty fangs I ordered eggs and bacon, when I would far rather have had something like Tournedos Rossini—talk about cutting off one’s own nose. In the end it proved the better part of wisdom.

  Having been summoned to deliver advice, I waited more or less patiently for The Question. It was not immediately forthcoming. Bruce had a bottomless fund of social chitchat, and he dipped from it frequently. He discussed his party of the evening before, referring to assorted guests as Jaime and Dolly and Pietro and Jenny and Sonny (or Sunny) and Chip and Bobo—the gender of people named Bobo has always eluded me. I was rather at a loss to follow very closely, and itching with curiosity to find out just why he was taking me to lunch. It probably reveals a nasty segment of my own character, but I am not ashamed to admit that when somebody I don’t know well offers to pay for an expensive luncheon, he is after something more than the pleasure of my palate, and whenever he says that it is “important,” he means that it is important to him and not to me. Never having been exactly pro Van Damm, I found myself becoming a little more anti-V.D. (in the Van Damm sense of the term) with every social nicety. He was so nice! Bruce had the kind of manners that made me conscious of my own many failings, yet I still felt wary. But for one rare time I was correct. He suddenly turned off the charm like the fountains in the restaurant and with the too-brief preamble of “Well, Patsy, I’ve taken up too much of your valuable time. . . .” got right down to the subject—but not quite directly.