by Philip Wylie
Meantime, his chosen mate would age, age while neither he nor she matured. The lowly ideal, what Huxley had called the “pneumatic” ideal, would go on dancing before his mind’s eye while child-bearing, child rearing, domestic duties and perhaps a job (along with the years) would gradually destroy in his mate every vestige of the reason he had once discovered for marrying her. So he would turn to prostitutes, younger women, or consort with high-school girls as Gaunt had seen so many middle-aged men do. He would get a doll a generation behind himself. He would pervert an instinct to be the suitable father-image for his daughters, into a quasi-incestuous relationship with their contemporaries.
It was not surprising, therefore, that the young American woman called her old beau “daddy,” or that he called her “baby,” or that a universal American term for woman was “doll.”
The national psyche was that infantile, exactly.
Gaunt stopped at the drugstore, picked up the kit he had been sold, went to the paved lot for his car, and drove through the hot afternoon toward home.
The source of American sex confusion, he thought, had lain in the near-total concentration of the American mind on objectivity. Excepting where psychology examined the subjective aspect of life and sex (and excepting for the precepts of religions—unreviewed and grown stale in millenniums of lopsided “progress”), there was no good counsel, no awareness anywhere, of inward human experience. Even the most modern literature on marriage concerned itself with just such qualities as had been built into the dolls. And the nation was (or had been before the Disappearance) a litter of psychological wreckage caused by the headlong efforts of almost everybody to retain the doll-aspect in matrimony without regard to the subjective wear and tear of such behavior.
Marriage was, consequently, a secret fear and an anathema. Its American premises and requisites usually doomed it to eclipse, since time doomed all Cinderellas to become old women and all old women, by American standards, were witches.
None was wise or wondrous, learned or loving; for the “wisdom” of the current American era insisted love and learning and wonder were exclusively young. Grandma delighted no one unless she was still a flapper. She did not even live at home any longer.
The grandchildren had to grow up without the association of age. The young married people, horrified by the isolation of the old, which they had themselves arranged, sought pensions and old-age security against the sure time when, dolls no longer, they too would be cast aside. The very idea that Grandma might be ardent, or amorous, was regarded as disgusting. And nobody thought any more, in America, that love and wisdom might be related or that it might take time to perfect both. Starvation of the spirit and a loss of life’s meaning were the penalty for the pneumatic ideal. It was no wonder women spent billions in beauty parlors to prolong the apparent nubility of the flesh; old age was more feared than death itself. And rightly, as things had been.
If further evidence were needed, Gaunt thought, one had only to consider the general term for the figurines: Miss America Dolls. Miss. He felt sure that, were the dolls renamed Mrs., sales graphs would soon decline. The American male did not truly want a Mrs. for his companion, but a Miss. Mrs. implied responsibility, authority, claims, duties—and age. But Miss was perpetually young. Miss had the look, sound, feel and odor of youth, the be-all and end-all of American libido. A smart widow, Gaunt thought, would have been well advised to change her name back hurriedly to Miss. It was a Miss the male yearned to possess even on the connubial couch; so, in the mere act of marrying, he had—in millions of cases—devaluated his bride in his own estimation.
What woman, he asked himself—what woman in all the earth—required to perform the principal function for which she is designed in body and spirit, could gracefully or happily take up the endeavor when, consciously or not, she was aware the very acceptance of marriage had classified her downward in the minds of her own spouse as well as of millions of other men?
The cruelty of the predicament burned in the philosopher’s mind brighter and fiercer even than the clear recognition of its cause. To be mere materialists concerning women was to be traitors to the brain—and the soul of whoever believed he had one. It was to be the opposite of all that humanity had recognized as human, a mere beast sniffing about another beast, eying, dancing ritualistically, pawing the fur. It was to omit from the relationship of the sexes everything but brute mating, the purpose of which the brute knew not and the man (or woman) permanently avoided, often enough. No doubt frogs and worms had the same sensations of allure; hence for men to have none other was infamous. It was also the American Ideal. Its cost was the ruin of the brain, which would not accept sex in its infinite provinces. For there was no human sexuality; it had been denied, evaded, tabooed, overthrown.
And perhaps, he thought heavily as he followed the curves of his driveway, that is why they left us. They could not be other than human but we refused to accord their humanity. So they ceased to exist.
The back door of his house hung open.
He was perplexed; he had left it locked. A long edge of splintered frame set his heart beating faster.
He hurried through the jimmied door.
The place had been ransacked.
Drawers had been pulled out and dumped on the Roar, rugs lifted and tossed aside. His butter and the last cans of corned beef were gone. The refrigerator door and the deep-freeze lid had been left open. Mattresses had been slid from the beds.
As he hurried from room to room he could see that money and food had been the objects of the raid. But the looters had, evidently, found too little of either to satisfy their expectations. Or perhaps no amount of booty would have done so. For, when Gaunt came to his study, he saw his books and journals, his papers and the long manuscript upon which he had been working piled in a mound; over this, the contents of a dozen pails of variously colored paint had been wantonly poured so that there seemed at first to be no way to extricate and reclaim the fruits of his months of effort.
He stood in the doorway, stunned and sickened. His bony hand, extended to support his tall frame, rattled against the wall. He went, after a while, to the edge of the mess and picked up here and there a paint-blotched sheet of paper. He could not read what was there.
He rubbed at the enamel, which was the Tyrian purple Paula had used in certain places in the living room. The words came clear. His lips quivered, set. If he could get assistance before the paint dried, perhaps the pages could be sufficiently cleaned so that they could be copied. If Jim Elliot and Gordon would come over—Teddy Barker—
Teddy?
Teddy Barker, his mind went on, and other neighbors. . . .
He rushed out to seek them.
It was after one in the morning when the Elliots prepared to go home. The job was done; the bulk of Gaunt’s work had been salvaged, and was spread now on the floors of the bedrooms and the living room, each page wiped by hand and weighted with nails or bolts.
“I’ll brew coffee,” the philosopher said with some cheer, “and we can have crackers and sardines. They didn’t find every cache I’ve got, damn them!”
The lawyer and the boy were tired. But Teddy, after his hours of sticky work, assented. “Coffee? Boy! I could use some! Anything to eat! I’m hungry.”
So Gaunt brought food he had hidden in the tool shed and he made coffee. He and Barker carried it to the porch, which was heavy with the sting of fresh paint and the perfume of night-blooming jasmine. They sat together without saying anything for some minutes. Enough light came from the lamps indoors to silhouette Barker’s profile and broad shoulders above the back of his chair.
Gaunt looked at him, thinking of Paula’s letters, of his own hesitation to ask any favor of Teddy, even in this wretched emergency. The younger man seemed at ease and that very composure irritated his host. At the same time, Gaunt found himself provoked at his irritation. He was trying, he realized, to see Teddy with Paula’s eyes; but that was extremely difficult, perhaps impossible.
; “What you been doing?” Gaunt finally asked.
“Mighty little. For a while, during the spring, I got in a lot of fishing. Rounded up a couple of pals. We tore down to the Keys together like schoolkids playing hooky.”
Teddy chuckled. “Married pals,” he added.
Gaunt remembered that Teddy Barker, on the night of the catastrophe, had said he would do just that. But he was surprised to find Teddy had meant what he had said. A fishing trip, under such circumstances, seemed asinine.
“I was down there,” Teddy went on, “when the hydrogen bombs fell. War was all over when we came back to Miami and we didn’t know there’d been a war! Funny.”
“It must have been a shock.”
“Shock? Hell! Nothing the commies could do would shock me! But it’s peculiar to have to remember there isn’t any San Francisco any more. Or any Chicago. I keep sending bank mail there, out of habit. I was shocked, I must say, when I found out the old Stock Exchange was going to be nailed up, sine die. But the banks needed extra personnel, so I just rustled up a job helping launch the New Economic System.”
Gaunt found himself wanting to eradicate the hostile feelings he had concerning the younger man. But how to go about it? “Darn nice of you,” he said presently, “to come over and help with this dirty job.”
“Glad to do it!” Teddy spoke heartily. “Not much to do nights. I bowl Wednesdays and Fridays. I generally sit around at the club Saturdays, watching guys drink themselves out cold. Taking ‘em home, pretty often. Somebody has to. Tuesdays I work at the bank late. Thursdays I go to the fights. But that still leaves me with a lot of spare time.”
“A man like you must especially—miss them.” Gaunt said it tentatively, almost hoping his guest wouldn’t pick up the thread.
“Who doesn’t?”
Gaunt was silent.
Teddy went on: “I can see now, of course, that I was making a big mistake.
There’s plenty of men—men like you—who can look back, at least, on a long, damned happy life with one dame. What do I look back at? At a lot of horsing around. At nobody who ever gave a damn for me personally. To the girls, I was something they wanted, for a minute or two—not somebody. And look at Jim Elliot, now. He’s got Gordon. What have I got? Empty rooms. If I’d had a couple of sons, I could be teaching them to fish and shoot and row and paddle and sail and hit a golf ball and a tennis ball and how to block a fast left and a million more things.”
Gaunt smiled.
“You realize how it is, Bill. You’re alone too. Where is Edwin, incidentally?”
“I don’t know,” Gaunt answered sadly. “I never heard from him. I tried to trace him but the closest I got was that his expedition piled up somehow.”
“Tough.”
“Tough.” Gaunt sipped coffee, leaned back and nervously re-crossed his stretched legs. Stooping all evening had made him stiff. He tried another approach to the barrier between them. “Maybe you’re hard on yourself, Teddy. Maybe you meant a good deal to a good many women.”
The silhouetted head shook and the athletic chest collapsed in a sigh. “Sure! I meant a lot as a sample of something! But nothing as me! Maybe you don’t understand.”
“Maybe not. Sample of what?”
Teddy thought that over. “Let me ask you a question. You told me, once, you hadn’t stuck to the strait and narrow. Well. Were the other women, so-called, young and good looking? Or were they—?”
Gaunt grinned. “Check!”
“We do it to the women. You do. Can you be annoyed at them for getting a yen to imitate us?”
“Logically, no. On the other hand, if you were an average married man with the normal belief in your wife’s fidelity, and found your belief was mistaken, you would also find, Teddy, that the knowledge was vexatious.”
“Shouldn’t be.”
“No?” There was rancor in the syllable.
“I said ‘shouldn’t,’ old-timer! Husbands don’t seem to appreciate the little woman is just as much a person as they are. She has feelings. Ideas. Gets curious. Wants to know.
Has a streak of adventure in her. Romance.” Teddy pondered. “Don’t you learned boys write about it all the time? I mean, the standard’s cultural. Isn’t that the word? You get
‘vexed’ purely because of how you were brought up. Other people don’t, brought up other ways. Anthropology, isn’t that?”
“I dare say. But how would you go about changing the pattern?”
“I’ve thought that over, too. I wouldn’t change it, so darn much, I guess. Just take the ‘private property—do not touch’ label off homo sapiens.”
“Wouldn’t that put the final touches on what used to be the shaky institution known as the American home?”
“Did Repeal make more drunks? Or was it Prohibition that turned us into a nation of guzzlers?”
“It’s a point.”
Teddy yawned. “Yeah. People ought to be allowed to get all the puppy stuff and the deprived feeling out of their systems while they are growing up, not after age thirty, or forty, or fifty.”
“Would you say,” Gaunt asked, “that a woman like Paula, for instance, suffered from ‘deprivation’?”
Teddy answered with the utmost aplomb, with friendliness and warmth. “So you know about that? I was beginning to wonder. What ho? Find the letters I wrote?”
Gaunt answered, “Yes.”
“Darned foolish of her to get me to write ‘em! You know, I felt like an ass. Never did write letters to dames before.”
“Your letters—” Gaunt began coldly.
“Look here, doc.” Teddy used the word “doc” derisively. “I like you. I like you one hell of a lot. I respect you and that’s something I do to few. I’m actually proud of being your neighbor and being allowed to come over and sit on your veranda and chew the fat. That’s how I feel. Now. Do you want me to kid you or do you want to stop talking about this, or what?”
Gaunt suddenly found in himself an urge to laugh. “Good Lord,” he said, “that’s some rebuke—to a self-styled philosopher.”
“You asked for it! I begin to feel that I misjudged you and that I’m not really welcome.”
“Maybe,” the older man said after a pause, “I’m just trying to understand things I don’t understand.”
Teddy pondered again; it was hard work. “God Almighty, what a problem it must be to have brains! Here’s how it went. And if you want to toss me into the night, go ahead.” He took a long breath. “One afternoon, downtown in Miami, quite a lot of years ago, I was coasting along Second Avenue in my convertible. It was pouring as hard as it did this morning and I spotted Paula in a striped dress trying to keep out of the splash from a folded-up awning that was the best shelter she could find.”
Gaunt nodded.
“So, okay. I stopped and she hopped in. Wet as a hen. My place was close and yours was over on the Beach then. And you were in Boston at a scientific meeting. You’d been gone three weeks, so she said when, in the normal course of being the old chivalrous Barker, I took her into my apartment, got her a highball, and lit the gas logs to dry her out. Because it wasn’t warm like today. It was a lousy, cold winter afternoon or I’d probably not have made the emergency stop. She was chilled through.”
“I see.”
“You sound like you see absolutely nothing! I had no more design on your wife than I ever had on Berthene Connauth, though Paula is about as handsome as they come.
Nor she, on me. I gave her a dressing gown and I hung her things in front of the fire and I got her a drink and she began kidding me about my reputation. She said if anybody had seen her come in with me her name would be mud. And she teased me about what it was I had that made all the girls so tiddly about me. It was all just kidding.”
“It sounds,” Gaunt said, “like the classical gambit. Rain. The fire. The highball.”
“Go ahead and take that line,” Teddy answered, with heat. “I’m telling you, for my own good. So all right. It got dark and we had several hi
ghballs and neither one of us was talking from the sober hook, quite.”
“Try,” Gaunt said, tensely still, “to imagine a wife of your own, on a rainy afternoon—”
“Damn it, what else have I been thinking about since they went? I think, if I’d married and if I really cared about the dame, I’d give her twenty-four hours a month off, and no questions asked, and she could even save up the days and take two weeks at the end of the year if she liked it better that way. What in hell is a woman hut a part of the whole person?”
“I don’t understand that.”
“Maybe you will someday,” Teddy replied. He went on, grinning stubbornly: “So, we continued—whether you faint, bawl or start throwing furniture, Bill. She asked me.”
“And you were amazed.”
“I was about as surprised as you are happy right now. I said no.”
“But she persisted?”
“She was there—and she probably thought she’d never he in such a situation or such a mood again. She cried. So I knew exactly how desperate she felt—and for a woman like Paula it was plenty desperate. I made love to her.” Teddy shook his head meditatively. “It’s funny. Whole books, thousands of movies, all based on the build-up to about the simplest thing people can do.”
Gaunt shook his head slowly again and again. He wadded up an empty cigarette package. He went into the living room to find another. He came hack and paced his porch a time or two, trailing smoke. “Pathetic,” he finally murmured.
“I thought so.”
“Not revenge. Not rebellion. Not even lust, in a way.”
“You might say,” Teddy nodded, “that some damned fine women seem to feel as if they had to have a ‘past’ to be complete. Part of living. So—they make a past for themselves—”
Gaunt paced. “I’m glad you told me, Teddy.”
For the first time, the younger man relaxed. “I was staking a lot—a lot, to me—on hoping you would be, in the end.”