‘Oh? How is she now?’
‘She’s – better.’
‘Good. Look, Emily, first of all I want to apologize – I haven’t had that much to drink in years and years. I’m not used to it.’
‘I’m not either.’
‘So if I made a total fool of myself I’m terribly—’
‘That’s okay; we were both pretty foolish.’ She wasn’t tired any more, except in a pleasant, well-earned way. She felt good.
‘Well, listen: do you think I could see you again?’
‘Sure, Ted.’
‘Oh, great; that’s great. Because I really— When? How soon?’
She looked with pleasure around her apartment. Everything was clean; everything was ready. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘almost anytime, Ted. Why not tonight? Give me half an hour to wash up and change, and then – you know – come on over.’
Chapter 4
The nursing home, a modest Episcopalian retreat at which the Grimes sisters shared the cost of their mother’s care, lay roughly halfway between the city and St. Charles. At first Emily went out there once a month; later she cut it down to three or four times a year. Her first visit, in the autumn after Pookie’s collapse, was the most memorable.
‘Emmy!’ the old woman cried, lying half-raised in her hospital bed. ‘I knew you’d come today!’
At first glance she looked startlingly well – her eyes gleamed and her false teeth were bared in a triumphant smile – but then she began to talk. Her wet mouth labored, slurring syllables in a slow parody of the way she’d talked all her life.
‘… And isn’t it wonderful how everything’s worked out so well for us? Just imagine! Sarah’s a real princess, and look at you. I always knew there was something special about our family.’
‘Mm,’ Emily said. ‘Well, you’re looking fine. How do you feel?’
‘Oh, I’m a little tired, but I’m just so happy – so happy and so proud of you both. Especially you, Emmy. Lots of girls marry into European royalty – only, you know something funny? I still haven’t learned to pronounce his last name! – but how many ever get to be First Lady?’
‘Are you – comfortable here?’
‘Oh, it’s nice enough – of course I knew it’d be nice, built right into the White House – but I’ll tell you something, dear.’ She lowered her voice to an urgent stage whisper. ‘Some of these nurses don’t know how to behave when they’re dealing with the President’s mother-in-law. Anyway—’ She settled back on her pillow. ‘Anyway, I know you must be terribly busy; I won’t keep you. He stopped by to see me the other day.’
‘He did?’
‘Oh, just for a few minutes, after his press conference, and he called me Pookie and gave me a little kiss. Such a handsome figure of a man, with that beautiful smile. He has such – such flair. Just imagine! The youngest man ever elected President in American history.’
Emily planned her next sentence carefully. ‘Pookie,’ she said, ‘have you been having a lot of dreams?’
The old woman blinked several times. ‘Dreams, oh, yes. Sometimes—’ She looked suddenly frightened. ‘Sometimes I have bad dreams, terrible dreams about all kinds of terrible things, but I always wake up.’ Her face relaxed. ‘And when I wake up everything’s wonderful again…’
On her way out of the place, passing the open doors of many murmurous rooms filled with beds and wheelchairs, occasionally glimpsing an ancient person’s head, she found a nurses’ station where two thick-legged young women in white were drinking coffee and reading magazines.
‘Excuse me. I’m Mrs. Grimes’s daughter – Mrs. Grimes in Two-F.’
One of the nurses said ‘Oh, you must be Mrs. Kennedy’; the other, with a tired little smile to show she was only kidding, said ‘Can I have your autograph?’
‘That’s what I wanted to ask about. Is she always this way?’
‘Sometimes; not always.’
‘Does her doctor know about it?’
‘Well, you’d have to ask him. Doctor’s only here Tuesday and Friday mornings.’
‘I see,’ Emily said. ‘Well, look: is it better to sort of play along with her in something like this, or to try and—’
‘Doesn’t make much difference, one way or the other,’ the nurse said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Mrs.—?’
‘Grimes; I’m not married.’
The delusion didn’t last long. Throughout the winter Pookie seemed to know who she was, most of the time, but her talk was much less coherent. She was able to sit in her chair and even to walk around, though once she splattered the floor with urine. By spring she had turned morose and silent, speaking only to complain of her failing eyesight and the nurses’ neglect and the shortage of cigarettes. Once, having demanded that a nurse bring her a lipstick and a mirror, she studied her frowning reflection and daubed a full, crimson mouth on the surface of the mirror.
During that year Emily was promoted to ‘copy supervisor’ of Baldwin Advertising. Hannah Baldwin, a trim and vigorous ‘gal’ in her fifties who liked to have it known that hers was one of the only three agencies in New York run by a woman, told her she had a real future in the business. ‘We love you, Emily,’ she said more than once, and Emily had to admit it was reciprocated. Oh, not love, exactly – surely not love on either side – more of a mutual respect and satisfaction. She enjoyed her work.
But she enjoyed her leisure a great deal more. Ted Banks lasted only a few months; the trouble was mainly that they both felt an irresistible urge to drink too much when they were together, as if they didn’t want to touch each other sober.
Things were on a much more intelligent footing with Michael Hogan. He was a rugged, energetic, surprisingly gentle man; he ran a small public relations firm, but talked so little about his work that she sometimes forgot what he did for a living, and the best thing about him was that he made almost no emotional demands on her. It couldn’t even be said that they were close friends: whole weeks might pass without her hearing from him, or caring, and when he did call (‘Emily? Feel like having dinner?’) it was as if they’d never been apart. They both liked it that way.
‘You know something?’ she told him once. ‘There aren’t very many people you can enjoy spending Sunday with.’
‘Mm,’ he said. He was shaving, standing just inside the open door of his bathroom; she lay propped on pillows in his big double bed, leafing through his copy of The New York Times Book Review.
She turned a page and a photograph of Jack Flanders jumped out at her, looking much older and even sadder than when she’d seen him last. There were pictures of three other men in the same full-page review, which ran under the heading ‘A Spring Poetry Roundup’; she skimmed the columns quickly and found the part about Jack.
In middle age, the once volatile John Flanders has settled into an amiable acceptance of things as they are – pierced, time and again, by a sharp regret for things lost. Days and Nights, his fourth book, displays the careful craftsmanship we have come to expect of him, but too frequently there is too little else to admire. Are acceptance and regret enough? For daily living, perhaps – not, one suspects, for the higher demands of art. This reader misses the old Flanders fire.
Some of the love poems are affecting, particularly ‘Iowa Oak Tree,’ with its strong, erotic final stanza, and ‘Proposal of Marriage,’ with its curious opening lines ‘I watch you fooling with the dog and wonder / What does this girl want from me?’ Elsewhere, however, one is tempted to dismiss poem after poem as commonplace or sentimental.
The long final poem should probably have been cut from the manuscript before it went to the printer. Even its title is awkward – ‘Remembering London Revisited’ – and the work itself performs a bewildering exercise in double flashback: the poet regrets a time when he stood at a London doorway regretting still another, earlier time. How much chagrin can a single poem bear without becoming ludicrous?
One closes this slim volume with something of the poet’s own regret-within-regret malaise,
and with all too little of his hope.
Turning to the brilliant, audacious new work of William Krueger, we find what can only be called an embarrassment of poetic riches…
The buzz of Michael Hogan’s electric razor had stopped some time ago; she looked up and found him peering over her shoulder.
‘What’s the deal?’ he asked her.
‘Nothing; just something here about a man I used to know.’
‘Yeah? Which one?’
There were four photographs on the page, she could easily have pointed to one of the others – even Krueger – and Michael Hogan would never know, or care, but she felt a stirring of old loyalty. ‘Him,’ she said, touching her forefinger to Jack’s face.
‘Looks like he just lost his last friend,’ Michael Hogan said.
One Friday morning Sarah called Emily at the office to inquire, happily, if she was free for lunch.
‘You mean you’re in town?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Fine,’ Emily said. ‘What’s the occasion?’
‘Well, Tony had to come in for a business meeting today, that’s part of it, but the main thing is we’ve got tickets to see Roderick Hamilton in Come Home, Stranger tonight, and afterwards we’re going backstage to meet him.’
Roderick Hamilton was a famous English actor whose new play had recently opened in New York. ‘That’s wonderful,’ Emily said.
‘He and Tony went to school together in England, you see – have I ever told you that?’
‘Yes, I believe you have.’
‘And at first Tony was too shy to write to him, but I made him do it, and we got back this really nice, really charming letter saying of course he remembered Tony and wanted to see him again, and wanted to meet me. Isn’t that exciting?’
‘It certainly is.’
‘So look. We’re staying at the Roosevelt, and Tony’ll be gone all day. Why don’t you come up here for lunch? They have this really nice place called the Rough Rider Room.’
‘Well,’ Emily said. ‘That sounds appropriate for a couple of old rough riders like you and me.’
‘What, dear?’
‘Never mind. Would one o’clock suit you?’
When she first walked into the restaurant she thought Sarah hadn’t arrived yet – all the tables were filled with strangers – but then she saw that a plump little overdressed matron, sitting alone, was smiling at her.
‘Come sit down, dear,’ Sarah said. ‘You look wonderful.’
‘So do you,’ Emily said, but it wasn’t true. In St. Charles, wearing country clothes, Sarah might still look her age – which Emily quickly calculated was forty-one – but here she looked older. Her eyes were lined and shadowed and she had a double chin. She was slump-shouldered. She had evidently been undecided about which of several pieces of bright costume jewelry to wear with her cheap beige suit, and had solved the problem by wearing them all. In the past year her teeth had developed heavy brown stains.
‘Something from the bar, ladies?’ the waiter inquired.
‘Oh, yes,’ Sarah said. ‘I’d like an extra dry martini, straight up, with a lemon twist.’
Emily ordered a glass of white wine (‘I have to work this afternoon’) and they both tried to relax.
‘Do you know,’ Sarah said, ‘I was just thinking. This is the first time I’ve been to New York in nine years. It’s funny how everything’s changed.’
‘You ought to get in more often.’
‘I know; I’d love to; it’s just that Tony hates it so. He hates the traffic, and he says everything’s too expensive.’
‘Mm.’
‘Oh!’ Sarah said, brightening again. ‘Did I tell you we heard from Tony Junior?’ Some months ago, having concluded his affair with the divorcée (she had found an older man), Tony Junior had gone off to enlist in the Marine Corps. ‘He’s at Camp Pendleton, California, and he sent us a nice long letter,’
Sarah said. ‘Of course Tony’s still furious with him – he’s even threatened to disinherit him—’
‘Disinherit him from what?’
‘—Well, you know, disown him; but I think the experience’ll do him a world of good.’
‘And how are the other boys?’
‘Oh, Peter’s busy at college, on the dean’s list every semester, and Eric – well, it’s hard to tell with Eric. He’s still mad about cars.’
Then the talk turned to their mother, whom Emily hadn’t visited for some time. The social worker at the nursing home, Sarah said, had called her to report that Pookie was becoming a discipline problem.
‘How do you mean, a discipline problem?’
‘Well, he said she does things that upset the other patients. One night about four in the morning she went into some old man’s room and said “Why aren’t you ready? Have you forgotten this is our wedding day?” And apparently she went on and on like that, until the old man had to call the nurses to come and take her back.’
‘Oh, my God.’
‘No, but he was very nice about it – the social worker, I mean. He just said that if that kind of behavior continues we’ll have to take her out of there.’
‘Well, but where would we – I mean where would we put her?’
Sarah was lighting a cigarette. ‘Central Islip, I guess,’ she said, exhaling smoke.
‘What’s that?’
‘The state hospital. It’s free. Oh, but I understand it’s very nice.’
‘I see,’ Emily said.
Over her second martini Sarah made a shy announcement. ‘I suppose I really shouldn’t have this,’ she said. ‘My doctor told me I drink too much.’
‘He did?’
‘Oh, it wasn’t a grim warning or anything; he just told me to cut down. He said my – you know – my liver’s enlarged. I don’t know. Let’s not talk about sad things any more. I hardly ever get to see you, Emmy, and I want to hear all about your job and your love life and everything. Besides, I’m going to meet Roderick Hamilton tonight, and I want to be in a good mood. Let’s enjoy ourselves.’
But a few minutes later she was gazing wistfully around the room. ‘It’s nice here, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘This is one of the places Daddy used to take me to, just before he’d put me on the train. Sometimes we’d go to the Biltmore, too, or the Commodore, but this is the place I remember best. The waiters knew him here, and they knew me too. They’d always bring me a double scoop of ice cream, while Daddy had his double scotch, and we’d talk and talk…’
Afterwards, Emily couldn’t remember whether Sarah drank three martinis or four at that lunch in the Rough Rider Room; she remembered only that she herself was fuddled with wine by the time their chicken à la king arrived, and that Sarah ate very little of her portion. She didn’t drink her coffee, either.
‘Oh, dear, Emmy,’ she said. ‘I guess I’m a little drunk. Isn’t that ridiculous? I don’t know why I – oh, but it’s okay. I can have a little nap upstairs. I’ll have plenty of time before Tony gets back; then we’ll have dinner and go to the theater and I’ll be fine.’
She needed help in getting out of her chair. She needed help in walking across the floor, too – Emily held her high and firmly under one soft arm – and in walking down the corridor to the elevators.
‘It’s okay, Emmy,’ she kept saying. ‘It’s okay. I can manage.’ But Emily didn’t let go until they were up in the room, where Sarah tottered a few steps forward and collapsed on the double bed. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll just get a little sleep now, and I’ll be fine.’
‘Don’t you want to take your clothes off?’
‘That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.’
And Emily went back to the office for a distracted afternoon’s work. It wasn’t until nearly five o’clock that she began to feel a guilty pleasure: now that she had seen her sister, it might be many months – maybe years – before she would have to see her again.
This would be an evening alone; and sometimes, when she planned things right, she f
ound she didn’t mind being alone at all. First she changed into comfortable clothes and got the materials for her light supper started in the kitchenette, then she fixed herself a drink – never more than two – and watched the CBS Evening News. Later, after she’d eaten and washed the dishes, she would sit in her deep chair or lie on her sofa with a book, reading, and the hours would pass uncounted until it was time to go to bed.
When the telephone rang at nine o’clock it startled her, and the weak, plaintive sound of Sarah’s voice – ‘Emmy?’ – brought her quickly to her feet. ‘Look,’ Sarah said. ‘I hate to ask you this, but do you think you could come up here? To the hotel?’
‘What’s the matter? Why aren’t you at the theater?’
‘I – didn’t go. I’ll explain it when I see you, okay?’
All the way uptown, in a cab that kept getting caught in traffic jams, Emily tried to keep her mind empty; she was still trying to keep her mind empty when she walked down the long carpeted corridor to Sarah’s door, which was an inch or two ajar. She thought of pushing it open, but knocked instead.
‘Anthony?’ Sarah called in a shy, hopeful voice.
‘No, baby, it’s me.’
‘Oh. Come on in, Emmy.’
Emily went inside the dark room and let the door click shut behind her. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘Where’s the light?’
‘Don’t turn it on yet. Let’s talk a minute first, okay?’
In the dim blue light of the window Emily could see that Sarah was lying on the bed, the way she’d left her this afternoon, except that now the bed was unmade and she appeared to be wearing only her slip.
‘I’m awfully sorry about this, Emmy; I probably shouldn’t have called you, but the thing is – well, I’ll start at the beginning, okay? When Tony got back here I was still – you know – still drunk, I guess, and we had a terrible fight about it and he said he wasn’t going to take me to the play, and he – anyway, he went to the play alone.’
‘He went to the play alone?’
‘That’s right. Oh, you can’t blame him; I wasn’t in any condition to meet Roderick Hamilton; that part of it’s all my fault. But I just – the point is, you and I had such good talks last summer, and I just called you up because I sort of need someone to talk to.’
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