I wrote poetry for several nights in a row, and some of it was pretty good, if I do say so myself. I wrote it in my head while I was walking the dog, or when I was riding the subway, and then put it down on paper after I’d gone to bed at night. I thought that maybe if I wrote enough poetry, then I could show it to Roscoe.
Then one day the telephone rang and I answered it, and a nice man’s voice said, “May I speak to Miss Folger, please?”
Often people call Mother Ms. Folger, so I said, “Just a moment, please, I’ll see if she’s busy.”
Then there was a laugh at the other end of the line, and the voice said, “Is this the maid?” And I knew it was Roscoe.
“Yes,” I said. I meant to say something witty and provocative, like, Yes, this is Parthenope, to show him I knew poetry, but all I said was plain yes with sort of a catch in the back of my throat so it sounded like a frog’s croak.
“Well, dear maid, I don’t want to speak to Mrs. Folger, I want to speak to Miss Folger. In other words, I don’t want to speak to Angel, I want to speak to Amy.”
“Hi,” I said, brilliantly.
“Amy, I have two tickets for the new Rodgers and Hammerstein musical; the author is one of my clients. Would you like to have dinner with me and go?”
“I’d adore to!” I said. “I’ve never been to the theatre, except school plays, and I was always in those.” And falling over the scenery, I didn’t add, because I couldn’t see the furniture without my glasses.
Angel helped me get ready. I couldn’t tell whether she was pleased or annoyed because Roscoe had called me.
“Amy,” she corrected me, “you’re far too young to call him Roscoe. It’s Mr. Whitelaw.”
“Yes, Angel.”
“It was very thoughtful of him to call you. Of course, he did it as a favor to me. Now, about your glasses. I think you’d better wear them.”
I had no intention of wearing my glasses with Roscoe. “You’re always telling me to take them off,” I said. “In fact, most of the time you grab them right off my face.”
Angel spoke slowly, emphasizing each word. “Amy, Roscoe Whitelaw is not a local yokel from Vermont. He is a man of the world. I’m afraid you wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to handle him. I’m not at all sure I should let you go out with him unchaperoned. I wonder if he could get a third ticket? I think I’ll call him.” And she went to the phone and dialed.
At that moment I hated Angel.
But Roscoe, darling Roscoe, told her that the show was completely sold out, and it was only through the utmost pull that he’d been able to get two tickets.
“You will wear your glasses, Amy,” Angel said firmly.
“Yes, Angel,” I lied.
Roscoe came for me and as soon as Angel let us go and we were standing, waiting for the elevator, I took my glasses off and put them in my bag. I was determined not to wear them all evening, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to see a thing on stage.
Suddenly the door of the apartment opened and my mother stuck her head out. I reached for my handbag to grab my glasses but I wasn’t quick enough.
“Amy!” Angel cried. “Put your glasses on immediately!” She smiled fulsomely at Roscoe. “The silly vanity of young girls. Poor little Amy can’t see a thing without her glasses and it’s very bad for her eyes to go without them.”
To be betrayed by one’s own mother!
The elevator came just then and the elevator man stood waiting, and Roscoe and I stepped into the car. I couldn’t say: “She’s the one who makes me take them off.” I couldn’t say anything. I clutched my hand back with my glasses still in it and went from white to red to white again.
“You do whatever you like about your glasses, Amy,” Roscoe said kindly. “I think you look very nice either way.”
But the evening was spoiled. I had been humiliated beyond endurance. Roscoe was wonderful; I mean he just kept on growing more and more wonderful every minute, but at dinner I just sat there as though I were tongue-tied.
He wasn’t, though. He talked and talked. He told me about Utah, and he told me about Columbia, and then he told me about how he’d studied for a year at the Sorbonne, and how he’d been in Japan in the army. It was almost like going out with somebody really foreign, since we were in an Italian restaurant eating food I couldn’t pronounce. It was like going out with a foreign agent. Gradually I began to relax as I listened to him, though I still couldn’t talk. Anyhow, I’m not in the habit of talking a great deal. Angel is a great talker and I learned early that I couldn’t hope to compete with her. I mean, she’s witty and clever and gay and sarcastic, and I can never say anything except what I feel. This is a great drawback.
I compromised about the glasses and put them on at the theatre, but I took them off at intermission. After the theatre we stopped at the cafeteria for a lemonade, and then he took me home on the subway. I suppose if it had been Angel it would’ve been a taxi. Angel doesn’t like subways. I do.
That night for some reason I couldn’t write any poems at all.
The next week I didn’t go walking with Bruce nearly as often as usual. I kept hoping that the phone would ring, that it would be Roscoe, that it would be for me.
Well, it was Roscoe once, and Angel got to the phone before I did, and it was for her. He was sending the manuscript in to the publisher. So there wouldn’t be any reason for him to call again until Angel had a new book ready, or unless he sold some of the old ones to a women’s magazine or something.
What was I to do?
I wanted to see Roscoe again more than anything in the world.
I wrote poetry.
I wrote poetry until I had twenty-five poems out of about fifty that I thought were reasonably good.
My chance came one evening when Angel went to a cocktail party at her editor’s. “I hope you don’t mind staying in the apartment alone, Amy,” she said. “They urged me to bring you with me, but really, these literary cocktail parties are no place for a child.”
I assured her I didn’t mind staying alone in the least. It would be a good opportunity for me to finish the new skirt I was making.
As soon as Angel had gone—and I waited not only until I saw her step into the elevator, but until, leaning out the living room window, I could see her leave the building and get into a taxi—I ran to the telephone and took off my glasses. It was a few minutes after five, but I hoped that maybe Roscoe didn’t leave the office promptly. I had the office number memorized, but I had to put my glasses back on to dial.
I must’ve gone through at least three secretaries before I got Roscoe. “You just caught me, Amy,” he said. “Now, what can I do for you?”
I told him about the poems.
There was a funny sort of hesitation at the other end of the line.
“Does your mother know you’re calling me about this?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “She doesn’t even know I’ve written the poems.”
“Amy,” he said, “I don’t want you to be disappointed, but we don’t usually handle poetry.”
“Oh,” I said.
“But look, Amy, I’d like to see it anyhow. Do you want to come in with it tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’d love to. What time?”
“Let’s see. I have an appointment for lunch. Make it around three.”
“Three,” I said. “That’ll be fine, Roscoe,” and then I almost fell off the bed, because Angel was standing in the door.
“I forgot—” she started, and I never did learn what it was she had forgotten, because then she said, “Well, Amy, and to whom are you talking?”
“Roscoe,” I said. “Mr. Whitelaw. Excuse me, Ros— Mr. Whitelaw,” I said into the telephone. “Angel is here. I have to hang up now.”
“Just a second, Amy,” my mother said, smiling brightly. “I’m going to have to call Roscoe this evening, anyhow,” and she took the phone out of my hand. “Put on your glasses,” she commanded, but she was still smiling, the same kind of
smile she used at cocktail parties when she wanted to impress someone. Why was she using the smile on me? Or was it really for Roscoe? It was the kind of smile you can hear as well as see.
Oh, Roscoe, darling Roscoe, in spite of Angel’s pumping he didn’t tell her about the poetry. He just told her he’d asked me to come in so that he could show me around the agency.
“It’s really very thoughtful of Roscoe,” Angel said.
So the next afternoon I got ready with great care. I finished the new skirt, and I wore it with a freshly washed and ironed white blouse with a little lace at the neckline.
“You’d better let me wash your glasses for you,” Angel said.
She didn’t do it on purpose, this I am quite sure of. But somehow the glasses fell into the sink and broke. Why on earth they chose that particular moment to break I’ll never know. I’m constantly dropping them, and they never break. But this time there was a large crack right across the left lens. Oh, this was tragedy compounded on tragedy. Because these weren’t just my glasses, these were my spare pair. The regular pair had been leaving an ugly red mark on the bridge of my nose, and they were being fixed.
Angel was sorry, she was truly sorry. This I know, because she had planned to do a lot of work on the new cookbook that afternoon, and instead she said, “I’ll take you down in a taxi, Amy. You can’t possibly go by yourself without your glasses.”
To go see Roscoe with Angel would be much worse than not going at all. “No, Angel, it’s all right, truly it is. I can manage.”
“How can you possibly manage?” Angel demanded. “You know you can’t see two inches in front of your face without your glasses.”
“I won’t go till tomorrow, then. My other glasses will be ready tomorrow morning.”
“You don’t seem to realize,” Angel said, “that Roscoe is a very busy person. He can’t just shift appointments around to suit your convenience. Roscoe works on a very tight schedule and it was exceedingly kind of him to work you in at all.”
“But he always sees you whenever you want him,” I said.
“After all, that’s a very different matter. I provide a good deal of butter for Roscoe’s bread,” Angel said smugly. “Come along, child, and let’s go.”
“I’ll go alone,” I said stubbornly.
“You know perfectly well that it’s not safe for you to be out alone without your glasses. You’d probably walk right in front of a truck. I said I would take you, whether it disrupts my schedule or not, and take you I will.”
And take me she did. It was awful. She made Roscoe show us all over the agency, and I kept having to shake hands with people I couldn’t see, and Angel kept beaming because they all said I looked like her sister and so forth and so on, et cetera, ad infinitum. We walked through a large room with lots of desks, and I banged right into a filing cabinet.
“What happened to your glasses?” Roscoe asked.
“She broke them,” Angel said. “You’ve no idea how much money I spend on Amy’s glasses. Children are so thoughtless.”
Just as we were leaving I felt a slip of paper being shoved into my hand. I looked up and there was Roscoe’s shadowy form. Angel was talking animatedly to someone else, and Roscoe raised his arm in a gesture that I realized must be putting his finger to his lips. I closed my fingers around the paper and put it into my pocket. When we got home and Angel had gone into her study—she said we’d go out to dinner because I couldn’t see to cook and I might put cockroach poisoning on the chops instead of salt—I went into my room and held the paper up close to my eyes and read in Roscoe’s small, tidy handwriting, “Meet me on the back steps of the Metropolitan Museum at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning with your poetry, Princess Amy.”
The old glasses weren’t to be ready till eleven, but I determined I would meet Roscoe anyhow. After all, it wasn’t very far away. I could walk. I wouldn’t have to take a bus or subway. That wouldn’t have been possible, anyhow, because I couldn’t see where to get off without my glasses. So I could walk, and I could take Bruce; that would be my excuse for getting out; and the Metropolitan Museum was big enough for even me to see.
So after breakfast I said to Angel, “I’m going to take Bruce for a walk.”
Angel was irritable. “How can you take the dog for a walk? You can’t see where you’re going.” Angel had made the coffee for breakfast herself and it wasn’t nearly as good as mine. I told her I could make it with my eyes shut and they didn’t need my glasses for coffee, but she wouldn’t believe me, and that made her crosser than ever.
“I’ll be fine. He’s practically a seeing-eye dog anyhow,” I assured her. This is not true. Bruce is sweet and he is large, but he is also dumb. I’m always having to haul him out of the paths of taxis and trucks. But fortunately Angel doesn’t realize this and she is convinced that any dog of hers must be exceptionally intelligent, so she was satisfied.
So about nine thirty I set off. I wanted to give myself plenty of time, and I wanted to be there first, so that Roscoe would have to recognize me instead of the other way around. People who aren’t nearsighted themselves are apt to think you’re awfully rude if you stare right through them. But if I got to the back steps of the Metropolitan first, I could be sitting on them and reading, and Roscoe would have to come up to me and say, “Hello, Amy,” or whatever it is he would say, and then I’d know who he was.
It didn’t take me more than ten minutes to get there. I had my pages stuck in the pages of a New Yorker. I certainly didn’t want Angel to find out about them. As it was, she couldn’t understand why I was taking a New Yorker, but I said I might just sit on a bench in the park until time to go pick up my glasses, and she knows I can read if I put the page right up to my nose.
I sat on the steps and reread my poetry. I was surprised at how good it was. It had never occurred to me that I, Amy Folger, could write poetry. It was a darned sight better than Angel’s, if I do say so myself.
I was absorbed in one of my poems when a voice said, “Hello, Amy.”
Roscoe! My heart thumped in two flip-flop syllables.
“Oh, hi,” I said. “I got here early because I thought I’d go over things a little.” I glanced up at Roscoe’s shadowy form, but even without my glasses I didn’t dare look right at him. You know that story about the Greek woman who is very beautiful, and Jupiter—oh, golly, is it Jupiter in Greece and Jove in Rome or the other way around? I never can remember. Anyhow, he comes down from Mount Olympus in human form and makes love to her, and she wants to see him not in human form but as he really is, and he keeps on warning her and everything, but she insists, and finally he reveals himself, and the sight of a god is too strong for human eyes, and it kills her. Well, that’s sort of how I felt about looking directly at Roscoe.
“And what would you have to go over, young lady?” asked this voice, and suddenly I was suspicious. I squinched up my eyes and looked as hard as I could and realized he wasn’t nearly as tall as Roscoe. My heart did another flip-flop, but this time it didn’t say Roscoe, it just plummeted down into my stomach and then managed to get back up into place again.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said, “but I’ve broken my glasses and I don’t know who you are.”
It was a lawyer we met a couple of times at parties. Oh, woe. Very nice and everything, and it would be just lovely if Angel would marry him so she has somebody else to worry about, but I certainly didn’t want to see him right now when I was waiting for Roscoe.
“Are you waiting for somebody?” he asked me.
I hoped that I didn’t look too disappointed when I realized it wasn’t Roscoe. “Oh, sort of,” I said stupidly.
“A gentleman friend?” I could sense the amusement in his voice. Angel’s baby girl playing at being grown-up.
“An acquaintance,” I said frigidly.
“Hi, Amy” came a voice, and this time it was Roscoe’s voice; there was no mistaking Roscoe’s voice when it really came.
“Well, I’ll be running along now,” Angel
’s friend said. “Oh, hello, Whitelaw. Robbing the cradle?”
I could’ve killed him. And he’d probably go running to the nearest telephone and report to Angel. Well, at least Bruce growled. He was on my side at any rate.
“Where are your glasses?” Roscoe asked me, patting Bruce. Bruce wagged his tail and stopped bristling.
“They won’t be ready till eleven.”
“Okay. Well, let’s see your poetry anyhow.”
Without a word I handed him my pages of poetry. I hadn’t dared to borrow Angel’s typewriter for them, but I’d copied them in my very best writing, and I didn’t think he’d have any trouble reading them.
He read very slowly and carefully, reading some of them twice. It took him half an hour, because I timed him. When he finished, instead of saying anything about my poems, he said, “And you’re going to Barnard next year?”
“Yes. Did you—what about my poems?”
“Why did you choose Barnard?”
“I didn’t choose it, exactly. Angel thought it would be good because of the cultural advantages of New York. I’ve already been to the Guggenheim five times. I like the Frick better, but Angel sends me to the Guggenheim. What about my—”
“Isn’t there any culture in Vermont?”
“Angel is culture where we live. I mean, nobody thinks anything about her cookbooks, but they all think her poetry is wonderful. She’s president of the Women’s Club and the Book Group and the Musicale. What about my poet—”
“But what about you?”
“I’d give my—I’d give my glasses if I could stay in the dormitories and Angel went back to Vermont!” I cried. I was surprised at my own vehemence and hoped he wouldn’t misinterpret it.
“Well, look, Amy,” he said. “I can get a contract for your mother to go to France and do a cookbook on life in a French kitchen from a Vermont farmwife’s point of view.”
“You can?” I breathed.
“And I’m sure she’d go. I don’t think even Angel could resist that. I’ve been working on it ever since that night we went out to dinner and the theatre together.”
The Moment of Tenderness Page 15