by Max Shulman
“Be my guest,” said Trueblood.
She plunged her hands into the beaver, and I decided I’d better go home and think, because I was in very big trouble.
So I went home and thought, and the solution to my problem came quickly. What I needed was a beard. That was obvious. Obvious, but not easy, because I didn’t have a hair on my face. Well, thought I, I’d just have to do everything possible to grow a beard, because clearly I couldn’t compete with old True-blood unless I had a beard too.
I remember hearing people say your beard grows faster if you shave often. This is a tissue of lies. I shaved twelve times a day for a whole week and not one hair showed up on my face. Plus I lost a lot of blood.
After that I tried a lot of salves and ointments that my father had bought when he started losing his hair. I rubbed them into my face until my fingers ached, but they didn’t do me any more good than they did my father.
It’s not an easy thing to lose a girl like Elizabeth Barrett, and, believe me, I kept thinking all the time, trying to figure out some way to prevent it. The best way, of course, was to murder Trueblood, but they would have suspicioned me right away. The next best way was to separate Trueblood and Elizabeth Barrett long enough—say about a year—so I could grow a beard and compete with him on even terms. But how could I separate them? They were together every day, and in a few weeks college would start and they’d still be together every day.
But I kept thinking, and one day an idea came to me—not a good idea, but the only one I had. I was out fishing all by myself when I noticed a piece of paper under the bilge boards in my boat. I pulled it out. It was an entry blank, all filled out by Elizabeth Barrett, for the Vassar Alumnae Association Essay Contest. Then I got this idea: I would take the entry blank, attach an essay to it, mail it in to the contest, and maybe Elizabeth Barrett would win a scholarship. If she did, Mrs. Schultz would be so proud that she’d make Elizabeth Barrett go away to Vassar. She’d be separated from Trueblood for a year, and when she got back I’d have a beard just as big as Trueblood’s.
But where, you are thinking, would I get an essay to submit with the entry blank? The answer is obvious: I would swipe Trueblood’s essay, the one called “Love.” That’s the part of the whole feeble scheme that appealed to me the most—if it worked, I’d be defeating Trueblood with his own weapon.
That afternoon, when Elizabeth Barrett and Trueblood were in swimming (he swims the breast stroke; wouldn’t you know?), I snuck up and stole the essay out of his corduroy jacket. I took it home, typed a copy, put the original back in his jacket, and mailed the copy, along with the entry blank, off to Vassar.
For the next two weeks—not with much hope—I kept checking the R.F.D. box we shared with the Schultzes. And one day it came—a letter to Elizabeth Barrett from the Vassar Alumnae! I grabbed it and went tearing up to the Schultz cottage. They were all in the living room—Mr. Schultz waxing his bowling ball, Mrs. Schultz reading “Ode on a Grecian Urn” aloud, Trueblood lying on the couch looking soulful, Elizabeth Barrett stroking Trueblood’s beard.
“Elizabeth Barrett,” I said, “here’s a letter for you.”
She opened the letter and read it and looked real puzzled. “I don’t get it,” she said, and handed the letter to her mother.
Mrs. Schultz read it, and she looked puzzled too. “How very odd!” she said.
“Read it,” said Mr. Schultz. “Maybe I can figure it out.”
So Mrs. Schultz read the letter: “‘Dear Miss Schultz,’” it said. “‘Your essay entitled “Love” was very charming, as, indeed, it has been since the Due de La Rochefoucauld wrote it in sixteen sixty-five. I am afraid that you are not the kind of girl Vassar is looking for. Alice Bayard Sherwood, Secretary.’”
For a second I was puzzled too. Then I saw Trueblood go pasty, and the whole thing was clear as daylight. “You fake!” I yelled, grabbing him by the beard and pulling him to his feet. “You phony, thieving fake!”
Then they all started tugging at me and asking what had happened, so I told them. I told them everything, while old Trueblood cringed and whimpered.
There was a silence when I finished. Then Mr. Schultz said, “Trueblood, I think you’d better go.”
“Yes, go!” screamed Mrs. Schultz. “Go, you wretched fraud. Oh, the shame of it! How will I ever face the Alumnae Association again? Go, you plagiarist! Go, and never let me or my daughter see your shifty face again. Go!”
Well, sir, Trueblood slunk out as fast as he could. Mr. Schultz looked mighty relieved. Elizabeth Barrett looked kind of puzzled, but I patted her back and pinched her a little bit, and pretty soon I had her smiling. Mrs. Schultz walked up and down wringing her hands.
Not five minutes after Trueblood left, a car drove up and a bunch of guys came up to the cottage, one of them carrying a camera, another one carrying a big flat package. “Who’s Elizabeth Barrett Schultz?” asked one of the guys.
“I am,” said Elizabeth Barrett.
“I’m from the Tribune,” the guy said.
“Oh, no!” shrieked Mrs. Schultz. “We must keep this out of the papers!”
“Keep it out of the papers?” said the reporter. “Why? Is it something to be ashamed of that your daughter caught the biggest smallmouthed bass ever taken out of Candlewood?”
“What?” said Mr. Schultz. “What’s all this?”
“I forgot to tell you, Daddy,” said Elizabeth Barrett. “I caught a bass that weighed nine pounds six ounces.”
“Why, that’s wonderful, honey, just wonderful!” said Mr. Schultz, beaming like a sunburst.
The guy with the wrapped package came over to Elizabeth Barrett. “I’m Ed Reynolds,” he said, “judge of the Bass Derby, and here is your trophy.” He unwrapped the package and took out a beautiful oak plaque.
The photographer took a bunch of pictures of Elizabeth Barrett accepting the plaque, and the reporter asked some questions, and after a while they shook hands all around and left.
Mr. Schultz was strutting around like the proudest peacock that ever lived. “Nine pounds six ounces,” he said. “Think of that! My little daughter!”
“I was lucky,” said Elizabeth Barrett. She’s real modest.
“And what a beautiful plaque,” said Mr. Schultz. “Look,” he said to Mrs. Schultz, “isn’t that a beautiful plaque?”
“Uh-huh,” she said, giving it a quick look. “Take it to the office when you go in tomorrow.”
“No!” said Mr. Schultz, sticking his jaw ’way out. “No, by Godfrey, I won’t take it to the office. This plaque is going to be put in our house—and so are all the rest of Elizabeth Barrett’s trophies.”
Mrs. Schultz’s jaw popped open. Mine too.
“You’ve got a wonderful daughter,” Mr. Schultz went on, “and it’s time you were proud of her for what she is, not for what you’d like her to be. She’s going to have all her plaques and trophies in the house, and when she wins some more, she’ll have those too, and there’ll be no more nonsense about poetry and Vassar and little monsters like Trueblood Eaton.”
“Put in a good word for me, Mr. Schultz,” I said, because I could see he had her on the ropes.
So he put in a good word for me—several, in fact—and today things are much better between Mrs. Schultz and me. I won’t say she’s crazy about me—every now and then she takes a look at me and busts into wild, uncontrollable sobs—but most of the time she’s fairly civil. Anyhow, what’s the difference? It’s Elizabeth Barrett I love, not her mother. Boy, how I love Elizabeth Barrett! Sometimes I wish I was a writer so I could tell you.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LOVE IS A SCIENCE
by Dobie Gillis, aged 18
A curious thing happened to Elizabeth Barrett and me after we started State University. For a while we went together and everything was fine, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t fine. Something went wrong—something deep and basic.
Like we were sitting on a bench on the campus one night—a beautiful, starry, balmy night—and I was feel
ing all soft and shimmering inside and I said, “Elizabeth Barrett, what would you like to do tonight?”
And she said, “Let’s go down to the cinder track and run a few laps.”
And I was full of sadness and disappointment, and I said, “No, Elizabeth Barrett, I don’t want to go down to the cinder track and run a few laps.”
We were quiet then for quite a long spell and finally she said, “Dobie, do you think we are growing apart?”
“Do you?” I said.
“Yes,” she said, nodding her big muscular head. “No offense, Dobie, but I would frankly prefer a more athletic type.”
“No offense to you, Elizabeth Barrett,” I replied, “but I would frankly prefer a less athletic type.”
“Dobie, leave us part friends,” she said and gave me her big calloused hand to shake, which I did, and she went trotting off into the night and I took out my copy of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
It is well enough to sneer at poetry when you are a callow high school youth, but when you are a man of eighteen summers, as I was, you suddenly discover that poetry is beauty and beauty is truth. All at once I dug poetry—not only dug it, but lived for it. I knew, in short, that I had a fine, sensitive soul.
I should have known it all along. I mean anybody who loves girls the way I do has got to be studded with sensitivity like a ham with cloves. But it takes time for a soul to emerge. All these years my soul had been like a rose in the night time—closed and asleep—but now, suddenly, the sun was up, and like a rose at morningtide my soul was open and alive. I felt pure and lambent and attuned to the universe. I would see a cloud and fill up with rapture. The folding of a leaf induced spasms. A sonnet by Keats, a white sail against a blue sky, a budding azalea, a Mozart quartet, the flight of a tern, a church in the wildwood, the head or haunch of a girl—all of these made my heart glow and swell and leap with exaltation.
Then one day, thanks to the alphabet, I met Angela Gilbey.
At State University it is customary in most classes to seat students alphabetically. Thus I, Dobie Gillis, found myself in freshman English sitting next to one Angela Gilbey.
For a man of my sensitivity, sitting next to Angela Gilbey represented a very real hazard. Every time I looked at her, there was more than an outside chance that I would expire from sheer delight. The human constitution was never meant to carry such a burden of joy as Angela Gilbey heaped upon me. When I looked at the perfection of her skull and mandibles, my pulses raced like the torrents of spring. When I regarded the symmetry of her torso, my eyeballs whirled like flywheels. When I observed her faultless legs, lithe and twinkling, it was as though a young furry animal were scampering under my breastbone.
The very first time I looked at Angela I was so stirred that I wrote her a poem. This is how it went:
I’d be so jolly,
Angela Gilbey,
To play Svengali
If you’d play Trilby.
I reached over and placed the poem on Angela’s desk. She read it. She smiled. I watched her eyes of Lake Louise blue crinkle at the corners. I watched her damask cheeks dimple. I watched her succulent, scarlet lips part to reveal her gleaming dentition. Giddy with ecstasy, I fell heavily against her.
“Sorry,” I murmured, blushing.
“You’re cute,” she said.
“You are the sun and the moon!” I cried.
“You’re a little goofy,” she said. “But cute.”
“Will you go steady with me?” I said.
“That depends,” she said.
“On what?” I said.
“We’ll talk about it after class,” she said.
“I’d appreciate that,” said Mr. Pomfritt. He is the freshman English instructor.
So after class we went over to the School of Animal Husbandry and sat on the green lawn, where I took Angela’s white hand and looked into her blue eyes and said, “Now to the question. Will you go steady with me?”
“Let me ask you a question first,” she said.
“Yes, my love?” I said. “Yes, my great tawny animal?”
“When are you going to stop writing poetry?”
“Stop?” I exclaimed, casting her a look of wild surmise. “Why, I could no more stop writing poetry than I could stop breathing.”
“So long, chum,” said Angela, making as if to rise.
I clutched her calf and held her on the turf. “Angela,” I asked, “what have you got against poetry?”
“Name me one rich poet,” said Angela.
“Well, let me think,” I said, and scratched my head for a longish interval.
“You see?” said Angela triumphantly. “You can’t because there aren’t any. Well, kid, it’s been nice knowing you.” She rose.
I seized the hem of her dirndl. “Angela,” I said, my lip curling in horror, “is that what you’re interested in—money?”
“That’s it, buddy,” she answered.
“Ha!” I said, giving a bitter laugh.
“Hah what?”
“That such an estimable body should contain such a sleazy soul!”
“I have a perfectly lovely soul,” replied Angela, bristling. “In fact, that’s why I can’t get mixed up with you.”
“How’s that?” said I.
“Look, Dobie,” she said, sitting down again, “you’re a little goofy, but that doesn’t bother me. I mean, that’s what boys are—a little goofy.”
“Well?”
“What bothers me is that you’re sort of cute. I mean you’re kind of loose and disorganized and helpless. I could go for you with no trouble at all.”
“Angela, baby!” I cried, lunging at her.
“Down, boy,” said she, fending me off. “What if I did fall in love with you? Then where would I be?”
“On Cloud Number Seven,” I replied. “With me.”
“In a pig’s eye,” said she. “I’d be at Twenty-one Twenty-three South Fremont Avenue, that’s where I’d be.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s where my family lives,” said Angela. “I’ve got an older sister. She married a boy just like you—cute and goofy and unemployable. Now he lives with my folks and eats his own weight every day. My folks made big sacrifices to send me to college, and for just one reason—so I could do better than my sister. Don’t you see, Dobie, I’ve got an obligation. Much as I’d like to go with you, I just can’t do it to those poor, sweet parents of mine.”
“But I’m going to make money,” I protested. “I’m going to be a very important poet.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head positively. “You can’t do both. It’s either poetry or money. What’s it going to be?”
“Angela!” I cried, full of anguish.
“Or let me put it another way,” said Angela. “It’s either poetry or me. Make your choice.”
“Angela!” I cried, fuller of anguish.
“Think it over,” said Angela, and rose and left me, and as I watched her walk into the setting sun, the light playing on her copper hair, her dirndl switching and undulating, her excellent legs sleek and quick and golden, I knew that I would give up poetry—or life itself—for Angela.
“Angela,” I called, “come back!”
She returned to me. “Yes?” she said.
“I am giving up poetry,” I said.
“Good man,” said Angela, clapping my back. “What are you going to do instead?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” I confessed.
“I have,” said Angela. “Come along.”
She took me over to the engineering school. She took me to the bulletin board in the lobby. “Look,” she said, pointing at a profusion of notices posted on the bulletin board.
I looked. The notices were offers of jobs to qualified engineers from General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, RCA, Boeing, Lockheed, Motorola, Minneapolis Honeywell, hundreds of electronics, aircraft, automotive and industrial firms. Big salaries were promised—job security, pensions, paid vacations, free housi
ng, paid-up life insurance, stock options.
“Very interesting,” I said to Angela. “What about it?”
“Don’t you see?” she asked excitedly. “There’s a terrific shortage of engineers. The whole country’s competing for them.… Oh, Dobie,” she exclaimed, her blue eyes shining, “when you get out of engineering school, you’ll be positively rolling in money!”
“But I don’t know anything about physics and chemistry and calculus,” I said truthfully. “I’m a poet.”
“You were a poet,” she corrected. “Come on.”
“Angela,” I said earnestly. “I’ll never get through. I just haven’t got that kind of mind.”
“You’ll make it,” she said.
“Never,” I said.
“For me,” she said.
I looked into her eyes, incandescent and entreating. I remarked her roundness, her softness, her suppleness, her creaminess. I sighed. “I’ll try,” I said.
And try I did. For the next few weeks I concentrated maniacally as my professors talked of ergs and vectors and torsion and ionization and cosines and Maxwell’s equation and Mendeleev’s table. But it was no use. My brain, an absolute sponge when it came to odes, sonnets and quatrains, dried up and shut tight when it came to science. No matter how earnestly I tried, how furiously I listened, nothing penetrated.
Nor did it help my morale to watch Zelda Gilroy every day. Alphabetical seating had placed me, ironically, next to a girl who was a positive whiz in science. During lectures her pencil would fly over her notebook, filling page after page with nuggets of information, while I sat and drew pictures of my initials and Angela’s locked in a heart. When called upon to recite, Zelda was a trove of facts, while I stood and blushed in silence. Her homework was always ready; mine never. She was invariably prepared, forever informed, and I was filled with helpless admiration.
The admiration, let me add, was only for her mind. Her body would take no prizes. It was all right, mind you; there just wasn’t enough of it.
Her head also was nothing to warm the blood. It was a perfectly adequate head; it’s just that Zelda didn’t take care of it. The nose shone, the lips were unlipsticked, and the short, straight hair was always stuck full of yellow pencils. Zelda, it was obvious to me, was a girl so preoccupied with science that she had no time for the softer things of life.