by Packer, Vin
Dru began kicking Archie violently under the table at that point, and when she went into the kitchen for more rolls, she called to Archie, “Can you come here a moment, darling? I need help with something.”
Archie gave Neal an apologetic smile and left him with Anna Awful.
Dru said, “She is not staying overnight!”
“I agree. Where’s the bus schedule?”
“On the counter. Does she think she’s invited for the weekend, Archie?” Dru said incredulously. “It sounds like it. We’ll all pay tomorrow—what does that mean if it doesn’t mean she’s planning to see us at breakfast?”
“And get her off Neal’s back, Archie! I don’t think her little gifts for you two were the least bit amusing!”
Both Neal and Archie had received a copy of 4000 Names for Your Baby.
“She wasn’t trying to amuse us,” Archie said. “It’s all that business about Mars, Neptune and Leo being in the House of Offspring. You know she can’t let go of anything; she keeps harping away on the same damn things! And she’s crocked, you realize?”
“Pissed! Did you see Neal’s face when he unwrapped it?”
“The poor bastard just left the police!” Archie said. “And I’m damn sure he suspects Margaret’s left him for this Tuto.”
“I don’t know, Archie. I think he’d be angrier. He just looks all shook up.”
Archie was running his finger down the bus listings. He said, “Anna Awful is the crowning blow, regardless of what he thinks! First she tells him there’ll be violent upheavals in his life, then she tells him it’s all right, though, because Mars, Neptune and Leo are going to provide progeny! She never stops to think that somebody might not want progeny!”
Dru sighed. “I know. Thank God he doesn’t have any interest in it; if he believed her, he’d have a perfect excuse for going out and hanging himself!”
“So would I.”
“So would you … Did you hear her tell him what his first name meant?”
Archie said, “Even if he doesn’t have any interest in it, it can begin to get you. Enough of it can begin to get you … What about his first name?”
Dru dropped more rolls into the bread basket. “While you were up in the bathroom she picked up the baby-name book and said, ‘Cornelius means battle horn, and you’ll be doing a lot of battling in the days to come.’ “
“What’d he say?”
“He didn’t even smile. He just looked at her and he said, ‘I hope my horn helps me, then. Or am I beyond help?’ “
“Naturally she assured him he was beyond help, right?” Archie said.
“Just about. Oh, she’s a bitch on wheels, Arch! Do you know she came out here before dinner and she had the nerve to tell me I was playing right into Saturn’s hands by not having a cake for your birthday!”
“Did you tell her that I don’t like cake?” Archie said. He passed her the bus schedule. “Here’s one leaving at ten-something. I don’t have my glasses. What is it, ten-twenty or ten-thirty?”
“Ten-twenty … No, I didn’t tell her you don’t like cake! Why should I defend myself? She said, ‘Oh, sweetie, now’s a time you have to work at your marriage! Archie’s marital aspects are very turbulent!’ I almost told her I didn’t have a marriage in the ninth place!”
Archie said, “One word about that business tonight and I’ll get on the ten-twenty with her.”
“You ought to rescue Neal now … Archie?”
“What?”
She touched his lips with her fingers. “You said it can begin to get you. It isn’t getting you, is it?”
“I wouldn’t miss her if she fell through an open manhole tomorrow,” he said.
“But it isn’t getting you, is it? You don’t believe in any of it, do you?”
“You know better than that.”
She said, “Because it is spooky. All this bit about bad marital aspects and Liddy turning up with that news about your divorce being illegal, and Margaret—“
He leaned down and kissed her. “Hush … How’m I going to get her on the bus in an hour and forty minutes? What’ll I tell her?”
“First get that glass out of her hand, or she’ll pass out,” said Dru. “I’m bringing in coffee before I serve the mousse.” “But what’ll I say? It’s heave-ho time, Mrs. Muckermann!” Dru said, “Tell her the sun is shining on her House of Departure.”
They giggled, and Archie said, “We’re going to have to put you out on Uranus, Mrs. Muckermann.”
Dru held her stomach, laughing. “Put on your shoes, Mrs. Muckermann, your Capricorn’s going traveling.”
Archie snapped his fingers. “I know,” he said. “I’ll get Neal to say one of his colleagues is giving him a birthday party later tonight, and we’re expected. I’ll just tell the old witch we’re going to drop her at the bus stop on the way.”
Anna Muckermann said, “That won’t be necessary, Archie.” She stood in the doorway carrying her empty champagne glass.
“Your other guest,” she said in a brittle voice, “has just gone upstairs to be ill. As for me, I’m prepared to leave immediately.”
CHAPTER 15
Visions of unpaid bills and a dwindling savings account danced sadistically through Archie Gamble’s head.
Tiffany’s owners, the Cages, had given him permission to drive their Buick until his car was repaired. Tiffany liked to stow away under the front seat, and it was to her that Archie addressed himself after depositing Mrs. Muckermann at the bus stop on 9W.
“Well, we’ll have to go out and kill a few bluebirds for our dinner now,” he said. “We just lost our meal ticket, old girl.”
Dru had insisted on driving Neal home in his Volkswagen, and Archie was to pick her up there. Neal had been pale and nauseated. While Mrs. Muckermann had sat outside smoldering in the Buick, waiting for Archie, Dru had told Archie, “I’m so worried about Neal!”
Archie slowed up for the turn off 9W.
He said, “The hell with me, right, Tiffany? First things first! She’s worried about Neal!”
Archie made the turn and lit a True as he went down the hill toward Piermont.
Damn Dru! She should have wanted to lend him a little support, never mind Neal Dana! Dru had gotten him involved in the whole Muckermann mess to begin with! If it hadn’t been for Anna Muckermann and this idiotic show, which was now kaput where Archie Gamble was concerned, Archie could have knocked off several articles and had a novel in the works.
The ride with Mrs. Muckermann to the bus stop had been undergone in stony silence. The only thing Mrs. Muckermann had said, before she got out of the car, was: “Our association is terminated. I have no doubt you’ll let Saturn carry you along the rest of the way on your self-destructive path. I feel sorry for you, Archie Gamble. There’s more trouble ahead.”
All right, it was a lot of crap, but it could get to you!
“It isn’t getting to you, is it?” Dru had asked, as though she had sensed that it was beginning to; then she had turned right around and chosen to look after Neal, left Archie to cope with Mrs. Muckermann, and now drive back by himself with his nerves in knots!
Archie could feel his drinks. He went along River Road slowly, telling himself all Mrs. Muckermann would need now would be the satisfaction of Archie’s destroying himself in an automobile wreck. He laughed, envisioning a newspaper report of the wreck as Mrs. Muckermann would write it. The driver was not intoxicated; he was badly aspected.
But the smile passed from his face. Better men than Archie Gamble had become wary of astrological omens: FDR, for one. He had consulted the famous astrologer Louis de Wohl; there were stories told that he had changed the date of the Presidential Inaugural to January 20 from March 4 in a futile effort at upsetting the pattern of American president’s dying during the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. Nehru was a stanch believer in astrology; Aldous Huxley, Henry Miller, Ralph Waldo Emerson; Benjamin Franklin, Goethe, and Mark Twain, who had said, “I was born with Haley’s Comet, and I expect to die u
pon its return”—and did … Teddy Roosevelt had mounted his horoscope on a chess board which always stood on a table in the White House.
The hell with it—his drinks were doing his thinking!
He slowed up near Neal’s hill. There was a car blocking the entrance, and Archie missed the turn. He had to back up, and as he did, the other car went forward. It was a black Ford Falcon; the street light caught the reflection of a small, shiny penny fixed to the door.
Archie braked the Buick and watched the car go down River Road. A woman was driving. He had not been able to see her face, only the bright green scarf she wore around her head.
Margaret Dana?
Tiffany took a swipe at the cuff on Archie’s trousers. “Okay! Okay!” Archie complained. “We’re going.”
• • •
Dru didn’t want to go.
“We can’t just leave him, Arch. He feels awful!”
Archie decided to tell her about seeing the Falcon after he got her home. If it had been Margaret Dana, she had not made an appearance.
Archie said, “How do you think I feel?”
“Don’t always think of yourself, Archie! You have me; he doesn’t have anyone!”
“I have her, folks. That’s why I took Mrs. Muckermann to the bus alone.”
“What’d she say, Archie?”
“Next time come along and find out.”
“Archie, Neal is heartsick!”
“He’s just got a load on.”
“Like you,” she said. “Only champagne doesn’t make him mean.”
“Now I’m mean. I just lost the show, thousands of dollars down the drain, and—“
She slammed a coffee mug down on the kitchen table. “The show! Money! Is that all you care about? Neal’s in there with all the sawdust spilling out of him!”
The old rag doll analogy! She had used it time and again when Archie was torching over Liddy, in the beginning days of his relationship with Dru.
“So that’s it,” Archie said.
“What’s it?”
“You’ve found a new rag doll to mend! A little psychologist doll this time, instead of a little writer doll. Jesus!”
“You just can’t stand it if you’re not the center of attraction!”
“Oh, he’s in for a treat!” He imitated Dru’s voice saying the things she had said when they were first sleeping together. “ ‘Am I as good as she was in bed?’ … ‘Would you rather be with her?’ … ‘Did you think of her while you were touching me?’ … ‘My breasts aren’t very big, are they?’ “
Dru’s eyes flashed. “You just lay off my breasts!”
“ ‘Neal?’ “ he continued, imitating her whine. “ ‘Do you mind it that I’m so small?’ “
“Liddy’s breasts are like goddamn hanging hams!” Dru said.
“Hear that in there, Neal?” said Archie. “Miss Ping-Pong Balls doesn’t like Miss Hanging Hams.”
“That did it!” said Dru.
“Oh, look,” Archie said, reaching for her. “I didn’t mean it, love. I’m just upset about—“
She pushed him away and regarded him with an icy expression. “Don’t touch me,” she said quietly, emphatically. “Go!”
“I’ll say good night to Neal and meet you in the car,” he said.
She said, “I’m not ready to leave yet.” “Well, I am!”
“Leave. I don’t care what you do.”
“Leave without you?”
“I’m not helpless. I’ll get home.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Oh? Was there a point?”
“Dru, I’ve just lost my whole summer’s work! That’s the point! How do you think I feel?”
She said, “You’re not really heartsick. You’ve just got a load on.”
“Okay, he’s heartsick! He didn’t puke up liquor; he puked up his goddamn heart!”
“Low-wer your voice, Archie.”
“Are you coming with me? Now?”
“No.”
“Happy Birthday to you, too,” Archie said.
She was busy making coffee with her back turned to him.
He said, “Are you coming with me now?”
“Does it look that way?” She was counting the tablespoons of coffee under her breath as she put them into the pot.
“If you stay here,” Archie said, “you won’t find me there when you finally decide to go home!”
“Promises, promises,” she said coldly.
“I mean it, Dru!”
“… four, five, six,” she said, “and one for the pot.”
He kicked the kitchen door open with his foot and stamped into the living room. Neal Dana had gone back upstairs to the bathroom; Archie could hear the repeated flushing of the toilet.
Archie went outside and stood on the porch.
It was a beautiful moonlit night, and the sight of the enormous full moon positioned over the Hudson made him feel all the more sorry for himself. You could see this very same view from the Cages’ bedroom, and that was where Dru and he should be now; that was what he needed now.
Then he had a ridiculous thought: the moon ruled Cancer; the moon ruled Dru. And he remembered that poem Mrs. Muckermann used to recite:
Who changes like a changeful season,
Holds fast and lets go without reason?
Who is there can give adhesion To Cancer?
As he lit a cigarette, he looked inside and saw Dru setting out a cream pitcher and a sugar bowl on the living-room table.
Yes, the good little mother preparing to put the sawdust back in the rag doll. The new rag doll.
“Cherchez la mère,” as Mrs. Muckermann had often remarked, “et vous trouverez le Cancer!”
He pushed open the screen door and walked across the lawn to the Buick.
After he started the motor, he waited briefly; then he backed up the car and put his foot on the brake. He could see her through the window. Dru was arranging the coffee mugs on the table now, oblivious to what was taking place out in the driveway.
Archie reached down and pulled Tiffany out from under the seat.
“Come on,” he said, “you don’t want to go all the way to New York,” and he dropped the cat out the window before taking off.
• • •
About forty-five minutes after Archie Gamble left, Dru left, too, taking the Volkswagen as Neal told her to do.
Sobered up and over-coffeed, Neal knew he wouldn’t sleep for a while. He went across and opened a window, then put on The Pajama Game, smoking a cigarette and lying on the couch as he listened to Eddie Foy, Jr., and the ensemble sing “Racing with the Clock.”
May, 1954.
He remembered the night Margaret and he had seen the show, because the same day the Senate had defeated a proposed constitutional amendment extending the vote to eighteen-year-olds. It had depressed Margaret; she had been a part of a Rockland County committee which had worked to try to have the amendment passed. They had talked about it at supper in the Algonquin after the show. He had always been so proud of Margaret because she cared about such things. He had always compared her with Cliff Bates’ wife, a rattle-brained woman who had stopped reading the newspapers when the Journal-American folded, with Cholly Knickerbocker’s column no longer available. Her conversations were laced with first names of people she had never met, like “Jackie” and “Cee-Zee,” and “Chessy” and “Ba.” She dressed like a page out of Seventeen, and called busboys and parking lot attendants and ushers “dawdling,” winking at them like some glamorous movie actress patronizing the little people. Margaret had had such class.
Neal could not remember her ever having embarrassed him.
He had not deserved Margaret. He lay there remembering so many things about her, so many of her ways, and his eyes brimmed with tears when Janis Page began to sing, “I’m Not at All in Love.”
Margaret never would have left him as Dru Gamble had left Archie tonight to drive Neal home; she never would have let Neal leave without her. Neal
had appreciated all that Dru had done—my God what would he have done without her?—but he could not help thinking that Margaret would not have done it for anyone, much less a relative stranger, leaving Neal to fend for himself. Margaret had always put Neal first.
Then that damn baby-name book Mrs. Muckermann had presented to Neal—Neal remembered the swift punch he had felt to his bowels as he took off the wrapping and saw the title! It was then that he had begun to fall apart at the seams—to imagine, with the help of all the champagne, that the Fates, the stars, whatever name you wanted to call them by, were conspiring against him, moving in now for the kill. What perfect irony, too, that it would be astrology and an astrologer that would unnerve him; poetic justice for Margaret!
As Eddie Foy, Jr., and Reta Shaw began “I’ll Never be Jealous Again,” Neal got up and carried the coffee cups into the kitchen. He could not allow himself to lie around remembering things; it was a time when he must discipline his mind, keep it occupied. He had papers to read: one on “Crying at the Happy Ending” in a back issue of a professional journal, and one on blushing from another quarterly. Next week he would lunch with the Doubleday editor; he would set his mind to preparations for that.
Penny had promised to take the quinine pills as Neal had directed; they could do nothing for her if she were pregnant, but they might induce her period if she were not. He put the cream pitcher in the refrigerator, slamming the door shut so that it shook the house with its force as he thought again of his foolishness in trusting Penny to do anything. If she had been responsible in the first place, if she had taken the other pills as she claimed she had, there would be no reason for alarm now!
As he began to rinse out the coffee mugs, he heard Sinister shouting in the living room. The old bird had finally come to! Neal had begun to fear that Sinister had sunk into a deep depression over Margaret’s absence. For days the parrot had been reluctant to sing or speak Italian, or say much more than “I’m Sinister. I love the view,” in a pathetic, melancholy tone.
Sinister was making up for it now!
Neal turned off the water to listen. The bird was really going at it. Neal smiled and went across to the refrigerator to get out the jar of worms. He supposed he was overfeeding the parrot; he would call Dr. Halliday, Monday, and check the diet. He was definitely not going to get rid of the bird; keeping him was the least he could do. He had to admit that he had even grown fond of Sinister.