“Honestly. It just makes me boil to hear anyone say anything against Larry. Just let them try criticizing him to me, that’s all. Why, that man’s a living saint, that’s what he is. How on earth he’s got anything at all left, after ten years with that woman, I don’t see. She can’t let him alone a second; always wants to be in on everything, always wants to know what’s the joke and what’s he laughing about, and oh, tell her, tell her, so she can laugh too. And she’s one of those damn serious old fools that can’t see anything funny, and can’t kid or anything, and then she tries to get cute and play, too, and—well, you just can’t look, that’s all. And poor Larry, who couldn’t be funnier or have more of a sense of humor and all. I should think she’d have driven him cock-eyed wild, years ago.
“And then when she sees the poor soul having a little bit of fun with anybody for a few minutes, she gets—well, she doesn’t get jealous, she’s too self-centered ever to have a jealous moment—she’s so rotten suspicious, she’s got such a vile, dirty mind, she just gets mean. And to me, of all people. Now I ask you! Me, that’s known Larry practically all my life, practically. Why, I’ve called him Cousin Larry for years—that shows you how I’ve always felt about him. And the very first time I went down there to stay with them, she started in about why did I call him Cousin Larry, and I said, oh, I’d known him so well, I felt sort of related, and then she got kittenish, the old fool, and said, well, I’d have to take her into the family, too, and I said, yes, that would be great, or something. And I did try to call her Aunt Lila, but I just simply couldn’t seem to feel that way. And it didn’t seem to make her any happier, anyway. Well, she’s just one of those kind she’s never happy unless she’s miserable. She enjoys being miserable. That’s why she does it. Catch her doing anything she doesn’t want to do!
“Honestly. Poor Cousin Larry. Imagine that dirty old thing trying to work up something, because I call him Cousin Larry. Well, I certainly didn’t let her stop me; I guess my friendship with Larry is worth a little more than that. And he calls me Little Sweetheart, too, just the way he always did. He’s always called me his little sweetheart. Wouldn’t you think she could see, if there was anything in it, he wouldn’t call me that right in front of her face all the time?
“Really. It isn’t that she means anything in my young life, it’s just that I feel so terribly sorry for Larry. I wouldn’t set foot in the house again if it wasn’t for him. But he says—of course, he’s never said one single word against her, he’s the kind would always be just like a clam about any woman that happened to be his wife—he says nobody has any idea of what it’s like to be there alone with Lila. So that’s why I went down in the first place. And I saw what he meant. Why, the first night I was in the house, she went up to bed at ten o’clock. Cousin Larry and I were playing some old phonograph records—well, we had to do something, she wouldn’t laugh or kid or do anything we were doing, just sat there like an old stick—and it just happened I happened to find a lot of old songs Larry and I used to sing and go dancing to, and everything. Well, you know how it is when you know a man awfully well, you always have things that remind you of things, and we were laughing and playing these records and sort of saying, ‘Do you remember the time?’ and ‘What does that remind you of?’ and all, the way everybody does; and the first thing you know, Lila got up and said she was sure we wouldn’t mind if she went to bed—she felt so awfully tired. And Larry told me then, that’s what she always does when anybody around is having a good time. If there’s a guest in the house when she feels so awfully tired, that’s just too bad, that’s all. A little thing like that doesn’t put that one out. When she wants to go to bed, she goes.
“So that’s why I’ve gone down there so much. You don’t know what a real godsend it is for Larry to have someone he can sit up with, after dear Lila goes to bed at ten o’clock. And then I’m somebody the poor soul can play golf with in the daytime, too; Lila can’t play—oh, she’s got something wrong with her insides, wouldn’t she have? I wouldn’t go near the place if it wasn’t such a help to Larry. You know how crazy he is about having a good time. And Lila’s old—she’s an owe-wuld woman! Honestly. Larry—well, of course it doesn’t make any difference how old a man is, anyway—years, I mean; it’s the way he feels that counts. And Larry’s just like a kid. I keep telling Lila, trying to clean up her nasty, evil mind, that Cousin Larry and I are nothing but a couple of crazy kids together. Now I ask you, wouldn’t you think she’d have sense enough to see she’s all through and the only thing for her to do is to sit back and let people have a good time that can? She had a good time; going to bed early, that’s what she likes. Nobody interferes with her—wouldn’t you think she’d mind her own business and stop asking questions and wanting to know what everything’s about?
“Well, now look. Once I was down there, and I happened to be wearing orchids. And so Lila said oh, weren’t they lovely and all, and who sent them to me. Honestly. She deliberately asked me who sent them to me. So I thought, well, it will just do you good, and I told her Cousin Larry did. I told her it was a sort of a little anniversary of ours—you know how it is, when you know a man a long time, you always have sort of little anniversaries, like the first time he ever took you to lunch, or the first time he sent you flowers or something. So anyway, this was one of those, and I told Lila what a wonderful friend Cousin Larry was to me, and how he always remembered things like that, and how much fun it was for him to do them, he seemed to get such pleasure out of doing sweet things. Now I ask you. Wouldn’t you think anybody in the world would see how innocent it was if you told them that? And do you know what she said? Honestly. She said, ‘I like orchids, too.’ So I just thought, well, maybe if you were fifteen years younger you might get some man to send you some, baby, but I didn’t say a thing. I just said, ‘Oh, wear these, Lila, won’t you?’ Just like that; and Lord knows, I didn’t have to say it, did I? But oh, no, she wouldn’t. No, she thought she’d just go and lie down a while, if I didn’t mind. She was feeling so awfully tired.
“And then—oh, my dear, I nearly forgot to tell you. You’ll simply die over this, you’ll absolutely collapse. Well, the last time I was there, Cousin Larry had sent me some little chiffon drawers; they couldn’t have been cuter. You know, it was just a joke, these little pink chiffon things with ‘Mais l’amour viendra’ embroidered on them in black. It means ‘Love will come.’ You know. He saw them in some window and he just sent them to me, just for this joke. He’s always doing things like—hey, for goodness’ sake, don’t tell anyone, will you? Because, Lord knows if it meant anything, I wouldn’t be telling you, you know that, but you know how people are. And there’s been enough talk, just because I go out with him sometimes, to keep the poor soul company while Lila’s in bed.
“Well, so anyway, he sent me these things, and so when I came down to dinner—there were just the three of us; that’s another thing she does, she doesn’t have anybody in unless he absolutely insists—I said to Larry, ‘I’ve got them on, Cousin Larry.’ So of course Lila had to hear and she said, ‘What have you got on?’ and she kept asking and asking, and naturally I wasn’t going to tell her, and it just struck me so funny I nearly died trying not to laugh and every time I caught Larry’s eye we’d both bust right out. And Lila kept saying oh, what was the joke, and oh, tell her, tell her. And so finally, when she saw we wouldn’t tell, she had to go to bed, no matter how it made us feel. My God, can’t people have jokes? This is a free country, isn’t it?
“Honestly. And she’s getting worse and worse all the time. I’m simply sick about Larry. I can’t see what he’s ever going to do. You know a woman like that wouldn’t give a man a divorce in a million years, even if he was the one that had the money. Larry never says a word, but I bet there are times when he just wishes she’d die. And everybody saying ‘Oh, poor Lila,’ ‘Oh, poor, dear Lila, isn’t it a shame?’ That’s because she gets them off in corners, and starts sobbing about not having any children. Oh, how she wishes she had a
baby. Oh, if she and Larry only had a baby, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the eyes filling with tears—you know, you’ve seen her do it. Eyes filling with tears! A lot she’s got to cry about, always doing what she wants all the time. I bet that’s just a line, about not having a baby. That’s just to get sympathy. She’s just so rotten selfish she wouldn’t have ever given up her own convenience to have one, that’s what’s the matter with her. She might have had to stay up after ten o’clock.
“Poor Lila! Honestly, I could lose my lunch. Why don’t they say poor Larry, for a change? He’s the one to feel sorry for. Well. All I know is, I’ll always do anything I can for Cousin Larry. That’s all I know.”
The young woman in the printed crepe de Chine dress removed her dead cigarette from its pasteboard holder and seemed, as she did so, to find increased enjoyment in the familiar sight of her rich-hued finger nails. Then she took from her lap a case of gold or some substance near it, and in a minute mirror scanned her face as carefully as if it were verse. She knit her brows, she drew her upper eyelids nearly to those below them, she turned her head as one expressing regretful negation, she moved her mouth laterally in the manner of a semi-tropical fish; and when all this was done, she seemed even cooler in confidence of well-being. Then she lighted a fresh cigarette and appeared to find that, too, impeccable. Then she went right on over all she had been saying before.
The New Yorker, June 30, 1934
Mrs. Hofstadter on Josephine Street
That summer, the Colonel and I leased a bungalow named 947 West Catalpa Boulevard, rumored completely furnished: three forks, but twenty-four nutpicks. Then we went to an employment agency, to hunt for treasure. The lady at the employment agency was built in terraces; she was of a steady pink, presumably all over, and a sky-wide capability. She bit into each of her words and seemed to find it savory, and she finished every sentence to the last crumb. When I am in the presence of such people I am frequently asked, “And what’s the matter with Sister today? Has the cat got her tongue?” But they make the Colonel want to tell them what he done to Philadelphia Jack O’Brien.
So the Colonel did the talking for our team. The lady at the employment agency was of the prompt impression that I was something usually kept in the locked wing; she gave me a quick, kind nod, as who should say “Now you just sit there quietly and count those twelve fingers of yours,” and then she and the Colonel left me out of the whole project. We wanted, the Colonel said, a man; a man to market, to cook, to serve, to remember about keeping the cigarette-boxes filled, and to clean the little house. We wanted a man, he said, because maids, at least those in our experience, talked a good deal of the time. We were worn haggard with unsolicited autobiographies. We must insist, he said, that our servant be, before all things, still.
“My wife,” said the Colonel—the lady and I waited for him to add, “the former Miss Kallikak”—“my wife must never be disturbed.”
“I see,” the lady said. She sighed a little.
“She writes,” the Colonel said.
“And pretty soon now,” the lady and I inferred, “we must look around for someone to come in a couple of hours a week and teach her to read.”
The Colonel went on talking about what we wanted. It was but little. The simplest food, he said. The lady nodded compassionately at him; surely she pictured him standing with extended dish trying to coax me in from eating clay. The quietest life, he said, the earliest hours, the fewest guests—it was a holiday, really, to live with us. We asked only someone to stand between us and the telephone, someone to flick from the doorstep young gentlemen soliciting subscriptions to magazines, someone to keep, at other times and in so far as possible, his face shut.
“Don’t you say another word!” the lady said. She smacked that “say” as if it had been delicious with salt and onion. “Not one other word. I’ve got just the thing!”
Horace Wrenn, she said, was the thing. He was colored, she said, but fine. I was so deeply pondering the selection of “but” that I missed several courses in her repast of words. When next I heard her, a new name had sprung in.
“He’s been with Mrs. Hofstadter off and on,” she said. She looked triumphant. I looked as if all my life I had heard that anybody who had ever been with Mrs. Hofstadter, either off or on, was beyond question the thing. The Colonel looked much as usual.
“Mrs. Hofstadter on Josephine Street,” the lady explained. “That’s our loveliest residential district. She has a lovely home there. She’s one of our loveliest families. Mrs. Hofstadter—well, wait till you see what she says!”
She took from her desk a sheet of notepaper spread with a handwriting like the lesser rivers on maps. It was Mrs. Hofstadter on Josephine Street’s letter of recommendation of Horace Wrenn, and it must have been a sort of blending of the Ninety-Eighth Psalm with Senator Vest’s tribute to his dog. Whatever it was, it was too good for the likes of us to see. The lady held it tight and slipped her gaze along its lines with clucks and smacks of ecstasy and cries of “Well, look at this, will you—‘honest, economical, good carver’—well!” and “My, this is a reference for you!”
Then she locked the letter in her desk, and she talked to the Colonel. He is to be had only with difficulty, but she got him, and good. She congratulated him upon the softness of his fortune. She marveled that it was given him to find, and without effort, the blue rose. She envied him the life that would be his when perfection came to house with him. She sighed for the exquisite dishes, the smooth attentions that were to be offered him, ever in silence, by competence and humility, blent and incarnate. He was to have, she told him, just everything, and that without moving a hand or answering a question. There was only one little catch to it, she said; and the Colonel went gray. Horace could not come to us until the day after the next one. Mrs. Hofstadter on Josephine Street’s daughter was to be married, and Horace had charge of the breakfast. It was touching to hear the Colonel plead his willingness to wait.
“Well, then I guess that’s all,” the lady said, briskly. She rose. “If you aren’t the luckiest! You just run right along home now, and wait for Horace.” Her air added, “And take Soft Susie, the Girl Who Is Like Anybody Else Till the Moon Comes Up, with you. We want no naturals here!”
We went home, sweet in thought of the luxury to come; though the Colonel, who is of a melancholy cast, took to worrying a little because Horace might not go back to New York with us when the summer was over.
Until the arrival of Horace, we did what is known as making out somehow, which is a big phrase for it. It was found to be best, after fair trial, for me to stay out of the kitchen altogether. So the Colonel did the cooking, and tomatoes kept creeping into everything, which gave him delusions of persecution. It was also found better for me to avoid any other room. The last time I made the bed, the Colonel came in and surveyed the result.
“What is this?” he inquired. “Some undergraduate prank?”
Horace arrived in the afternoon, toward the cool of the day. No bell or knocker heralded his coming; simply, he was with us in the living-room. He carried a suitcase of some leathery material, and upon his head he retained a wide white straw hat with drooping brim, rather like something chosen by a duchess for garden-party wear. He was tall and broad, with an enormous cinder-colored face crossed by gold-encircled spectacles.
He spoke to us. As if coated with grease, words slid from his great lips, and his tones were those of one who cozens the sick.
“Here,” he said, “is Horace. Horace has come to take care of you.”
He set down his suitcase and removed his hat, revealing oiled hair, purple in the sunlight, plaided over with thin, dusty lines; Horace employed a hair-net. He laid his hat upon a table. He advanced and gave to each of us one of his hands. I received the left, the middle finger of which was missing, leaving in its stead a big, square gap.
“I want you to feel,” he said, “that I am going to think of this as my home. That is the way I will think of it. I always try to
think the right thing. When I told my friends I was coming here, I said to them, I said, ‘That is my home from now on.’ You are going to meet my friends; yes, you are. I want you to meet my friends. My friends can tell you more about me than I can. Mrs. Hofstadter always says to me, ‘Horace,’ she says, ‘I never heard anything like it,’ she says. ‘Your friends just can’t say enough for you.’ I have a great many friends, boy friends and lady friends. Mrs. Hofstadter always tells me, ‘Horace,’ she says, ‘I never seen anybody had so many friends.’ Mrs. Hofstadter on Josephine Street. She has a lovely home there; I want you to see her home. When I told her I was coming here, ‘Oh, my, Horace,’ she said, ‘what’m I ever going to do without you?’ I have served Mrs. Hofstadter for years, right there on Josephine Street. ‘Oh, my, Horace,’ she said, ‘how’m I going to get along without Horace?’ But I had promised to come to you folks, and Horace never goes back on his word. I am a big man, and I always try to do the big thing.”
“Well, look,” said the Colonel, “suppose I show you where your room is and you can—”
Complete Stories Page 32