I am sure that many a husband has wanted to wrench the family medicine cabinet off the wall and throw it out the window, if only because the average medicine cabinet is so filled with mysterious bottles and unidentifiable objects of all kinds that it is a source of constant bewilderment and exasperation to the American male. Surely the British medicine cabinet and the French medicine cabinet and all the other medicine cabinets must be simpler and better ordered than ours. It may be that the American habit of saving everything and never throwing anything away, even empty bottles, causes the domestic medicine cabinet to become as cluttered in its small way as the American attic becomes cluttered in its major way. I have encountered few medicine cabinets in this country which were not pack-jammed with something between a hundred and fifty and two hundred different items, from dental floss to boracic acid, from razor blades to sodium perborate, from adhesive tape to coconut oil. Even the neatest wife will put off clearing out the medicine cabinet on the ground that she has something else to do that is more important at the moment, or more diverting. It was in the apartment of such a wife and her husband that I became enormously involved with a medicine cabinet one morning not long ago.
I had spent the weekend with this couple—they live on East Tenth Street near Fifth Avenue—such a weekend as left me reluctant to rise up on Monday morning with bright and shining face and go to work. They got up and went to work, but I didn’t. I didn’t get up until about two-thirty in the afternoon. I had my face all lathered for shaving and the washbowl was full of hot water when suddenly I cut myself with the razor. I cut my ear. Very few men cut their ears with razors, but I do, possibly because I was taught the old Spencerian free-wrist movement by my writing teacher in the grammar grades. The ear bleeds rather profusely when cut with a razor and is difficult to get at. More angry than hurt, I jerked open the door of the medicine cabinet to see if I could find a styptic pencil and out fell, from the top shelf, a little black paper packet containing nine needles. It seems that this wife kept a little paper packet containing nine needles on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. The packet fell into the soapy water of the washbowl, where the paper rapidly disintegrated, leaving nine needles at large in the bowl. I was, naturally enough, not in the best condition, either physical or mental, to recover nine needles from a washbowl. No gentleman who has lather on his face and whose ear is bleeding is in the best condition for anything, even something involving the handling of nine large blunt objects.
“And the Medicine Chest After It!”
It did not seem wise to me to pull the plug out of the washbowl and let the needles go down the drain. I had visions of clogging up the plumbing system of the house, and also a vague fear of causing short circuits somehow or other (I know very little about electricity and I don’t want to have it explained to me). Finally, I groped very gently around the bowl and eventually had four of the needles in the palm of one hand and three in the palm of the other—two I couldn’t find. If I had thought quickly and clearly, I wouldn’t have done that. A lathered man whose ear is bleeding and who has four wet needles in one hand and three in the other may be said to have reached the lowest known point of human efficiency. There is nothing he can do but stand there. I tried transferring the needles in my left hand to the palm of my right hand, but I couldn’t get them off my left hand. Wet needles cling to you. In the end, I wiped the needles off onto a bathtowel which was hanging on a rod above the bathtub. It was the only towel that I could find. I had to dry my hands afterward on the bathmat. Then I tried to find the needles in the towel. Hunting for seven needles in a bathtowel is the most tedious occupation I have ever engaged in. I could find only five of them. With the two that had been left in the bowl, that meant there were four needles in all missing—two in the washbowl and two others lurking in the towel or lying in the bathtub under the towel. Frightful thoughts came to me of what might happen to anyone who used that towel or washed his face in the bowl or got into the tub, if I didn’t find the missing needles. Well, I didn’t find them. I sat down on the edge of the tub to think, and I decided finally that the only thing to do was wrap up the towel in a newspaper and take it away with me. I also decided to leave a note for my friends explaining as clearly as I could that I was afraid there were two needles in the bathtub and two needles in the washbowl, and that they better be careful.
I looked everywhere in the apartment, but I could not find a pencil, or a pen, or a typewriter. I could find pieces of paper, but nothing with which to write on them. I don’t know what gave me the idea—a movie I had seen, perhaps, or a story I had read—but I suddenly thought of writing a message with a lipstick. The wife might have an extra lipstick lying around and, if so, I concluded it would be in the medicine cabinet. I went back to the medicine cabinet and began poking around in it for a lipstick. I saw what I thought looked like the metal tip of one, and I got two fingers around it and began to pull gently—it was under a lot of things. Every object in the medicine cabinet began to slide. Bottles broke in the washbowl and on the floor; red, brown, and white liquids spurted; nail files, scissors, razor blades, and miscellaneous objects sang and clattered and tinkled. I was covered with perfume, peroxide, and cold cream.
It took me half an hour to get the debris all together in the middle of the bathroom floor. I made no attempt to put anything back in the medicine cabinet. I knew it would take a steadier hand than mine and a less shattered spirit. Before I went away (only partly shaved) and abandoned the shambles, I left a note saying that I was afraid there were needles in the bathtub and the washbowl and that I had taken their towel and that I would call up and tell them everything—I wrote it in iodine with the end of a toothbrush. I have not yet called up, I am sorry to say. I have neither found the courage nor thought up the words to explain what happened. I suppose my friends believe that I deliberately smashed up their bathroom and stole their towel. I don’t know for sure, because they have not yet called me up, either.
A Couple of Hamburgers
IT HAD been raining for a long time, a slow, cold rain falling out of iron-colored clouds. They had been driving since morning and they still had a hundred and thirty miles to go. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. “I’m getting hungry,” she said. He took his eyes off the wet, winding road for a fraction of a second and said, “We’ll stop at a dog-wagon.” She shifted her position irritably. “I wish you wouldn’t call them dog-wagons,” she said. He pressed the klaxon button and went around a slow car. “That’s what they are,” he said. “Dog-wagons.” She waited a few seconds. “Decent people call them diners,” she told him, and added, “Even if you call them diners, I don’t like them.” He speeded up a hill. “They have better stuff than most restaurants,” he said. “Anyway, I want to get home before dark and it takes too long in a restaurant. We can stay our stomachs with a couple hamburgers.” She lighted a cigarette and he asked her to light one for him. She lighted one deliberately and handed it to him. “I wish you wouldn’t say ‘stay our stomachs,’ ” she said. “You know I hate that. It’s like ‘sticking to your ribs.’ You say that all the time.” He grinned. “Good old American expressions, both of them,” he said. “Like sow belly. Old pioneer term, sow belly.” She sniffed. “My ancestors were pioneers, too. You don’t have to be vulgar just because you were a pioneer.” “Your ancestors never got as far west as mine did,” he said. “The real pioneers travelled on their sow belly and got somewhere.” He laughed loudly at that. She looked out at the wet trees and signs and telephone poles going by. They drove on for several miles without a word; he kept chortling every now and then.
“What’s that funny sound?” she asked, suddenly. It invariably made him angry when she heard a funny sound. “What funny sound?” he demanded. “You’re always hearing funny sounds.” She laughed briefly. “That’s what you said when the bearing burned out,” she reminded him. “You’d never have noticed it if it hadn’t been for me.” “I noticed it, all right,” he said. “Yes,” she said. “When it was to
o late.” She enjoyed bringing up the subject of the burned-out bearing whenever he got to chortling. “It was too late when you noticed it, as far as that goes,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Well, what does it sound like this time? All engines make a noise running, you know.” “I know all about that,” she answered. “It sounds like—it sounds like a lot of safety pins being jiggled around in a tumbler.” He snorted. “That’s your imagination. Nothing gets the matter with a car that sounds like a lot of safety pins. I happen to know that.” She tossed away her cigarette. “Oh, sure,” she said. “You always happen to know everything.” They drove on in silence.
“I want to stop somewhere and get something to eat!” she said loudly. “All right, all right!” he said. “I been watching for a dog-wagon, haven’t I? There hasn’t been any. I can’t make you a dog-wagon.” The wind blew rain in on her and she put up the window on her side all the way. “I won’t stop at just any old diner,” she said. “I won’t stop unless it’s a cute one.” He looked around at her. “Unless it’s a what one?” he shouted. “You know what I mean,” she said. “I mean a decent, clean one where they don’t slosh things at you. I hate to have a lot of milky coffee sloshed at me.” “All right,” he said. “We’ll find a cute one, then. You pick it out. I wouldn’t know. I might find one that was cunning but not cute.” That struck him as funny and he began to chortle again. “Oh, shut up,” she said.
Five miles farther along they came to a place called Sam’s Diner. “Here’s one,” he said, slowing down. She looked it over. “I don’t want to stop there,” she said. “I don’t like the ones that have nicknames.” He brought the car to a stop at one side of the road. “Just what’s the matter with the ones that have nicknames?” he asked with edgy, mock interest. “They’re always Greek ones,” she told him. “They’re always Greek ones,” he repeated after her. He set his teeth firmly together and started up again. After a time, “Good old Sam, the Greek,” he said, in a singsong. “Good old Connecticut Sam Beardsley, the Greek.” “You didn’t see his name,” she snapped. “Winthrop, then,” he said. “Old Samuel Cabot Winthrop, the Greek dog-wagon man.” He was getting hungry.
On the outskirts of the next town she said, as he slowed down, “It looks like a factory kind of town.” He knew that she meant she wouldn’t stop there. He drove on through the place. She lighted a cigarette as they pulled out into the open again. He slowed down and lighted a cigarette for himself. “Factory kind of town than I am!” he snarled. It was ten miles before they came to another town. “Torrington,” he growled. “Happen to know there’s a dog-wagon here because I stopped in it once with Bob Combs. Damn cute place, too, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking you anything,” she said, coldly. “You think you’re so funny. I think I know the one you mean,” she said, after a moment. “It’s right in the town and it sits at an angle from the road. They’re never so good, for some reason.” He glared at her and almost ran up against the curb. “What the hell do you mean ‘sits at an angle from the road’?” he cried. He was very hungry now. “Well, it isn’t silly,” she said, calmly. “I’ve noticed the ones that sit at an angle. They’re cheaper, because they fitted them into funny little pieces of ground. The big ones parallel to the road are the best.” He drove right through Torrington, his lips compressed. “Angle from the road, for God’s sake!” he snarled, finally. She was looking out her window.
On the outskirts of the next town there was a diner called The Elite Diner. “This looks—” she began. “I see it, I see it!” he said. “It doesn’t happen to look any cuter to me than any goddam—” she cut him off. “Don’t be such a sorehead, for Lord’s sake,” she said. He pulled up and stopped beside the diner, and turned on her. “Listen,” he said, grittingly, “I’m going to put down a couple of hamburgers in this place even if there isn’t one single inch of chintz or cretonne in the whole—” “Oh, be still,” she said. “You’re just hungry and mean like a child. Eat your old hamburgers, what do I care?” Inside the place they sat down on stools and the counterman walked over to them, wiping up the counter top with a cloth as he did so. “What’ll it be, folks?” he said. “Bad day, ain’t it? Except for ducks.” “I’ll have a couple of—” began the husband, but his wife cut in. “I just want a pack of cigarettes,” she said. He turned around slowly on his stool and stared at her as she put a dime and a nickel in the cigarette machine and ejected a package of Lucky Strikes. He turned to the counterman again. “I want a couple of hamburgers,” he said. “With mustard and lots of onion. Lots of onion!” She hated onions. “I’ll wait for you in the car,” she said. He didn’t answer and she went out.
He finished his hamburgers and his coffee slowly. It was terrible coffee. Then he went out to the car and got in and drove off, slowly humming “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” After a mile or so, “Well,” he said, “what was the matter with the Elite Diner, milady?” “Didn’t you see that cloth the man was wiping the counter with?” she demanded. “Ugh!” She shuddered. “I didn’t happen to want to eat any of the counter,” he said. He laughed at that comeback. “You didn’t even notice it,” she said. “You never notice anything. It was filthy.” “I noticed they had some damn fine coffee in there,” he said. “It was swell.” He knew she loved good coffee. He began to hum his tune again; then he whistled it; then he began to sing it. She did not show her annoyance, but she knew that he knew she was annoyed. “Will you be kind enough to tell me what time it is?” she asked. “Big bad wolf, big bad wolf—five minutes o’ five—tum-dee-doo-dee-dum-m-m.” She settled back in her seat and took a cigarette from her case and tapped it on the case. “I’ll wait till we get home,” she said. “If you’ll be kind enough to speed up a little.” He drove on at the same speed. After a time he gave up the “Big Bad Wolf” and there was deep silence for two miles. Then suddenly he began to sing, very loudly, “H-A-double-R-I-G-A-N spells Harr-i-gan—” She gritted her teeth. She hated that worse than any of his songs except “Barney Google.” He would go on to “Barney Google” pretty soon, she knew. Suddenly she leaned slighty forward. The straight line of her lips began to curve up ever so slightly. She heard the safety pins in the tumbler again. Only now they were louder, more insistent, ominous. He was singing too loud to hear them. “Is a name that shame has never been con-nec-ted with—Harr-i-gan, that’s me!” She relaxed against the back of the seat, content to wait.
Aisle Seats in the Mind
I FOLLOW as closely as anyone, probably more closely than most people, the pronouncements on life, death, and the future of the movies as given out from time to time by Miss Mary Pickford. Some friends of mine think that it has even become a kind of obsession with me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but I do admit that many times when I would ordinarily sit back and drink my brandy and smoke a cigar and become a little drowsy mentally and a little sodden intellectually, something that Mary Pickford has just said engages my inner attention so that instead of dozing off, I am kept as bright-eyed and alert as a hunted deer. Often I wake up at night, too, and lie there thinking about life, and death, and the future of the movies. Miss Pickford’s latest arresting observation came in an interview with a World-Telegram correspondent out in Beverly Hills. Said Miss Pickford, in part, “Any type of salaciousness is as distasteful to Mr. Lasky as it is to me. There will be no salaciousness at all in our films. Not one little bit! We will consider only those stories which will insure wholesome, healthy, yet vital entertainment. Be a guardian, not an usher, at the portal of your thought.”
Miss Pickford has a way which I can only call intriguing, much as I hate the word, of throwing out little rounded maxims, warnings, and morals at the ends of her paragraphs. I had a great-aunt who did the same thing, and in my teens she fascinated and frightened me; perhaps that is why Miss Pickford’s exhortations so engross me, and keep me from the dicing tables, the dens of vice, and the more salacious movies, poems, and novels. Miss Pickford’s newest precept has occupied a great many of my waking hours since I read it,
and quite a few of my sleeping ones. In the first place, it has brought me sharply up against the realization that I am not a guardian at the portal of my thought and that, what is more, being now forty-two years of age, I probably never will be. What I am like at the portal of my thought is one of those six-foot-six ushers who used to stand around the lobby of the Hippodrome during performances of “Jumbo.” (They were not really ushers, but doormen, I think, but let us consider them as ushers for the sake of the argument.) What I want to convey is that I am all usher, as far as the portal of my thought goes, terribly usher. But I am unlike the “Jumbo” ushers or any other ushers in that I show any and all thoughts to their seats whether they have tickets or not. They can be under-age and without their parents, or they can be completely cockeyed, or they can show up without a stitch on; I let them in and show them to the best seats in my mind (the ones in the royal arena and the gold boxes).
A Trio of Thoughts
I don’t want you to think that all I do is let in salacious thoughts. Salacious thoughts can get in along with any others, including those that are under-age and those that are cockeyed, but my mental audience is largely made up of thoughts that are, I am sorry to say, idiotic. For days a thought has been running around in the aisles of my mind, singing and shouting, a thought that, if I were a guardian, I would certainly have barred at the portal or thrown out instantly as soon as it got in. This thought is one without reason or motivation, but it keeps singing, over and over, to a certain part of the tune of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” these words:
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