THE Melton Arms was a small, expensive residential hotel in the Fifties, convenient to everything. It was populated by dowagers, social out-of-town women who wanted to show New York to their daughters, an occasional successful columnist, and foreign diplomats who knew New York well enough to avoid the Waldorf. It had springy carpets, mirrors, fantastic arrays of gladioli, silently sliding elevators, and a famous cuisine. The waiters smiled wisely as they set down bowls of vichyssoise, and the desk clerk could look at a face and reach around for the mail that belonged to it, hardly even glancing at the box number.
Into all this went Val, carrying a suitcase, her fur-trimmed coat neatly buttoned. She was to stay there with her parents for the month they would be in New York.
“A month or longer,” Val had said, after talking to them on the phone. “It depends on Pop’s business.”
I saw her off at the corner, feeling as though she were going on a long ocean voyage. She was nervous, and kept dancing up and down. She fished a cough drop out of her pocket, tossed it in the air, and caught it in her mouth.
“I’m barricaded against all evil,” she said. “I have the sacred pictures and the Bible. Actually, it ought to be fun. We’ll probably be going out all the time. Mom likes 21. They give parties all the time...I’ll probably get some new clothes.” She babbled on and on, while I stood there feeling desolate. The world of romance was snapping Val up. “Well, I have to go now. We’ll probably go out to dinner somewhere tonight, and Pop always lets me have beer.” She looked impatient, and I said:
“Well, good-by. I’ll probably see you around school sometime.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “Oh, sure,” she said. Then she laughed. “Don’t look so sad, Gilbert. I’m not going to the moon.”
She went into the hotel, and I wandered up Fifth Avenue. It was snowing softly, and the shop windows glittered with Christmas. From inside, I could hear carols being played on chimes. It was late afternoon on a Saturday, and for the first time since I’d met Val I felt the old feeling of longing for all the city had to give, that I was too small or too ignorant to take. Up above in the windows, behind the glass revolving doors that turned and whispered in the flaky snow, beyond the fragile crystal trees in the Park, in all the carpeted steaming lobbies and in all the living rooms where candles glowed on the mantels and the lights twinkled and moved on the trees, there, if you could gather it all up in your hand like a snowball, was fulfillment. And I imagined myself in one of the living rooms, and watched desperately as I walked to the window and looked out, thinking that even this was only a part of it, and even if you were God and had forever to do it in, you could never have all of the city’s promise. Can you ever have everything you want? I wondered, standing on the corner of Fifty-ninth. Or do the people inside and above just rush around, trying to have a bit here and a bit there, hoping it will do? It seemed like an unjustifiable cruelty, for one place to have so much; for one place to be so agonizingly beautiful. It’s only because I’m lonely that I’m noticing it today, I thought. But perhaps people always are, at one time or another. Perhaps it’s good to be lonely sometimes, to be able to stand here and feel everything, all at once. After all, there’s nothing to stop me from doing anything I want, and someday I will gather up New York, like a snowball. Full of joy and cold, I began running up the street, past the secondhand bookshops, past the florist, with his window full of poinsettias, over to Lexington where two Santas tinkled their bells and a scruffy brown man sold roast chestnuts, their fragrance on the cold air. I’m happy! I thought. I’m happy! I have forever to live! In the store window, three plaster children in flannelwarm bathrobes stood poised by their tree, one hanging a ball, one dangling a candy cane, one with her hands upraised in joy. Softly, from inside, came:
“We, three kings of Orient are,
Bearing gifts we traverse afar...”
Orient! We are the kings of Orient!
On Third, the El rattled by, sending down a cascade of snow. Up the block, at the Supermarket, stood a mass of pine trees, leaning helplessly against a wooden frame. Two familiar figures stood in front of them, reaching out mittened hands to inspect a branch, or leaning back and gazing on them studiously, calculating the height of the living room. I ran over to Wimpole and threw my arms around her furry middle.
“Oh, Wimpole,” I cried, “please don’t let’s ever leave New York!”
For a week I hardly saw Val. She always seemed to be in a great rush, dashing off to have lunch with her parents and waving hastily as she went by. One day she grabbed me in the hall and said:
“Say, I’m sorry about all this, but you know parents. Mom says you’re to come to lunch Saturday.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is it an order?”
Her face fell. “You don’t have to. She just said to invite you.”
“I’ll come,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She grinned meekly and ran off. I watched her run down the hall in her new blue coat, with a flapping label saying, “Bergdorf Goodman.” As I stood there, chewing a fingernail, Lilian came over from her locker, where she had been listening.
“What’s with Boyd these days?” she asked.
“Her parents are in town,” I said abstractedly. “They take her to lunch every day at 21 and places.”
“Oh.” Apparently 21 was old stuff to Lilian. “I was wondering if she was seeing a lot of that musician.”
I turned and stared at her. “What musician?”
“Orient. She always carries his picture around.”
“Lilian Kafritz,” I said, “is there anything you don’t poke your nose into?”
Lilian put her hands on her hips and bared her yellow teeth. “Listen, Marian Gilbert. Do you think Boyd could keep a secret if she tried? Do you know how many times she’s left that picture lying around, and pages from that silly notebook? Honestly, I think she does it on purpose. Everybody knows about it. They think she’s having some great romance. Honestly, if she wouldn’t make such a fuss, nobody would care. I think she wants attention, that’s why she does it.”
I stared at her. “Everybody thinks she’s having a romance?” I repeated unbelievingly.
“Sure they do, stupid. Wouldn’t you? I don’t know whether she is, of course. It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. But I thought you might like to know what some people think.”
“Well, she isn’t,” I said. “She’s never even met him. She admires him. Haven’t you ever had a crush on anybody?”
Lilian pursed her lips. “Of course not,” she said. “I’m not that silly. Anyway, if I did, I wouldn’t make so much noise about it, especially if I’d never met him. Everybody thinks Boyd is just silly. Or they would think she was silly, if it weren’t for...” She paused, wondering whether to go on.
“Well, what?” I asked.
“Well, if it weren’t that everybody knows about her...well, you don’t have to look so horrified. She isn’t very quiet about that, either.”
I was convulsed with anger, and stood there scowling for a moment, wishing I had the courage to hit her. “So you told everybody about that, too, after we made an agreement. All right, you asked for it. I’m going to Mrs. Cooney.”
As I said it, the words sounded hollow. If it were the truth, Mrs. Cooney wasn’t going to care who found out first, whether it was Lilian or not.
“Now, listen,” Lilian was saying. “I know you think I told, but I didn’t. This is one time I didn’t. I like Boyd, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. It was just that everybody seemed to think I knew and kept asking where she went at three-fifteen. Nobody could go to a doctor or a dentist that often! So soon everybody was asking and I went to Mrs. Cooney and told her I knew, and so she got a few of the Eights together, Sylvia Van Dyke and Hillary and them, and told them, and said it didn’t mean she was queer or anything, but it was just like going to a regular doctor, and they said they understood, and they’d tell anybody who asked that Boyd had a psychiatrist but it didn’t mean she was queer, and they’d all try to help her adjust, but it was hard because she’s so quee...I mean different, and now with this Orient business, and nobody knows what to think. But I didn’t start it,” she finished, breathlessly and triumphantly. “I just thought I’d tell you before somebody else did.”
The hall was swinging back and forth in gentle arcs. All this had been happening while Val and I had been consecrating Carnegie Hall, peering through the window of Benny’s, writing in the Bible. We ignored Norton, and now we were paid back. There was nothing more to say.
“Okay, Lilian,” I said, feeling tired and dazed. “Meet me after school and I’ll buy you a sundae.”
She looked down at her little stubby hands. “It’s okay,” she said. “It so happens I have to go home anyway. Forget it.”
She picked up her books and walked down the hall, an awkward little figure, all alone. She doesn’t even have a friend, I thought. She’s the worst off of all. And I didn’t think she could ever do a nice thing.
The next day I went to see Mrs. Cooney. She frightened me, but everybody seemed to like her, so I cherished some hope that she would be understanding. I didn’t really know what I wanted from her; perhaps I just wanted to talk to someone. I found her in the home room all alone, putting fresh daisies in her test tube. She was large and lumpy, and the top half of her surged forward like a cannon barrel, while her feet, in Red Cross shoes, remained stolidly on the ground. Her face was purple and pouchy and a pince-nez balanced on her nose by magic. She always had three fountain pens stuck in the neckline of her crepe dresses.
“Well, Kiddo,” she boomed as I came in, “how’s tricks?” I wondered if she knew who I was, for I merely mumbled at her in the mornings, but she was sharper than I thought. “About time we met,” she said. “After all, we’ve been occupying the same room for three months.” She bit the end off a daisy to make it fit. “You’re Boyd’s little pal, in the blue funk. Your marks are okay, though. That’s half the battle. So I take it you’re here about the other half. Feel unpopular?” She backed me into a chair and grinned at me.
“Well, not exactly, Mrs. Cooney,” I said.
“Bip-boop,” said Mrs. Cooney, irrelevantly. “All these kids go to dances. You go to dances?”
“No, I don’t. I’m not really here to talk about me, Mrs. Cooney. I was wondering about Val...”
“Oh, the psychiatrist. Sorry it leaked out. Doggone sorry. She came to me at the beginning of the year and asked me to keep it quiet, but impossible, all these snoopy kids. Boyd throws herself around, you know. Makes so much noise about her secrets everybody finds out. Poor kid doesn’t know which end is up. Wants attention, gets it in the wrong way.”
Wants attention. Lilian had said that too. Did she? Perhaps, underneath it all...I tried to look into Val’s mental processes, but a black abyss yawned up at me, hundreds of layers; on top she doesn’t, underneath she does, but something makes her, and below that her childhood...
“She has to fight it herself,” Mrs. Cooney said. “But no strain. Most of these kids are okay. They won’t make it rough.” I looked at her so skeptically that she grinned. “Don’t think so, eh? How do you know? You hang around with Boyd all the time. I know ’em. Most of ’em have a skeleton in the closet. Divorced parents, drunk parents, loony parents, parents who don’t bother with ’em. Get ’em in here, they level out and make like everything’s fine. The school helps ’em. Finds ’em families to live with if they haven’t any, gets ’em painting or playing music or writing poetry to get it out of their system, lets ’em have self-government. Orders ’em up, tries to turn ’em back out feeling they’re okay. That’s why it’s a good school.” I stared at her in astonishment. “Listen, Gilbert. This is New York, not some country day-school in New England. We get all kinds here, as long as the I.Q. is so high. Knocking around makes them tough.”
“But...don’t their mothers send them to dances and introduce them to boys?”
“Some do. Those are the ones you hear about. You’re in a fog, aren’t you, Kiddo? I’ll tell you another fact of life. Mothers do anything for their kids. A mother may be living hand to mouth on alimony, but when it comes to her daughter, she’ll scrape up enough money and find a boy somewhere and send the kid off to a dance, with a silk dress and kid gloves and all the rest. Her life’s pretty well over; where she failed, the kid’s going to make up for it. That’s the way mothers are. I’ve seen it and I’ve done it. Your mother would do the same.”
“She...”
“You probably tell her you don’t feel like going to the lousy old dance, so she gets discouraged.” I watched her, listening to the echo of my own words.
“But, Mrs. Cooney,” I said slowly, “if it’s the parents, that’s one thing. But with Val...well, it’s she who has a psychiatrist.”
“True.” She looked up at me. “I don’t know everything. I don’t know how this will turn out. I think it’s nutty for a kid her age to go through this brainwashing, anyway. The parents are in town now, aren’t they?”
“Yes. Val is staying with them.”
“Bip-boop. I’m always around, Kiddo. Come see me whenever you like. Sure you’re all right?” She grinned at me, the cannon nozzle in my face. “You’re all right. You’ll snap out of it. Just open your eyes, and save people like me the bother of explaining. I don’t begrudge it, Kiddo. But it’s more fun to learn things yourself.”
I heard her laugh to herself, a soft croak, as I went out the door.
I didn’t have to tell Val that the Eights knew her secret. It sifted through to her, whispered from behind doors, and she knew. Children cannot keep a secret unless their own feelings are at stake. The Eights kept their own, whatever they were, but Val’s served as a good excuse to pass a few notes in a dull class, to speak to the omniscient senior, to wonder over at odd moments. But Val being Val, she pretended not to know, and obliviously flitted between her business and her pleasure, as though all was right with the world. Knowing her as I did, I watched the first big defense build-up, the defense of her normality. It was a little shaky at the beginning, but I had the feeling that it was going to strengthen and last all her life. Always, I told myself, she will be trying to convince people she’s just like everybody else. She’ll try to be ordinary, and then something horrible will happen to her mind. She isn’t ordinary, and she never will be; that’s what makes her wonderful. But she’s afraid of being wonderful.
As I was talking to her briefly one day in the cafeteria about plans for the forthcoming lunch, a couple of Eights walked by with their trays, staring at us inquisitively. When they had passed us, they began to giggle, and one of them spun her finger around her ear expressively. Val saw it; she had been staring at them idly, as I had; but she turned away and looked at the food. Her face crumpled a little, but she only said:
“The chicken actually looks edible today. Maybe they only cooked it six hours this time.”
It was feeble, and I was in agony for her. Why do you care? I wanted to say. Why, when you’re so much better than they are? But one couldn’t burst these things out to Val; one had to work up to them. I saw her so little these days, any confidences were impossible. I ached to tell her what Mrs. Cooney had said, and resolved to.
“You aren’t meeting your parents for half an hour,” I said hastily. “Sit down with me while I have my sandwich. You can take a taxi. I haven’t seen you in days.” She hesitated, and I added, “Honorable kowtowing servant desires to exchange latest Cherry Blossom dirt.” It worked, and we sat down at a table. She seemed embarrassed; guilty, I suppose, that she had been neglecting me. She made a few comments about Bartók, the looks of my sandwich, and a new dress her mother had bought her. I sat there staring at her, chewing my sandwich. When she looked at her watch, I burst out that I had talked to Mrs. Cooney and told what she had told me.
She leaned forward, her chin in her hands, listening. Everything in her eyes showed that she wanted to hear, and everything in the rest of her face denied it. But I said it all wrong, as usual. It sounded as though I was telling her not to worry about being queer because everybody else around was too. It got worse and worse, and her eyes were frightened.
“Look, Val,” I said desperately, “you’re so much better than any of the rest of them. You’re smart, and you can play the piano, and you’re...well, you’re different. Better different. You mustn’t be afraid.” I told her that Mrs. Cooney had said she let the secret out because she wanted attention.
Val put on an extremely bored smile. “Shades of Braintree,” she said. “Mrs. Cooney is another amateur psychiatrist. This time she agrees with Braintree—everything I do is to get attention, and all that.” She looked down at her hands, resting on the table. “I just wanted to be natural, that’s all. I didn’t want to bark it all over the place that I had a psychiatrist, but I was trying to act as though I wasn’t ashamed of it at the same time. So I let it slip to a couple of people, accidentally on purpose.” She glanced up at my shocked face. “I knew you’d be hurt, so that’s why I didn’t tell you. You get so upset sometimes, and horrified, when I pave the road a little. You’re terribly honest.”
It all rang false. “Then why did you make up all the things about going to dentists and meeting relatives every afternoon? How can you lie? Why didn’t you just tell people where you were going?”
“Because I didn’t want to bark it around, I told you,” she said patiently, as though I were an idiot child. “You’ve never had a psychiatrist to be ashamed of, Gilbert. You don’t know.”
“Nuts,” I said. “That’s the first time you’ve used that kind of talk to me.”
“Well, it’s true.” She was still looking at her hands, which were now playing arpeggios on the table, and she avoided my eyes. “Anyway, Mrs. Cooney has told me the same stuff she told you. She likes to feel she’s helping wayward children. But it’s probably true,” she said. “That’s why I’ve never had this illusion about Norton mothers that you have, and I keep telling you to appreciate Wimpole. There are probably three or four Norton mothers the way you imagine them, and those are the ones you hear about. The ones with other kinds of mothers keep their mouths shut, like me.” She looked up for a moment, realized her slip, and went on. “I should have told you you didn’t have to be so hush-hush about Braintree.”
I was furious. “You’re damn right you should have! You always acted as though you’d die if anybody found out. So old me, being a friend, acted the same way.” I stormed out the machinations I had gone through to keep Lilian Kafritz quiet, even before I had known Val. “I sat and watched her chew up that revolting sundae, paid for out of my own money, just so she’d keep her trap shut. Does she? Oh, yes, but she lets on to everybody she knows where Boyd goes every day after school, and when they ask her, she turns chicken and throws it all in Mrs. Cooney’s lap. What a worm. I suppose forty-two sundaes would buy the life history of everybody in the class.” I got so wrought up about Lilian’s foulness, completely forgetting the last piece of free information, that I almost forgot to be angry at Val; then I remembered. “And all the time you would have been delighted if I’d told her to spread the word to everybody so you could be ‘natural’ about it.”
Val’s face wore an odd expression; it was almost tender. She smiled.
“You did all that for me before you even knew me?”
“Yes,” I grunted, “fool that I was.”
“Gilbert,” she said, “sometimes I think you’re mad.”
“Me too! Well, I’ll go check in with Lilian.”
Val began to laugh. “Honestly, you’re fantastic! You’re even wising up! You’re starting to make wisecracks! But seriously, don’t you ever consider the fact that there’s evil in the world? Do you trust everybody? You heard I had a brain-doctor; didn’t you think I might have fits or whip out razors? You can imagine anything, I know. But you just went ahead and spent your allowance.”
“I know about evil,” I said. “The Eights are teeming with it.” But she had melted me, as usual, by telling me how marvelous I was. “Oh, Val,” I groaned, “you’re a pig, you really are. Go away and leave me alone.”
She grinned, then looked at her watch. “Oh, my God, I’m late.” She gathered up notebooks, mittens, rubbers, and for some reason, the remains of my sandwich. “‘By, Gilbert. Melton Arms at one tomorrow. Black tie.” She zoomed out, and I sat there grinning after her, watching the coattails and feet flying down the hall. It was only then that I remembered; I had forgotten to tell her what might have bothered her more, that the Eights also knew about Henry Orient.
I was really quite excited about the lunch at the Melton Arms. I hardly ever went out to lunch, save with my father, who always ordered the meal in the hotel room so we could Talk. In truth, he avoided restaurants, which was a disappointment to me, for I regarded eating in a restaurant the height of glamour and luxury, and would have gladly spent my life doing so. I ran between my closet and Wimpole’s room, where she and Boothy were doing their exercises with the Finn.
“Should I wear this or this?” I asked, holding up two dresses. “I don’t need to wear stockings, do I? Should I comb my hair this way or this way?”
“Flex, release,” chanted the Finn, “flex, release. Mrs. Booth, you are not really trying. I shall have to come over and help.”
“Oh, no,” groaned Boothy. “Spare me, just this once!”
“This one or this one, Wimpole?”
“I think the blue velvet, dear. And part your hair the other way...ooh, I really felt that one.”
The Finn scrutinized me. “How about you, little Gilbert? It seems to me the buttocks are lazy, are they not?”
“They’re fine,” I said irritably.
“Let her keep her happy youth a while longer,” Boothy said. “Say, maybe if I took up prison ball I wouldn’t have to do this.”
“I’m going to wear the green silk,” I decided. “The blue velvet is so revoltingly young.”
I spent half an hour or so trying to dress as though I ate at the Melton Arms all the time, and didn’t really succeed at all. I presented myself to Boothy and Wimpole, drinking black coffee in their shorts, and they said I looked sweet, which wasn’t at all what I wanted to hear. Then I went out and hailed a taxi. I could have walked, but my new shoes hurt, and it was icy. I got out in front of the hotel, while the doorman opened the car door for me. The street glittered; the city glittered. I felt, for a moment, pleased with the world. Then I went into the soft, velvety lobby, where strains of Muzak came softly from the dining room.
Val was pacing up and down like a sentry.
“Mother’ll be down in a minute,” she said. “She’s putting on her face.” We looked at each other solemnly, and I remembered the day we had met when I first went to the Hamblers’, in our Wright and Ditson shirts. She looked approximately as I did; silk dress, neat hair, gloves. Then I looked down at her legs.
“Val Boyd,” I said, “you’re wearing stockings! How could you?” I felt as though an old and trusted ally had moved over to the enemy.
“Well, Mother likes me to,” she said. “You know, pamper the old girl while she’s in town.”
“Have you ever worn them before?” I asked.
“Sure. All week.”
“All week!” This was fantastic. “How do they stay up? Do you wear a corset, like Boothy?”
“Of course not,” Val said, from the height of her superior knowledge. “I’m wearing a garter belt.”
“Oh,” I said lamely, looking down at my bare, fuzzy legs with white socks.
“It isn’t so bad,” Val said. “You get used to them. Let’s go in and get a table.”
We went into the dining room, and I watched with awe as Val greeted the captain with “Hi, Pierre,” and he replied, “Good afternoon, Miss Boyd.” He led us to a table at the back of the room and pulled out our chairs for us.
“The usual?” Pierre asked.
“Yes, please. Two.” Pierre left, and Val looked around the room. “Pretty crowded today.”
“Val,” I said, “did you just order a cocktail?”
She turned to me and grinned. “A Horse’s Neck,” she said.
“Now, look. You can have one if your mother lets you, but Wimpole would have a fit if...”
“It’s just ginger ale, dope.”
I frowned. “Word of honor?”
“Absolutely.” She began reading the menu, which was enormous. I looked around the room, and saw a lot of extremely handsome women in black suits and a couple of elderly men. In the center was a round table with an enormous tower of gladioli in the middle, surrounded by beautiful pastries. For dessert I’ll have one of those, I thought. No, I think one of that kind. On the other hand, the cherry tart...
“Here comes Mother,” Val said, putting down her menu. “Oh, Lord, she’s got Freddie with her.”
“Who’s Freddie?”
“Some society dame. A friend. She’s been up there at the sherry all morning.”
The two women were crossing the room. The one in front was clearly Isabel Boyd. She wore a black suit, like most of the other women in the room, and a small hat made entirely of pink feathers. She was impressively tall, and she carried her height well. She moved with a challenging air; she walked as though she had complete control of the situation, or rather, as though she would have control of it if she could only catch up. She somehow gave the odd impression of being overpowered by her own appearance. Her face, when she turned toward us, was poised and slightly desperate. It had Val’s features, and Val’s expression when she was afraid and trying not to be. It was a lonely face, looking out from under complicated coils of magnificent dark red hair, and in it I saw a curious suggestion of one of Val’s possible futures. She nodded at acquaintances as she passed their tables with a brilliant, forced smile. Freddie, panting behind her, was outrageous. She was short and dumpy, covered with furs and jewels and make-up, and she wore a red velvet fez on her black curls, tilted to the side. The moment she sat down at the table she whipped out a huge gold compact and disappeared behind it, twisting and stretching her jaw to apply powder, and emitting little grunts. Isabel kissed Val and stretched out a suede-gloved hand to me, which I shook.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Marian,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“It’s very nice meeting you, too, Mrs. Boyd,” I said. She scrutinized me for a moment, then turned to Val, and Val turned to her. They had the most curious effect on each other. Val smiled and fawned, and Isabel softened into melting motherliness.
“How do you feel, darling? Is the cold better? That dress is charming on you, and we’ll get another in a different color. We’ll go over to Bonwit’s afterwards.” Then, as though she had done her duty, she fished in her purse and emerged with smoking equipment.
“I don’t know if the sleeves are right for me,” Val was saying. “I think they should be longer.”
“Oh, no. They’re perfect, darling. Just perfect.” She lit her cigarette, and I sipped my Horse’s Neck, listening to this amazing conversation. Since when had Val given a damn how long her sleeves were? Isabel blew out her smoke, and looked as though she were wondering what to say next. Freddie put down her compact and leaned over the table.
“Let’s have a little cocktail, Izzy,” she said. “Well, hey! Who are these cute little girls?” Apparently she hadn’t noticed us before.
“Don’t be so silly, Freddie. This is Val, and her friend Marian Gilbert.”
“Who’s Val?” Freddie asked.
“My daughter,” snapped Isabel. “You know perfectly well who she is.” She turned to us and melted again. “What would you girls like to have? Anything you like. I’m just having a little poached fish, but why don’t you have a steak or something?” “I’ll have a steak,” Val said, “and French fries. How about you, Gilbert?”
“I’ll have the same,” I said agreeably.
“Let’s us have a little cocktail first,” Freddie said. “A little gin and a little vermouth, a very little vermouth.”
“You shouldn’t, Freddie,” Isabel said. “You’ve already had entirely too much.”
“I have to get worse before I get better, if you know what I mean,” said Freddie, and she began to laugh. It sounded more like a bark. “For old times’ sake.”
“All right, just one.” Isabel ordered a Martini for Freddie and a vermouth for herself. “Val, dear, did Daddy say where he was going when he left before?”
“Nope,” said Val.
“Oh, I was just wondering. He works too hard, Marian, far too hard,” suddenly turning to me. “He’s getting an ulcer, I’m sure.” I looked blank. “Does your Daddy work hard too?” she pursued.
“Divorced,” Val said cryptically, before I had time to answer. She said the word as one might say “palsy” to explain my abnormal silence. I was awed by Isabel, who rotated in a different world than any I had ever seen. Isabel started talking to Val about a party that was coming up, and what Val should wear to it. I turned to Freddie, who was tenderly fingering her drink. She was smiling at the onion in it like a wise old owl, as though she was communicating to it in some mysterious language.
“This is a nice restaurant,” I croaked out. “I’ve never been here before.”
She started and turned to me. “Who are you again?” she asked.
“Marian Gilbert. I go to school with Val.”
“Oh, I see.” She looked blank. “Do you like school?”
“I suppose so,” I said.
Freddie turned back to her onion. “What the hell do you talk about to school kids?” she asked it softly.
There was certainly nothing else to say to that, so I sat staring into space until Isabel turned toward me.
“I’m so sorry, Marian,” she said, “but Val and I see each other so little, that we just talk and talk when we get together. Arthur and I like Val to meet all our friends, and you know how it is.”
For some reason, I couldn’t think of a thing to reply to anything Isabel said to me. She talked on her own plane; she didn’t even come halfway down to mine, and I was left floundering. Her attitude to me seemed to say, “You understand, dear, I’m not really very interested in you,” or something of the sort. Clearly I was excess baggage and would, in time, be paid off and told to go home. Not that she said anything rude; she was really quite civil,
I suppose, but the lunch was so aimless, and the four of us so disconnected, that it all seemed like an unpleasant dream. The steaks, the little bit of fish, and black coffee for Freddie arrived. Val was humming and playing a sonata on the tablecloth, and Isabel was talking across to somebody at the next table.
“Is your steak good?” I asked Val.
“Oh, I’ve had better,” she said abstractedly, playing some octaves. Then she looked directly at me. “Are you having a good time?”
“Oh, fine,” I said, a little flustered. Freddie looked over at us.
“Aren’t you kids having anything to drink?” she asked.
“Well, we...I...my mother doesn’t let me,” I said. “I’m too young.”
“All my youth is blurred together,” Freddie mused. “I can’t remember at what age you do what. For instance, does a baby walk or talk first?” She smiled at her tiny companion. “Walk or talk, my little one? Walk or talk?”
Val leaned over the table. “Maybe afterwards we can...”
“How about dessert?” Isabel asked suddenly, turning back to us. She seemed to be in a hurry. “Parfait, pastries, what? I’m having a stewed pear.”
We ordered pastries, and Isabel sat pulling on her gloves. It took a long time, and each finger had to be eased into its place. First one, then the next, then the next pointed across the table at us. The desserts came. She sat there impatiently while we ate them, saying that we must hurry, since there was so much to be done that afternoon. Every shop on Fifth Avenue was to be cased, Christmas tree decorations were to be bought, presents for everyone. I wondered if I were to go along, and soon it became obvious that I was not.
“We’ll drop Marian at the cross-town bus,” she said, and it seemed to me I’d never heard a more damning statement. Val looked at me pleadingly across the table. On the way out of the restaurant, she said:
“I’m sorry this was such a framble. I’ll call you later.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” I said, with a weak attempt at nastiness. “I’m sure you won’t have time.”
She looked hurt for a moment, then Isabel swept us away. I stood fingering the bus-stop sign after they had left me, and wondered what kind of poison was being put into Val now.