22

A week later, the weather changed and winter returned. It returned with a cold, damp wind that blew steadily from the north and ruffled whitecaps in the bay. Claire got back to San Francisco on Monday—the Monday before Thanksgiving—and, in the apartment on Russian Hill, she was immediately depressed. The apartment was immaculate and cool; she had had it cleaned while she was away. But for some reason the cleanness and orderliness of it, with the low, handsome Chinese tables waxed and polished, the great glass walls freshly washed, made her feel out of place and rather purposeless. She had absolutely nothing to do, that was part of it. Ordinarily, there was some small housekeeping chore that could occupy her, but now, wandering from room to room, everything was perfect. She had left Squaw Valley out of boredom, too. The ski-ing lessons had turned out badly. She had begun, in the evenings, to drink much more than she was used to. She had sat, night after night, in the little cheerful, noisy bar and got herself pleasantly tight. Then, in the mornings, she had lain in bed for hours, wrestling with giant hangovers, hating herself, improvising elaborate and futile ways to relieve her tedium.

And now she was back. She was all alone. Blazer would not be back from Honolulu for another week. Norden-Clark had considerately planned Blazer’s sales trip so that he would be away over Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving was a holiday that had always had a great sentimental meaning to her. She thought, miserably, of spending it alone, in this chilly, unfriendly city. She thought, nostalgically, of Thanksgivings at Mars Hill. They were always huge, warm, bustling family affairs that began in midmorning with cousins and uncles and aunts arriving from all over the East, their long black cars filling the driveway and the circle in front of the huge front door. She remembered that her mother always ordered at least two extra turkeys for the chauffeurs, who were served a banquet identical with the one that the family was served, in the servants’ dining-room. She remembered the huge, long table set up in the family dining-room—set up sometimes for as many as forty—with the long, white banquet cloth, the silver place plates, and, in the centre, her mother’s traditional Thanksgiving centrepiece—a group of three stuffed pheasants with brightly coloured feathers and long, drooping tails in a lifelike arrangement of wheat sheaves, Indian corn, and artificial fruit. She remembered the chatter of servants in the kitchen—extra girls, brought in for the day, and her mother, in a long dinner dress, hurrying about, arranging last-minute details, greeting relatives, lighting the tapers that rose from the four five-branched silver candelabra. Dinner began with cocktails in the drawing-room, children curtsying and bowing to their elders as they helped pass bowls of nuts and trays of hors d’œuvres. Then it proceeded into the dining-room for course after course of dinner, with the magnificent turkeys, the wines. The mood was cheerful, warm, and intimate. They were all family. They were Denisons and Walthours and Merrimans and Sloats on her father’s side, and Chases, Hockings, and Van Camps on her mother’s. Daughters, home from college, brought their fiancés—smooth-faced, cheerful, polite young men from Yale, Dartmouth, and Williams. After dinner the party spread out, lazily and informally, throughout the house at bridge tables, chess tables, billiard tables. There were always an energetic few for ping-pong. The sky darkened, lamps were lit. Soon the whole house glowed with light. Then, some time during the course of the early evening, her father would propose a Thanksgiving toast. Everyone stood quietly to hear him utter it, and the servants were brought in from the kitchen and were given drinks, to join in it. It was a solemn moment, and Junius Denison raised his glass. The toast was always the same: “We live in an anxious, troubled world,” he said. “A world that, at times, seems to have lost its standards. Standards of dignity and humanity. But at the very centre of the world stands an institution—the family. If this institution is lost, then the world is lost. But as long as there are families who stand together and work together in kinship and in love, there is hope for mankind. So I drink to the family!”

The toast was drunk in silence, and, in the silence following it, Georgette Chase Denison moved towards her husband and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

Claire knew it would be the same this year. It would be the same, except she would not be there. She had considered, actually, flying home for Thanksgiving. In fact, she would do it without any hesitation at all if it weren’t for the fact that she had spent rather mountainous sums of money at Squaw Valley. She thought guiltily of the balance in her cheque-book. Blazer would be annoyed, she knew. For Blazer cherished the illusion—even though it was nothing more than an illusion—that the two of them lived within the limits of his salary. Or at least practically within them. Whenever he was reminded of the number of dividend cheques which Claire endorsed and deposited in his account (Claire collected cheques as they came and placed them in the bottom of her jewel-case in her bureau drawer, and withdrew them when they were needed), Blazer was apt to become angry. So there was nothing for her to do but spend a lonely, quiet Thanksgiving Day in the apartment.

Claire now went to the window and looked out. There was the view, sifting through fog. Alcatraz, Angel Island, Belvedere, Tiburon … Mount Tamalpais and the Golden Gate. She stood there, a slim figure in tight black toreador pants and black sweater, her yellow hair falling over her shoulders. She crossed slowly behind the sofa to the side of the room which hung, cantilevered out over the story below, towards the east. Standing there, she had the sensation of falling through airless space slowly, the way one falls in a dream. She felt dizzy and ill. She pulled the heavy curtains closed.

She went back and stretched out on the white sofa, stomach down, with her feet, in black ballet slippers, hanging over the edge. She put her cheek on the white nubby upholstery and lay there for quite a while. She thought about Jimmy. Jimmy was a bright, shimmering spot of hope. It all seemed so simple, and yet, in a way, it all seemed terribly complicated. It should be simple. Jimmy loved her, she was sure of that. Anyway, he would love her as soon as he got over feeling guilty about it. Jimmy’s wife had left him. They had been separated now for over six months. Obviously, she was never going back to him. Obviously, she would get a divorce. And yet everything seemed to have come to a curious standstill. That night in Squaw Valley had been suddenly nothing—nothing. He had appeared, then disappeared. Well, she thought sadly, a lot of that had been her fault. In fact, most of it. If she wanted Jimmy, she had hardly played her cards well. She had been impulsive, demanding, hasty. She had tried to back him into a corner. After all, Jimmy was a man. No man liked to be pushed around by a woman, she should have known that. She had literally thrown herself at him. Tears of shame came to her eyes. There was no other way to describe it. She had thrown herself at him.

And yet, she felt, he did need help. He needed to be manœuvred, helped to make up his mind. Yes, but manœuvred with a little subtlety! She had practically lain on the bed and pulled up her dress. What every woman knows, Claire thought, I don’t seem to know. Or practise, anyway. What would happen, she wondered suddenly, if she were to go again to see Helen? She knew what to expect now. She wouldn’t be frightened as she had been before. She could go to Helen, meet her on her own ground, and have it out with her, woman to woman. “I am the other woman,” she would say pleasantly. “Jimmy and I have grown fond of each other in recent months, and my own marriage, unfortunately, seems to be disintegrating due to my husband’s—” No, she wouldn’t go into that. “My own marriage seems to be disintegrating.” Period. “And I would like—I would like to ask you exactly how soon you plan to release Jimmy.” That would be simple enough. Blunt and frank, not possibly misunderstood. There was certainly no reason why she couldn’t do that. If she wanted Jimmy. And now she asked herself, did she want Jimmy? Analysing herself in a cold, impartial light, Claire realized that she had always yearned for unobtainable objects, simply because they were unobtainable. It was a game. She remembered it from college. See that young man over there with Kathy Squiers? Watch me take him away from her. And later, in what she called her Bohemian period, living in the Village, wanting to be an artist, had that been part of the game, too? She had believed it to be sincere at the time.

Oh, yes, she thought, it must have been sincere! It was the only thing I ever tried to do! More tears came. Am I a nice girl? she wondered. And then, despairingly, she thought: It isn’t my marriage that’s disintegrating, it’s me.

She pushed herself up on her elbows, and, urgently, for something to do, she seized her yellow hair with her hands. She pulled half the hair to one side, divided it into three strands, and began, rapidly, to braid it. When she finished one braid, she held the loose end with her teeth as she began to braid the other side. It’s the weather, she thought. It’s California. It’s living in this dreadful fish-bowl room that’s putting me into these morbid emotional states. I’m being subjected to a peculiar Oriental torture, known as view torture. It was like living in a room completely surrounded by mirrors, only this was worse. With mirrors, at least you could look at yourself. With clear glass, the whole world was looking at you. She finished the second braid, and, holding both ends in her teeth, she jumped up and went into the bedroom to look for elastic bands. In the mirror, she caught a glimpse of her reflection—two thick yellow braids clenched in her teeth. She grimaced at her image. There, she thought. Do I look like all the other damn’ fools from Smith now? Do I?

By five o’clock, she was in a cheerful mood. She felt almost gay. She placed a stack of records on the phonograph and turned the volume low, to the barest whisper of music. She went to the bar and mixed herself a small, crystal, jewel-like martini. It was really rather fun being alone. It was like her New York days when she had enjoyed cooking for herself, and setting the table for herself, and sitting down to eat by herself with candlelight. She sipped her martini slowly and then went to the telephone and called Jimmy.

When he answered, she laughed a small, tinkly laugh. “Well!” she said. “What have you been doing?”

“Hi, Claire,” he said. “Where are you?”

“In Squaw Valley,” she said.

“Still up there?”

“Yes. I’m having too much fun to leave. Parties—a simply wild round every night. Throngs of fascinating people.”

“How are the ski-ing lessons coming?”

“Marvellously! I’m schussing and slooshing and whooshing everywhere. My instructor says he’s never seen such progress!”

“Well, that’s great!” he said. “I’m glad you’re learning to whoosh. Can you do it on one ski yet?”

“Oh, yes. Tell me, Jimmy, is entering the Olympics terribly time-consuming?”

“Well, it would take some of your time, I suppose.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. I think I’ll tell them no. My time is simply too valuable.”

“Before you go much farther,” Jimmy said, “I should tell you that before I heard your voice, the operator said, ‘San Francisco is calling.’”

“Beast!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well,” she said, “let me tell you why I really called.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she said, “the darndest business has come up.”

“What’s happened?”

“Well,” she said, taking a quick sip of her cocktail, “do you remember what I told you about Blazer—about that new job with Monarch Mills? That Harry Masterson character?”

“Yes.”

“Well, of course Blazer’s in Honolulu, and this is all strictly sub rosa with Norden-Clark, but anyway, this Masterson character telephoned me to see if I could locate some papers of Blazer’s, some sort of vital statistics on him or something, and I’ve discovered they’re on file in Sacramento.”

“In Sacramento?”

“Yes. You know, in the capitol or in some sort of state office building or something, so I have an appointment to go up there and pick them up on Friday.”

“What kind of papers are they, Claire?”

“Oh—vital statistics things, I guess they’re called. His birth certificate and everything—”

“Blazer wasn’t born in California—”

“No, not his birth certificate actually, but things like that.”

“So you’d like me to drop over there and pick them up? I’d be glad to.”

“No, no! I have to be there. Myself. It requires my signature and everything. I have the appointment and everything, with the legislature or whatever it is—”

“The legislature?”

“Yes.”

There was a silence on the other end of the wire. “Now, let’s get this straight,” Jimmy said finally. “You have to go up to the state legislature to put your signature on some vital statistics of Blazer’s like his birth certificate so he can get a job with Monarch Mills.”

“Yes, exactly.”

There was a muffled sound on the other end of the line that resembled coughing.

“Oh, damn you!” she said. “Look—Thursday’s Thanks-giving, and I’ve got nobody to spend it with. I thought I’d come up Thursday night and let you take me out to dinner.”

“Gosh, Claire—”

“Please!” she said. “I know how you feel, how you want to wait and everything. But is there any harm in our having dinner somewhere? Just a nice, quiet Thanksgiving dinner? You came down here for dinner one time, and now it’s my turn to go up there!”

“The thing is, Claire, I’ve got a date already. Bob and Margie Maguire—the fellow I work for—have asked me to their house for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m awfully sorry. Really.”

“Then Friday night,” she said.

“Friday?”

“Yes. Please!”

“Well—”

“Please!”

“Sure, Claire,” he said. “I’d love to.”

“Good,” she said quickly. “And I’ve turned over a new leaf. I’m not going to try to coax you to drink, and I’m not going to try to seduce you. You won’t be able to get me inside your apartment if you try. Just to show you my intentions are absolutely pure, I’ll blow my horn outside your building at seven o’clock.”

“All right.”

“You’ll hear Scarlet O’Hara blow her horn at seven,” she said. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Claire.”

She hung up the telephone and gulped down the rest of her drink. Then, because she still felt like talking to somebody, she picked up the phone again and called Tweetums DeMay. “Tweetums,” she said, when the other woman answered, “I’m home again. Come on over and have a cocktail with me.”

When Tweetums DeMay arrived, about half an hour later, Claire had closed the curtains all the way around the room; the whole apartment seemed now to be upholstered with thick white cloth. And Claire, in the middle of it, still in her slim black toreador pants and black sweater, her hair still in pigtails, created a single decorative accent. Tweetums noticed it right away. “You should always wear black in this room,” she exclaimed. “It looks perfect!”

Claire laughed. “One thing I can’t ever wear is white,” she said. “In white, I simply wash out.”

Tweetums arranged herself comfortably on the sofa, tucking her short, plump legs underneath her. “How’ve you been?” she asked. “Did you have a wonderful time at Squaw Valley?”

“Oh, yes,” Claire said, “but I’ve decided I’ll never be a skier.” She went to the bar and mixed another pitcher of pale martinis.

“Ah, merci!” said Tweetums, when Claire handed her a glass. “Now tell me what you’ve been doing,” Claire said. She put her glass on the coffee table and sat, tailor fashion, on the floor opposite Tweetums.

“Oh, nothing very exciting,” Tweetums said. “Stan and I have been to a few football games. At Berkeley and San José. You know how crazy Stan is about football.”

“Oh, I know.”

“He’s just like a great big kid! I think he wishes he were still back in college …”

“Is he working yet?”

“Well, that’s a sore point,” Tweetums said. “He’s not. Not yet. I want him to get a job downtown, in one of the investment houses. I know some people at Schwabacher’s. But Stan says he wants to sow a few wild oats first.”

“Say, is it getting serious between you and Stan?” Claire asked.

Tweetums let out a whoop of laughter. “Oh!” she said. “Oh, no! No, no, no! Goodness me, I’m thirty-seven. I’m almost fifteen years older than he is. Give me credit for a little sense. I know I don’t have much, but I have that much. No, he’s just—well, he’s a lot of fun, that’s all.”

“I just wondered,” Claire said.

Tweetums put her head back against the sofa cushions and looked up at the ceiling. “You know how it is,” she said. “No, you probably don’t know how it is, but when a girl reaches my age—” Her voice trailed off. “Well,” she said, “I’ve had three marriages, all flops. I’m thirty-seven. I’ve lost my figure and most of my looks—I don’t kid myself. And at this point, the only thing I want out of life is to have fun. Stan thinks—he probably thinks he’s being pretty daring, running around town with an old jade like me!” She laughed gaily. “I mean it. His friends probably kid him about it, and he gets a kick out of that. Oh, a couple of times he’s told me he’s in love with me. I take it with a grain of salt. He likes me because I know the ropes, that’s all. My God,” she said, “if there’s one thing I am, it’s aware!”

Later, after another cocktail, Tweetums said, “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

“Nothing,” Claire said glumly, “absolutely nothing! Blazer won’t be back till a week from Wednesday. I’m going to spend Thanksgiving sitting right here in this apartment …”

“Oh, what a shame!” Tweetums said.

“What are you going to do?” Claire asked.

“Oh, it’s all up in the air at this point,” Tweetums said. “Stan is immobilized at the moment. He’s without wheels. His car is on the blink. We were going to drive down to Carmel for dinner, but now I guess we’ll have to stay in town.”

“I guess we’re both in the same boat,” Claire said.

“Oh, no. Not you. At least you have a husband, dear. Even if he’s thousands of miles away, at least you have a husband.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. I should be grateful.”

“Oh, you should, you should. Why, you’re the happiest two people I’ve ever seen—you and Blazer. What difference does it make to you if you miss one little old Thanksgiving dinner together?”

Claire laughed.

“You’ll have so many more,” Tweetums said. Then, sadly, she said, “I’m quite aware that Stan will get tired of me pretty soon. It’s bound to happen. I’m prepared for it, but it’ll be a blow just the same. Then I’ll have to get myself another beau.” She gazed despondently into her glass.

“Let’s have another cocktail,” Claire said.

Much later, when they were both quite tight, Claire stood up unsteadily and went into the bathroom. When she came out, Tweetums had kicked off her shoes and lay on her back on the sofa. She had rested an ash-tray on her bosom into which she periodically tapped her cigarette. Tweetums had finished recounting, in elaborate detail, the story of each of her marriages, and, in this mood of easy confidence, like two college roommates, Claire had been tempted to tell Tweetums about Jimmy. But she had caught herself, and, instead, had talked aimlessly about Blazer, her parents, Mars Hill, and her Bohemian period in New York.

Claire stood in the centre of the room, her feet planted wide apart. “Look,” she said suddenly, “why don’t you borrow Scarlet O’Hara to go to Carmel?”

“What?”

“Borrow my car, the Jaguar. I’m not going to be using it.”

Tweetums sat up. “Oh, no, honey, I couldn’t do that,” she said.

“Why not?” Claire asked gaily. “There’s no earthly reason why you couldn’t. It’ll just be sitting here. Why don’t you two take it?”

“And go to Carmel?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, no. You’re sweet to offer it, but—”

“I mean it,” Claire said.

“Well—” Tweetums said tentatively, looking at Claire, and then quickly away. “Well, we were planning to spend the night there.”

“Oh,” Claire said. “Well—”

“Oh, it’s perfectly all right,” Tweetums said hastily. “I have an aunt in Pebble Beach; we were going to stay at her place. I mean—”

“Well,” Claire said, “I do need the car on Friday. I have to—I have some things to do Friday night. I’d need it back by five.”

“Oh, we’d be back by five,” Tweetums said.

“Well, then—”

“Oh, no, it’s too much of an imposition, really,” Tweetums said. “I couldn’t think of borrowing Blazer’s car—”

“It’s my car really,” Claire said.

“Well, even so—”

“I must have it back by five o’clock, that’s all,” Claire said.

“Well, you’re terribly sweet—”

“Do you want to take it?”

“Oh, we’d love you for ever—if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind—”

“Take it then,” Claire said. “Take it overnight. Only have it back by five on Friday.”

“Oh, you’re a lifesaver, honey!” Tweetums said. “Wait till I tell Stan!” She jumped up and ran across the room to Claire in her stocking feet. “You’re wonderful!” she said, hugging her quickly. “You’re a real friend!”

Claire squeezed Tweetums affectionately. She felt warm and happy. She felt she was helping the course of true love. And she was fond of Tweetums. In her innocent, cheerful way, Tweetums reminded her of her mother.