O BABY’S BIRTHDAY!” CRIED Phil Barrow, and Walter and Mary and Bee Amidon and her husband (present at Walter’s secret request to Corinne) and Olive all clicked their Martini glasses a little too gamely, Corinne thought, as if, for crying out loud can’t we ever get a cocktail in this house without toasting the queen or a brandy without an anecdote?
“My birthday isn’t till Tuesday,” said Corinne. “You know it, Phil.”
She thought of how many times guests would have to drink to Baby’s birthday before she went crazy with boredom, and she thought this is the good-wife feeling, this teeth clenched, controlled screaming-boredom feeling. The guilty-wife feeling is better for the whole family, she reflected, that remorseful tender understanding, the seeing all his good traits because your badness has canceled his bad ones. The bad wife was far pleasanter around the home; she could stand a lot from a husband because it eased her conscience. “Why, dear, of course I understand,” she said day after day indulgently. “Don’t let it worry you for a minute, darling.”
Darling. This darling business was getting on her nerves. There had been more darlings in the drawing room tonight than had ever been in one room before. There was Walter darlinging his wife Mary so that Mr. Amidon would be reassured about Walter’s feeling toward Mrs. Amidon; there was Bee Amidon darlinging Mr. Amidon for the same reason; there was herself darlinging Phil very very conscientiously just to keep from knocking that ever-raised-aloft drink out of his hand. And Dennis hadn’t come, hadn’t called up, hadn’t been in his house when she went down to see him, had vanished, and if she never heard from him there was no way she could find him, nothing she could do, nothing she could say, she could only cry all night and pretend to Phil it was something else. She couldn’t even tell Olive for Olive was too obviously thinking, my dear girl I always said he was no good, this is just what I always told you, you wouldn’t believe me when I said he dropped me like a hot cake and ran out of his own party with that Mrs. Callingham but everyone knows about it.… No, she couldn’t tell Olive.
“I’m spoiling the whole dinner party,” Olive said gaily. “Since Dennis deserted us, I’m that awful thing, the girl without a man.”
Everyone laughed although Mr. and Mrs. Amidon, Walter and Mary, and Olive and Corinne all knew it wasn’t Olive but little Mrs. Barrow who had been deserted, and all, particularly Mrs. Amidon and Walter, felt a certain moral satisfaction in this.
“I don’t see why Baby is so surprised at Orphen,” said Phil and broke off a piece of bread in his soup slyly in the way he had that most irritated Corinne. Why didn’t he break the whole piece boldly or dunk it and say this is the way I like it, but no, he just sneaked a little bit now and then into his soup or gravy when he thought no one was looking. “Orphen is a crude sort. I understand he was brought up in a cheap little railroad hotel. His father was a traveling salesman. Not that I don’t admire the lower working class. And mind, I don’t criticize Orphen for not being a college man. But I do object to rudeness. The sonofabitch might have telephoned at least. Olive here—”
“I could have brought a very nice neighbor of Dennis’s, if he’d only given us warning,” said Olive archly. “Mr. Schubert. The one who draws all those things for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He’s going to Hollywood next month to do sets for that Joan Crawford picture. A thousand a week. I had tea with him at a little place over on East Fourteenth named Kavkas. Oh, terribly interesting. He’s a Communist.”
“There you are,” said Phil triumphantly. “I’d like to know how these Communists can reconcile themselves to Hollywood jobs. That seems to me just the same as being a capitalist.”
Olive gave a condescending smile.
“No, Phil, the way they feel is that until the Revolution they might as well avail themselves of their capitalistic opportunities. They have to sacrifice themselves to the present system.”
Now Olive would be radical, Corinne thought wrathfully, she would have to listen to Olive’s big thoughts on Russia and economics, and anything she hated was an economical bore. Olive would be going down to that apartment—up until the Hollywood moving—spilling things in the sink to make more plaster Gibson girls for Dennis’s ceiling. She wished she had never told Olive anything. She wished she had never cried on Olive’s shoulder. She wished Olive would move to California and never write to her, so she could have a really good reason for being mad at her. Looking about the table she thought she really detested everyone there; Walter particularly, who was always bellyaching to her that Bee Amidon didn’t love him enough, was now—right in front of Bee, taking tender care that Mary, his wife, didn’t get in a draft. Bee Amidon, bold-looking, dark, hearty woman, with a fine bouncing figure, was getting tight pretty fast without waiting for Phil’s organized toasts. She was stroking Mr. Amidon’s madly curly black hair and talking baby talk.
“Wooty wooty wooty,” she said. “Mama’s toy poodle.”
I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it, Corinne screamed inside herself, how can you love two people at once, well, she ought to know, but no, she only loved one at once, the one she wasn’t with at the time; or was love for Phil only being sorry she didn’t love him, sorry he was so good to her when she was so bad, sorry she loved Dennis who wouldn’t even call her up any more, who wouldn’t write or phone her, who probably didn’t love her, who wouldn’t even carry her suitcase or help her across the street. Now she was sorry that Phil loved her so much, while Dennis just not calling up made her want to die, she wished the wine was poison, she could not bear sitting here laughing and drinking with Dennis vanished from her life. She dabbed at her eyes, pretending to listen to awful Mr. Amidon tell jokes. Awful maybe-you’ve-heard-this-one Mr. Amidon. What was worse was that the Amidons were a storytelling couple. They boned up for parties. Then each whispered a story to the partner on their right, then to the partner on the left, then one told the whole table, and it wasn’t funny anyway, but just very long with a bad word as the point. How could Walter stand a storytelling sweetheart? In the middle of the kiss—Oh-I-just-heard-a-good-one! Corinne saw that Walter and Mary were not laughing much at the Amidon jokes. Walter, beside Corinne, whispered nervously to her, “I’ve told all of Bee’s jokes to Mary and now Mary smells a rat hearing Bee tell them all. For God’s sake, pretend to Mary they were all in a book!”
“Orphen’s novel is getting big reviews,” said Walter aloud. “They say it’s all about Callingham. Looks like a hit.”
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear that. I’m sincerely glad,” said Phil. He turned to Amidon. “This book, The Hunter’s Wife. My wife knows the author. He’s a great personal friend of Baby’s.”
“Yes,” said Corinne sarcastically. “I know him personally.”
That’s the way it was going to be. Dennis was going to be famous and forget all about her. She was going to hear Phil brag a thousand times a day—my wife used to know him personally! She put her napkin up to her face and ran out of the room. Why, Baby! Why, Corinne! Why, Mrs. Barrow! She ran upstairs, ran into the maid.
“I’ll be all right—don’t let them come up,” she said, thinking of Olive ghoulishly rushing up for confessions.
She ran into her bedroom, breathlessly snatched the telephone, dialed Algonquin 4—no answer. Try the Havana Bar. No Mr. Orphen here. Try his house again. No, send telegram. Worth 2-7300. Telegram for Mr. Dennis Orphen—D as in darling, E as in ever, N as in never, N as in never, I as in Ink, S as in Sugar … O as in—I hate you hate you hate you hate you hate … is that ten words? … Now Phil was coming up. She would jump out the window. Poor Phil. He loved her so. He would die if anything happened to her. His whole life centered about her. That’s why she couldn’t run away to Dennis. It wasn’t the mink coat or the world cruise or the diamond wrist watch, it was Phil not being able to live without her.
“Baby, what is the matter? Are you sick?”
“Just something in my throat … Phil, dear—” No, no dears. Walter calling his wife dear all the while playing footsie under the table with Bee Amidon finished that for her. “Phil, what would you do if I should die?”
“Why, Baby!”
“I don’t mean anything, I was just wondering. You’d probably give up this place and stay at the Harvard Club, wouldn’t you?”
“I should say not,” said Phil promptly. “I’d take a north apartment at Essex House and get that Jap houseman you fired last year and every March I’d go to London and stay six weeks.”
Corinne stared at him as if he were a monster. He had actually made plans. He probably had already signed up for a lease. So that was your loyal, faithful Phil, that was inside that toast-making head, plans for what fun he’d have when she died.
She went down with him and had a few brandies with the others, thinking about Phil, until people’s dishonest voices cracked in her head and their horrid private lives came out from behind their darlings and their dears. Bee and Walter had to go out in the kitchen naturally to make a stinger in a very special way, and Mr. Amidon and Phil had to brag. The way Phil boasted was to tell about the big bank presidents’ doings and Andrew Mellon and J. P. Morgan as if this were more or less his outfit and in a quiet way he could take bows for their achievements. Mr. Amidon, on the other hand, did his social climbing by picking out just such big figures for his personal rivals, told tales that insinuated that Stalin, Roosevelt, and the Pennsylvania Railroad had a powerful enemy in B. J. Amidon.
Olive didn’t seem to be having much fun. She sat in a corner with Walter’s wife, Mary, and they talked about their Schiaparellis of which they each had one, and whether the Normandie did or did not have a throbbing worse than the Ile de France or the Conte de Savoia. Once in a while Olive would give Corinne a sympathetic smile, an I-know-what-you’re-thinking-you-poor-kid—you’ve-been-stood-up. He might be at the Glaenzers’, Corinne thought frantically, if people would only leave so she might run through the streets looking for him. Why didn’t Olive go hunt for him, perhaps he was sick, why didn’t Walter help her out, but oh no he had to make stingers in the kitchen with Bee Amidon. Supposing Dennis was sick, at death’s door, who would tell Mrs. Philip Barrow, no one, or if she found out and went to nurse him how would she explain to Phil? … She slipped up to her room again. Worth 2-7300. Telegram for Dennis Orphen. D as in darling—Darling darling love you love you please come love you.…
She must be going out of her mind. It could not really be Phil standing in the bathroom door, horrified, gaping at her. Why hadn’t she looked in there?
“That was Orphen,” Phil said mechanically. “You said you loved him. Orphen.”
Corinne burst out sobbing.
“Yes, I do. I love him madly if you want to know,” she screamed. “Get a divorce or kill me, I don’t care. Now you know the truth. I love him—oh I do!”
She was torn with wild sobs, leaning over the bedpost.
Phil shook his head.
“Poor Baby,” he said. “Poor Honeybaby.”
“Honeybaby! That’s right. Put it on my tombstone,” she cried. “Go on, carve it on a monument for me—Poor Honeybaby—”
Between Phil and Olive and the maid they got her into bed with an icepack and a dose of luminal. Olive was frightened that when she and Phil tiptoed out of the room together he’d want to have it all out with her and she didn’t know what she could say. He stood at the head of the stairs and took off his glasses, wiped them off carefully as if this would help him to see things straight.
“Don’t say anything about this to the others,” he said in an undertone. “Let them think she was just tight.”
“That’s the idea,” said Olive quickly.
“As a matter of fact, Olive,” he said gravely confidential. “This has me pretty worried. For a few minutes there the poor kid went clean out of her mind.”