A Time to Be Born, page 17
Vicky honestly couldn’t see why Amanda would want to risk having Ethel Carey reveal her lowly past, or why Ethel thought of that privilege as her lawful right, but she dared not say so for Ethel would certainly accuse her of toadyism. It would be a fine thing to be like Ethel, to look everyone from king to Garbo, straight in the eye and say, “Move over, there, I’m on this street, too.”
“You know of course who paid for her tuition at Miss Doxey’s,” Ethel said and whipped out her lipstick for the purpose of readjusting her mouth after the scuffle with the squab. The manner in which she leveled this crimson trifle was so resolute, so ominous, that it foreboded a reloading of her guns, and Vicky resigned herself to further bombing of the Amanda legend.
“Wasn’t it her father?” murmured Vicky.
Ethel twisted her newly made lips to an unpretty pucker which involved a sardonic wrinkling of the nostrils, as well.
“Where would Howard Keeler get a thousand dollars? she gently mocked. “Not that it’s such a sum. Goodness knows Miss Doxey’s is the cheapest school in the territory, and I wish to goodness I had followed Daddy’s advice and gone East, but I was always so homesick. But at least I could have gone to Dobbs Ferry or Spence and none of the rest of you could.”
“That’s quite true, Ethel,” Vicky was glad to agree on anything that might calm Ethel’s ruffled vanity. “I know I could never have gone if my brother hadn’t loaned me the money, and even he had to borrow it, so—”
“Howard Keeler’s girlfriend, the beautician, paid it, believe it or not!” Ethel whispered dramatically. “I know on account of Daddy’s bank. All the time he was running around with her, Howard was deviled to death by Amanda. She didn’t want to live over the store, naturally, even as a kid. And you know how snooty she was, not with you, maybe, because you were so much younger, but with all the rest of us. It burned her up to be just nobody that way. So she just raised perpetual Cain with her father. His girlfriend hated her and thought it was worth her while to send her away.”
“Amanda didn’t want her father to marry again, I know,” Vicky cautiously admitted.
“Well, after all the woman did for his child, the poor man had to!” Ethel exclaimed. “She knew what she was doing, all right. She got Amanda out of the picture and then she marched her man straight down to City Hall and nailed him. It cost her all her savings, but at least she got him.”
“Amanda couldn’t stand her,” Vicky recalled. “Remember how she used to hide when they came to school for visits?”
“That was because the second Mrs. Keeler said ‘ain’t’,” said Ethel with some satisfaction. “So did the first, for that matter. They said ‘ain’t’ from morning till night like mad. It killed Amanda.”
The spectacle of the buxom blonde stepmother sending this naughty elision echoing over Miss Doxey’s formal gardens, baying it from the chapel steps, writing it a hundred times a minute on the heavens, made Vicky break into hysterical laughter.
“What gets me,” said Ethel, with vast bitterness, “is the way all the fuss about Amanda has made even Lakeville take her say-so about her family. They know Mrs. Keeler still had the beauty shop, they know Howard Keeler still has a dinky haberdashery store. They know Amanda was brought up over the store and went to Miss Doxey’s lousy little school. But they think they must all be mistaken because it says in all the papers that Amanda had convent training abroad and her folks were ‘land poor.’ I can’t tell them any different. ‘Look,’ they say, ‘it says all this right here in black and white.’ ”
Vicky wanted to be sympathetic to Ethel, who after all had not been received by her old friend as warmly as she should have been, no doubt about that; however, in all fairness she did not see how Amanda could be blamed for not wishing to be reminded of the humble past Ethel was only too eager to recall. She saw Ethel picking up her salad fork with the air of marshaling new forces, and sought to sidetrack her.
“Lakeville is such a stupid town, anyway,” she said. “I don’t blame you for getting mad at it.”
This was not a wise thought, it appeared, for Ethel held her fork poised in air a moment to give Vicky a level, haughty look.
“My dear Vicky, don’t you go New York on me!” she exclaimed. “After all, if I wished to, I could live here, too. Personally I prefer Lakeville. My home, you must admit, is one of the prettier homes in the state. It’s Frank Lloyd Wright! They don’t come any better, you know. I travel. I hear all the best concerts in Cleveland. I go to hunting parties in Virginia. And Lakeville is not a slum.”
“I know,” Vicky nodded.
“We do quite as much for war relief as Amanda does, I assure you,” Ethel went on proudly. “We have our adopted refugees just the same as anybody. We have our Bundles. You’re not fair to Lakeville because you had an unfortunate experience there—”
Ether could not forgive Vicky for appearing to recover from her “unfortunate experience” so easily. It seemed a personal affront to one who had devoted herself to ameliorating the “experience.” The least Vicky could do was to need more sympathy.
“And now she was to write a sequel!” Ethel recalled her special grievance with access of fresh spleen. “Now she’s announcing a trilogy, just because that’s the one thing she’s never tried! She must have everything!” With this thought she made an innocent-looking watercress salad the victim of her avenging fork. “Of course that will be a hit. How can it fail? Actually they tell me Julian has the reviews made up already and in type, all ready to spring on his readers. Almost before it’s written, mind you, it’s a hit.”
Vicky squirmed under Ethel’s rising voice. It was a pity, she thought, that anyone who admired outspokenness and candor the way she did, was always so terrified when she actually heard it, and must always suffer this anguish that it was being overheard. It must be, she gloomily reflected, that she came of a long line of downstairs ancestors, governesses, chimneysweeps, stablehands, housekeepers. Obviously Ethel, on the other hand, acquired her fine arrogance from forefathers who were squires landed gentry. You wouldn’t catch Ethel looking around apologetically at possible eavesdroppers, putting out an extra coin hastily when the waiter frowned at the tip, trying to smile at the policeman scolding you for crossing the street. Even while she admired Ethel’s high-handedness, Vicky was plotting to distract Ethel from her subject by some wily feminine confidence.
“I was really glad to see Tom Turner and Eudora the other night,” she said artlessly the moment she could break in. “I knew the minute that he stepped in the door it was all over, and I really in a way didn’t want it to be. I just didn’t want to find out I was that superficial. I was disgusted with myself for not having the guts to go on having a broken heart, honestly I was.”
Ethel was only momentarily put off the trail.
“Honey, you’re young yet. Besides, it would have been different, believe me, if it had been a real affair. I always thought, of course, that it was. I had no idea of anything else.”
Again Vicky felt guilty. She should never have confided the sordid fact of her chastity to Ethel. Nowadays you didn’t dare tell a thing like that to your own mother, or she’d have you analyzed to see what made you so backward. Certainly, it was proof of arrested development in anyone over twenty, and Vicky blushed to think of it. Ever since she’d told Ethel, the latter kept pondering over the strange fact, acting a little resentful about it, as if her sympathy had been extracted under false circumstances. At least Vicky knew enough now to try in the future to give an impression of a proper background of adult love affairs.
“I think Amanda doesn’t like the idea of your seeing that Saunders man,” Ethel said. “Thinks he’s too good for you, I suppose. I told her I thought you were falling for him in a big way.”
“Oh, Ethel!” protested Vicky. “I told you not to tell!”
“What of it? I can read you like a book. You think every word he says is the most brilliant thing you ever heard. You sit there gawping at him like some little goon. Even Tom Turner talked about it. Said he didn’t see much in that fellow. Of course that brought Eudora down on him in a big way. ‘What’s it to you, if she’s got somebody else?’ she said. ‘All right, go back to her. You got me in this condition, now you want to leave me and go back to Vicky. All right, all right, I can stand it.’ You know. The usual.”
Never, never would she tell Ethel another secret, Vicky vowed, it was worse than telling all Lakeville and her own family.
“Don’t act so snooty, honey,” Ethel laughed, in great amusement over Vicky’s suddenly stern countenance. “You are crazy about Ken Saunders, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Supposing I am,” Vicky burst out in a flash of anger. “You don’t have to tell the world! Amanda, Eudora—everybody in this restaurant!”
With this Vicky looked boldly around, fully expecting to see the entire staff of her office as well as Amanda Evans bending courteous ears to this broadcast of her weaknesses. When she actually did catch a horrifying glimpse of a bushy blond male head in the booth behind her, her heart failed her. It would have to be Ken Saunders, of course, And he must have heard every word.
“Oh, Ethel, how could you?” groaned Vicky. “Now I daren’t even leave this place, I’m so embarrassed.”
Ethel’s teasing smile changed suddenly to a look of blank consternation.
She peered gingerly around the wall of the booth, and had the grace to cover her eyes with a cry of remorse.
“Oh, Vicky, I didn’t mean—oh, how awful! It just couldn’t happen!”
At this point Ken Saunders rose and stood beside their table.
“If you think it isn’t just as bad for me!” he said, very red-faced. “Of course I missed the first part and that was probably the best. But now I suppose you’re going to hate me for hearing that last. It’s not my fault.” He had a sudden idea and looked from Vicky’s downcast fact to Ethel’s. “Say, you saw me there and were doing it on purpose, weren’t you. Of all the dirty tricks! And I fell for it!”
“We just wondered how much more we had to feed you before you’d get on to it,” Ethel laughed, with a triumphant look at Vicky. “You didn’t actually think it was on the level, did you?”
Ken looked doubtfully at them.
“I do have a normal supply of vanity, I suppose,” he said. “It never has seemed a screaming joke that any lady should be ‘falling for me’ as you put it. I won’t forgive this for a long time.”
Vicky managed to draw a breath of relief.
“It was the only way we could get you to talk to us,” she said.
They walked back to the office together, and Ken reproached her again for playing such a shameful trick on his vanity. Vicky was so relieved at this happy misunderstanding that she did not think, until late that night, that perhaps Ken was only tactfully trying to save the situation. He didn’t want her to be falling in love with him, and he refused to let it be said. He was deliberately pretending it had been a joke so he wouldn’t have to cope with a love he didn’t want. Having destroyed her sleep with this unpleasant thought Vicky got up and lit a cigarette.
“I wish there was some way to keep from seeing through things,” she thought savagely. “I wish there was some pill like an aspirin that could stop your common sense. Common sense never did anybody any good.”
8
VEN AS ASTUTE A publisher as Mr. Peabody had difficulty keeping his magazine a nose ahead of the public taste in these confused days. A “farseeing” editor can only live up to his name when the future looks pretty much like the past, and the public is reacting as it has before. Now surprises lay waiting in every corner, and Peabody’s was obliged to be guided not by an editor and a board of advisors, but by a committee of circumstance. It could be reasonably assumed that so long as there were women there would be safety in Fashions, but this department, old as it was, had the most desperate of scrambles to keep up. In the early days of the war the Paris correspondents sent back helpful sketches of what milady should wear to a bombing, what combinations of color and fabric were advisable for the matron, the dowager, the debutante, for the arousing of patriotism, bravery undying love, or respect. Forward-thinking readers at once sent in angry letters, canceling subscriptions, berating Mr. Peabody personally for assuming that the fair sex were interested in anything in war times except target practice and tank driving. Compromising with these objections, the magazine showed pictures of the smarter abris in Paris, and made suggestions for uplifting military morale by a show of orchids, costume jewelry and lace stockings. This, too, was roundly criticized as too frivolous for the hour. Indignant women’s organizations sent letters of protest at this insult to the gravity of the feminine mind; committees approached and even picketed Mr. Peabody’s home, declaring that his publication was an affront to American womanhood, now massing its strength for war and not for fun. It was hard to steer a profitable course between these groups and the actual facts, which continued to prove soaring sales in furs, nail polish, lipsticks, perfumes, wrinkle creams, and other peacetime consolations. Mr. Peabody and his associates finally solved the problem by throwing their weight almost entirely on the Home and America, two blameless subjects for editorial reflection. If it was wrong to admit interest in bodily adornment, then Peabody’s would instruct its readers how to make their little homes into inexpensive castles of great beauty; if it was unpatriotic to praise Capri skies or to photograph Mediterranean resort activities, then Peabody’s would loyally devote themselves to the hidden charms of Route 21, the bouquet of western vintages, the decorative possibilities of gilding horse chestnuts.
Peabody’s “Home in America” department became an instant success. Past frivolities were forgiven. Other fashion magazines and women’s periodicals tried vainly to keep up with this noble lead. The real estate advertising department took on fresh life, and a somewhat woolen note crept into the hitherto shimmering copy. Economy was a word fraught with imaginative nuances. Many of the Peabody League girls and their illustrious mothers were absolutely refusing to wear their jewels or sables for the duration, and mere working girls were easily detected now by their fur coats, having no alternative of well-cut cloth wraps as their richer sisters did.
Vicky Haven, with her real estate page, profited by the new homespun policy of the magazine and found commissions and bonuses added to her fifty dollar salary. Ken Saunders, in charge of the actual research into the American Home, was the gratified recipient of all manner of bribes, from electric razors to vacuum cleaners. He moved from his hotel to an apartment which he was able to furnish almost completely with “gravy”—sofas, mattresses, gadgets pressed on him by earnest manufacturers in hopes of public mention of their product.
“Here is the charming home of the Bumbys in Plymouth, Ohio,” the Home in America section would begin. “If the Bumbys can live this well in our great country on only $30 a week, surely you too can.”
“Taxes are higher, wages are less, jobs are fewer,” another issue would declare. “But see how pleasantly the Carmichaels live in a rented house in Bayonne, New Jersey, on the fruits of Father Carmichael’s endowment insurance.”
Photographs of the happy family would be included, menus of their simple but tasty fare, lists of books read by Sonny in the Knights of Columbus clubrooms, pattern for sweaters knitted by Mama after she had deftly put the wash to soak and the pot roast in the oven and was waiting for her Red Cross homework to arrive. It was a splendid means of building the American morale in time of fear and waiting, and it was even more profitable than the magazine’s former luxury propaganda. True, the idea was not without its financial complications. Families on $30 a week had a tendency not to make the most of their native opportunities, so that in order to make them photographically appealing, Peabody’s frequently had to send advance men to the locale to furnish and decorate the house themselves into which they popped the surprised and delighted typical Americans. Sonny and Sister had to be outfitted by the magazine, Daddy had to be calmed with a cash down payment, Junior had to be allowed to keep the bicycle which he, for photographic purposes, was supposed to have bought by saving money from lawn-mowing jobs. Sometimes, after the Peabody photographers and reporters had left the scene, the typical family found it impossible to take up their typical lives as they had lived them before being singled out for the honor of publicity. There were even suits brought against the magazine for loss of wives, husbands, jobs, when the publicity and unprecedented domestic conveniences were gone. However, Peabody’s increased its legal staff and took care of these cases as they came up, insisting fairly enough that each was a typical American family only as long as the particular issue was on the stands, and it was now someone else’s turn to be typical.
The “Home in America” research men made monthly expeditions into darkest America, under the instructions of Kenneth Saunders, departmental editor. The findings were even used, with proper payment, by the government and by educational and advertising agencies, and inasmuch as such august patrons could not be denied, there was oftentimes need for witchery. That is, if a typical home in Florida was promised for a certain issue, but Florida was under rains, then the camera staff and research writers must fly to southern California or even Alabama to capture the typical Florida home. These hazards were all in the game and very likely the less said about them, the better. Ken Saunders grew horrified as he saw his little brainchild blossom into this smiling Frankenstein, and begged to be let off. Mr. Peabody reasoned with him.
“It will rattle down to something worthwhile eventually,” Mr. Peabody prophesied, solemnly doodling away with a red pencil on the outgoing mail his secretary had just brought him. “What worries you about it, Saunders!”
Ken stamped out a cigarette butt on the office floor, and lit another. He felt, under Peabody’s kindly paternal gaze, like some little Lord Fauntleroy who had just found out there were rotters in the world. (“Peabody,” he might as well have cried, “we chaps just don’t do those things at Greyfriars!”) It was a squirmy feeling and reminded Ken again that at thirty-three the carapace should be a little thicker.
