A Time to Be Born, page 5
“Darling,” Vicky had said, getting maternal at the hint of what this advancement might mean to their relationship, “don’t you think you’d better go home and sleep, so as to be ready for your conference tomorrow?”
Mr. Turner, in turn, gave her a piece of advice which she forgave, being certain he would be sorry for it tomorrow, but this turned out not to be the case. Eager for feminine companionship and remembering a few pleasant nights with the sharp-faced Eudora Brown, Vicky’s business partner, Tom had no difficulty in getting her merry assistance in painting the town. They showed up at the conference, married for no reason at all, and it was a gala occasion. It was a good lesson, Vicky tearfully admitted to herself, that reform was something to attempt after the ceremony, never before.
But if she was so smart, and if an education was any good at all, why didn’t it teach a jilted lady how to recover her poise, how to wind back the will to live, to dance, to love? Her top dresser drawer information was as useless here as in any other crisis. All Vicky could do was to read the women’s magazines and discover how other heroines had solved this problem. The favorite solution, according to these experts, was to take your little savings out of the bank, buy a bathing suit, some smart luggage, put on a little lipstick, throw away your ugly glasses and go to Palm Beach or Miami for two weeks. There you lay on the beach doggedly in rain or shine, your glasses hidden in a secret compartment of the hotel cellar, and not-at-all-dangerous hair tint bringing out the highlights in your new permanent and the smart but inexpensive bathing suit bringing out other highlights in your figure. On the fourteenth day, if not before, a tall bronzed Texas oil man would appear and be bowled over by your unaffected passion for peppermint sticks, unlike the snobbish society women he knew, and if you turned to page 114 you would find yourself, as heroine, bumbling down the church aisles without your glasses led by the Texas oil king and possibly a Seeing Eye dog.
Vicky was not convinced by this remedy, nor even certain she wanted to live in Texas, or that the sight of her rather thin figure in a smart but inexpensive bathing suit would knock a millionaire off his feet. In fact she was pretty sure that the bathing suit would have to be pretty expensive and very carefully cut indeed to “do things for her.” Furthermore, the stories of How to Get Over a Broken Heart by Getting Another Man were invariably followed by other stories on what to do after you lost him again, after, say, ten years’ marriage. The expert storytellers appeared to be as certain you would lose him as they were that you would get him. You usually lost him on your tenth wedding anniversary to some girl in a bathing suit lying on a Miami beach with a lipstick and no glasses. The way you gained him back was to take your savings, put them into a new hair-dye do and permanent, take a figure-reducing course and erase that middle-aged spread which is the only thing that’s holding you back, call up an old beau who is always waiting for you at the nearest hotel and who sends you orchids at this faint beckon from you, and by getting a little flushed with champagne (instead of disagreeable over gin) and learning the newer dance steps, your husband is refascinated and comes whizzing back for a second honeymoon. Vicky deduced that it was just as well for you to start saving again, however, since there was no permanent way of keeping your man outside of nailing him to the floor. The lesson of all the stories boiled down to saving your money, since all the secret solutions devolved on dipping into this ever-present savings account. And that was the trouble with Vicky’s comeback after Tom had run out. The profits of her six years in business had been steadily put back into the business, new office equipment, printing, one thing and another, so that the personal savings account that was to see her to Palm Beach and Prince Charming was scarcely enough for the train fare, let alone two weeks of glamorous idleness. The thing was to make money, and in Lakeville money was made by a slow fairly honest process that might, after ten years, enable you to turn in your car every two years for a new one and have a little house just around the corner from next-to-the-smartest neighborhood. If she could only get to New York—if she could only find some excuse for dumping the business on her partner, now the wife of her lover, instead of this perpetual chin-upping about their wretched triangle.
“I suppose you wish I’d get out,” Mrs. Brown had candidly said the day after the wedding. “I know that would be the decent thing to do, but the truth is I need the money coming in till Tommy gets his bills paid.”
“No need to leave,” Vicky stonily answered. “I couldn’t afford to buy you out right now, anyway, and I’d have to train somebody else. We can manage. Providing you don’t let your husband hang around the office.”
“Oh, goodness, he wouldn’t dream of it,” Mrs. Brown’s laughter pealed out richly. “He’s simply scared to death of you.”
So day by day they kept up the illusion of an amiable business partnership and the sight of Mrs. Brown’s disposition slowly souring under the effects of marriage to the man Vicky loved did not keep Vicky from wishing to God she was in the other woman’s shoes.
“I’ll get over it,” she said to herself grimly. “It may take a couple hundred years but I’ll get over it.”
And then Ethel Carey got back from New York with exciting stories of plays, nightclubs, brilliant parties, gossip about Amanda, and sly hints that there were Texas oil men in New York as well as Florida, just waiting to heal broken hearts. Vicky was obliged to wearily declare that she did not want any man, none at all, all she wanted was to get out of this hateful town of Lakeville and make some money. Almost at once Amanda’s wire came, and then a letter about the idle studio waiting for her to move in, and next, as Amanda was an impatient woman, a letter with a ticket for the following Tuesday.
“Never mind about the office,” Ethel insisted. “I’ll get Papa to manage the whole thing, talk to Eudora and make all the arrangements. Your job begins and you have to leave. It’s an emergency.”
Having warned Vicky not to expect any friendly or personal gestures from Amanda, who, don’t forget, was a very busy and a very important person nowadays, Ethel was dumfounded at the offer of hospitality in Amanda’s own studio, hints of a welcoming dinner the first night in town, and all Ethel could conclude was that it was her own description of Vicky’s plight that had won these favors. She only hoped both of them would remember this and not sit around the fire in the long New York nights ganging up on her the way old friends generally did.
“I know how you feel about our friendship now, Vicky,” she said wistfully. “But what if you turn out as successful as Amanda? Then you’ll forget all about poor old Ethel.”
Vicky warmly denied this. Ethel had been her only friend, her only confidant in these trying months and she would never, never forget it in the almost certain glory of her future New York success.
“I only hope you’ll stay the same,” said Ethel, “only not such a fool next time, dear, I hope.”
At home Vicky met with more difficulty than she had anticipated. She rented a room from her brother’s family in a pretty little house on the lake and had lived here at his suggestion ever since she left college. It had often occurred to her that for the same money she could get a little place in town, but her brother’s family had gotten to count on her little contribution with their three children growing up. Brother Ted, who was ten years older than Vicky, liked to act smug about “giving Vicky a home now that Mother was gone,” and the exchange of money for this kindness was never mentioned. Vicky had expected, from veiled remarks overheard in the last two years, that her room could be put to good use with the children growing, and even as it was she shared her bed with Joan, the oldest. So she imparted the good news of her departure with every expectation of hearty rejoicing. Instead the news met with shocked silence, brother and wife looking at each other significantly, the baby’s burst into sobs quite ignored. Little Joan, age thirteen, scrawny, freckled, but happy in a “permanent” caught the cue of disapproval from her parents and looked from one face to the other, eager for Aunt Vicky to get scolded.
“I didn’t think you’d do a thing like that, Vicky,” her brother said, ladling out the veal potpie with careful justice. “You got a nice little business started and then you drop it and run wild.”
“But I’m not running wild,” Vicky protested. “I have a job and Amanda’s giving me her studio to live in—it’s the chance of a lifetime.”
“You give a person a home and what thanks do you get?” observed the brother’s wife.
Brother was more fair.
“I wouldn’t say that, honey, I wouldn’t put it just that way,” he said, “Vicky’s always paid a nominal rent and I know she would have raised it when she got to making more, of her own accord.”
Vicky, who had been secretly contemplating moving and had no intention of paying more for the privilege of sharing her brother’s expenses, stared in astonishment from one face to the other. The three little faces on the other side of the table, from Joan to Junior to Baby, frowned back in harmony with their parents.
“Can I call up Gertrude and tell her about Aunt Vicky going?” Joan asked.
“Hush, children! The point is, what do you want to go bumming around New York for,” Bother continued judicially, “that’s no kind of life for a nice girl, a girl as well thought of in Lakeville as you are.”
“Aunt Vicky’s afraid of being an old maid,” bitterly offered Brother’s wife, and the children tittered.
“Now, honey,” appeased Brother again, “you can’t blame Vicky for wanting to marry some day. But that’s just the point, Maybe she did lose a beau or two here, true enough, but that don’t mean there aren’t other fellows here in Lakeville. Good solid boys she went to school with, know the family. That’s what Vicky wants. You can’t blame her for that, honey, and wanting some kids of her own like ours.”
“Well, I’m not so sure that’s what I want,” Vicky flared back, looking with sudden dislike at the three smug little faces. “What do I want with kids when I’m trying to earn a living?”
“Vicky wants to have all that salary to spend on herself,” again Brother’s wife was accusing. “Every penny to put on her own back, I suppose.”
“I’ve stayed with them too long,” Vicky thought with immense perspicacity. “They want to own me as if I was a government bond that paid a nice little dividend all the time. In another year or so they’d be suing me for breach of promise if I left.”
“I can have a room to myself if Aunt Vicky goes,” said Joan. “I can have Gertrude come and stay all night whenever I like.”
“If Vicky feels that she wants to let a good business slide and go fool around with strangers, I won’t stop her,” Brother went on gravely. “She knows all she owes to us, and she’ll find out what it means to pay strangers for all the little comforts she gets here without thinking. Piano, radio, use of the car—”
“The car’s half mine, after all,” Vicky said in a small voice.
“All right then, go,” said Brother’s wife, losing her temper. “I suppose it means nothing to you that we’ll have to let Bobby go to public school next year, then, instead of to the Academy, and Joanie will have to put off boarding school another year (“But Mama!” wailed Joanie, “Gertrude and all my bunch are going!”) Oh, no, you’ll be putting your good money on a fur coat, something for yourself, maybe a diamond wrist watch. Take a cruise, why don’t you? We won’t be even able to go to Canada for August like we planned. And a lot you care.”
Vicky sat very still. She had not really given much thought to her fifty dollars a month contribution. It was no bargain as Lakeville prices went, but it was all in the family. Brother earned a fair enough salary at the printing company, but it was plain that that little extra fifty was what Belle counted on as gravy. It was Belle’s little private windfall and she never thought that it would cease or that its donor had first rights to it. Brother, even trying to be fair, could not help a look of somber disapproval.
“We’re thinking of your own good, Vicky,” he said.
“Fun’s all she’s thinking of,” cried Belle. “Fun and fur coats.”
Junior, aged nine, brightened.
“Can I have Aunt Vicky’s typewriter when she goes?” he asked.
“I want it,” said Joan. “I’m the oldest. You can have her radio.”
“The radio’s broke,” howled Junior. “I don’t want an old broke radio, I want a typewriter to make writing on. Mama says I can have it.”
“Hush!” cried their mother, and this set the baby to screaming convulsively. “It would be just like your Aunt Vicky to take them along to New York with her.”
Vicky pushed aside her plate.
“Oh, Mama, look, I’ve broken off my fingernail!” exclaimed Joan dolefully. “And I’ve been growing them all winter so they’d be longer than Gertrude’s. Just look.”
“Well, you’ll just have to cut them all off,” snapped her mother.
“But, Mama, they’ll look perfectly awful!” wailed Joan, holding out the maimed hand with its long red talons. “I’ll just have to paste it back on or something! It’s just a whole winter’s work ruined, that’s all it is.”
“Shut up, we’re talking about Aunt Vicky,” barked her father.
“But look!” sobbed Joanie. “How can I wear my formal and have nasty old sawed-off fingernails like Aunt Vicky? You’ve got to do something about it, Mama, honestly, you just got to!”
“I think I’ll start packing,” said Vicky.
As she left the room to the tune of Joan’s quiet sobbing, she was not consoled by hearing her brother say, “Now, honey, we mustn’t be too hard on Vicky, even if we do need that little extra help she gives. Don’t forget Vicky’s been through a lot having Tom throw her over and then everybody in town kidding about it behind her back. That takes a lot out of a girl, and Vicky’s getting on, so she’s got to get somebody quick. After all, Vicky’s twenty-six!”
“But Mama, just look,” Joanie’s voice rose in despair. “You won’t even look at that nail! You don’t care how I look, that’s all. You want me to grow up and be an old maid like Aunt Vicky, that’s what!”
2
THE TUESDAY she was leaving Lakeville, Vicky drove into town after breakfast with her brother Ted and little Joan. Usually she dropped Ted at the station to take a train into Cleveland, where most of his business was transacted, and she continued by the lake road, dropping Joan at school and then driving on to her office. But today Ted’s business was right in Lakeville, besides it was his brotherly duty to take care of Vicky’s trunk and ticket. Vicky would rather have driven in all by herself this morning, for she loved the car, and she loved the lake road, having thrashed out most of her problems in the last few years while driving along the blue water to work. Ted was not the natural driver that she was, either, so you could not relax and dream with him at the wheel, but must be constantly jarred by his nervous exclamations at every red light and every other car. “Look at that turn, will you? License ought to be taken away from him. Ah, of course. A woman driver. Might have known.”
Vicky kept her eyes out the window, thinking, “This is the last time. Good-bye, Lake Erie, good-bye lake road, good-bye all the morning thoughts I used to have driving along this road to work, wondering if I’d be able to pick up Tom at the car tracks, wondering if we’d dare get married with all his debts and his drinking. Then after a while wondering how I could manage to duck seeing him at the tracks, and how I could get through the day with her. When we get up to the crossroads up here I’ll look the other way so I don’t see our special secret beach with the old burnt pavilion where we used to have our Saturday night suppers. Anyhow Eudora doesn’t like that kind of thing, so they don’t go there together. That’s something.”
Ted would never put the top down when he drove, and he resented having the windows open, too, for fear the dust would spoil the new upholstering, so that even on the hottest days the car was filled with his after-breakfast-cigar smoke, while a mere pane’s width away lay the crisp azure lake air, as tantalizing as the crown jewels behind the jewelers’ invisible glass window. Vicky opened her window this morning, defying Ted’s customary argument about economy.
“It’s the last time I’ll smell Lake Erie,” she said, and drew a long breath of the tingling freshness of lake winds, steamer-smoke, fish, and automobile gas—all the things that made up a Lakeville autumn morning. This is what she would miss, she thought.
“Last time for a month or so, maybe,” chuckled Ted.
They were so sure the great city would throw her back here. They were fond of her, certainly, but part of the family fondness was in knowing that nobody else would ever like you or excuse your faults as they did. It would have been the same, had her mother lived, because Mother had been devoted to her son and her best wish for Vicky was that there would always be Ted on hand to protect her from her own folly. “Don’t let Amanda Keeler’s leaving town put ideas in your head, Vicky, my girl,” Mother had warned her when Vicky had wanted to leave Miss Doxey’s and go to New York just because Amanda had done so. “Our family has never liked big cities. We’re country people and don’t like to show off. Our women aren’t show-offs like Amanda Keeler. We’re just simple folks, marry the boys we grow up with, raise our families in the same town. No use your talking about being a newspaper writer, because none of our family has ever been writers. You can talk about times changing, blood don’t change. When you get out of Miss Doxey’s, you’ll find something to do right here in Lakeville or maybe Cleveland, doing something quiet the way we like to do. Any of our family in New York City would be like fish out of water. You stay here where Ted can help you out when you need help.”
