B.F.’s Daughter, page 34
She had to admit that spring that, hard as she tried and much as Bob Tasmin loved it, she did not like Gray’s Point at all. He kept saying it was great to be out in the country and to get some fresh air. It was great to see the old crowd at Gray’s Point again, and it was swell to get out on the tennis court and bat the ball around. He didn’t care whether she played well or not—he loved to have her with him at the Mill River Club. He loved to have her with him when he sat and talked with all those girls in sweaters and all those men in tweeds and flannels. He loved taking her to Sunday luncheons where they talked about horses and the stock market and golf. It may have been that his legal mind was tired on Sundays. Bob said it was great to be with friends again whom you had always known, and that you had more fun with them than you did with intellectual giants. He was at his best on the tennis court playing a hard game. He gave no impression of effort; he was always in position. He always did the right thing.
There was a new real estate development starting there up by Sugar Hill, each house on an acre of its own. There were houses of whitewashed brick or houses with big clapboards, and the rhododendrons and evergreens were all grouped by a good landscape architect. It was just the place, he said, that he had always dreamed of, and a lot of the young married crowd were buying lots. You could just drop in and out there and see everyone, and the houses were small and convenient, all built on slopes so that you could get a garage under them. Of course, they might have an apartment in town for a few months in the winter, but right from spring to late autumn there would be no place like Sugar Hill, just an eight-minute drive to the station and three minutes’ drive to the club.
If he wanted it, Polly tried to want it too, though she could not imagine what she would do there all day when he was away. Bob said there would be plenty to do, housekeeping, marketing and all those community things at Gray’s Point like the Garden Club; and she could play bridge like all the other girls and brush up on her golf and tennis. If she put her mind on it, Bob said, she could get to be good at tennis. He and Jeff, the professional, had been talking about her, and Jeff could round out anybody’s game. Bob could beat him any time, but teaching was an art in itself. It was the same with bridge. If Polly would keep her mind on it and not talk so much across the table, she would enjoy the game and enjoy the way the cards fell. All that spring Polly tried to see herself as a Sugar Hill matron, and it was not inconceivable when Bob Tasmin was around. It was only when he was out of sight that the good life presented itself as a problem.
It was a relief when she sailed with the family to Europe in July, but the relief had nothing to do with Bob, because she missed Bob terribly. She kept thinking of him on the boat and in Paris and in the Dolomites. She wrote him nearly every day, and he wrote to her. It was hot in New York, and he had been to Easthampton. He was not taking an early vacation because one of the cases he had been preparing for Mr. Willoughby was coming up for trial in late August. He had been to Gray’s Point and had walked over to the swimming pool. The garden had been beautiful. It had locked for a while as though there might be some recovery from the depression, but everything had slumped again. They were at the bottom and it was bound to get better. He was thinking of her all the time.
She hoped he would be at the dock to meet her—and there he was, right there by the gangplank with B. F.’s shipping man, who had come to take the declarations and get everything through the customs. When she saw Bob in his gray flannel suit, she knew that she loved him more than ever and without any doubt or reservation. She did not care who saw how glad she was to see him, though it was almost like admitting to the family that they were engaged.
“Darling,” she said. “Let’s go where we can be alone.” And before she could think of an excuse to go off and leave the family, B. F. had asked Bob Tasmin to take her out to lunch somewhere, if he had time. They went up to Bob’s apartment after lunch, and she kept thinking of all the things she could do to it to make it more comfortable, or at least she did eventually. At first all she could grasp was that he was near her again and that she could touch him.
“Did you miss me?” she asked. “Tell me just how you missed me.”
“I’ll tell you how,” he answered. “Nothing without you is worth a damn.”
“Then don’t treat me as though I would break. Don’t act as though someone might come in.”
“Maybe it would be better if someone did,” he said.
She did not care what might happen, because this was what they were both meant for.
“Poll,” he said, “we’d better cut this out.”
“But why,” she whispered, “why?”
“Because you wouldn’t like it, Poll,” he said.
“What makes you think so?” she asked. “Can’t we ever be ourselves?”
It was that self-control of his, and she hated it at the moment. It was that damned office and having no right until he had made a certain amount of money. He moved away from her, but at least for once he had been almost natural.
“All right,” she answered. “I won’t throw myself at you. It must have been the long sea voyage.” And she opened her compact and looked at herself in the little mirror. “You’re an awful stuffed shirt,” she said.
“Yes,” he answered, “I guess I am with you. You see, I love you, Poll.”
He was hurt and she was hurt, each in a different way.
“Oh, God, darling,” Polly said. “Everything is so—so contrived. Everyone’s always taking care of me. I’m never face to face with anything.”
“You’re face to face with me,” Bob Tasmin said.
“I’m not as nice as you are,” she told him. “I’m a spoiled, disagreeable, maladjusted girl. Why don’t you tell me so?”
“Because I’m prejudiced.”
“You’re so damned balanced,” Polly said. “Why can’t I be balanced too?”
“I wouldn’t like you if you were.”
“Do you think it would be biologically safe if you kissed me again?” Polly asked. “I don’t want you to put any strain on your better self.”
She knew that it would all end suitably because someday they would be married and live happily ever after. She said she was afraid she’d been mean to the family in Europe. When you traveled with B. F. there was a vacuum between you and the rest of the world. There were always suites at the Crillon and cars and chauffeurs, and a lot of subservient people trying to make you happy: persuasive gentlewomen with bon goût who took you to the great couturières—on a commission basis—scraping concierges and scraping little men, too, who wanted to marry you for your money. There had been an Englishman who had followed them about everywhere, proposing and proposing.
“He wasn’t like you, darling,” Polly said. “He was crazy about B. F.’s money. Perhaps you should have gone to Oxford or something, darling.”
No matter what the family said, she was not going to sit around or go to useless parties at Gray’s Point or in New York as she had last year. She had a lot of energy—and yet when she had suggested to B. F. that he might give her something to do at the office, he had said that it would upset the whole works if she went down there. Then she had suggested that she might go, with one of those archeologists she had met on the boat, and dig up a town in North Africa or one of those Indian places in New Mexico—but the family objected when she asked B. F. to put up the money.
She was not going to sit around the apartment. She was going to take some courses at Columbia—one in economics, one on the English novel, and one on the history of Europe since 1815. She was going up there tomorrow to see about it … And Bob Tasmin said it was a swell idea.
The best thing, they both agreed, was to go on without being engaged, and Polly asked him if he minded if she saw Milton Ouerbach and all those people.
“Of course, Poll,” he said. “That’s just what I want. I’ve told you—”
“Stop it,” Polly said. “Don’t say that you haven’t got any right.”
“Maybe you’ll meet someone you’ll like better than me,” Bob said. “That’s always a possibility.”
“When you say that,” Polly said, “please smile, darling.”
“It wouldn’t be funny, but it might happen,” Bob said; “but Poll, keep Sundays open for me, won’t you, so that we can walk in the country.”
It was the autumn of ’32, and Milton Ouerbach was already writing a syndicated column. Milton and all his friends knew that the whole system was going to pieces, and they enjoyed watching poor Mr. Hoover trying to keep it together. Bob said they were all a bunch of crackpots, but Polly saw them more and more, though they all looked upon her suspiciously because she was Burton Fulton’s daughter. Instead of liking her they disliked her because of money, and it was a great relief. They took Polly to all sorts of queer speakeasies, and finally to Harlem. When she asked Bob Tasmin why he never took her to places like the Savoy, Bob said he never dreamed that she would like them, and besides, he was too busy to stay out all night. He was so busy that Polly went alone to more and more parties at Washington Square, and finally she had to do something in return.
She invited Milton and Victor Steinhaus, whom Milton called the sculptor, the one who did those queer things that looked like eggs; she invited George Cyst, whom Milton called the explorer, and Kevin O’Rory, the prose-poet. She invited Beverly Pepcorn, the economist, and Dr. Jeannette Sparkoe, who had been indispensable to Freud, and lots and lots of other people. She asked them if they would mind a stuffy evening at the family’s, and she was astonished that they all seemed glad to come.
“You don’t have to be there, B. F.,” she said, and she told Bob Tasmin that he did not have to be there either. She only wanted a buffet supper, and it would be just as well to have it on Timmons’s night out.
“Now, listen, Poll,” B. F. said. “Don’t be shy. I want to see your friends.”
“I don’t know what they’ll think,” she told B. F., “and I don’t know how they’ll behave.”
“They’ll like it,” B. F. said. “I know those newspaper people. They always like food, and this is quite a layout, Poll.”
As a matter of fact, they did like it, and a great many more guests came than she had asked. There were a few dreadful minutes at first when everyone tried to be natural, but B. F. said afterwards that it was all like a salesmen’s convention—the main thing was to see that everyone had a drink.
“Of course, I have different ideas from some of you kids,” she heard B. F. saying. “I believe in the profit motive. It’s always worked well with me.”
It must have been a very good party, because they all stayed until two. They played the piano and danced in the hall, and Milton thought of one of those word games, and there were some men in the show business who put on an act. Polly had started being embarrassed for B. F., but when she heard him arguing with Milton about abundance, she realized how good he was at enlightened conversation, and as the evening wore on, they stopped calling him “Mr. Fulton.”
“I don’t know why Poll has kept you all away from me,” she heard B. F. say, and at least three of the girls kissed him good-by. When it was all over, she was not even tired.
“Now that was quite a crowd,” B. F. said. “Those boys were bright as buttons. Now that boy Ouerbach—he certainly could talk.”
“Well, what’s wrong with him?” Polly asked.
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” B. F. said. “It’s funny how many people know the answers to everything these days. I wish I knew the answers. Where’s Bob? Why didn’t Bob come?”
“He had to work,” Polly said.
B. F. put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall in the front parlor. He looked, as he sometimes did, straight into her eyes.
“Poll,” he said. “There’s just one thing to remember.”
“What?” she asked.
“Bob Tasmin amounts to more than any of them.”
“But, darling,” Polly said, “it isn’t fair to compare them. They are all more like you than Bob Tasmin.”
“Yes, I know,” B. F. said, “but I wouldn’t have them in the office, Poll.”
Polly had never felt so in touch with great world movements as she had that winter, and she could thank Milton Ouerbach for it. All those friends of his began coming more and more to the apartment, and they grew to be as much at home there as they were anywhere else. It was discouraging to have Bob say you could always collect freaks if you fed them. Bob was usually tired in the evenings, and he said it was like going to a five-ring circus, and that he could not keep his mind on all those different egocentrics performing. It was like getting drunk on mixed drinks, and as far as he could see, they were only individuals who had failed to cope with ordinary existence.
Then one morning just after Christmas he called Polly early, which was surprising because he hardly ever telephoned from the office.
“Poll,” he said, “how are you?”
“Darling, I’m just waking up,” Polly said. “I was up awfully late last night.”
“I heard you were,” he said. “I tried to call you. How’s the world situation? How’s Russia?”
“Don’t be so nasty,” Polly said. “What’s the matter? Why aren’t you busy?”
“I was just asking,” Bob said. “I don’t have to read any more. I don’t even have to ask Milton Ouerbach. I can just ask you, and I can find out anything.”
“Darling,” Polly said, “do you love me?”
“I’m crazy about you,” Bob said. “Listen, Poll, can you be in at six this afternoon? There’s something I want to tell you.”
His voice sounded forced and unnatural.
“Bob,” she asked, “has anything happened?”
There was a pause, a long pause.
“Yes,” he answered, “something.” There was no sign of elation. Instead he sounded grim.
“Oh, Bob, darling,” she said. “They haven’t fired you, have they?”
A great many people she knew had been losing their jobs lately.
“I’ll tell you about it at six, Poll,” was all he said. “I can’t talk about it over the telephone.”
All that day she felt capable and important. She kept thinking of what she could do for him and how she could show him that it made no difference. He could go into B. F.’s office if he wanted, or perhaps he could have a rest. It meant that at last Bob Tasmin was fallible like other people.
Everyone was there at six, her mother and B. F. and Harry. She wanted Harry out of the way, but when he heard that Bob Tasmin was coming, he said he would wait.
“You can see him any time,” Polly said. “There isn’t any reason to bother him today.”
“I want to talk to him,” Harry said. “I want to ask him something about Yale.”
“Oh, my God,” Polly said. “Why do we have to bring in Yale?”
“If he wants to ask Bob something,” her mother said, “I’m sure I don’t see why he shouldn’t.”
“What is it?” B. F. asked. “Something about the Freshman Crew?”
Harry blushed and cleared his throat.
“Well, if you want to know, it is,” he said, “but I can’t very well talk about it here, Father.”
“Why can’t you?” B. F. asked. “Is there any chance of your making it?”
“Now, listen,” Polly said, “Harry hasn’t any more chance of rowing in that boat than a snowball in hell.”
“Polly,” her mother said, “I wish you wouldn’t use those expressions.”
“I can’t discuss it in the present company, Father,” Harry said.
“Don’t try to be so important,” Polly said.
“Don’t try to be so important yourself,” Harry told her. “What are you all snaked up for? Where did you get that dress? It looks as though it’s coming off.”
She was wearing it because it was new and because Bob had never seen it.
Bob Tasmin came in just on time, wearing a new suit too.
“Hello,” he said, and he shook hands with everyone. Even then Polly could not tell what was on his mind because he had what she called his “Business” look.
“Well, sit down, Bob,” B. F. said, “and tell us how everything is.”
Bob shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m feeling a little let down,” he said. “This has been quite a day—at least it’s been for me.”
“Oh, Bob—” Polly began, but she did not know how to go on from there. He looked the way he had when he had been beaten in one of those tennis tournaments, perfectly controlled and cheerful.
“I might as well tell you the news,” Bob said. “Beginning January, I’m going to be a member of the firm.”
Polly drew a quick, sharp breath. Instead of being glad, she was thinking that he might have told her in the morning.
“Of course, it isn’t much,” he said. “I don’t suppose the firm will earn much next year, but there it is.”
B. F. shook Bob’s hand and slapped him on the back.
“Harry,” he said, “ring the bell and tell Timmons to get some champagne.”
Then her heart missed a beat, for she saw that Bob had something more to say.
“Now that everybody’s here,” he said, “I’d like to ask a question.”
It sounded so formal that it was silly, and if she could only have known earlier, it would have been much easier. “I’d like to ask if it’s all right to be engaged to Poll.”
B. F. started to laugh, and so did Harry. They all laughed except her mother, who half laughed and half cried.
“It’s about time,” B. F. said. “You’ve had us all worried, Bob.”
“You had me worried especially,” Harry said. “You ought to see the birds who’ve been coming around here lately.”
“My dear,” her mother said, “I’m so glad it’s Bob.” And then Polly found her voice.
“I wish you wouldn’t all look so relieved,” she said. “What did you think I was going to do, marry the janitor?” There was no reason why they should have been quite so overjoyed.
That was what she said to Tom Brett not so long afterwards.
