B.F.’s Daughter, page 4
“No,” Polly said, “I’m not afraid.”
“Well, that’s fine,” B. F. said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
The whole mood of the room had changed. He was able to move from one subject to another as though his mind were a filing system.
“Aren’t you getting tired?” Polly asked.
“No,” he said, “I’m feeling fine. Where’s Bob Tasmin, Poll? I’d sort of like to see him. I’ve always liked Bob.”
“Now wait,” Polly said. “Isn’t it pretty late to bring Bob Tasmin up? He’s in the war. I think he’s somewhere down in Washington with his wife.”
“I always liked Bob,” B. F. said again. “Maybe you should have married Bob.”
“Well, it’s too late now.”
“I was just thinking out loud,” B. F. said. “Why didn’t you marry Bob?”
“Do you really want to know why?”
“Yes,” he said. “I really do.”
“Because he was the sort of man you would have liked to hire for the office.” She had never thought of it in that way before. “And he wasn’t like you, B. F. My God, he, wanted me to live in Gray’s Point. All he wanted was one of those brick houses in a new development, and dogs, and exercise and dancing. Darling, I’d have been on a committee at the Club. He was everything I wanted to get away from. He isn’t intellectual.”
“Bob has a good legal mind,” B. F. said. “I wish he were here now to do some work on my will.”
“I hate legal minds.” Polly’s voice had risen.
“He knows what he’s talking about,” B. F. said.
“Who cares what he knows?” Polly answered. “He was absolutely conditioned by the time he was five. He’s an anachronism, darling, even his clothes. Yale Club, Mill River Club, and then that exercise.”
Just then the nurse tapped on the door.
“The half hour’s up,” she said.
“All right, Nursie,” B. F. answered. “Well, that was quite a talk, Poll. Now I’ve got time to put my mind on you, we’ll have to talk some more. Look, Cutie, I want to leave a thought with you.”
“Don’t make it sound like one of your letters,” Polly said.
“All right,” B. F. said.
“And you can only leave the thought,” Polly said, “if you don’t call me ‘Cutie.’”
It must have amused him because he always called her Cutie after that.
“Now, Cutie, you go out to the Colony with someone for lunch, and try to see some men tonight, if there are any men left. Try to have a good time. That’s my thought.” He held her hand tight when she kissed him.
“And don’t be afraid. Understand? Have a good time, and don’t worry. Come around tomorrow and tell me about tonight.”
“I ought to stay here,” Polly said. “I don’t want to go running around when you’re …”
B. F. beckoned to the nurse. “Are there any reporters downstairs now, Nursie?”
The nurse looked anxious and she stammered.
“Dr. Williamson talked to them,” she answered. “They’ve gone now.”
“Well,” B. F. said, “if they’ve gone, you go too, Poll. Those boys know better than the doctors. That means I’m not news yet.”
The office was in charge by this time, and downstairs in the bare little room with the telephones and filing cabinets, where B. F. talked business when he was in the apartment, Miss Silver, his private secretary, was answering calls. She was saying he was much better this morning and that it was too early still to give a definite report. Every time she hung up the telephone it would ring again.
Polly was always good at arranging things and taking over, as they called it—opening flowers, talking to the doctors and to the secretaries, and then to callers. A great many people dropped everything to come and inquire personally, and you had to know just how to treat them and to remember who they were.
They were mostly from those different directors’ boards. Mr. Royall, president of the bank with which B. F. was connected, although he was sick with the grippe, got out of bed and came. Homer J. Lovelace, the president of the Bulwer Machine Company, dropped everything and flew from Pittsburgh, bringing with him his own special osteopath in case B. F. should want him. Mr. Lovelace said he knew you could not monkey around with doctors, but he had brought him and he was going to leave him at the Waldorf in case B. F. felt cramped or uncomfortable. Mr. Lovelace had been suffering with stitches in the side himself, and that man was the only one who could take them out. He didn’t look like much, but he could straighten out anything. Arthur Murcheson, who was down in Delaware seeing the Hercules people, had left a meeting right in the middle, and he had called up his house at Miami to have everything there all squared away in case B. F. wanted to move South. Mr. Blossom was in town from Toledo, the one who owned Blossom, Jones, Ohio Glass, and with whom B. F. had been working on plastics. If B. F. wanted to go to Arizona, Mr. Blossom was ready to have him flown there.
They all referred to Polly and her mother as “you girls,” and they all wanted to send up word to B. F. that they were in there right behind him. They wanted the girls to know there wasn’t anything good enough for old B. F., and they wanted B. F. to know that he could relax and that they were all taking over. There was no reason to move B. F. to any hospital because the hospital could move its works right up to the apartment and they could attend to it personally. The thing for B. F. to do was to relax. Then they all sat together in the library, drinking Bourbon and talking to Polly and her mother about B. F. They wanted the girls to know that B. F. was not only a genius but a sweetheart and they all loved him, and they all kept saying “Remember the time—” Remember the time B. F. changed that assembly line at Detroit. Remember the time B. F. established research at Bulmaco. Remember the time they were all in that car playing poker. Something about the poker game made Mr. Lovelace begin to cry.
“I love him,” he sobbed. “You can’t help loving the old sonofabitch.” And then Mr. Murcheson told him there were ladies in the room.
“Excuse me, girls,” Mr. Lovelace said.
No one could help loving B. F. The girls would never understand, they couldn’t, what B. F. meant to an organization. There just wasn’t anybody like B. F. Do you remember what he said, do you remember what he did?
They were right: it was all something that Polly could not understand. They were all beings from another world, beings with only primitive powers of self-expression. They all came from plain backgrounds with the exception of Mr. Royall, and she remembered that B. F. had said bankers had to have manners. They were all there because they were fond of B. F., and their affection made them soft and awkward and wordy. They just sat there repeating themselves. No one could get production moving like B. F. Put him anywhere for an hour and all the boys would get going, and that was genius when you thought of labor nowadays. By God, B. F. could talk to labor better than those conciliators in Washington. B. F. knew everybody’s language.
But they were not speaking Polly’s language. That was why she was so glad when Apples Sandler called her up in the afternoon. Things were quiet then, and she told Apples she would stop in to see her at Sutton Place, and besides she had to go to her own apartment sometime to get some clothes if she was going to stay at the family’s. If everything was all right, they might even have dinner somewhere.…
III
Encore les Martinis
It was refreshing seeing Apples and her apartment at Sutton Place with all its glass and mirrors and modern, whitish furniture. There were glass-topped coffee tables, and Steuben glass fishes on the mantelpiece, and wire sculptures with little beads that you could move up and down, and three abstract pictures by a new man who, Apples said, kept growing on you.
“Oh, darling!” Apples said, after they had thrown their arms about each other. “You look simply dead. A Colonel Beyers is coming up, an Air Force one, and that commander—you know, the submarine one who knew Arthur at Nouméa. I couldn’t find where they were to put them off, but we can talk ourselves out before they come. Would you like tea, or a drink?”
Polly sat down in a curved chair that was also half a bookcase. It was so low that she almost fell into it, but once she was there she felt comfortable.
“Just a long, cold glass of water,” Polly said. “That’s the way I feel.”
Apples pushed a bell beside the fireplace.
“I do wish they weren’t coming,” she said, “but when Father was sick, everyone treated me like a cloistered nun, and you’ve got to keep on living.”
“That’s what B. F. told me,” Polly said.
“And Chuck’s only going to be here for three more days,” Apples said. “He’s got his orders.”
She was referring to her submarine commander. Apples was always too obvious to conceal anything; she might as well have told Polly that she was crazy about him and be done with it instead of being transparently devious, and it made Polly sorry for Arthur out there in the Pacific.
“Marie,” Apples was saying to her maid, a grim Norman-French girl in a starched apron, who never smiled, “apportez une verre de l’eau pour Madame Brett.” Apples’ French was rudimentary, but she loved to speak it.
“Bonjour, Marie,” Polly said. Her own French was very good.
“Bonjour, Madame,” Marie said.
“She still doesn’t know what happened to her farm,” Apples whispered.
“What farm?” Polly asked.
It was very hard to keep up with everything, particularly after that day.
“Her family’s farm near St. Lô,” Apples told her.
Polly could never quite accept the change in Apples since their schoolgirl years together at Heatherbloom Hall. Apples had been a dumpy, clumsy girl then, but now she had a lacquered hair-do and plucked eyebrows, and a made-up mouth that changed her whole expression. Her figure, too, in a carefully preserved green Schiaparelli dress, was svelte and graceful, but underneath this deliberately cultivated surface, she was still Apples to Polly, dear Apples. Polly would always remember when Apples had not been quite honorable at Heatherbloom Hall, when Apples had kept a boy’s picture on her bureau when such things weren’t allowed, and had said it was her brother. Apples had been summoned before the Senior Council and made to apologize to the class. No matter what her latest phase might be, Polly always thought of her as Apples, which, of course, was not her name. Her real name was Olivia, and she had married a Yale boy six years before named Arthur Paxton, a friend of Bob Tasmin’s, and Polly had been the matron of honor.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day, precious,” Apples said.
It was a relief to talk to an old friend, to be able to say what you wanted without having to be careful. She could tell Apples all about her worries at Pyefield and the drive down without having to explain too much.
“He doesn’t look sick at all,” Polly said and her voice choked. “He’s so damned brave. I don’t know how to say it. He’s so—he doesn’t seem to mind it.”
She could tell Apples anything.
“Polly darling,” Apples said. “Don’t you want some Scotch or a Martini?”
“No, thanks,” Polly said. “Not now.”
“Well, you mustn’t let it get you down.”
“It doesn’t,” Polly said, “but it’s just as though he could see everything. He wanted to know if Tom and I were happy.”
“Now precious,” Apples said. “Are you sure you don’t want a Martini?”
“I wish everything weren’t so mixed up,” Polly said. “How can anyone be happy?”
“Where’s Tom now?” Apples asked.
“Where he always is, down in Washington.”
Apples lighted a cigarette. “I wish lipstick didn’t come off on everything,” she said. “Poll, do you think there’s anyone down in Washington? I don’t want to worry you. I’m just asking.”
Polly tried to sit up straighter, but the functional chair was not made for it.
“Apples,” she said. “Have you heard anything? If you have, don’t pretend you haven’t.”
“Why, Poll, if I had, I’d have told you right away.”
“Then why did you ask?” Polly felt annoyed and very edgy, but then Apples was her best friend and she had a right to ask.
“Now don’t be upset, precious,” Apples said. “I was just thinking everybody’s getting to be so emotionally unstable. You can’t keep your love-life all tied up and in a box. At least I can’t. It keeps readjusting itself. At least, you have Tom right with you. He isn’t an abstraction.”
“All right,” Polly said. “Let’s not talk about it any more. I’m sick of thinking about Tom.”
“And I’m sick of thinking about Arthur,” Apples said. “My God, Poll, I can’t remember what he looks like. I can’t remember the reason for anything.”
“I’m sick of thinking of reasons,” Polly said. “You just keep going over them, and they never get you anywhere.”
Apples pressed the bell again.
“Marie,” Apples said. “Apportez deux Martinis. I’m going to have one if you’re not. Poll, who do you think I saw yesterday, right outside the Ambassador? I saw Will Tasmin. He’s in some sort of Public Relations at some flying field in Miami. He didn’t remember me at first.”
“You can’t expect anyone to recognize you,” Polly said, “when you keep doing yourself over.”
“It’s better than staying the same and just looking at yourself,” Apples said. “Poll, I wish you’d let me take you to Elaine’s. She gives a personality diagnosis.”
“Never mind my personality,” Polly said. “How was Will looking?”
“Just the same,” Apples answered. “He has that same squint. The uniform doesn’t change him. He doesn’t look a bit like Bob.”
“Did he say how Bob was?”
“He said Bob’s in the Pentagon Building,” Apples answered, “and he keeps going around on missions. Something to do with Intelligence. I always adored Bob.”
His name had come up again. It was like shaking pebbles in a bottle and having a certain pebble persist in rising to the top.
“If you adored him, why didn’t you marry him?” Polly asked.
“Why, precious,” Apples said. “How could I when you had him all staked out?”
In the distance the apartment doorbell rang, and the faint sound made Apples jump from her chair and take a quick look at herself in the mirror above the fireplace.
“There they are,” she said. “Poll, let’s forget everything.” She sounded just the way she used to at Heatherbloom Hall. “We’ll all go somewhere to dinner—you can have the colonel—and then we’ll go to the Stork Club or somewhere.”
“I can’t,” Polly said. “Not in this dress. And besides I ought to go to the apartment and pack.” But it was not such a bad idea to forget everything.
“Why, darling,” Apples said. “You look just right. You’re beautiful.” B. F. had honestly wanted her to go somewhere that night, and it might upset him if she didn’t.
There was nothing reasonable or constructive in having cocktails and going out somewhere with Apples and two strange men. Neither she nor Apples would have dreamed of doing such a thing before the war. She would have felt like one of those unattached girls who keep giving men their telephone numbers. Now you were always being asked to do something about someone who was in New York at loose ends for a few days. Somehow, the nation’s uniform made all men look very much alike after a year of service. Even their backgrounds were erased by the uniform, and by a few months in the European or Pacific theaters, so that you were always completely in the dark about them at first. Still, it was patriotic to go on the assumption that all officers were gentlemen, particularly when they got to be colonels and commanders.
“Polly,” Apples was saying. “This is Colonel Beyers and Commander Wildhaus—Mrs. Brett.”
Wildhaus, the one that Apples called Chuck, was dark, saturnine, and discouraged. His eyes were narrow, and he wore the insignia of the submariner. Colonel Beyers was one of those young Air Force colonels with a lot of ribbons.
“What a lovely room!” Colonel Beyers said. “I’m always partial to glass. Lovely.”
That speech made him, at least, the sort of person who used the adjective “lovely.” Commander Wildhaus made no comments on the room. He had obviously been there often.
“You’ll forget the glass when you get around a couple of these Martinis, Mike,” he said. “Mrs. Paxton really makes them. Colonel Beyers is one of these wine and food boys, aren’t you, Mike?”
“Oh, not really,” Colonel Beyers said. “But there’s nothing more lovely than a Martini. They’re rare in London. Are you familiar with London, Mrs. Brett?”
“Yes,” Polly said, “I used to be.” And she smiled. “But I haven’t been there lately. Have you, Colonel?”
“Back and forth. Leaving for there the day after tomorrow,” the colonel said. “Back from leave to the old 86th, but let’s skip it.”
“I didn’t bring it up. You did,” Polly said.
The colonel had finished his Martini.
“Darling,” he asked, “what has kept us apart all these years?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Polly said. “Where can you have been?”
“Right here in this terrific city,” the colonel said, “before this fuss started. Right in the National Broadcasting Company.”
He threw the name in lightly as though he expected her to be impressed.
“Oh, you were one of those people, were you?” Polly said, and she tried to imagine him in civilian clothes. The colonel was like the men who had come to the apartment when Tom had done a piece on “The Critics’ Fifteen Minutes.” If he were not in uniform he would be wearing a hand-painted tie.
“Why do you say ‘one of those people’?” the colonel asked. “Do you know about radio?”
“My husband has something to do with it sometimes,” Polly said. “Speeches.”
