For Esmé, With Love and Squalor Read online

  “Hello,” Eloise said into the phone, without having turned the overhead light on. “Look, I can’t meet you. Mary Jane’s here. She’s got her car parked right in front of me and she can’t find the key. I can’t get out. We spent about twenty minutes looking for it in the wuddayacallit—the snow and stuff. Maybe you can get a lift with Dick and Mildred.” She listened. “Oh. Well, that’s tough, kid. Why don’t you boys form a platoon and march home? You can say that hut-hope-hoop-hoop business. You can be the big shot.” She listened again. “I’m not funny,” she said. “Really, I’m not. It’s just my face.” She hung up.

  She walked, less steadily, back into the living room. At the window seat, she poured what was left in the bottle of Scotch into her glass. It made about a finger. She drank it off, shivered, and sat down.

  When Grace turned on the light in the dining room, Eloise jumped. Without getting up, she called in to Grace, “You better not serve until eight, Grace. Mr. Wengler’ll be a little late.”

  Grace appeared in the dining-room light but didn’t come forward. “The lady go?” she said.

  “She’s resting.”

  “Oh,” said Grace. “Miz Wengler, I wondered if it’d be all right if my husband passed the evenin’ here. I got plentya room in my room, and he don’t have to be back in New York till tomorrow mornin’, and it’s so bad out.”

  “Your husband? Where is he?”

  “Well, right now,” Grace said, “he’s in the kitchen.”

  “Well, I’m afraid he can’t spend the night here, Grace.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I say I’m afraid he can’t spend the night here. I’m not running a hotel.”

  Grace stood for a moment, then said, “Yes, Ma’am,” and went out to the kitchen.

  Eloise left the living room and climbed the stairs, which were lighted very faintly by the overglow from the dining room. One of Ramona’s galoshes was lying on the landing. Eloise picked it up and threw it, with as much force as possible, over the side of the banister; it struck the foyer floor with a violent thump.

  She snapped on the light in Ramona’s room and held on to the switch, as if for support. She stood still for a moment looking at Ramona. Then she let go of the light switch and went quickly over to the bed. “Ramona. Wake up. Wake up.”

  Ramona was sleeping far over on one side of the bed, her right buttock off the edge. Her glasses were on a little Donald Duck night table, folded neatly and laid stems down.

  “Ramona!”

  The child awoke with a sharp intake of breath. Her eyes opened wide, but she narrowed them almost at once. “Mommy?”

  “I thought you told me Jimmy Jimmereeno was run over and killed.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Eloise said. “Why are you sleeping way over here?”

  “Because,” said Ramona.

  “Because why? Ramona, I don’t feel like—”

  “Because I don’t want to hurt Mickey.”

  “Who?”

  “Mickey,” said Ramona, rubbing her nose. “Mickey Mickeranno.”

  Eloise raised her voice to a shriek. “You get in the center of that bed. Go on.”

  Ramona, extremely frightened, just looked up at Eloise.

  “All right.” Eloise grabbed Ramona’s ankles and half lifted and half pulled her over to the middle of the bed. Ramona neither struggled nor cried; she let herself be moved without actually submitting to it.

  “Now go to sleep,” Eloise said, breathing heavily. “Close your eyes. . . . You heard me, close them.”

  Ramona closed her eyes.

  Eloise went over to the light switch and flicked it off. But she stood for a long time in the doorway. Then, suddenly, she rushed, in the dark, over to the night table, banging her knee against the foot of the bed, but too full of purpose to feel pain. She picked up Ramona’s glasses and, holding them in both hands, pressed them against her cheek. Tears rolled down her face, wetting the lenses. “Poor Uncle Wiggily,” she said over and over again. Finally, she put the glasses back on the night table, lenses down.

  She stooped over, losing her balance, and began to tuck in the blankets of Ramona’s bed. Ramona was awake. She was crying and had been crying. Eloise kissed her wetly on the mouth and wiped the hair out of her eyes and then left the room.

  She went downstairs, staggering now very badly, and wakened Mary Jane.

  “Wuzzat? Who? Huh?” said Mary Jane, sitting bolt upright on the couch.

  “Mary Jane. Listen. Please,” Eloise said, sobbing. “You remember our freshman year, and I had that brown-and—yellow dress I bought in Boise, and Miriam Ball told me nobody wore those kind of dresses in New York, and I cried all night?” Eloise shook Mary Jane’s arm. “I was a nice girl,” she pleaded, “wasn’t I?”

  * * *

  Just Before the War

  with the Eskimos

  * * *

  Five straight saturday mornings, Ginnie Mannox had played tennis at the East Side Courts with Selena Graff, a classmate at Miss Basehoar’s. Ginnie openly considered Selena the biggest drip at Miss Basehoar’s—a school ostensibly abounding with fair-sized drips—but at the same time she had never known anyone like Selena for bringing fresh cans of tennis balls. Selena’s father made them or something. (At dinner one night, for the edification of the entire Mannox family, Ginnie had conjured up a vision of dinner over at the Graffs’; it involved a perfect servant coming around to everyone’s left with, instead of a glass of tomato juice, a can of tennis balls.) But this business of dropping Selena off at her house after tennis and then getting stuck—every single time—for the whole cab fare was getting on Ginnie’s nerves. After all, taking the taxi home from the courts instead of the bus had been Selena’s idea. On the fifth Saturday, however, as the cab started north in York Avenue, Ginnie suddenly spoke up.

  “Hey, Selena . . .”

  “What?” asked Selena, who was busy feeling the floor of the cab with her hand. “I can’t find the cover to my racket!” she moaned.

  Despite the warm May weather, both girls were wearing topcoats over their shorts.

  “You put it in your pocket,” Ginnie said. “Hey, listen—”

  “Oh, God! You’ve saved my life!”

  “Listen,” said Ginnie, who wanted no part of Selena’s gratitude.

  “What?”

  Ginnie decided to come right out with it. The cab was nearly at Selena’s street. “I don’t feel like getting stuck for the whole cab fare again today,” she said. “I’m no millionaire, ya know.”

  Selena looked first amazed, then hurt. “Don’t I always pay half?” she asked innocently.

  “No,” said Ginnie flatly. “You paid half the first Saturday. Way in the beginning of last month. And since then not even once. I don’t wanna be ratty, but I’m actually existing on four-fifty a week. And out of that I have to—”

  “I always bring the tennis balls, don’t I?” Selena asked unpleasantly.

  Sometimes Ginnie felt like killing Selena. “Your father makes them or something,” she said. “They don’t cost you anything. I have to pay for every single little—”

  “All right, all right,” Selena said, loudly and with finality enough to give herself the upper hand. Looking bored, she went through the pockets of her coat. “I only have thirty-five cents,” she said coldly. “Is that enough?”

  “No. I’m sorry, but you owe me a dollar sixty-five. I’ve been keeping track of every—”

  “I’ll have to go upstairs and get it from my mother. Can’t it wait till Monday? I could bring it to gym with me if it’d make you happy.”

  Selena’s attitude defied clemency.

  “No,” Ginnie said. “I have to go to the movies tonight. I need it.”

  In hostile silence, the girls stared out of opposite windows until the cab pulled up in front of Selena’s apartment house. Then Selena, who was seated neares
t the curb, let herself out. Just barely leaving the cab door open, she walked briskly and obliviously, like visiting Hollywood royalty, into the building. Ginnie, her face burning, paid the fare. She then collected her tennis things—racket, hand towel, and sun hat—and followed Selena. At fifteen, Ginnie was about five feet nine in her 9-B tennis shoes, and as she entered the lobby, her self-conscious rubber-soled awkwardness lent her a dangerous amateur quality. It made Selena prefer to watch the indicator dial over the elevator.

  “That makes a dollar ninety you owe me,” Ginnie said, striding up to the elevator.

  Selena turned. “It may just interest you to know,” she said, “that my mother is very ill.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “She virtually has pneumonia, and if you think I’m going to enjoy disturbing her just for money . . .” Selena delivered the incomplete sentence with all possible aplomb.

  Ginnie was, in fact, slightly put off by this information, whatever its degree of truth, but not to the point of sentimentality. “I didn’t give it to her,” she said, and followed Selena into the elevator.

  When Selena had rung her apartment bell, the girls were admitted—or rather, the door was drawn in and left ajar—by a colored maid with whom Selena didn’t seem to be on speaking terms. Ginnie dropped her tennis things on a chair in the foyer and followed Selena. In the living room, Selena turned and said, “Do you mind waiting here? I may have to wake Mother up and everything.”

  “O.K.,” Ginnie said, and plopped down on the sofa.

  “I never in my life would’ve thought you could be so small about anything,” said Selena, who was just angry enough to use the word “small” but not quite brave enough to emphasize it.

  “Now you know,” said Ginnie, and opened a copy of Vogue in front of her face. She kept it in this position till Selena had left the room, then put it back on top of the radio. She looked around the room, mentally rearranging furniture, throwing out table lamps, removing artificial flowers. In her opinion, it was an altogether hideous room—expensive but cheesy.

  Suddenly, a male voice shouted from another part of the apartment, “Eric? That you?”

  Ginnie guessed it was Selena’s brother, whom she had never seen. She crossed her long legs, arranged the hem of her polo coat over her knees, and waited.

  A young man wearing glasses and pajamas and no slippers lunged into the room with his mouth open. “Oh. I thought it was Eric, for Chrissake,” he said. Without stopping, and with extremely poor posture, he continued across the room, cradling something close to his narrow chest. He sat down on the vacant end of the sofa. “I just cut my goddam finger,” he said rather wildly. He looked at Ginnie as if he had expected her to be sitting there. “Ever cut your finger? Right down to the bone and all?” he asked. There was a real appeal in his noisy voice, as if Ginnie, by her answer, could save him from some particularly isolating form of pioneering.

  Ginnie stared at him. “Well, not right down to the bone,” she said, “but I’ve cut myself.” He was the funniest-looking boy, or man—it was hard to tell which he was—she had ever seen. His hair was bed-dishevelled. He had a couple of days’ growth of sparse, blond beard. And he looked—well, goofy. “How did you cut it?” she asked.

  He was staring down, with his slack mouth ajar, at his injured finger. “What?” he said.

  “How did you cut it?”

  “Goddam if I know,” he said, his inflection implying that the answer to that question was hopelessly obscure. “I was lookin’ for something in the goddam wastebasket and it was fulla razor blades.”

  “You Selena’s brother?” Ginnie asked.

  “Yeah. Christ, I’m bleedin’ to death. Stick around. I may need a goddam transfusion.”

  “Did you put anything on it?”

  Selena’s brother carried his wound slightly forward from his chest and unveiled it for Ginnie’s benefit. “Just some goddam toilet paper,” he said. “Stopsa bleeding. Like when you cut yourself shaving.” He looked at Ginnie again. “Who are you?” he asked. “Friend of the jerk’s?”

  “We’re in the same class.”

  “Yeah? What’s your name?”

  “Virginia Mannox.”

  “You Ginnie?” he said, squinting at her through his glasses. “You Ginnie Mannox?”

  “Yes,” said Ginnie, uncrossing her legs.

  Selena’s brother turned back to his finger, obviously for him the true and only focal point in the room. “I know your sister,” he said dispassionately. “Goddam snob.”

  Ginnie arched her back.

  “Who is?”

  “You heard me.”

  “She is not a snob!”

  “The hell she’s not,” said Selena’s brother.

  “She is not!”

  “The hell she’s not. She’s the queen. Queen of the goddam snobs.”

  Ginnie watched him lift up and peer under the thick folds of toilet paper on his finger.

  “You don’t even know my sister.”

  “Hell I don’t.”

  “What’s her name? What’s her first name?” Ginnie demanded.

  “Joan. . . . Joan the Snob.”

  Ginnie was silent. “What’s she look like?” she asked suddenly.

  No answer.

  “What’s she look like?” Ginnie repeated.

  “If she was half as good-looking as she thinks she is, she’d be goddam lucky,” Selena’s brother said. This had the stature of an interesting answer, in Ginnie’s secret opinion.

  “I never heard her mention you,” she said.

  “That worries me. That worries hell outa me.”

  “Anyway, she’s engaged,” Ginnie said, watching him. “She’s gonna be married next month.”

  “Who to?” he asked, looking up.

  Ginnie took full advantage of his having looked up. “Nobody you know.”

  He resumed picking at his own first-aid work. “I pity him,” he said.

  Ginnie snorted.

  “It’s still bleedin’ like mad. Ya think I oughta put something on it? What’s good to put on it? Mercurochrome any good?”

  “Iodine’s better,” Ginnie said. Then, feeling her answer was too civil under the circumstances, she added, “Mercurochrome’s no good at all for that.”

  “Why not? What’s the matter with it?”

  “It just isn’t any good for that stuff, that’s all. Ya need iodine.”

  He looked at Ginnie. “It stings a lot, though, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Doesn’t it sting a helluva lot?”

  “It stings,” Ginnie said, “but it won’t kill you or anything.”

  Apparently without resenting Ginnie’s tone, Selena’s brother turned back to his finger. “I don’t like it when it stings,” he said.

  “Nobody does.”

  He nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” he said.

  Ginnie watched him for a minute. “Stop touching it,” she said suddenly.

  As though responding to an electric shock, Selena’s brother pulled back his uninjured hand. He sat up a trifle straighter—or rather, slumped a trifle less. He looked at some object on the other side of the room. An almost dreamy expression came over his disorderly features. He inserted the nail of his uninjured index finger into the crevice between two front teeth and, removing a food particle, turned to Ginnie. “Jeat jet?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Jeat lunch yet?”

  Ginnie shook her head. “I’ll eat when I get home,” she said. “My mother always has lunch ready for me when I get home.”

  “I got a half a chicken sandwich in my room. Ya want it? I didn’t touch it or anything.”

  “No, thank you. Really.”

  “You just played tennis, for Chrissake. Aren’tcha hungry?”

  “It isn’t that,” said Ginnie, crossing her legs. “It’s just that my mother always has lunch ready wh
en I get home. She goes insane if I’m not hungry, I mean.”

  Selena’s brother seemed to accept this explanation. At least, he nodded and looked away. But he turned back suddenly. “How ‘bout a glassa milk?” he said.

  “No, thanks. . . . Thank you, though.”

  Absently, he bent over and scratched his bare ankle. “What’s the name of this guy she’s marrying?” he asked.

  “Joan, you mean?” said Ginnie. “Dick Heffner.”

  Selena’s brother went on scratching his ankle.

  “He’s a lieutenant commander in the Navy,” Ginnie said.

  “Big deal.”

  Ginnie giggled. She watched him scratch his ankle till it was red. When he began to scratch off a minor skin eruption on his calf with his fingernail, she stopped watching.

  “Where do you know Joan from?” she asked. “I never saw you at the house or anything.”

  “Never been at your goddam house.”

  Ginnie waited, but nothing led away from this statement. “Where’d you meet her, then?” she asked.

  “Party,” he said.

  “At a party? When?”

  “I don’t know. Christmas, ‘42.” From his breast pajama pocket he two-fingered out a cigarette that looked as though it had been slept on. “How ‘bout throwing me those matches?” he said. Ginnie handed him a box of matches from the table beside her. He lit his cigarette without straightening out its curvature, then replaced the used match in the box. Tilting his head back, he slowly released an enormous quantity of smoke from his mouth and drew it up through his nostrils. He continued to smoke in this “French-inhale” style. Very probably, it was not part of the sofa vaudeville of a showoff but, rather, the private, exposed achievement of a young man who, at one time or another, might have tried shaving himself lefthanded.

  “Why’s Joan a snob?” Ginnie asked.

  “Why? Because she is. How the hell do I know why?”

  “Yes, but I mean why do you say she is?”

  He turned to her wearily. “Listen. I wrote her eight goddam letters. Eight. She didn’t answer one of ’em.”