Franny and Zooey Page 7

  A much deeper sigh than customary--almost, it seemed, a part of the life force itself--suddenly came from Mrs. Glass. She got up and carried her cigarette over to the washbowl, let cold water run on it, then dropped the extinguished stub into the wastebasket and sat down again. The spell of introspection she had cast on herself was unbroken, as if she hadn't moved from her seat at all.

  "I'm getting out of here in about three seconds, Bessie 1 I'm giving you fair warning. Let's not wear out our welcome, buddy."

  Mrs. Glass, who had resumed staring at the blue bathmat, gave an absent-minded nod at this "fair warning." And at that instant, more than just mentionably, had Zooey seen her face, and particularly her eyes, he might have had a strong impulse, passing or not, to recall, or reconstruct, or reinflect the greater part of his share of the conversation that had passed between them--to temper it, to soften it. On the other hand, he might not have. It was a very touch-and-go business, in 1955, to get a wholly plausible reading from Mrs. Glass's face, and especially from her enormous blue eyes. Where once, a few years earlier, her eyes alone could break the news (either to people or to bathmats) that two of her sons were dead, one by suicide (her favorite, her most intricately calibrated, her kindest son), and one killed in World War II (her only truly lighthearted son)--where once Bessie Glass's eyes alone could report these facts, with an eloquence and a seeming passion for detail that neither her husband nor any of her adult surviving children could bear to look at, let alone take in, now, in 1955, she was apt to use this same terrible Celtic equipment to break the news, usually at the front door, that the new delivery boy hadn't brought the leg of lamb in time for dinner or that some remote Hollywood starlet's marriage was on the rocks.

  She lit a fresh king-size cigarette abruptly, dragged on it, then stood up, exhaling smoke. "I'll be back in a minute," she said. The statement sounded, innocently, like a promise. "Just please use the bathmat when you get out," she added. "That's what it's there for." She left the bathroom, closing the door securely behind her.

  It was rather as though, after being in makeshift wet dock for days, the Queen Mary had just sailed out of, say, Walden Pond, as suddenly and perversely as she had sailed in. Behind the shower curtain, Zooey closed his eyes for a few seconds, as though his own small craft were listing precariously in the wake. Then he pulled back the shower curtain and stared over at the closed door. It was a weighty stare, and relief was not really a great part of it. As much as anything else, it was the stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn't quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that.

  NOT five minutes later, Zooey, with his hair combed wet, stood barefoot at the washbowl, wearing a pair of beltless dark-gray sharkskin slacks, a face towel across his bare shoulders. A pre-shaving ritual had already been put into effect. The window blind had been raised halfway; the bathroom door had been set ajar to let the steam escape and clear the mirrors; a cigarette had been lit, dragged on, and placed within easy reach on the frosted-glass ledge under the medicine-cabinet mirror. At the moment, Zooey had just finished squeezing lather cream onto the end of a shaving brush. He put the tube of lather, without re-capping it, somewhere into the enamel background, out of his way. He passed the flat of his hand squeakily back and forth over the face of the medicine-cabinet mirror, wiping away most of the mist. Then he began to lather his face. His lathering technique was very much out of the ordinary, although identical in spirit with his actual shaving technique. That is, although he looked into the mirror while he lathered, he didn't watch where his brush was moving but, instead, looked directly into his own eyes, as though his eyes were neutral territory, a no man's land in a private war against narcissism he had been fighting since he was seven or eight years old. By now, when he was twenty-five, the little stratagem may well have been mostly reflexive, just as a veteran baseball player, at the plate, will tap his spikes with his bat whether he needs to or not. Nonetheless, a few minutes earlier, when he had combed his hair, he had done so with the very minimum amount of help from the mirror. And before that he had managed to dry himself in front of a full-length mirror without so much as glancing into it.

  He had just finished lathering his face when his mother suddenly appeared in his shaving mirror. She stood in the doorway, a few feet behind him, one hand on the doorknob--a portrait of spurious hesitancy about making another full entrance into the room.

  "Ah! What a pleasant and gracious surprise!" Zooey said into the mirror. "Come in, come in!" He laughed, or gave his roar, then opened the medicine cabinet and took down his razor.

  Mrs. Glass advanced, meditatively. "Zooey..." she said. "I've been thinking." Her usual seating accommodation was directly at Zooey's left. She started to lower herself into place.

  "Don't sit down! Let me drink you in first,"

  Zooey said. Getting out of the tub, putting on his trousers, and combing his hair had apparently raised his spirits. "It isn't often we have visitors at our little chapel, and when we do, we try to make them feel--"

  "Just be still a minute," Mrs. Glass said firmly, sitting. She crossed her legs. "I've been thinking. Do you think it would do any good to try to get hold of Waker? I don't, personally, but what do you think? I mean in my opinion what that child needs is a good psychiatrist, not a priest or anything, but I may be wrong."

  "Oh, no. No, no. Not wrong. I've never known you to be wrong, Bessie. Your facts are always either untrue or exaggerated, but you're never wrong--no, no." With much delight, Zooey wet his razor and began to shave.

  "Zooey, I'm asking you--just cut out the funny business, now, please. Do you or don't you think I should get in touch with Waker? I could call that Bishop Pinchot or whatever his name is, and he could probably tell me where I could at least wire him, if he's still on some crazy boat." Mrs. Glass reached out and drew the metal wastebasket in close to her and used it as an ashtray for the lighted cigarette she had brought in with her. "I asked Franny if she'd like to talk to him on the phone," she said. "If I could get hold of him."

  Zooey rinsed his razor briefly. "What'd she say?" he asked.

  Mrs. Glass adjusted her sitting position with a little evasive shift to the right. "She says she doesn't want to talk to anybody."

  "Ah. We know better than that, don't we? We're not going to take a straight answer like that lying down, are we?"

  "For your information, young man, I'm not going to take any answer of any kind from that child today," Mrs. Glass said, rallying. She addressed Zooey's lathered profile. "If you have a young girl lying in a room crying and mumbling to herself for forty-eight hours, you don't go to them for any answers."

  Zooey, without commenting, went on shaving.

  "Answer my question, please. Do you or don't you think I should try to get in touch with Waker? I'm afraid to, frankly. He's so emotional--priest or no priest. If you tell Waker it looks like rain, his eyes all fill up."

  Zooey shared his amusement at this remark with the reflection of his own eyes in the mirror. "There's hope for you yet, Bessie," he said.

  "Well, if I can't get Buddy on the phone, and even you won't help, I'm going to have to do something," Mrs. Glass said. Looking vastly troubled, she sat smoking for a long moment. Then: "If it was something strictly Catholic, or like that, I might be able to help her myself. I haven't forgotten everything. But none of you children were brought up as Catholics, and I really don't see--"

  Zooey cut her short. "You're off," he said, turning his lathered face toward her. "You're off. You're way off. I told you that last night. This thing with Franny is strictly non-sectarian." He dipped his razor and continued to shave. "Just take my word, please."

  Mrs. Glass stared full and pressingly at his profile, as if he might say something further, but he didn't. At length, she sighed, and said, "I'd almost be satisfied for a while if I could get that awful Bloomberg off that couch with her. It isn't even sanitary." She dragged on her cigarette. "And I don't know
what I'm supposed to do about the painters. This very minute they're practically finished in her room, and they're going to be champing at the bit to get in the living room."

  "You know, I'm the only one in this family who has no problems," Zooey said. "And you know why? Because any time I'm feeling blue, or puzzled, what I do, I just invite a few people to come visit me in the bathroom, and--well, we iron things out together, that's all."

  Mrs. Glass seemed on the point of being diverted by Zooey's method of dealing with problems, but it was her day to suppress all forms of amusement. She stared at him for a moment, and then, slowly, a new look gathered in her eyes--resourceful, crafty, and a trifle desperate. "You know, I'm not as stupid as you may think, young man," she said. "You're all so secretive, all you children. It just so happens, if you must know, that I know more about what's behind all this than you think I do." For emphasis, lips compressed, she brushed some imaginary tobacco flakes from the lap of her kimono. "For your information, I happen to know that that little book she carried all around the whole house with her yesterday is at the whole root of this whole business."

  Zooey turned and glanced at her. He was grinning, "How'd you figure that out?" he said.

  "Just never mind how I figured it out," Mrs. Glass said. "If you must know, Lane has called up here several times. He's terribly worried about Franny."

  Zooey rinsed his razor. "Who in hell is Lane?" he asked. Unmistakably, it was the question of a still very young man who, now and then, is not inclined to admit that he knows the first names of certain people.

  "You know very well who he is, young man," Mrs. Glass said with emphasis. "Lane Coutell. He's only been Franny's boy friend for a whole year. You've met him at least half a dozen times that / know of, so just don't pretend you don't know who he is."

  Zooey gave a genuine roar of laughter, as if he clearly relished seeing any affectation brought to light, his own included. He went on shaving, still delighted. "The expression is Franny's 'young man,'" he said, "not her 'boy friend." Why are you so out of date, Bessie? Why is that? Hm?"

  "Never mind why I'm so out of date. It may interest you to know that he's called up here five or six times since Franny got home--twice this morning before you were even up. He's been very sweet, and he's terribly concerned and worried about Franny."

  "Not like some people we know, eh? Well, I hate to disillusion you, but I've sat by the hour with him and he's not sweet at all. He's a charm boy and a fake. Incidentally, somebody around here's been shaving their armpits or their goddam legs with my razor. Or dropped it. The head's way out of--"

  "Nobody's touched your razor, young man. Why is he a charm boy and a fake, may I ask?"

  "Why? Because he is, that's all. Probably because it's paid off. I can tell you one thing. If he's worried about Franny at all, I'll lay odds it's for the crummiest reasons. He's probably worried because he minded leaving the goddam football game before it was over--worried because he probably showed he minded it and he knows Franny's sharp enough to have noticed. I can just picture the little bastard getting her into a cab and putting her on a train and wondering if he can make it back to the game before the half ended."

  "Oh, it's impossible to talk to you! But absolutely impossible. I don't know why I try, even. You're just like Buddy. You think everybody does something for some peculiar reason. You don't think anybody calls anybody else up without having some nasty, selfish reason for it."

  "Exactly--in nine cases out of ten. And this Lane pill isn't the exception, you can be sure. Listen, I talked with him for twenty deadly goddam minutes one night while Franny was getting ready to go out, and I say he's a big nothing." He reflected, arresting his razor stroke. "What in hell was it he was telling me? Something very winning. What was it?... Oh, yes. Yes. He was telling me he used to listen to Franny and me every week when he was a kid--and you know what he was doing, the little bastard? He was building me up at Franny's expense. For absolutely no reason except to ingratiate himself and show off his hot little Ivy League intellect." Zooey put out his tongue and gave a subdued, modified Bronx cheer. "Phooey," he said, and resumed using his razor. "Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day."

  Mrs. Glass directed a long and oddly comprehensive look at his profile. "He's a young boy not out of college yet. And you make people nervous, young man," she said--most equably, for her. "You either take to somebody or you don't. If you do, then you do all the talking and nobody can even get a word in edgewise. If you don't like somebody--which is most of the time--then you just sit around like death itself and let the person talk themself into a hole. I've seen you do it."

  Zooey turned full around to look at his mother.

  He turned around and looked at her, in this instance, in precisely the same way that, at one time or another, in one year or another, all his brothers and sisters (and especially his brothers) had turned around and looked at her. Not just with objective wonder at the rising of a truth, fragmentary or not, up through what often seemed to be an impenetrable mass of prejudices, cliches, and bromides. But with admiration, affection, and, not least, gratitude. And, oddly or no, Mrs. Glass invariably took this "tribute," when it came, in beautiful stride. She would look back with grace and modesty at the son or daughter who had given her the look. She now presented this gracious and modest countenance to Zooey. "You do," she said, without accusation in her voice. "Neither you nor Buddy know how to talk to people you don't like." She thought it over. "Don't love, really," she amended. And Zooey continued to stand gazing at her, not shaving. "It's not right," she said--gravely, sadly. "You're getting so much like Buddy used to be when he was your age. Even your father's noticed it. If you don't like somebody in two minutes, you're done with them forever." Mrs. Glass looked over, abstractedly, at the blue bathmat, across the tiled floor. Zooey stood as still as possible, in order not to break her mood. "You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes," Mrs. Glass said to the bathmat, then turned again toward Zooey and gave him a long look, with very little, if any, morality in it. "Regardless of what you may think, young man," she said.

  Zooey looked back at her steadily, then smiled and faced around to examine his beard in the mirror. Mrs. Glass, watching him, sighed. She bent and put out her cigarette against the inside of the metal wastebasket. She lit a fresh cigarette almost at once, and said, as pointedly as she was able, "Anyway, your sister says he's a brilliant boy. Lane."

  "That's just sex talking, buddy," Zooey said. "I know that voice. Oh, do I know that voice!" The last trace of lather had been shaved away from his face and throat. He felt his throat critically with one hand, then picked up his shaving brush and began to re-lather strategic parts of his face. "All right, what does Lane have to say on the phone?" he asked. "According to Lane, what's behind Franny's troubles?"

  Mrs. Glass sat slightly and avidly forward, and said, "Well, Lane says it all has to do--this entire thing--with that little book she's got with her all the time. You know. That little book she kept reading all yesterday and dragging with her everywhere she--"

  "I know that little book. Go on."

  "Well, he says, Lane says, it's a terribly religious little book--fanatical and all like that--and that she got it out of the library at college and now she thinks maybe she's--" Mrs. Glass broke off. Zooey had turned toward her with somewhat menacing alertness. "What's the matter?" she asked.

  "He said she got it where?"

  "Out of the library. At college. Why?"

  Zooey shook his head, and turned back to the washbowl. He put down his shaving brush and opened the medicine cabinet.

  "What's the matter?" Mrs. Glass demanded. "What's the matter with that? Why such a look, young man?"

  Zooey didn't reply till he had opened a new package of razor blades. Then, dismantling his razor, he said, "You're so stupid, Bessie." He ejected the blade from his razor.

  "Why am I so stupid? Incidentally, you just put
a new razor blade in yesterday."

  Zooey, his face expressionless, locked a new blade into his razor and began his second-time-over shave.

  "I asked you a question, young man. Why am I so stupid? Didn't she get that little book out of her college library, or what?"

  "No, she didn't, Bessie," Zooey said, shaving. "That little book is called 'The Pilgrim Continues His Way,' and it's a sequel to another little book, called 'The Way of a Pilgrim,' which she's also dragging around with her, and she got both books out of Seymour and Buddy's old room, where they've been sitting on Seymour's desk for as long as I can remember. Jesus God almighty."

  "Well, don't get abusive about it! Is it so terrible to think she might have gotten them out of her college library and simply brought them--"

  "Yes! It is terrible. It is terrible when both books have been sitting on Seymour's goddam desk for years. It's depressing."

  An unexpected, a singularly noncombatant, note came into Mrs. Glass's voice. "I don't go in that room if I can help it, and you know it," she said. "1 don't look at Seymour's old--at his things."

  Zooey said, quickly, "All right, I'm sorry." Without looking at her, and although he hadn't quite finished his second-time-over shave, he pulled the face towel down from his shoulders and wiped the remaining lather off his face. "Let's just drop this for a while," he said, and tossed the face towel over onto the radiator; it landed on the title page of the Rick-Tina manuscript. He unscrewed his razor and held it under the cold-water tap.

  His apology had been genuine, and Mrs. Glass knew it, but evidently she couldn't resist taking advantage of it, perhaps because of its rarity. "You're not kind," she said, watching him rinse his razor. "You're not kind at all, Zooey. You're old enough to at least try for some kind of kindness when you're feeling mean. Buddy, at least, when he's feeling--" She simultaneously took in her breath and gave a great start as Zooey's razor, new blade and all, slam-banged down into the metal wastebasket.