Ceremony of the Innocent (66 page)

“Your mother is hardly ancient,” said Kitty.

“Well, she looks and acts ancient. Look at her hair; down to her hips. Look at her skirts; they more than cover her knees, and as for her bosom—like a cow. She’s got awful fat lately, too. That’s because she is so lazy; she hardly moves from the house; she never goes anywhere, except to Europe once a year, and then to that awful house in the summer, on Long Island. She’s practically a recluse. Sluggish. Not interested much in anything, except to interfere with me. And our terrible old brownstone, so shabby and in such a neighborhood! She doesn’t realize how the neighborhood has decayed. I’ve tried to get her to buy a really beautiful house on upper Fifth Avenue. I even took her there; it belongs to the family of a friend of mine. Really exquisite, and only two hundred thousand dollars. Mama’s become a miser, too. That’s Uncle Charles’ fault, always talking of ‘conserving assets’ and ‘blue-chip stocks.’ But then, he’s old, too. It’s time for the younger generation to take over. Mama’s lived her life; I want to live mine.”

“I agree with you,” said Kitty with a sigh. “What does Francis say about all this?”

Gabrielle shrugged her thin shoulders. “Oh, Francis. So dreary. All he talks about is ‘social consciousness.’ And he’s stingy, like Mama, too. He spends her money, but keeps his own. He does agree with me, though, that that old house on Long Island should be sold. In many ways, he’s very sympathetic to Christian and me, and understands us. He often says, ‘Youth must be served,’ but I have the naughtiest conviction that he means youth in the factories, and dull clothes. Sometimes he tells me I’m too extravagant. Did I ever tell you that he wants me to be a volunteer for that dreadful pet charity of his, Hopewell House? All full of what he calls ‘oppressed workers and immigrants.’”

They were sitting, this warm July day, in Kitty’s cool and perfect living room, sipping illegal whiskey and ginger ale tinkling with ice.

Fans whirred close by. Gabrielle glanced about restlessly. ‘Tour house is an old brownstone, too, Aunt Kitty, but in a better neighborhood. And you are always redecorating. Mama won’t touch a thing. All that terrible damask silk on the walls, and gloom, and silence. Mama never touches her piano any more, though I should count that a blessing, considering her taste in music. We rarely have visitors, or dinners. Mama seems shut in on herself, hidden.”

Kitty was surprised at the girl’s perspicacity. “Well, Ellen was always that way, even when she was married to your father, whom she adored. I don’t think she ever got over his death, and her marriage to Francis seemed to make her more—retiring.”

“I think,” said Gabrielle, watching Kitty closely, “that Mama is mentally ill. I think she needs a psychiatrist. Someone to take care of her.”

Kitty understood immediately. She moistened her painted lips and stared at Gabrielle with thoughtfulness.

“Have you mentioned this to Francis?”

Again Gabrielle shrugged. “In a way, he’s as bad as Mama. He sometimes fills the house with the most horrible people, all jabbering excitedly, all socially impossible, all dingy and smelling. I call them ‘the dirty-underwear brigade.’ He wants me to join them occasionally—but no! He says they are all ‘concerned’ people, concerned with social progress and reforms. Me, I think they are a bunch of Communists.”

“Oh, hush,” said Kitty, laughing. “That’s libelous, you know. They could sue you, Gaby.”

Gabrielle laughed also. “I sometimes drop in on them, in our musty parlors. I’m very serious with them, and nod and agree. They don’t seem to mind that I am dressed up and perfumed and wear jewelry. They love inherited wealth, but they hate people who make their own way in life. I do, too. Nouveau riche. I agree with Francis that the nouveau riche should be taxed heavily—but not those with inherited wealth. Patricians. We must keep the upstarts down and force them to share the wealth with what Francis calls the ‘oppressed.’ We don’t want new challengers to our established positions, do we?”

“No, indeed,” said Kitty.

“Francis is all in favor of taxing the middle class heavily and forcing them to ‘share,’ as he calls it. He also calls it equality. Of course, that wouldn’t affect ‘us.’ I know some girls at college whose fathers were what is called ‘self-made men,’ men who worked their way up and sacrificed and studied and did all those dreary things, and became rich. I agree that they should be taxed almost out of existence. Upstarts. The girls were so damned serious, too. One of them actually said to me, To work is to pray.’ Bourgeoisie! What could be more stuffy and lightless?”

“Nothing,” said Kitty.

“One of the girls’ fathers was a Russian immigrant Jew who went into the clothing business in that horrible section—you know. He worked all the hours that God sent, and became rich. Then he sent for his relatives to rescue them, Esther said, from the Russian Communists. Esther is the dreariest girl. She talks politics, and other vulgar things. She wrote articles for the college newspaper—all very weighty, concerning God and duty and the Ten Commandments and the dangers of Socialism. We all laughed at her. Now, her illiterate father should really be crushingly taxed, and maybe Esther would be quiet for once. I agree with Francis when he quotes Karl Marx about taxing the middle class.”

You are quite a little bitch, thought Kitty, smiling at her young visitor with deep affection. You forget who your mother is, and was. She looked at Gabrielle, with the restless licentious face, and speculated.

“Have you talked with Francis, about a psychiatrist for your mother?”

“Yes. I think he agrees. He and Mama rarely exchange a word, and he seems miserable. I heard about a psychiatrist, a Dr. Emil Lubish. His daughter goes to school with me. I’ve met him. A very wonderful man, though he does have a habit of pawing and calling me
Liebchen
. He’s an Austrian, and was a student of Freud’s. I once talked to him about Mama and he said, very gravely, that she needs ‘help.’ I told that to Francis, and I think he agrees with that, too, though Mama never quarrels with him, and does almost everything he suggests. Well, almost. She can be very obdurate and and sullen, and Dr. Lubish calls that a ‘syndrome.’ Of what I don’t know.”

There was a little silence, while Kitty’s mind hummed. Then she said, “Well, you wanted me to help you, dear, with something. What is it?”

“Frankly, I want you to help me to persuade Mama to let me have my own apartment. Now. Oh, I can wait until next year, when I will be twenty-one. I’m rich, as you know, Aunt Kitty, but I can’t touch my inheritance until next year, and even then Uncle Charles will be watching and scolding. So narrow. I also want a car of my own. A Cadillac. All the girls have their own cars. But I have to take taxis or the subway! Mortifying. And my allowance! Beggarly.”

They refreshed their glasses. Kitty said, “Surely your mother, and Francis, know your position. No? Well, I’ll talk to your mother if you wish. But you know how stubborn she can be. But I’m her dearest friend, and always was. Loyal. Devoted. Her only friend.”

Francis Porter said to his wife with reproving distress: “You know it is illegal and unlawful, Ellen. Where do you get this—liquor? This bootleg poison?”

“I have to have it, Francis. It—soothes me. I have a very good bootlegger. This is genuine whiskey, imported.”

“Why do you need ‘soothing,’ Ellen?”

Ellen was silent, frowning and considering. How could she explain to him the black horror of her life, her suffering, her memories? He had no point of reference through which he could understand her. She did not care whether he understood or not; she simply wanted to be relieved of reproaches. When he reproached her she almost groveled with guilt, though she did not understand her guilt, either. She only knew that she must have an anodyne. It was little enough, to shut out the recurring dreams of her terrible youth, the torment, the hunger, the hopelessness. It was little enough, to bring back the memories of Jeremy, to whom she talked and laughed in her sodden sleep. Without those memories of her husband she would surely die.

“I must live,” she muttered. “I must live for my children.”

Francis looked at her with genuine misery. Ellen had become fat and shapeless. Her face was bloated, her color gone forever. She sagged and sprawled. Only her brilliant hair was alive, disheveled though it was. She ate almost nothing—but still she was fat.

“I have done so much for Christian,” Francis said, his lean body vibrating with anxiety. “You are not grateful, Ellen.”

She sipped at her glass; the liquid was deep amber. “I am grateful, Francis. I can’t tell you how much. But—I must have peace. You don’t understand. I must—”

“Run away?”

Ellen was silent. Run away? Yes. Run away from a world that never cared for despair, but only exploited it. Run away from knowing, grinning faces which belonged to people who had no integrity, no decency, no honor, no love. What had Jeremy once said? “The sweet smell of money.” It was a deadly effluvium. No. It was the stench of madness. The insidious reverie broke through her defenses and her mind shut it out.

“I only wanted to live,” she said. “But that was denied me, until I knew Jeremy. Then he died. Now I cannot live.”

“You are raving. You are drunk, Ellen.”

“In vino Veritas, Francis.”

She looked at him blearily. “I remember something that Jeremy once said. ‘Requiem for the innocent.’ He meant that about America, Francis. But I often think that it means people like me, too.”

Francis was exasperated. “Ellen! You never really loved or trusted anyone in your life! You deserted your aunt, and left her to die alone. You never really cared for your children. I am your husband, but you are not interested in me. My Aunt Hortense did everything for you, and look how you repaid her. The Porters—they were good to you, and you betrayed them, and alienated them from their son. You don’t try to understand your children, and their needs and wants. You have left them to me alone. Ellen, you need a psychiatrist to enlighten you as to what a selfish woman you are. You were always selfish. That has been your curse.”

Ellen drank deeply. Then she burst into tears and sobbed long and with anguish. Francis left her in disgust. She fell asleep in her chair in the library. Her last coherent thought was: What is it the world demands from people like me? And Jeremy? Corruption? Evil? Betrayal? No, they will never have it from us, even if we die.

I must call Dr. Lubish for her, thought Francis. Gabrielle is right She is mentally ill. It is possible she always was.

That night Ellen dreamt of Mrs. Schwartz in the dry brown garden of the little cottage in Preston. The old woman was weeping. She stretched out her hand to Ellen and stammered, “Beautiful daughter of Toscar.” Ellen reached for the rough hand extended to her but Mrs. Schwartz withdrew it, as if with terror and denial.

Part Three

Requiem for the Innocent

C H A P T E R   35

FRANCIS PORTER SAT IN THE SUAVE office of Dr. Emil Lubish on a cold January day in 1928. Everything was brown, gold, umber, with pale-gold satin draperies. It was warm and luxurious here and very quiet, even though Fifth Avenue traffic raged outside A dim snow was falling slowly, implacably.

“And how long would you say your wife has been an alcoholic, Congressman?” asked the doctor. He was a heavy man, heavy of body, heavy of face, heavy of eyes and brows and hair. Even the folds in his cheeks were heavy, and his chin and hands and thighs. Unlike other affected Viennese psychiatrists, he wore no beard, not even a mustache. His large ears drooped thickly. His clothing was European, though he had actually been in the United States for twenty years. He exuded an odor of peppermint, tobacco, and something curiously aromatic which Francis could not identify. He had very little accent.

Francis hesitated. The man intimidated him with his flickering eyes, strange eyes like round silver coins, intent, a little distended, and cold and probing.

“I should think about two years, though I am not sure. She always knew that I had an aversion for alcohol except for a little, a very little, sweet wine or sherry before dinner, and she knows the law now. After we were married, and that was before Prohibition, I never permitted strong spirits in the house, even for guests. I don’t know where she gets the illegal whiskey, for she rarely leaves the house any longer, and I trust the servants, who do not particularly like my wife. She is too—vague. Too indifferent to notice them.”

The doctor thought, humming like a dissonant bee, and pursing up his heavy lips. He said, “From what you have told me lengthily, I see here the archetype of a deeply neurotic woman, not very intelligent or educated, engrossed with herself, selfish, withdrawn, sluggish, lethargic, self-indulgent, uncaring about her family, obstinate and hysterical, frigid, petty-minded, narrow of outlook, deliberately unaware of the world about her, dissociative, depressed, anxious, childish, sometimes hostile, with an infantile passivity. A classic case. You have told me she had no father she ever knew and that she came from the lower working class. No doubt she resents that unknown father though she has been searching for him. Her first husband apparently filled her need for a father image and his death has left her the more lost. She has never outgrown, apparently, the oral, anal, or urethral phases of infantile development. Her addiction to the bottle also suggests that she was deprived of a mother’s breast. Yes. Classic.”

Francis had cringed at some of the mellifluent words, but he nodded solemnly.

“Her now total withdrawal from the world about her also suggests a portending psychotic condition. Have you considered institutionalizing her?”

“As I have told you, Dr. Lubish, she was institutionalized for two years following her first husband’s death. I am afraid she has never fully recovered. During those years I visited her often, and she did not recognize me. For a year, I was told, she did not speak and seemed to move about in a trancelike condition. Only at night, I heard, did she show any emotion. She would cry for hours, even after sedation. On her return to her home, allegedly cured, she remained passive and indifferent even to her unfortunate children, who, I am glad to say, have become normal and healthy since I became their stepfather. She shows no gratitude for my guidance and my care for them, though they are deeply affectionate towards me and trust my judgment.”