Ten North Frederick (9 page)

“I think you've had too much of something tangible called Scotch.”

“Well, at least I'm drinking it of my own accord. Deliberately. The poison Madam gave Father was much too subtle. But it wasn't so damn subtle that I didn't catch on. And she knows it.”

“Is that all you have to go on? She poisoned his mind in some way or other?”

“No, it isn't all I have to go on, Annie, but it should be enough. You loved Father, and anything destructive to him you should have hated. There's more, old girl, but I shall save it for another time.”

“You say things to shock me,” said Ann.

“Nothing shocks you. Surprises, maybe. But not shocks. I'll bet there isn't an evil, a sin in this world that you haven't heard about.”

“Probably not, and that's why you're wrong. Nothing surprises me, but a lot of things shock me. I'd be really shocked if I thought Mother could slow-poison Father over a period of years.”

“You would? Why? She hasn't had much time to work on you these past few years, but she's been successful in one thing.”

“What thing?”

“She's blinded you.”

Ann stood up. “You're getting pretty blind yourself, and not from Mother.”

He smiled. “Annie, if you weren't my sister you might solve a lot of my problems.”

She smiled back at him. “Dear old boy, you've forgotten about incest.”

“That's where you're wrong. That's one of my problems.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

“Well, don't think it
isn't
a compliment.”

“I'm going back and see if Madam has recovered her fountain pen,” said Ann.

“You do that,” said her brother. “I think I shall just sit here and consume some more of the Joseph B. Chapin Estate Scotch.”

“Dearie, that Scotch does not belong to the Joseph B. Chapin Estate. It happens to be mine.”

“So much the better. I shall sit here and think vile thoughts of you.”

“As long as you can think, which won't be long.”

“Which won't be long, but longer than I care to think. God damn it, I hate to think. Thinking stinks.”

Ann nodded. “Yes,” she said.

Her mother was sitting with a copy of the county edition of the Gibbsville
Standard
in her lap. “A nice article about Father in the
Standard
,” said Edith Chapin.

“Oh, naturally,” said Ann. “Mr. Hooker.”

“I don't think I care much for the heading. ‘Notables Attend Chapin Funeral.'”

“Why?”

“‘Notables,'” said Edith. “Be so much better if they'd just said ‘Funeral of Joseph B. Chapin,' without putting that word in the heading. And the article itself starts right out with ‘Prominent figures in government, legal and business affairs attended the funeral of—' and so forth.”

“But how else would you say it?” said Ann.

“Oh, I suppose it's all right,” said Edith. “I'm rather weary, we all are, after these past few days. Now there's a letdown. You and Joby and everybody, you've all been a great help to me, and now that the excitement's over, naturally I can expect a letdown.”

“Thank you, Mother,” said Ann.

Edith acknowledged the thanks with a nod. “I've been wondering what to do, where to start,” she said.

“With what?”

“Everything, everything,” said Edith. “I'll keep this house. I always intend to live here, the rest of my life, and you and Joby will always have this as your home to come back to. There won't be as much money as with Father alive and earning—substantial fees. But I'll have enough to run this household
pretty
much the way I have. You know how we've always lived. Well within our income except for the money Father—uh—disbursed while he was active in politics. That was costly. Very costly. But it was Father's money, he earned it or inherited it, and I knew he'd never do anything that would jeopardize our welfare, you children's and mine. Twice he dipped into capital, entirely with my approval and consent. And I don't think it would be fair for me to tell you how much, because as it turned out, Father's investments became more valuable during the war, so in the end the, uh, increase in value just about made up for what he spent on politics. Possibly a little more than he made up. He had some very good advice from Paul Donaldson and also from Dave Harrison. And I think Alec Weeks, but not as much from Alec.”

She looked up and at a distant, imaginary point. “I never liked Alec Weeks,” she went on. “I was very much surprised when he said he'd be a pallbearer.”

“Why didn't you like him? I thought you did.”

“Ah, you thought I did because I wanted you to. Your father never knew I didn't trust Alec either.”

“You didn't trust him?” said Ann.

“That's it. I didn't trust him. He always seemed to me to be one of Father's college friends that—oh, a link with the past, bright college years, but they really had very little in common. Wolf's Head. I've never been able to understand why two years together in a college club should continue to mean so much after a man has grown up. Those dinners in New York, year after year, taking too much to drink and singing those ridiculous songs, and I suppose a lot of toasts to the men who died since the last get-together. I suppose Alec Weeks will propose the toast to your father, next time, and Alec will be looked upon as the true brother who ventured into the wilds of Pennsylvania.”

“Well, he can't, because what about Mr. Harrison and Paul Donaldson?”

“They were not in Wolf's Head. I think they were both in Skull & Bones. Anyway, Dave Harrison was, I know. Maybe Paul Donaldson was in the other one, Scroll & Keys.”

“Key. Scroll & Key,” said Ann. “Why don't you trust Alec Weeks?”

“All that charm, that superficial charm. I'd never met him before our wedding, so there was no reason for him to pretend I was any great belle. I wasn't, and knew it. And when a girl knows that about herself and a man makes a great to-do over her, it's really insulting. Unless the girl is a fool.”

“But he might have been sincere.”

“No, he wasn't. I knew all about him. Chorus girls and all sorts of women. He left Oxford because he was having an affair with an Italian countess, much older than he was.”

“Alec Weeks,” said Ann. “You never know.”

“Yes, you do. You might not see it now, when he's sixty-three, but anyone with any sense could have told then.”

“Do you think I could have, Mother?” said Ann.

“Your—difficulties weren't caused by your not having any sense. You simply allowed your heart to rule your head.”

“My head couldn't have been very strong.”

“Don't disparage yourself,” said Edith Chapin. “Your life hasn't been lived yet, and I'm sure that a lot of good things are in store for you.”

“I hope you are right.”

“You'll have to help, of course. They won't just happen to you. You've learned, for instance, you've learned that love can be very deceptive. We often use that word when we mean something else. A warm-hearted girl like yourself can talk about love, about being in love, before she knows the meaning of the word. She has no other word to express some deep feeling, so she uses the word love, when actually it isn't love at all. Sometimes it can be pity.”

“You still think I pitied Charley.”

“Well, at least I don't think you loved him. If you had, your father and I would have known it. We'd have known it from you.”

“I tried to tell you.”

“And failed, and you wouldn't have failed if it had really been love, Ann. Charley felt passionately toward you and you felt pity for him, his helplessness. Men can be helpless under those circumstances, and a nice girl thinks it's her responsibility, or even her fault. A girl who isn't what we mean by a nice girl wouldn't feel that responsibility. She'd let him suffer, helpless. But that's exactly what you didn't do, and your kindness very nearly ruined your life.”

“Very nearly.”

“I know. I understand the irony in your voice. You still think we ruined your life, or you like to think that. But you must know when you're being honest with yourself that a marriage with an Italian boy in a jazz band wouldn't have lasted a year.”

“If you had let me have the baby, if you and Father had given the marriage a chance. Done half as much to help it as you did to stop it.”

“The baby was out of the question, Ann. A baby five months after you were married? How would the child itself explain that in later life? On legal documents, where you have to put down the date of your parents' marriage? To say nothing of your own friends, and for that matter, the father's friends. You know, people of that—class—are just as conservative as the more well-to-do, if not more so.”

Ann got up and went to the window. “The last time we talked about this we ended up having a very stormy scene.”

“Yes, and you went away and didn't write to me for months.”

“I don't want to do that again,” said Ann.

“And I hope you don't.”

“Then let's stop talking about it now. There isn't a single detail of it I haven't gone over a hundred times.—Oh, not only with you. Stuart never stopped talking about it.”

“I'm sorry about that. But it was part of—”

Ann turned quickly and looked at her mother. “Shall we stop now?”

“Why, yes. Of course. I was going to.”

“No, the minute you said that a lot of good things were in store for me, I knew what else was in store for me first. A rehash of my first marriage.”

Edith Chapin was silent. She waited until her silence became the most noticeable thing in the room, the dominant thing that would have been apparent to a person newly entering the room. When the silence reached that magnitude Edith Chapin ended it. In a higher tone that indicated a new topic of conversation she spoke again to her daughter. “Did we have a cablegram from Cousin Frank Hofman?”

“Not that I know of,” said Ann. “Where is he?”

“He's in Buenos Aires. Whit Hofman sent him a cablegram. He was always so fond of Father, and Whit thought he'd want to know.”

“I've completely forgotten about him. What does he do?”

“I forget. It must be at least fifteen years since I've seen him.”

“I don't even remember what he looks like,” said Ann.

“He's very different from the rest of the Hofmans. He's short, and when I last saw him he was quite stout. And I suppose living abroad all these years, someone who has a tendency to put on weight and cares a lot about food and wine—I imagine he's quite portly now. Although that's just a guess on my part.”

“Is he married?”

“Not that I know of,” said Edith Chapin. “Isn't Whit a dear?”

“Yes, he is.”

“It's so seldom you see anyone with all that money who can be so utterly un-self-conscious. He's one of the people I want to have for dinner later on, when things get settled. Next fall. When the summer's over I'm going to start having people in for dinner, once a week. Not more than four or five people at a time.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“Sometimes I'll have to deal in the black market, but I don't see that it's worse to deal in the black market than to take your friends to the club or the hotel. Father didn't agree with that point of view, but he was more or less in politics and that made a lot of difference.”

“Everybody buys in the black market,” said Ann. “And gas rationing's a joke. Where did that roast beef come from at lunch today? And all those cars.”

“The roast beef was perfectly legitimate. The club has always had a catering service.”

“Now, Mother,” said Ann.

“But it's true. You know that. Whenever we've had a big party we always had Otto, as long as I can remember. He asked me what to serve and I told him I'd leave that entirely up to him. And as far as the cars were concerned, weren't they mostly the undertaker's?”

“Not at our house.”

“Well, I thought they were,” said Edith Chapin. “But I agree with you. However, what else can you expect from the people in Washington? The waste and extravagance and dishonesty. Your father said it would happen, and it has. And it will continue as long as Roosevelt keeps his power.”

“And that will be forever.”

“Well, at least until the war's over.”

“Five years from now,” said Ann.

“At least. Unofficially, the admiral thinks it may be ten years before we finally win in the Pacific.”

“Well, I hope he's wrong,” said Ann. “Joby thinks five, and even that's too long.”

The small talk had not been a complete success and they both were conscious of it. They had been able to agree that Whit Hofman was a dear. The choice of Frank Hofman as a conversational topic had seemed inspired at the moment, but certain aspects of Frank Hofman made him something of a misfit, an irregular, like Ann herself and her brother Joby. The talk of black marketing and the war allowed them to release their bad humor on a nonpersonal subject, but guesses as to the duration of the war took them into another undesirable area. In a war the men are away, and that postpones the chances of courtship and marriage; traditional, conventional courtship and marriage, which meant more to Edith than they did to Ann.

“Much too long,” said Edith. “I wonder if I ought to lie down for a few minutes. I'm not tired, but I'm afraid I will be this evening.”

“Who's going to be here this evening?” said Ann.

“Uncle Arthur and Aunt Rose McHenry, and Uncle Cartie and you and Joby. That's all. I think I'll just stretch out for a few minutes. I may not sleep, but I'll relax.”

“Don't you want to take off your dress?”

“Yes, but I think I'll go down to my bedroom.”