Ammie, Come Home (3 page)

“Is that why you came home early?” Sara demanded incredulously.

“Yes, and that's why we are out right now, to get me something decent to wear. Darn, it still is cold. Unusual for this time of year.”

“You Washingtonians always say that.” Sara clutched her black leather jacket around her as a strong gust threatened to pull it off. Her black hair lifted, lashed by the wind like something out of a witches' sabbath. “Well, really, Ruth, I'm surprised at you. All this effort for some snobbish old society biddy.”

“Darling, she isn't like that. Her husband—good heavens, Pat's father—was Ambassador to England; the family is not only terribly rich, but intellectual, cultivated. She doesn't invite the ‘in' crowd, only people she thinks will be interesting. That's why her invitations are so hard to come by.”

“Hmmm,” said Sara, unconvinced. “Well, my dear aunt, whatever your motives, it is obvious that you must do us credit. So where are we going first?”

“First and last,” said Ruth, rounding the corner onto Wisconsin rather more briskly than she had intended. “Heavens, the wind simply roars down this street! We're going to Lili's.”

“But you always buy your clothes there.” Sara clutched a handful of hair in a vain attempt to keep it out of her eyes. “Let's prowl, we've plenty of time. I do love the Georgetown shops.”

Ruth liked them too, so their progress was slow, despite the lashing wind that blew down Wisconsin's curving slope as through a tunnel. The tartans in the Scottish import shop held them for ten minutes; it was hard to believe that those wild blends of color—purple, yellow and black, olive and pale green with a scarlet thread, turquoise and orange-red and indigo—were genuine clan patterns and not the improvisations of a mad Italian designer. The mad designers, Italian and otherwise, were represented in other shops which had names like “Whimsique,” and “the place,” with no capital letters. Ruth found this distressing and said so, but Sara laughed, loitering before a window framed in enormous orange and purple linoleum flowers and filled with such useful items as an Indian water pipe and a bird cage six feet high, of gilded bamboo trimmed with fake rubies and sapphires.

At the Wine and Cheese shop they stopped to buy cocktail snacks and some of Ruth's favorite hock. Then there was a Mexican shop, where Sara yearned over a bright red, wildly pleated dress embroidered all over the yoke and sleeves with black-and-gold birds; and an Indian shop, where Ruth remarked that, one day, she would like to see Sara in a sari, preferably that white one trimmed in gold. Then they decided that they really had to start thinking about a dress for Ruth, and passed nobly by the candle shop and the little gallery and the jeweler's that specialized in antique pieces. By this time, strangely enough, they were blocks from Lili's.

Sara stopped in front of a window.

“Look, Ruth. What a darling dress!”

It was a sheath of rainbow iridescence, with long sleeves, a demure high neck, and practically no skirt.

“This doesn't look like my sort of place,” Ruth remarked meekly.

“Let's go in anyhow.”

The store was small and thickly carpeted, with its stock discreetly tucked away on racks along the walls and only two isolated models in the middle of the floor. The salesladies, elegant young women who looked like college girls, smiled graciously at the new customers and returned to their conversation.

“That's it,” said Sara, advancing purposefully on a dress which stood in solitary splendor in the center of the shop. “I saw it the other day, and I thought of it right away when you said you wanted something dressy but not actually formal.”

Ruth eyed the creation dubiously. It was one of the new “romantic” styles—a full velvet skirt belted tightly at the waist with a wide, soft belt, and a white organdy top with long sleeves and a cascade of crisp ruffles down the front.

“It would look lovely on you,” she began.

“No, no, it's not my style at all,” Sara said. “I'm too long-legged for this new length—midi, they call it.”

“An ugly name for an unbecoming length,” Ruth said, and ran a finger along the fall of ruffles. They sprang briskly back into shape as if they had been starched.

“Try it on, anyhow. You can't tell unless you do.”

When they left the shop with a large parcel in hand, Sara insisted on treating them both to coffee at a local espresso bar. Sipping a liquid which had been referred to as a cappuccino, Ruth did not mention that it bore no resemblance to the drink of the same name which she had enjoyed in Florence four years earlier. She was moved, however, to comment on the price of the coffee and on the decor; the furniture was starkly, uncomfortably modern and the walls were hung with original paintings, in the manner of a gallery. Half the inhabitants of Georgetown painted; the other half bought the paintings.

“I thought these places would be cheaper,” Ruth explained. “Like—for students.”

“That's right, get with that slang,” Sara grinned. “Some students are pretty rich these days. Haven't you ever been in one of these places before?”

“No.”

“See what a good influence I am. Two new establishments in one day. I'll have to take you to a discothèque. And you claim to be an old Georgetonian. Or is it Georgetownian?”

“Georgetown is changing,” Ruth said dryly. “But I guess people do stay in well-worn tracks. Unfortunately you don't realize you're in a rut until it's too late to climb out of it. You are a good influence, Sara. I'm enjoying having you with me.”

“Thanks. I'm enjoying being with you.”

They smiled at one another rather self-consciously. Then Ruth glanced at her watch and gave an exclamation.

“We'd better hurry, or I'll be late getting dressed.”

“You need shoes,” Sara said, slipping into her coat. “No—you have those low-heeled pumps with the big buckles, that's just the thing. Black stockings—”

“Certainly not,” Ruth said firmly.

“I've got some I'll lend you.”

The total effect—buckled shoes, black stockings, and ruffles—made Ruth self-conscious until she saw Pat MacDougal's face. However, he said nothing, beyond a polite compliment, and Ruth thought she understood why; Sara's smile was too maternal to be encouraged.

“Cook both those lamb chops,” she told her niece. “No cheating with T.V. dinners. You need something solid.”

“Well, actually, I thought,” said Sara, trying to look as if the idea had just occurred to her, “that I might ask Bruce over to eat your chop. If you don't mind?”

Ruth had laid down the ground rules about guests when Sara first came to stay with her, and this was perfectly in order. She heard herself agreeing to the proposal with unusual warmth. She was in too much of a hurry to try to analyze why she was glad to have someone with Sara that evening; a dim discomfort, something connected with the morning, hovered on the edge of her consciousness and then was forgotten, as Pat drew her toward the door.

 

IV

Ruth knew the MacDougal home by sight; it was one of the famous mansions of Georgetown, and if she had had no other reason for accepting Pat's invitation, a chance to see the house would have been excuse enough. Now well within the borders of the Georgetown area, it had been a suburban estate when the little town on the Potomac was first founded. The original George Town, as its present inhabitants often pointed out, was a cosmopolitan town, with academies and jewelers and slaves, when the new capital was still a muddy swamp. Representatives of the young nation had to be scolded by the President into taking up residence in the city named for him, and it was with reluctance that they abandoned the amenities of the town named after another, less popular George.

The men who had built the house named it, with more candor than modesty, Barton's Pride. It had long since passed out of the hands of the Barton family; but it still stood as it had stood then, on a knoll surrounded by tall oaks, and it occupied an entire city block, a distinction which few of the original mansions could still claim. The driveway was a superb, sweeping circle; Pat's little Jaguar roared up it with a defiant blast of its exhaust.

After Pat had helped her out of the car Ruth stood for a moment gazing at the magnificent proportions of the facade, now blazing with lights which made the bricks glow rose-pink. The vines which in summer softened the formal Georgian lines fluttered like tattered curtains, the last reddening leaves flying in the wind. Shallow stairs led up to the beautiful doorway with its fanlight and side windows.

The hall was as large as Ruth's drawing room. The immense chandelier, whose crystal drops chimed delicately with the breeze of their entrance, had surely been taken from a Loire chateau. The rug was an acre of muted cream and blue and rose; Ruth had seen its like on museum walls, but never on a floor before. A superb staircase swept up and divided, framing a circular window. On either side of the hall were fireplaces; wood crackled and orange-and-gold flames leaped inside them. Ruth waited until the butler had turned away with their coats. Then she said out of the corner of her mouth, “And you had the nerve to admire my shack.”

“Oh, I admire this place,” Pat admitted. “The way I admire the Louvre.”

“But you don't live here?”

“People don't live in places like this. They perform, as on a stage. Wait till you see Mother in action; you'll understand what I mean.”

He took her elbow and turned her toward the wide doors on the left; but before they reached them the panels flew back and Mrs. Jackson Mac-Dougal erupted through them, arms outstretched, face beaming. Ruth gaped.

Washington's most famous hostess was a shimmer of silver: massed diamonds on her high-piled white hair, blazing from her fat little hands and plump throat; and silver, too, in the incredible garment that swathed her from throat to floor and billowed out like a tent as she came flying toward them. A silver lamé caftan, Ruth thought, and stifled a gasp of laughter. Above the ample folds Mrs. MacDougal's much photographed face—superbly, uniquely, magnificently homely—rose like a gargoyle from a cathedral roof.

She threw herself on her tall son, and for one unforgettable moment Ruth saw his rugged face and flaming head swathed in sweeping folds of silver.

“Horrible man, why don't you come more often?” Mrs. MacDougal demanded. “Who's this? Mrs. Bennett? How do you do, very nice, very nice indeed. Much more suitable than the last one. But you only brought her to annoy me. I knew that. Didn't work, did it?”

Pat returned her grin. For a moment the two faces were uncannily alike.

“Not any of my tricks work with you. You were so sweet to that ghastly female that she got the wrong idea. Pursued me for weeks. I had to leave the country to get away from her. Not,” he added hastily to Ruth, “because of my brains and good looks, mind you.”

“Why should any woman require more?” Ruth asked, since the conversation seemed to be taking that tone. The old lady gave a peal of appreciative laughter and linked arms with Ruth, displacing her flowing silver sleeve and baring another yard or two of diamonds running up her arm.

“That's right, put him in his place. I never trained him properly. Come in and meet the others. Just a small group; Pat won't come if I have more than a dozen people.”

The dozen included the usual lions, a pride of them—so many that their individual distinctions were lost in the general aura of fame. Ruth recognized a much-pursued young senator from a western state and a tall, melancholy man who was the musical half of Broadway's most famous musical comedy team. Ruth's hostess monopolized her, leaving the rest of the guests to fend for themselves; her tactics were so blatant that, in any other woman, Ruth would have recognized them immediately. But she could not believe at first that this descendant of millionaire aristocrats was trying to do her son's courting for him.

“But, Mrs. MacDougal,” she protested, after a particularly obvious ploy, “I don't think…”

“You think I'm a fantastic old bitch,” said her hostess calmly. “I am, it's true, but I'm quite serious about Pat; I'd like him to settle down. It sounds absurd, doesn't it, for a man of his age? He was married before, you know. So were you, I gather.”

“He died,” Ruth said, stunned into candor by the old lady's sledgehammer tactics. “In the war.”

“World War Two? Yes…we adults still say ‘
the
war,' don't we? Pat's wife didn't die; she divorced him. She was a dreadful woman, but I could see her point. He kept dashing off to the jungles of Africa or the deserts of Australia. What fun is that? But it's high time he tried again. He can't go gallivanting around in the wilds much longer; he's getting old. Those places aren't safe.”

Ruth's inclination to laugh was quenched by Mrs. MacDougal's expression. It was one she knew well, having seen it so often on her sister's face. Apparently the maternal instinct did not die, even in an eighty-year-old mother for her middle-aged son. Ruth did not find the emotion amusing; rather, it was frightening in its single-minded intensity.

During dinner Ruth watched Pat's expression become increasingly grimmer as the meal went on, through course after superb course. The food certainly could not be the cause of his discontent; Ruth wondered if it might be his dinner partner, who seemed never to stop talking. She was a tall, thin woman, so fair as to be almost anemic looking, with ash blond hair arranged in a peculiarly old-fashioned mass of braids, coils, and ringlets. If Mrs. MacDougal had not been present to dim all lesser lights, the woman's costume might have seemed eccentric: smoke-gray draperies of chiffon which floated dangerously near candle flames and wine glasses whenever she lifted her hands, which she did often, in studiedly flowing gestures.

As soon as the meal was over and the company was being led into the “small drawing room” for coffee, Pat sought Ruth out.