Letty Fox (33 page)

Another Day
. I had not the strength to go to the post office to get stamps and no one had any. Besides, you did not write.

King Carol is in all sorts of involvements; cannot travel, cannot move from one country to another and it seems his wife controls him
absolutely
and is really very brilliant, a woman of state, like the Pompadour. Only to think of it! I regret I could not go to Rumania. I know so many people now who know Carol. I am promised an introduction if I travel there. I met a Rumanian priest who lives in an orthodox monastery at Jackson, near Detroit, and he is a remarkable, dazzling, strange and—dangerous—man; dangerous to women. I can tell now. But I cannot tell you all the people I meet; and I only speak about the interesting ones, for I am
turning my back
upon everyone who has not done something brilliant, extravagant, courageous, adventurous—for what is the use of living otherwise? Only I, so far, have done nothing. I go to meet them, and lose myself with them, I am charming, very bright, but when I come home the illusion is broken to pieces—there I am, just a pretty young girl, very pretty—but what of it? You do not feel this necessity, Letty, because of your exuberance. I have not exuberance but fever; is it just a physical fever? I am invited to the monastery. The cure here is absolute. I will certainly soon be well. Poor Papa. About Mme. Lupescu, I hear wonderful tales about her courage and brio. I admire her. I shall try to get a signed picture of her. This is all my life—I am very happy. I am obliged to consider only the best, finest, most brilliant men when I think of men fit to be my husband, for it must be someone to increase my happiness, not to make me miserable; and I am not looking for a husband to liberate me, or give me a home, as many miserable girls are—I am free already and my life is glorious (yes, except when I say it is
wretched
), and I would not shut myself up except with a superb man, a man beyond men—a prince, recognizable by anyone in the street, as a prince—or even a savant—but he must be handsome and have money too. I cannot live in a side street; I cannot be discontented, as a woman, for I must have a spotless, absolutely chaste married life and everything must be delightful. I try to reason out (but vainly) the steps by which a girl like you came to your view of the world—sameness, a geometrical pattern, women in overalls at machines and men talking about dams and cross-country trains; no traveling, no objets-d'art, no beauty, no folly, no great passions! It is incomprehensible. I am obliged to say to myself, it is a mere fad. But I am always your Jacky.

G
randmother Fox had been away from the U.S.A. for some years and feared to die abroad. She wanted to come home, buy a lot, a headstone, consult with us about the lettering, and die among us. She would be happy if she could think her female relatives, aunts, cousins, nieces, and her daughter-in-law with grandchildren, of sex female, could come to visit her when she was underground. She loved Lily Spontini like a daughter, and Mathilde because she had been betrayed by a man; she loved me because I resembled Solander and was her first grandchild, and Jacky because she was a sweet, feminine girl, and Andrea, my six-year-old sister, because she was, maritally speaking at least, posthumous; and then, because we were all female.

I think she even liked Persia too, for I heard her say to her once, “When you have little girls of your own, my dear, you will understand; that I know.”

Then she had strange notions, come in her old age, that they would take away her citizenship because her passport was old and her mother had been a German, and everyone now hated the Germans and, “There will be war, there will be war,” she said, as she had said since 1919.

My father, in return for her kindness to the family, had got an immigration number and arranged financial backing for Edie, “the girl in Swan and Edgar's”; and in the spring of 1935, Grandmother sailed with this girl to New York.

The girl was an experienced trimmer and finisher of women's dresses. Though Mother was displeased with Grandmother for living with Solander and Persia, we all three, and with Dora Morgan, who was then in New York, turned up at the wharf to welcome the pair. I turn aside here to say that Uncle Philip at this moment had attempted to leave Dora, but the agile-tongued shrew had so rounded up the family, that Philip had this week returned to her, who had all the appearance of being his fateful woman.

Grandmother was pale, having lain in her berth the whole way; but Edie, a tall, brown-haired woman of twenty-eight, souring and tanning somewhat with a work-woman's spinsterhood, looked conceited as ever; she did not so much as glance at the skyline. “I saw it in the movies,” she said disdainfully, “long ago, years ago.” Edie was lively, with quick speech, smiles and glances and sudden turns of humor; spiteful, wise, cynical, all in a sentence. She seemed very fond of Grandmother, who leaned on her arm, and with a liquid glance upwards of her lovely brown eyes, called Edie “nearly my daughter.” Mother took a dislike to Edie, complained of her wretched Cockney accent, which mingled rapid, vaudeville notes with a strange dragging middle-class affectation.

Dora, again pregnant, extremely active, loved to run about everywhere, showing her belly to people, talking about her three other children, the boy in England, the girl in Mexico, and a boy, Tony, Dora's youngest, in Green Acres (the only one anyone had actually seen), and complaining genteelly about her husband, Philip: “I am tired of his crocodile tears.”

Philip was threatened with jail by his first wife for back alimony and seemed not to care. “I believe he would go to jail to escape me; it would relieve him of his responsibilities,” said Dora, in quite a warm tone, with pink cheeks, a jolly manner, and a dress that reminded you of Mary, Queen of Scots. She put her hand just below her waist and smiled tenderly. Though everyone in the family but Grandmother Morgan had become wary of her, because she never left any house without taking a gift with her (a cough drop, a tube of toothpaste, “merely as a token of you, dear”), it was hard to condemn her. What was she? A wife and mother; and Philip, a philanderer. She had been just lately to see Amabel, who was trying to get Philip back, with the idea of sympathizing with her over Philip's bad ways. She was very indignant, for this powerful woman, with the aid of her two brothers, threw her down the stairs. We never knew whether this had really happened. We said, by this, Dora was a mythomaniac, the latest polite word for liar.

At this time the U.S.A. was being overwhelmed by a new polite language, a sophomore neo-Latin, which my father called
acadamese
, and which concealed everything unpleasant in terms pseudoscientific, generally pseudo-psychological. This was partly the effect of translations from persons writing in German, e.g., Freud and Marx, whose works were translated by verbal-parallelists (not translators) into an astounding polysyllabic jargon.

In the so-called
sociological
sphere, English words were built up in the German fashion to conceal things. For example, this was the time when the poor and hungry began to be called
the underprivileged
and the rich, the
overprotected
. Radical views on the part of the poor were called
maladjustment
; the use of the imagination was
escapism
.

Thus Dora, a liar and fraud, everyone called, rather tenderly, a mythomaniac. It was partly anger. Philip, no doubt, had an ulterior motive in marrying her. He had always been seriously interested in women apparently able to keep him and themselves. He had always had bad luck. Now Dora had given up all thought of business, thrown away her talent, and devoted her unusual energies to tormenting Philip.

Dora at once tried to insinuate herself into Grandmother Fox's sympathies by patting her waist, as I say, speaking of her dear children far away, and of Philip's wickedness, “But you always told us, dear Mother Fox, that men are like that and I did not listen to you. Oh, I know better now, dear Mother.” They sat at tea in the back room in the St. George Hotel that Grandmother would occupy for one night with Edie. Edie, at a loss, casting round, blabbed to us about everything; she looked to us, without trusting us, for some support. I do not think she ever trusted any American. Dora told how Philip would shortly go to jail for alimony and leave them destitute, so that she would be thrown entirely upon the charity of Grandmother Morgan and her relatives by marriage. Mr. McRae, her uncle, had gone on a world tour, a thing she regretted, since he was surely using up the money which she so much hoped (and what was wrong in such a hope, in a mother?) would come to her own dear little ones. This made Grandmother Fox thoughtful. She said, “To put him in jail is not nice; a father should work for his children. Idiot! Does she think he can earn money in jail?”

Dora beamed, “How kind you are, Mother Fox! You understand me so well. Philip has not used me properly, but, after all, he is my husband, and I will allow him to work for me and dear Bernard and Cissie and Tony, so far away from me, and the new one I carry; I am not vengeful. I will take him back. I know what he has done to me, dear Mother Fox, using me and then using other women, just as it suits him, and often I thought to myself, Better he should be in jail, he'd be away from them and he'd have a chance to think over what he's done with his life! But, after all, I must think of my little ones too, I am a mother, now; I must not consult my own feelings of revenge. A girl can do that; a mother not. No woman can understand how things really are, till she is a mother.”

“Yes, yes,” said Grandmother Fox, in a worried voice, “no doubt, no doubt.” She suddenly became irritated, “For God's sake, how could she? Eh? How could she understand? You expect my little Letty or Jacky to understand things like that? Thank God they don't. Youth is for enjoyment.”

Dora laughed lightly, “How right you are, Mother Fox! How true!”

There was a silence. Dora continued, nonchalantly, “But he likes living in England, doesn't he? Oh, I don't think Solander would ever come back here. I do not think he would ever live here again. And then he has all his friends there, all his friends—”

Grandmother was silent for a little while; then she murmured politely, “Do you like it very sweet?”

“Not too sweet.” “Oh, dear! Perhaps it is too sweet. Taste it, my dear.”

“No, it's all right.”

“Are you sure it's not too sweet? I can put in more tea.”

Impatiently Dora said, “No, no, I like it this way.”

“Well,” said Grandmother, “much ado about nothing, as Shakespeare would say.”

Clink, clink, went the spoons. Dora said thoughtfully, “Poor Mrs. Bowles! You know Gideon Bowles's mother? They are expecting her to die.”

“Who is Gideon Bowles? Who knows all these things?”

“Gideon Bowles is that dear old friend of Mathilde's from when she was in the theater.”

“The theater—I don't know—” said Grandmother crossly.

“Poor Mrs. Bowles is dying now—”

“Is her son with her?”

“No, he is in California.”

“What is the matter with her?”

“She got a stroke.”

“If she is healthy, she will linger,” Grandmother said fretfully. Dora said, “Philip went to see her. The daughter is very good to the mother. Gideon Bowles visited Mathilde, but they say he is very good also to his mother. But they say the daughter is better.”

“Really good? Is she? I cannot tell you this, my dear. I never saw any of them.”

“Gideon was very good to Mathilde and she is so lonely.”

Grandmother, after a silence, said, “Too sweet is no good for me.” Dora said, “Thirty-five! Think of it, a man that age who hasn't a girl friend; do you think that is natural?”

There was a long silence; then Grandmother said thoughtfully, “You see, Dora, I don't like this material. It fades. Very, very natural—a daughter, a mother—oh, a stroke you say! Well, she may linger for years. And the daughter—nice, nice—and the son, he loves his mother, he cannot marry. You see, my dear, I knew a case, five sons, they loved their mother, they did not marry.”

Dora said, “Ah, I heard all about it; and if you ask me, that daughter is not so well either. He is fond of his sister, they say. Good, very good. I do not think she has been well for years, that girl. She had two kinds of operations and got hurt internally. They say she had one she lost—she wanted to lose, of course—and I think she was operated on once mysteriously—she does not look well, she looks nervous, that girl. Too much devotion to the mother is not good either. They cannot marry. Yes, twice a week Gideon Bowles was calling upon dear Mattie; a woman is glad of some company.”

In the silence, they drank. Dora reflected and in a maudlin voice began, “Since Letty came back to America, she is not the same child at all. I think Mathilde wishes she would be more attentive to her mummy. Then living in the Green Acres hotel—she learns bad manners; and is quite spoiled. And Jacky is getting too much attention. But then she is an invalid. Poor, poor child.”

Grandmother remained silent. Dora pursued, “And Jacky reads so much. She hurts her eyes so much. And not a good scholar, either. Reads, reads, reads. All the time. I told her not to. She needed care. A brisk talking-to. Mathilde—you know, Mathilde—Mathilde wished Letty and Jacky were nicer to their mummy. And Andrea— dancing, pulling up her skirts—”

Grandmother seemed to be dreaming; she murmured, “No, because if they go to a nice school, they will meet the right children; but so, in hotels—yes, they are very naughty—”

Dora said, “That little Letty loves to go to the movies too, every day, and to the theater—I never saw a child so spoiled—”

Grandmother became entangled, out of loyalty to her grandchildren, “It is—because, you see—if she reads too much, it is because—you see—yes; yes, they are clever, but naughty! Hotel life is no good. Andrea—oh, mm, mm, really a little beauty—well, what do you—well, let them be.”