Letty Fox (81 page)

With all my other work, I found time again to begin work on a new novel, a new idea. It came about through a fluke. I was at Susannah Ford's home, where I met some refugees who were doing quite well here in the start-up of an engineering, ship-building and ship-reconditioning business. A young woman was there, very much on the outs with her young, ambitious husband. I made quite an impression on him, claiming also to be a French refugee, and out of a job. My French, which I had always kept up with Jacky, was so very good (to him, at least, a German-born Swiss) that he at last believed me and slipped ten dollars into Susannah's hand as he was leaving, for her to give to me, to secure an appointment with him, the next day. An appointment for a job, he said. But was it?

It's a kind of amusing gag starting-point for a story, a lead, but what to? That's the rub. I heard there weren't many novels around, as the boys were going into the army and were interested in flying, soldiering, techniques of one kind or another, that would improve their positions; so women novices had a better chance.

I worked on my novel for two or three days, even denying myself to my boy friends, but such a high-minded state could not last with me. Partly out of ambition, and partly out of gaiety, I had become intimate with the head of the office, a pleasant married man of thirty-six. He was supposed to be rather tired of his wife, but I was getting to be used to this and no longer built the hopes on marital fatigue that I had before. He was an ambitious man, and wanted to help me on, to see me a journalist, a radio commentator or writer. To impress him and help myself, perhaps, one lunchtime I dashed off some “Notes on Character Observation on First Sight, and Afterwards”; for I said to myself, Here I am with a huge, sprawling, mad family, hundreds of friends; I've mixed in every kind of life and know a good deal; and know men better than ten women of my age—at least the average ten women—I ought to be able to make a hit with a novel, and I admit the novel is built on character.

So this is what I wrote:

1. Esteem old wives' saws until proven false; examine commonplaces, accepted lies—often truths.
   
2. Remember first things, as age, sex, domestic and marital standing, finances.
   
3. Occupation; this gives a special viewpoint.
   
4. Indications are given by body-build, race, coloring, skin, gait, sitting posture, tics; etc. Examine systematically, beginning with crown of head, ending with feet, or vice versa.
   
5. Ask for medical standbys, e.g., heart-build is as facebuild is as body-build. Peculiarities of posture indicate old or new weaknesses.
   
6. Indications by hands.
   
7. Draw easy conclusions; these are likely to be right. In analyzing motives, don't jump at once to idea of complex, egotistic, or raptorial notions. There may be temporary or permanent imitations, family, milieu.
   
8. What is the guiding motive?
   
9. Most things, apparent weaknesses, are really life-system of preservation. Life urge is strongest, even weaknesses utilized. Foibles are fortes.
   
10. Hackneyed situations always exist unless otherwise proven.
    
11. Mere observation not enough. The examiner must take part in discussion and bring out all kinds of reactions. Sympathy and antipathy are two instruments of observation for the observer.
    

Etc., etc.

I showed this to my new friend, as well as to the one I had fallen in love with such a short time back, Wicklow, my “American Ideal Male,” and pretended that these notes were the fruit of years of contemplation; but I slandered myself! Unfortunately, in this as in other things, I was far, far too clever. I came home from the meeting with my new lover in a great flush of success and joy; but, once there, while I was congratulating myself on my ability, an unpleasant thought struck me: Why can I do so much? Why can I love so often? It would be simpler to have one clear call, like Jacky. At least, simpler; but could I stand the stupidity of such a life? I must have fire!

M
y meddling with Jacky's affairs was not successful, after all. Simon Gondych had been gone to England about a year, and was working on poison gas, gas shelters, and diet problems in a reduced economy. Jacky did not often hear from him, for he was very busy, often ill, as he tried his experiments, like all biochemists, on himself, and always in danger of some sort. Also, he made frequent trips out of town, or to the Continent, and could not reveal his address. I thought this romance was fading, and was much surprised when I found that Jacky wrote regularly to him.

I was quite satisfied with my home. It was an old flat, but looking out over a back court, quiet and private on Sundays. All around were old studios in which commercial artists, artists, and workers in the fine arts, who had done very badly before, were doing very well now, owing to war orders and the general look-up in the business world.

We were at the end of a corridor with five other doors. On the right was a young airman's wife, with a blond baby; on the left two pretty Southern girls, making hay and harlotry with the army; opposite, a couple of tired girls-about-town, who drank and brawled and pulled in their rare male visitors; then an unmarried couple who spent the week end in gin, brazenly; and next door again a hard-working bachelor girl, nearly middle-aged. Jacky knew none of them, but I could borrow chairs, ice cubes from any of them, at any time. Jacky was disliked. Nothing is easier than to be alone. She lived for, with, and by Gondych, even in absence; and so she was neglected by the rest of the human race. I often became very much annoyed with her. She did not work as much as I did either, and was becoming quite old-maidish, although as lovely as she had ever been.

My surprise was great when this child, who had shown no enterprise, came to me one day and detailed plans she had been making for getting over to Gondych. I first said, “Does he want you, Jacky?”

“What do I lose, anyhow? I'm not happy here. I don't care if I die.”

“Well, little items like your family, me, your mother, your country, that is not much, of course—”

It was Greek to her. Overbalancing all that, she had a dozen or so twenty-line notes from her sage, written on small white notepaper, in extremely regular lines, in his clear, crabbed, scholar's script, and signed “Yrs” or “Your friend” or “Affectionately, Simon Gondych” or “S.C.” She thought they were State documents. The pretty monogram he had invented, the precise, masculine capitals, were, for her, Simon himself. She looked at these little bits of paper with burning cheeks and glowing eyes, and something of a maternal expression. By now, his age, all that had first repelled her, attracted her. She pitied and loved him for it. In fact, it was invulnerable. She had quite made up her mind to lose her life, country, and everything for Gondych.

She had been to Joseph Montrose, with whom my father had worked half a lifetime, and had asked him to get her to Britain somehow. Montrose was very friendly with every woman in my family, and still hankered after Aunt Phyllis, even though she was twice married and twice a mother by now, rather fat, be-furred and be-ringed, interested in facials and bridge.

Jacky resembled Aunt Phyllis most remarkably, with this shadow over her, which she had always had. It made her a less blatant beauty, but to some, the older, more thoughtful men, even more enticing. Montrose behaved with great delicacy toward Jacky, and, although himself a shameless Casanova, seemed to understand and respect her
grande passion
. Like all frequent lovers, like myself, Joseph Montrose had struck once or twice in five hundred chances—to put it in round figures—the fatal woman; and he sympathized with a poor young creature who had struck the fatal man at her first going out into the world, and one, by chance, separated from her by nearly two generations!

“Such things can happen,” he said, “and I am not one to laugh at love. I dare not. What would love do to me?”

He visited my mother frequently on this interesting topic, and begged her, perhaps only in obedience to habit, to arrange a meeting with Phyllis. My mother told him quite coldly that she no longer moved in Aunt Phyllis's set; she was not rich enough; an abandoned woman was a mere death's head at their feast of successful marrying and divorcing.

Joseph Montrose then betook himself to my father's. Mother was bitterly opposed to Jacky's wild plan, which was natural enough; but her poor words carried no weight, since she was opposed to any manifestation of will and considered almost every event some kind of as yet unclassified tragedy. Where did she get two or three daughters like us? She always said we were Grandmother Morgan's daughters, not hers; but she supposed she had no right to ask anything of life; she had failed, and life has no use for failures.

My father was equally opposed to the wartime (and necessarily illegal) trip to England, but Jacky managed to persuade him, with what sure signs of an invincible determination, I don't quite know. Montrose then agreed to take her over himself, by bomber, if possible; and as he had many connections in Washington, he hoped to get her a post there, preparatory to her getting over. He would finance her till she found whether it was possible for her to stay there. Jacky said my father should not be the loser, nor anyone else. Now, at length, she had found some use for Grandmother Fox's money; she wanted to use it for getting to Simon. My poor father made enormous eyes, and said, “Your little grandmother worked as a governess and housewife, and gave language lessons so that you kids could get a better education than she had; she didn't mean it to be spent on cleaner's bills, debts to Bill van Week, and trips to visit a man in England.”

Jacky said, “Grandmother was a darling old lady, but one of the old school; and, by the way, didn't she tell me of a long trek she made from Wisconsin to New York, without a cent to feed herself with, all for the sake of a man?”

“Did she tell you that?”

For my part I had never heard of it; but it turned out that it had been so. Grandmother had told me stay-at-home tales, painted word-pictures of adoring humble daughters and Griseldas and Penelopes. I saw in Grandmother a gentle propagandist. Jacky she perhaps considered too mild. My mother could only think to ask Jacky, “Don't you want to get married and have children?”

“Yes, but I can't help this.”

She refused to stay at home with her mother, but kept on with me, and I left her to her romance. She became tedious enough. To her mind, Gondych communicated with her, when he was in New York, by some animal means unknown to science. She knew when he was in town and when not. They could not really quarrel because, so often, their thoughts were identical. He had the simplicity and decent frankness of a young girl; she had the psychic complexity of Gondych. When she first fell in love with him, after a memorable week of outings, their meetings had been interrupted by ten days. She had daydreamed of a certain incident. He would come to Solander's place for dinner; Persia had apéritifs and wines. She would hand Gondych a glass of wine; he would taste from it and hand it back to her; she would drink from it and smash it accidentally. She had thought for some hours of the smashing of the glass, how she would place it, so that none but Gondych would know it was intentional. Gondych of course would know, “because he knew everything.”

The evening was actually arranged. Gondych came to the house, she opened the door, and there stood the man she loved, bowing. They looked at each other, and each thought, “Yes, it is true; it is not something I fantasied.”

She thought this, in a flash, and she could see it flash through Simon. He kissed her hand, and came in. The wine scene took place almost as imagined. Persia handed them both glasses of wine — Jacky followed Gondych to the foyer; he, with a slight bow, drank, his eyes fixed on her. She was frightened at the way reality fringed her dream. She put down her glass because her hand was trembling, and saw Gondych's disappointed look. She took his and drank from it, but did not dare to smash it, although they were alone. This incident showed an “abnormal parallelism in their thoughts.”

Jacky and I went for walks in the streets and usually ended up in a bar or cafeteria. She preferred to sit and walk in dark places. She did not like the way men stared at us in bars. I was pretty much on the prowl and her soul-mating made me shiver. I wanted to look about. Often, when I had dropped her at home, I'd pretend I had to get cigarettes and go back down to the Village, approaching it from the Port of Authority end of Fourteenth Street. Down that way I met few I knew, but by the time I got to Seventh Avenue, and turned down toward Sheridan Square, I was getting into my own bailiwick and was likely to run into plenty of people. I'd meet people I'd met with other men; and if I met no one, there were a few doorbells I could ring, where we could drink beer and chew the rag till I felt like sleeping. Jacky, at home, would not worry.

These empty weeks were the ones when I went most often to Mathilde's or Solander's, or called upon any relatives in town. This I only did to cut my expenses, or when I was too heartsick at my connections with crooks, self-appointed Casanovas, and the riffraff of town.

I took to card-playing and set out to beat Grandmother Morgan. I had some talent for gin rummy, which we played mostly for a quarter of a cent a point, and sometimes going partners with her, and sometimes letting her stake me. But I lost as often as I gained. If I made two or three dollars, I'd blow it in, and if I lost, was quite sick to think of the additional hole this made in my pocket. Jacky understood none of my troubles, but she no longer reproached me. She had been blown out to sea herself; she felt she had no advice to give to the rudderless. There were moments when I didn't mind being on the town, and times when I had thoughts of suicide, for I saw a good deal of sham in my glorious life-cavalcade and I couldn't see anything much to go for.

There were one or two bad incidents. Soldiers were roaming the town, out of camp, and a few back from abroad. They were wild, and from every girl expected the works, just for the asking. I had always gone round town freely, since schooldays; but now, a lot of town became impossible. Many of the soldiers were small-town boys or country lads who thought we owed them everything because we'd been born in the sex that doesn't fight.