The Fundamentals of Play (30 page)

“Kate hardly ever comes down to Newport,” the woman volunteered. “And I have a pretty good idea as to why.”

A waiter passed with a tray of cocktails. “One for me and one for
you,” said my new friend. We toasted. My drink was very sweet after the straight vodka in the taxi.

“She’s a lucky one, Kate.” That sounded more like her.

“Yes, she is,” I agreed.

“
All
the money’s Artie’s. I mean, literally every dime.”

“Is it,” I said absently, flustered anew, because I had finished the drink in two sips and didn’t know what to do with my glass—whether to hold it and pretend to sip out of it or carelessly demand another.

“Oh, God, yes. Viv didn’t have a cent when they got married. Not a red cent. They’ve got that house up in Maine and that’s divided three ways, and from what I heard it was practically falling into the sea when she and Artie got married.”

“Gosh,” I said.

“You know, people say Wills married
me
for my money, and I say I’d rather be married for my money and have money than marry someone with no money who—who doesn’t have any.” She paused, as if trying to understand the logic of that.

“Of course,” I said, peering into her cleavage, which was eye level. “I mean, I can see why.” She was an awfully sweet woman.

“But what happened to Viv would never have happened to me.”

“Really. Why not?”

The woman drained her glass and smiled. “Because I don’t go around screwing the townies, honey, that’s why!”

At this point the meal in the dining room must have broken up, for there was a sound of chairs being pushed back, and people began to trickle into the hallway. A tall man with gray hair walked by us. Mortified, I shrank back as my partner-in-waiting called out to him. “Artie! Artie, come here! Look at us, we’re hiding!”

The man stopped and looked around impatiently.

“In here!”

When the man saw who had called him, and whom she was with and where, the look on his face was both so contemptuous and so bored that I surprised myself by straightening up from the alcove and returning his glance with a sudden insolence of my own.

“This is a friend of Kate’s, Artie!”

“Are you,” said the man, turning indifferent eyes on me. “Linda, come out from there.”

“I won’t! We like it under here, don’t we? We’re playing Sardines! You”—she tugged at my sleeve—“you come back here.”

I hesitated a moment, but the dinner-party group had come and surrounded Mr. Goodenow. His expression changed instantly to a host’s condescension. He laughed deprecatingly at something one of the women said. He had taken less notice of me than if I
had
crashed his party—a real crasher, presumably, Mr. Goodenow would have taken the time to throw out.

Watching him go, perceiving the insult through her drunkenness, my friend remarked suddenly, “You know, Viv was a goddamn little bitch to me in school!”

“Maybe she didn’t mean to be,” I suggested, without much confidence.

“Oh, yes, she did! She did! She
hated
me. Because I had
sex
before she did. But I don’t care. Why should I care when she got pregnant? To see her that way! To see her the way she was! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

“Is Mrs. Goodenow here tonight?” I inquired.

“Granny’s here—it’s her birthday. If you see her, you give her a big kiss for me! Granny and I have always gotten along.”

“I’m sorry, I meant—Kate’s mother,” I said.

“Oh, Viv? Oh, no! Viv’s not here! Viv
hates
Newport.
Nothing’s
good enough for her but Maine. Well, you know what
I
say? I say Maine’s a fucking cold bore!”

I noticed that it was quieter then. The grown-ups’ party had passed through the hallway into another room, tucked away in the bowels of the huge house. Every few minutes you would a hear a car being started and the slurred comment of revelers as it drove away.

“That’s them going down to town,” remarked my companion, who had stopped to listen as well. “Are you going to go down?”

“I don’t really know,” I said.

“How old are you?” she asked suddenly. It was the first moment
in our conversation that she had taken on anything remotely like a motherly air.

“Fourteen,” I said.

The woman nodded, looking dimly into her empty glass. “I would have liked to have children,” she whispered.

“Maybe you still can,” I said.

“You think so?” said my friend. “I’d give anything—anything.” We stepped from beneath the alcove into the deserted hall. “Goddamn it, Wills is still out there on the porch with Corny Murphy!”

After Wills’s wife went off to retrieve him, I wandered through the huge house listening for Kate’s laugh. There were pockets of laughter here and there, but I had a dread of breaking in where I was not wanted, and eventually I found a small, dark library off the entrance hall. It seemed a safe enough place to wait without being noticed. I sat down on a ladylike sofa and switched on a lamp. When no one emerged from the shadows to accuse me of trespassing, I picked up the book on the coffee table and read it with all my heart. It was a history of the America’s Cup. It was actually an absorbing read, and I was well into the first chapter when I became aware that I was not alone in the room. I heard a shifting in one of the corners, then perceived human breathing. I looked up from the book nearer to shrieking than I like to remember. The corner was dark, and so it took me a moment to make out the source of the noise. When I did, I felt foolish indeed. My companion was an old woman in a wheelchair. She had evidently slumped down—her head was bent halfway to her waist—and this had made her breath come stertorously. It was a pitiful position, not to mention untenable, and I was steeling myself to go to the woman’s aid when the door to the library opened and a nurse or a maid in a gray uniform came in. “Hello,” I said nervously.

“Yes, hello,” she said, switching on an overhead light. “And what are you doing hiding away in here?”

Before I could explain, the old woman started awake. Her hand gripped the side of the wheelchair. “Bea!” she murmured. “Bea!”

“Yes, yes, I’m here,” said the maid. “I come to take you to bed.”

“Bea!” the old woman repeated.

“I’m here, crazy! I’m here, right in front of your face. Now, quiet down. I take you upstairs.” She moved behind the wheelchair and released the stop.

“Where’s Arthur gone?”

“Arthur, he go out.” The maid shared an amused look with me. “Arthur, he have fun.”

“Where? Where did he go?”

“Town. Everybody’s gone to town. Now you go up to bed. It’s past your bedtime.”

The old woman frowned angrily, as if she had been duped. “Who is this boy? Who is this, Bea?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

I stood up and said, “I’m George Lenhart, ma’am.”

“Who invited you? Are you a friend of Arthur’s?”

“Arthur? He don’t know Arthur! He one quarter Arthur’s age!”

“I came with Kate,” I said.

“Kate! Where is Kate? Why didn’t Kate come and say hello to me?”

I explained that I had lost track of her myself, a little while ago.

“He wait here all by hisself.”

“You go and find Kate. She’ll be upstairs.”

“That’s where the cousins hang out,” the maid corroborated. “You go upstairs. You don’t want to be hanging around down here with the old folks, do you?”

“Oh, no she won’t, Bea,” said the old woman. “Kate won’t be with the cousins. She doesn’t like her cousins. You know the only one she likes, Bea.”

“Oh, yes, I do, crazy. She like Froggy.”

“That’s right, Bea,” acknowledged Kate’s grandmother. “She likes Froggy the best. And so do I.”

“You go on up there,” the maid said pleasantly. “You find Kate upstairs with her cousin Froggy.”

Reluctantly I said I would go and look for them.

“Froggy’s a little off,” the maid warned me. “You know what I mean, right? You know Froggy?”

“Froggy’s a good boy,” countered her charge. “You be nice to Froggy, Bea!”

“I? I? I’m the nicest in the whole place. Froggy and I, we friends.” To me she repeated gently, “Froggy not quite right, you get it, though.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “That’s all right.”

“Then you go on and have fun! Don’t sit here by yourself. You miss the party.”

“Oh, I will. I’ll go right up. Thank you.”

“What’s your name, boy?” demanded the grandmother.

“He already tell you, crazy! You forget already?”

“It’s George,” I said. “George Lenhart.”

“Are you a friend of my son’s?”

The maid smiled, rolling her eyes. “Come on. Let’s go. Bedtime, Granny.”

I held the door as she wheeled the chair through it.

“It’s my birthday,” the old woman said.

“Yes, I heard,” I said. “Thank you for having me.”

“Did you have a good time?” she asked eagerly.

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Goodenow,” I said. “The best.”

She nodded into herself, reassured. “Lenhart?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She nodded again. “Yes, I know,” she said. “I know your name. There are Lenharts in Maine.”

By that point instincts of self-preservation had overcome propriety; before I went upstairs, I ducked back into the library and took the America’s Cup book and brought it with me for protection. Then I climbed the large curving stairs to the second floor. In a bedroom there, six or eight girls my age and some boys a few years older were lounging on a made bed and hardback chairs. They had evidently
gone up there to drink; an arcane drinking game was in full swing, which seemed to involve elements of each of the ones I knew: telling the truth, kissing members of the opposite sex, laying cards down, recitation. I got an odd sensation watching them play. Then I realized that they all looked something alike, but in an odd way. Sitting on one of the beds were two girls who looked up at me when I came in. It wasn’t just that they looked blank, their faces, for I was used to that. It was something stranger, and it wasn’t till I compared them with Kate’s that I formulated the thought, an ugly, inappropriate thought. They looked … inbred. Their eyes were a little bit too close together. I spoke up finally: “Has anyone seen Kate?”

“Upstairs,” said the two girls, registering me and looking away.

I closed the door and went up another flight, and there on the third floor I finally heard Kate’s voice.

“Kate!” I called. “Kate!”

They were playing inside a little bedroom, the kind every big old house has one of: the neglected bedroom, to which the lumpy twin beds are banished and the stuffed animals and the grammar school primers and the old athletic prizes. They were three: a grown man, a little girl of about five or six, and Kate. The man and the little girl were lying on their backs on one bed, giggling, and Kate was on the floor on her hands and knees.

“George!” she cried. “I’m a horsey! Come ride me!”

“No!” shouted the little girl. “I wanna ride!” She jumped down from the bed and climbed onto Kate’s back and began to whip it with an imaginary whip. Kate reared and tried to toss her off, but the little girl screamed and clung to Kate’s hair.

“Ow, you brat! You spoiled brat!” Kate’s dress was bunched up above her knees and one of the gold straps was hanging off her shoulder. It was as if she had put it on just to ruin it.

In no hurry, the man on the bed rose and came over to shake my hand. He had a wonderfully warm face with a winning smile. And his handshake was firm. “I’m Fred,” he said. “People call me Frog.”

“Froggy!” the little girl screamed.
“Froggy!”

The man removed a pack of cigarettes from a breast pocket and lit one while the two girls rolled around on the floor shrieking. There was a curious air of the invalid about Kate’s older cousin. He was wearing slippers and an old cardigan. At the same time he reminded me of an old movie star; he moved through a succession of languid, rather debonair postures.

“You shouldn’t smoke!” instructed the little girl.

“Say: ‘You shouldn’t smoke, Fred Goodenow Brown!’ ” Kate ordered.

“You shouldn’t smoke Fred Goodenow Brown!”

Mr. Brown bent over with the cigarette between his lips and exhaled pointedly into their faces, whereupon the little girl plucked the butt from his mouth and threw it on the ground.

“Hey—
crazy
,” Mr. Brown rebuked her, picking it from the rug. “That’s a lit cigarette! You want to start a fire and burn down Granny’s house?”

“I
hate
Granny!” said the little girl, and stamped her foot.

With a lazy, disapproving shake of his head, the man picked the child up and thrust her bodily from the room, shutting the door and locking it behind him. “That little bitch,” he said.

I must have looked alarmed, for the man smiled suddenly and said, in a low, rather seductive voice, “Do you live here? I mean, would you like to live here? We have plenty of room, now that
she’s
gone.” He indicated the door with a nod.

“Frogs,” Kate said warningly. “Don’t start. You don’t know George. George isn’t family.”

“Family, shmamily.”

“Kate, we should probably get back,” I suggested.

“Aren’t you having fun?” snapped Mr. Brown. The change in tone was so fast, it was almost as if a different tenant had taken up residence in the man’s body.

“It’s not that,” I began, when Kate’s eyes flew strangely up to mine. “Kate.” Her face was miserable. She looked inconsolable, and more: as if she had just realized she was inconsolable. “I miss Nick,” she said. Outside the door the little girl had begun to cry.

Fred knelt down beside Kate, momentarily his former self again. “Katie, Katie, Katie, what’s the matter? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, darling. Did I do something to upset you? I’m sorry—”

In the midst of the confusion, there was a knock at the door. “There’s a child out here wants to play,” said a woman’s voice.

I instinctively took a step back as Mr. Brown sprang up and wrenched the door open. It banged terribly. “Whadaya want?” he demanded.

“This little girl wants to play horse and rider,” said the woman.

“All right,” sighed Fred. “Come on, you little bitch,” he added, in a gentle, resigned tone that didn’t match the words, and laughed at what he evidently considered to be a joke.