The Group (30 page)

Weekdays, she dressed very plainly, in an old sweater and plaid skirt and low-heeled shoes. But for parties, like today, she had one good black crepe dress, with a low scalloped neckline and a fringed sash, and she had two wide-brimmed black hats, one for winter and one for summer. The summer one, which she was wearing today, was a lacy straw trimmed with black lace. The crepe of her dress was getting a little rusty (black crepe did that, alas), but it set off her full white neck, fleshy chin, and bosom; she had done her hair low on her neck, in a big knot, which was much more becoming. Harald Petersen said she looked like a Renoir. But Libby thought a Mary Cassatt. Libby herself was in high-necked brown taffeta (brown was
her
color) with topaz earrings to bring out the gold lights in her hair and eyes. She thought Polly, who did not have any good jewelry left, might have worn a white rose in her corsage.

Libby had balanced her guests carefully: a little bit of Vassar, a little bit of publishing, Sister and her husband, who were just back from Europe, a little bit of Wall Street, a little bit of the stage, a lady author, a man from the
Herald Tribune
, a woman from the Metropolitan Museum.
E cosí via
; she had not asked anybody from the office, because it was not that kind of party. A rather mixed bag, Sister commented, narrowing her amethyst eyes, but Sister had always been critical of Libby’s aspirations. “Noah’s Ark, eh?” chuckled Sister’s husband. “Bring on your menagerie, Lib!” He never failed to tease her about leading “the literary life.” Libby usually played up to this, but today she had other fish to fry. She wanted Sister and her husband to impress her latest flame. His name was Nils Aslund; she had met him this winter on the ski train. He was the ski jumper at Altman’s and a
genuine Norwegian baron
! Her brother-in-law, who was getting too fat, nearly choked on a gob of Mr. Andrews’
pâté
, when Nils came in, wearing the most beautiful Oxford-gray suit, and bent to kiss Sister’s hand—you only did that with married women, Nils had explained to her. He had the most heavenly manners and a marvelous figure and danced divinely. Even Sister had to admit he was pretty snazzy, after talking to him for a while. His English was almost perfect, with just the trace of an accent; he had studied English literature at the University, and imagine, before he knew Libby, he had read her poem in
Harper’s
and remembered it. They had the same interests; Libby was almost certain he was going to propose, which was partly why she had decided to have this party. She wanted him to see her in her setting; hence the dogwood, girls. She had never let him come up to the apartment before; you never knew, with Europeans, what they might assume. But at a party, with some of her family present, that was different. Afterward, he was going to take her to dinner, and that was where, she expected, if all went well, he was going to pop the question. Her brother-in-law must have smelled a rat too. “Well, Lib,” he said, “is he gainfully employed?” Libby told him that he was in charge of the ski run at Altman’s; he had come to America to study business. “Seems a funny place to start,” said her brother-in-law, thoughtfully. “Why not the Street?” He chuckled. “You certainly can pick ’em. But seriously, Lib, that rates him socially about on a par with a golf pro.” Libby bit her lip. She had been afraid of this reaction from her family. But she mastered her vexation and disappointment; if she accepted Nils, she decided, she could make it a condition that he find some other work. Perhaps they could open a ski lodge in the Berkshires; another Vassar girl and her husband had done that. And still another couple had a ranch out West. It was just a question of waiting till his father died, when he would go home and run the ancestral estate. …

With all this on her mind, it was no wonder that Libby, at the height of her party, forgot to keep an eye on Polly and see that she was circulating. When things calmed down a bit, what was her amazement to discover her deep in conversation with Gus LeRoy, who had said, when he arrived, that he could only stay a minute. Libby never did find out who had introduced them. They were standing by the window, looking at Libby’s lovebirds. Polly was feeding them bits of strawberry from her glass (the poor birds would be tight as ticks on Liebfraumilch), and Gus LeRoy was talking to her a mile a minute. Libby nudged Kay. Polly’s blue-white breasts were rather in evidence, which was probably the source of the attraction, and her strawy hair, which had a tendency to be untidy, it was so fine, was slipping a little from its pins in the back, at the nape of her neck.

Libby started to tell Kay Gus LeRoy’s history. Her baron was hovering nearby, and she signaled to him to join them. “We’re prophesying a romance,” she explained. Gus came from Fall River, where his family had a printing business. He and his wife were separated, and there was one child, about two and a half years old, Augustus LeRoy IV. The wife taught at a progressive school and was a Communist party member; she was having an affair with somebody in her cell—that was why Gus had left her. Up to now, he had been pretty pink himself but never a party member, and he had brought several important authors who were Communist sympathizers to the firm, but now the Communists were turning a cold shoulder on him because he wanted to divorce his wife and name this other man, which they called a “splitting tactic” or something. “Nils is a Social Democrat,” she added, smiling. “No, no,” said the baron. “As a student, I was. Now I am neutral. Not neuter.” He gave his jolly, boyish laugh and looked sidelong at Libby. The reason Libby had heard all this, she continued, flashing a reproachful look at Nils, was that there was an open Communist right in her office—a very homely girl, built like a truck, with nothing to do but drink by herself in the evenings or go to Party meetings. This girl or woman (she must be almost thirty) knew Gus LeRoy’s wife. “Oh well, homely women!” said the baron, making a disdainful face. “For them it’s like the church.” Libby hesitated. The story that popped into her mind was a bit off color, but it would point a moral to Nils. “I beg to differ, dear sir. You should hear the horrible thing that happened to this girl the other night. Quite another pair of gloves from the Girls Friendly Society or the Altar Guild of St. Paul’s. I had to take over this girl’s work for her till they let her out of the hospital. Four teeth knocked out and a fractured jaw. That was what she got for being a Communist.” “Picketing,” cried Kay. “Did you hear that Harald led a picket march the other day?” Libby shook her head. “
Quite
another pair of gloves,” she repeated. “This girl—I won’t tell you her name—being a Communist, is very sympathetic to the workingman. Point two: she drinks. You should smell her breath some mornings. Well, one night—actually it was over a month ago; you remember that cold spell we had late in March?—well, she was coming home in a taxi, having had one too many in a bar somewhere, and she started talking to the taxi driver and commiserating with him about his lot, naturally, and they both mentioned how cold it was. She noticed—anyway, that’s how she told the story—that he didn’t have an overcoat or extra jacket on. So, as one comrade to another, she asked him up for a drink, to get warm.” Kay caught her breath; Libby nodded. Several other guests drew near to listen; Libby had quite a reputation as a storyteller. “Maybe she thought being so homely was some protection,” she pursued. “But he had other ideas. And he assumed she did too. So when he had had the drink, he made overtures. She was very startled and pushed him away. The next thing she knew, she came to on her floor, in a pool of blood, with her teeth all over the place and her jaw broken. He was gone, of course.” “Did—?” “No,” said Libby. “Apparently not. And nothing was stolen. Her purse was lying right beside her on the floor. My boss wanted her to go to the police. So did the hospital. They had to wire her jaw together, and it will take her
years
to pay for the dental work. But she wouldn’t do a thing about it. It’s against Communist principles, it seems, to call the police against a ‘worker.’ And she said, between her clamped jaws, that it was her own fault.” “Quite right,” said Nils firmly. “She was in the wrong.” “Oh, I don’t agree at
all
,” cried Kay. “If every time someone misunderstood you, they had a right to knock your teeth out …? Or if every time you tried to be nice, it was taken the wrong way?” “Girls should not try to be nice to taxi drivers,” said Nils. “Old Europe speaking,” retorted Kay. “I’m always nice to taxi drivers. And nothing has ever happened.” “Really? Never?” said Sister, looking rather pityingly at Kay. “Well, actually,” said Kay, “once one did try to get into the back of the cab with me.” “Heavens!” said Libby. “What did you do?” “I talked him out of it,” said Kay. The baron laughed heartily; he had evidently caught on to the fact that Kay was an inveterate arguer. “But, Kay, my child, what had you done to encourage him?” said Libby. “Absolutely nothing,” said Kay. “We were talking, and all of a sudden he said I was beautiful and that he liked the perfume I was wearing. And he stopped the cab and got out.” “He had good taste. Don’t you think so, Elizabeth?” Nils spoke of Kay, but he looked deeply into Libby’s eyes with his bright burning blue ones till her knees nearly knocked together.

After that, discussion was general. Kay wanted to tell about Harald’s picketing. “His picture was in the tabloids,” she declared. Libby sighed, because of Sister and her husband. But the story, it turned out, was fascinating—not the usual kind of thing at all. It seemed that Harald had been directing a play for a left-wing group downtown. It was one of those profit-sharing things, co-operatives, but run really by Communists behind the scenes, as Harald found out in due course. The play was about labor, and the audiences were mostly theatre parties got up by the trade unions. “So when Harald found out that these Communists in the management were cooking the books, he organized the actors and threw a picket line around the theatre.” The man from the
Herald Tribune
scratched his jaw. “I remember that,” he said, looking curiously at Harald. “Your paper played the story down,” said Kay. “So did the
Times
.” “Because of advertising?” suggested the lady author. Harald shook his head and shrugged. “Go on, if you must,” he said to Kay. “Well, the audience couldn’t cross a picket line, obviously, even if most of the actors hadn’t been in it. So the management had to agree right then and there to show its books every week to a committee of the actors, which Harald is head of. Then they all marched into the theatre.” “And the show went on!” concluded Harald, with an ironical flourish of his hand. “So you won,” said Nils. “Very interesting.” In practice, Kay said, the actors were still only getting $40 Equity minimum, because the show was not doing too well. “But in principle,” Harald said dryly, “‘’twas a famous victory.’” His skeletal face looked sad.

He was not drinking, Libby noted; perhaps he had promised Kay. His own play, poor man, had not been done after all, because the producer’s wife had suddenly sued for divorce, just as they were casting, and withdrawn her money; a lawsuit was going on, which Harald’s play was somehow tied up in. Harald had never been a special favorite of Libby’s. They said that he was constantly sleeping with other women, and that Kay either did not know about it or did not mind, she was still so dominated by him intellectually. But he had thoroughly charmed Nils today, talking a little bit of Norwegian to him and reciting a few lines of
Peer Gynt
(you pronounced it “Per Gunt”), in which Nils had joined. “A delightful fellow, Petersen,” Nils said to Libby. “You have such charming friends.” And even Sister remarked that he was an ugly-attractive man.

All this time, Polly and Gus LeRoy had been standing by the window, paying no attention to the conversation. Their wine glasses were empty. Polly was very temperate because of the alcoholism in her family (one of her uncles had ridden a horse, while drinking, into the Copley Plaza in Boston), but usually she made an exception for wine and for odd liqueurs like Goldwasser and the one that had a tree growing in the bottle. Libby floated up to them and took their glasses to refill. “I think he’s asking her to dinner,” she reported to Kay. “And mark my words, she’ll refuse. She’ll find some bizarre reason for having to go home.”

Sure enough, before long, Polly was “making her excuses” and wondering if she could have a little of the
bowle
to take home with her to that Mr. Schneider. Libby threw up her hands. “Why?” she wanted to know. “He can perfectly well go around the corner to Luchow’s if he wants a glass of May wine. Why do you have to bring it to him?” Polly colored. “I’m afraid it was my idea. I told him about your
bowle
when I brought the woodruff home. And he and Mr. Scherbatyeff had a violent nationalistic argument about what to put in white-wine punches. Mr. Scherbatyeff”—she gave her quick humorous smile—“favors cucumber rind. Anyway, I offered to bring them home a sample of yours. If you can spare it, Libby.” Libby glanced at the punch bowl, calculating; it was still a third full, and the guests were thinning out. “It won’t be good tomorrow,” put in Kay, tactlessly. “The strawberries will go bad. Unless you strain it. …” “If you have a cream bottle I can take it in,” persisted Polly, “or an old mayonnaise jar.” Libby bit her lips. Unlike Polly, she had no patience with the kind of German refugee who was homesick for the old country and the “good old German ways.” She and Polly had argued about this before, and Polly said it was their
country
, Libby, but Libby said they would have to adapt to America. And, frankly, she thought it was a bit unseemly for a German Jew to be such a supporter of German products; why, there were people who believed that even we Americans should boycott Nazi goods. She would probably be criticized herself for having served Liebfraumilch at her party. Gus LeRoy, she noticed, had got his hat and was standing there—waiting to say good-bye to her, she supposed.

She was afraid her irritation showed. “Here,” she felt like saying, “Polly has a chance to go out to dinner with you at some nice place, and instead she’s going home to those lodgers, because of a silly promise she made! Isn’t that perverse?” Besides, no man, not even a parlor pink, liked a girl who carried things around in old cream bottles stuffed into paper bags. Libby turned to Polly. “You can’t take it home on the bus. It’ll spill.” Gus LeRoy stepped forward. “I’m taking her in a taxi, Miss MacAusland.”