The Group (51 page)

“I wonder,” she said politely, “if we could take a peek at Stephen. He’s not used to strangers.” Her conscience smote her again for having let these people clean him up. What if they had told him “Bad boy!” as so many ignorant servants did with children? Yet a few minutes ago she had been almost hoping they had. Norine got up promptly. “Sure,” she said. “Tell me one thing first, though.” Her cigarette cough rattled. Priss could not imagine what was coming. Norine stared down into her eyes. “Do you think Ichabod looks Jewish?”

Again Priss did not know how to answer. Ichabod was too young to have a hooked nose; his eyes were still the color of all babies’ eyes—a dark slate blue; his skin was dark, but that might be from his sun baths. It was true that he seemed somehow different from other babies. He was unusually long, Priss had observed, and this gave him a look of melancholy, like an exhausted reed. There were circles under his eyes, and his little features were slightly drawn. There was no doubt that he appeared to be a child marked for a special destiny, as they said of the Jewish people. His nakedness also gave him a kind of pathos, as though he were not just a baby but a small forked zoo specimen of the human race. But the fact that he bore no resemblance to Stephen at his age did not supply an answer to Norine’s question, even had Priss been willing to give it. The real thing was, she was not sure what Norine wanted to hear.

“He doesn’t look like you,” she said truthfully. “Perhaps he’s like his father.” Norine produced a large framed photograph of a dark, curly-haired, rather handsome, slightly plump man. Ichabod did not look like Freddy. “He looks like himself, I guess,” Norine summed up. They went down the ramp. In the kitchen, they found Stephen, wearing a diaper, the butler, a cook, three big Angora cats and a basket of kittens. Stephen had finished his lunch, except for a slab of chocolate cake, which he had left on his plate. “He doesn’t seem to want it, ma’am,” the cook said to Norine. They were all gazing at Stephen in astonishment. Priss apologized. “He doesn’t know what it is. He only knows graham crackers and animal crackers and arrowroot cookies.” “Cookie,” said Stephen. “Animal cacka.” Just then, in the doorway appeared a very pretty blonde young woman in a low-cut thin blouse that showed her breasts; she wore a pleated pastel skirt and high-heeled shoes. “Hi, Cecilia,” said Norine. She turned to Priss. “This is Ichabod’s nurse.” The girl was carrying Stephen’s underpants and yellow sunsuit. “The pants are still damp,” she said. “But I’ve ironed the sunsuit dry, Norine. Do you want me to put it on him?” “I’ll do it,” said Priss hastily. When the girl had bent down to help him, Stephen had put a hand out to touch her breast. He still eyed her as his mother dressed him. “Wass sat?” he said, pointing. Everyone but the butler and Priss laughed. “He’s precocious,” said the girl, hugging him, which gave Stephen the chance he wanted. He plunged his hand into the neck of her dress. “Watch out,” chuckled Norine. “Cecilia’s a virgin and a Papist.” Priss removed his hand. She looked around for something to give him, lest he start to cry. There was nothing but the slab of cake; the stroller was upstairs. She broke off a piece of cake and divided it in two. One piece she put in her mouth. “Look! It’s good,” she said, chewing. Reluctantly, he drew his eyes from the bold nursemaid and imitated his mother. Soon he was greedily eating chocolate cake, from a Jewish bakery, with fudge frosting.

Fifteen

A
FTER THAT, PRISS CHOSE
a new location in the Park. Though she sometimes passed the house with the red door, she took the other side of the street and she did not see Norine again till Kay’s funeral. Then more than a year had passed, a terrible year, and everything had changed. The war had broken out. Lakey had come back from Europe. France had fallen; the
Luftwaffe
was bombing England, and Kay was dead, at twenty-nine. It was a beautiful July day, like the June day of Kay’s wedding, and once again the scene was St. George’s Church, on Stuyvesant Square. This time the service was being held in the church itself; there were too many mourners to fit in the chapel. The organ was playing “And all our flesh is as the grass” from the Brahms Requiem Mass, and the undertakers had carried in Kay’s casket, a very simple one. It stood at the altar covered with white baby’s breath and white zinnias. The rector himself was officiating.

Kay would have been happy about that, her friends knew. They had worked with might and main to get her buried as an Episcopalian. Mrs. Hartshorn had finally arranged it by speaking to Dr. Reiland, an old family friend. She pointed out that Kay had been married in his church, which ought to entitle him to give her the last rites. Before that, Polly’s Aunt Julia had talked to
her
rector at St. Bartholomew’s, and Pokey, from the country, had telephoned St. James’s; Helena had got a friend who was married to the son of the rector of St. Thomas’s to intercede. It was amazing how sticky these ministers could be about burying a person who was not a church member.

Kay’s father and mother would arrive too late for the ceremony; in this warm weather you could not wait too long. On the long-distance, they had told Helena to have their daughter cremated, and they would take her ashes home—they were very bitter. But Helena was certain that Kay would have hated that, and she had telephoned back to say that her friends would like to arrange a church ceremony for her, if her parents would agree. Whatever Kay would have wanted, her father said; probably her friends knew best. That was bitter too. Yet the group were sure they were doing the right thing. Kay had grown away from her parents; they had not seen eye to eye at all while she was out West, and it had hurt them when she had insisted on coming back to New York after the divorce, though she had a home with them. But they had staked her, which was sweet, just as now they had wired the funeral parlor with an authority for Helena to act. How sad that Kay had not found time—that was what her father said—to write them a single letter in the month before she “went.” Naturally, if she had known, she would have.

At college the group had had long discussions of how you would like to be buried. Pokey had voted for cremation with no service at all, and Libby had wanted her ashes scattered over New York Harbor. But Kay, like the rest, had been for regular burial in the ground, with a minister reading the funeral service over her—she loved the “I am the Resurrection and the Life” part (actually that came in the church service, not at the open grave), which she used to recite, having played Sidney Carton in a school dramatization of
A Tale of Two Cities
. And she hated embalming; she did not want to be pumped full of fluid. In Salt Lake City, she used to go out with a boy whose father was an undertaker, she had once confided, blushing for it, to Lakey, and he had showed her all the grisly paraphernalia. How like Kay it was to have such violent preferences, her friends agreed. After all these years—seven, since graduation—the group could still remember exactly what she liked and what she despised. And she had never grown older and wiser.

This had made it easy for them—sad to say—to get her ready for the funeral. It was the first time they had ever done anything like that. When somebody close to them had died, it had been an elderly person, and they had had nothing to do with the arrangements. They did not know the first thing about laying out the dead. But since Kay was divorced from Harald and her family was not here, they had pitched in. To begin with, they had had a frightful struggle with the undertaker, who had wanted to embalm her when he had got her body from the police, and Helena had had to telephone a lawyer to make sure they were within their rights. To fly in the face of convention turned out to be so much trouble that in the end it seemed hardly worthwhile. But Mrs. Hartshorn had helped and Ross and Mrs. Davison, who had been in the Vassar Club lounge when it happened and Kay went hurtling down from the twentieth floor. Luckily her fall had been broken by a ledge on the thirteenth and she had landed in an awning, so that she was not smashed to bits; only her poor neck had been snapped. And luckily too Mrs. Davison had been there—she had come down from Watch Hill for a meeting of the board of the English-Speaking Union—to claim the body and have Helena get in touch with Kay’s parents.

They had laid her out in Helena’s studio apartment on West Eleventh Street, which seemed the most suitable place, since Helena was still single and besides they had been roommates. The undertaker had disguised her bruises, but they would not let him make her up to “look natural.” Kay had never used rouge. They had gone through the closet of her room at the Vassar Club, looking for the right dress—there could be no question of her wedding dress, and in any case she had thrown it away long ago; she had never liked that dress with the white fichu. Holding up her clothes (many of which could have stood a stitch or two) on their hangers, they could not make up their minds. Lakey, with her clear intellect, cut through their indecision. Kay would like to be buried in a new dress, of course. The others could not imagine shopping for a dead person, but Lakey took one of Kay’s dresses for a sample and went straight off to Fortuny’s and bought her an off-white silk pleated gown—the kind the Duchess of Guermantes used to receive in. Then the others remembered that Kay had always longed for a Fortuny gown, which she never in her wildest moments could have afforded. Kay would have loved the dress and loved having Lakey buy it for her. They put her old gold bracelet on her bare arm; she had never had any other jewelry but her wedding ring—she hated costume stuff. Helena looked for lilies of the valley for her—they used to pick them together in the woods by the Pine Walk—but of course their season was over. Mrs. Davison had a very nice thought; she closed Kay’s eyes with two early Christian silver coins, which she sent Helena out to find at a collector’s.

There had been a great deal to do and in such a short time. They had had no idea how complicated the last arrangements were, particularly when the defunct had been, like Kay, a stranger and a sojourner. Finding a funeral plot. Pokey, very generously, had donated a grave in her family’s plot, which would have pleased Kay too, to lie among all those Livingstons and Schuylers. Notifying everyone who had known Kay. Putting an item in the newspapers. Choosing the psalms and the lesson and the prayers with the minister; Helena and Mrs. Davison had taken care of that. Choosing the hymn. There were so many decisions to make. The flowers; they had determined to have only natural flowers of the season, nothing floristy. But that was easier said than done; the florists were bent on selling you wreaths and acted as if you were trying to economize when you said no, like the undertaker when you refused embalming and held out for a simple coffin. Kay would have liked a plain pine box, but that was absolutely unthinkable, apparently. Then making up your minds whether to have the casket open or closed in the church. They finally agreed to have it closed, but that those who had known Kay best and wanted to see her could come to Helena’s place before the undertaker’s people arrived. Helena served sherry and biscuits to those who came. Again that had involved decisions: sherry or Madeira, biscuits or sandwiches. The girls were reluctant even to think about such things as sandwiches (open or closed?), but the older women were firm that Helena had to offer what Mrs. Davison called funeral meats.

You found that you got obsessed with these petty details. They were supposed to distract you from your grief. In fact, that was just what they did. You caught yourself forgetting the reason you were doing all this: because Kay had died. And the relief of finally arriving at a decision or having it taken out of your hands, as when Lakey got the dress, made you feel positively gay, till you remembered.

It was curious, too, the differences in people that came out in the face of death. You hated yourself for observing them, at such a time, but you could not help yourself. For instance, Mrs. Hartshorn and Ross were wonderful about dressing Kay, even the most awful part—putting on her underwear; she had been delivered “prepared for burial” (which they supposed must mean eviscerated), wrapped in a sort of shroud. And Polly calmly helped them, which was understandable, probably, because she had worked in a hospital. But the others could not even stay in the room while it was happening. When Ross came into the living room to ask a question—should they put a brassiere on Miss Kay?—they felt sick. It was a hard question to decide too. It seemed against nature, somehow, to bury someone in a brassiere (fortunately, Kay had never worn a girdle), and yet, as Ross pointed out, the Fortuny gown was clinging. In the end, they told Ross to put her brassiere on.

The girls were interested to see that Mrs. Davison, who was a wonder in a supervisory capacity and never flinched mentally from a fact of death, felt just as they did about handling a dead body. She stayed in the living room with them, leading the conversation, while Ross and Mrs. Hartshorn and Polly “did the necessary.” “I wonder, Helena,” she said, “that you did not have the undertaker’s people dress her. That’s what they are paid for. ‘From each according to his capacities.’” Frankly, the others wondered too, now that they grasped what it entailed, but they had taken a dislike to the undertaker with his clammy voice and his rouge pots. Yet undertakers were necessary members of society—how necessary, the girls saw only now.

Even with Kay in the next room (that was another thing), the group could not help being covertly amused by Mrs. Davison, who was a card and knew she was a card, they suspected. Clad in her billowy black dress, with an onyx brooch, she chatted sociably of cerements and winding sheets, now and then drawing an apt quotation from her reticule or loosing a dark shaft of humor. “If only Kay could have been here,” she declared, shaking her head, “she could have run the whole show for us, dontcha know.”

As long as there was anything to do, Libby did not appear. Nor did she offer to help with the expenses, which the others had divvied up. She had been married, last summer in Pittsfield, to a best-selling author of historical novels whose books she had been handling; only Polly had gone to her wedding, which took place in the family garden, with an Elizabethan pageant and Purcell played on recorders in the gazebo. On the morning of the funeral, she came breathlessly for sherry and biscuits, wearing a black toque and a long chain she described as a chatelaine. She did not think the Fortuny dress was Kay’s color and was full of curiosity to learn what Lakey had paid for it. And as if sensing the group’s disapproval, she proceeded to put her foot in it still more. “Now, girls,” she said, hitching forward in her chair and examining a biscuit, “tell me. I won’t tell a soul. Did she jump or fall?”