The Group (54 page)

Harald and Lakey were driving very fast across the Queensborough Bridge. He wanted to go to a bar before putting in an appearance at the cemetery, and Lakey had agreed. “Who arranged that comedy?” he asked, turning to glance at Lakey’s profile. “You mean the funeral,” said Lakey. “What would you have done?” Harald did not answer. “You have to bury a body,” said Lakey. “Or cremate it. You can’t simply put it down the incinerator or out with the trash.” He meditated. “If there’s difficulty in disposing of a body,” he observed, “that suggests there’s been foul play. I was given the impression back there in the church that the belief was that
I
had done away with her.” Lakey patted the knot at the back of her neck. “She killed herself of course,” stated Harald. “Why?” said Lakey calmly. “Sheer competitiveness,” he answered. “For years I’ve been trying to kill myself, ever since I’ve known her.” Lakey looked at him for a minute steadily; his face was quite haggard. “She decided to show me how to do it.
She
could do it better. On the first try.” He waited. “You don’t believe me, do you, you inscrutable idol. You’re right. I’ve never seriously tried to kill myself. It’s always been a fake. Fake suicide attempts have been the Petersen specialty. And yet I honestly wish to die. I swear that to you. If we could just go off the road.” He pulled the wheel sharply to the right. “Stop that,” said Lakey. He righted the car. “And she,” he said, “
she
had the gall to kill herself and fake a death-by-accident.” “How do you mean?” “That airplane spotting. The silhouette cards. Having the maid see her at the window and warn her. Those were clumsy plants. A crude alibi. So that we’d believe she’d lost her balance.” “How do you know all the details?” “From Mama Davison. We had a nice little chat on the phone.” “But why would she want to fool us?” Harald shrugged. “Her parents, I suppose. The senile ‘Dads’ she talks about. Or maybe she was ashamed to confess so ostentatiously that her life was a failure. ‘Everyone would know.’”

Lakey studied this man, whom she had never liked, and said nothing. Her intention was limited to getting to the cemetery without having him kill them both in a dramatic effort to show her that he had the courage to commit suicide. He was a good driver; she had let him drive deliberately to test him. She had a certain curiosity about him, which she would like to satisfy, and she was aware that he had a curiosity about her.

“‘The Madonna of the Smoking Room,’ he said. “It’s funny, but I never picked you for a sapphic. And yet I have a good eye. When did you start? Or were you always that way?” “Always,” said Lakey. His imprudent questions shaped a plan in her mind. “The ‘group,’” said Harald, “must have been in quite a ‘tizzy’ when you finally showed your colors. God’s bowels, how tired I was of the ‘group’ before I was through!” “They’re dears,” said Lakey. Harald turned his head and lifted an eyebrow. “Did you say they were dears?” “Yes,” said Lakey. “All but one. Libby is a
mauvaise fille
.” “A woman’s taste,” said Harald. Lakey smiled. “My friend, the Baroness d’Estienne, is enchanted with them. She loves American women.” “Christ’s body!” said Harald. “Yes,” said Lakey. “She says American women are a fourth sex.”

Harald glanced at her again. “‘Always,’ you said. That means when you were in college.” His eyes narrowed. “I suppose you were in love with the ‘group.’ All seven of them, excluding yourself. Collectively and singly. That explains it. I never understood what you—a girl with a mind—were doing in that
galère
.” He nodded. “So you were in love with them. They were pretty to look at when nubile, I grant you. Why, you had a regular seraglio in that tower of yours. Kay always said that you turned hot and cold, picked them up, dropped them—they never knew why. But they were
fascinated
.” He imitated their collective voice. Lakey smiled. “It’s true, I had favorites.”

Harald stopped the car in front of a bar. They went in, and he ordered a double whisky for himself and a single for Lakey. They sat in a booth. “Five minutes,” said Lakey. “You don’t have to worry,” he said. “We can see the cortege pass.” He downed half his whisky. “Who were your favorites?” he said. “No, don’t tell me. I’ll guess. Dottie. Pokey. Kay. Helena.” “Not Helena,” said Lakey. “I like her now, but I didn’t care for her in college. She was like a homely little boy.” “Polly?” said Harald. “I was a snob,” said Lakey. “Polly was on a scholarship and doing self-help. One felt she was going to seed.” Her delicate dark eyebrows winced. “One was so callow then. I don’t like to think about it. Girls are brutal.” Harald finished his whisky. “Were you in love with Kay?” Lakey cupped her chin in her hand. “She was lovely in her sophomore year. You hadn’t met her then. On the Daisy Chain. Like a wild flower herself. It’s a kind of country beauty I’m particularly fond of. Very paintable. Who might have done her? Caravaggio? Some of the Spaniards? Anyone who painted gypsies. Or mountain people. She had a beautiful neck, like a stem. And such a strong back and tapering waist.” Harald ordered another whisky. His face had darkened.

“She was thick-skinned,” he said. “It amused me to hurt her. To get some kind of response out of her. And after I’d hurt her I felt tenderness for her. Then she’d ruin that by trying to drag some concession out of me. She was literal, always wanting me to be sorry in words. I don’t know, Lakey; I’ve never loved a woman. I’ve loved some men—great directors, political leaders. As a kid, I loved my father. But living with a woman is like living with an echo, a loud echo in Kay’s case. That voice of hers got on my nerves. Meaninglessly repeating what it’d heard. Generally from me, I admit.” He laughed. “I felt like some lonely captain with a parrot. But at least she had a kind of integrity. Physically she was straight. She was a virgin when I took her and she never wanted anybody else. Or anybody else’s ideas.” His voice grew husky. “That meant something. A chronically unfaithful man has to have a faithful wife; otherwise it’s no marriage. And Kay never found out I was unfaithful to her. I can boast of that, Lakey. She occasionally suspected, but I always lied to her. Faithfully.” He laughed again. “But her jealousy wrecked everything in the end. It was unreasonable.” “What do you mean?” “I never gave her anything to be jealous of. I protected her. Whenever I slept with a woman, I made sure Kay could never find out. That meant I could never break clean with them. No matter how fed up I was. Like that wench, Norine; you saw her in the church. A real blackmailer. She had the goods on me; in an idle moment I played the beast with two backs with her. For years I had to keep her hoping, so that she wouldn’t be moved to tell Kay. That was weary work. For which Kay repaid me with hysterical accusations. Christ, I was only seeing her for Kay’s sake.” Lakey gave him a level look of scorn and disbelief. “Christ, don’t be conventional,” he said. “I don’t expect that from you. You and I understand each other. I might have loved you, Lakey, if you weren’t a lover of women. You might have saved me; I might have saved you. You can’t love men; I can’t love women. We might have loved each other—who knows? We’re the two superior people in a cast of fools and supernumeraries. At last we meet to match swords. Let’s duel in her grave, shall we?”

Just then out the window they saw the hearse go by. Harald tossed off a drink at the bar. They got into the car. This time Lakey drove. Listening to Harald’s wild talk had disgusted her; she concluded that he was utterly specious. She was ashamed of the curiosity she had felt about him. To be curious about someone opened you to contamination from them. But she was still determined to play him a trick, to take a revenge for Kay, for women, and most of all for the impudence of his associating himself with her. She had no pity for Harald. Swinging the car into line behind the funeral procession, she waited for the question he would ask. “To be superior,” he said, “of course, is not only a prerequisite for tragedy; it
is
tragedy. Hamlet’s tragedy. We are forced to lower ourselves in our commerce with dolts, which sometimes gives us a feeling of hollowness, as if it were we who were hollow, not they. Could Hamlet love the daughter of Polonius? Could you or I ‘love’ Kay? Of course there was her body.” He nodded at the hearse. “To think that I’ve known it!” He gave a quick side glance at Lakey. “Your ‘love’ for her, I assume, was purely platonic.” Lakey looked straight ahead. “And yet,” said Harald, “that’s hard to believe, considering her mind. You must have wanted her, didn’t you? Did she reject you? Is that why you ‘dropped’ her?” “I was tired of her,” said Lakey truthfully. “I used to tire very easily of people.” “You haven’t answered my question,” said Harald. “I don’t propose to,” said Lakey. “You’re impertinent.” “
Did you sleep with her
?” said Harald violently. Lakey smiled, like a lizard. “You ought to have asked Kay,” she said. “She would have told you. She was such an honest girl at the end. Very American, Maria thought.” “You’re rotten,” he said. “Completely rotten. Vicious. Did you corrupt the whole group? What a pretty picture!” Lakey was content; she had forced this dreadful man at last to be truthful; the fact that he revealed a hatred of “abnormality” was only to be expected. “What a filthy Lesbian trick,” he said. “Not to fight openly but to poison the rapiers.” Lakey did not point out to him that he had poisoned them himself. Her conscience was clear. She had made a pact with herself to speak only the exact truth and insinuate nothing. Moreover, from her point of view, which he did not consider, poor normal Kay would not have sinned by being her prey instead of his. Far better for her, in fact, for Lakey, she hoped, would have been kind to her. “You’re a coward,” Harald said, “to spread your slime on a dead girl. No wonder you hid yourself abroad all those years. You ought to have stayed in Europe, where the lights are going out. You belong there; you’re dead. You’ve never used your mind except to acquire sterile knowledge. You’re a museum parasite. You have no part of America! Let me out!” “You want to get out of the car?” said Lakey. “Yes,” said Harald. “You bury her. You and the ‘group.’” Lakey stopped the car. He got out. She drove on, following the cortege, watching him in the rear-view mirror as he crossed the road and stood, thumbing a ride, while cars full of returning mourners glided past him, back to New York.

A Biography of Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) was an American critic, public intellectual, and author of more than two dozen books, including the 1963
New York Times
bestseller
The Group
.

McCarthy was born on June 21, 1912, in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and Therese (“Tess”) Preston McCarthy. McCarthy and her three younger brothers, Kevin, Preston, and Sheridan, were suddenly orphaned in 1918. While the family was en route from Seattle to a new home in Minneapolis, both parents died of influenza within a day of one another.

After being shuttled between relatives, the children were finally sent to live with a great-aunt, Margaret Sheridan McCarthy, and her husband, Myers Shriver. The Shrivers proved to be cruel and often sadistic adoptive parents. Six years later, Harold Preston, the children’s maternal grandfather and an attorney, intervened. The children were split up, and Mary went to live with her grandparents in their affluent Seattle home. McCarthy reflects on her turbulent youth, Catholic upbringing, and subsequent loss of faith in
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
(1957) and
How I Grew
(1987).

A week after graduating from Vassar in 1933, McCarthy moved to New York City and married Harold Johnsrud, an aspiring playwright. They divorced three years later, but many aspects of their relationship would resurface in the unhappy marriage of Kay Strong and Harald Petersen in
The Group
. In the late 1930s, McCarthy became a member of the
Partisan Review
circle and worked actively as a theater and book critic, contributing to a wide range of publications, such as the
Nation
, the
New Republic
,
Harper’s Magazine
, and the
New York Review of Books
.

In 1938, McCarthy married Edmund Wilson, an established writer; together, they had a son named Reuel, born the same year. Wilson encouraged McCarthy to write fiction, and her first book, a novel entitled
The Company She Keeps
(1942), satirizes the mores of bohemian New York intellectuals from the point of view of an acerbic female protagonist. Her second book,
The Oasis
, a thinly disguised roman à clef about the
Partisan Review
intellectuals, won the English monthly magazine
Horizon
’s fiction contest in 1949.

Soon after her divorce from Wilson in 1945, McCarthy married Bowden Broadwater, a staff member of the
New Yorker
, and also taught literature at Bard College and Sarah Lawrence College.
A Charmed Life
(1955), a novel about the rollercoaster experience of a shaky marriage in a quirky artists’ community, is based on her life with Wilson in Wellfleet, Cape Cod.
The Groves of Academe
(1951), a campus satire informed by her teaching positions, casts an ironic gaze on the foibles of academics. Randall Jarrell’s novel
Pictures from an Institution
(1954) is said to be about McCarthy’s time at Sarah Lawrence, where he also taught.

In the 1950s, McCarthy took a strong interest in European history. Her two books about Italy,
Venice Observed
(1956) and
The Stones of Florence
(1959), combine art criticism, political theory, and reportage to bring the two cities’ histories to life. While on a lecture tour in Poland for the United States Information Agency in 1959 and 1960, McCarthy met the public affairs officer for the US Embassy in Warsaw, James West. McCarthy and West left their respective partners and were married in 1961.

McCarthy’s most popular literary success came in 1963 with the publication of her novel
The Group,
which remained on the
New York Times
bestseller list for almost two years, and was made into a movie by Sidney Lumet in 1966.