The Towers of Love (11 page)

“I'm enchanted to meet you,” Hugh's mother said.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Carey.”

“You've got to call her Sandy,” Reba said. “Everyone must call her Sandy. I'm her baby sister and I ought to know. Don't you think we look alike?” She stood beside Hugh's mother. “Can you see the resemblance? We were always being mistaken for twins, weren't we, Sandy? They used to call us the Chinless Charmers.”

“I can see the resemblance,” Tom said.

“Sandy,” Reba said, “get Tom a drink. The poor devil's tongue has been hanging out ever since we left Grand Central.”

“
Pappy
!” Hugh's mother called.

There was, between the two women, certainly a strong resemblance. But an interesting thing that Hugh had always noticed was that Reba, in a number of ways, copied his mother. Of the two, his mother had always been the dominant one in any decisions, and Reba had been the follower. Reba's manner was distinctly based on her sister's and, for some reason, with Reba it had never been quite as successful. There was always something about Reba's that rang queerly a little false. And, Hugh supposed, it was because if, for some reason, you wished to consider his mother the genuine article, Reba was only an imitation.

He was shaking hands with Tom McGinnis now, and McGinnis suddenly seemed to have nothing at all to say.

“Titi!” he heard his mother's voice cry out. “Oh, here you are, my little rabbit, my little bird!”

And Hugh had his first sight of Titi, who was very dark, very diminutive, very young—no more than twenty-five certainly—and very shiny in a black velvet tuxedo, which was so astonishingly tailored that it clung to him like adhesive. He bowed low and grandly and kissed Alexandra Carey's hand.

“My darling girl,” Titi said.

“My true, true love,” said Alexandra Carey.

And now Hugh saw Edrita coming into the room, looking very pretty in a simple black cocktail dress.

“Edrita, darling,” he heard his mother say, “how wonderful you look. And your hair—it looks lovely, and so clean.”

Hugh made his way across the room to her.

“Hallo,” he said.

“Hallo, Hugh.”

“All the menagerie is here,” he said.

She smiled. “So I see,” she said.

“I'm glad you came.”

She nodded. “Who's that young man?” she asked him.

“That's Austin Callender. Pansy's engaged to him.”

“Pansy's engaged?”

“Yes.”

“He looks scared, doesn't he?” she said. “He looks terrified. Poor guy. He's wondering what he's got into. He looks nice.”

“He looks about sixteen,” Hugh said.

The cocktails continued, in great profusion under his mother's customary direction, for about an hour. Titi had discovered Tom McGinnis and, in two chairs in the corner of the room, they were talking—at least Titi was—with great enthusiasm about the theatre. Titi had a cigarette perched between his fingers which he shook rapidly back and forth as he made his points, and McGinnis did seem to be interested. “Of course I think Gadge Kazan is the greatest director in the
world
,” Titi was saying. “Oh, of course, he's
slick
and of course he's
facile
, but he is truly great,
truly
great. As I was saying to Gadge—”

“Oh, do you know Gadge?” McGinnis asked.

“Oh, of course I know Gadge,” Titi said. And then, “Of course one of my greatest dreams, a really
holy
dream of mine, Tom, is to do some designing some day for the theatre—stage design. Really, it's a kind of grail I have, a perfectly shining thing that simply burns inside me and that
must
get out some day, because I have this desire, this burning desire that simply
must
be expressed—it eats my insides like a kind of
cancer
, like a kind of—”

Austin Callender came up to Hugh now and said, “Gosh, Hugh, I really feel I know you already. After all Pryor's told me. She admires you a lot. Hugh,” he said earnestly, “I just want to tell you—I don't quite know how to tell you—how much I love Pryor.”

“Do you, Austin?” Hugh asked.

“Oh, yes,” Austin said, nodding vigorously. “Oh, yes. You know, Hugh, she's different from any girl I've ever met. She's so—she's so dainty, and so sweet, and—well, as you can probably imagine I've known a lot of different girls,” and he lowered his eyelids modestly. “But Pryor's different from any of them. She's got this sweet and tender quality about her that's rare in a girl, don't you think, and so unusual? And it's funny—and maybe you'll find this hard to believe, Hugh—but the first time I met her, the first time I saw her, I knew, Hugh, that this was it. That this was the real thing. That this was the most important moment of my entire life. And it was the kind of love—love at first sight—that I'd always read about and, Hugh, you may find this hard to believe, but it was such a pure feeling that I had, such a deep thing that—well, what I'm trying to say is that sex didn't even enter into it, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean, Austin,” he said.

Austin's face reddened. “Oh, don't get me wrong, Hugh. I mean, I think that sex has its place in a marriage. But what I mean is that this feeling I have towards Pryor is such a different sort of thing. It's sort of
everything
, I mean. I mean it's both things, all things. I'm not expressing it very well.”

“I know what you mean,” Hugh said.

“Well, what I really mean is—well, I suppose with all the other girls the main thing on my mind had been—well, sex. But this was different.”

“I understand.”

“I mean, you don't mind me talking this way, do you? I mean, we can sort of talk this way, can't we—man to man?”

“Of course we can,” Hugh said. “I'm glad you love her, Austin.”

“Oh, I love her so much—” he began, and then broke off, afraid perhaps that what he had been going to say would sound foolish. “I mean she's such a sweet girl that what I really want to do with her is put her way up on a pillar somewhere. Oh, I'll take awfully good care of Pryor, Hugh, I really will. I've got a good job and I have a fair-sized private income too. I'll take good care of your sister, Hugh, I can promise you that.”

“I'm sure you will, Austin,” Hugh said. “And I'm very happy. I think you're a fine fellow and I congratulate you both.” He shook Austin's hand again.

“Thanks, Hugh,” Austin said, his eyes looking so misty and grateful that it seemed touch and go whether or not he might cry. “Gosh, I do thank you,” he said.

“Get yourself another drink,” Hugh said.

“And I think,” Austin went on, “well, I think that Pryor's got the most wonderful family in the world.”

“Thanks, Austin.”

“I don't know a god-damned thing about the theatre,” he heard his father saying.

Hugh was standing next to Edrita now, and she was twirling the ice cube in her highball glass with the curved tip of her finger. “I've got to watch myself or I'm going to get tight,” she said. “This is my third. Your mother's such a forceful hostess.”

“I know,” he said. “Watch out for Sandy.”

“I wonder why she does it?”

“God knows,” he said. “Did you meet Titi?”

“Isn't he incredible?” she said. “I really can't quite believe he's real.”

“He's not real,” he said. “I got a good look at him and he's made out of plastic.”

“How does he get in and out of those pants, I wonder?” she said. “I think they must have little zippers running down the inside of the legs.”

“Oh, I'll bet he's pretty good at getting in and out of his pants,” he said.

“Not for me he wouldn't do it,” she said.

“No, I'm afraid not,” he said. “Poor Reba—she's been trying to get to talk to Titi all evening and he'll have nothing to do with her.”

“Do you know something?” she said in a quiet voice, looking down at her glass and twirling the ice cube slowly with her finger. “I probably shouldn't say this, but I've had two drinks and so I'm going to. Do you know the only thing that bothers me about my husband, about Bob?”

“No, what is it?” he asked her.

“This is going to sound awfully silly when I say it,” she said.

“Say it.”

“Well, do you—or rather
did
you, when you were working in New York—did you ever take your lunch to work in a paper bag?”

He laughed. “No,” he said. “Never.”

“I didn't think so,” she said thoughtfully. “I didn't think you ever would. You'd eat in a restaurant, wouldn't you?”

“Yes, or have something sent in if I was busy.”

“Yes,” she said, “I thought that was what most New York business men did.”

“What does Bob do?”

“Well, that's the thing,” she said. “He takes his lunch to work in a paper bag. I mean he only does it because he has to. There are no restaurants anywhere near the plant, and the plant doesn't have any cafeteria. So he has to, really. Everybody who works there does. His father always did it and so did his grandfather before that.”

“Well, what's wrong with it?”

“Nothing, really, I guess. Before we had a maid I used to have to pack Bob's lunch, and now the maid usually does it. But still there's something about it, something about seeing him go off to work, walking down the front walk to the car with his paper bag of sandwiches that makes me—I don't know—I guess it makes me wish I hadn't married a man who has to take his lunch in a paper bag.”

“You called me stuffy yesterday,” he said, smiling. “Now you're sounding a little bit stuffy.”

“I know it's silly. I told you it would sound silly. And maybe it
is
stuffy. I probably shouldn't have told you. It probably sounds disloyal. And there's the other thing, about his shirts.”

“What about his shirts?”

“Bob always goes to work in his shirt-sleeves. It's sort of a tradition of his family's, the men have always done it in his family. It's supposed—I guess it's supposed to make the workers at the plant feel that their boss is, you know, sort of one of them, working right along with them. Of course it has to be a
white
shirt that Bob wears. That's supposed to be the big distinction, you see, between him and them. They, the others, all wear blue shirts or any old shirts. But the bosses, Bob and his brother, always wear white shirts, open at the collar—no ties. Clean white shirts. God help me if there ever wasn't a clean white shirt in his drawer some morning! And, I don't know, there's just something about it all that looks so odd.”

“Looks odd to whom?”

“To me,” she said. “Just to me. It's funny, and I know it sounds silly and sounds as if I'm a snob, but you see I've learned to take the other things. I've learned to take Chicago, and the way we live, and the kind of friends we have to have—the company friends—and the kind of parties we have to give. I've learned to
take
all that, and so it seems funny that these little things would bother me—his having to wear the clean white shirts, and having the maid pack a lunch for him every morning.”

“I hope she always packs it with a pickle,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, smiling grimly and taking a swallow of her drink. “We always pack a pickle.”

Dinner was being announced now, and Alexandra Carey was herding her guests into the dining-room.

“This is quite a house,” Tom McGinnis was saying to her.

“Oh,
do
you like it?” she asked. “Please be utterly honest.”

He looked around the room appraisingly. “Well, it's kind of like a museum, isn't it?” he said. “And you're kind of a museum piece yourself.”

Hugh looked quickly at his mother to see how she was going to take this. You never could tell, when something was said like this, how she would react.

“I think you're very rude,” she said.

“I wasn't trying to be rude,” he said. “Just utterly honest.”

“Reba, dear,” his mother said, “you told me that this was a terribly exciting new voice in the modern theatre, didn't you? I'm interested. Just where, in which theatres, has this exciting new voice been heard?”

“I've never been produced,” McGinnis said with a smile, and, Hugh thought, you had to hand it to him for saying that.

“I rather thought not,” she said. “You don't look produced.”

“Don't mind Sandy, Tommy,” Reba said quickly. “She's just trying to be amusing, darling.”

“She is amusing.”

And they went in to dinner.

As a little gleeful touch of malice—or perhaps it was just an accident—Hugh discovered that his mother had seated him beside Titi at the dinner table. And, as Pappy began to serve the dinner, Titi leaned towards Hugh and whispered to him, “Isn't
Pappy
the most marvellous name for a butler?”

“His name is Palpal-Latoc,” Hugh said. “Pappy is just a nickname.

“And I'll bet anything that she thought it up for him!” Titi said.

“Yes, I guess she did.”

“She's delicious, isn't she? I adore your mother.”

“I like her,” Hugh said.

“She has the most exquisite taste,” Titi said. “Do you like what she and I have done to the drawing-room?”

“I think it's—just splendid.”

“Oh, I'm so glad,” Titi said. “I'm so happy you like it. She was very concerned, you know, while we were doing it—worried whether you'd like it or not. I'm so glad you do.”

“I like it,” he said. “Especially the pearls on Venus.”

“Oh!” he said. “
Do
you like that little touch? Oh, I'm just tickled to death you like that. I think it makes the whole house.”