Complete Stories - Dorothy Parker Part 29

"He's got his nerve!" Annabel said.

They walked on. Slowly the disdain went, slowly and completely as if drained from them, and with it went the regal carriage and tread. Their shoulders dropped and they dragged their feet; they b.u.mped against each other, without notice or apology, and caromed away again. They were silent and their eyes were cloudy.

Suddenly Midge straightened her back, flung her head high, and spoke, clear and strong.

"Listen, Annabel," she said. "Look. Suppose there was this terribly rich person, see? You don't know this person, but this person has seen you somewhere and wants to do something for you. Well, it's a terribly old person, see? And so this person dies, just like going to sleep, and leaves you ten million dollars. Now, what would be the first thing you'd do?"

The New Yorker, September 20, 1941.

The Lovely Leave.

Her husband had telephoned her by long distance to tell her about the leave. She had not expected the call, and she had no words arranged. She threw away whole seconds explaining her surprise at hearing him, and reporting that it was raining hard in New York, and asking was it terribly hot where he was. He had stopped her to say, look, he didn't have time to talk long; and he had told her quickly that his squadron was to be moved to another field the next week and on the way he would have twenty-four hours' leave. It was difficult for her to hear. Behind his voice came a jagged chorus of young male voices, all crying the syllable "Hey!"

"Ah, don't hang up yet," she said. "Please. Let's talk another minute, just another--"

"Honey, I've got to go," he said. "The boys all want a crack at the telephone. See you a week from today, around five. 'By."

Then there had been a click as his receiver went back into place. Slowly she cradled her telephone, looking at it as if all frustrations and bewilderments and separations were its fault. Over it she had heard his voice, coming from far away. All the months, she had tried not to think of the great blank distance between them; and now that far voice made her know she had thought of nothing else. And his speech had been brisk and busy. And from back of him had come gay, wild young voices, voices he heard every day and she did not, voices of those who shared his new life. And he had heeded them and not her, when she begged for another minute. She took her hand off the telephone and held it away from her with the fingers spread stiffly apart, as if it had touched something horrid.

Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching. Women alone often developed into experts at the practice. She must never join their dismal league.

What was she dreary about, anyway? If he had only a little while to talk, then he had only a little while to talk, that was all. Certainly he had had time to tell her he was coming, to say that they would be together soon. And there she was, sitting scowling at the telephone, the kind, faithful telephone that had brought her the lovely news. She would see him in a week. Only a week. She began to feel, along her back and through her middle, little quivers of excitement, like tiny springs uncoiling into spirals.

There must be no waste to this leave. She thought of the preposterous shyness that had fallen upon her when he had come home before. It was the first time she had seen him in uniform. There he stood, in their little apartment, a das.h.i.+ng stranger in strange, das.h.i.+ng garments. Until he had gone into the army, they had never spent a night apart in all their marriage; and when she saw him, she dropped her eyes and twisted her handkerchief and could bring nothing but monosyllables from her throat. There must be no such squandering of minutes this time. There must be no such gangling diffidence to lop even an instant from their twenty-four hours of perfect union. Oh, Lord, only twenty-four hours. . . .

No. That was exactly the wrong thing to do; that was directly the wrong way to think. That was the way she had spoiled it before. Almost as soon as the shyness had left her and she felt she knew him again, she had begun counting. She was so filled with the desperate consciousness of the hours sliding away-only twelve more, only five, oh, dear G.o.d, only one left-that she had no room for gaiety and ease. She had spent the golden time in grudging its going.

She had been so woebegone of carriage, so sad and slow of word as the last hour went, that he, nervous under the pall, had spoken sharply and there had been a quarrel. When he had had to leave for his train, there were no clinging farewells, no tender words to keep. He had gone to the door and opened it and stood with it against his shoulder while he shook out his flight cap and put it on, adjusting it with great care, one inch over the eye, one inch above the ear. She stood in the middle of the living-room, cool and silent, looking at him.

When his cap was precisely as it should be, he looked at her.

"Well," he said. He cleared his throat. "Guess I'd better get going."

"I'm sure you had," she said.

He studied his watch intently. "I'll just make it," he said.

"I'm sure you will," she said.

She turned, not with an actual shrug, only with the effect of one, and went to the window and looked out, as if casually remarking the weather. She heard the door close loudly and then the grind of the elevator.

When she knew he was gone, she was cool and still no longer. She ran about the little flat, striking her breast and sobbing.

Then she had two months to ponder what had happened, to see how she had wrought the ugly small ruin. She cried in the nights.

She need not brood over it any more. She had her lesson; she could forget how she had learned it. This new leave would be the one to remember, the one he and she would have, to keep forever. She was to have a second chance, another twenty-four hours with him. After all, that is no short while, you know; that is, if you do not think of it as a thin little row of hours dropping off like beads from a broken string. Think of it as a whole long day and a whole long night, s.h.i.+ning and sweet, and you will be all but awed by your fortune. For how many people are there who have the memory of a whole long day and a whole long night, s.h.i.+ning and sweet, to carry with them in their hearts until they die?

To keep something, you must take care of it. More, you must understand just what sort of care it requires. You must know the rules and abide by them. She could do that. She had been doing it all the months, in the writing of her letters to him. There had been rules to be learned in that matter, and the first of them was the hardest: never say to him what you want him to say to you. Never tell him how sadly you miss him, how it grows no better, how each day without him is sharper than the day before. Set down for him the gay happenings about you, bright little anecdotes, not invented, necessarily, but attractively embellished. Do not bedevil him with the pinings of your faithful heart because he is your husband, your man, your love. For you are writing to none of these. You are writing to a soldier.

She knew those rules. She would have said that she would rather die, and she would have meant something very near the words, than send a letter of complaint or sadness or cold anger to her husband, a soldier far away, strained and weary from his work, giving all he had for the mighty cause. If in her letters she could be all he wanted her to be, how much easier to be it when they were together. Letters were difficult; every word had to be considered and chosen. When they were together again, when they could see and hear and touch each other, there would be no stiltedness. They would talk and laugh together. They would have tenderness and excitement. It would be as if they had never been separated. Perhaps they never had been. Perhaps a strange new life and strange empty miles and strange gay voices had no existence for two who were really one.

She had thought it out. She had learned the laws of what not to do. Now she could give herself up to the ecstasy of waiting his coming.

It was a fine week. She counted the time again, but now it was sweet to see it go. Two days after tomorrow, day after tomorrow, tomorrow. She lay awake in the dark, but it was a thrilling wakefulness. She went tall and straight by day, in pride in her warrior. On the street, she looked with amused pity at women who walked with men in civilian suits.

She bought a new dress; black-he liked black dresses-simple-he liked plain dresses-and so expensive that she would not think of its price. She charged it, and realized that for months to come she would tear up the bill without removing it from its envelope. All right-this was no time to think of months to come.

The day of the leave was a Sat.u.r.day. She flushed with grat.i.tude to the army for this coincidence, for after one o'clock, Sat.u.r.day was her own. She went from her office without stopping for lunch, and bought perfume and toilet water and bath oil. She had a bit of each remaining in bottles on her dressing table and in her bathroom, but it made her feel desired and secure to have rich new stores of them. She bought a nightgown, a delightful thing of soft chiffon patterned with little bouquets, with innocent puffs of sleeves and a Romney neck and a blue sash. It could never withstand laundering, a French cleaner must care for it-all right. She hurried home with it, to fold it in a satin sachet.

Then she went out again and bought the materials for c.o.c.ktails and whiskies-and-sodas, shuddering at their cost. She went a dozen blocks to buy the kind of salted biscuits he liked with drinks. On the way back she pa.s.sed a florist's shop in the window of which were displayed potted fuchsia. She made no attempt to resist them. They were too charming, with their delicate parchment-colored inverted cups and their graceful magenta bells. She bought six pots of them. Suppose she did without lunches the next week-all right.

When she was done with the little living-room, it looked gracious and gay. She ranged the pots of fuchsia along the window sill, she drew out a table and set it with gla.s.ses and bottles, she plumped the pillows and laid bright-covered magazines about invitingly. It was a place where someone entering eagerly would find delighted welcome.

Before she changed her dress, she telephoned downstairs to the man who tended both the switchboard and the elevator.

"Oh," she said, when he eventually answered. "Oh, I just want to say, when my husband, Lieutenant McVicker, comes, please send him right up."

There was no necessity for the call. The wearied attendant would have brought up anyone to any flat without the additional stress of a telephoned announcement. But she wanted to say the words. She wanted to say "my husband" and she wanted to say "lieutenant."

She sang, when she went into the bedroom to dress. She had a sweet, uncertain little voice that made the l.u.s.ty song ludicrous.

"Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,

Climbing high into the sun, sun, sun, sun.

Here they come: zooming to meet our thunder-

At 'em boys, give 'er the gun!"

She kept singing, in a preoccupied way, while she gave close attention to her lips and her eyelashes. Then she was silent and held her breath as she drew on the new dress. It was good to her. There was a reason for the cost of those perfectly plain black dresses. She stood looking at herself in the mirror with deep interest, as if she watched a chic unknown, the details of whose costume she sought to memorize.

As she stood there, the bell rang. It rang three times, loud and quick. He had come.

She gasped, and her hands fluttered over the dressing table. She seized the perfume atomizer and sprayed scent violently all about her head and shoulders, some of it reaching them. She had already perfumed herself, but she wanted another minute, another moment, anything. For it had taken her again-the outrageous shyness. She could not bring herself to go to the door and open it. She stood, shaking, and squirted perfume.

The bell rang three times loud and quick again, and then an endless peal.

"Oh, wait, can't you?" she cried. She threw down the atomizer, looked wildly around the room as if for a hiding-place, then sternly made herself tall and sought to control the shaking of her body. The shrill noise of the bell seemed to fill the flat and crowd the air out of it.

She started for the door. Before she reached it, she stopped, held her hands over her face, and prayed, "Oh, please let it be all right," she whispered. "Please keep me from doing wrong things. Please let it be lovely."

Then she opened the door. The noise of the bell stopped. There he stood in the brightly lighted little hall. All the long sad nights, and all the strong and sensible vows. And now he had come. And there she stood.

"Well, for heaven's sake!" she said. "I had no idea there was anybody out here. Why, you were just as quiet as a little mouse."

"Well! Don't you ever open the door?" he said.

"Can't a woman have time to put on her shoes?" she said.

He came in and closed the doors behind him. "Ah, darling," he said. He put his arms around her. She slid her cheek along his lips, touched her forehead to his shoulder, and broke away from him.

"Well!" she said. "Nice to see you, Lieutenant. How's the war?"

"How are you?" he said. "You look wonderful."

"Me?" she said. "Look at you."

He was well worth looking at. His fine clothes complemented his fine body. The precision of his appointments was absolute, yet he seemed to have no consciousness of it. He stood straight, and he moved with grace and a.s.surance. His face was browned. It was thin, so thin that the bones showed under the cheeks and down the jaws; but there was no look of strain in it. It was smooth and serene and confident. He was the American officer, and there was no finer sight than he.

"Well!" she said. She made herself raise her eyes to his and found suddenly that it was no longer difficult. "Well, we can't just stand here saying 'well' at each other. Come on in and sit down. We've got a long time ahead of us-oh, Steve, isn't it wonderful! Hey. Didn't you bring a bag?"

"Why, you see," he said, and stopped. He slung his cap over onto the table among the bottles and gla.s.ses. "I left the bag at the station. I'm afraid I've got sort of rotten news, darling."

She kept her hands from flying to her breast.

"You-you're going overseas right away?" she said.

"Oh, Lord, no," he said. "Oh, no, no, no. I said this was rotten news. No. They've changed the orders, baby. They've taken back all leaves. We're to go right on to the new field. I've got to get a train at six-ten."

She sat down on the sofa. She wanted to cry; not silently with slow crystal tears, but with wide mouth and smeared face. She wanted to throw herself stomach-down on the floor, and kick and scream, and go limp if anyone tried to lift her.

"I think that's awful," she said. "I think that's just filthy."

"I know," he said. "But there's nothing to do about it. This is the army, Mrs. Jones."

"Couldn't you have said something?" she said. "Couldn't you have told them you've had only one leave in six months? Couldn't you have said all the chance your wife had to see you again was just this poor little twenty-four hours? Couldn't you have explained what it meant to her? Couldn't you?"

"Come on, now, Mimi," he said. "There's a war on."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was sorry as soon as I'd said it. I was sorry while I was saying it. But-oh, it's so hard!"

"It's not easy for anybody," he said. "You don't know how the boys were looking forward to their leaves."

"Oh, I don't give a d.a.m.n about the boys!" she said.

"That's the spirit that'll win for our side," he said. He sat down in the biggest chair, stretched his legs and crossed his ankles.

"You don't care about anything but those pilots," she said.

"Look, Mimi," he said. "We haven't got time to do this. We haven't got time to get into a fight and say a lot of things we don't mean. Everything's all-all speeded up, now. There's no time left for this."

"Oh, I know," she said. "Oh, Steve, don't I know!"

She went over and sat on the arm of his chair and buried her face in his shoulder.

"This is more like it," he said. "I've kept thinking about this." She nodded against his blouse.

"If you knew what it was to sit in a decent chair again," he said.

She sat up. "Oh," she said. "It's the chair. I'm so glad you like it."

"They've got the worst chairs you ever saw, in the pilots' room," he said. "A lot of busted-down old rockers-honestly, rockers-that big-hearted patriots contributed, to get them out of the attic. If they haven't better furniture at the new field, I'm going to do something about it, even if I have to buy the stuff myself."

"I certainly would, if I were you," she said. "I'd go without food and clothing and laundry, so the boys would be happy sitting down. I wouldn't even save out enough for air mail stamps, to write to my wife once in a while."

She rose and moved about the room.

"Mimi, what's the matter with you?" he said. "Are you-are you jealous of the pilots?"

She counted as far as eight, to herself. Then she turned and smiled at him.

"Why-I guess I am-" she said. "I guess that's just what I must be. Not only of the pilots. Of the whole air corps. Of the whole Army of the United States."

"You're wonderful," he said.

"You see," she said with care, "you have a whole new life-I have half an old one. Your life is so far away from mine, I don't see how they're ever going to come back together."

"That's nonsense," he said.

"No, please wait," she said. "I get strained and-and frightened, I guess, and I say things I could cut my throat for saying. But you know what I really feel about you. I'm so proud of you I can't find words for it. I know you're doing the most important thing in the world, maybe the only important thing in the world. Only-oh, Steve, I wish to heaven you didn't love doing it so much!"

"Listen," he said.

"No," she said. "You mustn't interrupt a lady. It's unbecoming an officer, like carrying packages in the street. I'm just trying to tell you a little about how I feel. I can't get used to being so completely left out. You don't wonder what I do, you don't want to find out what's in my head-why, you never even ask me how I am!"

"I do so!" he said. "I asked you how you were the minute I came in."

"That was white of you," she said.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" he said. "I didn't have to ask you. I could see how you look. You look wonderful. I told you that."

She smiled at him. "Yes, you did, didn't you?" she said. "And you sounded as if you meant it. Do you really like my dress?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "I always liked that dress on you."