Part 2 (1/2)

”The daughter? No. Do you?”

”No. No one does.”

I went upstairs again.

”Are you back?” said my mother.

”Who did you ask here anyway?”

”Is something the matter?”

”It's a rotten idea, the whole thing.”

”I'm sick,” said my mother. ”I'm sick, go down.”

”They can't tell they're drinking champagne,” I accused her.

My mother plucked the sheet upward to her face and coughed into it guiltily, warding me off with it. ”It must be the poets,” she scratched out finally. ”You know-My staff.”

”Your what?”

”It isn't easy to find people in summer,” she broke out in her odd fever-voice. ”Practically everyone's out of town. I asked whom I could,” she acknowledged finally. She took a harsh breath. ”Why won't you go away?”

I waited. ”I thought you said something about decent society.”

”I'm sick, I have ghosts in my brain. Go away.”

”The ghosts are all downstairs,” I murmured, getting up and going to the door.

Behind me I heard my mother bore fitfully into her pillow. ”So is William's boy,” she uttered faintly; her huddled back divulged not how far she had gone for me, but how far she had given me up.

I found them after a while, my mother's ”staff,” eight pale poets, small light-eyed supercilious lads; two of them were the critical young men I had overheard earlier. I observed that their goblets, which the ingrates were still clutching, had been freshly filled. They had camped down all together, in a cl.u.s.ter, surrounded by idle dancers still vaguely bobbing on the margins of the talk, and ferocious-looking girls with violently curly hair, and girls as plaintive and unaware as b.u.t.terflies, and earnest angry minuscule-nosed balding young men with slipping eyegla.s.ses. The latter, I soon discovered, were a contingent obligingly sent down from Cambridge at the request of my mother. They were all law students, cla.s.smates of William's son. I felt ashamed: my mother, sc.r.a.ping for guests and disquieted by the scarcity of a certain kind of young person, had appealed to William, who had in turn consulted with his son; and to this unimpeachable youth had been entrusted the delicate and infamous affair of collecting dancing partners for me (although I had so far attempted the floor only once, and then with the fat doctor who lived in the duplex below ours, and who had been called up to attend my mother: on his way out, jogging me toward the terrace in his minuet-like foxtrot, he confided his disapproval of all such festivities on the ground that they abused the health; also he warned me against contracting in my travels the Asiatic influenza which had recently spread toGenoa). For this hive of squires, lovers, boy friends, suitors-whatever my mother in her expectant fancies believed them to be-I was, it appeared, clearly indebted to the Harvard Law School. And the neophyte attorneys were easily distinguishable from the parasite poets. The attorneys were glabrous, ambitious, social, and grave, the poets mendacious, flagrantly seedy, thinly optimistic, and (worst of all) poetic. The two factions slyly prospected one another, leering face to face in a nook formed by the newly-built dais-in the lists, as it were-while the musicians, vying nearby but ignored, inexorably pursued their own dread list (they had just arrived at my mother's favorite military tunes). They were all of them yelling-the poets wildly and poetically, the musicians out of resentment for their buried grace notes, the girls in animal grat.i.tude for the fray, the attorneys perforce.

”What's it all about?” I asked one of the poets.

”Oh, it's a fight,” said one of the dancers.

”There are idiots present,” offered one of the law students in a politic tone.

”Quite,” said the poet, glaring. ”And I wish they'd go back to Cambridge.”

”Don't be so charitable,” interjected one of the frizzy-headed girls, who had taken the side of the poets, ”Cambridge isn't hot enough.”

The embryonic lawyers were losing, outwitted by the nimble poets, who were becoming a little coa.r.s.e in their style of speech: the poets were aggressively circular, intuitive, and periphrastic, whereas their opponents were logical and spoke in syllogisms-hence it was transparent that they would go down. It was less transparent what it was they would go down for-I could make out their cause only in part: in the indirect language of Const.i.tutional Law (a second-year course, it developed), they sedately expressed a hope that the First Amendment might be re-amended in order to prevent the free and unhampered publication of verse pamphlets. I half agreed, for my mother's choice of poets was lamentable-she might better have determined to support a covey of vegetarians, whose dependency would be to a higher purpose and who would have eaten more cheaply in any case. The law students, on the other hand, were as wearisome a crew as ever entered Langdell Hall-one of their Cambridge buildings, apparently a temple of some sort, to which they never ceased referring, on account of the phantom presence in that place of their local divinity, Justice Holmes, whom they seemed to honor by having forgotten his decisions. Like my mother's versifiers, they showed no innocence of spirit. It was not merely that they were as worldly as profligates, but rather that they insisted on their own version of the world, exactly like the poets. I decided to abandon both camps-neither side had any originality. I thought them rank phonies. And so, because I was still in the dark about the meaning of their a.s.saults, and to get away from the noise, I wandered into the kitchen.

The refrigerator was disconnected-someone had removed the plug from the socket, and had inserted instead the attachment belonging to my mother's portable phonograph. The turntable, set at a low-Speed, was doggedly going round and round, tended by a pretty girl in blue shoes.

”When the icebox needs defrosting,” I said evenly, ”the maid does it.”

The girl tossed out an unperturbed smile. ”Hey, I found these cute records-they're French lessons. You want to hear? I'm already up to Lesson Four.”

”Where did you get the phonograph?” I asked.

”It was sitting right in the broom closet So were the records.”

”That's right,” I concurred. ”Now tell me what you were doing in the broom closet”

”Looking for a broom.”

We stared at one another.

”My date is out there bringing back something to eat,” my informant took up. ”Hie food around here, is out of this world.”

”Thank you,” I said.

”How d'you like that?” toy friend stated in surprise. ”Is this your party?”

I observed that I supposed it was.

”Well then, you see, about the broom. It's what started the fight out there. You know those boys who work on Mrs. Vand's magazine?”

”Pamphlet,” I corrected.

”Oh-well, I've never seen it, that was part of the trouble. One of 'em said it's called Bushelbasket-can you believe it?” (I did: the t.i.tle had been invented by my mother as a piece of paradoxical sophistry-”You see,” she had maintained, ”they've been hiding their light under a bushel all this time-and now here I am, about to help expose it. Also,” she had added worriedly, ”it suggests abundance ... do you think Cornucopia is better?” But William had favored the former for its humble and homespun sound. ”Call it Cornucopia,” he admonished, ”and those fellows will get the idea that's just what your pocketbook is.”) ”And then,” the girl was going dutifully on, ”the editor said-Ed McGovern, that's his name-that he'd had the d.a.m.nedest time with Allegra over the last issue-I guess Allegra is Mrs. Vand.”

”I know.”

”She your stepmother?”

”No.”

”I heard you had a stepmother.”

”I have a stepfather,” I said. ”Enoch Vand.”

My friend c.o.c.ked her head; she was very pretty. ”Enoch Vand. Haven't I heard of him?”

”Maybe,” I a.s.sented, glum with jealousy. ”He works for the Administration. He gets to see a lot of Cabinet members, and once in a while his name's in the paper.”

”Oh, I never read about politics, it's such a bother. The news changes all the time, who can keep up with it?” She crossed her little blue shoes with their little blue straps and gave me her quick suspenseful glance. ”Has he seen the President?”

”Enoch? I guess so.”

”No, I mean really seen him. Up close!”

”I guess he's seen him up close,” I said, ”every so often.”

”Are you lucky!” she marveled eagerly. ”You know I always feel so out of things on account of my parents are Democrats. And they're so adamant about it!-I heard Mrs. Vand used to be a pinko,” she said suddenly.

I blinked. ”What?”