Part 18 (1/2)
”You wouldn't have done it,” Enoch repeated.
”No, I wouldn't.”
”You wouldn't have had her throw herself under the train either?”
”What a way to end a book!”
”n.o.body denies it's a tragedy, dear. Then I suppose you would have had her go back to her husband?”
”Not that husband. What a prig, exactly like William. What I'd have done,” she said meditatively, ”if I were Tolstoy, is”-she really did not know, and had to suck her lip for inspiration.
”Remember,” Enoch said, ”divorce wasn't available-”
”Well I know that! Ssh, I'm thinking.” But just then the maid knocked to announce the arrival of Ed McGovern. ”I'd simply have found a new lover for her!” she burst out.
”-who wouldn't get bored?”
”Well look, for goodness' sake, it's not Anna who was boring. She's not a boring woman, after all. That's why I can't see Tolstoy's conception, I just can't see it. There's something wrong with a man who'd tire of a bright woman like that. I mean, I sort of see a bit of myself in Anna-”
”So do I,” said Ed McGovern.
”There! You see, Enoch? Now don't look me all over please, I have to stay in bed.”
”If it's too much for you-”
”No, no, stay, I'm perfectly all right. I'm not sick any more, but my hair's all coming out. I don't see how I can remind anyone of that beautiful Anna when I know how awful I look. It's just lucky for me that a turban's becoming to me. In the thirties I used to wear them all the time, it was the style, even though it was a little old for me-did you bring the proofs?” she broke off.
”Well, no,” said Ed McGovern, and stopped.
”Didn't they come yet? Really, that printer-”
”Oh, they've come, they've come.”
”Then what's the matter? You don't have to be nasty about it!”
”They look lousy, if you want to know the truth.”
”You're not going to start about the capital letters again, are you, because I warn you if you do-”
My mother's editor very slowly sat himself down on her bed and began moodily searching for an ashtray. ”It's not the capitals, it's the commas. You just can't print sonnets without commas, Mrs. Vand, they don't make sense.”
”Then don't print sonnets. I never gave you permission to have sonnets anyway, did I? We've discussed it a thousand times-Bushelbasket's got to be really revolutionary or nothing at all.”
”Then it's nothing at all.”
I brought him the cap of a cold-cream jar from the dresser and received in it the long grey snout of his cigarette, just in time.
”Maybe you're having a sterile period,” Enoch suggested from his chair. ”Artists usually do.”
”Artists yes, but editors aren't allowed to,” my mother said severely. ”Don't joke, Enoch. I pay this young man perfectly good unfunny money, and he's got to do what he's told.”
”There's a Rat in my room,” the young man morosely observed.
”Don't try and tell me I'm responsible for that!” said my mother. ”I didn't advise you to live in that sort of neighborhood.”
”You said it was a romantic part of New York, didn't you? Full of writers, ha, ha. How should I know New York? I took your word for it, didn't I?”
Enoch asked, ”Where are you from?”
”Boston.”
”South Boston,” said my mother maliciously. ”That's pretty far from lace-curtain.”
”Don't cast aspersions, Allegra.”
”Anyhow he went to N.Y.U., he knows all about New York.”
”I did not go to N.Y.U.,” said McGovern haughtily. ”I merely registered, I did not go.”
”You also registered at Columbia, the New School, St. John's University in Brooklyn, and the Henry George School. I know. I paid all the fees.”
”You did not. The Henry George School is free.”
”Free hot air,” said my mother, who even in her radical days had been against the single tax. ”The point is, Enoch, he's lived in this city for six years. Where do you think he got that fake Flemish accent? He can't blame his rats on me-it's a subterfuge.”
”I did not say rats. I said Rat. One Rat.”
”How do you get a Flemish accent from living in New York?” Enoch innocently inquired, but both my mother and her editor snubbed this foolish question with a simultaneous shrug. I suspected that my mother had copied hers-a rather steep lift of the left shoulder-from her protege.
”It's really hard to understand the poems without the commas,” I offered meekly.
My mother yielded up all her scorn: ”Who asked you? You don't understand the first thing about modern poetry. I know what they taught you in that college, they taught you Wordsworth,” she sneered.
”Wordsworth's not so bad,” Ed McGovern said.
My mother stared. ”Dear boy, are you undergoing a conversion?”
”All I said was Wordsworth's not so bad. You'd probably like him if he'd left out the commas.”
”If that's sarcasm, you might just as well forget you've ever been an editor.”
”All right. I'm going to San Francisco.”
”What!”
”I mean I'm going if you'll give me the carfare.”
”What about Bushelbasket? You just can't pick up and leave without-”
”You fired me, just now, in the presence of two witnesses.”