Anybody Can Do Anything

  Dede crept up on the stage, Mary jerked her backstage and the try outs began. First there were some adagio dancers, who had on dirty long underwear and breathed heavily; then an oily nun who wore loose trousers and told dirty jokes; then a poor little juggler who dropped his tenpins and broke most of the footlights.

  Then from the wings came what looked like a little raccoon, for Mary, the dramatic student, the make-up artist, had heavily blackened the underneath part of Dede’s eyes as well as the lids, and had drawn Dede’s dark curly hair back tight and oiled it with brilliantine. I glanced at Mary, who had slipped into a seat beside me and was smoking furiously. But she seemed well satisfied with her work so I said nothing.

  Dede walked timidly over and sat down on the edge of the stage, crossed her legs, as Mary had taught her, was immediately enveloped in the pink taffeta—all but her head—and began to sing, in the voice Mary had taught her. It was thin and eerie like cries carried on the wind and the accompaniment by ‘Bill honey’, was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard outside of Sousa’s band.

  As soon as it was over, and it seemed like hours, we left. Dede was crying and we were all pretty mad at Mary. Suddenly Mary turned to Mother and said, “You see, Sydney, that’s the trouble with having so many children. Having children is a form of selfishness like collecting jewellery, growing orchids. In your day it was fashionable—it was the thing to do. But, did you ever stop to think how or if you were going to educate them? Did you stop to think of the possibility of one of your children being a genius? How you would pay for his musical education?”

  Dede had stopped crying and we were all listening to Mary, for we knew she had launched one of her attacks and it would lead to something interesting. She said, “Well, Sydney, is the entire burden of using the tremendous talent in this family to fall on me?”

  Mother said, “Let’s get a hamburger.”

  8

  ‘You Name It, Betty Can Do It’

  “WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN you sell direct mail advertising?” I asked Mary.

  “It’s the simplest thing in the world”, she said. “You get an idea, then you convince somebody who has never had one that he thought of it and it is so outstandingly brilliant, so unusual, the product of such a scintillating mentality that it should be mimeographed and sent to some long list of people. Say the Boy Scouts of America or the Teamsters’ Union, whichever list has the most names on it.”

  “Sounds simple”, I said. “But how do you know what kind of an idea they want?”

  “Well, in the first place, any idea is better than none, which is most people’s problem”, said Mary. “In the second place, the only thing people are interested in these days is sales promotion. Ideas that will sell more butter, shoes, davenports, permanent waves, petrol, ferry rides, or popcorn to the public. Now take Standard Oil.”

  Which was one of my few criticisms of Mary, she was always taking Standard Oil or Sears Roebuck or some other great big important firm whose name scared me to death, to use as testing grounds for either my ability or her ideas. I didn’t want to sell advertising at all. I wanted some sort of very steady job with a salary, and duties mediocre enough to be congruent with my mediocre ability. I had in mind a sort of combination janitress, slow typist and file clerk. Not for a moment did Mary entertain any such humble idea. She had in mind for me any job up to and including the President of the United States.

  The thing about selling is that you’re either a salesman or you’re not. I remember an insurance salesman’s telling me without shame, how he followed a store executive right into his corner show window during the lunch hour and started explaining the benefits he would receive at ‘age 65’ and was surprised but not hurt when the executive picked him up bodily and threw him into the men’s wear section. He said, “Figured he must have got out of bed on the wrong side so I didn’t go back until the next day.”

  If you are the type of person who remembers your second grade teacher’s pinching you on the neck because you exhibited a doll dress your mother had made as your own handiwork at the school carnival; who buys brown print dresses that are too short in the waist and are unbecoming anyway, because you are afraid of the sales-woman; who could never ask the butcher for half a turkey; and can still exhibit all the symptoms of pure animal terror at the sight of any dance programme; then the chances are you would be the next to the worst salesman in the world. I was the worst.

  I followed Mary up and down town and in and out of offices for three days and all I learned was a lot of basic differences between Mary and me, and the location of fourteen coffee shops where a butterhorn and coffee were only ten cents. Mary, who seemed to get an order with every call, used the same approach on steamship offices, bakeries, garages, oil companies, candy stores, department stores, shoe repair shops or lending libraries.

  The approach was that she was vitally interested in every single person in the organization, knew the location and condition of every tumour, sacroiliac, heart condition, bunion and crippled relative, knew who was mistreated, how much and by whom, knew who had gone where on their vacations and who had been gypped out of theirs, who was in love and who was lonely.

  On one of our first calls she learned from a long sallow stenographer that her mother, with whom she lived, had a tumour. Mary said, “Oh, think nothing of it. I had two huge tumours. Had them both removed at once and now I’m better than ever.” I looked at Mary, who had never even been in a hospital, with some astonishment. The stenographer looked avid. She said, “Where were your tumours and how much did they weigh?” Mary said, “Oh, one was here, she pointed to her appendix, and one was here”, she moved her hand around to the back. “They weighed eight pounds apiece and the operation only took twenty minutes.”

  As Mary, who was so vivid, so obviously bursting with health, talked on and on, the stenographer drew in every word and seemed to become firmer, to take shape. It was like watching someone stuff a rag doll. When we left the woman said, almost cheerfully, that she was going to call her mother and tell her about Mary.

  Out in the hall I said to Mary, “Mary, you know that nobody in our entire family for generations and generations has ever had a tumour.”

  Mary said, “What difference does that make? Evelyn’s mother’s got one and nobody likes to have a tumour all alone. Anyway, can you think of anything drearier than that poor old Evelyn’s life? She works in that stuffy office all day for that disagreeable old Mr Felton, who has such a bossy mistress and such a nasty wife who knows about the mistress, that his only pleasure in life is kicking old Evelyn every chance he gets.”

  “How do you know about all these mistresses and nasty wives?” I asked. Mary said, “People tell me. I’ve got that kind of a face. People tell me everything. I don’t know why.” I did. It was because Mary was more interested in their problems than they were.

  Our next call was on an automotive supply establishment. Our contact was a large fat man named Charlie, who took us into his private office, closed the door, looked under the desk and in the waste-baskets for hidden spies, and then told us he had been fired. Mary said, “It doesn’t surprise me at all.” Belligerently Charlie said, “How come?” Mary said, “You’re too smart. You’re smarter than anyone in this entire firm and it is so obvious they had to let you go. I knew the minute you were hired you wouldn’t last up here.” Charlie, who was obviously slow, dull-witted and lazy, leaned back, pursed his fat lips importantly and said, “You know I think you’re right, Mary. Every time I get a good idea somebody steals it. Like that bulletin on anti-freeze I sent the dealers. That dirty little Ab Miller took all the credit for it.” Mary said, “Naturally. But the thing is that you’ve got to learn to take things like this in your stride. You’ve got to learn to share your great brain with people not so fortunate.” On the way out she hissed at me, “The only way he could share that great brain of his is with an atom splitter. The only work he’s ever done since he started here is to wear a groove over to that coffee shop across the street.”


  It was fun making calls with Mary but I dreaded the day when I’d have to go alone. I didn’t dread it half enough.

  On Wednesday morning, Mary gave me a little stack of cards, some briefing and sent me off. My first call was on a Mr Hemp in an automobile agency. Mary had said, “Sell him that list of Doctors and Dentists—they’re about the only people who can afford cars now. Sell him on the idea of a clever but dignified letter stressing price and mileage per gallon of petrol.”

  I left the office. It was a soft spring morning. The sky was a pale blueing blue and the breeze from the Sound smelled salty and fresh. The automobile company was about fifteen blocks up town but I decided to walk both to save carfare and because I wanted to delay as long as possible the moment for seeing Mr Hemp, and selling him the clever idea I didn’t have.

  My route led me up hill, past the dirty grey prisonlike facade of the Public Library, through a shabby cluster of cheap rooming houses that advertised Palm Reading, Mystic Seances and Steam Baths in their foggy limp-curtained windows, past wooden apartment houses with orange-crate coolers tacked to their windowsills, and whose only signs of life on this clean sunny morning were a few turbaned and housecoated women scuttling around the corner to the grocery store, and a smattering of pale children listlessly bouncing balls or riding tricycles in small restricted areas, the overstepping of whose boundaries brought immediate shrill admonitions from nearby open windows.

  The automobile company’s wide front door was propped open with a wooden wedge and four salesmen, with their hats pushed to the back of their heads, lounged in the sunshine on tilted-back chairs, smoking and looking sad. Timidly I asked one of them for Mr Hemp. The man gestured toward some offices at the back. All the salesmen watched my progress across the huge showroom which made me so self-conscious I walked stiff-legged and cut a zigzag path across the shiny linoleum floor.

  The offices were guarded by a long counter, behind which several girls were talking and laughing. I asked one of them for Mr Hemp and she said she wasn’t sure he’d have time to see me but she’d ask him. She went into a glass-enclosed cell and spoke to a man who was lying back in his swivel chair, his feet on his desk, talking on the phone. He turned around and looked at me and shook his head. The girl came back and said, “Did you want to see him about a job?”

  I said. “No, I don’t want to see him about a job.”

  She waited for me to reveal what I wanted to see him about but for some silly reason I was ashamed to tell her and acted evasive and sneaky and as though I were trying to sell something either dirty or ‘hot’.

  The girl went in and whispered to Mr Hemp and I watched him peer at me and then shake his head. When she came back she said, “Mr Hemp’s terribly busy this morning and can’t see anybody.”

  I said, “Oh, that’s all right, I’m busy myself, I’ve got another appointment”, and I hurried out leaving my purse on the counter. I missed it after walking a block or two, and when I came back to get it the girl looked at me with such a puzzled look I didn’t leave my Advertising Bureau card, which by now was quite bent and sweaty anyway.

  My next card was a Collection Agency. As I walked back down town, I kept glancing hopefully at my watch, praying for it to be noon or too late to make any more calls. But it was only ten-twenty when I reached the large office building that housed the collection agency.

  Waiting in the foyer in front of the elevators, laughing and talking, were men without hats and girls without coats. People with regular jobs just coming back from coffee. I looked at them carefully and tried to figure out where they worked what kind of work they did, what magic something they had that made them so employable. Only one of the girls was really pretty. She had a tiny waist, a big bun of dark hair, and was laughing with one of the men. The other girls were clean and ordinary and looked as if they might belong to business girls’ groups and curl their own hair. In the elevator we all stood self-consciously, silently, staring straight ahead the way you’re supposed to in elevators.

  I got off at the third floor and walked slowly down to room 309. The door was frosted glass. Clutching my note-book of collection letters and taking a deep quivering breath, I turned the knob, pushed open the door and was immediately confronted by a pair of eyes so hard they sent out glances like glass splinters. The owner of the eyes, standing at a counter sorting some cards, said, “Wadda you want?” as she slapped the cards down into little piles. I said, “I’m from the Advertising Bureau. . . .” She said, “We don’t want any more of those bum collection letters.” I said, “I have a new series. I wrote them myself and I think they’re pretty good.” She said, “Wadda you mean new series? We already sent out one through five.” I said, “Now we have five through ten”, and began looking for my note-book. The woman said, “Don’t bother gettin’ them out. I don’ wanna see them. It’s all a waste of money.” I said, “All right, thank you very much.” She said, “Wadda you thankin’ me for?” and laughed. I left.

  My next call, in the same building, was on a school for beauty operators. Still smarting from the Collection Agency woman’s laugh, I entered the La Charma Beauty School with the same degree of enthusiasm Daniel must have evinced when entering the lions’ den. A woman with magenta hair, little black globules on the end of each eyelash, eyebrows two hairs wide, big wet scarlet lips and a stiff white uniform, was sitting at a little appointment desk. The minute she saw me she shoved a paper at me and told me to sign it. So I did and she said, “Black or brown?” I picked up the paper and it seemed to be a waiver of some sort having to do with La Charma not being responsible if I went blind.

  I said, “I don’t understand, I’m from the Advertising Bureau.” She laughed and said, “Gosh, I thought you was my ten o’clock appointment. An eyelash dye job. Say, hon, Mrs Johnson wants to see you. She wants a letter to all the girls who will graduate from high school this June.” I almost fainted. Somebody wanted to see me. I was going to sell something.

  Mrs Johnson, who looked exactly like the woman at the appointment desk except that she had gold hair, was very friendly, offered me a cigarette and thought my ideas for a letter were ‘swell and had a lotta bounce’. I left with a big order and my whole body electrified with hope. Maybe selling advertising was easier than prostitution after all.

  My next call was on a shoe repair shop. I went in smiling but the little dark man said, “Business is rotten. No use throwin’ good money after bad. I don’t believe in advertisin’. Good work advertises itself. Go wan now I’m busy.” So I slunk out and went back to the bureau.

  Mary, who was in giving the artist some instructions, was so very enthusiastic about the beauty shop and my first order that I didn’t tell her about the other calls. We took our sandwiches, which we brought from home, unless we were invited out for lunch, and walked to the Public Market where for five cents we could get an unlimited number of cups of wonderful fresh-roasted coffee, and the use of one of the tables in a large dining-room in the market loft, owned by the coffee company.

  The Public Market, about three blocks long, crowded and smelling deliciously of baking bread, roasting peanuts, coffee, fresh fish and bananas, blazed with the orange, reds, yellows and greens of fresh succulent fruits and vegetables. From the hundreds of farmers’ stalls that lined both sides of the street and extended clear through the block on the east side, Italians, Greeks, Norwegians, Finns, Danes, Japanese and Germans offered their wares. The Italians were the most voluble but the Japanese had the most beautiful vegetables.

  The market, offering everything from Turkish coffee and rare books to squid and bear meat, was the shopping mecca for Seattle, and a wonderful place to eat for those who like good food and hadn’t much money. It had Turkish, Italian, Greek, Norwegian and German restaurants in addition to many excellent delicatessens and coffee stalls.

  The nicest thing about it to me was its friendliness and the fact that they were all trying to sell me something. Everybody spoke to us as we went by and in spite of the depression,
which was certainly as bad down there as anywhere, everyone was smiling and glad to see everybody. A small dark fruit-dealer named Louis, who was a great admirer of red hair, gave us a large bunch of Malaga grapes and two bananas. “Go good with your sandwiches”, he said.

  The dining-room was three flights up in the market loft, so we climbed the stairs, got our coffee, climbed more stairs and sat down at the large table by the windows always saved by our friends and always commanding a magnificent view of the Seattle waterfront, the islands and Puget Sound. Our friends, mostly artists, advertising people, newspapermen and women, writers, musicians, and book-store people, carried their sandwiches boldly and unashamedly in paper bags. Others who ate up there were not so bold.

  Bank clerks, insurance salesmen and lawyers were lucky because they had briefcases and could carry bottles of milk, little puddings and potato salad in fruit jars, as well as sandwiches, without losing their dignity. But accountants and stenographers usually put down their coffee, looked sneakily around to see if they knew anyone, then slipped their sandwiches out of an inside coat pocket, purse or department store bag, as furtively as though they were smuggling morphine.

  I must admit that I had false pride about taking my lunch and hated the days when it was Mary’s turn to fix the sandwiches, and she would slap them together and stuff them into any old thing that came to hand—a huge greasy brown paper bag, an old printed bread wrapping, or even newspaper tied with a string.

  Mary, one of those few fortunate people who are born without any false pride, laughed when I went to a Chinese store and bought a straw envelope to carry my sandwiches in. The straw envelope made everything taste like mothballs and incense and squashed the sandwiches flat but it looked kind of like a purse. Mary said, “So we have to take our lunch. So what?” and went into I. Magnin’s swinging her big brown, greasy, paper bag.