‘Oh, thank you, quite all right.’ Now Brett chuckled for no apparent reason, almost like his old soft laugh when he was happy and relaxed, but now it came out like a habit, a social gesture, like covering a mouth when yawning. ‘And Cliffie – you’ve put on weight, I see.’
‘Thenk you,’ said Cliffie with his English accent.
Edith laughed.
‘Fond of the beer, my son,’ said Brett to Starr. ‘That’s obvious.’
‘Miller’s, thenk you,’ said Cliffie, dead-pan but enjoying himself, and lifted his scotch to the two men and drank. He was pleased to see that his father was taking the best-to-retreat tactic, and concentrating on his mother again.
‘And how’s your —’
‘Can I freshen your drink, Mr Starr?’ Edith said at the same moment, and got up, because Mr Starr was hesitating, then relenting, and presenting his empty glass. While she was making the drink, Brett said:
‘How’s the sculpture coming along? I’d love to show Pete. Could you possibly —’
‘I don’t think my workroom’s in a state to be seen just —’
‘Oh, come on, doesn’t matter,’ Brett said.
She’d be a coward if she didn’t let them go up, Edith supposed. ‘Very well.’ She handed Mr Starr his drink. ‘It’s upstairs,’ she said to him.
Up they went, and Cliffie remained downstairs. Edith put on the light. Her heads of Melanie and of Cliffie were exposed, uncovered, and her work-in-progress, ‘City,’ was on its wooden pedestal, so nearly finished that the plastic sheet was not at the moment on the floor. Mr Starr strolled around reflectively with hands behind him, looking at her abstracts, Edith noticed, not the two heads. Her worktable looked its usual semi-mess, but her diary was neatly at the left back corner, closed of course, and under the last couple of Bugles.
‘Interesting. Yes. What’s this – called?’ Mr Starr asked of ‘City.’
‘Just “City”,’ Edith said.
‘Like a rabbit warren,’ he replied, smiling. ‘How right you are. Disturbed by – overcrowding. Hm-m. Thinking of – Lorentz, maybe.’
Edith hesitated, not caring one hundred percent for Lorentz. ‘I’m not a Lorentz fan. I like Fromm better, frankly.’ She wasn’t sure Starr understood that she didn’t believe in the necessity of aggression, and didn’t give a damn if Starr understood or not. She thought of asking him if he liked Daniel Bell’s work, then abandoned this, too. She wanted them both out of her room.
They drifted out, Mr Starr preceding, and he went down the stairs. Brett lingered in the hall.
‘How’re things really, Edie?’
‘Not too bad. Why?’
‘Cliffie doesn’t look in the pink,’ Brett continued in a low tone. ‘Gert phoned me. She thinks —’
Edith had suspected that Gert had telephoned. ‘Well, thinks what?’
‘Just that you’re under a lot of strain just now. You never cashed the ten thousand, it seems.’
‘No, thank you. I didn’t want it. I also don’t want any part of the fourteen thousand in the Dreyfus – just so there’s no fuzziness in the future about that one. – I’m doing all right, Brett, if it comes to money.’
‘But this silly job!’ Then he seemed to give that up. ‘And Cliffie boozing as usual.’ Brett was whispering.
What was all this, Edith wondered, an account of her woes? ‘What’s silly about my job? And what’re you doing about Cliffie, for instance, if you’re so worried? Have you asked him to New York to have a talk with him – get him a job, something like that?’
Brett smiled a little, as if trying to get Cliffie a job was an absurdity, something that would reflect badly on him, Brett. ‘I did invite him – a couple of months ago. By phone. He didn’t tell you? He didn’t seem interested.’
Maybe not, after you’ve accused him of giving George an overdose, Edith thought. She walked to the stairs and went down.
Mr Starr, who was not seated, suggested that he and Brett might be going. Edith had the feeling he had been talking with Cliffie, who was sitting in Melanie’s rose-sprigged armchair.
‘Your sculpture is most interesting,’ Mr Starr said. ‘Are you taking lessons anywhere – or did you?’
‘No,’ Edith replied. ‘It’s just a pastime.’
‘No, no, it’s quite good. I think you throw yourself into it!’ said Mr Starr genially. ‘Now if you two would like a minute in private, I’ll go out to the car. Thank you very much, Mrs Howland, for the lovely drinks.’ Mr Starr left.
Cliffie was watching all this from his chair.
Brett beckoned Edith into the front hall, away from Cliffie. ‘The inside of the house could use a painting too. And there must be a lot of things —’
‘Yes, there are a lot of things.’
Brett nodded. ‘I’d like you to be comfortable, Edie.’
She said nothing.
‘Well – bye-bye and thanks.’ Brett leaned through the door-way of the living room. ‘Bye, Cliffie!’
‘G’bye, Brett.’
Brett left. The car purred away.
Cliffie wriggled as if he had insects under his shirt. ‘What a prick! That old guy, I mean.’
‘You think so?’ Edith found the drink she had left and picked it up. She was thinking of ‘Shoot-the-President,’ pleased – she admitted for the tenth time – with her effort there. And there was her Democratic-Headquarters-burglary idea too, which she wanted to start on.
‘Guy looks like a spy. CIA type, you know?’ Cliffie said. ‘Something phony about him.’ And Cliffie got up to refresh his drink.
‘Cliffie, did you do anything with Brett’s check? That famous ten thousand?’ Edith remembered that she had simply left it, torn in half, on the kitchen table.
Cliffie was embarrassed, but not seriously so. ‘I did take it. It’s in my room. I can’t do anything with it, you know, because it’s made out to you. I don’t want to do anything with it.’
‘I know, but you may as well destroy it. Brett asked about it.’ Edith supposed that Cliffie was simply looking at it now and then, marveling at the sum.
‘Well – is it serious, whether I destroy it or not?’
Edith laughed. ‘Frankly no.’
She went into the kitchen to get dinner. Edith was thinking about Gert Johnson telephoning Brett and telling him about her ‘strain’ and what else? It had been personal, anyway, not just a business call about newspaper work. Edith had a feeling that people were ganging up on her. First signs of paranoia, Edith thought, and smiled. She was glad Brett had noticed that the interior of the house looked shabby, despite Melanie’s new chair and settee, which Brett had not noticed, perhaps. The house was still running along, at least. Brett should have seen George’s room, she thought, which looked terrific now! And Edith smiled again to herself.
Bang! She was thinking of the alternative ‘wins’ and ‘winners’ she had put at the end of her ‘Shoot-the-President’ piece. One winner of the game was the genuine president-elect who was not shot at (after so many replacements), because there were simply no more assassins left among the spectators. Then she thought of Brett, imagined his Manhattan life in a well-kept apartment with his cozy little wife, his young wife in bed every night, and maybe again pregnant. She wondered if Brett said the same things to Carol that he had used to say to her? Edith felt that she didn’t care if he did.
Time for a snatch of television news while the macaroni and cheese (frozen) got its crust in the oven. Nixon was considering a trip to China, first president to make such a visit, etc. etc. and Edith’s blood boiled with a wrath that she realized was irrational. Nixon was cracked. Anything to escape facing the people, to avoid answering questions that the people and the journalists asked. Even Gert had said that.
‘Switch it off, Cliffie, it makes me sick. Dinner’s ready.’
Edith took her head of Cliffie to a shop in Philadelphia that did casting. Bronze was out of the question because of cost, but there was a new material, a kind of plaster which could be lig
htened with sandpaper on surfaces such as the tip of a nose, the bulges of a forehead, and the result resembled bronze. The librarian at the Brunswick Corner library had told Edith about the shop, for which Edith was grateful. The job was going to take about three weeks, as the shop had other orders, and would cost around fifty dollars. Edith was pleased. Now the head could have a place in the house, a finished work like a picture, not simply remain in sticky Plasticine up in her workroom. ‘City’ Edith was proud of, with its fleck-like, action-filled daubs which represented people in the tiny ‘rooms,’ running, walking, peering out, or sleeping, brooding, collapsing. Casting this would be a horror and probably impossible, however. Edith embarked on another short story, this time straight fiction without a political slant. Her thought of speaking to Gert about telephoning Brett had vanished, which was probably all to the good. Gert called up at least twice a week on Bugle matters, but Edith never mentioned Brett. One morning Gert rang up to tell her their paper supplier was closing shop, retiring, and there was a choice of two other companies, both more expensive.
‘Well, everything’s getting more expensive,’ Edith remarked patiently.
‘I’m nearby. Can I pop over?’
‘By all means!’
Edith was at her typewriter when Gert arrived, but she left it willingly and went downstairs. It was a little after 10. Gert wore lavender slacks, a purple sleeveless blouse bulging with bosom, as her slacks bulged, at the thighs, with flesh also. Gert was a bit knock-kneed.
‘Whew! Sorta muggy today,’ Gert said.
They discussed the newsprint problem, and decided, as Edith had supposed they would, to take the lower bidder between the two suppliers. The Bugle now had a circulation of five thousand. Lots of families sent it to their kids as far away as Australia.
In a silence, Edith said, ‘I heard you phoned Brett not so long ago. He came to see me.’
‘Oh, yeah. I did. Told him about your short stories – and your sculpting.’
‘Do you know his friend Starr? Peter Starr?’ Edith was mainly curious about him.
‘No.’
‘Well, what did you tell Brett?’
‘What do you mean?’
Edith took a breath. ‘I had the feeling he was worried about me. Somehow. And I wondered why.’
‘No-o,’ Gert said, smiling. ‘I think I told him about some success you’d had selling a story to the underground press.’
Edith took a cigarette.
‘I thought that story was fun,’ Gert went on in a merry tone that Edith sensed was phony.
‘Who is this Peter Starr? A psychiatrist?’
‘I don’t know him. Never heard of him.’
That was very likely true. ‘I really had the feeling Brett and the other man were casing me. I wondered why. Then he mentioned that you’d phoned him.’
Gert looked briefly embarrassed, but perhaps was only pretending embarrassment. ‘Well, yes, Edie. Matter of fact, I was worried about you, and I didn’t think it would hurt – Brett knowing you so well – for him to come and see you. What’s the harm in that? I don’t think he sees you enough, considering you’re both on good terms.’
Edith thought again of cautious Peter Starr. She had heard of a husband somewhere bringing a psychiatrist to the house suddenly, and the wife had been whisked away to a loony-bin, kidnapped more or less. ‘Besides the underground press, which has the virtue of being amusing at least —’
Gert gazed into space, or at the bar cart. ‘You used to be pretty far-out too, Gert,’ Edith went on in a calm tone, because she wanted to learn what she could from Gert, ‘yet you called me – doctrinaire or reactionary one night at your house! Potential right-winger or some such. I don’t know about that. But I do believe that authoritarianism is coming because it has to. It’s an historical – or anyway an objective fact, nothing to do with me personally. Society is becoming increasingly complex.’
‘That’s not the same as believing in it. Or preaching it – authoritarianism. You want to organize things, Edie, in your own way!’
‘Nonsense! How could I? – One can go on believing in what one wants to believe in forever, I suppose. Isn’t it more intelligent – even more interesting to see what’s coming and – be braced?’
‘Braced for fascism? Authoritarianism? – Nixon, that creep, for instance?’
‘Why was he elected in the first place? Advertising, television. Do you expect brains, judgement from people who watch the crap on TV? Everybody in the United States watching on average four hours a day?’
Gert groaned as if she were bored, as if what she, Gert, was talking about – hope, maybe, could it be? – was something concrete and worth fighting for.
‘It’s galloping right-wing fascism or authoritarianism right now with Nixon,’ Edith said, ‘and not even the right kind, and if I write for the underground press, it’s only like saying, why in hell not have some fun out of the situation? Why’re you being so serious about it? I mean – what good are you doing, just saying Nixon ought to be kicked out? At least I make a mockery of Nixon’s filthy methods of eliminating opponents who – who still —’
Gert rolled from side to side on the sofa, and Edith thought of Mother Earth, swinging in its course, summer, winter, tipping its axis. ‘Edie, I’m worried about you,’ Gert said.
Edith was – if she was frank with herself – a little worried about herself also, mentally, psychically, and yet, what was wrong? Her health was fine, the house was certainly not a shambles, she and Cliffie were making it financially, and she was holding a job, plus doing several hours a week of Bugle work. ‘Well, tell me more,’ Edith said finally.
‘You’ve been through so much in the last three or four years – Brett, George’s death, Melanie’s death, Cliffie drinking too much, let’s face it,’ Gert said in a lower tone with a glance at Edith, though Cliffie’s transistor was on at nearly full blast, playing something that sounded like ‘Ring around the Rosie.’ Gert went on, ‘But believe me, I think you’re doing well.’
Edith was impatient. It sounded like a word of comfort for the dying. ‘To get down to brass tacks, did you tell Brett I needed a psychiatrist or something like that?’
‘Well, yes, I did,’ Gert said with her flat Pennsylvania accent. ‘No harm in it, Edie. I really am worried and so is Norm. Just a little guidance sometimes – talking things over with someone —’
‘This one didn’t want to talk. Or he hasn’t rung me back in the last – what is it?’
‘You wouldn’t object to seeing someone, would you? The way people have physical check-ups, that’s all,’ Gert said with a roly-poly shrug.
‘No. But he might’ve come here in his true colors. Maybe they’re both drawing up papers now, coming to get me in a strait-jacket?’ Edith smiled at her old friend Gert, feeling that Gert was not such a good friend, was not and never had been as straightforward as Edith had always given her credit for being.
‘It’s not like that at all, Edie. You know, if you could talk with a psychiatrist about your worries, discouragements and so forth – all those things could get straightened out. Brett said he’d pay for it, by the way. So if you’re willing – It wouldn’t have to be this fellow you met the —’
‘I hope not. He didn’t look outstandingly bright to begin with. A G.C.B. Cliffie called him, Grand Crashing Bore. Looked like a Nixon-voter. Well —’ Edith tried to be cheerful, in the manner of someone who had just been told he had leukaemia, cancer or some such. ‘I’m willing, I suppose.’
Gert seemed heartened. ‘Dreams also – if you can remember them.’
Edith made no comment. Out of twelve dreams, she might remember one. They were weird rather than frightening, she thought, and half the time comical. Gert declined coffee, but agreed to a short rye. All they had been talking about seemed so unimportant compared to Nixon’s save-my-skin tactics now, the fact that a powerful country had no leadership now. Nixon was promising a total pull-out from Viet Nam, announced figures proudly – ‘Another f
ive hundred home this week!’ – because the country was full of people like the Johnsons who wanted their sons home, of course, but Nixon made no comment on the philosophy or strategy of being in Viet Nam in the first place or of pulling out now. Now that he was scared about his office, he was going to China to fill the TV screens with pictures of himself on the Great Wall, no doubt, and using chopsticks. Shades of George Orwell and 1984. Distract the public from the real issues!