Jack and Susan in 1933 (12 page)

“Why are you telling me this?” he said at last.

“You asked me,” Susan replied. “I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that you wanted the truth.”

“I'm not certain I got the truth,” said Marcellus Rhinelander.

“You got what you thought you'd hear if I did tell the truth,” said Susan. “You think I'm a gold digger. You think I seduced the man you wanted for a son-in law. Though I think it only just to point out that Barbara spoiled that little plan first, by marrying Mr. Beaumont of the interminable legs. You think that I have connived, and subterfuged—is there such a word?—and played wanton, played virgin, played coquette, played whatever role was necessary to marry a man who hasn't seen a sober sunset or a sober sunrise in ten years.”

Marcellus Rhinelander didn't answer. Obviously, it was what he thought.

“It's what your daughter thinks of me, too,” said Susan.

“But it's not all the truth, is it?” said Marcellus Rhinelander. Susan liked him for that. A little, anyway.

“No, of course it isn't all the truth. I'm very fond of Harmon. How could anyone not be? Harmon is very fond of me. I'm already a good wife to him, insofar as I'm the kind of wife that least disturbs his peace of mind. I don't try to stop his drinking. I don't tell him to work harder or to bring home more money. I don't try to make him take me out more—if anything, there are many evenings I'd rather stay home. I don't ask where he's been, what he's been doing, or who he's been doing it with. I try to appear as beautiful, and as happy, and as in love with him as I can. Certainly, if you're afraid that I'm spending all his money, you needn't concern yourself. I don't accept half what he tries to give me. I didn't want to be rich— I've been that. I just didn't want my entire life to revolve around that damned two dollars a week. I think Harmon loves me as much as he could love any woman who hangs around more than six weeks or so, and I think I love Harmon as much as I could love any man I married for his money.” Susan swallowed off the last of the port in her glass. “That's still not all the truth,” she concluded, “but it's most of it, I think.”

“I believe you,” said Marcellus Rhinelander. “Now the question is, why are you telling it to me?”

“Because I want you to believe the worst of me, that is, what you've believed all along, so that I'll never be invited back to another of these dreadful dinners.”

“Not a chance,” returned Marcellus Rhinelander, blowing out a blue cloud of smoke from his cigar. “We're having dinner again tomorrow night. Now that I've heard the truth, or most of it, I've come to the conclusion that you are the best possible wife for Harmon Dodge. And beyond that, I've decided I like you.”

“I don't like you,” returned Susan. “Not one little bit.”

“Quite beside the point, really.”

He called the next day and Susan said that she didn't want to return to the Cliffs for dinner.

The Bolshie will pick you up at seven.

“He might not be a Bolshie if you treated him decently,” said Susan.

The man's paid better than any chauffeur on the Hudson. I built a house for him and his wife, and it's bigger than the house I grew up in.

“What about the dalmatians?”

A warning, so that he doesn't try to assassinate me.

“In any case,” said Susan, “don't bother sending him over. Because I don't want to have dinner with you tonight.”

I promised Harmon I'd take care of you while you were staying at the Quarry. In fact, you have no business being there alone. When the Bolshie picks you up, I'll send one of the extra maids over. I'll send Louise. She can cook and she knows how to handle a gun. Killed a thief over here once; only took her five shots.

“No, Mr. Rhinelander. Don't send Mr. Grace, don't send Louise. I'll tell Harmon that you've done everything possible to make me happy. And if you leave me alone, you'll be doing just that.”

She rang off.

The Bolshie showed up at seven. Susan came out with a broom, in case the dalmatians mistook her political leanings, and told Richard Grace to go back to the Cliffs. Before Richard Grace could reply, the door opposite the driver opened and a young woman with a fierce expression stepped out. She was carrying a suitcase in one hand and a large revolver in the other.

“I'm Louise,” she said. “I know the place and can find a room on my own.” Before Susan could reply, Louise marched up the steps and into the house.

The back door of the touring car opened and Marcellus Rhinelander himself stepped out.

“I told you,” said Susan, “I'm not going to the Cliffs tonight.”

“I knew you wouldn't,” said Marcellus Rhinelander. “You're just that sort of person, aren't you? So that's why our Socialist friend here is going to return to the Cliffs and bring back Grace and our dinner. Your husband's cellar is a trivial thing, Mrs. Dodge, so I've taken the liberty of bringing a few bottles that aren't entirely unpotable. Comrade Grace,” he said, turning to the chauffeur, “if you aren't too occupied with your plans for a Socialist utopia, could you please bring in that small crate?”

Louise served the dinner, which was an embalmed duck with a bullion aspic, tinned asparagus again but crowned tonight with limp pimento rings, and for dessert an overly generous portion of frozen prune whip. Susan wondered edgily where Louise kept her revolver.

The evening was pleasanter than Susan could have predicted. Scotty and Zelda sat quietly on either side of Susan's chair, and even when Marcellus Rhinelander called them with scraps of the embalmed duck, dripping with aspic, they wouldn't go till Susan said, “All right.” Having told Marcellus Rhinelander so much truth the night before, Susan wasn't able to retreat into politeness and avoidances with the man.

“Don't talk about politics,” she pleaded with him.

“You find them boring? Most women do.”

“I don't find them boring. I just think you're entirely wrong. I find your opinions either wrong-headed, reprehensible, or simply bizarre.”

“Of course they are,” he laughed. “What sort of pompous old fool would I be without them? I'm all alone, my dear Mrs. Dodge. My wife is dead, though I never particularly cared for her, and she certainly never cared for me. My daughter has married and moved away, though one hundred and fifty miles seems rather too short a distance where Barbara is concerned. The few friends I made in my youth are either indicted for crimes, members of the national legislature, or dead—and some of them are all three. What fills my life? Newspapers, and begging letters from relatives I never knew I had, and a law practice that takes a couple of hours of a couple of afternoons every other week. You must never, never tell him, my dear Mrs. Dodge, but I would positively shrivel up and die if Richard Grace ever left my employ. I'll tell you something else I suspect: If the revolution came, I think I'd see Richard Grace at the door, defending my person and my possessions with his life.”

Susan didn't honestly believe this last to be the case, but she didn't think badly of Marcellus Rhinelander for deceiving himself on this little point. The man's honestly disarmed her, and she increasingly liked him, even though Barbara Beaumont's father was not the sort of man you gave your trust to with a whole heart and head. When the man has been trained as a lawyer, you have to be doubly careful. Susan's mother, who was daughter, sister, and wife to lawyers, had always stressed this maxim. But tonight was tonight, and there wasn't much that he could do to her in her own home, so she smiled at him and she laughed at his moribund philosophy, and when he asked her, “Is there anything that you regret from your two-dollar-a-week existence, Mrs. Dodge?” Susan once more told the truth.

“I miss an audience.”

“Ah, your singing.”

“Yes.”

“Sing for me. I'll be your audience.”

Susan didn't demurely demur. “I'd love to,” she said. “May I invite Louise and the Graces to listen?”

“Only if you tell them that I vehemently protested against their presence.”

“They wouldn't believe me if I told them otherwise,” said Susan.

Louise sat by the door as if guarding against the intrusion of persons who did not have a ticket. The Graces sat on an ugly little love seat covered in silk. Marcellus Rhinelander sat opposite, where he could glower at the servants to greatest effect. Though he did offer his chauffeur a glass of his best port, he remarked, “The stuff is almost undrinkable anyway,” as he handed it over.

Susan accompanied herself with simple chords and didn't bother bringing down the sheaf of music she'd brought with her from Manhattan. She sang the old songs she knew from before the Villa Vanity. Songs she had sung in duet with her mother back in Boston. Simple songs by Mr. Work and Mr. Foster. Her audience knew the songs and they joined in on the chorus. It even turned out that Marcellus Rhinelander had a rich tenor, and Richard Grace had not a bad bass. Grace was tone deaf, but Louise could do harmony, though she sang everything rather as if she were standing behind one of her husband's revolutionary barricades.

Susan, as she sang and urged the others to sing with her, thought about what Marcellus Rhinelander had said earlier about his wife, his daughter, and his friends—and told her to what his life had been reduced. Susan felt the same, as if her own life had been reduced to this. This cold room in this large house between the Catskills and the river, singing the old songs to three servants and a man she probably ought not to like at all.

She felt reduced, but she didn't feel very bad about it.

H
ARMON CALLED HER
every day from the office to tell her how desperately unhappy he was in her absence. Susan replied that it was very lonely in the country, that her heart was breaking without him, but that the dogs still needed considerable training before they'd be fit to take up a residence in the penthouse.

Is Marcellus taking care of you?

“Oh yes,” said Susan vaguely. “He's even lent me one of his maids.”

Is it the one with the pistol?

“Yes. Louise.”

So you're not
too
lonely?

“Except for you, of course. But I rub along.”

As do I. I'm going out with Barbara and Jack tonight to some dreadful O'Neill thing. It should be over by Saturday or so, I suppose, and as they're driving up, perhaps I'll come along.

“Oh do,” said Susan, wishing he wouldn't. In just a few weeks she'd grown accustomed to life at the Quarry. Despite what she'd told her husband, Susan hardly felt alone. Scotty and Zelda frolicked at her heels, Louise was always in the kitchen, making sandwiches or polishing her revolver, dinner was always with Marcellus, alternating evenings at the Quarry and at the Cliffs. And, at either place, music afterward. Marcellus, Susan discovered, was a fair accompanist himself, and sometimes he'd even sing one of the Verdi arias he usually reserved for the last wee, drunken hours of the nightwatch. Though he was her husband, and though the Quarry was his home, Harmon's coming seemed very much an intrusion to Mrs. Dodge.

Marcellus Rhinelander felt the same, and he didn't hesitate to tell Susan as much.