What to Do About It, F. Scott Fitzgerald

I

The girl hung around under the pink sky waiting for something to happen. She was not a particularly vague person but she was vague tonight: the special dusk was new, practically new, after years under far skies; it had strange little lines in the trees, strange little insects, unfamiliar night cries of strange small beasts beginning.

—Those arc frogs, she thought, or no, those are grillons—what is it in English?—those are crickets up by the pond.

—That is either a swallow or a bat, she thought; then again the difference of trees—then back to love and such practical things. And back again to the different trees and shadows, skies and noises—such as the auto horns and the barking dog up by the Philadelphia turnpike…

The dog was barking at a man at whom it presently sniffed; finding nothing either hostile or ingratiating, he nosed around and wanted to play. The man was on his way to meet the girl, though as yet he was unaware of it; he continued to sit in the middle of the dirt lane and try to wrest a 1927 tire-lock of its prey.

“Get away, you animal!” he exuded, and muttering unwillingly he returned to the lock, which was an excellent job of steel and ingenuity and had only half yielded to his inadequate chisel.

He was not a burglar—he was a doctor and this was his car and had been for some months, during which the “rubber on it” in salesmen’s jargon had endured beyond modest expectations. Turning into the lane from the main road he became aware that the rubber had yielded gently to the pressure of time, thus accounting for the inaccuracy of the steering wheel. This he had noticed immediately after leaving the hospital.

“The old boy could have come in his sedan,” he muttered, “He’s getting lazy. In most businesses they’d send him to the minors—in ours we endow them.”

From overhearing this bellyache an interested observer might have deduced that Doctor Bill Hardy belonged to the latest and most irreverent of generations. He was little less than tall, and standardly welded, rather like the 1927 tire lock, and his thoughts in this moment of recuperation were inspired by the fact that his boss, the distinguished Doctor C.H.L Hines, had delegated to him the most unpleasant of duties—to visit, console and administer to a chronic female hypochondriac of a certain age, on an evening when he had important business of his own.

He was too good a doctor to have confused duty with personal pleasure but in this case the line between the two was drawn very close: there was the woman in a southerly suburb of the city who must be called upon, consoled, or at least got rid of with tact, and there was this woman in the mansion at the lane’s end who needed nothing yet considered that she did, but who poured twenty-five dollars fortnightly into Doctor C.H.L. Hines’ coffers for the reassurance that her heart was not stopping and that she had neither leprosy nor what she referred to as “the bubonic.” Usually Dr. Hines did the reassuring. This evening he had merely rolled to the telephone and mumbled, “Look, Bill, I’m about to begin dressing for an engagement m’wife’nI’ve looked for’d to for ages. Go out see what you can do with the damn—with Mrs. Brickster.”

Bill adjusted the chisel and the gong—it was a curious thing he had found under the seat that he thought of as a gong because it gave out a ringing sound—and struck a discouraged blow. To his surprise the lock yielded: he was so inspired by his own mechanical, or archaeological, achievement that ten minutes later he was able to roll down the lane to face his case. Shutting off the motor and backing out of the car he confronted the girl.

Confronted is exact: for on her part she noticed his arrival with merely a hopeful surprise. She was eighteen with such a skin as the Italian painters of the decadence used for corner angels, and all the wishing in the world glistening in her grey eyes.

“How do you do—I’m Doctor Hardy, Dr. Hines’ assistant. Mrs.

Brickster phoned—”

“Oh, how do you do. I’m Miss Mason, Mrs. Brickster’s daughter.”

The red dusk was nearly gone but she had advanced into the last patch of it.“Mother’s out but is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“Is there anything I can do,” he corrected her.

She smiled a little. “Well, I don’t think I know you well enough to decide that for you.”

“I mean tonight—is there anything I can do tonight?”

“I couldn’t even tell you that, Dr. Hines—”

“No. I’m Dr. Hardy, Dr. Hines’ assistant.”

“—excuse me, Doctor Hardy. We give a cup of coffee in the kitchen and what small change is in the house.”

Bill realized in the course of this last that all was not according to Aristotelian logic. He reconsidered, began again;

“I was called from this house, Miss Mason, to treat your mother. If she has been taken away—”

“Father took her away.”

“Oh—I’m sorry—what was the matter?”

“She found that the Chicago Opera Company was doing Louise.”

“Oh I see,” Bill agreed. Yet he didn’t see, for in the thickening dust the girl was dazzling his vision a little, “You mean she can’t stand Louise—I know;

I had an aunt who could never—”

“This is getting sadder and sadder, Dr. Hines—”

“No. Hardy, Dr. Hines’ assistant.”

“—excuse me, Doctor Hardy. But when aunts begin to appear in the picture you wonder just what are we driving at! Mother went toward Louise, not away from it. But she left rather suddenly with father carrying his cuff buttons. I’ve just come home after some years away and just met my new father and I’m trying to get adjusted. If somebody in the house is sick I don’t know who it is. Mother said nothing about it to me.”

“Then your mother isn’t sick? She didn’t phone Dr. Hines? It’s all a mistake?”

“She didn’t seem sick starting for the opera.”

“Well, suppose—well, suppose we give it up.” He looked at Miss Mason once more and decided not to. “I mean suppose we check up. I’ll give you the address of a physicians’ exchange and you phone and see if they received such a call. I won’t even take coffee or small change—I’ll wait out here in the car.”

“All right,” she agreed. “It’d be better to straighten out the situation.” … When she appeared on the verandah some minutes later she had an envelope in her hand.

“Excuse me, Dr. Hines—you were perfectly right. Mother did call the doctor—”

“My name is Hardy.”

“Well—let’s not start that over again; she called up whichever you two is which; I’m sorry to seem discourteous, but for all I know you might be a racketeersman.”

He kept his laugh secret as he said:

“That leaves us where we were before—unless your mother expects me between the acts at the opera.”

She handed him the envelope.

“I found this on the hall table going out—addressed to Doctor—”—stopping herself in time she said gently while he took the letter to his headlights, for it had grown too dark for the sky’s light. “…I hope it clarifies matters.”

Dear Doctor

I really called you about the boy, as I am again growing interested in domestic affairs, as you suggested, and it is very successful But my husband and I thought it would be better for me to go out so, I went out, especially as there was an opera I especially wanted to see. Or we may go to a movie. Almost anything to get one’s mind off myself, as you suggested. So sorry if I hare caused you any trouble.

Sincerely

Anne Marshall Mason Brickster

P.S. I meant to stay and tell you about the boy but my husband felt I should get away. He told me he stole the bluga. I don’t know what the bluga is but I’m sure he shouldn’t do it at his age.

A.M.M.B.

Bill switched his car lights from dim to white; by the new brilliance he looked at the letter again—it read the same; the boy had stolen the bluga, the woman wanted something done about it. For the first time a dim appreciation of the problems which Dr. Hines was called upon to face, and to which he himself was to succeed, brought a dim, sympathetic sweat to his temples. He turned abruptly to the girl.

“Now, when did you miss the bruga?”

“What bruga?”

No go.

“The brunga?”

She edged away, faintly but perceptibly, and Bill covered himself by telling all:

“Here: your brother has evidently taken something that doesn’t belong to him. Your parents want to see the why and wherefore of it. Can you make out this word?”

Their heads were close together under the light, so that his brisk blond sidelocks scratched her cheek while a longer tenuous end of gold silk touched him materially in the corner of his eye, but really all over.

“I can’t help you out,” she said after a moment.

“I feel I should investigate,” he suggested.

“All right,” she agreed. “His light’s still on.”

She led the way through a hall adorned with the remnants of slain game. “Will you see him down here?” She paused at the foot of the stairs—“or in his boudoir?”

“Let’s go up,” Bill suggested; he had a lingering hope that the bruga might be triumphantly snatched up from under a pillow, and the whole situation cleared up by that moral lecture carried in the knapsack for instant production. The Loveliness led the way upstairs like a beacon that afterwards upon the verandah might illume the problems of a young doctor—or some such matter.

There seemed justification for the beginning of his hope, the solution of the