Randolph Hearst estate, a gloomy pair of Gothic «easy» chairs; she bought the
complete Modern Library, shelves of classical records, innumerable. Metropolitan
Museum reproductions (including a statue of a Chinese cat that her own cat hated
and hissed at and ultimately broke), a Waring mixer and a pressure cooker and a
library of cook books. She spent whole hausfrau afternoons slopping about in the
sweatbox of her midget kitchen: «José says I’m better than the Colony. Really, who
would have dreamed I had such a great natural talent? A month ago I couldn’t
scramble eggs.» And still couldn’t, for that matter. Simple dishes, steak, a proper
salad, were beyond her. Instead, she fed José, and occasionally myself, outré soups
(brandied black terrapin poured into avocado shells) Nero-ish novelties (roasted
pheasant stuffed with pomegranates and persimmons) and other dubious innovations
(chicken and saffron rice served with a chocolate sauce: «An East Indian classic, my
dear.») Wartime sugar and cream rationing restricted her imagination when it came
to sweets — nevertheless, she once managed something called Tobacco Tapioca:
best not describe it.
Nor describe her attempts to master Portuguese, an ordeal as tedious to me as it
was to her, for whenever I visited her an album of Linguaphone records never
ceased rotating on the phonograph. Now, too, she rarely spoke a sentence that did
not begin, «After we’re married — » or «When we move to Rio — » Yet José had never
suggested marriage. She admitted it. «But, after all, he knows I’m preggers. Well, I
am, darling. Six weeks gone. I don’t see why that should surprise you. It didn’t me.
Not un peu bit. I’m delighted. I want to have at least nine. I’m sure some of them
will be rather dark — José has a touch of le nègre, I suppose you guessed that?
Which is fine by me: what could be prettier than a quite coony baby with bright
green beautiful eyes? I wish, please don’t laugh — but I wish I’d been a virgin for
him, for José. Not that I’ve warmed the multitudes some people say: I don’t blame
the bastards for saying it, I’ve always thrown out such a jazzy line. Really, though, I
toted up the other night, and I’ve only had eleven lovers — not counting anything
that happened before I was thirteen because, after all, that just doesn’t count.
Eleven. Does that make me a whore? Look at Mag Wildwood. Or Honey Tucker. Or
Rose Ellen Ward. They’ve had the old clap-yo’-hands so many times it amounts to
applause. Of course I haven’t anything against whores. Except this: some of them
may have an honest tongue but they all have dishonest hearts. I mean, you can’t
bang the guy and cash his checks and at least not try to believe you love him. I
never have. Even Benny Shacklett and all those rodents. I sort of hypnotized myself
into thinking their sheer rattiness had a certain allure. Actually, except for Doc, if you
want to count Doc, José is my first non-rat romance. Oh, he’s not my idea of the
absolute finito. He tells little lies and he worries what people think and he takes
about fifty baths a day: men ought to smell somewhat. He’s too prim, too cautious to
be my guy ideal; he always turns his back to get undressed and he makes too much
noise when he eats and I don’t like to see him run because there’s something funnylooking about him when he runs. If I were free to choose from everybody alive, just
snap my fingers and say come here you, I wouldn’t pick José. Nehru, he’s nearer the
mark. Wendell Wilkie. I’d settle for Garbo any day. Why not? A person ought to be
able to marry men or women or — listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to
hitch up with Man o’ War, I’d respect your feeling. No, I’m serious. Love should be
allowed. I’m all for it. Now that I’ve got a pretty good idea what it is. Because I do
love José — I’d stop smoking if he asked me to. He’s friendly, he can laugh me out of
the mean reds, only I don’t have them much any more, except sometimes, and even
then they’re not so hideola that I gulp Seconal or have to haul myself to Tiffany’s: I
take his suit to the cleaner, or stuff some mushrooms, and I feel fine, just great.
Another thing, I’ve thrown away my horoscopes. I must have spent a dollar on every
goddamn star in the goddamn planetarium. It’s a bore, but the answer, is good
things only happen to you if you’re good. Good? Honest is more what I mean. Not
law-type honest — I’d rob a grave, I’d steal two-bits off a dead man’s eyes if I
thought it would contribute to the day’s enjoyment — but unto-thyself-type honest.
Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I’d rather have
cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn’t being pious. Just practical. Cancer may
cool you, but the other’s sure to. Oh, screw it, cookie — hand me my guitar, and I’ll
sing you a fada in the most perfect Portuguese.»
Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn,
are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had
reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than
in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and
chasing about that produce a friendship’s more showy, more, in the surface sense,
dramatic moments. Frequently, when he was out of town (I’d developed hostile
attitudes toward him, and seldom used his name) we spent entire evenings together
during which we exchanged less than a hundred words; once, we walked all the way
to Chinatown, ate a chow-mein supper, bought some paper lanterns and stole a box
of joss sticks, then moseyed across the Brooklyn Bridge, and on the bridge, as we
watched seaward-moving ships pass between the cliffs of burning skyline, she said:
«Years from now, years and years, one of those ships will bring me back, me and my
nine Brazilian brats. Because yes, they must see this, these lights, the river — I love
New York, even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street
or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.» And I
said: «Do shut up,» for I felt infuriatingly left out — a tugboat in drydock while she,
glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbor with whistles
whistling and confetti in the air. So the days, the last days, blow about in memory,
hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves: until a day unlike any other I’ve lived.
It happened to fall on the 30th of September, my birthday, a fact which had no
effect on events, except that, expecting some form of monetary remembrance from
my family, I was eager for the postman’s morning visit. Indeed, I went downstairs
and waited for him. If I had not been loitering in the vestibule, then Holly would not
have asked me to go horseback riding; and would not, consequently, have had the
opportunity to save my life.
«Come on,» she said, when she found me awaiting the postman. «Let’s walk a
couple of horses around the park.» She was wearing a windbreaker and a pair of blue
jeans and tennis shoes; she slapped her stomach, drawing attention to its flatness:
«Don’t think I’m out to lose the heir. But there’s a horse, my darling old Mabel
Minerva — I can’t go without saying good-bye to Mabel Minerva.»
«Good-bye?»
«A week from Saturday. José bought the tickets.» In rather a trance, I let her lead
me down to the street. «We change planes in Miami. Then over the sea. Over the
Andes. Taxi!»
Over the Andes. As we rode in a cab across Central Park it seemed to me as
though I, too, were flying, desolately floating over snow-peaked and perilous
territory.
«But you can’t. After all, what about. Well, what about. Well, you can’t really run
off and leave everybody.»
«I don’t think anyone will miss me. I have no friends.»
«I will. Miss you. So will Joe Bell. And oh — millions. Like Sally. Poor Mr. Tomato.»
«I loved old Sally,» she said, and sighed. «You know I haven’t been to see him in a
month? When I told him I was going away, he was an angel. Actually» — she frowned
— «he seemed delighted that I was leaving the country. He said it was all for the
best. Because sooner or later there might be trouble. If they found out I wasn’t his
real niece. That fat lawyer, O’Shaughnessy, O’Shaughnessy sent me five hundred
dollars. In cash. A wedding present from Sally.»
I wanted to be unkind. «You can expect a present from me, too. When, and if, the
wedding happens.»
She laughed. «He’ll marry me, all right. In church. And with his family there.
That’s why we’re waiting till we get to Rio.»
«Does he know you’re married already?»
«What’s the matter with you? Are you trying to ruin the day? It’s a beautiful day:
leave it alone!»
«But it’s perfectly possible — «
«It isn’t possible. I’ve told you, that wasn’t legal. It couldn’t be.» She rubbed her
nose, and glanced at me sideways. «Mention that to a living soul, darling. I’ll hang
you by your toes and dress you for a hog.»
The stables — I believe they have been replaced by television studios — were on
West Sixty-sixth street Holly selected for me an old sway-back black and white
mare: «Don’t worry, she’s safer than a cradle.» Which, in my case, was a necessary
guarantee, for ten-cent pony rides at childhood carnivals were the limit of my
equestrian experience. Holly helped hoist me into the saddle, then mounted her own
horse, a silvery animal that took the lead as we jogged across the traffic of Central
Park West and entered a riding path dappled with leaves denuding
