During the lunch he informed me that they had decided to take a ride out on Long Island, perhaps spend the night there somewhere. Why couldn’t I come along? I said I had made a date with Ulric. «That’s all right,» he said, «bring your friend Ulric along. I haven’t much use for him, but if it’ll make you any happier, sure we’ll pick up, why not?» I tried to tell him that Ulric might not be so eager to join us. He wouldn’t listen. «Hell’ come,» he said, «you leave that to me. We’ll go out to Montauk Point or Shelter Island and just lie around and take it easy—it’ll do you good. As for that Jane you’re worrying about, why forget it! If she likes you she’ll come round by herself. Treat ’em rough, that’s what I always say, eh Tess?» and with that he gave his wife a dig in the ribs that knocked the breath out of her.
Tess Molloy was what you’d call a good-natured Irish slob. She was about the homeliest woman I’ve ever seen, broad in the beam, pock-marked, her hair scant and stringy (she was getting bald), but jolly and indolent, always ready to fight at the drop of the hat. MacGregor had married her for purely practical reasons. They had never pretended to be in love with one another. There was scarcely even an animal affection between them since, as he had readily explained to me shortly after their marriage, sex didn’t mean a thing to her. She didn’t mind being diddled now and then, but she got no pleasure from it. «Are you through?» she would ask every now and then. If he took too long a time over it she would ask him to fetch her a drink or bring her something to eat. «I got so damned sore at her once that I brought her the newspaper to read. ‘Now go ahead and read,’ I says to her, ‘and see that you don’t miss the comic strip!’»
I thought we’d have a hard time persuading Ulric to come along. He had only met MacGregor a few times and each time he had shaken his head as though to say—«It beats me!» To my surprise Ulric greeted MacGregor quite cordially. He had just been promised a fat check for a new can of beans he was to do next week and he was in a mood to lay off work for a while. He had just been out to get himself a few bottles of liquor. There had been no phone call from Mara, of course. There wouldn’t be any, not for a week or two, thought Ulric. Have a drink!
MacGregor was impressed by a magazine cover that Ulric had just finished. It was a picture of a man with a golf bag just setting out for the greens. MacGregor found it extremely life-like. «I didn’t know you were that good,» he said with his customary tactlessness. «What do you get for a job like that, if I may ask?» Ulric told him. His respect deepened. Meanwhile his wife had spied a water color which she liked. «Did you do that?» she asked. Ulric nodded. «I’d like to buy it,» she said. «How much do you want for it?» Ulric said he would be glad to give it to her when it was finished. «It’s not finished yet, you mean?» she screamed. «It looks finished to me. I don’t care, I’ll take it anyway, just as it is. Will you take twenty dollars for it?»
«Now listen, you fathead,» said MacGregor, giving her a playful ox-like poke on the jaw which knocked the glass out of her hand, «the man says it ain’t finished yet; what do you want to do, make a liar out of him?»
«I’m not saying it’s finished,» she said, «and I didn’t call him a liar. I like it just as it is and I want to buy it.»
«Well, buy it then, by Jesus, and get done with it!»
«No, really, I couldn’t let you take it in that condition,» said Ulric. «Besides, it’s not good enough to sell—it’s just a sketch.»
«That doesn’t matter,» said Tess Molloy, «I want it. I’ll give you thirty dollars for it.»
«You just said twenty a minute ago,» put in MacGregor. «What’s the matter with you, are you nuts? Didn’t you ever buy a picture before? Listen, Ulric, you’d better let her have it or else we’ll never get started. I’d like to do a little fishing before the day’s over, what do you say? Of course this bird»—indicating me with his thumb—«doesn’t like fishing; he wants to sit and mope, dream about love, study the sky and that kind of crap. Come on, let’s get going. Yeah, that’s right, take a bottle along—we might want a swig of it before we get there.»
Tess took the water color from the wall and left a twenty dollar bill on the desk.
«Better take it with you,» warned MacGregor. «No telling who may break in while we’re gone.»
After we had gone a block or so it occurred to me s that I ought to have left a note for Mara on the doorbell. «Oh, fuck that idea!» said MacGregor. «Give her something to worry about—they like that. Eh Toots?» and again he poked his wife in the ribs.
«If you poke me again like that,» said she, «I’ll wrap this bottle around your neck. I mean it too.»
«She means it.» he said, glancing back at us with a bright nickel-plated sort of smile. «You can’t prod her too much, can you Toots? Yep, she’s got a good disposition—otherwise she’d never have stood me as long as she has, ain’t that right, kid?»
«Oh, shut up! Look where you’re driving. We don’t want this car smashed up like the other one.»
«We don’t?» he yelled. «Jesus, I like that. And who, may I ask, ran into the milk truck on the Hempstead Turnpike in broad daylight?»
«Oh, forget it!»
They kept it up like that until way past Jamaica. Suddenly he quit pestering and nagging her and, looking though the mirror, he began talking to us about his conception of art and life. It was all right, he thought, to go in for that sort of thing—meaning pictures and all that humbug—provided one had the talent for it. A good artist was worth his money, that was his opinion. The proof was that he got it, if you noticed. Anybody who was any good always got recognition, that’s what he wanted to say. Wasn’t that so? Ulric said he thought so too. Not always, of course, but generally speaking. Of course, there were fellows like Gauguin, MacGregor went on, and Christ knows they were good artists, but then there was some strange quirk in them, something antisocial, if you wanted to call it that, which prevented them from being recognized immediately. You couldn’t blame the public for that, could you? Some people were born unlucky, that’s how he saw it. Now take himself, for instance. He wasn’t an artist, to be sure, but then he wasn’t a dud either. In his way he was as good as the next fellow, maybe just a little bit better. And yet, just to prove how uncertain everything could be, nothing he had put his hand to had turned out right. Sometimes a little shyster had gotten the better of him. And why? Because he, MacGregor, wouldn’t stoop to doing certain things. There are things you just don’t do, he insisted. No sir! and he banged the wheel emphatically. But that’s the way they play the game, and they get away with it too. But not forever! Ah no!
«Now you take Maxfield Parrish,» he continued. «I suppose he doesn’t count, but just the same he gives ’em what they want. While a guy like Gauguin has to struggle for a crust of bread—and even when he’s dead they spit in his eye. It’s a queer game, art. I suppose it’s like everything else—you do it because you like it, that’s about the size of it, what? Now you take that bastard sitting alongside of you—yeah you!» he said, grinning at me through the mirror— «he thinks we ought to support him, nurse him along until he writes his masterpiece. He never thinks that he might look for a job meanwhile. Oh no, he wouldn’t soil his lily-white hands that way. He’s an artist. Well, maybe he is, for all I know. But he’s got to prove it first, am I right? Did anybody support me because I thought I was a lawyer? It’s all right to have dreams—we all like to dream—but somebody has to pay the rent.»
We had just passed a duck farm. «Now that’s what I’d like,» said MacGregor. «I’d like nothing better than to settle down and raise ducks. Why don’t I? Because I’ve got sense enough to know that I don’t know anything about ducks. You can’t just dream them up—you’ve got to raise them! Now Henry there, if he took it into his head to raise ducks, he’d just move out here and dream about it. First he’d ask me to lend him some money, of course.
