East Side Story (15 page)

"She does. And so does Sidney. Who's stopped drinking, believe it or not. He persuaded me to go to one of their meetings, which I reluctantly agreed to do. But I was electrified! I really was. And since then I've been to several more. Oh, I know what you're thinking, of course. Lots of our smart friends laugh at it. But those who see don't laugh. And I think I'm going to be one who sees. Oh, Alida, if we could be in this thing together!"

Alida could not deny that she had laughed at the Society. It was not a new religion but an intensification of religious feeling; its members were culled largely from Protestant sects, notably Episcopalians, for it had a distinctly fashionable following and its conventions were apt to be held in such summer communities as Newport, Bar Harbor, and Nahant. It had no temples of its own, though it sponsored several elegant rural centers, usually donated mansions of the rich, for retreat and meditation. Its primary focus was in congresses of the faithful where public avowals of sin and repentance were cheerfully and fervently proclaimed. Alida had amused a lunch table at the Martha Washington Club by pointing out how neatly it reversed the Christian story. It was as if, she maintained, the early fathers had started at the peak rather than the nadir of their fortunes: in the court of Constantine rather than in a manger.

"Would you object terribly, Alida, if I invited Dr. Forman to come and dine with us? He's dying to meet you."

Well, of course she did object, but she was too wise to say so, and she agreed that the bid should be given. She had heard Forman lecture at her club and had deplored him. He was a small, dry, plump sexagenarian with thick steely gray hair, a rodent-like face, and a soft, mellifluous voice surprisingly capable of rising to a ringing tone when he came to a climax in his address. He was reputed to have been a dentist, somewhere in the northern Middle West, and to have abandoned his profession—and some said his family—to answer the call of God and rekindle the ebbing faith of dwellers on the Atlantic coast. He had enjoyed an extraordinary success, as astounding to his critics as it seemed natural, or even of divine origin, to his converts, who opened their ears to his purring persuasion and their purses to his ever-reaching hand.

Alida wondered how even a woman as intelligent as Peggy Tulliver could believe that any deity would have chosen such an emissary. But she was resolved to keep an open mind until she had thoroughly examined the field.

She broke down, however, on her first meeting with the new evangelist. His unctuousness undid her. She could sense his glee at the hope of winning over such a prize as the former Alida Livingston, and his chatter was strewn with honeyed references to the distinguished lady converts whom he had reason to believe, did he not, were among his hostess's friends.

"I know plenty of people, Dr. Forman," she was at last provoked to retort, "but I'm not in a mood tonight to tell you who they are."

But this, she saw at once, was a sad mistake. Forman, of course, knew just how to parry such a blow.

"Ah, dear lady, I had no intention of invading your privacy. I know well from your dear husband how you cherish the inviolability of the wonderful home you have created for him and your beautiful children."

After that, and under Sam's admonishing stare, she had to spend the balance of the evening being gracious to the odious little man.

In the months that followed, Alida failed in her every effort to persuade her husband to take the Society less seriously. He met all her objections to it with the bland and cheerful stubborn rebuttals of the convert on the road to Damascus. What was even more irritating was his serene assurance that time was bound eventually to bring around as goodhearted a listener as his spouse to a cause so shiningly true. Their son Pierre and younger daughter, Eliza, were tolerantly amused by his new enthusiasm, which they regarded as one of those understandable if mildly pathetic refuges for the aging (which, thank God, they were not yet) against the fear of approaching death. Alberta, however, took the matter more seriously. She found the Society the potential answer to her father's biggest problem.

"Ma, have you seen Mr. Wagstaff recently?" she asked Alida. "No? Well, you'd find him a changed man. He claims he hasn't had a drink in six months, and I believe him. He looks ten years younger. And he's already persuaded Dad to cut down his drinks to one before lunch and two before dinner."

"But that's still a long way from curing an incipient alcoholic. Everyone knows that going cold turkey is the only real answer."

"True, but it's still a start. And Dad would never have done even that much without Dr. Forman's help. I know you look upon the man as a vulgar fraud, and I'm not saying you're entirely wrong, but Mr. Wagstaff told me that Forman believes strongly that if you could only bring yourself to take a little more interest in the Society and go to the meetings with Dad, he could get Dad off the booze entirely."

"No, Alberta! Attend those idiotic gatherings! Why, I'd be the laughingstock of all my friends."

"Not of all of them. Not by a long shot. What about Mrs. Tulliver?"

"Peggy Tulliver, Alberta, is the ass of asses."

"You didn't always think so. Couldn't you just try, Ma? For Dad's sake? For all our sakes?"

"But, child, you don't know what you're asking! Your father would not be in the least affected unless he believed in my absolute sincerity. He's nobody's fool, Alberta. And to convince him of that I'd have to be a better actress than I could ever imagine myself being."

"Mother, we all know you have the willpower to do anything you set your mind on. I know it's a great deal to ask of you. But, as the French say:
Pour les grands maux les grands rèmedes.
However, if you can't, you can't."

Alida didn't like her conclusion. That same day she called on her brother-in-law at his office. She had a great respect for David's perception, and besides, he was the family counsel. He listened to her carefully as she told him of Alberta's suggestion. Of course, he knew of his brother's interest in the Society.

"I think Alberta's quite right," he said at last. "It might well be the saving of Sam. And it shouldn't be too hard to convince him of your sincerity. Violent converts like himself are prone to believe in other violent conversions. And there's something else to be gained besides getting him off the sauce."

"Surely you don't mean
my
salvation!"

"Please, Alida, I'm not the village idiot. I know how phony the whole Society is. What I'm referring to is the way this man Forman manages to extract fortunes from his converts. I'm not going so far as to say they go into his pocket, but we know whose pockets they come out of. And let's not let one of them be Sam's. Once you're in the organization with him, you'll have much more say in what he gives or doesn't give."

"I doubt we have to worry much about that. A Carnochan is not Scottish for nothing."

"There can be strange exceptions to that rule."

T
HE NEXT YEAR
was an onerous one for Alida. She attended all the Society's meetings with an exultant husband who, as predicted by his brother, seemed not in the least surprised that the scales had fallen from her eyes. No doubt he attributed it to divine intervention, and why should it be surprising that the All Powerful should be able to turn the spirit of even the most reluctant mortal? He even boasted about it to his fellow reborns. The hardest part in the whole business for Alida was the necessity of keeping up the appearance of her supposed change of heart to the former dentist and his rapt followers. But it helped her that she feared that any apprehension on Sam's part that she was playing a game would probably put an end to his cure, and he had now given up drinking entirely. Her success might have been precarious, but so far it was complete.

No more complete, however, than her inner dejection. To appear before the world—
her
world, anyway—as an apostle of a ridiculous sect was a humiliation such as she had never conceived she could endure. Pierre and Eliza, who had not been told of the stratagem—Alida had not trusted their discretion—treated their mother's new "hobby" with the same condescending approval that they had accorded their father's, and Alberta, awestruck at her mother's skill and resolution at taking on so taxing a role, had to confine her admiration to applauding glances. But Alida's women friends, at her boards and clubs, were relentless in their acid comments.

"Is it true, Alida, that you've fallen for this mountebank?"

"Can one really have Forman for dinner?"

"What kind of magic did he pull on you?"

"You, Alida! Of all people! A priestess of the life of reason!"

And all she could do was to shake her head sadly, as if in sorrow at this demonstration of souls so benighted, and imply that she was waiting for the day to come when they, too, would comprehend the truth and the light. But it was torture, and she could only pray for the time when Sam might be pronounced cured and she could confess to a relapse to her old agnosticism.

But the worst had not yet come. The worst was what David had predicted. Sam, one night when they were dining alone, outlined to her gravely Dr. Forman's project for a splendid new retreat and meetinghouse in Westchester County, complete with a library of edifying works, a theater for spiritual dramas, a museum of religious art, and extensive gardens and walks for meditation and
recueillement.
Forman already had several pledges of "major gifts," and of course, he was looking to Sam for one.

"How much are you thinking of?" Alida's tone was very dry.

"Well, what would you say to half a million?"

She gasped. It was more than a quarter of what he was worth. "I'd say it was twenty times too much! What are you thinking of, Sam? How can you possibly contemplate taking such a hunk out of what we can leave the children?"

"But, Alida, my dear, if God tells us to do it?"

"He hasn't told me!"

"Perhaps you haven't been listening."

"Well, let us wait, then, till I've had a chance to. No, that is all I can say about this now, Sam." She had seen that he was about to protest vigorously. "I'll have to think it over. I'll need time. And I'll thank you in the meanwhile to make no commitments! I think you owe me that much, don't you?"

He bowed his head. "Of course."

She had gained a pause, only that. Sam would be patient for weeks, perhaps for months, but the day would come when Forman would put the necessary pressure on him, and when it came to choosing between God and his wife as to the disposition of funds earned by himself, it was easy to foretell whom he would select.

And now something new and ominous was beginning to simmer in her mind and heart. If Sam was turning himself into a different man from the one she had married, from the one she had loved and who had sired her children, if he had chosen, at the behest of an invented deity, to become the bland and fatuous factotum of a grinning parvenu whose greasy palm was outstretched for the family capital, was it not the remedy of his cheated spouse to play every card in her hand to reverse a losing game?

He had repeatedly and publicly given the Society full credit for his victory over alcohol; it was evident that in his mind he closely associated the two. It could not but occur to her that any lapse in his abstemiousness might be accompanied by a corresponding lapse in his fidelity to the God of Dr. Forman. If the Society failed him in his battle with the bottle, might it not fail him in other things? And might it not be better for her to be married to a sot than to a bigoted fanatic? Plus the fact that she might be saving her children's inheritance? For Forman would not be content with half a million. The pocket that had produced it would be deep enough for other grabs. She had to act.

But she could not do so until her anger had reached a boiling point. She would have almost to hate Sam. This, however, was not a state that it was hopeless to envision. Already her lip was curling with disdain as she watched him gloat over the long newsletters with which the indefatigable ex-dentist showered his faithful. He might consider himself reborn, he might see himself as a phoenix rising from the ashes of his former self, but what did he care for the charred remains of his spouse? Could she not see the degradation into which he had plunged her in the new attitude of her friends at the club? For they no longer jeered at her now; they had come to accept her as a sad lost cause and refrained from any reference to her religious affiliation in the same way that they avoided any reference to what they regarded as the "Roman superstition" in the hearing of their Irish maidservants. Useful inferiors should not be offended.

It had been her habit, in helping her husband to avoid temptation, to have her evening cocktail alone in her dressing room upstairs before joining Sam in the parlor before dinner and sharing his preprandial libation of tomato juice. But one night now, when the butler appeared in her retreat armed with his tray and the shaker, she directed him to take it below.

"I'll have it in the parlor tonight, Smithers."

In the presence of her keenly observing spouse she not only drank her usual glassful but poured herself a dividend from the shaker.

"Isn't this a change?" he asked her.

"You can take it as a sign that I regard you as cured," she responded briskly. "I don't have to tank up in secret anymore."

The following night she not only repeated the process before him but instructed the butler that she would take a glass of wine with her dinner.

It was only a week later that Sam told Smithers that he, too, would need a wineglass at his place. "I guess a sip of Burgundy isn't going to be fatal," he added, with a jovial wink, to the placid but evidently disapproving servitor. "I want to drink to my lady's health. Isn't it somebody's birthday?"

"Not that I know of" was Alida's dry response.

"Well, let's pretend it is."

Alberta, of course, noted just what was going on the first night that she dined with her parents. She was the only person to know, not only of her mother's pretended conversion, but of her father's threat to her own inheritance. Her situation in life, however, had been very much altered in the previous year. She was engaged to be married to a fine
young
doctor, whose last dollar had been swallowed in the expenses of his medical education and whom she proposed to support until he had finished his internship and started what everyone assumed would be a profitable practice. Money had for the first time occupied an important spot in her planning, and Alida suspected that her daughter was quite shrewd enough to sense what her mother was up to. But she guessed that Alberta was also shrewd enough to say not a word about it. There were things that would not bear even being thought of.