Evergreen (29 page)

Chris went to the window and looked out for a minute, as if he were making up his mind about something. Then he turned back to the room. “Listen, I have a proposition. Your nerves are pretty bad, one can see that with half an eye. Why don’t you just chuck everything and sail to England with me next week? If money’s a problem I can lend you some. Well go tramping through England and you’ll be born again. What do you say?”

“You don’t understand. You say you want to help me. Then why don’t you give me the help I want? Tell me, Chris. Be honest with me.”

“You mean that?”

“I mean it.”

“Because I don’t approve of the marriage. If I had known about you and Aggie I wouldn’t have let things get this far.”

“Why, Chris, why?”

“Come on, Maury, you’re not that naive. Because you are what you are, that’s why.”

“And in what way am I so different from you?”

“I don’t think you are, but the world thinks so. And you’d be asking Aggie to be the world’s victim along with you.”

“She doesn’t care.”

“She thinks she doesn’t care. Clubs and friends, many of her friends—she’d have to give them all up. Her children would be rejected by people and in places where she’s been welcomed.”

“She doesn’t give a damn, I tell you!”

“She gives more than a damn about her parents! Aggie is very close to them, especially her father. Ever since he had
polio she’s been his right hand. I remember when she was a little kid, no more than eight or nine, and she used to help him learn to walk again. It would have broken your heart.”

“And this doesn’t break your heart?”

Chris looked at him, not speaking. Maury opened the door. “
My friend. My good friend
. Chris. Well, you can go to hell!”

They were married at city hall on a blazing day in July. “You could fry an egg on the sidewalk today,” the clerk said as he stamped their certificate.

In their stifling room at the hotel a fan stirred the air at ten-second intervals. Through the open window came the sound of a record playing “Pagliacci” over and over. They sent downstairs for a meal of overcooked steak and soggy potatoes. It was the most beautiful room, the most sumptuous dinner, the most marvelous music they had ever known.

Aggie took a bottle of wine from her suitcase. “I brought some wine for our wedding toast. Look at the label. Nothing but the best!”

“I don’t know a thing about wines. We never had any in our house.”

“I got used to it, living in France. You drink it there instead of water.”

“Don’t people get drunk?”

“Just a pleasant haze. Your health!” she said.

“And yours, Mrs. Friedman.”

So they drank to each other, pulled the shade and went back to bed, although it was only three in the afternoon.

In the morning, after he was sure that his father had left for work, he telephoned his mother.

“Maury,” she said, “oh, how I want to see you! But I can’t. Your father has forbidden me.” And she cried, “Dear heaven, if only you hadn’t done this! It’s like a morgue here since yesterday. Iris and I, we can scarcely breathe. And your father looks ten years older.”

He was not angry at her. “Good-by, Ma,” he said softly, and hung the receiver up.

Between them they had a little more than four hundred dollars.

“If were very careful,” Maury said, “we can make this last a couple of months. But I’ll have a job long before then.” He felt very strong, very confident.

“I’ll get something too. I can always teach French as a substitute until there’s a permanent opening.”

“Meanwhile, well find the cheapest decent apartment we can until we decide where we want to go permanently.”

Cheerfully, purposefully, they bought newspapers, took subways, and finally found a furnished apartment on the top floor of a two-family house in Queens. The owner was Mr. George Andreapoulis, a polite young Greek-American who had just graduated from law school into the Depression. On a trip to Greece he had gotten a bride, Elena, a strong girl with a white smile and hairy arms.

The apartment was newly furnished in yellow maple. There were clean curtains and an ugly imitation Oriental rug.

“I should get fifty a month for it,” said Mr. Andreapoulis, “but the times are so bad that, frankly, I’ll be willing to take forty.”

Maury stood looking out of the kitchen window to the small concrete-and-cinder yard, the endless lots without trees, just dry waving grass as far as the distant billboards on the highway. Bleak, even in the glittering sunlight. If the world were flat this would be the place where you dropped off into the void. Still, it was immaculate, the landlord was respectable and friendly and they wouldn’t be here long anyway.

“My wife speaks no English,” said Mr. Andreapoulis. “Were newlyweds, too. Maybe you will help her to learn English, Mrs. Friedman? And she will teach you to cook, she’s a wonderful cook.” He looked suddenly flustered. “Excuse me, how stupid, I only meant that so many American
young ladies don’t learn cooking—although probably you’re a fine cook already.”

Agatha laughed. “No, I can’t boil water as the saying goes. I’m ready to be taught. Until I get a job, that is.”

So it was settled. They made two trips on the subway with their suitcases, a heavy box of books, and their one purchase, a superheterodyne radio which Maury bought for thirty-five dollars. They placed it on the table in the living room next to the lamp.

There was a certain amount of guilt over its purchase, but in the end it turned out to have been a good investment. People needed some recreation, and the movies cost seventy cents for the two of them. For nothing at all, the radio brought the Philharmonic on Sunday afternoons, and a good dance band almost any time. They could dance on the kitchen floor to Glen Gray’s Casa Loma Orchestra or to Paul Whiteman at the Biltmore. They could Begin the Beguine, Fly Down to Rio, or turn off the lights and Dance in the Dark, alone together in their private world. Dazed and entranced, they moved like one body across the room to where, still not separating from her, he switched off the sound, and then in the sudden fall of silence they moved again like one body to the bed.

They walked up Riverside Drive and turned toward West End Avenue at Iris’ street. It was a warm evening for April and people were out, fathers of families walking their dogs and young people singing “When a Broadway Baby Says Goodnight,” shoving at one another and laughing boisterously. They were on their way to a party. Iris and Fred were coming back from one.

“Sorry to break it up so early,” Fred said when they reached the building where Iris lived. “I shouldn’t have left so much homework for Sunday night. My fault,” he said apologetically.

“That’s all right,” she told him. “I’ve got work too,” which was not the case.

They stood a moment. It was awkward; should she ask him upstairs for a few minutes, after all? She didn’t really want to and she knew he didn’t want to come.

“Thanks for inviting me,” he said. “It was a great party. I didn’t know you and Enid were friends.”

“Were not. It’s just that our mothers work on the same charity committee and it happened through them.” It occurred to her as she said the word ‘charity’ that it really was odd for her mother to be doing charity when there was never an extra dollar at home. But then, Ma always said, we must be very thankful, there are so many people far worse off than we are.

“Well, it was a great party,” Fred said again. He started
to move away. “Don’t forget, newspaper meeting after school tomorrow.”

“I won’t forget,” she answered. She went inside and took the elevator upstairs.

Her mother was reading in the living room. She had a look of surprise. “So soon? And where’s Fred?”

“It broke up early. And he had homework.”

“My goodness, it’s only nine-thirty. He could have had something to eat. I put the cocoa pot out and some cake.”

“We had too much to eat, we were stuffed.”

“So you had a good time, then,” her mother said. “Don’t brother your father, he’s doing the income tax. I guess I’ll go read in bed, it’s more comfortable.”

Iris went to her room and took her dress off. It was emerald green, the color of wet leaves. Her mother bought it when Fred first took an interest in her. That was when they started to work on the school paper together. Her mother said she ought to pay more attention to her clothes now that she was fifteen.

Fred was a serious boy. When he filled out he would be a fine-looking man in spite of his glasses. Right now he was very tall and skinny, but he had a nice face. And he was one of the smartest boys in school.

They had been having such good discussions all winter, working in the editorial room, and sometimes walking home in the late afternoons. He was interested in politics and they had great arguments, although mostly they agreed on things.

“I respect your mind,” he told her. “You reason things out. You think for yourself.”

They felt, although they did not say so, rather superior to most of the other kids. They filled their lives, they didn’t waste time. Fred did a lot of reading too, and they talked about what they read.

She knew he liked her, and this was one of the happiest things that had ever happened to her. It was like having something new to look forward to every day.

A week ago he had invited her to a wedding. One of his
cousins was getting married and he had been told to bring a girl. It was to be a big formal wedding, and everyone would wear evening clothes. Iris had never been at any wedding at all, and she was excited about that and about having been asked by Fred.

Her mother said, “Well, we shall have to get you something very nice to wear.” She had an idea. She went to a box on the top shelf of her closet and took out a dress. It was pink silk and Iris recognized the dress in the portrait of her mother, her Paris dress.

“We can take it to a dressmaker and have it altered for you,” her mother said. “Look,” and she pulled the skirt out into a fan, “ten yards of material, and such material! We can make a magnificent dress for you. And shoes dyed to match. What do you think?”

It was truly beautiful. Iris wondered, though, what the other girls would be wearing and wondered how she could find out.

Now she hung up the green wool dress. At this party tonight there was a girl who kept looking at Iris’ dress. She was one of those girls who look good with an old sweater tied around their shoulders, the sort of girl who is born that way and cannot be made. This girl gave Iris’ dress a long, slow look, so that she sank lower into her chair and knew that her dress must be awful, must be all wrong. (Years later she was to meet this same girl at someone’s house and the girl was to tell her: You had a dress once, emerald green, the most beautiful color; I never forgot it. But of course Iris could not know that now.)

It had really been a dreadful, miserable party. She was sorry she had invited Fred, but Enid had told her to bring a boy. All those friends of Enid’s were the kind of people Fred didn’t like: shallow and showoffy, speaking in wisecracks which you were supposed to answer with more wisecracks. It had been very tiring. Fred and Iris had exchanged looks and she had known he was thinking the same. She telegraphed her regret, and Fred brought her a
plate of food. “The food’s good anyway,” he said, and went back for more. He had an enormous appetite.

Iris had watched the girls. It had been almost like a show, to see them giggling and giving the boys that arch look, the sideward and upward sliding of the eyes. Boys were so stupid they didn’t see how affected it was. Except for Fred, who would see and understand. It was remarkable how his mind and Iris’ worked on the same track.

“My goodness,” Enid had said, “you look as if you’d lost your best friend! Aren’t you having a good time?” She had smiled, but it was a cold smile.

Iris had been mortified in front of Fred. “Of course, I’m having a very good time,” she had answered stiffly.

Perhaps she really ought to smile more. Cousin Ruth had told her once that she had an unusually nice smile. In fact, what Cousin Ruth had really said was: “A light seems to turn on in your face when you smile.” After that Iris had gone home and practiced in front of the bathroom mirror. It was true. Her lips did draw back sweetly and her teeth were very bright. When the smile withdrew her face fell back into severity, although she didn’t feel severe. She must remember to smile, but not too much, or she’d look like a nut.

Enid and some of the boys had taken up the rugs in the hall and put the phonograph on. Everyone got up to dance. Fred held his arm out. Iris loved to dance. She must have got that from her mother; her father danced well but he didn’t love it all that much. She remembered the day she came home and found her mother all alone, dancing in the living room. Mama hadn’t heard Iris come in and there she had been, whirling around in a waltz, with “The Blue Danube” playing on the phonograph. It was an Edison, with thick records; you had to wind it up when the record was only half over. Iris had been so embarrassed for her mother, but Mama hadn’t been at all. She had only stopped and said, “Do you know, if I could be reincarnated for a few days, I would like to be a countess or a princess in Vienna and go whirling in a marvelous white lace dress,
waltzing under the crystal chandeliers. But only for a day or two. It must have been a very silly, useless life.”