Mary McCarthy's Collected Memoirs: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, How I Grew, and Intellectual Memoirs (39 page)

Yes, this was the reception committee that had welcomed me to Garfield, where I had thought I would know nobody. From the first day they had “taken me under their wing,” showing their pride in the act of adoption by trumpeting my convent nickname (the mysterious initials C.Y.E., which they mistook for “Si,” as in “Silas”) whenever they caught sight of me: “There’s Si McCarthy!” “Hey, Si! Hey, there, Si!” In the summer, they must have heard the twins greeting me at the ferry, and of course it was the Berens twins, known to most of Mercer Island at least by sight, who were responsible for the bit of red carpet put under my feet at Garfield.

At Forest Ridge, the two girls were boarders, a class ahead of me, but in the summer they lived on the island with their widowed mother, a realtor who wore a beret at a sporty angle on her prematurely white hair, smoked cigarettes in a holder, and painted big circles of crimson rouge on her cheeks. That summer they had had me over two or three times to spend the night with them in their bungalow; they were sorry for me, I guess, because I could not win the popularity I coveted (the twins were
very
popular) or, lacking one parent themselves, they could imagine how it felt to lack two. (In fact, it was not clear whether Mr. Berens had died or whether he had deserted Mrs. Berens; he was never alluded to in my presence, and his relict had all the earmarks of what was then called a grass widow.) I loved staying with the two of them—lively Louise and studious Harriet—going to bed in the starlight on their screened sleeping porch, and I loved the island, which was woodsy and informal even for the West. I was impressed by the knowledge that Mrs. Berens “worked,” unlike other convent mothers, and wore big pearl earrings even around the house. The twins helped with the cleaning and washing up, and I envied them; in my grandmother’s house, I was not trusted to do anything of importance. On Saturday nights there was dancing—or was it a movie?—in a barn down the road, and Mrs. Berens let us go, not even bothering to look in herself as a chaperon.

It must have been on one of those Saturdays that, thanks to the twins, I met my first “man.” His name was Armour Spaulding (which said tennis to me); he was twenty-one and smoked a pipe. One night, in his white oxfords, with the pipe glowing, he walked me home along a path through the woods, under a moon, no doubt, with the dark lake water lapping the shore. Possibly Mrs. Berens had deputized him to escort me home; he may have taken me for older than I was. Anyway he sounded quite interested by my flow of conversation and courteously drew me out when I hesitated. For about a year I lived on the memory of it, as if on stored-up energy, though I never saw him again and all I retain of him is the name, the pipe, the shoes, a close-cropped, somewhat bullet-shaped head, perhaps a white shirt and dark-blue blazer. He must have cast a spell of glamour over the whole of Mercer Island, in reality not very classy, he and the popular, kind-hearted twins and their trouper of a mother.

At Garfield the contingent that welcomed me and seemed proud to count me among them probably knew Armour Spaulding, but I never asked. Instead, I lingered around a sporting-goods store that carried Spalding rackets, as though the surname would make him materialize like a genie reporting for duty at the rubbing of a lamp. Meanwhile I acquiesced gratefully in the sponsorship of the Mercer Island entity without being especially drawn to any of its members. But before long I became aware that I had let them take me over too quickly. Those friendly millstones were pulling me down to their level. And that dawning suspicion, I now conjecture, was what has made me efface the success of Alice and her dog from my memory: I was ashamed of it then and there, stricken
in medias res.
As I stood on the stage receiving plaudits, I must have wished to drop through a trap door, like the one in the Metropolitan Theatre that, according to Aunt Rosie, was utilized by Harry Houdini for his famous disappearing act. But no such luck. I was left with a hatred of Stephen Leacock, of the loyal chortlers and stampers, and of the side of myself that wanted their mindless applause. But I have no recollection of my emotions. If some psychoanalyst is moved to tell me “You felt imperiled by success,” I do not deny it: I
was
imperiled by success and at the age of thirteen apparently had the sense to know it.

Having lowered myself to the limit of degradation (thank God no member of my family was there), then mercifully dropped into an oubliette, in mind, if not in body, I began to “space” my meetings with the Mercer Island crowd. They must have considered me, rightly, an ingrate. The Berens twins, too, faded from my life. Several years later, home from college for the summer, I saw Louise again; she, the pretty and vivacious one, had become an elevator-starter at Frederick’s. And didn’t my grandmother tell me that Mrs. Berens was in jail for embezzlement? My present self is shocked that I did not try to “do” something for Louise, my old desk mate. Today I would, but perhaps that only shows that today I am more of a hypocrite.

Yet there is a little more, I suspect, to the “Alice” episode. At that very time, as I now reckon it, I had probably made my first intellectual friend, if “intellectual” is the right word for “Ted” (really Ethel) Rosenberg, whose organ of reflection was perhaps less fully developed than her bump of sensibility. She had a broad, coppery, high-cheekboned face, like an Indian’s, short, black, curly hair, like a boy’s, a thin, flat-chested figure; she wore brogues and soft loose vests of deerskin. Her green prominent eyes, flecked with brown, had a riveting gaze and widened shyly with excitement, and her voice, always husky, got softly breathless when she spoke of her culture heroes and heroines, some of whom were dead and some of whom were right there in our school.

She came of a family of intellectuals, very close-knit and loving, who did not seem to have any other relatives. There was a sister, Matilda, called Till, who worked in a doctor’s office, a tall, gaunt, rabbinical-looking older brother, Dan, who was a graduate student in the Speech Department at the University and talked in a slow, careful voice, and a little brother, Jess, who, at least in my memory, played the violin. The father was a tailor; the mother kept the house, read, baked, and benevolently listened—she was active in Aunt Rosie’s Temple De Hirsch (Reformed). I had never met a family like this before; the nearest I had come was Aunt Rosie, who played solitaire all night in a downstairs bedroom lined with signed photographs of opera stars and pianists, and her husband, Uncle Mose, who subscribed to the
New York Times.

I am not sure how I got to know Ted, who was at least a class ahead of me. It was a question, I think, of
my
becoming aware of
her
becoming aware of me. This could have happened in the cafeteria, in the hall in front of the bulletin boards, or even on a chilly bench at the side of the sports field during football practice, for Ted’s hero worship fully embraced athletes. The intellectuals at Garfield were equipped with radar for finding each other, though they themselves, the diviners, would have been barely noticeable to eyes less skilled than their own. Among the incoming freshmen, somehow, Ted had picked me out as someone worth knowing, like a connoisseur looking over a Whitman’s Sampler and sensing which one would have a liqueur cherry underneath the chocolate coating. Some feature of me had caught her attention—something about my appearance, something she had heard about me, something she had heard me say. However our acquaintance started, my first clear memory of Ted is connected with a book.

In those days modern literature (like “creative writing”) was not taught in school
or
in college. You read it, relying on tips from friends. As with Prohibition liquor, you had to know somebody to get hold of the good stuff. Professional librarians were no help. The circulating library at Frederick’s had recommended
The Peasants
by some Pole who had won the Nobel Prize to my grandmother, who had been reading it for months, scarcely making any progress. I had heard of a sensational novel about flappers—
Flaming Youth
—and of
Three Weeks,
by Elinor Glyn, but the existence of modern literature, apart from such titles, was a secret “they” had succeeded in keeping from me till I met Ted. And when she introduced me to
Green Mansions,
by W. H. Hudson, after school in the deserted locker room, it was on a note of confidentiality. The Modern Library imprint awed me, as though it were a sort of guarantee or the password of some exclusive set. I did not notice that the book had first been published in 1904.

Thus at a time when I was close to failing most of my subjects, my real education was getting under way. If this overlapped with “Alice,” no wonder I felt mortified. Ted could have been in the audience, and what would she have thought? Being far more a loving soul than a critical spirit, she might have tried to see the best in Stephen Leacock. The critical spirit was me. Borrowing her eyes, I would have looked on myself far more harshly than it was in her nature to do.

In the friendship that began, she was the guide, scout, pathfinder; I was the follower. Yet my character was more decisive and sharper than hers. Once I was initiated into this new, arcane region, I promptly judged. The one-way traffic in limp leather volumes that moved from her locker to my school-bag did not always go smoothly. I did not like all her treasures. And, though I usually tried to hide it so as not to disappoint her, I think she generally knew when I felt let down.

It started, in fact, with
Green Mansions,
with that girl, Rima, who was meant to be the spirit of the South American rain forest and flitted about, naked, among the trees. Somehow I had been led to expect, possibly by the glow of Ted’s countenance, that some torrid scenes were coming—Rima was not naked for nothing. But in reality, alas, she was; she violated that literary principle—wasn’t it Chekhov’s?—that a loaded gun hanging on the wall in the first act must go off in the last. Yet Ted, I perceived, did not mind Rima’s being a disembodied spirit; she liked her better that way. That was one of the pitfalls of modern literature, I soon learned; it did not always live up to its promises. I had been let down already by Conrad’s
The Nigger of the Narcissus,
when I took it out of the public library the year before, thinking that the dirty word “nigger” in the title was going to couple perversely with the white narcissus bloom, but then “Narcissus” turned out to be the name of a boat.
Marius the Epicurean
was another misleading title, a real cock-teaser (or
allumeuse,
if you prefer) for the expectant young reader.

To be truthful, what I was hoping for from books described as modern or daring (and from classical sculpture) was to see the fig-leaf stripped off sex. Someone had finally told me the rudiments of the act, but I did not feel wholly convinced that
that
was what men and women did. There was the usual difficulty in picturing respectable people, i.e., my grandparents, doing it, and in fact something in the sexual conjunction does arouse a natural skepticism, whoever the parties involved: “For Love has pitched his mansion/ In the place of excrement.” But unless someone has experienced sex or a close approach to it, stories and poems do not tell much about it; if one has, they may act erotically as reminders. In my case, what might have been helpful were scientific manuals (unavailable), but even with scientific manuals (remember
Ideal Marriage?
)
,
some prior knowledge or practice is generally required for full enlightenment. It is something like the Uncertainty Principle: if you are distant enough from the experience to need instruction, you are too remote to be benefited. Possibly blue movies shown in the classroom by a teacher with a pointer are what is really wanted. Or is the famous “need to know” of children just another
ignis fatuus?

At any rate I felt the need, and Ted apparently did not. At the same time, I could tell that for her there was a strange vibration in
Green Mansions,
something thrilling and esoteric, that remained hidden from me. Now I know its name: literary art. We called it beauty then, and for a long time I had trouble perceiving it without being nudged, at least when it was of human manufacture; I could recognize it in sunsets, dew, wild flowers, fireflies, snowflakes, and the like. The excitement that literary art could produce in someone like Ted confused me, therefore, leading me to look for a set of thrills and revelations that literature does not give.

My own preferred authors that year were Adela Rogers St. Johns and Thyra Samter Winslow (both
Saturday Evening Post,
if I remember right), and the English Berta Ruck, an Enid Blyton of her time, who wrote about the Land Girls of World War I. But I did not try to proselytize, except now and then my grandmother. Ted, meanwhile, was eagerly sharing her heap of treasures with me: Pater, of course, Oscar Wilde, Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass, The Crock of Gold.
When she gave me one of her Paters (it may well have been the deadly
Marius
)
,
she wisely sugared the pill with the whispered tale that Pater had done his utmost to save Oscar Wilde from ruin by pleading with him not to publish
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
“It will bring us all down,” he cried, weeping, having taken the train from Oxford to London to stop him, but the reckless Oscar persisted. I do not know where Ted got this literary anecdote or whether she invented it. I have never seen it in any book. Indeed, I have never seen it stated that Pater was a homosexual.

The romance of this story, for Ted, lay in the suggestion of a liaison between the two men; that is obvious to me now. Later, I gather, she became an overt lesbian, moving to California and changing her name from Ethel-Ted to Teya, though I have learned to my surprise that, some time before that, she was married briefly to a tennis star called Billy Newkirk. But at Garfield in her crushes—all purely mental, I assume—she did not distinguish between the sexes, any more than between football and track; she distributed her love equally between Larry Judson and Bill Albin. I thought of her then as a sort of deep-voiced boy; somewhere in my mind or in a lost album is a picture of her playing baseball, with springy legs spread apart and a catcher’s mitt. More girlish, though, was her perpetual weaving of romances, as though to cover the nudity of everybody’s life. She spun her webs around Kathleen Hoyt and her tartan cloak, around Estare Crane and her spit curl; it must have been she who told me Larry Judson was Jewish. She was sweet on my grandmother, whose tragic story she seemed to know, just as she knew about my parents, and I could never tell whether it was as a beautiful woman that Augusta Morgenstern interested her, or as a Jewess, or as the wife of Harold Preston, for she was sweet on him, too, and so was Till. My grandmother, in turn, liked them both and put down her book to chat with them, which was rare with her when I led a friend into the living-room, with its shirred pongee shades and fancy grass wallpaper.