The Collected Stories of William Humphrey (18 page)

Rachel flitted among the guests, keeping them talking and laughing. James stayed at the door. The face of each new guest filled him with loathing and anger. Rachel ran to greet each new arrival, but not before James had managed to shout to him that he was to be addressed as Mister Ravich. The room filled and the talk grew louder, louder still as the guests, out of their mounting embarrassment and indignation, tried to drown out his shameless, painful joke. But he managed to make himself heard each time.

Finally he gave up his station at the door to join the party. He came examining the face of each guest, anxious to find one of them revealing that he had come out of pity, or for amusement, or that he was feeling uncomfortable.

But everyone was enjoying himself quite innocently. Sixteen guests had come. The John Woosters clung together, and Mrs. Wooster regarded James with apprehension. Edith Morris had a corner of the divan to herself, much to her satisfaction. But everyone else was gay. The David Petersons had come and James remarked that Dolly had not seen fit to wear her silver fox stole or one of her Paris originals. Max Aronson was there and had lost all his usual nervousness. Max was known to feel that people who had just had good news were happier to see him, being then no longer quite so envious of him. But his joy in someone else's good fortune was as great as in his own, so he hovered over Rachel in a perfect dither of happiness.

Martha Phillips had shown up, bringing with her a visitor, Mrs. Kunitz, who had been better known in Redmond as Muriel Johnson, but who corrected no one's calling her Mrs. Kunitz. For Mrs. Kunitz, then, it was old home week. She once lived next to the Ruggles and never bothered pulling down her shade at night. In those days she always looked as though she had just got up—eyes puffy and ringed, hair blowzy. Obviously it had been meant to show that she was too taken up with her art to bother. She even won some kind of prize, James seemed to recall. She had quite suddenly married Mr. Kunitz, a widower in wholesale groceries, who was in Redmond for a vacation, and a cure, ten years ago. Now she was greatly amused at the distance she had come. It seemed to astound her afresh each moment that people still lived like this, still took seriously the things these people did.

As was his way at gatherings, Carl Robbins had abandoned his wife the moment they came in, and though the room was small he managed to keep a great deal of distance between them. She was pregnant with her third effort to keep Carl at home. The evening had turned off warm, the windows were up and Carl Robbins, like everyone else, was helping himself plentifully to the beer.

Despite himself, James felt beginning to steal over him a warm satisfaction at being a host, having people drink and laugh and enjoy themselves in his house. Rachel's spicy little liver knishes were a great success, they brought tears to Max Aronson's eyes and set him reminiscing over the famous cooks in his family, and when they were gone Rachel suggested games.

Games? Two or three of the guests exchanged significant glances. What were they in for now?

“Or, David,” Rachel said, “give some of your impersonations!”

Peterson flushed and looked sheepishly at his wife. Dolly had got him—how many years ago!—to give up making a fool of himself in public. He felt guilty also that it showed how long it was since he had been friendly with the Ruggles. No one had reminded him of his impersonations in years. And yet, he thought, with a look of some defiance at his wife, they were damned clever impersonations. Especially the one of Chaplin (but again, how long ago was Chaplin!) and he was pleased with Rachel for remembering them. All the same he demurred; he, too, thought that impersonations were no longer becoming to his dignity. Besides, no one was coaxing him but Rachel. And besides, Dolly's look was quite threatening.

“Then let's play games,” Rachel insisted. She supposed that games were no longer quite so popular at Redmond parties, but she wanted to revive some of the spirit of parties she remembered.

“What sort of games?” asked John Wooster.

“A community picture!” Rachel cried, and ran off to the studio where they heard her scrambling about.

How long was it since any of them had painted a community picture! In the old days it was a party stand-by. Now the ladies exchanged smiles of pity and condescension for poor Rachel. How long it must have been since she had given a party! How much longer even since she had been invited to one, not to know that community pictures were
passé
.

Rachel came back bearing the easel and on it was a large canvas. She made another trip for brushes and a palette and all was placed in the middle of the room.

No one would go first.

“Then I'll choose,” said Rachel. “And David is it, since he wouldn't give us any impersonations.”

She handed Peterson a fistful of brushes and led him to the easel. Everyone enjoyed his discomfort.

But Peterson was a good sport. He regarded the canvas, took a few tentative swipes at it, then began wielding the brush with dash, with obvious relish. Vague, but already recognizable and already funny forms began to take shape on the canvas. For everyone knew what he had to put there before he began. In painting a community picture each person contributed the little mark of his style, his
petit sensation
, the little mannerism or the subject by which his work was known. Soon it became apparent that David Peterson was doing one of those hollow-eyed, nebulous nudes for which he was famous, but one even more gaunt and soulful—a delightful self-parody. Peterson had been taken right back ten years and was having a marvelous time.

Peterson stepped back to regard his creation and everyone was hugely amused. There was no lack of volunteers for second; they fought to be next, and Rachel had to choose to keep order.

Max Aronson started in a little above and to the left of Peterson's lady and from his first stroke everyone began laughing uncontrollably. In no time at all there took form one of those bleary-eyed, long-faced, ancient rabbis for which Max was known all over the world—only this rabbi, while looking just as burdened with
Weltschmerz
as ever, even more ludicrously so, was regarding Peterson's lady with a sly and lecherous glint in his eye. Everyone held his sides laughing.

Then Carl Robbins and Martha Phillips took brushes and began painting at the same time, racing each other while everyone cheered them on.

At this point Mrs. Kunitz drained her beer glass and set it down, looked searchingly into every corner of the house, got up and peered around the studio screen, and still not finding what she wanted, came over and bent to Rachel's ear.

“You'll find it,” said James in a voice that made everyone hush and turn, “about thirty yards behind the house. Just follow your nose. Would you have believed it possible in this day and age?”

They were pressing Rachel to add her bit to the painting. “Get James,” she said, “get James.” The tone of his voice had alarmed her, and she breathed a sigh of relief for this distraction.

“Here, James,” said Carl Robbins, holding out a brush to him.

James made no move, but left Robbins standing, awkwardly holding out the brush. The others stirred uneasily. James raised his palm in a gesture of overwhelmed unworthiness. “Let me not bring laughter and ridicule and indignity to this work,” he said. A hush fell on them all.

But on her whole trip nothing had so delighted Mrs. Kunitz as the outhouse. “Well! That's the first time I've seen one of those things in a while!” she said as she stepped in.

“Yes, we keep it for sentimental reasons,” said James. “Not to mention other reasons.” The prolonged, stunned silence of the guests made him more audacious. “We try to keep up the old traditions. People come expecting to see the real thing, the artist's life, you know—and where else are they going to find it in Redmond? Though now,” and he gave a glance at Rachel, a deferential smile, “now I suppose we too will begin to slip and backslide and forget the simple life. In fact,” his voice rose to a shout, “in fact, we have already begun. Indeed yes!”

He relished their embarrassment for a moment, then said, “I'm sure you're all dying to know what's been done with the money. Well, let me just show you. None of you is quite as, ah, thin, as you once were. But just draw in a breath and perhaps we can all squeeze into the, ah, the bedroom.”

He strode over and folded back the bedroom screen with a flourish.

“There!” he exclaimed. “Our prize money bedroom suite!”

The little room looked positively embarrassed. In it stood a huge highboy, a vanity with an oval mirror tinted blue, a padded vanity seat covered with glossy satin and a bed with a gleaming headboard, covered with a bright blue chenille spread.

The silence was broken by the ladies' exclamations. “Lovely. Charming. How nice.” The men assented in embarrassed grunts.

Rachel had seen it yesterday in the window of a shop in Redmond, where she had gone to get away from James and to look for something to get rid of the money on. Her mother had had one very like it. Rachel thought it was beautiful.

How was it, then, that otherwise the house was so tasteful? Was that all James's doing? Far from it. In fact, aside from his contribution of a few heirlooms—some of them among the few ugly things in the house—he had no part in it. He was indifferent to his surroundings. So long as they could not come up to his notions of what they should be, he preferred to go to the opposite extreme; it would have given him pleasure to live off orange crates and hang dime-store chromos on the walls. No, the charm of the place was Rachel's doing. But Rachel had taste only so long as she had no money. When her resourcefulness was demanded, when she had to make shift, she made beauty. When she had money she bought the things she thought other people bought with money, the things she remembered money as being for.

“Lovely, isn't it?” James demanded of Mrs. Wooster.

“Yes—yes, lovely!” and she cringed against her husband.

“Isn't it lovely?” he shouted at Edith Morris.

“It certainly is,” said Edith. She meant it.

James included them both in his look of utter contempt. “Maple, you know,” he said, looking at the furniture with nausea. “That is, pine with a coat of maple syrup.”

Those who were not too embarrassed for Rachel even to look at her sent her looks of sympathy and support. John Wooster said, “We had better go.”

James was taken aback. “Go?” he said. He had humiliated himself for them. Weren't they enjoying it?

The Woosters began moving toward the door; others followed. James saw all his crafty plans collapsing. He grew panicky to keep them there. His urgency gave a repulsive oiliness to his smile and the affability of his tone was repellent as he said, “Come now. You're all used to staying up later than this. The evening's young.” He realized he was saying the wrong thing. This pleased him and goaded him on. “Why, there's no telling what may happen yet,” he said.

He stood in the middle of the room and watched them leave. He half-expected them to return, to slap him on the back and say that he was better than all of them put together. He could think of nothing startling to say, no show to make which would detain them. He wanted to say something disdainful, something contemptible even, yet have them admire him all the more for it.

The last ones were stepping out. James thought how as they walked down the road Sam Morris would take it upon himself to explain him to the rest. “It's James's nature,” he would say knowingly, “to be volatile and impulsive, always to be different and conspicuous.” Sam was certain he understood James. How James hated that kind of understanding! For if he acted extravagantly, made himself conspicuous, it was all because he had such a great wish to do just the opposite, because he had such great respect for convention and the proper form.

Rachel stepped outside and detained the last few. “James doesn't mean anything by it when he goes off like that,” she said in an intimate tone. “You needn't feel sorry for me, because he is always terribly sorry afterwards. It's only his own unhappiness.”

They gaped at her. Was she then as bad as he? Had she no more sense of privacy than he had? It was shameless, such confiding eagerness.

Not all the prize money was spent on the bedroom suite. Thirty-six dollars went for the suit in which James stood admiring himself on a morning two weeks after the party. It was the first one the clerk had shown him, and he had liked it right off. When he tried it on at home he found the pinstripe too broad and too light in color, but that no longer bothered him. He stroked the lapel lovingly.

Another seven dollars went for the shoes.

James turned and looked at himself from the back, particularly at his haircut. Then he faced himself once more and looked at his mustache. His mustache had been clipped and trimmed and his curls lopped off so that now his hair lay in tight kinks against his skull.

He wore a white shirt with a starched collar so cruelly buttoned that his great red neck hung over it in a roll, and after swallowing he had to duck his head to get his Adam's apple up again.

Every few seconds he was worried that the suit was not what it should be. It had been so long since he had bought one. Then he would again decide that it was grand.

The thing which amazed and delighted him most was that he looked just like anybody else. He might be in advertising or the law.

Rachel came in rubbing the crown of a new brown hat with her elbow. But when he put it on it fell down over his ears. He had bought it before Rachel cut his hair. She took the blame for that, but said that a little tissue paper in the sweatband would fix it.

While she went to get some, James polished the emblem in his lapel and pictured himself at the fraternity house tomorrow evening after the Reunion Dinner. He was amazed that he had gone so many years without attending Reunion Day. He saw himself sitting back in his chair with his legs crossed, sipping Benedictine while he talked with Pee-wee Moore, now Charles Moore of Ohio, Michigan, Ltd. or with Walter Beck of U. S. Steel.