The Group (20 page)

At this point in Norine’s narrative, Helena laughed. “The secretary upstairs?” she surmised. “How did you guess?” said Norine. Helena had grasped the situation. The plain-clothes men were private detectives, matrimonial specialists, and they had picked the wrong apartment. All the time, the woman’s husband was upstairs with “Grace,” the secretary, waiting to be caught by his wife and the detectives; it was an “arranged” divorce case. “And of course,” Norine continued, “they weren’t really supposed to be fornicating—just to have their clothes ‘disarrayed.’ And they were supposed to open the door right away and let the detectives in quietly; otherwise John makes a stink. He keeps telling Margaret they’re running a ‘disorderly house.’” “‘John’ is the landlord?” said Helena. Norine nodded. “Actually, he can’t say much, because Margaret caught him with the previous tenant and threw her out. But he’s pretty stuffy about Grace sometimes—the profit motive, as usual. He used the house as a sort of showroom for his decorating clients and he’s afraid the address will get in the paper in some divorce case. This time, it was all the stupidity of those detectives; they’d been clearly told to raid the top-floor apartment and instead they came to the ground floor. When we didn’t open the door and they could hear us inside, they decided there was some funny business, that the husband was reneging on the deal. So, instead of calling up the lawyer, as they should have done, for instructions, they straight-armed their way in here. The wife didn’t know what was up when she found me in the coverlet and her husband, she thought, hiding. She’d been told to expect a blonde (it has to be a blonde), so naturally she assumed I was Grace. Probably she figured her husband had decided to suit the action to the word.” She laughed.

Harald had been “magnificent.” Very quietly, he had elicited all the facts from the detectives and then given them a tongue-lashing. He had told them they were a pair of stupid goons who had got their training in violence on the New York police force and been “broken” for extortion or sheer witlessness. He dared them to deny it. They ought to have learned that they could not enter a private residence without a policeman and a search warrant, and in Norine’s place, he said, he would bring suit against them for housebreaking, which was a felony, and send them and their lady-client to jail. “You were hardly in a position to carry out that threat,” commented Helena. “The detectives must have seen that.” Norine shook her head, which was now frizzed all around in a pompadour. “They were livid with fear,” she declared.

Luckily, she went on, more prosaically, the house had been empty that afternoon, except for Grace and the man with her on the top floor; otherwise, the banging and shouting would have brought everyone running. “Where was Nietzsche, by the way?” inquired Helena. “I should have thought he would have added his voice.” Nietzsche had gone to the country for the day with the landlord and his wife; it was Lincoln’s Birthday, which was why Grace had the afternoon off; normally she was raided at night, unless John and Margaret had a dinner party. “And Kay?” said Helena. “Kay was working,” said Norine. “The stores don’t observe Lincoln’s Birthday. They cash in on the fact that the other wage slaves get the day off. It’s a big white-collar shopping spree. When do you think a forty-eight-hour-week stenographer gets a chance to buy herself a dress? Unless she goes without her lunch? Probably you’ve never thought.” She stared at Helena and lit a cigarette, holding the burning match for a moment, as though to lighten the darkness of Helena’s mind.

Helena got up; she was resolved to speak her piece. The careless, cursory tone of “Kay was working” had made her lips tighten. “I’m not a socialist, Norine,” she said evenly. “But if I were one, I would try to be a good person. Norman Thomas is a good person, I think.” “Norman used to be a minister,” put in Norine. “That’s his big handicap. He doesn’t appeal to the modern worker. They smell the do-gooder in him. He’s been helpful to Put, but Put thinks the time has come when he’s got to break with him. There’s a new group of Congressmen in Washington—Farmer-Laborites and Progressives—that Put feels he can work with more effectively. They’re closer to the realities of power. A couple of them are coming this afternoon for drinks; probably we’ll go to the Village with them afterward, to a night club—one of them likes to dance. Put and Bill—did he tell you?—want to start a newspaper syndicate and get out of fund-raising, where the Communists have a pretty formidable edge. Now these Congressmen have a lot of small-town newspapers behind them, in the farm states, that are hungry for real, uncensored labor news and the latest on co-operatives and profit sharing. I’ve asked Harald and Kay too this afternoon, because Harald has his roots in Veblen—” “Norine,” interrupted Helena. “I said if I were a socialist, I would try to be a good person.” Her voice, though she strove to maintain its careful drawl, began to tremble. Norine, staring, slowing put out her cigarette. “You say your husband can’t sleep with you because you’re a ‘good woman.’ I suggest you enlighten him. Tell him what you do with Harald. And about the progressive-school teacher with the wife and six children. That ought to get his pecker up. And have him take a look at this apartment. And at the ring around your neck. If a man slept with you, you’d leave a ring around him. Like your bathtub.” Norine sat staring up at her, perfectly impassive. Helena gulped; she had not spoken so fiercely since she was a spunky child and angry with her mother. She hardly recognized some of the language she was using, and her voice was doing curious slides. In her dry constricted throat, a crowd of disconnected sentences seemed to be milling, like a mob she was trying to moderate. “Get some ammonia,” she heard herself declare all of a sudden, “and wash out your brush and comb!” She stopped with a gasp, afraid that she might cry from sheer temper, as used to happen with her mother. Swiftly, she walked to the French windows and stood looking out into the garden, endeavoring to frame an apology. Behind her, Norine spoke. “You’re right,” she said. “Dead right.” She picked up the hand mirror and examined her neck. “Thanks for telling me the truth. Nobody ever does.”

At these gruff words, Helena jumped. She turned around slowly in her brown lizard pumps. Gratitude was the last thing she had expected from Norine. Helena was no reformer; she had “reacted,” as Norine would say, against her mother’s measured and stately meliorism and bridled at the very notion of changing people, as much as at the notion of being changed. She did not know, now, what had possessed her to fly off the handle—a defensive loyalty to Kay or to a canon of honesty or simply the desire to show Norine that she could not fool all of the people all the time. But to find Norine receptive was quite a responsibility to shoulder. “Go on. Tell me more,” she was urging. “Tell me what I need to do to change my life.” Helena sighed inwardly and sat down opposite Norine at the table, thinking of her appointment with her father and of how much she would rather be looking at old silver than playing the new broom to Norine’s life. But she supposed that at least the Congressmen and perhaps Putnam would thank her if she advised her to begin by cleaning up the apartment.

“Well, she said diffidently, “I’d start with a little ‘elbow grease.’” Norine looked absently around her. “Scrub the floor, you mean? O.K. Then what?” Despite herself, Helena warmed to the opportunity. “Well then,” she proceeded, “I’d get some toilet paper. There isn’t any in the bathroom. And some Clorox for the garbage pail and the toilet bowl. And boil out that dishcloth or get a new one.” She listened. “I’d unchain the dog and take him for a walk. And while I was at it, I’d change his name.” “You don’t like Nietzsche?” “No,” said Helena, dryly. “I’d call him something like Rover.” Norine gave her terse laugh. “I get it,” she said appreciatively. “God, Helena, you’re wonderful! Go on. Should I give him a bath to christen him?” Helena considered. “Not in this weather. He might catch cold. Take a bath yourself, instead, and wash your hair in the shower.” “But I just curled it.” “All right, wash it tomorrow. Then get some new clothes and charge them to Putnam. When he makes a fuss over the bill, tear up the budget. And buy some real food—not in cans. If it’s only hamburger and fresh vegetables and oranges.” Norine nodded. “Fine. But now tell me something more basic.”

Helena’s green eyes looked around thoughtfully. “I’d paint this room another color.” Norine’s face was dubious. “Is that what you’d call basic?” she demanded. “Certainly,” said Helena. “You don’t want people to think you’re a fascist, do you?” she added, with guile. “God, you’re dead right,” said Norine. “I guess I’m too close to these things. I never thought of that. And you can’t be too careful. The Communists are completely unscrupulous. One day they’re your bedfellow and the next day they’re calling you a fascist. They even call Norman a social fascist. O.K. Go ahead.” “I’d get rid of that polar bear,” said Helena mildly. “It’s just a dust-catcher, and it seems to have outlived its usefulness.” Norine agreed. “I think Put’s allergic to it, anyway. Next?” “I’d take some real books out of the library.” “What do you mean, ‘real books’?” said Norine, with a wary glance at her shelves. “Literature,” retorted Helena, “Jane Austen. George Eliot. Flaubert. Lady Murasaki. Dickens. Shakespeare. Sophocles. Aristophanes. Swift.” “But those aren’t seminal,” said Norine, frowning. “So much the better,” said Helena. There was a pause. “Is that all?” said Norine. Helena shook her head. Her eyes met Norine’s. “I’d stop seeing Harald,” she said.

“Oh,” murmured Norine. “Fill up your time some other way,” Helena went on briskly. “Register for a course at Columbia. Or write up what you saw in the coal mines. Get a job, even a volunteer one. But, Norine, don’t see Harald. Not even socially. Cut it clean.” With this plea, her voice had grown earnest; she resumed in a lighter key. “In your place, I’d get a divorce or an annulment. But that’s something you have to determine—you and Putnam. It’s nothing you should discuss with anyone else. If you want to stay with him, then I think you should decide to do without sex. Don’t try to have it both ways. Make up your mind which you want: sex or Putnam. Lots of women can live without sex and thrive on it. Look at our teachers at college; they weren’t dried up or sour. And lots of women,” she added, “can live without Putnam.”

“You’re right,” said Norine dully. “Yes, of course you’re right. It’s a choice I have to make.” But her tone was flaccid. Helena had the feeling that some time back Norine had ceased to listen to the program she had been outlining or was only listening mechanically and making noises of assent. “The subject,” she concluded, “is no longer fully co-operative.” And despite herself, she was vexed and disappointed. Why should she care, she asked herself, whether Norine heeded her advice or not? Except on Kay’s account, but it was not only, she admitted, on Kay’s account that she minded. She had got carried away by a vision of a better life for Norine. And now, inflamed by her own missionary zeal, she did not want to give that vision up. “Whatever choice you make, Norine,” she said firmly, “don’t talk about it. That’s my principal advice to you. Don’t talk about yourself or Putnam to anyone but a lawyer. Not even another doctor. If anybody talks to a doctor, it ought to be Putnam, not you. And as long as you’re married to him, resolve not to mention sex. In any form—animal, vegetable, or mineral. No Fallopian tubes.” “O.K.,” said Norine, sighing, as if this would be the most difficult part.

A weighty silence followed; the dog resumed its barking; the Elevated rumbled on its trestle. In this Homeric contest, Zeus, opined Helena, was taking out his golden scales. Norine coughed and stretched. “You’re a precocious kid,” she said, yawning. “But you’re still in short pants, emotionally.
Si jeunesse savait
…!” She yawned again. “Seriously, I’m grateful to you for trying to help me. You’ve told me the truth, according to your lights. And you’ve given me a few damn good ideas. Like having to make a choice between sex and Put. Commit myself one way or the other. Instead of straddling the issue, the way I’ve been doing. What are you smiling at?” “Your choice of words.” Norine gave a brief guffaw. Then she frowned. “That’s an example,” she said, “of what I’d call the limitations of your approach. You’re hipped on forms, while I’m concerned with meanings. Do you mind if I tell you that most of your advice is superficial?” “Such as?” said Helena, nettled. “Cleaning up the apartment,” replied Norine. “As if that were primary. Buying toilet paper, buying Clorox, buying a new dress. Notice your stress on bourgeois acquisition. On mere
things
. I ask for bread and you offer me a stone. I grant you we ought to have toilet paper in the bathroom; Put bawled me out for that this morning. But that won’t solve the important questions. Poor people don’t have toilet paper.” “Still,” suggested Helena, “I should have thought that one of your aims was to see that they did have toilet paper.” Norine shook her head. “You’re dodging my point,” she said. “Your obsession with appearances. You don’t touch on the basic things. The intangibles.” “The ‘spirit of the apples,’” remarked Helena. “Yes,” said Norine. “It seems to me your ‘central problem’ is rather tangible,” Helena drawled. She perceived that Norine did not intend to follow any of her prescriptions, unless perhaps she would change the dog’s name to Rover—as a conversation-maker. “No,” Norine replied thoughtfully. “There’s an underlying spiritual malaise. Put’s impotence is a sign of a Promethean loneliness.”

Helena picked up her ocelot coat from the studio couch. After her last remark, Norine had sunk into meditation, her chin cupped in her hand, and seemed to have forgotten that Helena was there. “Do you have to go?” she said absently. “If you stick around, I’ll give you some lunch.” Helena refused. “I have to meet my father.” She slipped her coat on. “Well, thanks,” said Norine. “Thanks a lot. Drop in this afternoon if you’re free.” She put out her big hand with its bitten, dirty fingernails. “Harald and Kay will be here, if you want to see them again.” Her memory appeared to jog her, and she reddened, meeting Helena’s eye. “You don’t understand,” she said. “Put and I can’t just drop them. I have to see Harald socially. He and Put have a lot in common—in their thinking. Probably they mean more to each other than I mean to either of them. And Harald depends on us for intellectual stimulation. I told you—we run sort of a salon. We’re being written up this month in
Mademoiselle
. ‘Put and Norine Blake, he Williams ’31, she Vassar ’33, keep open house for the conscience of young America.’ With pictures.” Her laugh jerked out. Then she frowned and ran a hand through her hair. “That’s the element you miss in your analysis. The vital center of my marriage with Put. We’ve come to stand for something meaningful to other people, and when that happens you’re no longer a free agent. From
your
perspective, you can’t see that. And that leads you to overemphasize sex.” Norine’s tone had grown instructive and kindly as she stood looking down on her little visitor. “You won’t repeat what I’ve told you?” she added, on a sudden note of anxiety. “No,” said Helena, adjusting her jaunty hat. “But
you
will.” Norine followed her to the door. “You’re a peach,” she declared.