The Group (40 page)

Dear Polly:

Your mother and I have decided to get a divorce. If it suits you, I would like to come to New York and live with you. That is, if you are not otherwise encumbered. I could make myself useful, do the shopping and cooking for you. We might look for a little flat together. Your mother will keep the farm. My mental health is excellent.

Your obedient servant and loving father,

Henry L. K. Andrews

Twelve

I
T WAS AN ILL
wind that blew nobody good. Had Gus not decided to go back to Esther (and he did, the following week), Polly would have had to turn her father away. In fact, if the letter had arrived on Saturday, instead of Monday, she would have been in a terrible quandary. On Saturday there was still Gus. What
could
she have done? Probably she would have telephoned her mother and begged her to keep her father on the farm—not to rush into a divorce. Or she might have suggested mental treatment. The irony of this was not lost on her from the very first minute. She took cold comfort from the thought that, thanks to Gus, she could wire her father to come ahead. On hearing the news, everyone took for granted that her parents’ separation must have been a dreadful shock to her, but the sad truth was that all Polly felt then was a wan gratitude that her father was coming. It was with a start finally that she remembered her mother and wondered how she was taking it.

Long afterward, Polly admitted that it had all worked out for the best. She was happy, living with her father, far happier than she had been with Gus. They suited each other. And his arrival, three days after his letter, was occupational therapy for her—just what a doctor would have prescribed.

Mr. Andrews himself, when he got off the train, was in fine fettle—a small white-haired old man with a goblin head and bright blue eyes; he was carrying a case of fresh farm eggs, which he would not entrust to the redcap, and a bouquet of jonquils. He had not been so well in years, he declared, and Kate was well too, never better. He attributed it all to divorce—a splendid institution. Everyone should get a divorce. Kate already looked ten years younger. “But won’t it take a long time, Father?” said Polly. “All the legal side. Even if Mother consents.” But Mr. Andrews was sanguine. “Kate’s already filed the papers and served me. The process server came to tea. I’ve given her grounds, the best grounds there are.” Polly was slightly shocked at the notion that her father, at his age, had been committing adultery. But he meant insanity. He was delighted with himself for having had the foresight to be loony and to have the papers to prove it.

Low-spirited as she was during the first days, Polly was amused by her father. She was startled to hear herself laugh aloud the night he came; it was as if the sound had come from someone else. She told herself that she was going through the motions of living, now that she had someone to live for, but before long she found she was looking forward to coming home from work, wondering what they would have for dinner and what her father had been up to in her absence. He was immensely proud of the divorce and talked about it to everyone, as if it were some new process he had discovered, all by himself. For the time being, Polly had taken for him a room on the third floor; on weekends, they were going to look for an apartment. But then Mr. Andrews had a better idea. Having made friends with the landlady, he persuaded her to turn the top-floor rooms into an apartment for him and Polly—the lodger in the one that was rented could move downstairs to Polly’s place. He designed the new apartment himself, using the hall to gain space and to make a little kitchen, long and narrow, like a ship’s galley. All spring and early summer he and Polly were busy with the remodeling, which did not cost the landlady very much since Mr. Andrews gave his services free, did some of the carpentry himself (he had learned at the workshop in the sanatorium), and found a secondhand sink and plumbing fixtures in the junk yards he haunted, looking for treasure. Polly learned to paint, well enough to do the bookshelves and cupboards; she sewed curtains from old sheets, with a blue and red border, the colors of the French flag, and she got to work with upholstery tacks and recovered two of the landlady’s Victorian chairs.

The apartment, when it was finished, was delightful, with its old marble fireplaces and inside shutters; if Mr. Andrews and Polly were ever to leave it, the landlady could rent it for much more than she was charging them. Carried away with his success, Mr. Andrews wanted to redo the whole house into apartments and make the landlady’s fortune—a project Polly vetoed, thinking of Mr. Schneider and Mr. Scherbatyeff, who could not afford apartment rentals and would have had to move. Mr. Andrews had to content himself with the plan of making Polly a little winter garden or greenhouse for her plants, outside the back windows, which had a southern exposure; he wanted this to be Polly’s Christmas present and spent a good deal of his time at the glazier’s.

The change in Mr. Andrews amazed everyone who knew him. It could not be just the divorce, his sister Julia said, nor dear Polly’s good heart and youthful spirits. Something else must have happened to Henry. It was Polly’s mother who provided the information, during a visit she made to New York, where she stayed with her ex-sister-in-law on Park Avenue. “They changed the name of his illness, did you know that, Polly? They don’t call it melancholia any more. They call it manic-depressive psychosis. When Henry heard that, he felt as if he’d been cheated all these years. He’d only had the ‘depressed’ phase, you see. He cheered up extraordinarily and began to make all these projects. Beginning with the crazy notion that we ought to get a divorce. At first I went along with it just to humor him. You know, the way I did when he insisted on being baptized into the Roman faith by the village curé and then baptized all you children himself. I knew those baptisms were otiose, since you’d all been christened as infants in the Episcopal church. Well, I assumed the divorce bug would pass, like the Romanism bug. But he got more and more set on it and on coming to New York. So I finally said to myself, ‘Why not? Henry may have a good idea, after all. At our time of life, there’s no earthly reason to stay together if we don’t feel like it.’ And I’ve been a new woman myself ever since.” Polly looked at her mother, pouring tea at Aunt Julia’s table. It was true; she was blooming, like an expansive widow, and she had had a new permanent wave. “Excuse me, madam,” said Ross, who was passing biscuits, “but why couldn’t you and Mr. Henry just live apart, the way so many couples do?” “Henry said that wouldn’t be respectable,” replied Mrs. Andrews. “It would be like living together without marriage—living apart without a divorce.” “I see,” said Ross. “I never thought of it that way.” She gave Polly a wink. “I can run the farm much better myself,” Mrs. Andrews went on to Polly, lighting a cigarette and oblivious of Polly’s blush. “With just your brothers’ help. Henry was always interfering, and he’s never cared for domestic animals. He was only interested in his pot herbs and his kitchen garden. Now that he’s gone, we’ve bought some Black Angus and I’m going to try turkeys for the Thanksgiving market—I’ve been to see Charles & Company and they took an order. If Henry were there, he’d insist on Chinese pheasants or peacocks. And peacocks are such an unpleasant bird! Quarrelsome and shrill.”

“Do you mean that Father is in a ‘manic’ state?” “I suppose so, my dear,” Mrs. Andrews answered comfortably. “Let’s only hope it lasts. He’s not giving you any trouble, is he?” “No,” said Polly, but the next day she had a talk with the second psychiatrist-in-charge at the Payne Whitney Clinic, whom she had known as a young resident. She often had to give metabolism tests to manic-depressive patients, but she had not known that her father’s “melancholia”—which she connected with “
Il Penseroso
” and with Dürer’s engraving—was part of the same syndrome. In her experience, the manic patients were frequently under restraint, in straitjackets, and she was amazed at her mother’s unconcern.

Yes, said the young doctor, Mr. Andrews’ behavior did indeed reveal some of the typical manic symptoms, but in a mild form. It was possible that a trough of depression would follow, but, given the mildness of the manic elation, it need not be severe. At her father’s age, the cycle often lengthened or abated altogether. “How old is he?” “About sixty.” The doctor nodded. “After the climacteric, many manic-depressive patients spontaneously recover.” Polly told him her mother’s idea: that her father had changed his symptoms when he learned the new name of his disease. The doctor laughed. “That isn’t possible, is it?” said Polly. “With these nuts anything is possible, Polly,” he declared. “Insanity is a funny thing. We don’t really understand anything about it. Why they get sick, why they get well. Changing the name may make a difference. We’ve noticed that now that we no longer speak of dementia praecox, we get fewer dementia-praecox patients. It tempts you to think sometimes that all mental illness has an hysterical origin, that they’re all copying the latest textbooks. Even the illiterate patients. Could your father be hysterical?” “I don’t think so,” said Polly. “Though he used to cry a lot. But very quietly.” “Would you like me to see him?” Polly hesitated; she was feeling greatly relieved, without knowing why. “You might come for sherry some afternoon. Or for Sunday lunch, if you’re off duty. Very informal. Father’s a good cook and he loves to entertain.”

This was true. Polly’s social life had become much more active since her father had been sharing an apartment with her. The chief problem was restraining his expenditures. He had discovered the new A & P self-service market and was an enthusiastic patron, confident that he was saving money with every purchase he made. He shopped in quantity, saying that it saved time; the big economy-size package appealed to him; he took advantage of “special offers” and never missed a sale. He was also fond of the Italian fish and vegetable markets on lower Second Avenue, where he bought all manner of strange sea creatures and vegetables Polly had never seen before. Every Sunday at lunch they entertained, using chafing dishes Aunt Julia had put away as old-fashioned, and the guests sometimes stayed the whole afternoon, playing games or listening to the phonograph. Polly now had great trouble finding time to do her laundry and wash her hair.

Shortly after his arrival, Mr. Andrews had taken up ping-pong; as a young man, he had played tennis very well, and now he had found a bar on First Avenue with a long back room where there was a ping-pong table. Every day he played with the “regulars” and on Saturday afternoons he would take part in tournaments, in which he insisted that Polly play too. In this way, she met a number of young men, some of whom would turn up for Sunday lunch or for her father’s Friday-night bouillabaisse. The guests often brought a bottle of wine. When Mr. Schneider came, he brought his violin. Or there would be a chess tournament, which Mr. Scherbatyeff presided over. “I hear you have a
salon
,” Libby said enviously on the telephone. “Why don’t you invite me? Kay says Norine Blake says you and your father are the
succès fou
of the year.”

But the red-letter day in Mr. Andrews’ life was the day he became a Trotskyite. Not just a sympathizer, but an organizational Trotskyite! It was Mr. Schneider, of course, who was responsible. Once the apartment was finished, Mr. Andrews had time to kill while Polly was at the hospital, and behind her back Mr. Schneider had been supplying him with reams of books and pamphlets about the Moscow trials. At first her father had found them heavy going; he had never taken much interest in politics, being a pessimist in the tradition of Henry Adams. But his attention was slowly fixed by the element of mystery in these trials—her father had a passion for puzzles, rebuses, mazes, conundrums. He concluded that Trotsky was innocent. The figure of the whiskered war commissar wearing a white uniform and riding in his armored train or reading French novels during Politburo meetings captured his imagination. He demanded that Mr. Schneider recruit him to the Trotskyite group. And unlike the village curé in France, who had required him to take instruction before being “received,” the Trotskyites, apparently, had accepted him as he was. He never understood the “dialectic” and was lax in attendance at meetings, but he made up for this by the zeal with which, wearing a red necktie and an ancient pair of spats, he sold the
Socialist Appeal
on the street outside Stalinist rallies. He proselytized at Aunt Julia’s tea table and at his ping-pong bar.

Polly was embarrassed by her father’s behavior; she felt that his style of dress and upper-class accent were giving the Trotskyites a bad name: the Stalinists would laugh at this “typical convert” to the doctrine of permanent revolution. And just as Gus had not made a Stalinist of her, her father could not make her a Trotskyite. She felt that neither Mr. Schneider nor her father would be so enthusiastic about the Old Man, as they called him, if he were actually in power. She did not approve of revolutions, unless they were absolutely necessary, and she thought it peculiar, to say the least, that her father and his friends were eager to make revolutions in democratic countries like France and the United States instead of concentrating on Hitler and Mussolini, who
ought
to be overthrown. Of course, as her father said, it was pretty hopeless to make a revolution against Hitler for the time being, since the workers’ parties had all been suppressed; still, it seemed rather unfair to penalize Roosevelt and Blum for not being Hitler. Fair play, replied her father, was a bourgeois concept and did not apply against the class enemy. Polly would have been horrified to hear her parent talk this way if she had thought he believed what he was saying. But she was sure that he did not, and furthermore the idea of his “seizing power” made her smile, it was so unlikely. She wondered whether the Trotskyites were not all a little touched. “Do you belong to a cell, Father?” she asked him, but he would not say, claiming that he was under discipline. It struck her that becoming a Trotskyite had merely given him one more thing to be snobbish about. He now looked down his nose at Stalinists, progressives, and New Dealers, as well as on the middle class and the “moneyed elements,” whom he had always derided. Some of his worst prejudices, she told him, scolding, were being reinforced by his new adherence. For example, coming from Massachusetts, he had a plaintive aversion to the Irish, and he was elated to hear that Marx had called the Irish the bribed tools of imperialism. “Look at that bribed tool of imperialism!” he would whisper, of the poor policeman on the beat.