The Group (42 page)

These visions, Polly recognized, were all Utopian, when not simply humorous. But when she tried to think more practically, she was appalled by the images that crept into her mind. Just now, on this Saturday afternoon, when her father had been talking to her about marriage, a picture of Aunt Julia’s will appeared before her. They were gathered together, the relations, in Aunt Julia’s library, the corpse was in the drawing room, and the lawyer was reading her will to them: Henry Andrews was the chief beneficiary.

“I wouldn’t count on Julia,” her father said quietly. Polly jumped. He had this uncanny faculty—which Polly had observed in some of the mental patients in the hospital—of sitting there silently, reading your thoughts. “Julia,” her father went on, “is a queer one. She’s likely to leave everything she’s got to a charity. With a pension to Ross. The Animal Protection Union. Or the Salvation Army. To be used for Santa Claus uniforms.” He gave his plaintive laugh. “In my opinion, Julia is senile.” Polly knew what her father was thinking of. His sister had always been a temperance woman, because of the history of alcoholism in the family; her uncles and all her brothers, except Henry, had succumbed to the malady. But until recent years she had served wine at her dinners, even during Prohibition, though she herself drank only ginger ale. The law, she said, did not extend to a gentleman’s private cellar. But since repeal, illustrating the Andrews’ perversity, she had banned wine from her table and served ginger ale, cider, grape juice, and various health drinks described by her brother as nauseous; he insisted that he had been served coconut milk. “Throughout the meal.” Her latest crime, however, was more serious. She had emptied the contents of her husband’s cellar down the sink in the butler’s pantry. “I might have sold it,” she said. “I had the man from Lehmann appraise the contents. It would have brought me a pretty penny. But my conscience forbade it. To have sold it would have been trafficking in death. Like these munitions-makers you read about—profiteers.” “You could have given it to me,” said Henry. “It wouldn’t be good for you, Henry. And anyway you have no place to keep it. You know yourself that fine wines deteriorate if kept in improper conditions.” In fact, Ross had saved a number of bottles of Mr. Andrews’ favorite claret and brought them down to Tenth Street, but Mr. Andrews was incensed. “It was typical of Julia,” he said now, “to have the cellar appraised before scuttling it. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she had several different appraisers in. To enter her virtue in the ledger at the highest bid. It will be the same with her will. There’ll be a long preamble explaining what she intended originally to leave to her survivors and explaining that she finally decided that it would not be good for them to have it. ‘My husband’s money brought me a great deal of unhappiness. I do not wish to transmit this unhappiness to others.’”

Polly smiled. She hoped her father was right, for if he was, she would be able to forget about Aunt Julia’s will. Counting on it was close to wishing for her death. Not that Polly had done that, but she feared she might if things got very bad. Or even if she did not, it was still wrong to see the
good side
of the loss of a relation.

“No,” said her father. “I must find you a husband. Invest my hopes in grandchildren—not in the death of an old woman. Though I still trust that I can get her to leave a small legacy to the Trotskyites.” “You’re crazy,” said Polly, laughing. “You can’t seem to get it through your head that Aunt Julia’s a Republican.” “I know that, my dear,” said Mr. Andrews. “But Julia has been convinced by what she reads in the papers that we Trotskyites are counter-revolutionary agents bent on destroying the Soviet Union. Walter Duranty and those fellows, you know, have made her believe in the trials. If what they write wasn’t true, she says, it wouldn’t be in the New York
Times
, would it? And of course I’ve added my bit. The Trotskyites, I’ve assured her, are the only effective force fighting Stalin. Roosevelt is playing right into his hands. And Hitler has his own ax to grind.” “You’re a crook, Father,” said Polly, kissing him. “Not at all,” said her father. “It’s true. And I’ve saved Julia from being a fascist.”

This conversation, by entertaining her, made Polly forget her worries for the moment. That was the trouble with her father. When she was with him, she could not remember to worry. And when she did remember, it was with a start of fear at the thought that she could have forgotten. At night she had terrible dreams about money, from which she would awake sweating. Once she dreamed that Christmas had come and the whole apartment had turned into a greenhouse as big as the Crystal Palace because she had forgotten to tell the landlady to countermand it. Another night she thought that she and her father had become nudists because he said they would economize that way on clothes, and an Irish policeman arrested them. But at the hospital one day she found a solution to their troubles. It was a solution she had never thought of because, like the purloined letter, it was staring her right in the face. She was taking blood for a transfusion from a professional donor, and the thought popped into her mind: “Why not I?” That week she sold a pint of her blood to the laboratory. The next week she did it again and the week after. She was sure it was not dangerous; professional donors did it all the time, and the internes sometimes did it. Besides, she was unusually healthy and well nourished this year because her father was an excellent dietitian—she was bursting with iron and vitamins, and if she looked anemic, it was only that she was naturally pale. Yet she told herself that it would be wiser, in the future, to make her donations at Bellevue or at another laboratory, where nobody knew her, so as not to cause talk among her colleagues. The next time, though, she was in a hurry, for it was the week before Christmas and she had used her lunch hour to buy candy canes and paper to make chains for Christmas-tree decorations—her mother had sent them a tree from the farm. So she went to her own laboratory as usual, saying that this would be the last time.

That day, as luck would have it, she was discovered by Dr. Ridgeley, who had come in to look at a patient’s blood sample. “What are you doing?” he wanted to know, though he could see quite clearly from the apparatus, which still hung beside the couch where she was resting, as you were made to do after giving blood. “Christmas money,” said Polly, smiling nervously and letting her clenched fist relax. His eyes got quite big and he turned and went out of the room. In a minute, he came back. He had been consulting the records. “This is your fourth donation, Polly,” he said sharply. “What’s the trouble?” “Christmas,” she repeated. But he thought it was her father. “Did you do what I told you?” he said. “Shut down your charge accounts? See that he doesn’t get credit?” “I don’t have any charge accounts. He doesn’t use credit.”

“That you know of,” said Dr. Ridgeley. “Look here, Polly. Allow me to put two and two together. If I see a manic patient and meet a member of his family selling her blood in a laboratory, I conclude that he’s been on a spending spree.” “No,” said Polly. “We’re just short of money over the holidays.” She got up. “Sit down,” he said. “Your father, my dear girl, is severely ill. Someone ought to see that he gets treatment.” “Goes to the hospital, you mean? No, Dr. Ridgeley.” She refused to call him “Jim” now. “He’s sane, I swear to you. His mind is completely clear. He’s just a little bit eccentric.” “These spending sprees, I told you,” he said impatiently, “are symptomatic. They indicate that the patient is way up on the manic curve. The next stage is often an outbreak of violence, with megalomania. Commonly with a sense of mission. Is your father interested in politics?” Polly paled; she was dizzy, which she tried to attribute to blood loss. “Everyone is interested in politics,” she muttered. “I’m not,” said Jim Ridgeley. “But I mean, does he have some special angle? Some pet formula to save the world? A discovery he’s made in recent months?” To Polly, this was magic. “He’s a Trotskyite,” she whispered. “What’s that?” he said. “Oh, don’t be so ignorant!” cried Polly. “Trotsky. Leon Trotsky. One of the makers of the Russian Revolution. Commander of the Red Army. Stalin’s arch-enemy. In exile in Mexico.” “I’ve heard of him, sure,” said Jim Ridgeley. “Didn’t he use to be a pants-presser in Brooklyn?” “No!” cried Polly. “That’s a legend!” A great gulf had opened between her and this young man, and she felt she was screaming across it. In fairness, she tried to remember that a year ago she too had probably thought that Trotsky had pressed pants in Brooklyn; a year ago, she had been almost as ignorant as this doctor. But this only made her realize how far she had traveled from her starting point, the normal educated center, where Jim Ridgeley doggedly stood in his white coat, and which now seemed to her subnormal and uneducated. Yet he had guessed her father was a Trotskyite without even knowing what one was. She began explaining to him that the Trotskyites were the only true Communists and that, right now, they were in the Socialist party. “You’ve heard of Norman Thomas, I hope.” “Sure thing,” replied the doctor. “He ran for President. I voted for him myself in ’32.” “Well,” said Polly, relieved, “the Trotskyites are part of his movement.” As she spoke, she was aware of a slight dishonesty. The Trotskyites, she knew from her father, had entered the Socialist party “as a tactic”; they were not really Socialists like Norman Thomas at all.

He sat down on the leather couch beside her. “Be that as it may,” he said, a phrase Polly disliked, “they’re a small sect with a mission. Is that right?” “In a way,” said Polly. “They believe in permanent revolution.” And in spite of herself, she smiled. The doctor nodded. “In other words, you think they’re nuts.” She tried to be honest. Forgetting about her father, did she think Mr. Schneider was a nut? “On many points, I think they’re right. But on that one point—permanent revolution—I can’t help feeling that they’re a bit out of touch with reality. But that’s just my idea. I may lack vision.” He smiled at her quizzingly. “You have wonderful eyes,” he said. He leaned forward. For a startled moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. Then he jumped to his feet.

“Polly, you ought to commit your father.” “Never.” He took her hand. “Maybe I feel strongly because I’m falling in love with you,” he said. Polly pulled her hand away. She was not as surprised as she ought to have been. In the back of her mind, she feared, she had been angling to make Dr. Ridgeley fall in love with her; that was why she had consulted him about her father! Just like other women, she had had her eye on him, having guessed that he liked her quite a bit. Sensing nothing but that about him (she now admitted), she had “thrown herself in his way.” But now that she had heard what she had been hoping to hear, she was scared. She wished he could have said something different; he sounded like the hero of a woman’s magazine story. The idea too that she had probably been using her poor father as a pawn to lure this young man forward made her smile disgustedly at herself. At the same time, inside her, an exultant voice was crowing, “He loves me!” But then another voice said who was Jim Ridgeley after all, what did she know about him? Her father might say that he was sadly ordinary—another Gus. The proof of this was that he could talk of love and of putting her father in an asylum in one and the same breath. She gave him an icy look. “If you won’t do it,” he said in a different tone, “your mother should.” “She can’t,” Polly answered triumphantly. “You forget. They’re divorced.” “Then the nearest of kin.” “His sister,” said Polly. “My Aunt Julia.” He nodded. “She’s senile,” said Polly, in that same tone of childish triumph. She did not know what had got into her, some mischievous demon that was prompting her to lie. “And your brothers?” “They’d never do it. Any more than I would. You’ll have to give up, Dr. Ridgeley.” “Stop playing,” he said. “It’s a dangerous game.” “
My father is not dangerous
,” said Polly. “You leave him alone.” “He’s dangerous to you now,” he said gently. “You shouldn’t be giving your life blood for him.” “I suppose you think I have a father complex,” she answered coldly. He shook his head. “I’m not a Freudian. You feel protective toward him. As if he were your child. This may be because you haven’t yet had any children.”

Suddenly Polly began to cry. He put his arms around her, and she pressed her wet cheek against his stiff white coat. She felt completely disconsolate. Nothing lasted. First, Gus, and then on top of that her father. She had been so happy with him and she would be still, if only they had some money or if he were just a
little
different. But it was true, he was like a child, and gradually she had got to know that, just as gradually she had got to know that Gus would never marry her. But she ought to have faced facts in both cases from the beginning. She had welcomed her father because she needed him and had deliberately not noticed his frailties, just as she had done with Gus. And with her father, there was probably a little element of trying to be superior to her mother:
she
could make him happy, if her mother couldn’t. This meant she had given in to him, where her mother had had the strength not to. They should
never
have taken the apartment, her mother could have told her that; that was the beginning of the
folie de grandeur
. She could not control her father; she was inert. The same with Gus. If she had given him a strong lead, he would have married her.

“I had an
awful
love affair,” she said, still weeping. “The man threw me over. I wanted to die, and then my father came. I thought finally I had a purpose in life, that I could take care of him. And now I can’t seem to do it. It’s not his fault; I just don’t earn enough for the two of us. And I can’t ship him back to my mother. And I won’t put him in an asylum. He really and truly isn’t certifiable. You said yourself he might ‘spontaneously recover.’ Of course, I could go to my aunt. I guess that’s what I’d better do.”

“Go to your aunt?” “Ask her for money. She isn’t senile. That was a lie. And she’s very rich, or used to be—nobody really knows how much she has left. But you know how funny rich people are about money.” “That might solve your problem temporarily,” he said, sounding like a psychiatrist. “But you must face the fact that your father may get worse. What will you do with him when you marry, Polly?” “I can’t marry,” she said. “You know that. At least, I can’t have children, with my heredity. I’ve come to terms with that finally. It would be selfish to have children—wicked.”