The Group (49 page)

Afterward he had told her that she and her sister had made an unnecessary hullabaloo. Yet it was the only sphere where he could say she had failed with Stephen. He did not wet his bed any more; he ate his vegetables and junkets; he was obedient; he hardly ever cried now, and at night he went to sleep at his appointed time, surrounded by his stuffed animals. She could not see where she had erred in training him. Neither could her mother. Together, they had retraced the whole history, from the first mornings she had set him on the new toidey-seat strapped to the regular toilet. Immediately, he had changed the time of his movement. It jumped from nine o’clock to ten to seven and all around the clock, with Priss and the young girl she had had helping her chasing it in vain. Whenever they judged, from his expression, that he needed to “go,” they would clap him on the toidey, so that he would associate the two ideas. But no matter how long they lay in ambush for him or how patiently they waited once he was on the seat, usually he disappointed them. Often, as soon as they took him off, he would do it in his crib.

When he was smaller, Priss had tried to think that he did not understand what was wanted of him, and Sloan had authorized her to grunt and make pushing grimaces, to encourage him to imitate her. But her grunts produced no results except to make her feel foolish. She tried leaving him on the toidey alone, so that he would not suppose it was a game the two of them were playing. She tried leaving him there longer, but Sloan said five minutes was enough. On the rare occasions when—by pure chance, it seemed to Priss—he “performed,” she moderated her pantomime of approval, so that he would not sense it as a punishment when she did not smile or clap.

Sloan’s belief was that Priss’s nervousness was to blame, just as it had been with her nursing. “He senses your tension when you put him on the toilet. Relax.” Yet Sloan himself would have been far from relaxed if he had had to clean up Stephen’s bed when he had fouled his toys and stuffed animals. Sloan always said that the right way was to avoid even the appearance of censure when that occurred. “Just be matter-of-fact. Act as though nothing had happened.” But that would be a lie. By this time, Stephen must know, though she had never reproached him by word or sign, that she did not really like him to do Number Two in his bed. In fact, it had become clear to her that not only did he know but enjoyed the knowledge. Particularly on a day when she would lead guests to his room after a luncheon party and find that “it” had happened. Seeing the ladies flee from the scene of the crime, he responded with gurgles and crows. Priss suspected there was a streak of rebellion tucked away in Stephen, which expressed itself by thwarting her in this particular way. As if he had read a handbook on pediatrics and knew that this was one naughty action for which he could not be punished; instead, he could punish her.

This thought was too morbid to be discussed, even with her mother. Could a two-and-a-half-old plot and carry out a scheme of revenge? And for what? Alas, in her darkest moments, Priss feared she knew. For the bottle he had got too late, for the schedule he had been held to, on the minute: six, ten, two, six, ten, two. Perhaps even for this “sucking” Norine talked about that he had missed. For never having been picked up when he cried, except to have his diaper changed or be given a drink of water. For the fact, in short, that his father was a pediatrician. Everyone, including Mrs. Hartshorn, who had begun as a skeptic, now exclaimed over how well the new regime had worked; they had never seen a two-year-old so strong, so big, so well behaved and self-sufficient. Priss’s friends, when they came to dinner, were amazed to observe that Stephen went to bed without any discussion. Priss sang to him; he had his arrowroot cookie, his drink of water, and his kiss. Then he was tucked in, and out went his light. He did not call out to have it turned on again or ask for his door to be left open. “He was trained as an infant,” Sloan would say, passing the hors d’oeuvres. “Priss never went in to him, once he’d been stowed away for the night. And we accustomed him to noise. He’s never had a pillow.” Not one of Priss’s friends could match that; they had tried to follow the broad principles, but they had weakened on some detail, with the result that their young disturbed the parents’ cocktail hour with pleas for drinks of water, light, attention generally; they were afraid of the dark or had food crotchets or refused to take naps. The point, Sloan said, was to have the force of character to stick to the system absolutely, except in cases of illness or on trips. Stephen had got a good start in life because Priss had never compromised. This was what Priss endeavored to think herself, encouraged by her friends’ admiration. Yet at times she furtively wondered whether when Stephen made messes in his pants he was not getting his own back for being alive at all.

“I hope you’ll be luckier than I’ve been,” she said sadly to Norine. “Have you started toilet training yet? Sloan has a theory that we waited too long. If you begin early enough, he says, there’s no reason a baby should be harder to train than an animal.” Norine shook her head. She did not plan to train Ichabod. He needed the fun of playing with his own excrement, just as he needed sucking. “When he’s ready to use the toilet, he’ll ask for it. Probably when he starts nursery school. The pressure of the group will encourage him to give up his anal pleasures. You’ll find, when you put yours in nursery school, that he’ll make the great renunciation.” She did not plan to wean Ichabod either—that is, from the bottle. He would wean himself when he was Stephen’s age, and, if he did not,
tant pis
.

“Where in the world did you get such ideas?” Not, Priss was certain, from a reputable pediatrician; Norine must have got hold of some quack. They were based on anthropology, Norine explained. Scientists had been watching the habits of primitive peoples and drawing valuable conclusions. The Pueblo Indians, for instance, who were the
crème de la crème
of the Indian world, did not wean their children till they were two or three years old. Most primitive peoples did not bother about toilet training at all. “But they have no toilets,” said Priss. Norine nodded. “That’s the price of our culture. If you have a flush toilet, you make a fetish of it. Have you read Margaret Mead? A great woman, that.”

Needless to say, Ichabod was not on a schedule. He created his own schedule. He was picked up whenever he cried and was fed “on demand.” “What about baby foods? Are you going to give him baby foods?” Norine did not know. But she was against feeding a baby a restricted diet. “Babies are tough,” she said. “They’ll choose their own diet if you offer them a variety of foods.” Priss said that she thought girls today were perhaps making it too easy for themselves by opening a jar of baby food, instead of pureéring fresh vegetables at home and pressing beef in the ricer for beef juice. The question did not appear to interest Norine. Indeed, the discussions that raged in pediatric circles—how soon to start orange juice, evaporated milk versus Borden’s, bottled baby foods versus homemade, enemas versus glycerine suppositories, the merits of Pablum, the new three-hour feeding schedule for hungry babies (Priss and Sloan had pioneered that!)—seemed never to have reached her ears. Ichabod, she repeated, would make his own decisions; already he had shown a taste for Italian spaghetti—she made a practice of offering him scraps of food from her plate. She did not possess a baby scales or a bathinet. He was bathed in the washbasin. She stared reflectively at Stephen. “How old is he? Three?” “Two and a half next Saturday.” Norine pondered. “In his day, of course, you were still hipped on scales and clocks and thermometers. The age of measurement. God, it seems a long time ago!” She yawned and stretched her big frame. “We had a late night last night. Some Jesuits for dinner. And somebody playing the drums. Then Ichabod burned the candle at both ends.”

Priss girded her loins for combat; it was plain to her that Norine was talking through her hat. “The age of measurement is just beginning,” she said doughtily. “For the first time we’re establishing norms. In all fields. You ought to keep up with the latest developments. Have you heard about Gesell’s studies at Yale? Finally we’re going to have a scientific picture of the child. Gesell shows us what to expect in terms of achievement of a one-year-old, a two-year-old, a three-year-old. When he publishes his findings in p-p-popular form, every mother will have a y-yardstick.”

This time Norine smothered her yawn. “I know Gesell’s work. He’s a fossil relic of behaviorism. His daughter was ’35.” “What does that prove?” demanded Priss. Norine declined to argue. “You still believe in progress,” she said kindly. “I’d forgotten there were people who did. It’s your substitute for religion. Your tribal totem is the yardstick. But we’ve transcended all that. No first-rate mind can accept the concept of progress any more.” “You used to be such a radical,” protested Priss. “Don’t you admire some of what Roosevelt is doing? TVA, rural electrification, the Farm Resettlement Administration, crop control, Wages and Hours. Granting that he’s made some mistakes—” “I still am a radical,” interrupted Norine. “But now I fathom what it means—going back to the roots. The New Deal is rootless—superficial. It doesn’t even have the dynamism of fascism.”

“Does your husband agree with your ideas?” “Does yours?” retorted Norine. “No,” Priss had to admit. “Not about politics. We’re at daggers drawn.” Right now, they were quarreling about Danzig; Sloan did not care if Hitler gobbled up the whole of Europe—he was for America first. “The old Vassar story,” commented Norine. “I leave politics to Freddy. Being a Jew and upper crust, he’s profoundly torn between interventionism abroad and
laissez faire
at home. Freddy isn’t an intellectual. But before we were married, we had an understanding that he should read Kafka and Joyce and Toynbee and the cultural anthropologists. Some of the basic books. So that semantically we can have the same referents.” Priss wondered that Norine should have left out Freud. “Most of Freud’s out of date,” Norine declared. “He was too narrowly a man of his place and time. The old Austrian Empire, with its folkways, he took for a universal culture. Jung has more to say to me. And some of the younger post-Freudians. Not that I don’t owe a lot to Freud.”

Priss, who had always been planning to read Freud some day when she had the time, felt relieved and disappointed to hear that it was no longer necessary. Norine, she presumed, knew about such things. She sounded almost as if Freud were dead. Priss had a flutter of anxiety that she might have missed reading his obituaries in the papers; she seemed to have missed so much. “Of course,” Norine was saying, “between Freddy and me there’s a deep cultural conflict. Our Vassar education made it tough for me to accept my womanly role. While Freddy, as a Jew, instinctively adopts the matriarchal principle. He wants me to reign in the home while he goes to the counting-house. That’s great, as far as Ichabod goes; he doesn’t interfere with my program and he keeps his mother muzzled. Freddy’s philoprogenitive; he’s interested in founding a dynasty. So long as I can breed, I’m a sacred cow to him. Bed’s very important to Freddy; he’s a sensualist, like Solomon. Collects erotica. He worships me because I’m a goy. Besides, like so many rich Jews, he’s a snob. He likes to have interesting people in the house, and I can give him that.” She broke off and gave vent to a sigh. “The trouble is—The trouble is—” She dropped her voice and looked around her. “Christ, I can say it to you. You probably have the same problem.” Priss swallowed nervously; she feared Norine was going to talk about sex, which was still Priss’s bête noire.

“The trouble is my brains,” said Norine. “I was formed as an intellectual by Lockwood and those other gals. Freddy doesn’t mind that I can think rings around him; he likes it. But I’m conscious of a yawning abyss. And he expects me to be a
Hausfrau
at the same time. A hostess, he calls it. I’ve got to dress well and set a good table. He thinks it ought to be easy because we have servants. But I can’t handle servants. It’s a relic, I guess, of my political period. Freddy’s taken to hiring them himself, but I demoralize them, he says, as soon as they get in the house. They take a cue from my cerebralism. They start drinking and padding the bills and forgetting to polish the silver. Freddy goes all to pieces if he gets served warmed-over coffee in a tarnished pot—he’s a sybarite. Or if the table linen’s dirty. He made the butler change it last night just as we were sitting down to dinner. I never noticed it myself; I was too busy discussing Natural Law with those Jesuits.”

“You can go over the linen and the silver in the morning,” Priss pointed out. “Before you have a dinner party. Take out everything you’re going to use and check it.” Though a Phi Beta Kappa, she had never had any trouble with her part-time maids, who usually came to her through her mother. Brains, she thought, were supposed to help you organize your life efficiently; besides, she had never heard that Norine had shone as a student. “I know,” answered Norine. “I’ve been trying to turn over a new leaf, now that we have a new house. I start out with a woman who comes to massage me and give me exercises to relax. But before I know it, I’m discussing the Monophysites or the Athanasian Creed or Maimonides. The weirdest types come to work for me; I seem to magnetize them. The butler we have now is an Anthroposophist. Last night he started doing eurhythmies.” She laughed.

“You really feel our education was a mistake?” Priss asked anxiously. Sloan had often expressed the same view, but that was because it had given her ideas he disagreed with. “Oh, completely,” said Norine. “I’ve been crippled for life.” She stretched. Priss looked at her watch. It was time for her and Stephen to leave. Norine rose too. “Ichabod and I’ll keep you company.” She pinned a diaper on her offspring and covered him with a monogrammed blanket. “
Pour les convenances
,” she said. Together they crossed Fifth Avenue and walked along Seventy-second Street, wheeling their children. The conversation became desultory. “When did I see you last?” Norine wondered. “Was it at Kay’s?” said Priss. “The year after college?” “That’s right,” said Norine. There was a silence. “Poor Kay,” said Priss, dodging a grocery cart from Gristede’s.