Love & Mrs. Sargent Page 10

  “Don’t you think that some of them may read it just for laughs?”

  Sheila was not too pleased, but she was objective enough to consider the question. “I have no doubt of it. I get letters every day that are obviously gags. I get letters from cranks of all persuasions. But ninety-five per cent of my daily mail is from people who really want help. And I try my level best with each and every one. But I don’t do it through Freud or prayer or faith-healing or anything else. I have one formula and that is Common Sense for Common People.”

  “Just wait till I write that down,” Peter said, scribbling at his pad. “Common Sense for Common People. But just who is to say who is common?”

  “Oh come, Mr. Johnson. Everybody’s common. At least the people who write to me are all pretty common. Here,” she said, rising in a whisper of skirts, “I’ll show you.” Not unaware of how extremely handsome she was looking, Sheila strode to her desk. “This is today’s batch I’ve got to sign them. As for you, you can be useful as well as inquisitive. I’ll do the signing and then you can blot, read, fold, insert and lick the envelopes. Be careful not to mix the carbons. We file those. . .”

  “My God,” Peter said, seating himself beside her at the desk. “Do you really answer all this stuff every day?” He liked the way she smelled. Whatever it was she was wearing, it had a crisp clean lady-like odor without any of the obvious I-am-a-dangerous-woman undercurrents of musk or civet.

  “Certainly. Only the most interesting letters are printed, but I answer every piece of mail I get. And I never let the sun set on a letter. If these poor people think enough of me to. . .”

  “Well now, here’s an odd letter.”

  “Let’s see.”

  “No. Let me test you. I want to see if you’ll give the same answer to the same question on the second time around.”

  “Very well, Dick Tracy, fire away.”

  “Well, a Miss Rosalie Green of the Bronx writes to say—among other things—quote ‘My boy friend and I have been going steady for two years. Now he wants to become engaged. But, as he is still in dental school, he says he cannot afford to buy me an engagement ring. My mother says. . .”

  “Oh, that Rosalie! I remember her.”

  “And what did you advise?”

  “Why naturally, I told her—in polite language—that lots of old maids had rings but that diamonds made pretty chilly bedfellows. I suspect that Rosalie’s class has something to do with her attitude.”

  “Let’s see,” Peter said, studying the carbon copy of Sheila’s reply. “Hmmm. Oh yes, If you only knew how many thousands of women would be happy to trade their rings for the love of a good man.’ Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yes, I guess you’ve covered that one. Let’s try another.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “’Dear Shelia’—misspelled—I am fifteen years of age and want to wear a black sateen formal to our class dance. My mother says. . . .’ “

  “Oh, that silly goose of a girl,” Sheila said, interrupting him. “Rosebuds all over her letter paper and big fat circles dotting every I. That’s one case where mother does know best.”

  “And your reply: ‘Dear Sandra Jane: At fifteen you have years ahead of you when you can wear black—including some years when you may have to wear black. Listen to your mother for a little while longer. You will look far prettier and fresher in white, a delicate pastel or a gay, bright color. Sincerely yours, Sheila Sargent.”

  “I’m saving that one to run in the column around prom time. You’d be amazed at how many little girls want to turn up on the dance floor looking like streetwalkers.”

  “So you resort to the old Mother Knows Best line?”

  “Now don’t go putting words in my mouth. Rosalie’s mother in the Bronx obviously does not know best when she insists on some silly, extravagant gesture like an engagement ring for her daughter. Lots of mothers are stupid, power-driven old bitches who never should have had children in the first place. They bully, they meddle, they try to force their sons and daughters into impossible patterns. And they often—through the best of intentions, perhaps—wreck the lives of their children. But this Sandra Jane child, who wants to flounce around in black satin at fifteen, obviously comes from a nice, sensible family—where is it, Pitchpipe, South Dakota; some place like that—and. . . .”

  “Don’t you let Allison wear black to the Bicycle Club or wherever?”

  “Certainly not. You saw her tonight. And Allison is eighteen, not fifteen. .But until she’s come out, she’ll dress appropriately. The same should apply to Sandra Jane.”

  “Do you think there’s much of a debutante season in Pitchpipe, South Dakota?”

  “It’s all relative. If your daughter in New York. . . .”

  “I don’t happen to have a daughter in New York. I’m still single. It’s all pretty trivial anyhow.”

  “Ah, there you’re wrong. Problems like Rosalie’s and Sandra Jane’s may seem silly to us, but to them they’re of the most vital importance. Otherwise they never would have written.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Peter conceded. “Well, try this one. It’s a lot steamier. ‘I am employed in an office where I have held a position of trust for many years. But my employer has engaged a new secretary—a peroxide blonde only twenty years old that has already ruined one man’s life. Now she has set her cap for my boss and. . . .’”

  “Oh, yes. I remember. The boss is married and has three children and this old tattletale feels it a moral obligation to tell the wife. Never a day goes by that I don’t have to say ‘Mind your own business’ to some busybody.”

  “But reading on, it looks to me like this dame is a little bit sweet on the boss-man herself.”

  “Very astute of you, only that was no lady. That was a man. Look at the signature.”

  “What do you know! Shreveport, Louisiana—down in the Tennessee Williams country. But didn’t you suggest to him that he might be a little queer around the edges?”

  “Certainly not. To begin with, that’s just a guess. If I even hinted at such a thing I stand a chance of driving him to suicide or straight to some shyster lawyer. No, Mr. Johnson, I’m not a mail-order psychoanalyst. I answer the question at hand. He wants to know if he should make a man’s wife miserable by telling her that he suspects—only suspects, mind you—her husband of playing around. My answer was No.”

  “I suppose you’re right again.”

  “Of course I’m right. My, but you lick a mean envelope! If you’ll let me have those I’ll put them out so that Taylor can. . . . Thank you.” With speed and efficiency she stacked the envelopes on the desk and began arranging the original letters and the carbons of her replies in alphabetical order. “You’ll forgive me if I do this. Mrs. Flood isn’t at her best with the alphabet I’m sorry it’s been such a light day—only forty or fifty letters and most of them pretty run-of-the-mill. But there’ll be something much more interesting coming in while you’re here. Of course you won’t betray names or addresses? And if you’d like to go down to the cellar and look through the files. . . .”

  “Hey,” Peter said, picking up a letter, “here’s one I overlooked.”

  “Which one is that?” Sheila asked, leaning over his shoulder.

  She felt a warmth emanating from him and she noticed, for the first time, what nice little waxen looking ears he had. She liked that. “Oh, yes. This one was very odd. In the first place it didn’t come with the rest of the letters from Famous Features, but it was addressed directly to the house. It’s from a girl up in Waukegan. A waitress. Some Polish name, A lot of people around this neck of the woods know I live here. Not that anyone ever bothers me. Very strange.”

  “Strange? Her life sounds like an episode in. . . . Just listen to this: ‘Dear Mrs. Sargent’—very respectful—’My mother reads your column every day and I know she will do what you tell her to.’ The power of the press! ‘I am a girl eighteen years old and a high school graduate. Three months ago I moved to a place of my own because of my
dad. He would get drunk and beat me up because he said I was playing around with fellows. This is not true. I am a good girl but he would not believe me.

  “ ‘I got a job as a waitress and make good money. Every week I take my mom some money when I am sure my dad will be out of the house. At some tavern. Last week Mom was all bruised up with a big black eye. She told me she had fell down the front steps. This week she looked even worst and couldn’t hardly move her right arm. She said she slipped in the kitchen. But I know this is not so. My dad must of twisted her arm like he done mine before I moved out.

  “ ‘Honest, Mrs. Sargent, he is real crazy. Mom says that he don’t beat her up, but I know he does because he is a no-good mean crazy drunk. I make good money and have a car. If Mom would only leave him and come with me we could go to Cal.’ Cal?”

  “She doesn’t mean Coolidge. She means California—the land of milk and honey.”

  “Oh, yes. I see . . . we could go to California. I could get a job and he would never find us. But Mom says my dad is a burden God gave her and she won’t leave him. Please Mrs. Sargent write and tell her to come with me before that crazy man kills her. Sincerely, Pearl Pulaski. P.S. Please answer right away.’ Well!”

  “The poor child.”

  “And what did the Delphic Sybil say? Ah, here’s the reply. ‘Dear Miss Pulaski: I cannot tell your mother to leave your father if she doesn’t want to. You say he beats her. But how can you be sure? Your mother says that he does not. Why would she lie to you? Remember, you are only eighteen and not a qualified psychiatrist or a marriage counselor.’ Hmmmm.”

  “Well,” Sheila said, “is she?”

  “If she were she wouldn’t be writing to you. ‘Because of your dislike of your father, you could be breaking up your mother’s marriage. Perhaps she loves him. If God gave your mother this man as a burden, think of this old German proverb: Gott giebt die Schultem noch der Burde. . . .’”

  “I hope Floodie spelled that right.”

  “Translated, it means “God giveth the shoulder according to the burden.” Sincerely, Sheila Sargent.’ Very nice. You’ve disposed of Pearl with speed and. . . .”

  “What do you mean I’ve ‘disposed’ of her?”

  “Well, what have you done to help her except hand her some dubious half-truth about God and shoulders and burdens? Maybe she’s a Moslem. How have you helped the poor kid?”

  “What would you have me do, Mr. Johnson—say to the mother, ‘Sure, leave your husband. Go out to California on a wild goose chase with an eighteen-year-old girl who. . . .’”

  “Who claims her father is insane.”

  “So the girl says. But how do I know that Pearl Pulaski isn’t the crazy one? The world is full of lunatics who call everyone else mad.”

  “And what about the beatings?”

  “Again, that’s only hearsay. The mother claims she slipped and fell.”

  “A real accident prone. So your advice is to do nothing?”

  “What else can I say? Stick my neck out and break up a marriage because a bitter child says her father’s a brute? After all, Mr. Johnson, I don’t know these people.”

  “Then why do you presume to mess with their lives? Or any lives?”

  “Because they ask me to!” Sheila shouted angrily. Then she got control of herself. “Oh, come, Mr. Johnson,” she said graciously. “This is just one letter in thousands. You can sit in on questions and answers all week—even add a few opinions of your own if you like and we’ll discuss them. But now let’s just file Pearl Pulaski away and get on with the interview. More brandy? I for one would. . . . Yes, Taylor?”

  Taylor stood in the doorway. He was wearing street clothes. “Miz Sargent, Bertha and me’s going to the movies. You got any letters you like me to mail?”

  “Oh, thank you, Taylor. They’re on the desk. You’d better hurry. It’s after ten.”

  “Bertha only want to see the Ingmar Bergman picture. She don’t care about the first feature.”

  “Well, enjoy yourselves,” Sheila said, amused. “Good night, Taylor. Now—oops, that’s enough brandy for me—where were we?”

  “Your girlhood in Evanston with a governess in a sitz bath.”

  “Oh yes. Well, I went to Sunday School at St. Luke’s Church. I was a Girl Scout. I took dancing lessons from Mr. Bournique and then Miss Pocock, had all the usual childish diseases and went to Roycemore School from kindergarten all the way through. I still wear the skirt, but the middy blouse looks a little skittish.”

  “Private, I’m sure.”

  “Yes,” she said, sensing his disapproval.

  “College?”

  “No, Mother was sort of toying with Sarah Lawrence, but she wanted me to come out first. So I did and somebody—I don’t remember who—brought a dashing older man to the party.”

  “George Arliss?”

  “No,” Sheila laughed. “That man was Richard Sargent—a glamorous foreign correspondent, the Evanston boy who made good away from the Athens of the Middle West. Well, I stopped thinking about Sarah Lawrence right there on the dance floor and concentrated on becoming Mrs. Richard Sargent.”

  “And?”

  “And we were married the following spring. I’m a good concentrator.”

  “I figured that.”

  “So for a couple of years we knocked around the world together—those were the days of Franco and Chamberlain and Hider and Poland, fascinating times. Well, you know, just the two of us. Then something told me every morning that Dicky was on the way, so we moved out here and I settled down to being wife, mother and hostess.”

  Peter looked into his brandy inhaler and realized that he was a little drunk. He reviewed his intake for the day: a scotch and water on the plane, which he had ordered of his volition; two drinks before lunch with Malvern and offers of liqueurs; a beer before dressing and three whiskies before dinner; two different kinds of wine at table and now his second brandy. She’s trying to get me plastered, he thought, both this dame and her cohort, Malvern. “One of the slickest little hostesses in the business, I’ll bet,” he said unkindly.

  Not understanding, Sheila went right on. “Well, I couldn’t have been too bad. Once we had Colonel McCormick and Colonel Knox at the same table without bloodshed. Oh, Dick always knew a lot of interesting people. Well, then Allison came along and well, life just sort of happened until—until Dick was killed during the war.” Peter said nothing, wrote nothing. There was a slight pause. Sheila cleared her throat and went on. “So after a while Howard Malvern rustled up something to keep the wolf away from the door—all of Dick’s friends were wonderful to me—and, oddly enough, the column caught on. And so here I am, telling you the story of my life, which I have just finished.”

  “Very nicely done,” Johnson said. “My congratulations.”

  “For what?”

  “For the way you’ve done it. The way you’ve produced this whole evening.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I do. The stage all set. The star makes a late entrance. Applause. A pretty confusion among the bit players. The star changes into this devastating bathrobe, or whatever you call it. There’s an elegant little dinner with two faithful old darkies hovering. . .”

  “Please! They might hear you! They’ve been with me since. . . .”

  “Us house niggahs all done gwine to de minstrel show wiv you kine permission, massah,” Peter said. “Then the Lake Forest Lochinvar comes to drag the popular daughter off to the ball. That Falstaff, Mrs. Flood, exits laughing to watch TV and young Hamlet mysteriously disappears. Who do you think you’re kidding?”

  With considerable control Sheila said, “Just what did Howard Malvern give you for lunch, lemons?”

  “What?’

  “I’ve been entertaining people in this house for twenty years-social people, G.I.’s from Fort Sheridan, writers, editors, publishers—but I’ve never seen one as truculent and rude as you. Remember, you’re not doing me any favor by being here. I didn’t ask your pallid
little imitation of Time to interview me.”

  “And I didn’t ask for the assignment. They should have sent the drama critic.”

  “Perhaps they should. He could hardly be more difficult.”

  “Difficult?”

  “No, not difficult, impossible. You came here determined to despise me, didn’t you? Oh, yes. Don’t give me those wondering eyes.” Even in her anger, Sheila noticed his eyes, the lashes. Where did a man named Johnson ever get such Irish eyes? “Howard Malvern suggested that you might have a chip on your shoulder. Well, he was wrong. You’ve got a Yule log!”

  “That’s not true,” Johnson said, angry because she was right. “As a member of the press, I . . .”

  “As a member of the press! Oh my, but aren’t we pleased with ourselves! That may knock your other victims for a loop but it doesn’t cut any ice with me. I’m a member of the press. So was my husband. So are half the people I know. But there isn’t a one of those newspaper people from the copy boys on up to the publisher himself so mean and petty as to have his whole story written before he asks the first question.”

  “Listen, I came here. . . .”

  “You came here with your little red hatchet all set to do a job on me. Because I tried to look decent for you, because I gave you a good dinner, you’re furious. But if I’d put on an old house dress and dished up frozen chow mein with my hair in curlers you’d have been outraged. There’s just no winning with you, is there, Mr. Johnson?”

  “Do you usually have two wines with dinner?”

  “I usually have three! Be sure to make a note of that so all of your readers can tell all of my readers that Sheila Sargent is a rum pot.”

  “You’re pretty tough, lady.”

  “Right both times. I am tough and I am a lady. I just hope that you’ll be gentleman enough to answer one question honestly.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why did you come here hating me?”

  “Hate you? I don’t hate you. It’s just that I . . . I don’t approve of you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t approve of what you write or why you write. I’ve seen too many talented and experienced newspaperwomen spending their whole lives covering church suppers and dog fights for peanuts just because some rich dame like you switches into the boss’s office wearing a mink coat with the idea that she’d be great at telling the other half how to live. Emily Post, Elsa Maxwell, Abigail van Buren, Sheila Sargent-you’re all alike. And if there’s anything I can’t stand it’s the amateur society writer.”