Auntie Mame Page 17

  Every week end after that was spent with Auntie Mame. If we didn’t go to New York, she came to us. She knew all the bright young intellectuals on the faculty and she was in steady demand. If I didn’t feel like going home, she’d invite the others without me, and Biff or Bill or Jack or Alex would pass hilarious week ends on Washington Square, meeting Auntie Mame’s famous friends, being debonair at her parties, or taking her to the Stork Club. And Auntie Mame, her sable coat, the Rolls-Royce, the exotic clothes, became as familiar and glorious a sight on campus as the new stadium.

  But all during the sophomore year, Auntie Mame practiced admirable restraint. Whenever she came down for a week end, she made it clear to everyone that she was visiting this instructor and his wife or Professor and Mrs. So-and-So, and although my friends and I saw a lot of her, it was only for Sunday lunch or drinks.

  She was still in evidence during our junior year. And although she spent fewer and fewer week ends around school with the faculty and their wives, she entertained my friends more and more at her house in New York.

  At that time I was carrying on a violent affair with a waitress named Bubbles, who had been seductive over the slabs of pineapple pie at a lunch counter in Newark, and so I spent most of my free time there in the Robert Treat Hotel waiting for Bubbles. Hence I saw very little of Auntie Mame that year, and since my particular chums were rarely out of her sight, it seemed wiser not to mention Bubbles to any of them.

  “Darling,” Auntie Mame said toward the end of February, “I almost never see you nowadays. Where on earth do you spend your week ends? I’ve asked all the boys and they don’t know.”

  “Oh, just here and there,” I said evasively. “You know how it is.”

  “No, I don’t know how it is, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked you. But I’ll bet I can guess. You’ve got a girl, haven’t you?”

  I blushed.

  “Oh, but darling, why don’t you bring her home! I’d love to meet her. What’s her name? Where does she go to school? Have you got her picture?”

  I had a picture of Bubbles but it wasn’t the kind you show to loving relatives. In fact, Bubbles just wasn’t the kind of girl you bring home.

  But at that moment Auntie Mame decided to teach Alex how to samba and the conversation was mercifully dropped.

  My trysts with Bubbles kept me awfully busy during my junior year, but not too busy to notice that still more changes were taking place with Auntie Mame and my classmates. I brought three of them home for spring vacation, hoping that they could keep Auntie Mame entertained long enough for me to slip over to Newark and the voluptuous charms of Bubbles. And they could. But I was a little surprised to hear the guys calling her just plain Mame instead of Mrs. Burnside. Alex, in fact, who was a couple of years older than I was, called her Mame Darling. And I could have sworn that her hair was a different color.

  That wasn’t all that was going on, either. While Biff and Bill were chasing every sweet young thing in New York, Alex stuck pretty close to the house on Washington Square. In fact, he and Auntie Mame were hardly ever separated. They danced together, played backgammon together, went out to lunch together. A couple of times I caught them whispering in the library and they looked up at me almost with resentment. In the evenings they’d disappear—just the two of them off to dinner or the theater or some overupholstered little supper club—leaving the rest of us alone in the cavernous house.

  Alex was the Astaire-iest of us all. He was the tallest, the oldest, the richest, the most sophisticated. But he wasn’t that dashing, and I couldn’t quite see why Auntie Mame was devoting so much of her valuable time to him. She was the kind of woman who liked crowds.

  However, Bubbles was giving me enough to worry about, without my having to take on Auntie Mame’s problems. We’d been carrying on ever since the cold night in January when I stepped into her open-all-night web for a cup of coffee. Bubbles had been all warmth and tenderness then. She’d loved me for myself and myself alone. Her eyes had filled with tears over little gifts like a bottle of perfume, a black nightdress, a couple of pairs of stockings, an alligator bag and shoes to match. But as we got to know each other better, Bubbles grew more sure of her power, more importunate in her demands. I’d had to hock my studs and cuff links to pay for the bulky white fox jacket she insisted on buying.

  “But, honey, I gotta have a chubby!” Then there was the time she said her purse had been stolen and I had to give her money to pay her rent. And around Easter she talked less and less about the bargains at the Lerner Shops and more and more about the creations of Hattie Carnegie.

  “Honestagod, honey, sometimes I think yer ashamed to take me aroun’ with all yer ritzy collitch crowd. G’wan, a’mit it. Yer ashameda me, g’wan, say it!”

  “Aw, Bubbles, for the love of God, lay off. You know I’m not ashamed of you, but that bunch of meat balls’d bore you. They’re just kids.”

  “So already you’re old?”

  I was only twenty, but with a girl like Bubbles you age fast. “Aw, listen, baby, forget it. Come on, we’ll go over to the Treat and I’ll buy you a couple of drinks.”

  “Sure, sure, Good Time Cholly, we’ll go ovah to the Robutt Treat, have a coupla drinks, then we’ll go upstairs and have a coupla somethin’ else. Newark, Newark, all the time Newark! Jesus Christ, here I am, bawn in Newark, work in Newark, love in Newark. So I’ll prob’ly die in Newark. And a fat lot you’d care, Mister Great Heart! I don’t never notice yer askin’ me over to Noo Yawk. It’s on’y a fi’ cent boat ride, I’ll give yuh fare if yer so hard up. Oh, no! I’m good enough for you in Newark, but when it comes to takin’ me to the Stawk Club or meetin’ yer a’nt, Mrs. Bunnside, in that swell mansion she’s got—an’ I seen pitchas of it, don’t think I haven’t; in Hoppa’s Bizzah, they was—on Washin’ton Squayah. Oh, no indeedie, then Bubbles is just a little joik fum Joisey. G’wan, a’mit it! Yer ashameda me!”

  The awful part was that she was right. I was ashamed of her. I was ashamed of myself for ever getting mixed up with her. She was a cheap, gold-digging little whore who called herself a waitress because she was too dishonest to call herself a whore; and I was a cheap, snobbish little parasite who called myself a student because I was too dishonest to call myself a parasite and too honest to call a whore a mistress. But mistress she was, and she was beginning to be a tiresome, dictatorial, expensive one.

  “Awright, so you won’t take me ta one of yer a’nt’s swell shindigs. So how about you take me to the prom?”

  My mouth flew open with horror.

  “Sure, you hoid me. The Junya Prom. I read all about it in the paypas. Yer a junya, too. If yer so prouda me, whyn’t ya take me up to one a ya swanky house potties? C’mawn, honey, I never been ta no collitch prom. C’mawn, baby, plee-ase.”

  “But baby, I don’t go to those school shindigs. They’re kid stuff.”

  “Honey, ya got to. I nevah been to no prom befaw. I nevah had the chance. Evah since Poppa died an’ we lost the impawtexpawt biznizz, I had ta give up my edjication—my chances fer a careeh.” Bubbles’ late father had been variously represented to me as a prominent banker, a lawyer, surgeon, broker, and manufacturer, but I was too beaten to mention it.

  Bubbles kept on with her pleading, her nagging, her wheedling, her bullying. After an hour of tears and threats I gave in.

  “All right, but for God’s sake, stop crying! I can’t stand it anymore. Yes. I’ll take you to the goddamned prom.”

  “Hun-nee!” she said, beaming through her tears.

  The Junior Prom was the big event of the year, even for guys like us who didn’t have any school spirit. It was the last week in May, and the whole college turned out for it dressed to the nines. If you had a best girl, you invited her down for the prom week end, and if you didn’t have a best girl, you dated up the most satisfactory one you could find. It was a tradition. The whole college held open house. On Friday each club gave a spectacular dinner da
nce for its members and their girls, cocktail parties went on in every room in the dormitories, on Saturday there were extravagant picnics with all the beer you could drink, Saturday afternoon there was always a hard-fought boat race for anyone who was sober enough to watch it, and on Saturday night, the gala ball.

  Against a suave background of Mr. Astaire singing “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” my particular friends discussed the big prom, the kind of party we should have in our rooms, who was Astaire enough to be invited, and who was not.

  “What do you mean, Bugsy’s a meat ball? He only used to date Brenda Frazier, that’s all,” Biff said.

  “That’s her hard luck, not ours,” Jack said hotly. “I say that if he comes, I don’t.”

  “Now come off that crap,” Bill bawled, “the thing we’re talking about right now is this: Do we serve martinis or Scotch, and if so, to how many people and how much will it cost? You, Pat, what do you say?”

  “Who, me?” I started blushing. “Well, gee, I’m not at all sure I’ll be here for the prom, boys. Just go ahead with any plans you like.”

  “Not be here for the prom!” Biff yelled. “Holy Christ, how Astaire can you get?”

  “Not be here for the prom!” Bill said incredulously. “Since when? Listen, if you’re having any trouble getting a girl, old man, I can fix you up with Mollie’s cousin, Gloria Upson. She’s still at Miss Chapin’s, but boy, is she stacked!”

  “Believe me,” I said icily, “I am having no difficulty in obtaining a partner. It’s just that I’m not going to be here.”

  There was a funny look in Alex’s eyes as I strode out.

  In the cowardly fashion of all men who want to get rid of women, I tried every trick except saying a downright “No” to shake Bubbles before the Junior Prom. I tried the Silent Treatment and didn’t go near the diner in Newark for ten days. Bubbles didn’t seem to mind a bit. In a weak moment I’d given her the telephone number of my room, and on the tenth day she called. I was vague and evasive over the telephone until she said, “Whatsamatta, honey, ya sick or somethin’? Look, baby, I’m worried aboutcha. Are you comin’ down here or shall I come up there so’s I can look afta ya?” That settled it. I drove down to Newark that very night.

  Then I tried to pick a fight with her. I was gloomy and moody, uncommunicative and difficult, but Bubbles, whose volatile disposition was legendary, remained as serene as the Mona Lisa. She could talk of nothing but the Junior Prom, what she was going to wear, whom she was going to meet, how she was going to rub shoulders with all the best debutantes of the season. I shuddered. I didn’t know how to work it, but one thing was certain; Bubbles was not going to go to the Junior Prom with me.

  By the time Prom Week arrived, I knew what I was going to do. I’d simply wire Bubbles, say that I was in the infirmary with something very contagious, and hide out in Philadelphia until the big brawl was over. It was a stinking trick, but then, she’d managed to gouge a good five hundred bucks out of me just to clothe herself for her debut in the ivy-clad halls of learning.

  The Thursday night before the festivities got under way, I was in my room playing Fred Astaire’s record of “Bojangles” and hastily packing enough duds to make my getaway. Alex was lying on the sofa drinking a can of Budweiser when the telephone rang. It was Auntie Mame. “Darling,” she said, “are you coming home this week end?”

  “No, Auntie Mame,” I said, “you know I always send you a card if I’m coming.”

  “Oh, yes, how stupid of me, but where are you going?”

  “Why, to Philadelphia,” I answered clearly.

  “For the whole week end?” she asked.

  “Certainly. Why?”

  “Oh, no special reason, darling. I just wondered. Then you won’t be at school at all?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Not until late Sunday night?”

  “No, Auntie Mame,” I said, getting hot and irritable at being discovered in my caddish retreat. “What’s all this about?”

  “Why, nothing, darling,” she cooed in that fraudulent innocence that always makes me suspect her. “I just wondered what my little love was going to do with himself all week end. I’ll probably stay at home with Marcel Proust.”

  “Well, give him my best,” I said. “By the way, Alex is here. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Oh, no, why should I? Just say hello and tell him I’ll see him shortly. Well, have a nice time in Philadelphia, darling.”

  It struck me as strange that Auntie Mame would call, but then, she was a very strange woman. Alex gave me a deep, dark look and then said he’d be getting to bed.

  “Who’d you ask to the prom, Alex?” I asked in glib and unfelt interest.

  “Oh, just a female,” he said quickly, closing the door.

  The next morning I was up at eight. The telegram I’d created—HOSPITALIZED WITH DIPHTHERIA AND DESOLATE ABOUT PROM DON’T COME CAN SEE NO ONE—seemed to make English Composition class unnecessary that day, and everyone always cut Italian Sculpture of XIV, XV, XVI Centuries, anyhow. I determined to get an early start, before anyone could question my whereabouts, and escape school for the big week end.

  It was just nine-thirty by the big square clock in the Western Union office when I finished writing the telegram begging sick leave of Bubbles. That meant I could drive to Philadelphia at a leisurely clip and be there in time for lunch. Whistling “The Piccolino,” I ambled out to the curb and opened the door of my car. The music died on my lips. Sitting in the front seat was Bubbles.

  “Su’prise!” she screamed. “Here I am, honey! Betcha nevah expectid me this oily, didja?”

  “Why, Bubbles,” I whispered.

  “Gee, you look like you jes seen a ghost, baby. C’mawn, howsabouta little kiss?”

  In a trance, I got into the car.

  “Well, honey,” Bubbles chattered, “the cook, he sez to me, he sez, ‘Hell, yer on’y young once, so g’wan, take the whole week end,’ so I got up with the budds an’ caught the mawning train—a reglar Tumorville Trolley it was—an’ thought I’d su’prise ya.”

  “You certainly did,” I said dully.

  “I cou’nt get a taxi at the dee-po, so I decided to hoof it, an’ low and behole, I seen ya cah pahked here an’ I reckinized the Noo Yawk license, so I jus’ got in an’ sat. Lissen, honey, I hope you dint go out an’ rent me any expensive soote at the ho-tel, ’cause I’m staying with my gull-frien’ Mavis.”

  “Mavis Hooper?” I asked incredulously.

  Mavis Hooper was the town whore—illegitimate daughter of the village whore—and a girl of almost no intellect, although Woodrow Wilson was rumored to have been her real father.

  With my stomach sitting inside me like a block of marble, I drove Bubbles to the notorious frame house on the outskirts of town where Mavis lived, and carried the bright new powder-blue luggage up the steps worn smooth by many generations of liberal arts students.

  “C’mawn in, restcha feet, honey,” Bubbles said.

  “I—I can’t,” I stammered. “I have a class in sculpture.”

  “Okey-dokey, pufessah. I’ll jes get cleaned up; then I’ll ankle ovah to the campus and pick y’up in time fa lunch.”

  “Oh, no! Don’t do that, Bubbles! It’s a long way. I’ll come and call for you. Twelve o’clock, sharp.”

  “Sa-well! Gimme a chance ta case the burg. See ya, honey!”

  My head spun as I sat limply behind the steering wheel. If I’d ever credited myself with a certain Machiavellian turn of mind, I’d certainly been outdistanced by Bubbles. Driving slowly back to the dormitory I was in a quandary. If I went back to my room and stuck it out for the week end, I’d never be able to explain Bubbles. If I skipped town for the whole time—even longer—Bubbles, who had an inquisitive mind, would surely find her way to the dormitory and make a scene to end all scenes in dear old Morgan House. If I shot myself … No, I decided. The thing to do
would be to cut back to the dorm, collect some clothes, and then move out to a tourist cabin and try to keep Bubbles as far away from school as possible.

  That day we drove twenty miles to lunch at a Howard Johnson’s and then I took a lot of detours to show Bubbles the scenery.

  “But, honey, looka the time! I gotta get back an’ change my cloze for all the cocktail potties. An’ what about the club dinnah dance?”

  “Club? Club? What club? I don’t belong to any club.”

  “You don’t belong to no club?” Bubbles screamed. “I coulda swore you tole me you was a membah of …”

  “Oh, that,” I said. “Resigned. Resigned two months ago. Pack of snobs there. No democracy. Listen, Bubbles, how about just going out for a little dinner—only the two of us?”

  “Well, okay,” she said petulantly, “but I ain’t seen a single collitch fella since I hit this town.”

  “Plenty of time for that,” I said. “It’s only Friday.”

  I managed to hold Bubbles at bay until late that night.

  “Whaddabout the tawchlight pur-rade an’ all the Noo Yawk daybutantes?” she kept asking.

  “Torchlight parade just looks like a lot of matches in the dark and hardly any of the New York girls get here before tomorrow. It’s a long way, you know.”

  “Yeah, almost an hour and a half on the slow train,” she said grimly. “Well, take me ta see yuh room. I bet it’s jus’ like a regla bachlah’s quawtahs.”

  “They don’t allow girls in the rooms,” I said quickly.

  “Mavis says …”

  “Well, they’re clamping down now. Getting very strict.”

  I pried myself loose about one-thirty and spent a miserable night in the Kosy Komfie Kabins, cursing the day I ever heard of Newark.

  The next morning I picked up Bubbles before she had any time to investigate the town and possibly bump into anyone I knew. She tripped down the steps chez Mavis in a bright green organdie dress with a big straw hat. “You like?” she said, turning coquettishly. “I sure hope so, honey, the money you ga’ me fa cloze dint quite covah this, so I had ta chawge it.”