Auntie Mame Page 21

  In his chartreuse playsuit and deafening huaraches, Mr. Upson looked more like a performing bear than a person. He bowed low over Auntie Mame’s hand, and threw a great paternal paw around my shoulder. “Well,” he roared, “here we all are. And nothing like a good Upson daiquiri at this time of day!”

  “Yummy!” Auntie Mame said.

  “Yep,” he went on, “I don’t make ’em like everybody. When Doris and I were down in Cuba this winter this bartender at a little place we used to go—what was the name of that place, Doris, Casa Wan? Yes, Casa Wan—well, this bartender, Wan, told us never to use sugar. No, indeed, not a bit of sugar in a really good daiquiri.”

  “Do tell!” Auntie Mame said.

  “Nope, not a grain. Wanta know the secret Wan told me?”

  “Oh, I’m dying to—if it isn’t a security risk.”

  “Well, Wan always uses strained honey.”

  “Just fancy, strained honey!”

  “Yep. Strained honey and very, ve-ry pale rum and then …”

  “I don’t know what can be keeping Gloria,” Mrs. Upson said, laying a plump hand on my knee. “But don’t you worry. We’ll just have a good …”

  “… and then you have to really shave the ice …”

  “Seems almost too much trouble, Mr. Upson.”

  “Oh, Bertha,” Mrs. Upson called, “would you just put those canapés in the oven now? The chutney ones.”

  “… and then you have to really shake ’em. None of this Waring Blendor business. That’s for sissies. Really put a little elbow grease in the job and shake ’em if you want a good daiquiri. Here now, Mrs.—say, as long as we’re more or less on fa-meal, why don’t I call you Mame and you call me Buster.”

  “Buster?” Auntie Mame shrieked. “Why, I thought all the time your name was Claude.”

  “Oh, Doris calls me Claude, but everybody else just calls me Buster, and you do it, too.”

  “Well, I will, Buster,” Auntie Mame said kittenishly, “if you’ll call me by my pet name.”

  “What’s that?” he said, pouring out the drinks.

  “It’s Cuddles.”

  I choked terribly over my cocktail and had to be excused.

  Gloria arrived looking brown and bewitching, and made elaborate apologies for having lingered so long at the club. At seven o’clock another couple, named Abbot or Cabot or Mabbit—I never learned just which—joined us. He was in banking and she was in Planned Parenthood, and they both loved Paris and talked a great deal about a hotel where they stayed called, apparently, the Crayon. We ate a heavy, hearty meal and Auntie Mame regaled the company with anecdotes about the year she took her troop of Campfire Girls to Yosemite Park. I’d never heard the stories before—in fact, never heard that she’d ever heard of the Campfire Girls—and laughed right along with the rest of the guests. She was far and away the hit of the evening, and it wasn’t until after I was in bed that I remembered that during the time she claimed to have been in Yosemite Park with her Campfire Girls, she was really in the chorus of Chu Chin Chow.

  On Saturday, Auntie Mame made an ostentatious point of getting up at seven o’clock and spent most of the morning daintily snipping roses in the garden—really more roses than the Upsons had vases to accommodate. I didn’t honestly feel that she was being quite sincere, but although she was overplaying the pastoral side of her nature, she was going over big. Both Mr. and Mrs. Upson practically groveled at her feet. At lunch she spoke of her gay debutante days in Buffalo, which also coincided with Chu Chin Chow and the Campfire Girls, and then she and Mrs. Upson had a rather technical discussion of genealogy, during which I was startled to hear that I was directly descended from Charlemagne.

  During the afternoon we all split up; Mr. Upson wandered off to the golf course, Mrs. Upson and Auntie Mame—Doris and Cuddles, by now—went off to a country auction, and Gloria took me off to make love in a patch of woods.

  “Oh, angel,” Gloria murmured, her beautiful eyes deeper and greener than ever, “don’t you just love it out here, away from all those filthy people in New York?”

  I put my arms around her and kissed her for a long time.

  “Angel,” she said, sitting up, “you see all that land there beyond the stone wall?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You know it’s all for sale? Every inch of it. Sixty acres.”

  “Is that so? Give us another kiss.”

  “Oh, don’t. You hurt! I’ll bet you have to shave about twice as much as most men. Well, I was thinking how perfectly dreamy it would be if we could just buy all that property and live out here. Right next to Mummy and Daddy.”

  “You mean commute into town every day?”

  “Oh, no. We could have a place in town. Just a little pied à terre. But spend our real life out here in Mountebank. Besides, Daddy’s so worried that somebody funny might buy in right next to us.”

  “Funny?”

  “Well, you know, angel. Not nice.”

  “Gee, Gloria, I’ll bet the land out here costs like hell.”

  “Well, it’s not cheap, but it’s so clean and fresh, and they’ve got such a nice class of people out here. Why, look how your aunt loves it. I’ll bet if you just asked her sweetly—or if I did—she might want to give us that rolling hillside and maybe a little house—all glass and very modern—as sort of a wedding present.”

  “Now, wait a minute, baby,” I said, sitting up. “I don’t want to ask her for a lot of dough. She’s been too generous with me all my life. And besides, I have money of my own and don’t want to go around begging a lot of favors.”

  “But angel,” she pouted prettily, “what’s money for? She’s all alone in the world and, after all, you are sort of the heir apparent.”

  I changed the subject quickly. “We ought to start looking around for a place to live in town and set a date. How about, say, the middle of next month?”

  “You mean, get married next month?”

  “Sure. What else?”

  “But I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why, I don’t have any clothes.”

  “What do you call that dress you’re wearing?”

  “Oh, you know what I mean, silly. I mean real clothes. Lingerie and dresses and suits and coats and hats—all the things a bride has to have.”

  “This is the first I’d heard that she had to have anything except a man and a negative Wassermann.”

  “Oh, stop it! We couldn’t get married. Jane’s in Maine and Pammy’s in Nantucket and B.J. and Frannie are both in …”

  “But I don’t want to marry Jane and Pammy and B.J. and Frannie. I only want to marry you, and I couldn’t care less if they were all in the downtown business section of hell. Couldn’t we just run off some place and get it over with?”

  “And break my poor father’s heart? Why, Daddy’d never forgive me if I did such a thing. And Mummy … ever since I was a little bit of a baby she’s always dreamed of a beautiful beautiful wedding in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, with bridesmaids and ushers, and Boyd’s little girl—oh, wait till you see little Deborah, she looks just like a cherub—as a flower girl, and then a big reception at the club, and then …”

  “Do you mean I’ve got to hunt up six guys and get them into rented cutaways that don’t fit just so …”

  “But lover, that’s the fun of getting married.”

  “Oh, I’d always imagined that the fun came later.”

  “You know what I mean. But who wants to get married when you can’t have a lot of parties and dances and presents and your picture in the papers? The way everybody does.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Well, everybody I know. Nice people. I certainly don’t want to go down to City Hall with a lot of foreigners and …”

  “Just how long do you think it’s going to take you to prepare for this production, now that Ziegfeld’s dead?”

/>   “Oh, I thought we’d announce it right after Labor Day when everybody’s back in town, and then there are all the big parties up through the holidays, and then I thought we might get married right after the first of the year, and maybe go to Palm Beach or someplace like that for a honeymoon.”

  “I see,” I said dully.

  “Well, don’t take on like that, angel. It isn’t as if it were forever. Besides, you’ll be as busy! We’ve got to find an apartment—and I don’t mean just some little hole-in-the-wall, but a really nice place with some style to it—and furniture and rugs and some sort of maid or something. You can’t just rush into these things. They’ve got to be done right or not at all.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and lit a cigarette.

  “Now, don’t sulk, little boy. You’ll see that I’m right in the long run. Now it’s nearly four and I promised Mary Elizabeth we’d be over for tennis! Hurry. You’ve got to change!”

  That evening the Upsons entertained a jolly party of the young, the middle-aged, the elderly, and the oldest of all, the Young Marrieds, at the club dance. Long before sundown gay carloads of suburbanites in evening clothes were crunching up the gravel drive, and Mr. Upson was in his element explaining just how to make a real, sugarless daiquiri. He seemed a little hurt when Auntie Mame asked for straight whisky. News of her charm had apparently spread even to the most heavily restricted sections of Mountebank, and I had the feeling that the merrymakers were hanging on her every word. She was in fine fettle and spoke tenderly of the large hand-painted slop jar she’d bought at the auction that afternoon. “And Doris is going to teach me how to turn it into a lamp,” she told her spellbound audience.

  Auntie Mame looked especially ravishing in yards of trailing white and sapphires. I had a notion that a lot of the men who hadn’t felt much like dancing for years were going to turn suddenly spry that night. Auntie Mame was on her best behavior and pirouetted prettily from one to the next, talking about the Japanese beetle, a difficult mashie shot, elm blight, country day schools, the servant problem, and—until I caught her eye—the wisdom of legalizing prostitution.

  There were about two dozen people sipping Mr. Upson’s daiquiris, and I moved around uncomfortably just catching snatches of the conversations:

  “Perfectly ravishing, and she can’t be as old as …”

  “An’ so Wan sez to me, ‘See, Seen-yor,’—that’s how he talked—‘you don’t use zee sugar at all, but zee honey.’ An’ I wanna tell you it makes the smoothest damned …”

  “Mousseline de soie, that’s what it is, and do you know how much they want for just one yard of it at McCutcheon’s …”

  “But then I always knew Gloria would …”

  “And then this nigger caddy sez, ‘Wal, suh, Ah sho nebbah see no golf ball dat color! …’ ”

  “But, Gloria, it’s a beautiful ring! As I say to your mother, I say, ‘Doris, you must remember you’re not losing a daughter, but gaining a son!’ And he’s a very nice young man …”

  “Most magnificent piece of womanflesh we’ve had around Mountebank since Queen Marie lectured …”

  “Yes, but I always gorge so at a boo-fay …”

  “That’s the secret, shake like hell. None of these …”

  “Half a grapefruit and a Ry-Krisp. And for dinner …”

  “But of course they’re real. I read all about her jewelry in Town and Country. And she’s been everywhere …”

  “Their name was Harris, and you know that can mean either Yes or No. Well, he looked perfectly all right, but when Alice got a look at her, she said ‘Oh-oh’ and sold the place to us for exactly half what those kikes were willing to pay …”

  “Then F.D.R. sez, ‘But Eleanor, how will I know if you …’ ”

  “He doesn’t say much, but his aunt is perfectly …”

  Just as the party was at its noisiest, Auntie Mame hopped gracefully up onto a chair and called, “Quiet! Quiet everyone! Quiet, please.” There was a silence, and I felt myself go hot and then cold. “Of course you all know what these two young people have been up to, so there’s no use of my spreading that old news. But I’ve racked my brain to try to think of a little engagement present that would be suitable for a girl as beautiful as Gloria, and now I know what it is.” She loosened the baroque sapphire necklace from her throat, stepped off the chair, and clasped it around Gloria’s neck. “Here, darling. I want you to have this. Only the young can wear them.”

  There was a volcanic buzzing and whispering. Gloria was speechless with pleasure.

  “Oh … oh …” was all she could say.

  “Mame!” Mrs. Upson shrieked. “You can’t! You shouldn’t! Oh, Mame, it’s beautiful! Now, Gloria, let Mummy fasten it with dental floss until Daddy takes out a policy. You know how you’d feel if you lost it.”

  I was stunned with gratitude and surprise, but in the orange sunset, against Gloria’s green dress and her green eyes, the sapphires didn’t look quite, well, quite becoming.

  It was a standard evening with a standard dinner and a standard orchestra in a standard country club. I danced most of the evening with Gloria after I’d polished off the other dames at the long table, and she clung to me as she never had before. “This is the happiest night of my life,” she kept whispering. Auntie Mame got the big rush of the evening. In fact, she didn’t stop dancing from half after nine until I saved her from another athletic schottische of my prospective father-in-law.

  “May I?” I said.

  “Oh, you young whippersnappers get the best of everything. Eh, Cuddles?” he chortled, giving her bare back a final pinch.

  “Ouch! Oh, Buster, you slay me!” Auntie Mame shrilled.

  “Do you mind my cutting in this way, Auntie Mame?” I asked.

  “Mind? I’d have been a basket case if you hadn’t. I’ve never been in a place where they played rugby to music before. Would you like me to tell you how to make a daiquiri as Juan does? You just take honey and …”

  “No, please, I know.” I laughed. “But you really are having a good time, aren’t you?”

  “Jim-dandy! Did I tell you about the time Mr. Abbot made the hole-in-one on the fourteenth? (You know, par for that hole is three.) Well, he was out with this Negro caddy …”

  “Listen, Auntie Mame, and I mean it. Whether you’re having a good time or not, you’re being the most wonderful person in the whole state of Connecticut …”

  “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

  “No, I mean it. You’re absolutely super and I love you for it. I’ve never been so proud of anybody in my life.”

  “But it’s nothing, darling. You just take honey and shake like hell. Oh, God, here comes the Swedish Angel for round four.”

  “May I?” Mr. Abbot-Habit-Cabot-Rabbit-Mabbit said.

  “I do hope you won’t be bored,” Mrs. Upson said the next morning, handing Auntie Mame the gardening section of the Herald Tribune, “but Sunday is just a family day for us. Claude does get in eighteen holes in the morning—I tell him he should go to church on Sunday mornings, but he says, ‘I call on God often enough out on the links!’ Isn’t he awful!”

  “Awful?” Auntie Mame said, “my dear, he’s …”

  “But as I was saying, Mame, it’s just a quiet old-folks-at-home day here at Upson Downs. We lie around the house and usually Boyd—that’s our boy—comes over with Emily and we just chat and generally relax. You don’t happen to like gin, do you?”

  “Like it? I adore it!”

  “Goodie! Well, I’ll just get out the deck and the score pad and we’ll have a little game while …”

  “Oh,” Auntie Mame said, crestfallen.

  “Of course, some people do object to cards on Sunday. Devil’s pasteboards, you know.”

  “Perhaps I’d better just content myself with the gardening pages. I don’t want to be too stimulated for Floyd.”

  “Boy
d.”

  “Sorry. Yes, Boyd and Emily.”

  Sunday lagged along. Gloria slept until lunchtime and spent the afternoon in her room writing of her new happiness to distant friends. Mrs. Upson took Auntie Mame to call on the woman who had the biggest collection of milk glass in Mountebank, and I sat on the terrace rather hot and very bored.

  At five o’clock we all congregated on the terrace where Mr. Upson, red and robust from his golf game, mixed up a round of daiquiris and told us again just how it was done. This time Auntie Mame was very firm about straight whisky and I asked for beer. No sooner were we settled than we were unsettled by the arrival of a Ford convertible which contained Boyd Upson, his wife Emily, and their child Deborah.

  “Woo hoo!” Mrs. Upson called. “Woo hoo! Boydie-boy, Emily!”

  There was a thunder of little feet and Deborah, a rather pretty child of about three, came racing onto the terrace.

  “Oh, the precious! Come to Grammy, Debbie darling. Give Grammy a big kiss! Isn’t it ridiculous,” she said, simpering at Auntie Mame, “to be a grandmother at my age?”

  “Ridiculous?” Auntie Mame said, “why it’s …”

  Her words were fortunately drowned by the arrival of Boyd Upson and his wife, Emily. Boyd was the ideal young Connecticut Republican, tall, fair, and nice-looking, with whatever muscles he once had turning speedily to fat. His wife Emily was the epitome of every girl on every verandah of every country club from Bar Harbor to Santa Barbara, a tall, unpleasant-looking young woman who’d had her teeth straightened, dancing lessons, and a mediocre education in the Spence-Chapin-Nightingale-Bamford-Hewitt circuit. She was the de luxe model, but with an extra tire because she was once again pregnant.

  “Well, son, how goes it?” Father Upson said warmly. “Emily, dear, how’s the little mother?”

  “Golly, Dad, swell,” Boyd yelled. I discovered during the afternoon that his education in American slang seemed to have begun and ended during the twenties. Gee, golly, swell, gosh dam, okay, oh boy, baby, prefaced his every statement.