Love & Mrs. Sargent Read online

  “Oh, don’t talk that way!”

  “But at least I want the chance to do it for myself. I don’t want to lead Richard Sargent’s life. I want to live my life and I’m going to do it.”

  “Good for you, Dicky “ Allison said.

  “All right, children,” Sheila said. There was a splendid business-like quality about her. “You’ve had your say. But you can’t imagine that I’ve done what—what you claim I’ve done to you out of cold, heartless cruelty. I only did it because I loved you. I’ve made a mistake. Isn’t that human? And even the two of you will have to admit that I’m only human. But that’s no reason to run out—to desert me. We can compromise. Allison, once you’ve come out you can take that job you were asking Howard about. I could do over the tool shed as a sort of studio. As for you, Dicky, instead of going to Washington, I could try to get you a commission right here around Chicago—at Fort Sheridan, perhaps. I know the commandant. In that way you could live at home here and if you ever felt that you wanted to pick up your writing again, you could. As for you, Allison, I wouldn’t be worried about what you were up to, the kind of people you were running around with. You’d each be living your own lives but at least you’d be living them here with me. Now does that strike you as so very unreasonable? I know I can manage Howard Malvern and I’m pretty sure I can manage the commission.”

  “Well. . . .” Dicky began.

  But Allison was too quick for him. “No, Dicky. Don’t! Can’t you see what she’s doing? Can’t you hear that word—the word ‘manage’? It’s what she’s always done. It’s what she’s doing right now. And it’s what she’ll go on doing as long as you or I let her, She’ll manage Uncle Howard, she’ll even manage the United States Army. She’s always managed you and she’s always managed me into doing exactly what she wants us to do. She’s not even satisfied to stop with us. She’s got to manage the lives of everyone in the whole country—anybody who can write a letter or read her damned column.”

  “Allison. . . .”

  But Allison would not be stopped. “Dicky, you can do as you like, but I warn you that if she gives an inch she’ll take a mile. Shell be charming and reasonable, and before you know it you’ll be charmed and managed right back to the tool shed and I’ll be charmed and managed right into the Junior League. Stay if you want, but I’m going.”

  “I . . . I guess you’re right,” Dicky said, hesitating.

  “All right then,” Sheila said. “Get out! Get out right now. But when you both discover that you haven’t got me to wipe your noses and change your diapers, don’t come crawling back. When you walk out of this door it’s forever.”

  “Good-by, Mother,” Allison said. “Coming, Dicky?”

  Dicky halted for a split second and then followed his sister.

  Sheila stood silently until she beard the front door close. Then she turned to Peter and said, “ ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth. . . .’ Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Drink?” Without waiting for an answer, she poured out two.

  “Sheila,” Peter said quietly, “have you ever considered some kind of help. I mean psychiatric help?”

  “No, but I can see now that I should have. I was wrong and I’m big enough to admit it. Oh, I thought I could raise them myself—be both mother and father to them. And look what I ended up with—two ungrateful, self-centered neurotics, thinking only of what they want. Yes, I should have taken them both to a good psychiatrist—especially Allison.”

  She was too busy with her own thoughts, her own speech, to notice Peter’s jaw drop, his shoulders sag, the look of bewildered defeat. Nor, when she came over and stood very close to him, handed him a glass and said, “Well, here’s to us,” did she see that he put the drink down untasted. “Speaking very candidly, darling—and I hope you won’t misunderstand and think that I’m some sort of an unnatural monster of a mother—I’m almost glad they’ve gone. Oh, they’ll come crawling back, I’m not worried about that. Let them get a little taste of life as it really is and then they may begin to appreciate what they’ve just thrown away. And also, Peter, this . . . this defection on the part of my entire household gives me a chance to lead my own life for a little while.”

  “Yes,” he mumbled, “I-I guess it will.”

  “Of course it will! I’m tired, Peter; bone tired. And you’re tired, too. There’s no reason why I couldn’t find some competent hack writer to take over my column for a month or two and get away for a while—South, perhaps; Jamaica, some place like that. So right after this Mother of the Year ceremony, I suggest that we. . . .

  “Sheila! Do you mean to stand here and tell me that you plan to accept this Mother of the Year Award after what’s just happened?”

  “Well, really, Peter, it’s a little late in the day to refuse. I ought to be dressing at this very minute. You didn’t bring a dinner jacket, did you? No matter, Dicky has a. . . . Really, darling, if you could see the expression on your. . . . What has come over you?”

  “Have you lost your mind? Not five minutes ago your kids both walked out of here forever and now you can put on your glad rags and receive this honor as though nothing had. . . .”

  “Oh, that! Well, nobody’s going to notice. It’s the mother they’re interested in, not the children. Besides, in my speech of acceptance I can always explain their absence. You know the selfless type who sends her children out to stand on their own feet. And Dicky as a buck private will fit in nicely with all that democracy and patriotism sort of thing. Oh, I can think fast on my feet. You’ll see tonight. Now, do you prefer to fly or sail? I think a nice, slow boat, but . . .”

  “Sheila, I’m taking a plane. . . .”

  “Oh, very well. The jet service. . . .”

  “Listen to me, Sheila. I’m taking a plane hack to New York tonight.”

  “To New York? Oh, yes, Worldwide Weekly. You know, I’ve been thinking, darling, it’s such a shabby little magazine. Not really worthy of you. I have such a load of work piled on me—details that I can’t possibly handle myself—I thought that you might possibly consider. . . . Or, if you wanted to do some sort of creative writing, there’s the tool shed just begging to be put to good use. Of course I can do my work anywhere, but as long as we’ve got this huge house right here, it seems silly to. . . .”

  “Sheila!” he said sharply. “Now listen to me and listen carefully. Don’t just think about what you’re going to say.”

  “Yes, darling,” she smiled.

  “I am going to New York tonight. I am getting away from ‘right here,’ from this ‘huge house’ and from you. There isn’t going to be any Mother of the Year banquet in Dicky’s tuxedo. There isn’t going to be any month or two in Jamaica.”

  “You’re joking, of course. I mean, all of my plans. . . .”

  “I was never more serious. And here you go. It’s just what Allison said—all of your plans. You decide that I’m going to Jamaica. You decide that I’m going to throw everything over and handle details for you. You decide that I can be a creative writer in your tool shed. You give me the choice between being Mrs. Flood or Dicky—both yours.”

  “But, Peter, I love you.”

  She said it so beautifully, so simply, so sincerely that for a moment he stopped as though the breath had been knocked out of him. “Sheila, those are three short, simple words. They’re very easy to say.”

  “Why shouldn’t they be easy to say? They’re true.”

  “That’s the trouble, Sheila. You think they’re true. Right now—right at this moment—maybe they are. You’re the expert on love, I’m not. But the trouble with you, Sheila, is that you love Sheila Sargent.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “It isn’t a lie, Sheila. You destroy everyone you touch. And yet you kid yourself into thinking you help them. You must be fooling yourself. You’re a decent person. If you knew the damage you were doing. . . .”

  “I’ve said this before. I’ll say it again. If there’s one thing I know, it’s Sheila Sargent. I am ruthlessly
honest about myself with myself. I have no designs on you. You can stay or go as you choose. But I tell you this, Peter Johnson, we could do big things together. If you’d listen to me for just a little while I could turn you into one of the most important. . . .”

  “Good-by, Sheila.”

  “What?”

  “I said good-by. I’m going now. Back to New York.”

  “I see. It’s quite a story I’ve given you these past few days, isn’t it? Sheila Sargent, the authority on love who snatches young reporters into her bed. Sheila Sargent, the Mother of the Year, who’s driven her children away. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in . . . in selling your little article to me? I’m sure I’d pay better than Worldwide Weekly.”

  “There isn’t any story for sale, Sheila. There isn’t going to be. I quit my job today.”

  “Ah, then chivalry isn’t quite yet dead.”

  “That’s right, Sheila. Sick as a dog, maybe, but not quite dead.”

  “Get out of here.”

  “Good-by, Sheila.”

  She turned away. When she looked back he was gone.

  Stunned, Sheila stood there for just a moment and then she forced her mind to work in its usual logical orderly fashion. “Dark in here,” she said. “Taylor’s no ball of fire, but even he must know the days are getting shorter.” She set to work drawing the curtains, lighting the lamps. She went to the desk and saw Mrs. Flood’s five-dollar bill on top of the stack of mail. She dropped it into the petty cash box, signed Mrs. Flood’s final paycheck and put it into its envelope. Then she copied down Mrs. Flood’s address just in case she’d ever have to get in touch with her. “I’m just as glad she is gone,” Sheila said. “Her endless chatter, her bogus social graces. The next one is going to be young, bright, not in the Stud Book and preferably a deaf mute.” She looked at the envelope, reread the address “Care of Porter” on an unfamiliar North Side street. Probably one of those middle-middle-class sun-porchy buildings dating from the year Sheila had been born.

  “Poor old idiot,” Sheila said. “I suppose I do owe her some sort of severance pay. After all, I fired her. I only asked her to stay because she needs the job—needs me.” She sat down and figured out how much Mrs. Flood’s salary would have been up to the end of the year. Then she wrote a check for that and put it into the envelope. It was quite a farewell gift. With unemployment compensation it would help to tide the old girl over. It made Sheila feel better about Mrs. Flood.

  She glanced at the mountain of unanswered letters. The one on top, written in pencil on lined paper, began: “I am 80 yrs old and loosing my eye site.” Sheila would get at them tomorrow, finish the whole bunch alone over the weekend. In fact, she wondered if she might not dispense with any secretarial help. That would be one less person hanging onto her, “Free. That’s what I want to be. Free of all these hangers-on depending on me—sucking my blood.”

  “Miz Sargent?” It was Bertha. “I laid out your dress. And Miss Allison’s, too. Mr. Malvern be here at six. It’s past five now.”

  “Thank you, Bertha. I know. Oh, and you can hang Allison’s up again. She’s gone.” Bertha’s eyebrows rose questioningly. “Gone to New York to visit a friend. Dicky went with her. The change will do them both good.” She didn’t like Bertha’s look. Bertha, in fact, could be very tiresome. Sheila supposed that sooner or later she’d have to have a straight talk with the Taylors. Get the house running smoothly again. “And so I’ll be the only one here for breakfast tomorrow. I’ll have it in my room—when I ring.”

  “Mr. Johnson gone, too?”

  “Didn’t I say that I would be the only. . . . Yes. Mr. Johnson has left. After all, he was just here on an assignment. And I’ll be quite relieved to have a little peace and quiet. After all, we’re not running a hotel.” She got up and left the room.

  “Yes,” Sheila said, as she reached the top of the stairs, “it will be nice having the place to myself—do things my way for a change.” She went into her bedroom and began to undress. For some reason, the room made her think of Peter. “And I’ve had quite enough of him, thank you. His moods, his petulance, his immature leftist leanings, his scolding and preaching. Wanting to marry me! Imagine! Sheila Sargent and a hayseed reporter—what a pair!” She rummaged in a drawer for fresh underwear. “Yes, the timing was just about right. It was frankly an adventure and nothing else. Much more of him and I could have turned into one of those fool women who write to Sheila Sargent. I suppose that’s why there has to be a Sheila Sargent—just someone with her feet on the ground who doesn’t go around kidding herself that. . . .”

  She cut short her conversation, put on her ball gown and her jewelry and examined her reflection critically. Satisfied with the way she looked, she gazed around the room and decided that she really didn’t like it very much. It was cold, somehow, with all that blue. Maybe she’d just do it over in a rosy red. That would be gay. And then maybe she’d turn Allison’s room into a kind of sitting room again. Quite a suite for just one woman.

  She wandered into Allison’s room, busily thinking about bringing that little rosewood desk down from the attic to place between the windows. The room seemed very, very empty. Allison’s evening dress—the new blue one—lay across the bed with the little mink jacket.

  “Really,” she said, “didn’t I tell Bertha to hang it up?” She snatched up the dress and the jacket and marched into the dressing room. “Left her new fur jacket behind, did she? She may regret that when winter hits New York.” She opened the closet and saw that all of Allison’s new clothes were still hanging there. “She’s going to look awfully dowdy on Fifth Avenue. Drab.” Yes, that was it. Drab. “That’s always been Allison’s trouble. She’s drab.”

  Sheila recalled now all of the junior assemblies and fortnightly dances she had got Allison into, using a tall, eligible older brother as hostage. The dinner parties she had staged before each so that the silly stick of a girl would have a string of socially indebted males more or less obligated to dance with her. “And what did Allison do? Did she sparkle? Did she shine? She did not! Just stood around like a lump, not talking, never smiling. Drab, Now if I’d been down on the floor instead of up in the balcony with the mothers. . . . Oh, I can just see her a few years from now—an old maid in a sloppy suit living with a cat and a rubber plant and too many pictures on the walls.”

  She closed the closet door and wandered down the hall to Mrs. Flood’s room. As promised, the mink coat and the old broadtail were hanging there in lonely splendor. “No fool like an old fool,” she said. She’d think about what to do with Flood’s room later. The next secretary—if there had to be another one—would live out.

  In Dicky’s rather monastic room she saw the unfinished manuscript of his new novel lying on the desk. She picked it up and glanced at it, turning to the last page.

  “Bon soir, monsieur,” she said in a mellifluous voice. “You are, how-you-say, lone-lee?”

  “Really!” Sheila said. “How can anyone write that badly? Here I give him the plot, the characters, every situation—I offer him a career on a silver platter—and he can’t even set it down in a string of simple, declarative sentences. Silly, affected, vulgar, dull writing. He only wrote it that way to spite me.” She dropped the manuscript into the waste basket and went into the bedroom recently vacated by Peter, On the desk she saw the farewell note he had begun:

  Dear Sheila—

  Sorry I have to run out on you while you’re away, but I’ve been called back to the magazine on an emergency. It’s been great knowing you and. . . .

  She tore up the note and let the pieces scatter to the floor. “You can take a boy out of Kansas, but you can’t take Kansas out of the boy. And to think I allowed him to . . . well, to take liberties with me. Of course he actually forced himself on me. I mean, what could I do, a defenseless woman alone in the house?” The new cashmere jacket, the ties, the hat had all been left behind, she noticed. “Just as well,” she said. “He was pure Robert Hall. Bond Clothing—two pa
irs of pants with every suit. Why, I couldn’t have taught him to dress like a gentleman in a million years. Ingrates, the whole lot of them—taking everything they could get from me and then throwing it all back in my face. Well, I’m glad they’re gone!”

  A light flashed past the window. Sheila looked out and saw the Famous Features company limousine coming up the drive. The clock in the hall began striking six. “Dear Howard, always on the dot.” She went to her room, gathered up her cape, her evening bag, her gloves. “I’d better start thinking of some gracious thing to say when I accept this award tonight.”

  She paused at the head of the stairway and looked down at Malvern standing below in white tie and top hat. Grasping the handrail she began to descend. It was then that the Other Sheila began to speak to her again.

  “So you’re really going through with it, darling?”

  “Well of course I am. I’ve got to. The banquet’s at seven.”

  “Banquet! Overdone beef and runny baked Alaska! You’d do better scrambling a couple of eggs right here.”

  “It’s not the food, stupid, it’s the honor.”

  “And you’re going to accept it?”

  “Certainly. I was an excellent mother. Was it my fault that my children were ungrateful?”

  “Grateful for what, having your prefabricated dreams crammed down their throats? You drove them out of here, you know.”

  “That isn’t true,” Sheila said, pausing at the landing, “Howard, dear. Good evening,” she said aloud. How grateful she felt to see him, just to have him there,