Auntie Mame Read online

  I walked slowly back to the Maddox place. For some reason I wasn’t in much of a hurry to get there. Margot was lying in Auntie Mame’s hammock reading a copy of Circle 6. She put down the magazine and looked at me with wide-eyed concern. “Dearest, where have you been? We’ve all worried so. Miranda was going to show us the costume designs she’s done for a possible showing of Amerika by a very gifted experimental group. She’s up showing them to poor Mame now.”

  “What’s the matter with her—other than seeing Miranda’s sketches?”

  “Heavy cold. Where have you been all day?”

  “At the movies.”

  “The movies? You’re joking!” She laughed exquisitely. “They never show anything here that’s fit to be seen by anyone but the natives.”

  “No, this was fascinating. This experimental group in Minnehaha Falls has done a brave, new filming of the old Leda and the Swan legend, with lyrics by Gertrude Stein and music by Virgil Thomson and Bix Beiderbeck.”

  “No! Why didn’t you tell me! Why, we could all get so much from …”

  “Leda is played by a hunchbacked girl of thirteen and she’s supported by Laurel and Hardy and the Ritz Brothers and Bela Lugosi and Buster Keaton. It has settings by Salvador Dali and costumes by Christian Bérard.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t have chosen Bérard, but … Oh! You are joking!”

  “Listen, Margot,” I said, “I want to talk to you, and I want to talk to you seriously—alone, and now.”

  “Good. I want to talk to you, too. I’ve been discussing our plans with Melissa and Miranda.”

  “They are one of the things I want to talk about,” I said.

  “… out in the sailboat. And we’ve hit upon a perfect idea …”

  “Don’t you think you should make our plans with me?” I asked.

  “… that will take care of you and me and Melissa and Miranda and assure a valuable, interesting, cultivated life for all of us …”

  “I find my life—as I usually lead it, that is—valuable and interesting and cultivated enough for me,” I said. But Margot didn’t seem to be hearing a word I was saying. She went right on.

  “I thought that we’d get married at the end of September, just as we planned. Then we’d go to Europe for a trip …”

  “I’m not sure I can get away from the office.”

  “… and after the four of us had done Europe, we’d settle down …”

  “Margot! Are you listening to what I’m saying?”

  “Why, certainly, dearest. Now, Melissa suggested Capri, but there is such riffraff there that we could never settle down to any creative work, so I thought Mame could take a house on Ischia or …”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why, I’m talking about us,” she said blandly.

  “You and me?”

  “Naturally—you and me and Melissa and Miranda.”

  “I don’t believe my agency has a branch on Ischia—or Capri, either,” I said. “In fact, it’s only in New York. It’s a rather small agency.”

  “That isn’t important, dearest.”

  “It’s my living,” I said. “My work.”

  “Work! Do you call grinding out platitudes for a hot plate work?”

  “It keeps me occupied most of the day,” I said leadenly.

  “And as for a living, you don’t need it. You have plenty. Of course Mame has tons.”

  “And?”

  “Well, Patrick dearest, why take jobs away from those who really need them?” She seemed totally serene. “As I pointed out, it’s not fit work for anyone of intelligence, anyhow.”

  “What do you consider your work to be, Margot?”

  “My work? Why, I’m busy all day.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Well, I read a great deal. There are my languages, art, music, new thought. I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge …”

  “Is that why they bounced you out of Bennington?”

  “… and I enjoy observing life’s comedy … Who told you that?” It was the first time I’d ever seen Margot ruffled, and it wasn’t a very pleasant sight.

  “Pegeen Ryan.”

  “Pegeen Ryan? You mean you’d believe that ignorant little shanty-Irish waitress? Why, she’s nothing but a native!”

  “But a native who got through college,” I said.

  “College! The University of Maine, if you can call that a college!”

  “I can,” I said.

  “Too much importance is attached to a college degree. Life can teach one so … Really, the nerve of that common little mick. Why, her grandfather was my grandfather’s gardener!”

  “So she said.”

  “How you could go sneaking off to that little slut while my back was turned and …”

  “I went down there to apologize for the scene your sisters put on last night. Also to pay our bill.”

  “Apologize to Ryan for a Maddox! Hahahaha! What a scene!”

  “Quite a scene, Margot. Especially in that there was no adequate apology for the Maddox bad manners. They didn’t accept the apology—or the money.”

  “What did you say about manners?”

  “You heard me, Margot. Now for once I’m going to do the talking and you’re going to do the listening. I love you, Margot. I love you in spite of your intellectual pretensions, in spite of your acting like a dowager duchess in public and a convent girl in the bosom of your family.” Suddenly I was confronted with the lugubrious fact that I didn’t actually love her at all—didn’t even like her.

  “How dare …”

  “I’m doing the talking—just for this once. In spite of the infantile, theatrical, decadent week we’ve spent here, culminating in your monseigneur performance last night, I still want to marry you. But I want to marry you—not Melissa and Miranda, not Kafka. In fact, none of the things I’ve put up with around here. This is going to be our marriage. There isn’t going to be any communal living or any creative work on any island except Manhattan Island. We’re going to live together—alone—like any other man and wife. I’ll get to the office at nine and home before six. You can do all the intellectual things you want during …”

  “Just like some bourgeois little bookkeeper with celluloid cuffs!” Margot spat.

  “Exactly like some bourgeois little bookkeeper, except I can’t keep books. A little bookkeeper with children and a normal life—the kind of life I’ve never been able to lead. Auntie Mame can look out for herself. She’s always been able to. So can Miranda and Melissa.”

  “Look out for themselves!” she exploded. “How do you think I can get them married off to suitable husbands while leading a drab little life like that? I have to take them to surroundings where they can meet men who are …” She was getting fairly hysterical, stammering and groping for words. “… intelligent, worldly, wellborn …”

  “You mean rich?” I asked.

  “Well, yes. A Maddox can’t go and marry just anyone. It’s different for you. You have money of your own. You’re the sole heir of a wealthy woman. You don’t know what it’s like to have had everything and then see your father wiped out. We’re not like other people. We can’t adjust to …”

  “When did this fortune disappear, Margot?”

  “In twenty-nine. We had three governesses and footmen and …”

  “You were eight then. Your sisters were even younger. I should think you could have got used to facing real life in fifteen years. In fact, the sooner the three of you get over your delusions of grandeur—the misapprehension that you’re born leaders in the arts and society—and learn to cook and treat other people as though they were human and not serfs of the defunct Maddox empire, the better …”

  “Shut your mouth!” she screamed. “For ten generations the Maddox family has led everybody in Salem—and sometimes Boston—socially, artistically, intellectually! Everybody in our cote
rie says …”

  “Just who is in your coterie, Margot?”

  “Nobody you ever heard of!”

  “I’m sure of that! But if your coterie, as you call it, consists of three rich men, you’d better jump fast. I’ve spent my whole life among people of talent and breeding, and somehow you and your sisters don’t measure up on either count. And if you think I’m going to marry you and spend the rest of my life pimping for your rude little sisters, you’ve got …”

  “Marry me! You great bumbling Madison Avenue oaf with your empty-headed rich poseur of an aunt who thinks she can buy her way into a truly gifted, aristocratic family!”

  “Now, wait a second …”

  “I wouldn’t marry you for anything in the world! I’m going to put my sisters and myself on the top of the intellectual pile if it’s the last thing I ever do!”

  “And that will be the last thing you’ll ever do.”

  “Get out of here, damn you! Get off my property at once!”

  “Okay, Margot, I’m going. But just one point of law—it isn’t your property. It’s Auntie Mame’s—until Labor Day.”

  “I own this property just as I own this island! I’m a Maddox and a Maddox is …”

  “So long, Margot. Give my love to all the folks on Ischia.”

  I hurried across the lawn to be away from the Maddox place. But as I passed the house, Auntie Mame’s window flew open. “Patrick! Wait!” she cried hoarsely.

  In a moment she flew down to the lawn, swathed in shawls and blankets.

  “Lady Macbeth?” I asked.

  “Oh, my little love, Auntie Mame is so miserable—after that dreadful scene last night my nerves are shattered. And then I’ve caught cold and … By the way, where have you been? Where are you going in such a …”

  “I’ve been in wonderland with you, as usual. I am now going to New York on the next boat.”

  “B-but you and Margot, darling? Your wedding plans? Why, she was up here all afternoon telling me about the cunning little villa I was going to give you as a wedding gift—just big enough for two love birds, two younger sisters, and a doting aunt. It sounded such fun that she mentioned a pied à terre in Paris, too, and a …”

  There was a sort of bogus, wide-eyed quality about her which I didn’t like. “Margot and I have gone pfffft,” I said.

  “Gone where?”

  “It’s a rather rude noise made by horses and faulty connections. It means we’re finished.”

  “Finished? But, Patrick, what of my plans for you? My golden summer? My grandbabies? Here I spend half a year corralling these beautiful, intellectual, well-bred girls. I thrust you into their midst. I give you every opportunity to re-enact the Judgment of Paris …”

  “Paris would have shown better judgment.”

  “But my psychology teacher told me that …”

  “Your psychology teacher didn’t count on your winding up in a nest of vipers. But I could have told him that of all the scatter-brained, chump-hearted, soft touches in the world, you would be the one to get sucked in by those money-grubbing, waspish, phony patricians, who haven’t the manners or the decency to …”

  “Well, I’ll admit that their interchange with that lovely red-head last night was horrid, but these old aristocrats do …”

  “You’re damned right it was horrid. It was the cheapest, loudest cat fight in history. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect from a pack of whores in a Barcelona crib. It …”

  “Perfectly true, darling,” she said with maddening calm.

  “And you might also admit that the Maddox sisters have been sponging on you ever since you met them.”

  “They are not what is called in the restaurant trade check-grabbers.”

  “And you know as well as I do—or at least you ought to know—that they haven’t got any more talent than I have. Margot wouldn’t know Kafka from Elinor Glynn; as for Miranda’s imitative …”

  “Had you noticed, too, my little love, that Melissa’s ‘Fugue in D’ is actually ‘Ramona’ played backwards and in C—her only key?” Her restraint was getting on my nerves.

  “And there aren’t any eligible men chasing after them. In fact you made up the whole …”

  “Not all men are the scatter-brained, chump-hearted, soft touch you seem to be. Qualities which, I suppose, run in our family, just as conceit, rapaciousness, snobbery, and pretension run in the Maddox bloodline.”

  “And you wanted me to marry one of those human bloodsuckers?” I bellowed.

  “I didn’t ask you to marry Margot. I didn’t ask you to marry any of them. I find them to be a most tiresome little gaggle of gold-diggers—and without sufficient generosity to offer the physical rewards expected from …”

  “But, my God,” I gasped, “you knew this all along and then you just sat by letting those harpies hook me? You’d have got yourself up in a flap of feathers and wept at the wedding? You’d have …”

  “Darling, my psychology teacher told me that …”

  “Well you can tell your psychology teacher, for me, that the next time I fall in love, I’m going to depend on biology and not psychology—and certainly not on you.”

  “Good!” Auntie Mame said crisply. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

  “What are you talking about,” I breathed. “You’re the one who …”

  “I am the one who always has to get you disentangled from the scrapes you insist upon thrusting yourself into—although I will admit that once or twice you have assisted in extricating me from, um, slight difficulties forced on me by fate—like that horrid Upson bitch and your Bubbles creature. But now you’re a grown man. You’re heading for thirty. The time has come for you to be cracked from your crustacean lethargy into the free-swimming sea of manhood, to quote a brilliant middle-aged editor of my acquaintance.”

  “Auntie Mame, you really planned all this? You …”

  “Go free, little bird, wiser in the ways of the world from your years in my gilded cage!” she said with an airy sweep of her wings.

  “Well, you’re damn-tootin’ I’m going. I’m going this minute.”

  “Excellent, darling, now just wait for me to throw a few things into my bag. I’ll be with you in a second. This morgue gives me the shudders. I won’t be more than ten or fifteen …” I could hear the launch whistle at the end of Maddox Island.

  “Sorry, Auntie Mame,” I said. “The boat won’t wait ten or fifteen minutes. So long. Watch your purse around here. And thanks.” I bent down and gave her a hug and a kiss.

  “Now just hold your horses, young man,” she said indignantly. “After all I’ve done for you, you’re not leaving me behind with these three furies.”

  “To quote your brilliant middle-aged editorial acquaintance, I’m cracking from my crustacean lethargy into the free-swimming sea of manhood. And I’m doing it right now, before I have to spend another night under the dock.”

  “Patrick! Don’t leave me here alone in this awful house!” she cried.

  “You got into it,” I said, “now you get out of it—psychologically, of course. Good-by, and thanks again.” With that, I was off.

  Just as I got to the gate, Melissa stepped out of the shadows. She was very pale and determined-looking, and she was wearing red, cut low. It was some sight.

  “Stop, Patrick,” she said eerily. “I overheard what you said to Margot. And you were right. Margot’s horrid. She’s mercenary. She doesn’t know anything about Kafka. But I’m not like her and Miranda. Take me with you and I promise you’ll never see either of them again. We could go to Rome together, and I could go on with my music and you.” I could hear the melancholy whistle of the launch again. “I could make you very happy. I love advertising and common people and …”

  The rest of her proposition was lost on me. I broke into a run and started pounding down the dusty road that bisected Maddox Island.

  I got
to the dock just as the launch was taking off. It was quite a leap, but I made it. I milled among the departing week-enders, dragging my suitcase behind me until I came upon a gorgeous girl in a prim traveling suit. She had beautiful red hair whipping out behind her. It was Pegeen Ryan. “Boo,” I said.

  “Oh it’s you,” she said.

  “Yes, me city boy—you native girl.”

  “That’s just sidesplittingly funny. I’ll bet you could wow them on television.”

  “Oh, come off it, Irish.”

  “Going into Bangor to buy Margot a wedding ring?”

  “No, I’m going into Bangor to buy a ticket back home—back where I belong.”

  “Oh?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

  “Oh,” I said.

  We were still for a little while.

  “Mind if I sit next to you, Pegeen?”

  “It’s a public launch,” she said.

  “Mind if I sit next to you on the jitnev when we get to the next island?” I asked.

  “It’s a public bus.”

  “And on the ferry to Eastport?”

  “It’s a public ferry.”

  “And there’s another public bus to Bangor, Pegeen, and then a public plane to New York, and a public limousine to the air terminal, and …”

  “All very public, isn’t it?” she said. But she smiled.

  “Maybe we could have dinner sometime—say tonight? But, of course, only in a public restaurant.”

  “Maybe we could,” she said.

  I put my arm around her and watched Maddox Island disappear into the twilight.

  Chapter Eleven

  Revisited

  Reading about the Unforgettable Character was so spellbinding that I dozed off. It was four o’clock when I was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. I got up to answer it but Pegeen already had.

  “It’s for you,” she said, covering the mouthpiece. “And it’s that mad aunt of yours.”

  “That’s impossible,” I whispered. “She’s in India.”

  “Then it’s a remarkably clear connection. Here.”