Auntie Mame Page 4

  Mr. Babcock got out a lot of papers and said that Auntie Mame was very fortunate to have such a nice little boy to comfort her after the, uh, Loss of her brother. Auntie Mame dropped her eyes demurely. Then Mr. Babcock said that he’d been looking over my school records and that they were very good, but we’d get onto schools later. Auntie Mame bridled.

  Then he got out sheets and sheets and sheets of paper with figures all over them. He said that I was well off—not rich, mind you, but well off. “Never have to worry about where his next meal is coming from unless these, um, Bolsheviks take over the government.” He said that every penny I owned was carefully invested in good, conservative, steady stocks and bonds and that this was a bad time to go fiddling around with the market. He showed Auntie Mame the papers but she didn’t seem very interested.

  “Now, as for this young man and his schooling,” he finally said, rustling a lot of papers. “You know, of course, that in this matter, the boy’s late father felt that it would be, uh, wiser if I—on behalf of the Trust Company—were to have complete authority on that matter.” Auntie Mame’s back stiffened. “But, heh, heh, heh, I don’t think there need be any friction on that account,” he said. “You look a fine, sensible woman, Miss Dennis, and I think we can see eye to eye on the subject.” He brought out a thick red book called Handbook of Private Schools. From that moment the fight was officially on.

  Mr. Babcock led off with a few preliminary remarks. He said he thought it would be ideal if I could go to a good day school right in Manhattan so that Auntie Mame and I could be together as much as possible.

  “Lovely,” Auntie Mame said warmly. “I had just such an arrangement in mind, myself.”

  “Now,” Mr. Babcock said, “I’ve gone to, uh, some pains to, uh, gather information on a number of the better boys’ schools in town.”

  Auntie Mame touched her throat gingerly and said, “Personally, I prefer coeducational schools. Throwing boys and girls together at a tender age does so much to reduce psychosexual tensions, don’t you think?”

  Mr. Babcock looked as though he’d been struck, and Auntie Mame, quickly lapsing back into her maiden lady role, amended her statement by saying, “Well, you know what I mean. After all, men and women do live together in real life—marry.”

  “Yes, I see,” Mr. Babcock mumbled, “that’s a very interesting, uh, theory, Miss Dennis, there’s probably a great deal to it. Now, I hadn’t considered any of the coeducational, uh, institutions, but the Buckley School is known to be a splendid …”

  “Well, now, before we get into the Buckley School, do you mind if I just suggest a new school that a friend of mine, Ralph Devine, is starting. Ralph is a darl … an extremely learned man. He knows Freud backwards and forwards, in fact he knows Freud personally, and he has this idea of education that is generations ahead of Froebel and Montessori. Now, the idea of this school is completely revolutionary. He …”

  Mr. Babcock held up his hand as though he were directing rush-hour traffic. “I’m positive, Miss Dennis, that that sort of school is exactly where your late brother would not wish his son to be sent. He specified in his will that it was to be a conservative school. Now, if you don’t like the idea of Buckley, what about the Allen-Stevenson School?”

  “Oh, no, I know a dreadful little boy who goes there. But I do have an idea, and you couldn’t possibly object to it. It’s a well-established school but coeducational and modern. It’s the City and Country School down on …”

  “I’ve looked into that one, too, Miss Dennis, and I’m afraid that I find it a lit-tle too experimental. But there’s the Browning School which is quite convenient to …”

  Auntie Mame was getting that old overeager, desperate quality which I’ve since learned to fear. “Oh, but Mr. Babcock, give a thought to the Dalton School! That’s marvelous. I’ve met both Miss Dickerman and Mrs. Roosevelt and they’re doing such absolute wonders with …”

  “I know the Dalton School,” Mr. Babcock said icily. “They have some very radical ideas. Dangerously radical.”

  “What about Ethical Culture?” Auntie Mame said wildly.

  “My dear Miss Dennis, you surely wouldn’t suggest sending the child off with a pack of Jews?” Auntie Mame’s false coronet rocked alarmingly. “In fact,” Mr. Babcock continued placidly, “I’d like to keep that West Side element out of his life as much as possible. However, there is the Collegiate School over there, and that’s said to be splendid.”

  For the next hour and a half I sat in the hot little room while Auntie Mame and Mr. Babcock battled over every school in New York—St. Bernard’s, Friends, Horace Mann, Buckley, the Hoffman School for Individual Development, Poly Prep—neither would give an inch. Auntie Mame quivered like a greyhound, while Mr. Babcock grew progressively stonier. The argument had reached a pitch that made me fear for the complete success of Auntie Mame’s genteel masquerade when a furtive, cunning look crept across her face. There was a sudden sob, then Auntie Mame buried her face in her hands and shook convulsively. Mr. Babcock was so thunderstruck that the eulogy to the mathematics department of the Browning School dropped dead on his lips. I was stunned too. The room was silent except for Auntie Mame’s sobbing. Mr. Babcock colored to an almost human pallor and ran an exploratory finger under his wilting collar. “Miss Dennis,” he sputtered, “please, uh, really, uh, that is, I didn’t mean to …”

  Auntie Mame raised a beatific face, which I noticed was surprisingly dry. “Oh, Mr. Babcock,” she gasped, “how can I, how can I ever apologize for being such a foolish, headstrong thing? How very, very stupid and willful I must have seemed.” She dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief and I was curiously reminded of Pola Negri in a silent film I’d seen not so long ago. She sniffed delicately, “After all, who am I—a simple, single woman, unused to raising little ones—to argue with you, a father and the executor of little Patrick’s estate? How hateful you must think me.” Her head drooped fetchingly and her toes pivoted inward.

  “Well, now, Miss Dennis,” Mr. Babcock said cordially, “if you think the boy would be happier at Dalton …”

  Auntie Mame raised a limp white hand. “No, Mr. Babcock, I was wrong. There, now, I’ve said it and I’m glad. I was wrong and silly. Patrick will go to the school you suggest. You mustn’t pay any attention to me, although I know you can never forgive or forget my unpardonable behavior here tonight.”

  Mr. Babcock grew suddenly expansive. “Well, now, I know about women. After all, Eunice—that’s Mrs. Babcock—and I sometimes have our, uh, little differences. It’s only natural—battle of the, uh, sexes, you know, heh, heh, heh.”

  Auntie Mame dimpled becomingly.

  “Now, of course,” Mr. Babcock continued, “there are a lot of good schools in New York—none really better than another—but the one I’d suggest is Buckley.”

  “Mr. Babcock, don’t say another word. Your choice is right. I’m convinced of it. Right. He shall go to Buckley and wear the uniform proudly!”

  “It’s just a cap, not a uniform,” Mr. Babcock said deprecatingly. “But it’s a splendid, uh, school; perfectly splendid. Boys from really the best families …”

  “Yes,” Auntie Mame sighed, “class is so important. And now,” she simpered, “we must go.”

  “Then I’ll make out a check to the Buckley School and you’ll take the boy around to register him when you’re notified?”

  “That will be heavenly,” Auntie Mame said with a devastating smile. “Come, dear, we mustn’t keep you up too late.” She swept to the door and arranged Vera’s black hat onto her switch. “Good night, Mr. Babbitt … it’s been a charming evening—really informative! Come, Patrick.”

  The car door closed and Ito started the motor with a roar.

  “Are you really going to send me to that … that school he was talking about, Auntie Mame?”

  “Don’t worry, darling, don’t worry, Auntie Mame has a plan.”

  With an
ecstatic sigh she lighted up a Melachrino as Ito headed the car straight toward Connecticut.

  Right after Labor Day Auntie Mame took me to Buckley and registered me. All of my school papers had been transferred by Mr. Babcock and they said that everything was in good order. Auntie Mame bought me one of the little blue caps, which she took to wearing herself, and sent me to a place near Washington Square for an intelligence test. When I came home I found her engrossed in conversation with a handsome blond man.

  “Darling, come in,” she trilled, “I want you to meet Ralph Devine. You’ll be going to his school next week.”

  “But … but what about the Buckley place?” I stammered.

  “Pardon me a moment, Ralph,” she said. She drew me near to her and gazed solemnly into my eyes. “Darling, what Auntie Mame has done may seem a little, well, deceitful, but you’ll learn later in life that sometimes it’s best not to be too honest. You and I are going to play a little joke on your Mr. Babbitt, dear. You see, while he thinks you’re going to that other school, you’ll really be doing the most divine and advanced things with Ralph, here. It’ll be our secret, my little love, only the three of us need know, and Mr. Hitchcock—whatever his name is—will be ever so fooled, won’t he?”

  I said that I thought he’d be very fooled.

  “Now run upstairs and read something while I talk to Ralph, there’s a pet.”

  Ralph was saying, “Mame, you let that child read?” as I left the room.

  The following week Auntie Mame got up in the Middle of the Night and took me two blocks away to Ralph’s school. It occupied the top floor of an old loft building on Second Avenue. We were a little late—Auntie Mame was always late—and when we got there, the big room was filled with naked children of all ages racing around and screaming. Ralph came forward, as naked as the day he was born, and shook hands cordially.

  “Isn’t he lovely,” Auntie Mame gushed. “Just like a Praxiteles. Oh, darling, I know you’re going to love it here!”

  A square little yellow-haired woman, also naked, rushed up and kissed Auntie Mame. Her name was Natalie. She and Ralph were running the school together.

  “Now you just tag along with Ralph and enjoy yourself, my little love, and I’ll see you back at the flat in time for tea.”

  Auntie Mame departed with a gay wave and I was left alone, the only person in the place who was wearing any clothes.

  “Come in here and disrobe, yes?” Natalie said, “then join the others?”

  I always felt a little like a picked chicken at Ralph’s school, but it was pleasant and I never had to do anything. It was a big, stark, whitewashed room with a heated linoleum floor, quartz glass skylights, and violet ray tubes running around the available ceiling. There were no desks or chairs, just some mats where we could lie down and sleep whenever we wanted, and, in the center of the room, a big white structure that looked like a cow’s pelvis. We were supposed to crawl in, around, and over this if we felt like it, and whenever one of the younger children did, Ralph would give Natalie’s broad bottom a resounding smack and chuckle, “Back to the womb, eh Nat!”

  There was a communal toilet—“Nip the inhibitions in the bud”—and all sorts of other progressive pastimes. We could draw or finger-paint or make things in Plasticine. There were Guided Conversation Circles, in which we discussed our dreams and took turns telling what we were thinking at the moment. If you felt like being antisocial, you could just be antisocial. For lunch we ate raw carrots, raw cauliflower—which always gave me gas—raw apples, and raw goat’s milk. If two children ever quarreled, Ralph would make them sit down with as many others as were interested and discuss the whole thing. I thought it was awfully silly, but I got quite a thorough suntan.

  But I didn’t stay long enough at Ralph’s school to discover whether it did me good or harm. My career there—and Ralph’s too, for that matter—ended just six weeks after it began.

  Ralph and Natalie, under the misapprehension that their young followers did any work at school, organized an afternoon period of Constructive Play so as to send us all home in a jolly frame of mind. The general idea was that the children, all except the really antisocial ones, were to participate in a large group game that would teach us something of Life and what awaited us beyond the portals of the school. Sometimes we’d play Farmer and attend to the scrubby avocado plants Natalie grew. At other times we’d play Laundry and wash all of Ralph’s underwear, but one of the favorite games of the smaller fry was one called Fish Families, which purported to give us a certain casual knowledge of reproduction in the lower orders.

  It was a simple game and rather good exercise. Natalie and all the girls would crouch on the floor and pretend to lay fish eggs and then Ralph, followed by the boys, would skip among them, arms thrust sideways and fingers wiggling—“in a swimming motion, a swimming motion”—and fertilize the eggs. It always brought down the house.

  On my last day at Ralph’s we’d been playing Fish Families for about half an hour. Natalie and the girls were on the linoleum and Ralph started to lead the boys through the school of lady fish. “A swimming motion, a swimming motion! Now! Spread the sperm, spread the sperm! Don’t forget that little mother fish there, Patrick, spread the sperm, spread the …”

  There was a sudden choking noise.

  “My God!” a familiar voice gasped.

  We all turned around and there, fully dressed and looking like the angriest shark in the sea, stood Mr. Babcock, my trustee. With one deft motion, he yanked me out of the melee. “God damn it! You get your clothes on and hurry. I want to talk to that crazy aunt of yours and I want you to be there with me!” He threw me into the dressing room. “As for you, you filthy pervert,” he shouted at Ralph, “you haven’t heard the last of this!”

  Before I had my clothes buttoned, Mr. Babcock dragged me down the stairs and halfway to Auntie Mame’s.

  As luck would have it, Auntie Mame, dressed in one of her most exotic outfits, was having stingers with a distinguished Lithuanian rabbi and two dancers from the cast of Blackbirds when Mr. Babcock and I burst into the drawing room.

  “By God,” he screamed, “I should have known it! No more fit to raise a child than Jezebel! What kind of mad woman are you?”

  With some effort, Auntie Mame got to her feet. “Why, Mr. Babbitt, what do you mean?” she said with a hollow hauteur.

  “You know goddamned good and well what I mean. Two weeks ago I called up Buckley to see if this brat wanted to go to the rodeo with my son and me, and ever since then I’ve been trying to track him down in every low half-baked school for the feeble-minded in this town. But today, today I found him in the lowest of them all; mother-naked with that filthy man spreading the—Oh, God, I can’t stand it!”

  Auntie Mame stepped forward with dignity and took one of the deep breaths that always preceded her better denunciations, but she needn’t have bothered.

  “Tomorrow,” Mr. Babcock screamed, “in fact, tonight, right now—I, me personally—I’m taking this kid off to boarding school myself. I should have figured you’d try to pull a dirty double cross like this, but never again. I’m putting him into St. Boniface Academy and he’s going to stay there. The only time you’ll get your depraved hands on him is Christmas and summer and I wish to God there was some way to prevent that. Come on, you,” he said.

  “Auntie Mame.” I cried and tried to run to her, but he held tight.

  “Come back here, you damned little hellion, I’m going to get you to St. Boniface and turned into a decent, God-fearing Christian if I have to break every bone in your body. Come on, we’re getting out of this, this opium den.” Another yank and I was on my way to St. Boniface Academy.

  The next day Ralph’s school was raided by the police, and the tabloids, caught in a lull between ax murders, became profoundly pious about all of progressive education. Over delicately retouched photographs of Ralph and Natalie and the student body were headlines such as SE
X SCHOOL SEIZED, with articles by civic leaders and an outraged clergy that all seemed to begin: “Mother, What Is Your Child Being Taught?”

  The day after that was October 29, 1929. The bottom dropped out of the market and the papers had more pressing things to write about. But by then I was incarcerated in St. Boniface Academy and from there the strident voice of my Auntie Mame was but a dim whisper in an academic wilderness.

  Chapter Three

  in the Temple of Mammon

  A dark cloud soon hovers over the sweet little spinster in the Digest. Always used to living in security and comfort with the kid and the cat, suddenly the local bank folds and all of the poor little lady’s savings are swept away. She has only a miserable pension to keep her, and things look pretty black. But she’s undaunted and she discovers that she has a real head for business.

  First of all she starts baking bread and rolls and Lady Baltimore cake, and the next thing you know, she has a thriving bakery with more business than she can handle. Then she resumes her girlhood hobby of painting china, and her forget-me-not pattern becomes a perfect rage—with whom, the article doesn’t say. Then this little bundle of energy turns to making hooked rugs and woven place mats and patchwork quilts and the money just never stops rolling in.

  That doesn’t impress me one bit. Auntie Mame always said she had a head for business, too. When the depression hit her hard, she launched out on many more careers than the Unforgettable Character and, one way or another, she saved us, too.

  The month of September was particularly hot in 1930, and the day my Auntie Mame chose for her painful interview at the bank was a scorcher. She came home, dropped her fox furs in the middle of the living room, called for a stiff drink, and wilted tragically onto her new “modernistic” sofa. “Patrick,” she said hollowly, “your Auntie Mame is a poor woman. Ruined, ruined, ruined!” She gazed soulfully out into the street and tried to work up some tears. “I am,” she said dramatically, “little more than a pauper.”