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Gretchen looked at her watch. “It’s now exactly eighteen minutes past seven, according to Mr. Cartier.”
It was still raining outside, but a taxi drove up and a couple got out and the doorman protected Gretchen with a big umbrella as she ran for the cab. Outside Twenty-One, you’d never guess that the city needed ten thousand more taxis.
When Rudolph let them into the apartment, they heard the violent sound of metal on metal. Rudolph ran into the living room with Gretchen on his heels. Jean sat on the floor, in the middle of the room, with her legs spread apart, like a child playing with blocks. She had a hammer in her hand and she was methodically destroying a pile of cameras and lenses and camera equipment that lay between her knees. She was wearing a pair of slacks and a dirty sweater and her unwashed hair hung down, masking her face, as she bent over her work.
“Jean,” Rudolph said, “what the hell are you doing?”
Jean looked up, peering slyly through her hair. “His Honor the Mayor wants to know what his beautiful, rich young wife is doing. I’ll tell his Honor the Mayor what his beautiful, rich young wife is doing. She is making a junk pile.” Her speech was thick and she was drunk. Jean smashed the hammer down on a big wide-angle lens and splintered it.
Rudolph grabbed the hammer from her. She did not struggle. “His Honor the Mayor now has taken the hammer from his beautiful rich young wife’s hand,” Jean said. “Don’t worry, little junk pile. There are other hammers. You’ll grow up and one day you’ll be one of the biggest, most beautiful junk piles in the world and his Honor the Mayor will claim it as a public park for the citizens of Whitby.”
Still holding the hammer, Rudolph glanced over at Gretchen. There was a shamed, frightened look in his eyes. “Christ, Jean,” he said to his wife, “there’s at least five thousand dollars’ worth of stuff there.”
“Her Honor the Mayor’s wife doesn’t need cameras,” Jean said. “Let people take pictures of me. Let poor people take pictures. Talented people. Hoopla!” She made a spreading, gay ballet gesture with her arms. “Bring on the hammers. Rudy, darling, don’t you think you ought to give your beautiful rich young wife a drink?”
“You’ve had enough to drink.”
“Rudolph,” Gretchen said, “I’d better be off. We’re not going to Whitby tonight.”
“Beautiful Whitby,” Jean said. “Where the beautiful rich young wife of his Honor the Mayor smiles at Democrats and Republicans alike, where she opens charity bazaars and appears faithfully at her husband’s side at banquets and political meetings, where she is to be seen at Commencements and Fourth of July celebrations and the home games of the Whitby University football team and the dedication of new science laboratories and the ground-breaking ceremonies for housing projects with real toilets for colored folk.”
“Cut it out, Jean!” Rudolph said harshly.
“Really, I think I’d better go,” Gretchen said. “I’ll call you in …”
“Sister of his Honor the Mayor, what’s your rush to leave?” Jean said. “Who knows, one day he may need your vote. Stay and we’ll have a nice cosy little family drink. Maybe if you play your cards right, he may even marry you. Stay and listen. It may be in … instructive.” She stumbled on the word. “How to be an appendage, in a hundred easy lessons. I’m having visiting cards printed up. Mrs. Rudolph Jordache, ex-career girl, now in the appendage business. One of the ten most hopeful appendages in the United States. Parasitism and hypocrisy a specialty. Courses given in appendaging.” She giggled. “Any true-blue American girl guaranteed a diploma.”
Rudolph didn’t try to stop Gretchen as she went out of the room and into the hallway, leaving him standing in his raincoat, the hammer in his hand, staring down at his drunken wife.
The elevator door opened directly into the apartment and Gretchen had to wait in the hallway and she heard Jean say, in a childish, aggrieved voice, “People are always taking away my hammers,” before the elevator door opened and she could flee.
When she got back to the Algonquin she called Evans’s hotel, but there was no answer from his apartment. She left a message with the operator that Mrs. Burke had not left for the weekend and could be reached all night at her hotel. Then she took a hot bath and changed her clothes and went down to the hotel dining room and had di
Rudolph called at nine the next morning. She was alone. Evans hadn’t called. Rudolph said that Jean had gone to sleep after Gretchen had left and had been contrite and ashamed when she woke up and was all right now and they were going to Whitby after all and they’d wait for Gretchen in the apartment.
“You’re sure you don’t think it’s wiser to spend the day alone with her?” Gretchen asked.
“It’s better when we’re not alone,” Rudolph said. “You left your bag here, in case you think you’ve lost it.”
“I remember,” Gretchen said. “I’ll be up at your place by ten.”
As she dressed she puzzled over the scene the night before and remembered Jean’s less violent, but almost equally strange behavior at other times. Now it all added up. She had managed to hide it from Gretchen until now, because Gretchen hadn’t seen her all that often. But it was plain now—Jean was an alcoholic. Gretchen wondered if Rudolph realized it, and what he was going to do about it.
By a quarter to ten Evans hadn’t called, and Gretchen went down in the elevator and into the sun of Forty-fourth Street, a slender, tall woman, with fine legs, her hair soft and black, her skin unblemished and pale, her tweed suit and jersey blouse exactly right for a gracious country weekend. Only the Ban the Bomb button, worn like a brooch on the well-tailored lapel, might indicate to the passerby that not everything was as it seemed on that su
The debris of the cameras had been cleared away from the living room. Rudolph and Jean were listening to a Mozart piano concerto on the radio when Gretchen came in. Rudolph seemed unruffled and although Jean was pale and a little shaky when she stood up to kiss Gretchen hello, she, too, seemed to have recovered from the night before. She gave Gretchen a quick glance, that perhaps asked for pity and understanding, but after that, in her normal, quick, low-timbred voice, with a hint of gaiety that didn’t seem forced, she said, “Gretchen, don’t you look smashing in that suit. And tell me where I can get one of those buttons. The color goes with my eyes.”
“Yes,” Rudolph said. “I’m sure it’ll make a big hit the next time we have to go down to Washington.” But his voice was tender and he laughed, relaxed.
Jean held his hand, like a child on an outing with a father, as they went downstairs and waited for the man from the garage to bring the car. Her hair was washed and shone chestnut brown, and she had it tied in back with a bow and she was wearing a very short skirt. Her legs, without stockings, were lovely, slender, straight, and already ta
While they were waiting for the car, Rudolph said to Gretchen, “I called my secretary and told her to get in touch with Billy and tell him we were expecting him for lunch at our place.”
“Thank you, Rudy,” Gretchen said. She hadn’t seen Billy in so long that for their first meeting it would be much better if there were others around.
When the car came, the two women sat in front with Rudolph. He turned on the radio. Mozart, unworried and spring-like, accompanied them as far as the Bronx.
They drove through dogwood and tulips and skirted fields where men and boys were playing baseball. Mozart gave way to Loesser on the radio, and Ray Bolger sang, irresistibly, “Once in love with Amy, Always in love with Amy,” and Jean sang along with the radio, in a low, true, sweet voice. They all remembered Bolger in the show and how much pleasure he had given them. By the time they reached the farmhouse in Whitby, where the first twilight-colored lilacs were budding in the garden, the night before was almost as if it had never happened. Almost.