—
Once I was able to rouse myself and get vertical, I headed to the kitchen, where I encountered the most unusual pairing of men I’d ever seen.
There was Mr. Herbert sitting at one end of the table, wearing his usual sad trousers and undershirt, his white hair tousled and hopeless looking, his customary Sanka in a mug before him. At the other end of the table was my Uncle Billy—tall, slim, sporting a sharp-looking tuxedo and a golden California tan. Billy was not so much sitting in the kitchen as lounging in it, taking up space with an air of luxurious pleasure while enjoying his highball of scotch. There was something of Errol Flynn about him—if Errol Flynn couldn’t be bothered to swashbuckle.
In short: one of these men looked like he was about to go to work on a coal wagon; the other looked like he was about to go on a date with Rosalind Russell.
“Good morning, Mr. Herbert,” I said, as per our habit.
“I would be shocked to discover that was true,” he replied.
“I couldn’t find the coffee and I couldn’t stomach the idea of Sanka,” Billy explained, “so I settled on scotch. Any port in a storm. You might want a nip yourself, Vivian. You look as though you’ve got a heck of a sore dome.”
“I’ll be all right once I make myself some coffee,” I said, not really convinced of this fact myself.
“So Peg tells me you’ve been working on a script,” Billy said to Mr. Herbert. “I’d love to have a look at it.”
“There’s not much to see,” said Mr. Herbert, glancing sorrowfully toward the notebook that sat before him.
“May I?” Billy asked, reaching for the notebook.
“I’d rather you . . . oh, never mind,” said Mr. Herbert—a man who always managed to be defeated before the battle had even begun.
Billy slowly paged through Mr. Herbert’s notebook. The silence was excruciating. Mr. Herbert stared at the floor.
“It looks as though these are just lists of jokes,” Billy said. “Not even jokes, all of them, but punch lines. And a lot of drawings of birds.”
Mr. Herbert shrugged in surrender. “If any better ideas should develop themselves, I’m hoping to be alerted.”
“The birds aren’t bad, anyway.” Billy set down the notebook.
I was feeling protective of poor Mr. Herbert, whose response to Billy’s teasing was to look even more tortured than usual, so I said, “Mr. Herbert, have you met Billy Buell? This is Peg’s husband.”
Billy laughed. “Oh, don’t you worry, girlie. Donald and I have known each other for years. He’s my attorney, actually—or used to be, when they still let him practice law—and I’m Donald Jr.’s godfather. Or used to be. Donald’s just feeling nervous because he knows I’ve arrived unannounced. He’s not sure how that’s going to go over with the upper-echelon management around here.”
Donald! It had never occurred to me that Mr. Herbert had a first name.
Speaking of upper-echelon management, at that very moment in walked Olive.
She took two steps into the kitchen, saw Billy Buell sitting there, opened her mouth, closed her mouth, and walked out.
We all sat in silence for a moment after she left. That had been quite an entrance—and quite an exit.
“You’ll have to excuse Olive,” said Billy at last. “She’s not accustomed to being this excited to see someone.”
Mr. Herbert put his forehead back down on the kitchen table and literally said, “Oh, moan, moan, moan.”
“Don’t worry about me and Olive, Donald. We’ll be fine. She and I respect each other, which makes up for the fact that we dislike each other. Or, rather, I respect her. So that’s something we share, at least. We have an excellent relationship based on a deep history of profound one-way respect, and plenty of it.”
Billy took out his pipe, scratched a match into flame with his thumbnail, and turned to me.
“How are your parents, Vivian?” Billy asked. “Your mother and the mustache? I always liked them. Well, I liked your mother. What an impressive woman, that one. She’s careful never to say anything nice about anyone, but I think she was fond of me, too. Don’t ever ask her if she likes me, of course. She’ll be forced by propriety to deny it. I never warmed to your father. Such a stiff man. I used to call him the Deacon—but only behind his back, of course, out of politeness. Anyway. How are they?”
“They’re doing well.”
“Still married?”
I nodded, but the question took me aback. It had never occurred to me that my parents could be anything but married.
“They never have affairs, do they—your parents?”
“My parents? Affairs? No!”
“That can’t hold much novelty for them, can it?”
“Umm . . .”
“Have you been to California, Vivian?” he asked, thankfully changing the subject.
“No.”
“You should come. You’d love it. They have the best orange juice. Also, the weather is outstanding. East Coast people like us do well out there. The Californians think we’re so refined. They give us the sun and the moon, just for classing up the joint. You tell them you went to boarding school and you’ve got Mayflower ancestors in New England, and you might as well be a Plantagenet, as far as they’re concerned. Come at them with a blue-blood accent like yours, and they’ll give you the keys to the city. If you can play a decent game of tennis or golf, that’s almost enough to get a man a career—unless he drinks too much.”
I was finding this to be a very quick-paced conversation for seven o’clock on the morning after my birthday festivities. I’m afraid I might have been just staring at him, blinking, but honestly, I was doing my best to keep up.
Also: did I have a blue-blood accent?
“How are you entertaining yourself around the Lily, Vivian?” he asked. “Have you found a way to be useful?”
“I sew,” I said. “I make costumes.”
“That’s smart. You’ll always find work in the theater if you can do that, and you’ll never age out of it. What you don’t want to be is an actress. What about your beautiful friend in there? Is she an actress?”
“Celia? She’s a showgirl.”
“That’s a tough gig. There’s something about a showgirl that always breaks my heart. Youth and beauty—they’re such a short lease, girlie. Even if you’re the most beautiful girl in the room right now, there are ten new beauties coming up behind you all the time—younger ones, fresher ones. While the older ones are rotting on the vine, still waiting to be discovered. But your friend, she’ll leave her mark while she can. She’ll destroy man after man in some great romantic death march, and maybe someone will write songs about her, or kill himself for her, but soon enough it will end. If she’s lucky, she might marry a rich old fossil—not that this fate is anything to envy. If she’s very lucky, her old fossil will die on the golf course one fine afternoon and leave her everything while she’s still young enough to enjoy it. The pretty girls always know it will end soon, too. They can feel how provisional it all is. So I hope she’s having a good time being young and beautiful. Is she having a good time?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”
I didn’t know anybody who had a better time than Celia.
“Good. I hope you’re having a good time, too. People will tell you not to waste your youth having too much fun, but they’re wrong. Youth is an irreplaceable treasure, and the only respectable thing to do with irreplaceable treasure is to waste it. So do the right thing with your youth, Vivian—squander it.”