“I took them for real.”
“They are real. But for the camera—”
“O.K., I dote on your shadows. May we get on?”
“Which way is on?”
“Is your husband hooked up with the Du Ponts?”
“Lloyd, I don’t know, and I’m not at all sure he does either. The whole thing is an interlock so complicated that people have gone mad trying to figure it out. He could be hooked up with them — by stock they hold in his companies, by dummy names on the books, so he wouldn’t even know it. Possibly he is, but he doesn’t think so, I gather from the little he talks about it, and neither do I. He has reasons for not telling anyone, and I have mine, but mine are simple: the way they act when we go to their houses for dinner and when they come to mine. In general, Du Ponts sell chemistry — processes, dyes they know how to make, fibers they cook out of oil and spin into cloth like nylon, seat covers, stockings. Richard, however, sells things. He boasts that he knows a thing from a thing, like tractors and bulldozers and carts, and boats, boats of all sizes and shapes. If you had met him at his office, you’d see the scale models he has there, of everything he makes. But, of course, just like General Motors, all those things need paint, as well as the other things Du Pont has for sale. So he doesn’t hurt them; he helps them.”
“Where does General Motors come in?”
“Well, it’s a Du Pont thing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Lloyd, on something like that, no one is ever sure. But it has been and, so far as I know, still is... mainly.”
I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say for some time.
Suddenly she asked: “How does Wilmington look to you now?”
“Bigger.”
“It’ll grow on you. Getting back to Richard, there’s another reason for Du Pont respect: they’re a bit recent compared with him. They came around 1800, pushed out by the French Revolution, and went into the gunpowder business. Then came Napoleon, our War of 1812, and all sorts of things such as our canals which used powder to blow out stumps. One thing led to another, so they got bigger and bigger and bigger. But Richard’s ancestors were here long before that. They came over with William Penn and took land on the Delaware. Just to show how filthy rich Richard is, he still has some of that land, and I think Du Ponts respect it.”
“Well, I would—”
“Okay, but being cheap doesn’t help.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If I were hauling a girl somewhere, I’d give her something to eat.”
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Yes, of course.”
“But not just yet!”
She gave me a playful pat and held up her hand, and there it was — the gorge of the Susquehanna passing under us, one of the world’s great sights. She stared, then whispered: “It’s so beautiful, I always want to inhale it!”
“Then let’s both inhale.”
Soon we were in Havre de Grace and I pulled in at a roadside joint on the far side of town. We went in and sat at the counter and had hotdogs on rolls, buttermilk, apple pie a la mode, and coffee. She wolfed everything down, then sat sipping her coffee and breathing through her nose. Then we were in the car again.
“Young man in a dinner jacket?” she said. “What kind?”
“Actually, I have two — one black, one red — or, say maroon. I didn’t like it at first. The satin lapels were too shiny. But I had them changed to cross-grained silk. Now I like it fine.”
“I wonder if I will.”
“Just for your info, I’m the one wearing it.”
“Well, just for your info, I’m the one that’ll be presenting it, with you inside, at dinner, when I introduce you to money — and, my sweet, I do mean money, millions and millions and millions of it — in an effort to get you your institute. But if your red dinner jacket gets a laugh, we lose before we really go to bat. Why don’t we stop at your place so I can have a look?”
“Listen, I like the goddam coat.”
“Why the pash goddam?”
“I don’t want my clothes inspected.”
She studied me for a moment and then asked: “What’s with the apartment, Lloyd?”
“Nothing — that I know of.”
“There has to be, from the shifty way you’re acting.
“It’s a perfectly good condo. My mother left it to me. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s talk about something else.”
“What’s there. A wife you haven’t mentioned?”
“I’m not married.”
“Lloyd, if I find you the money, they’ll want to know about you — all kinds of things, like your background and whether you have what it takes to run a biographical institute — or any institute. And why shouldn’t they know? After all, how you live is part of it. On top of that, there’s you. You’re not uninteresting, you know. They wouldn’t be human if they didn’t want to know you better.”
It seems to me now that she said quite a bit more, but I must not have had the right answers, because all of a sudden she said: “Our apartment is in East Watergate. It’s at 2500 Virginia Avenue, if you know where that is.”
“I do. I know East Watergate.”
It was a haughty way of saying forget about College Park and the warthog that had an apartment there. For some time we rode in silence — to Baltimore, through the tunnel, and onto the freeway to Washington. But when I took the turnoff for College Park she said nothing. I came to the Accomac, where I lived, and pulled into the parking lot back of it. I shut the motor off and, still sitting behind the wheel, spoke my piece very stiffly.
“O.K., there is something about my apartment. It was my mother’s before she died. It was where she lived, with her son a sort of a lodger. As such, it was a beautiful place for a middle-aged woman to call home. But for the son it has caused smiles on faces that did not, not, NOT get invited back. So if you do any smiling—”
“What is there to smile at, Lloyd?”
“The decor, I suppose you would call it, consists of Sonny Boy’s career. Pictures of him by the dozen, by the score, maybe even by the hundred — doing everything from riding his Shetland pony to getting his Ph.D. Which was fine for Mommy’s apartment. But for Sonny Boy to call it his, that has a peculiar look. If you want to laugh, go ahead. But it will be the last time you will. I like it, the way I like the dinner jacket. And if you don’t—”
“Calm down, Lloyd.”
“O.K., let’s go up.”
We got out of the car and I locked it. I said: “I usually go in the back way, through the basement and up in the freight elevator. But today, in your honor, we can go around front and make a grand entrance through the lobby.”
“I think we should use the back way.”
I must have looked surprised, because she explained: “We don’t know who’s in the lobby, who might remember the beautiful frog whose picture they saw in the paper.”
“Then through the basement it is.”
I unlocked the basement door and led to the freight elevator where I stood with her, feeling foolish while it creaked upward. At the seventh floor we got off and I unlocked the door to apartment 7A. Then I bowed her into my apartment. For a moment she was behind me as I hung up my coat in the guest closet in the vestibule. When I turned, she was under the arch between the vestibule and the living room, her mouth parted, her eyes roving around the room. At last, without looking at me, she said in a reverent whisper: “Lloyd, how could anyone laugh? How could you even imagine that I would? It’s beautiful, simply beautiful!”
If it weren’t for the pictures, I’d have been proud of it myself. The room wasn’t as big as the drawing room of her place, but it was still pretty big, bigger than most living rooms. On three sides were bookshelves six feet high — solid on the long side where there were no windows and broken on the side with the arch and fireplace. On the fourth side of the room was a large picture window which looked out on the university campus. The view was grassy, fresh, and green.