“You wouldn’t believe it,” Mary cried. “Ellen got them from the Esso Service Station. George Sandow loaned them.”
“What’s it about?”
“About everything. It’s a glory thing.”
I don’t know whether she had heard of Danny Taylor or had heard and retired him. Certainly I didn’t invite him to the feast, but he paced about outside. I knew I would have to go out to meet him later but I did not ask him in.
“You’d think it was Ellen had won honorable mention,” Mary said. “She’s even prouder than if she was the celebrity. Look at the cake she baked.” It was a tall white cake with HERO written on its top in red, green, yellow, and blue letters. “We’re having roast chicken and dressing and giblet gravy and mashed potatoes, even if it is summer.”
“Good, darling, good. And where’s the young celebrity?”
“Well, it’s changed him too. He’s taking a bath and changing for dinner.”
“It’s a day of portent, sibyl. Somewhere you will find a mule has foaled and a new comet come into the sky. A bath before dinner. Imagine!”
“I thought you might like to change too. I have a bottle of wine and I thought maybe a speech or a toast or something like that, even if it’s just the family.” She fairly flooded the house with party. I found myself rushing up the stairs to bathe and be a part of it.
Passing Allen’s door, I knocked, heard a grunt, and went in.
He was standing in front of his mirror, holding a handglass so he could see his profile. With some dark stuff, maybe Mary’s mascara, he had painted on a narrow black mustache, had darkened his brows and raised the outer ends to satanic tips. He was smiling a world-wise, cynical charm into the mirror when I entered. And he was wearing my blue polka-dot bow tie. He did not seem embarrassed at being caught.
“Rehearsing for a turn,” he said and put the hand-mirror down.
“Son, in all the excitement I don’t think I’ve told you how proud I am.”
“It’s—well, it’s only a start.”
“Frankly, I didn’t think you were even as good a writer as the President. I’m as much surprised as I am pleased. When are you going to read your essay to the world?”
“Sunday, four-thirty and a national hookup. I have to go into New York. Special plane flying me.”
“Are you well rehearsed?”
“Oh, I’ll do all right. It’s just a start.”
“Well, it’s more like a jump to be one of five in the whole country.”
“National hookup,” he said. He began to remove the mustache with a cotton pad and I saw with amazement that he had a make-up kit, eye-shadow, grease paint, cold cream.
“Everything’s happened at once to all of us. Do you know I’ve bought the store?”
“Yeah! I heard.”
“Well, when the bunting and the tinsel come down, I’m going to need your help.”
“How do you mean?”
“I told you before, to help me in the store.”
“I couldn’t do that,” he said, and he inspected his teeth in the hand-mirror.
“You couldn’t do what?”
“I’ve got a couple of guest shots and then ‘What’s My Line?’ and ‘Mystery Guest.’[74] Then there’s a new quiz coming up called ‘Teen Twisters.’[75] I might even get to M.C. that. So you see I won’t have time.” He sprayed something sticky on his hair from a pressure can.
“So your career is all set, is it?”
“Like I told you, it’s just a start.”
“I’ll not let loose the dogs of war tonight. We’ll discuss it later.”
“There’s a guy from N.B.C. been trying to get you on the phone. Maybe it’s a contract because like I’m not of age.”
“Have you thought of school, my son?”
“Who needs it if you got a contract?”
I got out fast and closed the door and in my bathroom I ran the water cold and iced my skin and let the cold penetrate deep to control my shaking rage. And when I emerged clean and shining and smelling of Mary’s perfume, my control was back. In the few moments before dinner, Ellen sat on the arm of my chair and then rolled over in my lap and put her arms around me.
“I do love you,” she said. “Isn’t it exciting? And isn’t Allen wonderful? It’s like he’s born to it.” And this was the girl I had thought very selfish and a little mean.
Just before the cake I toasted the young hero and wished him luck and I finished, “ ‘Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.’ ”
“That’s Shakespeare,” Ellen said.
“Yes, muggins, but what play, who says it, and where?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Allen. “That’s for squares.”
I helped carry the dishes to the kitchen. Mary still carried her glow. “Don’t fret,” she said. “He’ll find his line. He’ll be all right. Please be patient with him.”
“I will, my holy quail.”
“There was a man calling from New York. I guess about Allen. Isn’t it exciting, their sending a plane for him? I can’t get used to you owning the store. I know—it’s all over town you’re going to be Town Manager.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, I heard it a dozen times.”
“I have a business deal that makes it impossible. I have to go out for a while, my darling. I have a meeting.”
“Maybe I’ll get to wish you were back a clerk. You were home nights then. What if the man calls back?”
“He can wait.”
“He didn’t want to. Will you be late?”
“Can’t tell. Depends on how it goes.”
“Wasn’t it sad about Danny Taylor? Take a raincoat.”
“Sure was.”
In the hall I put on my hat and on an impulse picked old Cap’n’s narwhal cane from the elephant foot. Ellen materialized beside me.
“Can I go with you?”
“Not tonight.”
“I do love you.”
I stared deep into my daughter for a moment. “I love you too,” I said. “I’ll bring you jewels—any favorites?”
She giggled. “You going to carry a cane?”
“For self-protection.” I held the spiraled ivory at parry, like a broadsword.
“You going to be gone long?”
“Not long.”
“Why do you take the cane?”
“Pure decoration, a boast, a threat, a fear, a vestigial need to bear arms.”
“I’ll wait up for you. Can I hold the pink thing?”
“Oh, no you won’t, my little dung-flower. Pink thing? You mean the talisman? Sure you may.”
“What’s a talisman?”
“Look it up in the dictionary. Know how to spell it?”
“T-a-l-e-s-m-a-n.”
“No, t-a-l-i-s-m-a-n.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“You’ll know it better if you look it up.”
She locked her arms around me and squeezed and as quickly let me go.
The night closed thick and damp about me, humid air about the consistency of chicken broth. The street lights hiding among the fat leaves of Elm Street sprouted damp, hairy halos of moisture.
A man with a job sees so little of the normal daylight world. No wonder he must get his news and his attitudes from his wife. She knows what happened and who said what about it, but it is strained through her womanness, wherefore most working men see the daylight world through women’s eyes. But in the night, when his store or his job is closed, then is a man’s world risen—for a time.
The twisted staff of narwhal ivory felt good in my hand, its heavy silver knob polished by old Cap’n’s palm.
74
‘What’s My Line?’… ‘Mystery Guest’: A popular game show that ran from 1950 to 1967 where a panel of four well-known figures tried to guess the unusual occupations of two weekly guests. In the third round of each show, panelists were blindfolded and a celebrity “mystery guest” was questioned.
75
‘Teen Twisters’: No quiz show with this name made it to the air, but Chubby Checker recorded “The Twist” in 1959, and by September 1960 it reached the top of the charts, launching a new dance craze.