“What do you want with her?” Alfred asked.
“I got something I want to ask her.”
“What about?”
“That’s none of your God damn business,” said Mack.
“Okay. Have it your way. I’ll see if she wants to talk to you.”
A moment later he led Mack into the sanctum. Dora sat at a rolltop desk. Her orange hair was piled in ringlets on her head and she wore a green eyeshade. With a stub pen she was bringing her books up to date, a fine old double entry ledger. She was dressed in a magnificent pink silk wrapper with lace at the wrists and throat. When Mack came in she whirled her pivot chair about and faced him. Alfred stood in the door and waited. Mack stood until Alfred closed the door and left.
Dora scrutinized him suspiciously. “Well — what can I do for you?” she demanded at last.
“You see, ma’am,” said Mack— “Well I guess you heard what we done over at Doc’s some time back.”
Dora pushed the eyeshade back up on her head and she put the pen in an old-fashioned coil-spring holder. “Yeah!” she said. “I heard.”
“Well, ma’am, we did it for Doc. You may not believe it but we wanted to give him a party. Only he didn’t get home in time and — well she got out of hand.”
“So I heard,” said Dora. “Well, what you want me to do?”
“Well,” said Mack, “I and the boys thought we’d ask you. You know what we think of Doc. We wanted to ask you what you thought we could do for him that would kind of show him.”
Dora said, “Hum,” and she flopped back in her pivot chair and crossed her legs and smoothed her wrapper over her knees. She shook out a cigarette, lighted it and studied. “You gave him a party he didn’t get to. Why don’t you give him a party he does get to?” she said.
“Jesus,” said Mack afterwards talking to the boys. “It was just as simple as that. Now there is one hell of a woman. No wonder she got to be a madam. There is one hell of a woman.”
Chapter XXIV
Mary Talbot, Mrs. Tom Talbot, that is, was lovely. She had red hair with green lights in it. Her skin was golden with a green undercast and her eyes were green with little golden spots. Her face was triangular, with wide cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and her chin was pointed. She had long dancer’s legs and dancer’s feet and she seemed never to touch the ground when she walked. When she was excited, and she was excited a good deal of the time, her face flushed with gold. Her greatgreat-great-great-great grandmother had been burned as a witch.
More than anything in the world Mary Talbot loved parties. She loved to give parties and she loved to go to parties. Since Tom Talbot didn’t make much money Mazy couldn’t give parties all the time so she tricked people into giving them. Sometimes she telephoned a friend and said bluntly, “Isn’t it about time you gave a party?”
Regularly Mary had six birthdays a year, and she organized costume parties, surprise parties, holiday parties. Christmas Eve at her house was a very exciting thing. For Mary glowed with parties. She carried her husband Tom along on the wave of her excitement.
In the afternoon when Tom was at work Mary sometimes gave tea parties for the neighborhood cats. She set a footstool with doll cups and saucers. She gathered the cats and there were plenty of them, and then she held long and detailed conversations with them. It was a kind of play she enjoyed very much— a kind of satiric game and it covered and concealed from Mary the fact that she didn’t have very nice clothes and the Talbots didn’t have any money. They were pretty near absolute bottom most of the time, and when they really scraped, Mary managed to give some kind of party.
She could do that. She could infect a whole house with gaiety and she used her gift as a weapon against the despondency that lurked always around outside the house waiting to get in at Tom. That was Mary’s job as she saw it — to keep the despondency away from Tom because everyone knew he was going to be a great success some time. Mostly she was successful in keeping the dark things out of the house but sometimes they got in at Tom and laid him out. Then he would sit and brood for hours while Mary frantically built up a backfire of gaiety.
One time when it was the first of the month and there were curt notes from the water company and the rent wasn’t paid and a manuscript had come back from Collier’s and the cartoons had come back from The New Yorker and pleurisy was hurting Tom pretty badly, he went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed.
Mary came softly in, for the blue-gray color of his gloom had seeped out under the door and through the keyhole. She had a little bouquet of candy tuft in a collar of paper lace.
“Smell,” she said and held the bouquet to his nose. He smelled the flowers and said nothing. “Do you know what day this is?” she asked and thought wildly for something to make it a bright day.
Tom said, “Why don’t we face it for once? We’re down. We’re going under. What’s the good kidding ourselves?”
“No we’re not,” said Mary. “We’re magic people. We always have been. Remember that ten dollars you found in a book — remember when your cousin sent you five dollars? Nothing can happen to us.”
“Well, it has happened,” said Tom. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just can’t talk myself out of it this time. I’m sick of pre.. tending everything. For once I’d like to have it real — just for once.”
“I thought of giving a little party tonight,” said Mary.
“On what? You’re not going to cut out the baked ham picture from a magazine again and serve it on a platter, are you? I’m sick of that kind of kidding. It isn’t funny any more. It’s sad.”
“I could give a little party,” she insisted. “Just a small affair. Nobody will dress. It’s the anniversary of the founding of the Bloomer League — you didn’t even remember that.”
“It’s no use,” said Tom. “I know it’s mean but I just can’t rise to it. Why don’t you just go out and shut the door and leave me alone? I’ll get you down if you don’t.”
She looked at him closely and saw that he meant it. Mary walked quietly out and shut the door, and Tom turned over on the bed and put his face down between his arms. He could hear her rustling about in the other room.
She decorated the door with old Christmas things, glass balls, and tinsel, and she made a placard that said “Welcome Tom, our Hero.” She listened at the door and couldn’t hear anything. A little disconsolately she got out the footstool and spread a napkin over it. She put her bouquet in a glass in the middle of the footstool and set out four little cups and saucers, She went into the kitchen, put the tea in the teapot and set the kettle to boil. Then she went out into the yard.