Cannery Row

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.

Kitty Randolph was sunning herself by the front fence. Mary said, “Miss Randolph — I’m having a few friends in to tea if you would care to come.” Kitty Randolph rolled over languorously on her back and stretched in the warm sun. “Don’t be later than four o’clock,” said Mary. “My husband and I are going to the Boomer League Centennial Reception at the Hotel.”

She strolled around the house to the backyard where the blackberry vines dambered over the fence. Kitty Casini was squatting on the ground growling to herself and flickering her tail fiercely. “Mrs. Casini,” Mary began and then she stopped for she saw what the cat was doing. Kitty Casini had a mouse. She patted it gently with her unarmed paw and the mouse squirmed horribly away dragging its paralyzed hind legs behind it. The cat let it get nearly to the cover of the blackberry vines and then she reached delicately out and white thorns had sprouted on her jaw. Daintly she stabbed the mouse through the back and drew it wriggling to her and her tail flicked with tense delight.

Tom must have been at least half asleep when he heard his name called over and over. He jumped up shouting, “What is it? Where are you?” He could hear Mary crying. He ran out into the yard and saw what was happeing. “Turn your head,” he shouted and he killed the mouse. Kitty Casini had leaped to the top of the fence where she watched him angrily. Tom picked up a rock and hit her in the stomach and knocked her off the fence.

In the house Mary was still crying a little. She poured the water into the teapot and brought it to the table. “Sit there,” she told Tom and he squatted down on the floor in front of the footstool.

“Can’t I have a big cup?” he asked.

“I can’t blame Kitty Casini,” said Mary. “I know how cats are. It isn’t her fault. But — Oh, Tom! I’m going to have trouble inviting her again. I’m just not going to like her for a while no matter how much I want to.” She looked closely at Tom and saw that the lines were gone from his forehead and that he was not blinking badly. “But then I’m so busy with the Bloomer League these days,” she said, “I just don’t know how I’m going to get everything done.”

Mary Talbot gave a pregnancy party that year. And everyone said, “God! A kid of hers is going to have fun.”