The Institute

2

Not much was said until we were outside Wilmington, rolling on Route 40, when she suddenly sounded off: “Dr. Palmer, to clear up why I’m interested in your institute and at the same time want no connection with it — no personal connection, that is. My husband’s interest in it is genuine. He respects, reveres, achievement, which is what biography honors, so there’s nothing phoney about what he told you. Just the same, there’s a little more to it than what was said, on his side as well as mine. Genuine interest or not, his immediate concern is to use this thing as bait, to dangle it in front of me, to get me to take it over so that we’ll shift our base to Washington — our secondary base, that is — because, of course, Wilmington would still be home. He thinks that by giving me this toy, I’ll be so excited about it, so excited about the prospect of running a high-toned salon for the great, the near-great, and the would-be-great who’ll be getting themselves written up, that I’ll fall all over myself to move down and become the new Marjorie Merriweather Post, patroness of the arts, encourager of the intelligentsia, and chief cook and bottlewasher of all that’s fine and beautiful. I will — in a pig’s eye. What’s your name?”

“Palmer.”

“Your first name, Dr. Palmer?”

“Oh. Lloyd.”

“Mine’s Hortense, if you’d like to call me that.”

“Hortense, I’d be honored.”

“Lloyd, the reason is simple, and it’s not subject to change after a sales talk, even from you. In Wilmington I’m a great big beautiful frog in the biggest puddle on earth, and I’m not trading that off for something tiny, like a tadpole in a millpond, which is what I’d be in Washington.”

“Washington is tiny?”

“Compared with Wilmington, yes.”

“I never heard that.”

“Now you have.”

“Just how do you measure ponds?”

“With money. How do you?”

“Why, with power, for one thing.”

“Money is power.”

“That’s one of those spread-eagle statements that’s true every foot of the way, not true for every inch. In other words, it’s as true as you think it is, but that still leaves the beautiful frog. She is beautiful — every inch, every foot, every yard—”

“Every mile? I’m not that tall.”

“Get on with what you started to say. Are you talking about Du Ponts or what?”

“Something wrong with Du Ponts?”

“Not that I know of, no.”

“They don’t blow their horn, that’s true. It’s one of the characteristics of money that it does not like its name in the papers — except for pictures, of course. For us beautiful frogs, that’s permitted, and I confess that I like it. I like seeing my photograph in print, with my shadows touched up just a bit with mascara. Do you like my shadows?”

“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.

She moved to the middle of the room where she kept turning around. “It’s the books that make me lower my voice. They throw a hush over any room. We have what we call ‘the library’ It’s full of reference books. Who was Moody?”

“John Moody? Financial writer, I think.”

“Yes! Annual Report of Earnings! I never go into that room... What are these books? Biographies?”

“A lot of them, yes.”

“And you’ve read them?”

“Well, that’s what I buy them for. I think I’ve read most of them. A lot of them, like Bancroft’s Chronicles of the Builders, nobody’s really read. But I have them. If I want to find out who Kit Carson was, it’s in there.”

“I’ll bite. Who was Kit Carson?”

“A scout.”

“Never heard of him... Oh! There’s one I have read — R.E. Lee.”

“Nice job Freeman did on it.”

“I bought it when I was a girl. Paid my girlish money for it. I fell for the beautiful binding. I just love scarlet. And that, reminds me to look at your jacket.” She started for the door but stopped by the cocktail table to look at an enlarged portrait photograph that was over the fireplace. She asked: “Is that who I think it is?”

“My mother, yes.”

“Damned good-looking.”

“Beautiful, I’d call her.”

“I wouldn’t. Beauty, let’s face it, is slightly dumb. She wasn’t. That face is smart. It can’t be fooled.”

“With money, it couldn’t be.”

“The hair, gray, almost white, is beautiful. That I admit. The face — those soft, round features, a bit like yours — is beautiful, too. But the eyes see more than beauty cares about. You say she was good with money?”

“Better than my father.” I waved at his picture which was on a shelf off by itself. “He was a politician and real estate man. In Prince Georges County they’re practically the same thing. He was very proud of my mother — for all the wrong reasons. He died when I was ten years old without finding out how smart she was. What he doted on was her family which came in the Ark.”

“Well? Didn’t he? Didn’t we all?”

“Oh, not that Ark. Noah’s if that what you mean. The other one, more important here in Maryland. The first settlers came in the Ark and the Dove and landed in St. Mary’s County — the next one down the line. He was always talking about how high-born she was.

“Then you were high-born, too?”

“I don’t do much about it. And neither did she.”

“Wait till Richard hears about this.”

“But when my father died, she went to town with what he left her, and doubled it and tripled it and quadrupled it—”

“And quintupled it, I’ll bet.”

“At least. But she wasn’t tight with it. She would help anyone out.”

“Rich people are often like that. So is you-know-who.”

“Just the same, when money saw her come in the door, it would come over for a pat on the head before snuggling into her handbag.”

“The more you talk, the more I like her.”

“She left me very well off. I don’t have to work.”

“I’m so glad to hear it.”

Her eyes half closed on that, and suddenly I felt foolish. I had forgotten, just for that long, how rich she was. Suddenly she said: “The coat, where is it?”

“My bedroom, I’ll show you.”

“I’ll find it.”

She was gone a few minutes. I heard drawers being opened and shut. Then she was back, saying: “The coat’s fine and the dark-blue trousers are just right. But those light-blue puff-bosomed shirts are an inspiration. Lloyd, they’ll love you. You’ll look like just what you are, a high-born Maryland gentleman being gracious to his nouveau riche friends. I’ll be proud to present you. I can hardly wait.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“No, I’m not. Do you have a red tie?”

“Yes. Of course I have a red tie.”

“Just wanted to know. I forgot to look.”

She began making the rounds of the pictures, stopping at one of a little girl beside two oxen yoked to a cart. “Who is she?”

“My mother, when she was little. At that time, in St. Mary’s County, they used oxen all the time.”

“As I said, the more I know about her, the more I like her.”

In front of a picture of me with a pony, she let out a string of yelps. “Oh! Oh! Oh! I always wanted a pony and never had one! What was his name?”

“Brownie.”

“And look at his fuzzy forelock.”

“He didn’t like for it to be pulled. Try it, and he’d bite you, and bite you to mean it.”

“I would have patted his nose.”

“That he didn’t mind.”

She pointed at a football mounted on a rack. “What’s that about?”

“Touchdown I scored against Navy. They gave me the ball to keep.”

“Then you played?”

“That’s right. My senior year I was captain.”

“But not professionally?”

“It didn’t interest me that way. And to be realistic about it, in professional football, at 185, I’d have been a midget.”

“Yes, of course; you’re really quite tiny.”

She went on, moving sideways, while I stood behind her, watching the twitch of her bottom while trying not to. She admired pictures of me taking my bachelor’s degree, my master’s, and finally, my doctor’s, stepping in close to inspect that one and saying: “Just making sure they didn’t cheat you on that costume. It’s really a gold tassle.”

“Yes, they gave me the works.”

She moved on to me throwing a pass in some game. Then suddenly she sat down as though collapsed and began staring at me.

“Mrs. Garrett — Hortense! Is something wrong?” She didn’t answer me. “Are you ill?” I asked, shaking her.

She still didn’t answer. Then a lech that felt like a sea-nettle detached itself from the seat of my pants, moved to my rear, and started crawling up my backbone. I put one arm around her and the other under her knees and lifted. “No, no, no!” she moaned.

I started for the arch, and she kicked and twisted and struggled. One leg slipped clear and fell down. I hung onto the other one and marched on, through the arch, through the foyer and hall to the door of my room. She had closed it. I kicked it open and carried her in. I dumped her on the bed and started peeling her clothes off. I stripped off her coat, the pants of her pantsuit, the panties, bra, stockings, and shoes. When she was naked I picked them up and dropped them on a chair in a pile. She jumped up and darted for them. I grabbed her, held her, and began undressing myself. One-handed, it was a job, but it didn’t take long. When I was naked, too, I pulled the spread back. Then I rolled her in and climbed in beside her. At last, when I held her to me, her mouth found mine, and from there on in, it was volcanic.