The Institute

22

For the next two weeks I didn’t live. I skulked — alone, seeing no one except people who meant nothing to me, such as parking lot attendants, gas station men, and waiters, and doing nothing but pray she would come back. I’d make my own breakfast, go down and pick up my mail, the paper, and messages, then go out as though I were going to work, the way I always had. I would walk around to the parking lot, have a look at my car, then let myself in the back way and come back up on the freight elevator to the apartment again. Every time the phone rang, I dived for it. Around ten each morning, Eliza would come, make the bed, put out fresh towels, and straighten up; but on Fridays she really cleaned and would be there till midafternoon. So I wouldn’t be underfoot, I would go down the back way again, get in the car, and drive — anywhere — Annapolis, Baltimore, Richmond, Frederick, wherever. Then I would come back and at six watch the news on TV. I would go out to dinner, generally the Royal Arms. Then back to the apartment, “to catch up on my reading.” But reading just to kill time is the most pointless thing I can think of, and pretty soon, I would turn to cards. Then to bed, for the simple reason that there was no place else to go.

The day after the hearing, Mr. Garrett called to say that Georgia had seen the news stories and that the aftermath was terrific, with editorials in the papers, “and all kinds of beautiful stuff.” But no word about my resignation or what his reaction was. Then Sam Dent called to find out where I was. When I told him that I had quit, he was stunned. Then, in no more than a couple of minutes, Mr. Garrett called again.

“What the hell is this, Lloyd? I just read your note, the one you gave me last night. It’s been in my pocket all the time. I forgot it completely. What’s the point of it? Have I done something? Why are you resigning?”

“That handshake we had did it.”

“Did what?”

“It meant I had to end the deception. On my part, sir, that handshake was sincere, and I felt it was on yours, too. So I had to resign.”

“What deception?”

“Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“You mean, about Hortense?”

“That’s right — about Hortense.”

“But, Lloyd, I wasn’t deceived, so what deception was involved?” He paused and then said: “Well, yeah, I suppose I flinched a little. But not from what I knew had to be going on. It was how to take it that bothered me. But little by little we all liked each other so well that it was nothing to flinch from at all. You’ve dreamed yourself up a bugbear that doesn’t exist. What the hell. Let me talk to her.”

“She’s not here.”

“Well, she’s not at the Watergate apartment. Where is she, then?”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, then: “I don’t know.”

“Say what you mean, Lloyd.”

“I mean she’s walked out on me — or, at least, I think she has.”

“If she wasn’t so goddamned headstrong—” He let it dangle, then finished: “She wouldn’t be Hortense, otherwise, Lloyd.”

“You can say that again.”

“Getting back to your note—”

“I’m sorry, sir, it’s final.”

“It certainly is final. I’ve just burned it in the ashtray. I’m punching the ashes now. Now — will you be in? Can I tell Sam to simmer down?”

“No, Mr. Garrett, I won’t be in.”

“Lloyd, goddam it, I’m getting annoyed.”

“O.K., but I won’t change my mind.”

“Suppose I find her for you? Suppose I bring her back?”

“Shut up, damn it, shut up!”

“All right, now I know what I have to do.”

On Friday when I got in, I rang downstairs to ask Miss Nettie if I had had any calls, and she said no but that I did have a visitor. “That girl who was here before. Rodriguez, I think her name is. She’s been here since just after lunch. I said you were out, but she said she would wait.”

I told Miss Nettie to give me a moment to think and then said: “Send her up.”

But what stepped out of the elevator was a girl I had never seen. In place of the ratty, reddish hair she had had before was a mound of black curls, a little crimson bow on them over one eye; a knee-length black dress, very smart; crimson shoes matching the bow, with high heels and open toes and a mink coat I could hardly believe when I saw it. It was full length, full fashioned, and dark, something a movie actress might have, but not many honest women. She also had a sulky look on her face which was quite different from the crazy, hop-skip-and-jump goof who had been there before. Actually, she looked like the Spanish dame she was, not like some sorority kid cutting up. She inclined her head for a moment and then brushed past me into the foyer, through to the arch to the living room where she stood looking around as though to get reacquainted with something remembered but not remembered too well. Then she took off her coat, spread it over a chair, and stretched out on a sofa to face it — all without saying a word.

“Well,” I said, “you again.”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“What do you want?”

“You.”

“You can’t have me.”

“I know that. You asked what I wanted. I told you.”

“O.K., honesty’s good for the soul. But if I’m what you want, and you already know you can’t have me, I don’t get it. Why are you here? I don’t want to seem inhospitable, but—”

“In other words, what am I doing here?”

“Yes.”

“Just... looking you over again. Hoping against hope that I didn’t like you so much any more. And now that that hope is dashed, how I’m getting the same old buzz, to catch up on you just a little, you and your girl friend — that I don’t like even a little bit. Where is she, by the way?”

This caught me off balance, and I sat there not making any answer. Suddenly she jumped up, came partway around the table, and peered down at me. “She hasn’t been home for two weeks, that much I already know,” she snapped, biting off her words short. “And I know where she is — or was. Do you?”

“Go back where you were.”

“I asked you—”

“And I told you.”

She went back to the sofa, but didn’t lie down. She just sat on it, staring at me.

“O.K., then,” I said. “I’ll answer you. I don’t know where she is. She blew one night. Just disappeared like that. When I went to sleep she was there, and when I woke up, she wasn’t. I’d see her in hell before I would lift a finger, before I would pick up that phone to try and find out where she is. So if you know, don’t feel you have to tell me. Don’t think you’ll be doing me a favor. You won’t be.”

“Where do you think she is?”

“Europe.”

I didn’t know I was going to say it, but when things reach a certain point, you mean to clam up and don’t.

“Europe? What makes you think that, Dr. Palmer?”

I snapped: “If she had bought a ticket, that would be a reason. What’s it to you why I think it?”

“One of her reasons could be to have her child over there.”

“And another might be to find a place to mind her own business in.”

“Okay, touché. It’s what you said to me one time, when I hadn’t even been touched. Remember? Just patted a bit on the patches I had. She is knocked up, isn’t she?”

“If she were, would I tell you?”

“If she weren’t, you would but quick.”

I let that one ride and she began again. “Now that I’m caught up on her, at least a little bit, why not catch up on me? Ask me about me. Show some interest, like, where did I get this coat?”

“You might say how you got it.”

“And you wouldn’t like that?”

“Well? Would anyone?”

“But you wouldn’t like me to say?”

“Put an ad in the paper, why don’t you?”

But I sounded the least bit wild, and she got up and came over and looked down at me again. Then in a low, slow whisper: “You care how I got it, don’t you? Dr. Palmer, that makes me happier than anything I can imagine! And all the more because I can say it wasn’t the way you think it was. Not that it mightn’t have been. Not that I’m morally pure. I wasn’t trying to be, but I am.”

“That’s about as clear as mud in a wine glass.”

“I was willing, but he was unable.”

“What’s with that guy in bed?”

“Something — he doesn’t know what himself. And I sure don’t. Except with one woman, he just can’t do it. Dr. Palmer—”

“Get back where you were.”

She went back to the sofa and went on without any break: “So let’s get back to that day when I carried the suitcases for you and he drove me to College Park. We sat in his car for a long time and he got to the point right away — how well he liked me, how pretty he thought I was, how he liked to hold my hand. And so he asked how’s about it. And I asked him back — did he mean what he seemed to mean, recreation done in bed in a horizontal position? He said, yes, that was it. At first I held back because of a yen I had for a certain Ph.D. in English poetry, perhaps by the name of Palmer. But then when he said I wouldn’t regret it and seemed to mean worldly goods, I screwed up my nerve and asked him if he meant something like a mink coat. And he said yes, he did mean that. I said, O.K., I asked nothing better. In my own mind I was faithless to poetry, English or otherwise, and particularly to a guy named Palmer. Well, I said I was morally pure. Didn’t I, Dr. Palmer?”

“Get on with it. What then?”

“At least you’re interested.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? Get on with it.”

“So he called me, maybe a week after that, sent his driver for me and brought me to his hotel, one of the big ones downtown where he’d taken a suite. Did you know, Dr. Palmer, that once you take a suite, you can bring up a girl if you want to, with no questions asked? I thought it was him who was so big they didn’t dare squawk, but it turned out that it was the suite. So, anyway, there I was in his arms, holding close, and then he was peeling me off. He peeled me down to the skin, until I had nothing on. I expected results, of course. I mean, like with you that day, Dr. Palmer, there was physiological proof that you weren’t indifferent to me—”

“You don’t have to go into the details.”

“Except maybe I want to.”

“Get on with what you were saying.”

“There weren’t any results — physiological, I mean.”

“Hey, hey?”

“No, don’t say ‘hey,’ Dr. Palmer. He’s not gay, I promise you he’s not. It’s not like that at all. Just the same, he has some mental block about sex — that he halfway admitted to me. I mean, he had me do things like walking in front of him, on my hands yet, doing the upside-down split. You know what that does to a girl”

“I can guess, I suppose. And?”

“Even that didn’t help.”

“What then?”

“At the end of a week, no soap. At last we called it off. That part, I mean. But we had become good friends, and he leveled with me, what it was all about: on account of liking me, he’d hoped I could break him clear of the thrall he was under, he called it. What’s a thrall?”

“Like handcuffs or—”

“Yeah, I betcha, I betcha!”

She was all excited and went on: “The way he told it, I knew that’s what it was like. Dr. Palmer, I think he’s banging the Swede!”

“Banging the—”

“Swede woman keeps house for him. I think he’s doing it to her morning, noon, and night. I think it’s what ails him — that she’s got the hex on him so he can’t do it with anyone else — even me, willing as I was. Because, don’t make any mistake, Dr. Palmer, as little interest as you take in me, I meant business with him. But I didn’t, you might as well know, I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t!”

“You said it once — you didn’t.”

“So all God’s chillen got thralls. She’s his, you’re mine, and this Hortense character is yours. If she is. Well, is she?”

“You think I would admit it to you?”

“Look, if she’s got your child in her belly—”

“Who says she’s got my child?”

“You do, by the way you act.”

“So... all God’s chillen got thralls.”

I guess there was more, but not much that day, because I was jangled, and she was, and I didn’t encourage her. Pretty soon she left, but next day she was back and we resumed where we had left off. This day, however, she had on a cloth coat, not the mink one.

“I only wore it yesterday so you could see it just once,” she said. “Except when I’m going somewhere, like dress-up at night, I leave it home where I’m living now. I drive to school every day, to the university here, I mean, in the car he gave me. Did I mention that he pays all my college expenses? And set up a trust fund for me? It’s just like I made it with sin, except I didn’t. I’m pure and undefiled — at least since I met this guy, the one I showed my legs to and would take off my clothes for now if he just said he wanted me to.”

“He does, and if you do, he’ll kick you out.”

“O.K., you don’t have to holler.”

She explained that at first, when her mother saw the coat, she wouldn’t let her in the house. She wouldn’t have a daughter living there who had got a coat that way. “It took me an hour to convince her that, though I hand’t meant to be pure, I was. So—”

She stretched out and wiggled her toes in her open-end shoes.

“What made you say what you did?” I asked. “About her, I mean? What made you think she’s—”

“Knocked up?”

“Yes, if you want to call it that.”

“That’s what her mother thinks.”

“You know Mrs. Mendenhall?”

“Yeah, sure. We’re friends.”

“How did that happen?”

She didn’t answer that day or the next or the next, but then one day she did.

“She came to see me, that’s how, when I was in Wilmington one time, at the Du Pont Hotel in a suite he got for me. I may as well own up that we had retakes of the attempt he had made before. I think he had the idea that if he could take it easy, have me there convenient, so the urge would come to him instead of him going after it, things might turn out as he hoped. They didn’t, though I stayed up there for some time — a couple of weeks, at least. Why he mentioned me to her — Mrs. Mendenhall, I’m talking about — I have no idea. Maybe as a cover, to pretend that I was the one he was banging instead of this Inga. Anyway, he did mention me, and then there she was on the phone, wanting to come and see me. Curiosity killed the cat. I said, O.K., she could come. What she wanted to know was the dirt on the bash they had, the one the President came to. She was all steamed up, Dr. Palmer, because she hadn’t been asked down. So I hadn’t been asked either, but, of course, I knew all about it and kind of filled her in. But, then, by a kind of accident, I found out why she hadn’t been asked. To show how high-toned I was, I asked her if she would like some tea, and when she said yes, I made her some on an electric grill. I had bought. Then, to be really high-toned, I offered her brandy in it, and she said she’d never had it that way, but O.K., she’d like to try it. So I spooned her some brandy in. Then I spooned her some more and some more and some more after that. She got there around three o’clock, and at five I put her to bed so she could sleep it off. Dr. Palmer, she’s a really distinguished woman, with a kind of trained-nurse way of talking — which she was before she got married — and a drunk. I call her what she is. I wouldn’t have asked her to come, not to a cocktail party the President was coming to. So to that extent, though I hate to admit it, Mrs. Garrett used good judgment.”

“Do you still see Mrs. Mendenhall, Teddy?”

“Oh, all the time. We’re thick as whipping cream.”

“What do you talk about?”

“She does the talking, always, and always about one thing — ‘Horty,’ as she calls her. I suppose she must love Horty, but if she thinks Horty ever did something right, she’s never let on to me that she does. She keeps getting off on Horty’s ‘genius for wrong decisions,’ she calls it, her going to Delaware U instead of Vassar, her marriage to Mr. Garrett, her moving out and going to Washington. But I don’t think she knows about you. And certainly I didn’t tell her. I just didn’t care to own up that I had flopped with you.”

Then suddenly: “You taking me or not?”

“Taking you? Where?”

“Bed. Where do you think?”

“I thought we’d been all over that.”

“Then I’ll take myself off — and I guess I won’t be back. There’s a limit to what I can stand. Being nice about it, lying here dreaming dreams.”

She got up and picked up her coat. As I stepped over to help her with it, I got a flash of the beautiful shape inside the pantsuit she had on. For a second I had an impulse. To fight it back, perhaps, I snapped: “Where is she?”

“I don’t rightly know. But she was in Wilmington, first. Then she went to New York and then came on back to Wilmington. That’s what his goons report. Mr. Garrett’s, I’m talking about. You’re goofy about her, aren’t you?”

“Well, I’ve admitted it to you, haven’t I?”

“More times than I wanted to hear it.”