Chapter 21 Breakfast at Tiffany's-21
"Oh, that." He grinned rather scornfully. "They do us a grand favor, Rusty and Mag. We laugh over it: how they think they break our hearts when all the time wewant them to run away. I assure you, we were laughing when the sadness came."
His eyes searched the litter on the floor; he picked up a ball of yellow paper. "This,"
he said.
It was a telegram from Tulip, Texas: Received notice young Fred killed in actionoverseas stop your husband and children join in the sorrow of our mutual loss stopletter follows love Doc. Holly never mentioned her brother again: except once.
Moreover, she stopped calling me Fred. June, July, all through the warm months shehibernated like a winter animal who did not know spring had come and gone. Herhair darkened, she put on weight. She became rather careless about her clothes: used to rush round to the delicatessen wearing a rain-slicker and nothing underneath. Jose moved into the apartment, his name replacing Mag Wildwoods on the mailbox. Still, Holly was a good deal alone, for Jose stayed in Washington threedays a week. During his absences she entertained no one and seldom left the apartment -- except on Thursdays, when she made her weekly trip to Ossining.
Which is not to imply that she had lost interest in life; far from it, she seemed more content, altogether happier than Id ever seen her. A keen sudden un-Holly-like enthusiasm for homemaking resulted in several un-Holly-like purchases: at a Parke-Bernet auction she acquired a stag-at-bay hunting tapestry and, from the William Randolph Hearst estate, a gloomy pair of Gothic "easy" chairs; she bought the complete Modern Library, shelves of classical records, innumerable. Metropolitan Museum productions (inc. a statue of a Chinese cat that her own cat hated and hissed at and ultimately broke), a Waring mixer and a pressure cooker and library of cook books. She spent whole hausfrau afternoons slopping about in the sweatbox of her midget kitchen: "Jose says Im better than the Colony. Really, whoould have dreamed I had such a great natural talent? A month ago I couldnt scramble eggs." And still couldnt, for that matter. Simple dishes, steak, a proper salad, were beyond her. Instead, she fedJose, and occasionally myself, outre soups (brandied black terrapin poured into avocado shells) Nero-ish novelties (roasted pheasant stuffed with pomegranates and persimmons) and other dubious innovations (chicken and saffron rice served with a chocolate sauce, "Anicast E my dear.") Wartime sugar and cream rationing restricted her imagination when it cameto sweets -- nevertheless, she once managed something called Tobacco Tapioca: best not describe it.
Nor describe her attempts to master Portuguese, an ordeal as tedious to me as it was to her, for whenever I visited her an album of Linguaphone records never ceased rotating on the phonograph. Now, too, she rarely spoke a sentence that didn't begin, "After were married -- " or "When we move to Rio -- " Yet Jose had never suggested marriage. She admitted it. "But, after all, he knows Im preggers. Well, Iam, darling. Six weeks gone. I dont see why that should surprise you. It didn't me.
Not un peu bit. Im delighted. I want to have at least nine. Im sure some of them will be rather dark -- Jose has a touch of le negre, I suppose you guessed that?
Which is fine by me: what could be prettier than a quite coony baby with brightgreen beautiful eyes? I wish, please dont laugh -- but I wish Id been a virgin for him, for Jose. I dont blame the bastards for saying it, Ive always thrown out such a jazzy line. Really, though, Itoted up the other night, and Ive only had eleven lovers -- not counting anything that happened before I was thirteen because, after all, that just doesnt count.
Eleven. Does that make me a whore? Look at Mag Wildwood. Or Honey Tucker. OrRose Ellen Ward. Theyve had the old clap-yo-hands so many times it amounts to applause. of themmay have an honest tongue but they all have dishonest hearts. I mean, you cantbang the guy and cash his checks and at least not try to believe you love him. Inever have. Even Benny Shacklett and all those rodents. myself to thinking their sheer rattiness had a certain allure. Actually, except for Doc, if you want to count Doc, Jose is my first non-rat romance. Oh, hes not my idea of the absolute finito. He tells little lies and he worries what people think and he takes about fifty baths a day: men ought to smell somewhat. Hes too prim, too cautious to be my guy ideal; he always turns his back to get undressed and he makes too much noise when he eats and I dont like to see him run because theres something funny looking about him when he runs. I f I were free to choose from everybody alive, just snap my fingers and say come here you, I wouldn't pick Jose. Nehru, hes nearer the mark. Wendell Wilkie. Id settle for Garbo any day. Why not? A person ought to be able to marry men or women or -- listen, if you came to me and said you wanted tohitch up with Man o War, Id respect your feeling. No, Im serious. Love should beallowed. Im all for it. idea what it is. Because I dolove Jose -- Id stop smoking if he asked me to. Hes friendly, he can laugh me out of the mean reds, only I dont have them much any more, except sometimes, and even then theyre not so hideola that I gulp Seconal or have to haul myself to Tiffanys: I take his suit to the cleaner, or stuff some mushrooms, and I feel fine, just great.
Another thing, Ive thrown away my horoscopes. I must have spent a dollar on every goddamn star in the goddamn planetarium. Its a bore, but the answer, is goodthings only happen to you if you are good. Good? Honest is more what I mean. Notlaw-type honest -- Id rob a grave, Id steal two-bits off a dead mans eyes if I thought it would contribute to the days enjoyment -- but unto-thyself-type honest.
Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: Id rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the others sure to. Oh, screw it, cookie -- hand me my guitar, and Illsing you a fada in the most perfect Portuguese."
Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tension unrelaxed chatter and chasing about that produce a friendships more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramatic moments. Frequently, when he was out of town (Id developed hostile attitudes toward him, and seldom used his name) we spent entire evenings together during which changed we ex less than a hundred words; once, we walked all the way to Chinatown, ate a chow-mein supper, bought some paper lanterns and stole a box of joss sticks, then moseyed across the Brooklyn Bridge, and on the bridge, as wewatched seaward-moving Ships pass between the cliffs of burning skyline, she said: "Years from now, years and years, one of those ships will bring me back, me and mynine Brazilian brats. t see this, these lights, the river -- I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a streetor a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it. " And Isaid: "Do shut up," for I felt infuriatingly left out -- a tugboat in drydock while she, glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbor with whistleswhistling and confetti in the air. So the days, the last days , blow about in memory, hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves: until a day unlike any other Ive lived.