The Woman Who Has
Everything
IT IS A VERY ODD,
NICE, FEY THING. HELENE CAN SIT OVER here with her nylon shanks
sunk in the sofa, the downy billows, and watch Jamie over there on
one knee, with his back turned, fooling with a paw-foot chair. It’s
only Jamie, an interior decorator. But all
right! he has a beautiful small of the back.
Helene has an urge to pick him up by the waist like a … vase. This
is a marvelous apartment, on 57th Street practically on Sutton
Place. In fact, Helene—well, Helene is a girl who, except for a
husband, has everything.
Helene was divorced three years ago.
Even so! she is only twenty-five. She went to Smith. She has money,
both a great deal of alimony and her own trust fund. She is
beautiful. Her face—sort of a hood of thick black hair cut Sassoon
fashion with two huge eyes opened within like … morning glories—her
face is seen in Vogue, Town & Country,
practically all the New York newspapers, modeling fashions, but
with her name always in the caption, which is known as “social”
modeling. She is trim, strong, lithe, she exercises. She has only
one child. Only one child—she doesn’t even
mean to think that way, Kurt Jr. is three years old and
beautiful.
Helene also has Jamie, who is her
interior decorator. Here is Jamie down on one knee adjusting the
detachable ebony ball under the paw-foot of one of his own chairs.
He designed it. Everyone sees Jamie’s furniture. Oh, did Jamie do your apartment? It is exotic but
simple. You know? Black and white, a modern paw-foot, if you can
imagine that, removable ebony balls—
Oh, what the hell is going on? Suddenly
she feels hopeless. There are at least ten girls in New York whom
she knows who are just like her: divorced, and young; divorced, and
beautiful; divorced, and quite well off, really; divorced, and
invited to every party and every this and that that one cares to be
invited to; divorced, and written about in the columns by Joe Dever
and everyone; divorced, a woman who has everything and, like the
other ten, whose names she can tick off just like that, because she
knows their cases forward and backward, great American baronial names, some of them, and she, and all of them,
are utterly … utterly, utterly unable to get another husband in New
York.
Of course she has tried! A great deal
of good will has gone into it, hers and her friends’. The J————s
invited her to dinner and set the whole thing up for no other
reason than for her to meet their favorite among all the eligible
young men of New York. He was beautiful, he was one of the youngest
bank vice-presidents in New York, a bona-fide vice-president in
this case, and a great Bermuda Racer. They talked about his
strenuous life among the Wall Street studs. They talked about the
things her friends had been pumping her conversation full of—Jasper
Johns, nouvelle vague, the bogus esthetics
of fashion photographers. They grimaced, mugged, smiled, picked
over crab meat—and there was no “chemistry” about it all. And he
took her back to East 57th Street and they stepped into an elevator
with a lot of scrolly wood and a little elevator man with piping
all over his uniform and the moment the door closed on them, there
was practically a sound like steam in the brain that told them
both, this is, yes, rather impossible ; let me out.
Two weeks later the D————s invited her
to dinner and Mrs. D—————met her practically as she stepped off the
elevator and told her very excitedly, very confidentially, “Helene,
we’ve put you next to absolutely our favorite young man in New York”—who, of course, was
Bermuda Racer. Everybody’s favorite. This time they just smiled,
grimaced, mugged, turned the other way answering imaginary
questions from the other side and picked over the melon
prosciutto.
Maddening! These so-called men in New
York! After a while Bermuda Racer began to look good, in
retrospect. One could forget “chemistry” in time. Helene’s liaisons
kept falling into the same pattern; all these pampered, cautious,
finicky, timid … vague, maddening men who wind their watches before
they make love. Suddenly it would have almost been better not to be
the woman who had everything. Then she could have married the
stable boy, who, in New York, is usually an actor. Helene is in a …
set whose single men are not boys. They are absorbed in careers.
They don’t hang around the Limelight Café with nothing more on
their minds than getting New York lovelies down onto the downy
billows. Somehow they don’t need wives. They
can find women when they need them, for decoration, for company, or
for the downy billows, for whatever, for they are everywhere, in
lavish, high-buffed plenitude.
Very ironic! It is as if Helene can see
herself and all the other divorced women-with-everything in New
York this afternoon, at this very moment, frozen, congealed, this
afternoon, every afternoon, in a little belt of territory that runs
from east to west between 46th and 72nd Streets in Manhattan. They
are all there with absolutely nothing to do but make themselves
irresistibly attractive to the men of New York. They are in Mr.
Kenneth’s, the hairdresser’s, on East 54th Street, in a room hung
with cloth like a huge Paisley tent or something, and a somehow
Oriental woman pads in and announces, “Now let us go to the shampoo
room,” in the most hushed and reverent voice, as if to say, “We are
doing something very creative here.” Yet
coiffures, even four hours’ worth at Mr. Kenneth’s, begin to seem
like merely the basic process for the Woman Who Has Everything.
There is so much more that must be done today, so much more has
been learned. The eternal search for better eyelashes! Off to
Deirdre’s or some such place, on Madison Avenue—moth-cut eyelashes?
square-cut eyelashes? mink eyelashes? really, mink eyelashes are a
joke, too heavy, and one’s lids … sweat; pure sweet saline eyelid
perspiration. Or off to somewhere for the perfect Patti-nail
application, $25 for both hands, $2.50 a finger, false
fingernails—but where? Saks? Bergdorf’s? Or is one to listen to
some girl who comes back and says the only perfect Patti-nail place
is the Beverly Hills Hotel. Or off to Kounovsky’s Gym for
Exercise—one means, this is 1965 and one must face, now, the fact
that chocolate base and chalk can only do so much for the skin;
namely, nothing; cover it. The important
thing is what happens to the skin, that
purple light business at Don Lee’s Hair Specialist Studio, well,
that is what it is about. And at Kounovsky’s Gym one goes into the
cloak room and checks clothes labels for a while and, eventually,
runs into some girl who has found a new place, saying, this is my
last time here, I’ve found a place where you really
have to take a shower afterwards. Still—Kounovsky’s. And
Bene’s, breaking down the water globules in the skin—and here they
are all out doing nothing every day but making themselves
incomparably, esoterically, smashingly lovely—for men who don’t
seem to look anyway. Incredible! Arrogant!
impossible men of this city, career-clutched, selfish and
drained.
So Helene sits morosely in the downy
billows watching Mr. Jamie adjust an ebony
ball on a paw-foot chair. Jamie is her interior decorator, but even
before that, he had become her Token Fag, three years ago, as soon
as she was divorced. She needed him. A woman is divorced in New
York and for a certain period she is radioactive or something. No man wants to go near. She
has to cool off from all that psychic toxin of the divorce.
Eventually, people begin asking her for dinner or whatever, but
who is going to escort her? She is
radioactive. The Token Fag will escort her. He is a token man, a
counter to let the game go on and
everything. She can walk in with him, into anybody’s coy-elegant,
beveled-mirror great hall on East 73rd Street, and no one is going
to start talking about her new liaison.
There is no liaison except for a sort no one
seems to understand. Jamie is comfortable, he is no threat. The
old business is not going to start up again.
This has nothing to do with sex. Sex! The sexual aggression was the
only kind that didn’t really have that old
business, the eternal antagonisms, clashes of ego, fights
for “freedom” from marriage one day and for supremacy the next, the
eternal piling the load on the scapegoat. Helene’s last
scene with Kurt—Helene can tell one about
that, all this improbable, ridiculous stuff in front of the movers.
They had just been separated. This was long before the afternoon
plane ride to El Paso and the taxi ride across the line to Juárez
and the old black Mexican judge who flipped, very interested,
through a new and quite ornate—arty—deck of Tarot cards under his
desk the whole time. They had just separated—they were separating
this particular evening. One does separate. One stands out in the
living room in the midst of incredible heaps of cartons and duffel
bags, and Kurt stands there telling his
movers what to pick up.
“I don’t mean to be picayune, Helene,
but it isn’t exactly picayune. You didn’t
put the Simpson tureen out here,” and he starts fluttering his
hand.
“The Morgetsons gave that to—they’re
friends of my parents.”
“That isn’t even the point, Helene.
This is something we agreed
on.”
“You know as well as I
do—”
Kurt makes a circle with his thumb and
forefinger, the “O.K.” sign, and thrusts it toward Helene as if he
is about to say, Right, and in that very moment he
says:
“wrong!”
Oh, for godsake. Sal Mineo, or whoever
it was. Somebody told Kurt once that “Sal Mineo and his set” are
always putting each other on with his O.K. sign—then saying,
“Wrong!”—and Kurt was so impressed with the
Sal Mineo humor of it. Just like right now, standing out amid the
packing cartons, with a couple of fat movers … lounging, watching.
Kurt has to stand there with his hands on his hips and his thatchy
head soaking up perspiration, wearing a cable-stitch tennis sweater
and Topsiders. His moving clothes. He has to
wear this corny thing, a cable-knit tennis sweater, about $42,
because he is going to pick up a couple of boxes and his precious
hi-fi tubes or whatever it is. They do something to these tall
ironsides at Hotchkiss or some place and they never get over it.
Glowering in his $42 White Shoe physical exertion sweater—the
old business.
Kurt Jr. is out of bed, waddling into
the living room and all he sees is Daddy,
wonderful, thatchy Daddy. Children, to be honest, have no
intuition, no insight.
“These men don’t want to sit there and
listen to you recite your parents’ friends,” says
Kurt.
But they do,
Kurt. They are seated, as you say yourself.
Placid, reedy fat rises up around their chins like mashed potatoes.
They sit on the arms of Helene’s chairs and enjoy it, watching two wealthy young fools coming apart
at the seams. Kurt Jr. apparently thinks everything Daddy says is
so funny; he comes on, waddling in,
chuckling, giggling, Daddy! The movers think
Kurt Jr. is so funny—a Baby!—and they slosh around, chuckling in their jowls.
Good spirits, and so obscene, all of it.
Jamie was at least an end to the
old business. Most of them, Helene, all
these divorcees who have everything, soon move into a second stage.
Old friends of theirs, of Helene and Kurt—you know? Helene and
Kurt, the Young Couple? Helene and Kurt here, Helene and Kurt
there—old friends of theirs, of Kurt’s, really, start taking Helene
out. Fine, fat simple-minded waste of time. What do they want? It
is not sex. It is nothing like that old Redbook warning to divorcees, that he, Mr. Not Quite
Right, will say, She was married, so it is a safe bet she will play
on the downy billows. In fact, practically nothing is sex madness
with men in Helene’s set in New York. Would that the Lord God of
Hotchkiss, St. Paul’s and Woodberry Forest would let them go mad as randy old goats—one wishes He would.
Not for the sex but the madness. One longs to see them go berserk
just once, sweating, puling, writhing, rolling the eyeballs around,
bloating up the tongue like a black roast gizzard—anything but this
… vague coolness, super-cool interest.
Anyway, these old friends come around and their eyes breathe at her
like gills out of the aquarium, such as that dear dappled terrier
from Sullivan & Cromwell whom Kurt used to wangle invitations
for, over and over. He did something on the Cotton Exchange. The
Cotton Exchange! He came around with his gilly eyes breathing at
her, wondering, beside himself with this
strange delight of Kurt’s Wife being now
available for him to speculate over and breathe his gilly look at.
Sweet! One day Douglas, well, Douglas is another story, but one day
Douglas invited everyone to a champagne picnic in Central Park for
Memorial Day, all these bottles of champagne in Skotch Koolers,
huge blue and yellow woven baskets full of salmon and smoked turkey
and Southside Virginia ham sandwiches prepared by André Surmain of
Lutèce. Kurt’s poor old dappled terrier friend from the Cotton
Exchange arrived in a correct, “informal,” one understands,
long-sleeved polo shirt from someplace, Chipp or something, with
the creases popped up in straight lines and a sheen on it.
Obviously he had gone out and bought the correct thing for this
champagne picnic. Poor thing! But Helene kept on going out with
him. Old Terrier never made a pass. Never! He always left at 1
A.M., or whenever, with a great, wet look of rice-pudding
adoration. But he was easy, none of the old
business.
A terrible lesson! Soon Helene was
identified with this placid Cotton Exchange
lawyer, who still breathed unsaid longings at her through his
gills. She didn’t care about that. The problem was with other men.
In New York there are no Other Men. Men in
New York have no … confidence, whatsoever. They see a girl with a
man four or five times, and she is his. They
will not move in. Happy ever after! Helene and Terrier! Stupid! New
York men would not dream of trying to break up a romance or even a
relationship. That would take confidence. It would take interest.
Interest—mygod, some kind of sustained interest is too much to
ask.
That is why it was so absolutely
marvelous when Helene saw Porfirio Rubirosa again at C————’s. She
hadn’t seen him for a year, but he immediately remembered and began
pouring absolutely marvelous hot labial looks all over her from
across the room and then came over, threading through the rubber
jowls, and said:
“Helene, how do you do it! Last year,
the white lace. This year, the yellow—you are … wonderful, what is
the expression? One hundred per cent wonderful!”
And the crazy thing is,
one—Helene—knows he means it because he doesn’t mean it. Is that
too crazy? You are a woman, he is a man. He would break up this
stupid Cotton Exchange Terrier universe just to have you. Well, he didn’t, but he would. Does one know
what Helene means?
WHY SHOULD HELENE HAVE TO END UP IN THESE
RIDICULOUS drunk evenings with Davenport? Davenport is not a
serious person. Davenport practically enters with orange banners
waving, announcing that he will never get married. He is like a
tepezquintle boar who runs, rut-boar, all night, and if they put
him in the pen, he dies, of pure childish pique. He stops breathing
until the middle of his face turns blue. Dear Davenport! One
morning—too much!—they overslept and Helene woke to Kurt’s Nanny
rattling in through the drop lock and had to make Davenport get up,
skulk around, get dressed and sneak out when Nanny was in the
kitchen. But little Kurt, with his idiot grin, saw him, coming out
of the room. Davenport was, of course, still mugging, pantomiming great stealth, tiptoeing and rubber-legging
around, but Kurt Jr.—incredible! what do three-year-old children
think about?—he cries out, “Daddy!” Davenport is slightly shocked
himself, for once, but Helene has this horrible mixed agony. She
realizes right away that what has really hit her is not the
cry—Daddy!—but the fact that it might bring Nanny running to see
Davenport sidewinding across the wall-to-wall like a trench-coat
gigolo or something.
No more Davenport! Short nights with
Pierre. Pierre was a Frenchman who had come to the United States
and grown wealthy from the mining industry in South America or some
such thing. South America! he used to say. The slums of the United
States! Helene used to rather like that. But Pierre used to wind
his watch before he went to bed. A very beautiful watch. At
parties, at dinner, anywhere, Pierre always grew suddenly …
vague, switching off, floating away like a
glider plane. He even grew vague in the downy billows. Now he is
there, now he isn’t. Pierre may be French but now he is thoroughly
New York. In New York a man does not have to devote himself to a
woman, or think about her or even pay attention to her. He can …
glide at will. It is a man’s town, because there are not fifty, not
one hundred, not one thousand, beautiful, attractive, available
women in New York, but thousands of these
nubile wonders, honed, lacquered, buffed, polished—Good Lord, the
spoiled, pampered worthlessness of New York men in this situation.
Helene can even see the process and understand it. Why should a
talented, a wealthy, even a reasonably good-looking and congenial,
cultivated man in New York even feel the need for marriage? Unlike Cleveland, Pittsburgh,
Cincinnati or practically anywhere else in America, single men are
not shut out of social life in New York. Just the opposite. They
are terribly desirable. They are invited
everywhere. A mature man’s social life inevitably flags a bit in
New York after his marriage. A single man, if he has anything going
for him, is not going to get lonely in New
York. What does he need a wife for? What does a man need children
for in New York? Well, Helene doesn’t mean to even think that. Of course, every man has a natural desire
for a son, just as she has a natural desire for a son, she loves
Kurt Jr., he is a beautiful
boy.
Well, this is the last straw about
Pierre. Pierre winding his watch. There was enough about Pierre
without this final night when he got just euphorically high enough
on wine and began expanding on the metaphysics of man and woman.
Some metaphysics. Some brain. It turned out Pierre had decided
about ten years ago, when he was thirty-two, that he ought to get
married. This was more or less a theoretical decision, one
understands. It would be fitting. So he set
out with a list of specifications for finding a wife. About so
tall, with this type of figure, he even wanted a certain gently
bellied look, but firm, one understands, a certain education, a
certain age, not over twenty-five, a certain personality, a certain
taste for decor, and on and on. It was all quite specific. He never
found her, but, then, one gets the impression that he did not look
all that hard and was never very disappointed about that. And so,
finally, this night, with his watch wound, Pierre announced that,
well, now he was forty-two years old, and he had mellowed, and life
is a complex drama, and blah-blah-blah, and now he is amending his
specifications to include one child. Not
two, one understands. Two are underfoot. But
one is all right. And what gets to Helene when she thinks about it
is that for a moment there her heart leapt! Her spirits rose! She
could see a breakthrough! For a second she no longer thought about
the Horror number for New York divorcées—forty, age forty, after
which the packing under the skin begins to dry up, wither away, Don
Lee can’t do a thing about it, Mr. Kenneth and Kounovsky are
helpless, all that packing under the skin is drying up, withering
away, until one day, they make an autopsy of the most beautiful
woman in New York, in her seventy-seventh year, and they find her
brain looking like a mass of dried seaweed at Tokyo Sukiyaki. The
packing is gone! For one moment she no longer had that vague,
secret dread of the fate of the ten other divorcées she knows, all
failing miserably in the only job they have, viz., finding a
husband.
But—sink—the
folded-napkin life with Pierre. Pierre’s specification. Thank you
for including me in your stem-winding Weltanschauung. So that was it with Pierre.
And now, in a few minutes, the new
Buyer will be coming around, he’s an editor at Life, not a top editor, one
understands, but he looks good, he has none
of that ironside Hotchkiss in him, he seems to know things. Helene—well, journalists—but Helene met him at Freddie’s and it
went well, and now he is coming around for
the first time.
So Jamie is fitting the last ebony ball
onto the paw feet—Jamie comes around like this at any time; it
brings some kind of peace to Jamie to be down on his knees in the
wall-to-wall. Or something. And, ultimately, the doorman calls up,
the buzzer rings, Old Nanny fools around with the drop lock and
brings him in. And—simple mind!—it happens again. Helene can almost
feel her eyes rolling up and down him, inspecting him, his shoes,
which are cordovan with heavy soles—how sad!—but she goes on,
inspecting him, she can’t stop it, sizing up every man who comes
through that door as … Mr. Potential.
The nanny had to leave Kurt Jr.’s room
to go to the door and now—oh, wonderful!—the little—boy—comes
waddling out—and, like someone frozen, Helene sees that simple,
widening grin on his face and knows precisely what it means and can
say nothing to ward off what she knows she is going to hear. Big
Lifey stands a little nervously, sloshing
around in his cordovans, grinning stupidly at this little waddling
Child in the Plot, while Jamie keeps coming and—pow!—throws his
arms around big Lifey’s leg and looks
up—idiot appeal!—and says, “Are you going to be my new
Daddy?”
Ah—one thing has not changed. Helene
has wheeled about, can’t think up a thing to say, it doesn’t really
matter—and Jamie is still bent over on one knee, fooling with the
chair. What would it be like with Jamie? And why not? She
can size up Jamie. Perhaps she has been
sizing up Jamie since the first time he walked through the door.
There is something about Jamie. There is … beauty. It is … very odd, nice, fey, sick, but
Jamie—never mind!—has a beautiful small of the
back, poised, pumiced, lacquered, and it remains only for
her to walk over, travel just a few feet, and put her hands upon
him like a … vase.