be taken for granted in company like this. Instead they talked almost entirely of trivial things.
They all abhorred the movies, though all admitted to having seen a great many of them, and so they entertained one another with movie jokes. What if June Allyson had been cast as Scarlett O’Hara? What if Dan Dailey had been given the Humphrey Bogart role in
Casablanca?
Would Bing Crosby or Pat O’Brien be the better choice to star in a movie biography of Albert Schweitzer? Then Michael asked, rhetorically, if anyone would ever know how many hundreds of movies of all kinds – comedy, love, war, crime, or cowboy – had contained the line “Look: I can explain everything.” And that, to his own shy surprise, struck the others as the funniest thing that had yet been said.
Philip was sent to join his brothers in what must have been a crowded, double-decked bedroom, and soon after that the party moved to the kitchen table. It was big enough to serve as a dinner table for four, but just barely, and the kitchen was still too warm from the cooking. On one corner of the floor, beyond the table and away from the stove, Michael saw the flat piece of galvanized tin beside a cardboard box, advertising Kellogg’s Rice Krispies, from which several fresh rolls of shelf-paper protruded.He supposed that the paints, the ink, and the pens and brushes must be kept in the same box.
“Oh, please take off your coat and tie, Michael,” Pat Nelson said, “or you’ll
die
in here.” Then, a little later in the meal, she gazed at one of the steamed-up windows as if it might open onto bright vistas of the future. “Well, at least we’ll only be here a few more months,” she said. “Has Tom told you we’re moving to the country this summer? For good?”
“But that’s
terrible,”
Lucy said, with more heartfelt emphasis than seemed warranted. “I mean it’s wonderful for you, but terrible for us. We’ll have hardly gotten to know you before you go away.”
And Pat assured her, kindly, that it wouldn’t be far away: they were only going up into Putnam County. That was the next county north of Westchester, she explained, and it was mostly rural – there was scarcely any suburban element at all. She and Tom had made several trips up there to look around, until they’d found what struck them as the right house on the right piece of land, near the village of Kingsley. The house itself needed work, but the work was being done now; they’d been promised it would be finished and ready in June. “And it’s only a short drive from here – what is it, Tom, a little over an hour or something? – so you see it’ll be easy to keep in touch with all our friends.”
Lucy cut into another slice of cooling roast beef, and Michael could tell from her face that she was hurt by the phrase “all our friends.” Hadn’t the Nelsons made clear that they
had
no other friends in Larchmont? But then, chewing, she seemed to understand that Pat had meant all their friends in New York – the Museum of Modern Art crowd and the Whitney crowd, all the well-heeled, admiring people who’d taken to buying as many Thomas Nelson pictures as they could afford, as well as the jolly,witty, insiders’ crowd of other young painters who were rapidly becoming successful too.
“Well, it sounds great,” Michael said heartily. Since removing his coat and tie he had unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt and rolled up the sleeves; now, hunched over his wine and speaking in a voice that he knew might strike Lucy as being just a little loud, he was determined to suggest that he too might soon be a man unburdened of mundane necessity. “Once I can manage to get the damn job off my back,” he said, “we’ll be ready to make a move like that ourselves.” And he winked conspicuously at his wife. “Maybe after the book’s out, babe.”
When dinner was over and they moved back to the living room, Michael discovered a bureau bearing six or eight precise
They all abhorred the movies, though all admitted to having seen a great many of them, and so they entertained one another with movie jokes. What if June Allyson had been cast as Scarlett O’Hara? What if Dan Dailey had been given the Humphrey Bogart role in
Casablanca?
Would Bing Crosby or Pat O’Brien be the better choice to star in a movie biography of Albert Schweitzer? Then Michael asked, rhetorically, if anyone would ever know how many hundreds of movies of all kinds – comedy, love, war, crime, or cowboy – had contained the line “Look: I can explain everything.” And that, to his own shy surprise, struck the others as the funniest thing that had yet been said.
Philip was sent to join his brothers in what must have been a crowded, double-decked bedroom, and soon after that the party moved to the kitchen table. It was big enough to serve as a dinner table for four, but just barely, and the kitchen was still too warm from the cooking. On one corner of the floor, beyond the table and away from the stove, Michael saw the flat piece of galvanized tin beside a cardboard box, advertising Kellogg’s Rice Krispies, from which several fresh rolls of shelf-paper protruded.He supposed that the paints, the ink, and the pens and brushes must be kept in the same box.
“Oh, please take off your coat and tie, Michael,” Pat Nelson said, “or you’ll
die
in here.” Then, a little later in the meal, she gazed at one of the steamed-up windows as if it might open onto bright vistas of the future. “Well, at least we’ll only be here a few more months,” she said. “Has Tom told you we’re moving to the country this summer? For good?”
“But that’s
terrible,”
Lucy said, with more heartfelt emphasis than seemed warranted. “I mean it’s wonderful for you, but terrible for us. We’ll have hardly gotten to know you before you go away.”
And Pat assured her, kindly, that it wouldn’t be far away: they were only going up into Putnam County. That was the next county north of Westchester, she explained, and it was mostly rural – there was scarcely any suburban element at all. She and Tom had made several trips up there to look around, until they’d found what struck them as the right house on the right piece of land, near the village of Kingsley. The house itself needed work, but the work was being done now; they’d been promised it would be finished and ready in June. “And it’s only a short drive from here – what is it, Tom, a little over an hour or something? – so you see it’ll be easy to keep in touch with all our friends.”
Lucy cut into another slice of cooling roast beef, and Michael could tell from her face that she was hurt by the phrase “all our friends.” Hadn’t the Nelsons made clear that they
had
no other friends in Larchmont? But then, chewing, she seemed to understand that Pat had meant all their friends in New York – the Museum of Modern Art crowd and the Whitney crowd, all the well-heeled, admiring people who’d taken to buying as many Thomas Nelson pictures as they could afford, as well as the jolly,witty, insiders’ crowd of other young painters who were rapidly becoming successful too.
“Well, it sounds great,” Michael said heartily. Since removing his coat and tie he had unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt and rolled up the sleeves; now, hunched over his wine and speaking in a voice that he knew might strike Lucy as being just a little loud, he was determined to suggest that he too might soon be a man unburdened of mundane necessity. “Once I can manage to get the damn job off my back,” he said, “we’ll be ready to make a move like that ourselves.” And he winked conspicuously at his wife. “Maybe after the book’s out, babe.”
When dinner was over and they moved back to the living room, Michael discovered a bureau bearing six or eight precise
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