The Long-Winded Lady Read online

  1969

  Broccoli

  THE luncheon hour in this city begins at eleven-thirty; by three-thirty even those who sit down latest and stay longest have left the table. Then, until five o’clock, the restaurants are nearly empty, and you can walk in and arrange yourself at the table of your choice, in the lavish solitude provided by a little sea of calm white tablecloths, and look about you, even stare, be as curious or as indifferent or as watchful or as lazy as you are inclined to be — in other words, be yourself in a public place and still consider yourself polite. There is a great deal of virtue in feeling unseen. The small restaurants I like are selfish enough to keep the afternoon quiet hour for themselves, so today I went to the Longchamps at Fifty-ninth Street, where there is that big window on Madison Avenue — elegant, positive Madison Avenue. I did not sit by the window. I went to a booth, halfway back in the room, that gave me a long view across the empty tables to the street. One of the booths in that Longchamps has a patched seat. It is a booth that faces the back of the restaurant. The patch, of wide gray adhesive tape, is in the form of a Red Cross cross, square and definite. It is reassuring to think of the big Longchamps chain having recourse to such a tiny, housewifely economy and being so neat about it. I sat beside that patch the last time I was in the Fifty-ninth-Street Longchamps, so it must have been summertime then, because I would never agree to face away from the window except in the hot midsummer weather, which I hate. Since that day, the year has receded by several weeks, and now it is autumn. The Longchamps menu is big and extensive, but I ordered what I always do, broiled sole with its Longchamps accompaniments, and then I looked carefully at the menu and gave an extra order, for fresh broccoli with sauce suprême. When the food came, the broccoli was in its own dish, with a small companion beside it — a silver sauceboat with a spoon in it. Everything was very hot. The waiter took hold of the sauce spoon and looked inquiringly at me, but I said, “No, leave it a minute.” When I had finished the sole, I turned to the broccoli. I took hold of the sauce spoon, as the waiter had done, and I began to move it over the broccoli, and then I quickly put it back in the sauceboat. I could not remember which end of the broccoli you eat. I couldn’t remember. I should have let the waiter do his job. I tried to remember other vegetables that have their limits, but their names, their appearance, everything about them, had gone out of my head. I can think of them now — asparagus, scallions, and so on — but I couldn’t think of them then. My mind was blank, and I could do nothing. The broccoli was fluffy, with delicious-looking stalks. It was simply a question of where to put the sauce suprême. After a while, I took the spoon again and dribbled some of the suprême along the side of the broccoli and pushed at it with my fork, and then I put the fork down and left it so. I took up my book and began to read absentmindedly. The waiter came and took everything away and brought coffee. He kindly said nothing about the uneaten broccoli. There is neither moral nor reason, and there is no justice, in this kind of private failure, as you will understand the next time you try to introduce two of your old friends and cannot remember the name of one of them.

  NOVEMBER 2, 1963

  A Shoe Story

  I WAS hurrying across Park Avenue the other day when my left foot gave way and I almost fell, but I recovered myself and got to the corner and up on the sidewalk. I investigated and found there was nothing wrong with my foot, but the heel of my left shoe had snapped in two. I was really angry, because the shoes were only a week old. A taxi was coming along, and I waved at it and got into it and gave the driver the name of the shop where I had bought the shoes. I intended to go in and confront the manager. Then I realized that I could make a much more effective stand, so to speak, if I walked in in a pair of brand-new, expensive shoes from some other shop instead of limping in in the shoes they had sold me. I asked the driver to take me to Bergdorf Goodman, and when we got there I went into the Delman Shoe Salon and told what had happened to me to the first salesman I saw, and listened to his words of sympathy. I sat down and he measured my foot, and then he went off and quickly came back with several pairs of shoes, and I decided on the pair I wanted, but I didn’t like the way the bows were sewn onto them. The bows were set at an angle, and I wanted them set straight. The salesman said that the change could easily be made but that the girl who did that work was out to lunch and would not be back for twenty minutes or so. I said I would wait, and he went off with the shoes and I sat back, prepared to waste the time. I began to listen to the conversation of two ladies who were sitting near me looking at evening sandals. They were talking about the election. They were talking about Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

  One of them said, “He’s simply too young. He’s too young.”

  The other one said, “Much too young.”

  The first one said, “Forty-three years old. It’s absurd.”

  I began to feel very cheerful. I am forty-three. Of course, I was aware from reading the papers that Senator Kennedy and I were born the same year, but the close connection between us had never been apparent to me until that moment. I hoped the two ladies would go on criticizing the senator’s age, but instead they turned their attention to the sandals and decided they didn’t want any that they had seen, and they gathered themselves up and went away. That left me with nothing to listen to. There was no sign of my new shoes, so I couldn’t go out of the shop. I decided I would just go up to the fifth floor and see if there was anything left from the sales that most of the stores have at this time of year. When I got to the fifth floor, I found a big sale going on. All the reduced dresses were ranged in rows on big double racks. I began to look along the rack that held my size, and I became aware that someone was humming a tune near me — someone who was hidden behind one of the dress racks. The tune was “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” and the humming increased in volume so gradually that it was insistent but not noticeable, the way a nice, well-treated air-conditioner sometimes is. I couldn’t find a dress I wanted, and I wandered around to see who owned the voice I was listening to. It was a lady who was looking at the size tens and finding a lot of bargains. She had three dresses over her arm, and while I was looking at her she found another one worth trying on. Every time she saw something that interested her, her humming rose a little, and by the time she went off to the fitting room, with several dresses, she had almost achieved a soft chant of triumph. I have often noticed women humming when they are looking at dresses, but this lady was the most enthusiastic shopper I have ever listened to. Since I had found nothing, I went down to see about my new shoes, and they were ready, and I put them on. The salesman put my old shoes in a bag and gave them to me, and I thanked him and asked him for his name.

  He said, “Mr. Sugarman,” and he gave me his card.

  I said, “I’d better put this card in a safe place,” and I slipped it into my passport, which I have always carried since the day a taximan told me that if I was picked up for jaywalking I would be taken away in the wagon unless I had proper identification.

  I said to Mr. Sugarman, “Now you’re in my passport. That means you’ll travel all over the world.”

  Mr. Sugarman said, “Oh, I hope I won’t be seasick.”

  I said, “If you are seasick, I will let you know.”

  I went out onto Fifth Avenue and began to walk downtown. It was a lovely, sunny day, not too warm, and everybody was walking very fast. I passed St. Thomas Church, which I first saw twenty years ago, when I already considered myself quite grown up. I thought how astonishing it was to have been alive so many years and to have looked at so many faces and heard so many words and said so many words and seen so many different kinds of weather and still to be judged young. I blessed Senator Kennedy, and then I blessed Vice President Nixon, because he is young, too. I had friendly thoughts for everybody over forty-three and also for everybody under forty-three. I thought about the national emphasis on youth that I have often heard deplored and that I have sometimes objected to myself, and I thought that that question would not b
other me again, now that I had realized that emphasis on youth really means emphasis on me. I was so taken up with myself that I walked right past the shop where I had bought my bad shoes and forgot to go in and make my complaint. Now I think I will not bother to return those shoes.

  AUGUST 27, 1960

  In the Grosvenor Bar

  TODAY I saw the man who does the right thing in the right place at the right time and knows it. I think he must also be that man who is in step when all the rest of us are out of step. His sense of timing is very good. He knows when to be silent and when to speak. Perhaps he knows everything. Perhaps he has all the questions to all the answers that I have. I should have followed him. He was in the Grosvenor bar, sitting at the bar, all alone at the far end of the bar, with his back to the empty dining room that lay beyond him, when I rushed in there to get out of the rain this afternoon. I didn’t exactly rush into the bar — I was washed in by a cloudburst that arrived very unfairly because it had given no warning. There had been a faint drizzle earlier, that was all. The Grosvenor Hotel stands at the corner of Tenth Street and Fifth Avenue, and I know it well because I lived around that neighborhood for years. It is a very nice bar, with small tables along the wall, and beyond it the dining room is big and has a polite hotel air. It looked very polite in there this afternoon, with all the clean tablecloths and no people. This is Sunday, and it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner. I sat down in front of one of those big windows that would look out on Tenth Street if they were not shrouded with draperies and curtains, and I was very cold, and I wondered about pneumonia. The bartender came over and put an extremely small paper napkin on the table in front of me and said, “Some rain,” and I asked him for a martini. It was not too early for a martini. The man at the bar was drinking what seemed to be a Scotch-and-water. He was very middle-aged, and he had a very large face. He had his right elbow on the bar, and beside his elbow he had his black umbrella crooked to the edge of the bar. He was gazing down the length of the bar and through the glass entrance doors at the rain, and his expression was contemplative. He moved his eyes to watch the bartender mix my martini, and the bartender caught him and said cheerfully, “Some rain, all right,” but he got no answer. When the bartender had delivered my drink, he went back and stood with his hand on the bar staring out at the rain and at three ladies in cotton dresses who stood huddled in the doorway. From time to time, one of the ladies would turn to look in at us all.

  It was a peaceful scene until a tall, thin man in a very wet cotton suit plunged in from the street, paused to ask the bartender for a Scotch-and-soda, and then went straight back to look around the deserted dining room. He was soaked and his shoes squelched when he walked, but he was very cheerful and wore a beaming smile. He said to the bartender, “I waited twenty minutes for a taxi at the corner of Madison Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, but I made it.” The bartender shook his head and said, “This is some day for rain.” The beaming man was enjoying the drink with which he was rewarding himself. He looked out into the street once or twice, and then he said to the bartender, “Is there another bar here, or any place where somebody could be waiting?” The bartender said, “Just the lobby,” and he jerked his head and then pointed his arm to show the lobby entrance, which is around the corner of the far end of the bar. The beaming man squelched off and disappeared into the lobby, and in about one minute he was back, looking ruined. He said, “This isn’t the Fifth Avenue Hotel.” The bartender said, “This is the Grosvenor Hotel. I’m sorry, sir.” And the ruined man said, “I thought it was Tenth and Fifth.” The bartender said, “Ninth and Fifth, you want,” and he looked sympathetic and glanced at the silent man, who remained silent. The ruined man vanished into the street. The rain continued to pour down, and the ladies outside waited patiently for it to stop. I wondered why they did not give up and come on in. No one came in and nothing happened until the silent man suddenly stood up, lifting his umbrella. The bartender said, “Thank you, sir.” The silent man spoke at last, and he said, “It’s a good thing it was raining when I left home; otherwise I would not have brought my umbrella.” And he walked away and out, past the drooping ladies, and as he left our shelter he opened the umbrella and held it up over himself and went toward Eleventh Street, rejoicing.

  AUGUST 4, 1962

  A Chinese Fortune

  THE train was crowded as usual last night, and so I was riding standing up with my arms clasped around the center pole of the car, and my hands were joined not together but by a copy of Life that I had purchased at the Fifty-ninth Street station newsstand. I was reading from the back of the magazine to the front — not from inclination, but because the particular balance I was trying to maintain between my right shoulder and the pole obliged me to turn the pages with my left hand. I describe my position with some care because it occasioned the backhanded manner in which I learned about the career of Miss Jerry Stutz and may therefore account to some extent for the unsettling effect that her remarks, which I am about to quote, had upon me. Miss Stutz is a pretty girl with dark hair who has a luxurious apartment and a French maid and a very big office. I looked at her photographs, working backward, as I say, and finally I turned to the first page of the article, where a great deal of information about Miss Stutz and her career was boiled down into one long column, and I read that she is only thirty-three years old and has recently been made president of Henri Bendel. Now, to be president of Henri Bendel is a big job for a woman of any age, or even for a man, and I was very much impressed and read right along. Here is what Life says, “A logical person, President Stutz likes to see perfect logic in the rapid rise to her present job. She majored in journalism at Mundelein College in her native Chicago, modeling on the side while there, and for a year after graduation wrote fashion publicity. Then she became accessories editor on Glamour magazine and learned all about shoes. When the $223 million General Shoe Corporation bought I. Miller shoes in 1954, it hired Jerry as fashion coordinator. A year later, breaking an industrywide tradition against woman executives, she was made vice president of Miller’s and general manager of their retail stores, and sales rose 20%. General Shoe, which also controls Bonwit Teller and Tiffany, bought Bendel’s and at the end of 1957 put fast-moving Jerry Stutz in command. ‘I expect it’ll be years before everything’s slicked up here and I know enough to be interested in moving along,’ says she placidly. ‘Meanwhile, my first principle applies — when you come into a new job, put your eye on people, not figures. Once you’ve found the right people and set them free, you can’t lose.’”

  Well, I read that last sentence again, and then I read it again. “Once you’ve found the right people and set them free, you can’t lose.” Those words reminded me of something, but I could not remember what it was I was reminded of. “Once you’ve found the right people and set them free, you can’t lose.” I rolled up my copy of Life and fitted it into the straw carryall that always hangs on my arm when I travel in and out of town. I repeated Miss Stutz’s words over and over, putting the emphasis on different words to see if I could discover the reason for the commotion they were causing in my head. I am afraid my thoughts wandered a bit. I couldn’t begin to guess how Miss Stutz recognizes a right person, but I did allow myself a little naughty conjecturing about how she sets the right people free once she has put the finger on them. Does she take them up on the roof at Henri Bendel? Or out into Central Park? Does she set them free all at once, in a flock, or one by one? At dawn, or when? If by some mischance a wrong one starts out of a coop, how is he or she got back in again? A hand on each shoulder? Both hands together on top of the head? Net? What if a wrong one gets clear away? The whole time, I kept thinking of all the people who are right people for Henri Bendel but who are someplace else. What arrangements was Miss Stutz making for finding them and setting them free? Myself, for instance. There I was down in the subway, but it was entirely possible that all the time what I really was was a right person for Henri Bendel. I was quite staggered by the sweep and scope of
the vision that Miss Stutz’s words had conjured up before me in my mundane underground flight toward home and dinner, and I wished I could remember what it was she had reminded me of, because I began to feel that if I didn’t remember, my brain would be locked up forever and I would never be able to think of anything again except once you find the right people and set them free, you can’t lose.