Evan Connell - Mrs. Bridge

Next they interviewed and employed a Japanese called Niki who, with clasped hands, assured them he paid cash for whatever he bought. Mr. Bridge felt more at ease with Niki than he had with Jules, but Mrs. Bridge felt quite the opposite. She was terrified of the way he backed out of the driveway. She asked him to go slower and to pay some attention to where he was backing, and he grinned and agreed to do so, but there was no change. When she became severe about this he looked so grieved by the rep-rimand that she became ashamed of herself. Still he would not slow down. He never actually struck anything but there were some near misses, the worst when he roared over a pile of burning leaves and almost killed a boy with a canvas bag around his neck who was throwing circulars onto the front porches. It was such a close call that Mrs. Bridge refused to ride with him any more, so there was nothing to do but dismiss him.

After Niki came another Negro man, but there was always a faint odor of whisky around him, and Harriet, when asked for an opinion, compressed her lips significantly and shook her head. After this man came another Oriental, who, within the first month, failed to show up five times. And so at last they were obliged to abandon the idea, and Mrs. Bridge, when discussing the matter with her friends, some of whom had chauffeurs and some of whom were considering it, was apt to say, “Well, it does have advantages, but of course there are drawbacks.”

The principal advantage, of course, so far as she was concerned, was that in case of difficulty there was a man around to take charge. Occasionally something unfortunate would occur while she was out driving and she then found herself in a quandary, not knowing whether to telephone her husband and run the risk of interrupting him at work or to try to handle the situation alone. One day, for instance, the Lincoln simply stopped in the middle of Ward Parkway. Luck was with her on this occasion, because a tow truck came by and when she had explained what happened the man looked under the hood. He asked how long it had been since the Lincoln was overhauled. She did not know, but thought it had been quite a while. She knew mechanics often tried to take advantage of people who knew very little about automobiles and so she bent over to peer into the engine, holding her fur coat tightly to her breast so it would not touch anything greasy, and after looking at different things for a few seconds she withdrew and said, “Well, do the best you can. About how long do you think it will take? I have a luncheon appointment on the Plaza.” Aside from mechanical difficulties there was always the parking problem; she had been amazed and impressed with the way the chauffeurs could park the Lincoln, and now that she was again on her own she was more than ever conscious of her inadequacy. Douglas, inadvertently, made the situation worse. A few days after taking up the study of geometry he began to measure everything. In his pocket he carried a carpenter’s flexible steel tape, a compass, and a scratch pad, and he was obsessed by a desire to calculate all such things as the number of cubic feet in the attic, the radius of the mahogany dining-room table if it had been circular instead of elliptical, and the angle formed by the radio and the sofa and the fireplace. Among other things he measured the chimney, the back porch, the stove, and the wicker laundry basket, and one evening he pedantically announced that the pantry was almost exactly two cubic feet smaller than the Lincoln. The next time she tried to park the car she was reminded of his calculations. She pulled on one side of the steering wheel with both hands, backed up a few feet, pulled on the opposite side of the wheel, moved forward, backed up, and so on, gasping for breath in her efforts to maneuver the formidable machine, and she was not assisted by the knowledge that it would have been easier to park the pantry.

Douglas liked it, though, and he had no more than gotten his first driver’s license when he began asking to borrow the car. She was glad enough to let him have it, only cau-tioning him to drive carefully; if she had to run an errand while he was using the Lincoln she did not mind catching a bus, and if the weather was bad she could telephone one of her friends. She often wondered where he went and what he was doing, but she did not worry much about him because he was growing to be rather conservative, which gratified her, and furthermore he seemed to be using his head more effectively than he did as a child. He was even taking a reasonable amount of interest in schoolwork. In short he was becoming a sober, self-reliant young man, a bit too mysterious, perhaps, but otherwise agreeably normal. She was, therefore, almost startled out of her wits to encounter him on the Plaza with the wildest-looking girl in the world. He had borrowed the car to go bowling and Mrs. Bridge had later decided to go shopping for some cocktail napkins and so, quite unexpectedly, they met. The girl was a gypsy-looking business with stringy black uncombed hair, hairy brown arms jingling with bracelets, and glittering mascaraed eyes in which there was a look of deadly experience. She was wearing a sheer blouse of burnt orange silk and a tight white skirt, and Mrs. Bridge did not need a second glance to realize that was practically all.

“How do you do, Paquita?” she said, smiling neutrally, after Douglas had sullenly mumbled an introduction. The girl did not speak and Mrs. Bridge wondered if she understood English. The hairy arms and the rancid odor were almost too much for Mrs. Bridge to bear. “I hope you two are having a nice time,” she said, and heard a bracelet jingle and saw Douglas and Paquita exchange a deep, knowing look.

“Dad will be home early this evening for a change, so Harriet is planning on dinner at six sharp. I hope you won’t be late. It’s nice to have met you, Paquita/ 5 And she could not be sure, but it seemed to her that a moment after she turned away the girl spat on the sidewalk.

On the bus going home with the cocktail napkins she tried to make sense of it. She tried to be fair. Why would he want to go bowling with someone obviously from a different high school when there were so many nice girls at Southwest? Why would he want to see this girl at all? What could they possibly have in common? Where could he have met her?

“You’d think I was poison/’ she said to him that evening, jokingly and very seriously, as they entered the dining room. “Why not tell us when you’re beau-ing someone new? Your Dad and I are interested in knowing your friends/

Douglas, having pushed her chair in as usual, went around the table and seated himself without a word.

“Paquita certainly jingles/’

“She likes bracelets,” he said trenchantly.

Mr. Bridge entered, and in passing behind Douglas’s chair gave him a solid, affectionate rap on the skull with his knuckles.

“Well,” said Douglas, grinning, “you must have had a good day today. You make another million bucks or something?”

Mr. Bridge laughed and picked up the carving knife, and while examining the roast he said, “I hear you’re turning into quite a basketball player/’

“Who told you that?”

“Never mind who told me.”

“Oh, I don’t know/’ Douglas said, blushing. He played forward on the church team and was trying to make the high-school squad but so far had been unsuccessful.

“Maybe you should butter up the coach’s daughter/’ said Mr. Bridge, busying himself with the roast.

Douglas groaned in elaborate agony. “Anyway, I don’t even know if he’s got a daughter. And besides, that’s no way to make the team/’