Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

Eddie stood there, his face quivering, but no tears. “Pop,” he said, controlling his voice as best he could. “Pop, what’re you hitting me for? It ain’t my fault. The school burned down, Pop.”

“If the school burned down,” his father said in measured tones, “and you were there, it was your fault. Frederick,” he said to his dresser, who was standing in the doorway, “put Eddie on the next train to his aunt in Duluth.” And he turned, immutable as Fate, back to his dressing table and once more carefully started applying false hair to the famous face.

In the train to Duluth an hour later, Eddie sat watching the Hudson River fly past, crying at last.

“ T ell her Mr. Bloomer wants to see her,” Philip said, holding his hat, standing straight before the elegant, white-handed hotel clerk.

“It’s a Mr. Bloomer, Miss Gerry,” the hotel clerk said elegantly, looking through Philip’s plain, clean face, far across the rich lobby.

Philip heard the famous voice rise and fall in the receiver. “Who the hell is Mr. Bloomer?” the famous, sweet voice said.

Philip moved his shoulders uncomfortably in his overcoat. His country-boy ears, sticking out from his rough hair, reddened.

“I heard that,” he said. “Tell her my name is Philip Bloomer and I wrote a play called The House of Pain .”

“It’s a Mr. Philip Bloomer,” the clerk said languidly, “and he says he wrote a play called A House of Pain .”

“Did he come all the way up here to tell me that?” the deep rich voice boomed in the receiver. “Tell him that’s dandy.”

“Let me talk to her, please.” Philip grabbed the receiver from the clerk’s pale hand. “Hello,” he said, his voice shaking in embarrassment. “This is Philip Bloomer.”

“How do you do, Mr. Bloomer?” the voice said with charm.

“The thing is, Miss Gerry, this play I wrote,” Philip tried to find the subject, the object, the predicate before she hung up, “ The House of Pain. ”

“The clerk said A House of Pain , Mr. Bloomer.”

“He’s wrong,” Philip said.

“He’s a very stupid man, that clerk,” the voice said. “I’ve told him so many times.”

“I went to Mr. Wilkes’ office,” Philip said desperately, “and they said you still had the script.”

“What script?” Miss Gerry asked.

“ The House of Pain ,” Philip cried, sweating. “When I brought it into Mr. Wilkes’ office I suggested that you play the leading part and they sent it to you. Now, you see, somebody at the Theatre Guild wants to see the script, and you’ve had it for two months already, so I thought you mightn’t mind letting me have it.”

There was a pause, an intake of breath at the other end of the wire. “Won’t you come up, Mr. Bloomer?” Miss Gerry said, her voice chaste but inviting.

“Yes, ma’am,” Philip said.

“1205, sir,” the clerk said, delicately taking the phone from Philip’s hands and placing it softly on its pedestal.

In the elevator Philip looked anxiously at his reflection in the mirror, arranged his tie, tried to smooth down his hair. The truth was he looked like a farm boy, a dairy-hand who had perhaps gone to agricultural school for two years. As far as possible he tried to avoid meeting theater people because he knew nobody would believe that anybody who looked like him could write plays.

He got out of the elevator and went down the softly carpeted hall to 1205. There was a sheet of paper stuck in a clip on the metal door. He braced himself and rang the bell.

Miss Adele Gerry opened the door herself. She stood there, tall, dark-haired, perfumed, womanly, in an afternoon dress that showed a square yard of bosom. Her eyes held the same dark fire that had commanded admiring attention on many stages from Brooks Atkinson, from Mantle, from John Mason Brown. She stood there, her hand lightly on the doorknob, her hair swept up simply, her head a little to one side, looking speculatively at Philip Bloomer in the hallway.

“I’m Mr. Bloomer,” Philip said.

“Won’t you come in?” Her voice was sweet, simple, direct, fitted exactly to the task of allaying the nervousness of farm boys and dairy-hands.

“There’s a note for you on the door,” Philip said, glad of one sentence, at least, with which to get inside.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, taking it.

“Probably a letter from some secret admirer,” Philip said, with a smile, suddenly resolved to be gallant, to fight the farm boy, destroy the dairy-hand.

Miss Gerry took the sheet of paper over to the window, scanned it, her eyes close to it near-sightedly, her whole body beautifully intent on the written word.

“It’s a menu,” she said, tossing it on a table. “They have lamb stew tonight.”

Philip closed his eyes for a moment, hoping that when he opened them, Miss Gerry, the room, the hotel would have disappeared.

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Bloomer?” Miss Gerry said.

He opened his eyes and marched across the room and sat upright on a little gilt chair. Miss Gerry arranged herself beautifully on a sofa, her hand outstretched along the back, the fingers dangling, the legs girlishly tucked in.

“You know, Mr. Bloomer,” Miss Gerry said, her voice charmingly playful, “you don’t look like a playwright at all.”

“I know,” Philip said, gloomily.

“You look so healthy.” She laughed.

“I know.”

“But you are a playwright?” She leaned forward intimately, and Philip religiously kept his eyes away from her bosom. This, he suddenly realized, had become the great problem of the interview.

“Oh, yes,” he said, looking steadfastly over her shoulder. “Yes, indeed. As I told you over the phone, I came up for my play.”

“ The House of Pain. ” She shook her head musingly. “A lovely title. Such a strange title for such a healthy-looking boy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Philip said, rigorously holding his head steady, his gaze up.

“It was so good of you to think of me for it,” Miss Gerry said, leaning forward even farther, her eyes liquid and grateful enough to project to the third row, balcony. “I’ve practically been in retirement for three years. I thought nobody even remembered Adele Gerry any more.”

“Oh, no,” Philip said, gallantly. “I remembered you.” He saw that this was bad, but was sure that anything else he might add would be worse.

“The Theatre Guild is going to do your play, Mr. Bloomer?” Miss Gerry asked fondly.

“Oh, no. I didn’t say that. I said somebody I knew up there thought it might not be a bad idea to send it around, and since you’d had the play for two months …”

Some of the interest fled from Miss Gerry’s deep eyes. “I haven’t a copy of your play, Mr. Bloomer. My director, Mr. Lawrence Wilkes, has it.” She smiled beautifully at him, although the wrinkles showed clearly then. “I was interested in seeing you. I like to keep an eye on the new blood of the theater.”

“Thank you,” Philip mumbled, feeling somehow exalted. Miss Gerry beamed at him and he felt his eyes, unable to withstand the full glory of her glance, sinking to her bosom. “Mr. Wilkes,” he said loudly. “I’ve seen many of his plays. You were wonderful in his plays. He’s a wonderful director.”

“He has his points,” Miss Gerry said coldly. “But he has limitations. Grave limitations. It is the tragedy of the American theater that there is no man operating in it today who does not suffer from grave limitations.”