Джеймс Кейн - Root of His Evil [= Shameless]

“Oh no, my dear, don’t even think of it. We’ll have to be going in a few minutes anyway. We just stopped by to—”

“—Call on the bride—”

“Certainly! But don’t even consider going to any trouble about us.”

That was Mrs. Hunt, and the other two chorused along with her. Grant got up and went out. I did some more babbling about the Indians and in a few minutes he was back, carrying a tray with a bottle of Scotch on it, a seltzer siphon, some glasses and a bowl of ice. “Tea is a little out of date, Carrie. I think we’ll offer them something more modern.”

I got up, took the bottle of Scotch and, as gracefully as I could, pitched it out the window. It seemed the longest time before it broke in the court beside the apartment house. When I heard it crash I turned to him. “That’s for correcting my manners. I am offering them tea.”

There was a long and extremely dismal silence. Then Mrs. Hunt wriggled in her chair a little, “I guess we take tea.”

“I guess you do.”

I went out and fixed tea and canapes, which turned out very well, considering what was there to make them with, for I had had no chance to go out and do any marketing at all. Then on the tray I put a bottle of rye and a bottle of brandy and went back in the living room. “Now we have tea, rye and brandy. Which can I give you?”

Mrs. Hunt smiled sourly. “Tea, darling.”

But the taller one, Elsie, jumped and said: “Oh, the hell with it! We’ve got to say it, so why keep this up? Give me a slug of rye, will you, dear sister-in-law, so I can really fight? Make it double, it’ll save time.”

The other one, Jane, closed in on the liquor tray and grabbed the bottle. “Two.”

“Three,” said Mrs. Hunt.

Grant got up. “Oh, hell — let’s all have a slug of rye.”

So we all began to laugh and they got up and grabbed canapes without waiting for me to pass them, began wolfing them down and grunting that they were pretty good. Then we all had a slug of rye, including myself, a most inadvisable step on my part, as I found out afterwards, for while my restaurant work had made me very expert at serving liquor, I hadn’t much experience drinking it. But it all seemed so comical at the time, us hating each other the way we did and at the same time sociably having a drink so we could fight, that I wanted to be a good sport, and so gagged mine down too. Then we all sat down and Grant hooked one knee over his chair and growled: “Well, get at it.”

Mrs. Hunt got at it without any further encouragement. She jumped up, charged over to Grant and shook her finger right under his nose. “You big slob! What do you mean by doing a thing like this? Haven’t you any regard for us? Haven’t you any regard for her? Don’t you know you’ve ruined her life?”

That was where I jumped up, for the liquor was reacting on me in a most unexpected way and leading me to do something I practically never do, which is lose my temper. “Who asked you to take up for me? You can confine yourself to your own ruined life or you’ll get something that will be a big surprise! I may look small, but I’m perfectly able to throw all three of you down every flight of stairs, in this apartment house, and if there’s any more of that kind of talk out of you I’ll do it.”

“Where did you get all that muscle — carrying trays?”

“Yes! And milking cows on my stepfather’s farm, and a whole lot of other things you never did.”

“Set ’em up in the next alley,” said Grant. “Let’s all have another drink.”

So we all had another drink, and this time when Mrs. Hunt started in, it was on me. “Oh, you needn’t be so tough. We’ve all got to arbitrate, you know.”

I wanted to yell at her some more, but all of a sudden it seemed to be too much trouble, and also my tongue felt woolly and thick, so all I said was: “Whass arbitrate?”

“Now we’re gett’n somewhere,” said Jane, and her tongue seemed to be thick too.

“Arbitrate,” said Mrs. Hunt in a very waspish way, “means that for the sake of appearances you have to take us to your bosom and pretend to like us, and we have to take you to our bosoms and pretend we like you, although we don’t at all. We’d like that distinctly understood. We think you’re terrible.”

“Oh, thass all right. I think you’re terrible too.”

So then everything became extremely cloudy in my mind and yet wholly delightful in a way, because I said the most awful things to them, and they said the most awful things to me, and then we would have another drink and laugh very loudly and start all over again. So then there was a great deal of talk about a cocktail party which Mrs. Hunt would give for me within three or four days because, as she said, a cocktail party practically required no manners at all and I would disgrace them less in that way than at any other form of entertainment she could think of. So I said I thought that was swell and a great deal better than a dinner party would be, because at a dinner party I might get up and begin to serve just from force of habit, and if I ever got hold of a plate of soup I might let her have it in the face. So then Grant said, “Set ’em up in the next alley,” which seemed to be about the only remark he could make all afternoon, and Mrs. Hunt said she would give anything to be able to throw soup with such accuracy, and I said it was really no trick at all, that all it needed was something inspirational to aim at. So then Elsie said: “The rye’s all gone. Never mind about the soup, redhead, get the cork out of the brandy.”

So next thing I knew I was in the bedroom lying down, very sick, and Grant was sitting beside me and they were gone. And next thing I knew, it was very late at night and I was alone there, with my head very clear and a guilty feeling all over me. I got up and went into the living room. Grant was there reading. I went and sat down in his lap and he put his arm around me and ran his fingers through my hair. “How do you feel, Carrie?”

“All right. What happened?”

“Oh — my sisters came and you and I and they had a good Kilkenny fight that cleared the air quite a little.”

“What was that about — a cocktail party?”

“Ruth’s giving you one. Friday, I believe.”

“I don’t want to go to her cocktail party.”

“I was a little leery of it, but you seemed set on it, so I kept my notions to myself.”

“Then I said I’d go?”

“ ‘In Karb’s uniform,’ were your exact words, ‘with a napkin on one arm and a pewter tray under the other.’ ”

“Tell me something, Grant. Was I drunk?”

“Stinko. And very sweet.”

“I’ve heard about that all my life, being drunk, and here it had to happen to me today, of all times.”

“It’s all right. I got you to bed.”

“Then I’ll have to go? To the cocktail party?”

“I’m afraid you’re hooked.”

If I had no very clear recollection about accepting the invitation to the cocktail party the newspapers quickly refreshed my memory. The first of the next day’s editions had nothing about it but around the middle of the afternoon some of the people Mrs. Hunt called up must have tipped the reporters off, because when Grant’s financial editions came up, there I was again, plastered all over the front pages, with stories of how the family had decided to accept me “on probation,” as one paper put it. I had hardly started to read them when the phone rang and it was Mrs. Hunt. She accused me of calling up the papers and giving them the information, and I promptly accused her of the same, so that was how we discovered that it must have been one of the guests who had done it.