Chapter 4
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don't know just why my successful evasion of chemistry shouldhave floated into my mind there in Jay Cee’s office. All the time she talked to me, I saw Mr Manzi standing on thin airin back of Jay Cee’s head, like something conjured up out of a hat,holding his little wooden ball and the test-tube that billowed a greatcloud of yellow smoke the day before Easter vacation and smelt ofrotten eggs and made all the girls and Mr Manzi laugh. I felt sorry for Mr Manzi. I felt like going down to him on my handsand knees and apologizing for being such an awful liar. Jay Cee handed me a pile of story manuscripts and spoke to memuch more kindly. I spent the rest of the morning reading thestories and typing out what I thought of them on the pink InterofficeMemo sheets and sending them into the office of Betsy’s editor tobe read by Betsy the next day. Jay Cee interrupted me now and thento tell me something practical or a bit of gossip. Jay Cee was going to lunch that noon with two famous writers,a man and a lady. The man had just sold six short stories to theNew Yorker and six to Jay Cee. This surprised me, as I didn’t knowmagazines bought stories in lots of six, and I was staggered by thethought of the amount of money six stories would probably bringin. Jay Cee said she had to be very careful at this lunch, because thelady writer wrote stories too, but she had never had any in the NewYorker and Jay Cee had only taken one from her in five years. JayCee had to flatter the more famous man at the same time as she wascareful not to hurt the less famous lady. When the cherubs in Jay Cee’s French wall-clock waved theirwings up and down and put their little gilt trumpets to their lips andpinged out twelve notes one after the other, Jay Cee told me I'd doneenough work for the day, and to go off to the Ladies’ Day tour andbanquet and to the film premiére, and she would see me bright andearly tomorrow. 40 | Chapter 4 Then she slipped a suit jacket over her lilac blouse, pinned a hatof imitation lilacs on the top of her head, powdered her nose brieflyand adjusted her thick spectacles. She looked terrible, but very wise.As she left the office, she patted my shoulder with one lilac-glovedhand. “Don't let the wicked city get you down.” I sat quietly in my swivel chair for a few minutes and thoughtabout Jay Cee. I tried to imagine what it would be like if 1 were EeGee, the famous editor, in an office full of potted rubber plants andAfrican violets my secretary had to water each morning. I wished Ihad a mother like Jay Cee. Then I’d know what to do. My own mother wasn’t much help. My mother had taughtshorthand and typing to support us ever since my father died, andsecretly she hated it and hated him for dying and leaving no moneybecause he didn’t trust life insurance salesmen. She was always onto me to learn shorthand after college, so I'd have a practical skill aswell as a college degree. “Even the apostles were tent-makers,’ she’dsay. “They had to live, just the way we do.” I dabbled my fingers in the bowl of warm water a Ladies’ Daywaitress set down in place of my two empty ice-cream dishes. ThenI wiped each finger carefully with my linen napkin which was stillquite clean. Then I folded the linen napkin and laid it between mylips and brought my lips down on it precisely. When I put the napkinback on the table a fuzzy pink lip-shape bloomed right in the middleof it like a tiny heart. I thought what a long way I had come. The first time I saw a finger-bowl was at the home of mybenefactress. It was the custom at my college, the little freckled ladyin the Scholarships Office told me, to write to the person whosescholarship you had, if they were still alive, and thank them for it. I had the scholarship of Philomena Guinea, a wealthy novelist whowent to my college in the early nineteen-hundreds and had her firstnovel made into a silent film with Bette Davis as well as a radio serialthat was still running, and it turned out she was alive and lived in alarge mansion not far from my grandfather's country club.
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