She was sitting up in bed wearing her favorite sweatshirt and a baseball cap and she was reading a monstrous Russian novel. Closing the book on a hairpin she said, “I’m losing my mind.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it/’ said Mrs. Bridge with a smile.
“Do stop/’ Grace said unhappily. “Don’t be gay, India. Please, for once, don’t.”
“Well, it is rather a shocking remark.*’
“Life can be shocking.” She took off the ball player’s cap and began turning it around in her hands and frowning. “It’s just that I do want to be a person. I do, I do!” Mrs. Bridge did not know what to say and presently Grace continued. “Virgil says there’s something wrong with me. He says he’s never known another woman in all his life who would wear a sweatshirt on the Plaza/’
“Well, you do attract attention. Not that I mind, and I can’t see where it’s anyone else’s business, and there certainly isn’t any law against it.”
“But I do attract attention/’
“Well,” Mrs. Bridge answered uneasily, “as Virgil says, you’re the only one from this neighborhood who dresses as though you were going to work in the north end.”
Grace nodded. “It’s true. Yes, it’s true.”
Both of them fell silent.
“Do you think we’ll get in the war?” said Grace after a while.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Bridge replied. “I can’t understand what’s going on. I hate to think about it. It’s so senseless.”
Again they fell silent.
“Can you tell me what happened, Grace? Being in bed is so unlike you.”
“It was the washing machine’s fault,” she answered without a smile, and went on to explain that she and the machine had never gotten along very well “We’ve always despised each other,” she said and on this day it had defied her, it had knocked and trembled, and begun tearing the clothing, and so infuriated her that she had grabbed it by one leg and tipped it over, and the water ran all over the basement. The maid, who was upstairs in the kitchen preparing lunch, heard her screaming and summoned a doctor.
Mrs. Bridge remained silent and was thoughtful, for here was someone less confident of the future than herself. An evil, a malignancy, was at work. Its nature she could not discern, though she had known of its carbuncular presence for many years. Until now, until this revelation of its existence, she had not imagined it could be more than a fanciful illness, nor that there could be other victims than herself. But her friend was ill and suffering and Mrs. Bridge, too, was afflicted. Thinking back she was able to remember moments when this anonymous evil had erupted and left as its only cicatrice a sour taste in the mouth and a wild, wild desire.
One morning she had chanced to meet Grace downtown and Grace had wanted to look around in a toy store, and so, together, Mrs. Bridge amused and puzzled by this whim, they stopped here and there. So much had changed from the years when she used to buy toys for Ruth and Carolyn and Douglas. Everything was more intricate now, more automatic. It seemed you no longer played with a toy, you operated it. Douglas used to spend hours on his knees ruining his corduroy knickers pushing a fire engine or a dump truck and making appropriate noises. Now, however, you simply pushed a lever and the toy ran around by itself and the sirens wailed and the lights flashed until you were able to catch the machine and stop it. And Grace had caught it and was trembling so she could hardly reverse the lever.
There was a doll, too, with its little frock tied up around its head in order to display the electronics in the abdomen. There was a booklet tied to the wrist of the doll and they had read the booklet and then Mrs. Bridge turned the doll on. The eyes began to roll, the jaw dropped, and from the loud-speaker in the stomach came a nursery rhyme, and when this ended the doll sat down and a thin, colorless liquid appeared from beneath it and trickled over the counter.
“Can you help me?” Grace was asking, but Mrs. Bridge was too depressed to speak.
84. Robbery at the Heywood Duncans’
The next time she met Grace was at a party given by the Heywood Duncans. Shortly after ten o’clock, while the two of them were chatting, just as Mrs. Bridge was reaching for another anchovy cracker, four men appeared in the doorway and they did not look like guests. They were wearing plastic noses attached to horn-rimmed glasses and were carrying pistols. One of them said, “All right, everybody, this is a stick-up!” Another of the men sprang to the top of the piano and pointed his gun at several different people. At first everyone thought it was a joke it was so typical of a stunt Noel Johnson might dream up. But it wasn’t a joke because the robbers made all the guests line up facing the wall with their hands above their heads. Then two of them walked around pulling billfolds out of the men’s pockets and taking bracelets and necklaces and rings from the ladies. Another of the men went upstairs and came down with his arms full of purses and fur coats. Just before the robbers reached Mrs. Bridge, who was standing obediently with her hands as high as possible, something frightened them and the one standing on the piano she afterward described him to the police as not having worn a necktie called out in an ugly voice, “Who’s got the keys to that blue Cadillac out front?”
At this Mrs. Ralph Porter screamed, “Don’t you tell him, Ralph!”
But the bandits took Mr. Porter’s keys, and after telling everyone not to move for thirty minutes they ran out the side door. Heywood Duncan immediately phoned the police while Dr. Foster, who had dropped in unexpectedly and who had been robbed the same as the others, feebly seated himself in a corner and urged everyone to be calm, saying the bandits would not get away with it.
The bandits did get away, though, and it was written up on the front page of the newspaper with pictures on page eight, including a close-up of the scratched piano. Mrs. Bridge, reading the account in the breakfast room next morning after her husband had gone to work, was surprised to learn that Stuart Montgomery had been carrying just $2.14 and that Mrs. Noel Johnson’s ring had been zircon.
85. No Questions
As if one robbery were not enough, Mrs. Bridge became involved in another not much of a robbery, and she was de-tained less than ten minutes; still it was frightening. She was in a department store examining some brocade with the idea of altering the scheme in the dining room when, quite un-known to her, someone looted the cash register not six feet away. The theft was discovered a few minutes later and she, along with several other women, was herded into the manager’s office. When it came her time to be interviewed she sat down in front of the desk, adjusted her fur neckpiece, and said, “I surely hope you don’t think I’m the guilty one/’
The manager raised both hands in a faint gesture of dismay at such a thought. He asked if he might see her driver’s license, and when she produced it from her purse he handed it to the police lieutenant who was lounging on the edge of the desk with a felt hat pushed back off his forehead. Mrs. Bridge knew he was a policeman the instant she saw him. She expected him to study the license and ask a great many questions; consequently she was both relieved and slightly ruffled when he barely glanced at her license before handing it back and asked her nothing at all.
“I certainly hope you catch whoever it was/’ she said.
The lieutenant, who knew a bona-fide country-club matron when he saw one, responded by nodding politely.