The manager opened the door for her.
86. Follow Me Home
Kansas City was apparently headed for an epidemic of crime such as no one could remember since the days of the hood-lums and political bosses. How the latest scare actually started no one knew, although several women, one of whom was a fairly close friend of Madge Arlen, claimed to know the name of someone who had been assaulted not far from Ward Parkway. Some insisted it had happened near the Plaza, others thought farther south, but they were generally agreed it occurred late at night. The story was that a certain matron had been driving home alone and when she had slowed down for an intersection a man had leaped from behind some shrubbery a clump of spirea, according to Madge and had wrenched open the door. Whether or not the attack had been consummated the story did not say; the important part was that there had been a man and he had leaped up and wrenched open the door. There was nothing about it in the paper, nor in The Tattler > which did not print unpleasant material, and the exact date of the assault could not be determined, only that it had been one dark night not long ago.
As this story began to circulate through the country-club district none of the ladies cared to drive anywhere alone after sundown; if they did they locked themselves in the car and drove with great anxiety. And it became customary at the conclusion of parties where there were “office widows” for the host to get his automobile out of the garage in order to follow the unescorted matrons home, which was the reason there could be seen processions of cars winding through the country-club district late at night.
So Mrs. Bridge came home on those evenings when her husband did not get away from the office in time to attend the party, or when he was too tired to go. At her driveway the procession would halt, engines idling, everyone watching, while she drove into the garage and returned along the driveway so as to be constantly visible until she reached the front door. Having unlocked it she would step inside, switch on the hall lights, and call to him, Tm home!” if she had seen his car in the garage. If he failed to answer she necessarily assumed he was asleep or otherwise occupied. In any event, she would then flicker the lights a few times to show the friends waiting outside that she was safe, after which the caravan would move along.
87. No Chauffeur
The idea of a chauffeur had begun to appeal to Mr. Bridge. Traffic was getting more congested all the time, and as he did not enjoy driving anyway he thought it would be well worth the expense, so, after they had considered the matter, Mrs. Bridge telephoned an employment agency and the following evening a tall, affable colored man came out for an interview. Both of them were impressed by his manners. He was from New Orleans, he told them, and this somehow added to his stature. He was dignified and courteous. The longer they talked to him the better they liked him, so he was employed.
In the rear seat of the Chrysler, his briefcase in his lap, Mr. Bridge sat erect and tense, expecting an accident at every corner while being driven to the office. It was less exhausting to battle the traffic himself, but now that he had the chauffeur he could not dismiss him without a reason. Then, too, having set his mind to the proposition, he was determined to make a success of it. At the office he got out, very much relieved, and told the chauffeur what time to pick him up. The chauffeur spent the remainder of the day driving Mrs. Bridge around in her Lincoln, or, when she had no use for him, he would loiter in the basement.
During the third week they began to receive mysterious telephone calls asking for Jules, which was his name. Drawl-ing Negro voices would inquire, “Well, whereabout you figure he at?” if it was his day off. Or, “Yes, ma’am, it sho’ly am mighty impo’tant.” If, reluctantly, she went to the top of the basement steps and called, “Jules? Jules? Someone wishes to speak to you on the phone,” he would not respond, and her patience was severely tested. Eventually they learned that Jules had bought a yellow satin easy chair for his apartment in the north end of the city, but so far he had been unwilling to pay for the chair and these were the creditors who were calling. When a few more weeks had passed an attempt was made to link Mr. Bridge with the payment; a serious talk with Jules having produced no effect, he was dismissed.
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.”
88. The Rich and the Poor
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.