“If you can’t speak English,” Mrs. Osborn said, “it’s better to keep quiet. You sound like a fruit peddler.”
“I am sorry,” Boobee said.
“Please sit down,” my wife said, and he did, but his nose seemed to get very long. He had been injured. The awkward party lasted not much over an hour.
THEN BOOBEE CALLED me one night, one late-summer night, and said that he had to see me, and I invited him over. He wore his gloves and his green plush hat. My wife was upstairs, and since she didn’t especially like Boobee, I didn’t call her down. I made some drinks, and we sat in the garden.
“Listen!” Boobee said. He used the imperative ascolta. “Listen to me. Grace is insane…. Tonight, dinner is late. I was very hungry, and if I do not have my dinner punctually I lose my appetite. Grace knows this well, but when I arrived at the house there is no dinner. There is nothing to eat. She is in the kitchen burning something in a pan. I explain to her with courtesy that I must have a punctual dinner. Then you know what happens?”
I knew, but it seemed tactless to say that I knew. I said, “No.”
“You could not imagine,” he said. He put a hand to his heart. “Listen,” he said. “She cries.”
“Women cry easily, Boobee,” I said.
“Not European women.”
“But you didn’t marry a European.”
“That is not all. The madness now comes. She cries, and when I ask her why she cries, she explains that she is crying because in becoming my wife she has given up a great career as a soprano in opera.”
I don’t suppose there is much difference between the sounds of a summer night—a late-summer night—in my country and Italy, and yet it seemed so then. All the softness had gone out of the night air—fireflies and murmuring winds—and the insects in the grass around me made a sound as harsh and predatory as the sharpening of burglar’s tools. It made the distance he had come from Verona seem immense. “Opera!” he cried. “La Scala! It is because of me that she is not performing tonight in La Scala. She used to take singing lessons, that is so, but she was never invited to perform. Now she is seized with this madness.”
“A great many American women, Boobee, feel that in marriage they have given up a career.”
“Madness,” he said. He wasn’t listening. “Complete madness. But what can one do? Will you speak to her?”
“I don’t know what good it will do, Boobee, but I’ll try.”
“Tomorrow. I’ll be late. Will you speak to her tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
He stood and pulled on his gloves, finger by finger. Then he tossed on his plush hat with its imaginary feathers and asked, “What is the secret of my charm—my incredible ebullience?”
“I don’t know, Boobee,” I said, but a warm feeling of sympathy for Grace spread through my chest.
“It is because my philosophy of life includes a grasp of consequences and limitations. She has no such philosophy.”
He then got into his car and started it up so abruptly that he scattered gravel all over the lawn.
I turned off the lights on the first floor and went up to our bedroom, where my wife was reading. “Boobee was here,” I said. “I didn’t call you.”
“I know. I heard you talking in the garden.” Her voice was tremulous, and then I saw there were tears on her cheek.
“What’s the matter, darling?”
“Oh, I feel that I’ve wasted my life,” she said. “I have the most terrible feeling of waste. I know it isn’t your fault, but I’ve really given too much of myself to you and the children. I want to go back to the theatre.”
I should explain about my wife’s theatrical career. Some years ago a company of amateurs in the neighborhood performed Shaw’s Saint Joan. Margaret had the lead. I was in Cleveland on business, through no choice of my own, and I didn’t see the performance, but I am convinced that it was outstanding. There were to be two performances, and when the curtain came down at the end of the first there was a standing ovation. Margaret’s performance has been described to me as brilliant, radiant, magnetic, and unforgettable. There was so much excitement that several directors and producers in New York were urged to come out for the second night. Several of them accepted. I was, as I have said, not there, but Margaret has told me what happened. It was a blindingly bright, cold morning. She drove the children to school and then returned and tried to rehearse her lines, but the telephone kept ringing. Everyone felt that a great actress had been discovered. It clouded over at ten, and a north wind began to blow. It began to snow at half past ten, and by noon the storm developed into a blizzard. The schools closed at one and the children were sent home. More than half the roads were closed by four. The trains were running late or not at all. Margaret was unable to get her car out of the garage, so she walked the two miles to the theatre. None of the producers or directors could make it, of course, and only half the cast showed up, so the performance was canceled. Plans were made to repeat the performance later, but the Dauphin had to go to San Francisco, the theatre was booked for other things, and the producers and directors who had agreed to come seemed, on second thought, to be suspicious about going so far afield. Margaret never played Joan again. She had the most natural regrets. The praise that had been poured into her ears rang there for months. A thrilling promise had been broken and, as anyone would, she felt that her disappointment was legitimate and deep.
I CALLED Grace Parlapiano the next day, and went to their house after work. She was pale and seemed unhappy. I said that I had talked with Boobee. “Anthony has been very difficult,” she said, “and I am thinking seriously of getting a divorce or at least a legal separation. I happen to have rather a good voice, but he seems to feel that I’ve produced this fact out of spite and in order to humiliate him. He claims that I’m spoiled and greedy. This is, after all, the only house in the neighborhood that doesn’t have wall-to-wall carpeting, but when I had a man come to give me an estimate on carpeting, Anthony lost his temper. He completely lost his temper. I know that Latins are emotional—everyone told me this before I married—but when Boobee loses his temper it’s really frightening.”
“Boobee loves you,” I said.
“Anthony is very narrow-minded,” she said. “I sometimes think he married too late in life. For instance I suggested that we join the country club. He could learn to play golf, and you know how important golf is in business. He could make a great many advantageous business connections if we joined the club, but he thinks this is unreasonable of me. He doesn’t know how to dance, but when I suggested that he take dancing lessons he thought me unreasonable. I don’t complain, I really don’t. I don’t, for instance, have a fur coat and I’ve never asked for one, and you know perfectly well that I’m the only woman in the neighborhood who doesn’t have a fur coat.”
I ended the interview clumsily, and on that note of spiritual humbug we bring to the marital difficulties of our friends. My words were useless, of course, and things got no better. I happened to know, because Boobee kept me informed on the train every morning. He did not understand that men in America do not complain about their wives, and it was a vast and painful misunderstanding. He came up to me at the station one morning and said, “You are wrong. You are very wrong. That night when I told you she had a madness, you told me it was nothing. Now listen! She is buying a grand piano, and she is hiring a singing coach. She is doing this out of spitefulness. Now do you believe that she is mad?”
“Grace is not mad,” I said. “There is nothing wrong with the fact that she likes to sing. You’ve got to understand that her desire for a career is not spiteful. It is shared by almost every woman in the neighborhood. Margaret is working with a dramatic coach in New York three days a week and I don’t consider her spiteful or insane.”