“Nobody said anything about dying,” Mrs. Glass said. She gave her hairnet a minor and needless adjustment. “I’ve been trying the whole entire morning to get those people that live down the road from him on the phone. They don’t even answer. It’s infuriating not to be able to get him. How many times I’ve begged him to take that crazy phone out of his and Seymour’s old room. It isn’t even normal. When something really comes up and he needs one—It’s infuriating. I tried twice last night, and about four times this—”
“What’s all this ‘infuriating’ business? In the first place, why should some strangers down the road be at our beck and call?”
“Nobody’s talking about anybody being at our beck and call, Zooey. Just don’t be so fresh, please. For your information, I’m very worried about that child. And I think Buddy should be told about this whole thing. Just for your information, I don’t think he’d ever forgive me if I didn’t get in touch with him at a time like this.”
“All right, then! Why don’t you call the college, instead of bothering his neighbors? He wouldn’t be in his cave anyway at this time of day—you know that.”
“Just kindly lower that voice of yours, please, young man. Nobody’s deaf. For your information, I have called the college. I’ve learned from experience that that does absolutely no good whatsoever. They just leave messages on his desk, and I don’t think he ever goes anywhere near his office anyway.” Mrs. Glass abruptly leaned her weight forward, without getting up, and reached out and picked up something from the top of the laundry hamper. “Do you have a washrag back there?” she asked.
“The word is ‘washcloth,’ not ‘washrag,’ and all I want, God damn it, Bessie, is to be left alone in this bathroom. That’s my one simple desire. If I’d wanted this place to fill up with every fat Irish rose that passes by, I’d’ve said so. Now, c’mon. Get out.”
“Zooey,” Mrs. Glass said patiently. “I’m holding a clean washrag in my hand. Do you or don’t you want it? Just yes or no, please.”
“Oh, my God! Yes. Yes. Yes. More than anything in the world. Throw it over.”
“I won’t throw it over, I’ll hand it to you. Always throw everything, in this family.” Mrs. Glass got up, took three steps over to the shower curtain, and waited for a disembodied hand to claim the washcloth.
“Thanks a million. Clear out of here now, please. I’ve lost about ten pounds already.”
“It’s no wonder! You sit there in that tub till you’re practically blue in the face, and then you—What’s this?” With immense interest, Mrs. Glass bent down and picked up the manuscript Zooey had been reading before she made her entrance into the room. “Is this the new script Mr. LeSage sent over?” she asked. “On the floor?” She didn’t get an answer. It was as if Eve had asked Cain whether that wasn’t his lovely new hoe lying out there in the rain. “That’s a marvellous place to put a manuscript, I must say.” She transported the manuscript over to the window and placed it with care on the radiator. She looked down at it, appearing to inspect it for wetness. The window blind had been lowered—Zooey had done all his bathtub reading by the light from the three-bulb overhead fixture—but a fraction of morning light inched under the blind and onto the title page of the manuscript. Mrs. Glass tilted her head to one side, the better to read the title, at the same time taking a pack of king-size cigarettes from her kimono pocket. “ ‘The Heart Is an Autumn Wanderer,’ ” she read, mused, aloud. “Unusual title.”
The response from behind the shower curtain was a trifle delayed but delighted. “It’s a what? It’s a what kind of title?”
Mrs. Glass’s guard was already up. She backed up and re-seated herself, a lighted cigarette in her hand. “Unusual, I said. I didn’t say it was beautiful or anything, so just—”
“Ahh, by George. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get anything really classy past you, Bessie girl. You know what your heart is, Bessie? Would you like to know what your heart is? Your heart, Bessie, is an autumn garage. How’s that for a catchy title, eh? By God, many people—many uninformed people—think Seymour and Buddy are the only goddam men of letters in this family. When I think, when I sit down for a minute and think of the sensitive prose, and garages, I throw away every day of my—”
“All right, all right, young man,” Mrs. Glass said. Whatever her taste in television-play titles, or her aesthetics in general, a flicker came into her eyes—no more than a flicker, but a flicker—of connoisseurlike, if perverse, relish for her youngest, and only handsome, son’s style of bullying. For a split second, it displaced the look of all-round wear and, plainly, specific worry that had been on her face since she entered the bathroom. However, she was almost immediately back on the defensive: “What’s the matter with that title? It is very unusual. You! You don’t think anything’s unusual or beautiful! I’ve never once heard you—”
“What? Who doesn’t? Exactly what don’t I think isn’t beautiful?” A minor groundswell sounded behind the shower curtain, as though a rather delinquent porpoise were suddenly at play. “Listen, I don’t care what you say about my race, creed, or religion, Fatty, but don’t tell me I’m not sensitive to beauty. That’s my Achilles’ heel, and don’t you forget it. To me, everything is beautiful. Show me a pink sunset and I’m limp, by God. Anything. ‘Peter Pan.’ Even before the curtain goes up at ‘Peter Pan,’ I’m a goddam puddle of tears. And you have the gall to try to tell me I’m—”
“Oh, shut up,” Mrs. Glass said, absently. She gave a great sigh. Then, with a tense expression, she dragged deeply on her cigarette and, exhaling the smoke through her nostrils, said—or, rather, erupted—“Oh, I wish I knew what I’m supposed to do with that child!” She took a deep breath. “I’m absolutely at the end of my rope.” She gave the shower curtain an X-ray-like look. “You’re none of you any help whatsoever. But none! Your father doesn’t even like to talk about anything like this. You know that! He’s worried, too, naturally—I know that look on his face—but he simply will not face anything.” Mrs. Glass’s mouth tightened. “He’s never faced anything as long as I’ve known him. He thinks anything peculiar or unpleasant will just go away if he turns on the radio and some little schnook starts singing.”
A great single roar of laughter came from the closed-off Zooey. It was scarcely distinguishable from his guffaw, but there was a difference.
“Well, he does!” Mrs. Glass insisted, humorlessly.
She sat forward. “Would you like to know what I honestly think?” she demanded. “Would you?”
“Bessie. For God’s sake. You’re going to tell me anyway, so what’s the difference if I—”
“I honestly think—I mean this, now—I honestly think he keeps hoping to hear all you children on the radio again. I’m serious, now.” Mrs. Glass took another deep breath. “Every single time your father turns on the radio, I honestly think he expects to tune in on ‘It’s a Wise Child’ and hear all you children, one by one, answering questions again.” She compressed her lips and paused, unconsciously, for additional emphasis. “And I mean all of you,” she said, and abruptly straightened her posture a trifle. “That includes Seymour and Walt.” She took a brisk but voluminous drag on her cigarette. “He lives entirely in the past. But entirely. He hardly ever even watches television, unless you’re on. And don’t laugh, Zooey. It isn’t funny.”
“Who in God’s name is laughing?”
“Well, it’s true! He has absolutely no conception of anything being really wrong with Franny. But none! Right after the eleven-o’clock news last night, what do you think he asks me? If I think Franny might like a tangerine! The child’s laying there by the hour crying her eyes out if you say boo to her, and mumbling heaven knows what to herself, and your father wonders if maybe she’d like a tangerine. I could’ve killed him. The next time he—” Mrs. Glass broke off. She glared at the shower curtain. “What’s so funny?” she demanded.
“Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I like the tangerine. All right, who else is being no help to you? Me. Les. Buddy. Who else? Pour your heart out to me, Bessie. Don’t be reticent. That’s the whole trouble with this family—we keep things bottled up too much.”
“Oh, you’re about as funny as a crutch, young man,” Mrs. Glass said. She took time to push a stray wisp of hair under the elastic of her hairnet. “Oh, I wish I could get Buddy on that crazy phone for a few minutes. The one person that’s supposed to know about all this funny business.” She reflected, with apparent rancor. “It never rains but it pours.” She tapped her cigarette ash into her cupped left hand. “Boo Boo won’t be back till the tenth. Waker I’d be afraid to tell about it, even if I knew how to get hold of him. I never saw a family like this in my entire life. I mean it. You’re all supposed to be so intelligent and everything, all you children, and not one of you is any help when the chips are down. Not one of you. I’m just a little bit sick of—”
“What chips, for God’s sake? When what chips are down? What would you like us to do, Bessie? Go in there and live Franny’s life for her?”
“Now, just stop that! Nobody’s talking about anybody living her life for her. I’d simply like somebody to go in that living room and find out what’s what, that’s what I’d like. I’d like to know just when that child intends to go back to college and finish her year. I’d like to know just when she intends to put something halfway nourishing into her stomach. She’s eaten practically nothing since she got home Saturday night—but nothing! I tried—not a half hour ago—to get her to take a nice cup of chicken broth. She took exactly two mouthfuls, and that’s all. She threw up everything I got her to eat yesterday, practically.” Mrs. Glass’s voice stopped only long enough to reload, as it were. “She said maybe she’d eat a cheeseburger later on. Just what is this cheeseburger business? From what I gather, she’s practically been living on cheeseburgers and Cokes all semester so far. Is that what they feed a young girl at college these days? I know one thing. I’m certainly not going to feed a young girl that’s as run-down as that child is on food that isn’t even—”
“That’s the spirit! Make it chicken broth or nothing. That’s putting the ole foot down. If she’s determined to have a nervous breakdown, the least we can do is see that she doesn’t have it in peace.”
“Just don’t you be so fresh, young man—Oh, that mouth of yours! For your information, I don’t think it’s at all impossible that the kind of food that child takes into her system hasn’t a lot to do with this whole entire funny business. Even as a child you practically had to force that child to even touch her vegetables or any of the things that were good for her. You can’t go on abusing the body indefinitely, year in, year out—regardless of what you think.”