“Answer my question, please. Do you or don’t you think I should try to get in touch with Waker? I’m afraid to, frankly. He’s so emotional—priest or no priest. If you tell Waker it looks like rain, his eyes all fill up.”
Zooey shared his amusement at this remark with the reflection of his own eyes in the mirror. “There’s hope for you yet, Bessie,” he said.
“Well, if I can’t get Buddy on the phone, and even you won’t help, I’m going to have to do something,” Mrs. Glass said. Looking vastly troubled, she sat smoking for a long moment. Then: “If it was something strictly Catholic, or like that, I might be able to help her myself. I haven’t forgotten everything. But none of you children were brought up as Catholics, and I really don’t see—”
Zooey cut her short. “You’re off,” he said, turning his lathered face toward her. “You’re off. You’re way off. I told you that last night. This thing with Franny is strictly non-sectarian.” He dipped his razor and continued to shave. “Just take my word, please.”
Mrs. Glass stared full and pressingly at his profile, as if he might say something further, but he didn’t. At length, she sighed, and said, “I’d almost be satisfied for a while if I could get that awful Bloomberg off that couch with her. It isn’t even sanitary.” She dragged on her cigarette. “And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about the painters. This very minute they’re practically finished in her room, and they’re going to be champing at the bit to get in the living room.”
“You know, I’m the only one in this family who has no problems,” Zooey said. “And you know why? Because any time I’m feeling blue, or puzzled, what I do, I just invite a few people to come visit me in the bathroom, and—well, we iron things out together, that’s all.”
Mrs. Glass seemed on the point of being diverted by Zooey’s method of dealing with problems, but it was her day to suppress all forms of amusement. She stared at him for a moment, and then, slowly, a new look gathered in her eyes—resourceful, crafty, and a trifle desperate. “You know, I’m not as stupid as you may think, young man,” she said. “You’re all so secretive, all you children. It just so happens, if you must know, that I know more about what’s behind all this than you think I do.” For emphasis, lips compressed, she brushed some imaginary tobacco flakes from the lap of her kimono. “For your information, I happen to know that that little book she carried all around the whole house with her yesterday is at the whole root of this whole business.”
Zooey turned and glanced at her. He was grinning, “How’d you figure that out?” he said.
“Just never mind how I figured it out,” Mrs. Glass said. “If you must know, Lane has called up here several times. He’s terribly worried about Franny.”
Zooey rinsed his razor. “Who in hell is Lane?” he asked. Unmistakably, it was the question o
f a still very young man who, now and then, is not inclined to admit that he knows the first names of certain people.
“You know very well who he is, young man,” Mrs. Glass said with emphasis. “Lane Coutell. He’s only been Franny’s boy friend for a whole year. You’ve met him at least half a dozen times that I know of, so just don’t pretend you don’t know who he is.”
Zooey gave a genuine roar of laughter, as if he clearly relished seeing any affectation brought to light, his own included. He went on shaving, still delighted. “The expression is Franny’s ‘young man,’ ” he said, “not her ‘boy friend.” Why are you so out of date, Bessie? Why is that? Hm?”
“Never mind why I’m so out of date. It may interest you to know that he’s called up here five or six times since Franny got home—twice this morning before you were even up. He’s been very sweet, and he’s terribly concerned and worried about Franny.”
“Not like some people we know, eh? Well, I hate to disillusion you, but I’ve sat by the hour with him and he’s not sweet at all. He’s a charm boy and a fake. Incidentally, somebody around here’s been shaving their armpits or their goddam legs with my razor. Or dropped it. The head’s way out of—”
“Nobody’s touched your razor, young man. Why is he a charm boy and a fake, may I ask?”
“Why? Because he is, that’s all. Probably because it’s paid off. I can tell you one thing. If he’s worried about Franny at all, I’ll lay odds it’s for the crummiest reasons. He’s probably worried because he minded leaving the goddam football game before it was over—worried because he probably showed he minded it and he knows Franny’s sharp enough to have noticed. I can just picture the little bastard getting her into a cab and putting her on a train and wondering if he can make it back to the game before the half ended.”
“Oh, it’s impossible to talk to you! But absolutely impossible. I don’t know why I try, even. You’re just like Buddy. You think everybody does something for some peculiar reason. You don’t think anybody calls anybody else up without having some nasty, selfish reason for it.”
“Exactly—in nine cases out of ten. And this Lane pill isn’t the exception, you can be sure. Listen, I talked with him for twenty deadly goddam minutes one night while Franny was getting ready to go out, and I say he’s a big nothing.” He reflected, arresting his razor stroke. “What in hell was it he was telling me? Something very winning. What was it? . . . Oh, yes. Yes. He was telling me he used to listen to Franny and me every week when he was a kid—and you know what he was doing, the little bastard? He was building me up at Franny’s expense. For absolutely no reason except to ingratiate himself and show off his hot little Ivy League intellect.” Zooey put out his tongue and gave a subdued, modified Bronx cheer. “Phooey,” he said, and resumed using his razor. “Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day.”
Mrs. Glass directed a long and oddly comprehensive look at his profile. “He’s a young boy not out of college yet. And you make people nervous, young man,” she said—most equably, for her. “You either take to somebody or you don’t. If you do, then you do all the talking and nobody can even get a word in edgewise. If you don’t like somebody—which is most of the time—then you just sit around like death itself and let the person talk themself into a hole. I’ve seen you do it.”
Zooey turned full around to look at his mother.
He turned around and looked at her, in this instance, in precisely the same way that, at one time or another, in one year or another, all his brothers and sisters (and especially his brothers) had turned around and looked at her. Not just with objective wonder at the rising of a truth, fragmentary or not, up through what often seemed to be an impenetrable mass of prejudices, clichés, and bromides. But with admiration, affection, and, not least, gratitude. And, oddly or no, Mrs. Glass invariably took this “tribute,” when it came, in beautiful stride. She would look back with grace and modesty at the son or daughter who had given her the look. She now presented this gracious and modest countenance to Zooey. “You do,” she said, without accusation in her voice. “Neither you nor Buddy know how to talk to people you don’t like.” She thought it over. “Don’t love, really,” she amended. And Zooey continued to stand gazing at her, not shaving. “It’s not right,” she said—gravely, sadly. “You’re getting so much like Buddy used to be when he was your age. Even your father’s noticed it. If you don’t like somebody in two minutes, you’re done with them forever.” Mrs. Glass looked over, abstractedly, at the blue bathmat, across the tiled floor. Zooey stood as still as possible, in order not to break her mood. “You can’t live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes,” Mrs. Glass said to the bathmat, then turned again toward Zooey and gave him a long look, with very little, if any, morality in it. “Regardless of what you may think, young man,” she said.
Zooey looked back at her steadily, then smiled and faced around to examine his beard in the mirror. Mrs. Glass, watching him, sighed. She bent and put out her cigarette against the inside of the metal wastebasket. She lit a fresh cigarette almost at once, and said, as pointedly as she was able, “Anyway, your sister says he’s a brilliant boy. Lane.”
“That’s just sex talking, buddy,” Zooey said. “I know that voice. Oh, do I know that voice!” The last trace of lather had been shaved away from his face and throat. He felt his throat critically with one hand, then picked up his shaving brush and began to re-lather strategic parts of his face. “All right, what does Lane have to say on the phone?” he asked. “According to Lane, what’s behind Franny’s troubles?”
Mrs. Glass sat slightly and avidly forward, and said, “Well, Lane says it all has to do—this entire thing—with that little book she’s got with her all the time. You know. That little book she kept reading all yesterday and dragging with her everywhere she—”
“I know that little book. Go on.”
“Well, he says, Lane says, it’s a terribly religious little book—fanatical and all like that—and that she got it out of the library at college and now she thinks maybe she’s—” Mrs. Glass broke off. Zooey had turned toward her with somewhat menacing alertness. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“He said she got it where?”
“Out of the library. At college. Why?”
Zooey shook his head, and turned back to the washbowl. He put down his shaving brush and opened the medicine cabinet.