Penelope Read online

  “All this is perfectly ridiculous.”

  “Is ridiculous. At same time, Sadaba is expecting Mrs. James R. Hastings at Sadaba’s salon by three o’clock.” And with that, Sadaba broke the connection, leaving Penelope both troubled and mystified.

  It was the kind of a day on which no one should be either troubled or mystified. It was such a day as comes occasionally in January in New York City, washing the city with a warm and gentle south wind, melting the ridges of ice and the piles of slush, and for twenty-four hours and even forty-eight hours giving to cold, cave-dwelling Gothamites the illusion that somehow the seasons have come unstuck, spring arriving on the scene a full three months before schedule. It is far more delightful, unexpected, and rewarding than the real thing in its regular progression; and when Penelope came out onto the street, she found it difficult not to sing inwardly with the pure pleasure of the day.

  But Sadaba had placed a damper on all and sundry kinds of inward singing. What a silly fluke of fate it was, Penelope thought to herself, that the execution of what was otherwise the perfect crime should be impinged upon by someone called Sadaba, who spoke with an accent that combined all the worst features of Russian/Hungarian/Swedish-English, with none of the charm of any of them! Well, she told herself, Sadaba had no more evidence than anyone else; and she, Penelope, would simply not play her game—not at all. Penelope detested dishonest people.

  She said as much to Dr. Mannix. Lying there on the couch, she said to a Dr. Mannix who was determined not to emerge from his detachment or break his objective silence:

  “I do detest dishonest people.”

  “What?” he exploded, his vows broken, his therapeutical method shattered once again.

  “I am not a hostile personality,” Penelope reminded him. “You said that yourself. But dishonest people—I just detest them. It’s the way I was brought up, Gregory.”

  “Penelope,” he said in his sternest clinical voice, “I would like you to think this point through.”

  “What point?”

  “Honesty. Dishonesty.”

  “Oh, Gregory, we have such important things to discuss.” And then she went on to relate, in great detail, what had happened the evening before. Dr. Mannix listened to all of it, and when she had finished the air seemed to be permeated with his thoughtful silence. Penelope tried to think of something else to say, but for the life of her, she could not.

  As so often in these analytical sessions, the silence extended itself to a point beyond endurance, Penelope telling herself, “I can outlast him.” As a girl in Camp Winnikoochee on the shores of Lake Winnikoochee in the sovereign state of Maine, she had always been chosen as anchor man in the tug of war—an abundance of stubbornness compensating for a lack of virtue—and had earned quite a reputation as a Rock of Gibraltar.

  Dr. Mannix finally surrendered. “Only this is analysis, Penelope, not a tug of war.”

  “Did it ever occur to you, Gregory, that at this moment support and advice are more necessary to me than the depths of Freudian analysis?”

  “Advice?”

  “I know exactly what you are going to say; but if I had asked your advice before robbing the bank, you would have told me not to rob it at all. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So?”

  “Penelope—you always want advice after the fact, not before it.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “No? You certainly waited for no advice when you pinched the police commissioner’s wallet.”

  “Gregory,” Penelope said softly, “tell me the truth—wouldn’t you just adore to analyze someone like Napoleon or Teddy Roosevelt or J. P. Morgan?”

  “Now isn’t that a silly and iffish question?”

  “—so you could understand how I felt with Mr. Comaday’s wallet sticking out of his pocket—”

  “All right,” Dr. Mannix said, bringing his teeth together with a sharp, decisive click. “You want to get down to some hard facts, then we will. By all means. To begin with—do you know why your robbed your husband’s bank?”

  “Of course I do. Because it was burglarproof.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, Gregory, I know what you are going to say—you are going to project the entire matter as an expression of my hostility toward James. But that is simply not the case. It could have been any bank.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “Because James’s bank was the only one in the neighborhood with a ladies’ john on the main floor. I just kept after him and kept after him until he got the architect to redraw the plans to include a pothouse.”

  “A what?”

  “A pothouse, Gregory—please don’t be dense. That was what we called it at Camp Winnikoochee; and I got to thinking of Winnikoochee before because of the tug of war.”

  “The what?”

  “Gregory, please don’t keep saying ‘a what’ and ‘the what,’ because it doesn’t become you at all. Whenever this silence descends and goes on and on and on—well, I always think of it as a tug of war between you and me. Don’t you remember, you yourself said to me that this was an analysis, not a tug of war?”

  “I said that?”

  “Of course you said it,” Penelope assured him patiently.

  “That is very interesting.”

  “I am sure it is, and do you know, Gregory, that sometimes I wonder whether I should be paying the entire fee for these sessions.”

  “Nevertheless, Penelope, you did not select your husband’s branch by chance. You robbed his bank as a direct act of hostility toward him.”

  “No.”

  “Penny, why won’t you face this?”

  “There!”

  “What do you mean, ‘there!’”

  “You called me Penny.”

  “That is hardly important or relevant. I am trying to direct you to the ambivalence of your relationship to your husband—”

  “Gregory,” Penelope said plaintively, “do you really mean that your calling me Penny is utterly without meaning? How can you sit there—”

  “I am standing.”

  “Then how can you stand there and say that?”

  “Because we are not concerned with what I call you, but with your ambivalence.”

  “That is such a psychiatrist word, Gregory. I don’t think that any of you could practice without it. But if by ambivalence you mean that I am attracted to James and simultaneously repelled by him, you are only half right. Poor James ceased to attract me many years ago, and I refuse to believe that I have such awful feelings of hostility toward him. If the truth be told, I don’t think I have any feelings at all toward James.”

  “Then why don’t you divorce him?” Dr. Mannix demanded fretfully, casting overboard both therapy and reserve. “For God’s sake, why don’t you divorce him?”

  Penelope sat up suddenly, swung around to face Dr. Mannix, and stared at him with new interest. “Why, Gregory,” she said, “I do believe that under that Freudian shirt of yours, there beats a heart of warm human flesh. Do you have a crush on me?”

  “Absolutely not,” Dr. Mannix snorted. “It is unthinkable and unprofessional.”

  “Unprofessional—but, Gregory, unthinkable?” she asked woefully.

  “I did not mean it that way at all.”

  “You did, and I am utterly desolated.”

  “I was fighting,” Dr. Mannix said desperately, moving toward Penelope and shaking a finger under her nose, “I was fighting for my life as a therapist—fighting for my professional integrity, and you tell me—”

  “Poor Gregory—I am sorry.”

  “Well, I hope so,” Dr. Mannix said, returning to his chair and collapsing into it. “I certainly have made a mess of things. A fine psychiatrist, I am—you come in here after robbing a bank and go out of here to pinch the police commissioner’s wallet.”

  “Gregory?”

  “Yes,” wretchedly and glumly.

  “Gregory, dear, I never pry, do I?”

  “No.”


  “And we do know each other a long time.”

  “Being in therapy is not precisely having a love affair.”

  “But you do love me—just a little, Gregory?”

  “Well, possibly,” he admitted. “In a manner of speaking—”

  “And you do go on wondering why I don’t divorce James?”

  “I have wondered,” he confessed.

  “That’s so big of you, Gregory—because so few men in your profession would admit that they wondered about anything in a patient—because they are so absolutely certain that they know everything and that nothing is left to wonder about. But you are big.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Yes, you are,” Penelope insisted. “And that is why I am going to ask you one small question. Dear Gregory, what was your name before you changed it to Gregory Mannix?”

  “Changed it? Why do you think I would even—”

  “Gregory, dear!”

  “Very well—Ernie Claphorn.”

  “Such a nice name.” Penelope smiled.

  “Can you just see a psychoanalyst named Ernie Claphorn?”

  “From Ohio?”

  “Findley, Ohio.” Dr. Mannix nodded. “But how did you know?”

  “Just something one feels.” Penelope shrugged. “And you can remember how your folks felt about divorce?”

  “My father and mother,” Dr. Mannix said slowly and deliberately, “were middle class, insular, narrow-minded Middle Westerners.”

  “I should love to meet them.”

  “But whatever they were, or are, or may think, has nothing to do with your continuing to live with a man you hate.”

  “Gregory, how many times must I tell you—I do not hate James.”

  “Will you also deny that you spend your time compensating for his treatment of you by being a thief?”

  “No,” Penelope said thoughtfully, “that simply is not the fact, Gregory. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that people must have a reason to exist?”

  “It keeps occurring to me that a woman I admire and respect spends her time stealing.”

  “I’m a neurotic, Gregory. You are my physician—even if you are not behaving at all like one. And I am a kleptomaniac.”

  “You say that with great satisfaction,” Dr. Mannix snapped. “Too much satisfaction. It’s a crutch for you.”

  “Oh, Gregory—don’t get angry, please. You know that when you lose your temper, it upsets your stomach and then you have those awful gas pains and it makes you feel that you are getting a heart attack—except that you’re always too shy to call another physician, and you suffer so all alone.”

  “I am not losing my temper!”

  “Good. I am glad.”

  “And just in case you decide to lean too heavily upon that crutch, my dear Mrs. Hastings—”

  “You are angry.”

  “You are by no means a kleptomaniac. Not by a long shot. No, sir. In fact, as I have told you before, the word itself is meaningless. It is used most inaccurately to label people who steal compulsively. You do not steal compulsively. You steal out of spite, for the pleasure and the excitement of it, and you only steal when you are damn well prepared to steal—and you choose your clientele very carefully. Kleptomania—hah!”

  Penelope opened her purse, took out a tiny bit of lace that passed as a handkerchief, and dabbed at her eyes.

  “Stop that!” Gregory shouted.

  “Don’t shout at me, Gregory. It’s not fair of you to shout at me.”

  “Penelope, don’t pretend that you are crying. It leaves me absolutely cold.”

  “‘Ernie Claphorn.’ It certainly fits you.”

  “Absolutely cold. You are no more in tears than I am, and furthermore when you come right down to it, Penelope Hastings, you are the most damned calculating woman I ever had in this office.”

  “If I pretended to love someone,” Penelope told him mournfully, “I would certainly not say things like that. You sound more like James than you might imagine, Dr. Mannix.”

  “I do not. James believes you are stupid. I happen to know that you are a lot too smart for your own good.”

  “Oh, how could you? Gregory, how could you—you, a therapist, a doctor with all the responsibility of caring for the mentally sick, of helping people?”

  “You are no more mentally sick than I am. In fact, less. Do you hear me, Mrs. Hastings? L-e-s-s!”

  “Yes—when I need help the most, cast me away. Fine. Oh, that is just fine, Gregory Ernie Mannix Claphorn or whatever you call yourself!”

  With long, determined steps, Dr. Mannix came around the couch, bent over, and leered at Penelope. “Do you know how you need help?” he cried. “Like a fox needs help in a nest of rabbits! Male rabbits.”

  The image was more than Penelope could bear, and in spite of herself she felt her eyes misting over with tears. Once more, she felt in her purse for the lace handkerchief, blindly now, her lips trembling; and suddenly there in her hand was the huge piece of linen with which Dr. Mannix administered to his own needs. It was clean and crisp, and his hands guided it to her eyes.

  “My dear, my dear,” he begged her. “How could I have been such a fool?”

  Somehow, in response to that, Penelope could think of no line that was not unbelievably gauche. She found herself saying, “Gregory, you are the same as all men.” The sound of it hurt. Her need to laugh was irrepressible, and she plunged her face into the folds of the huge handkerchief, her body convulsed with her emotions. Far, far away, Gregory was pleading with her for forgiveness.

  She managed to stumble to her feet and make her way, more or less blindly, to the tiny washroom that opened into the office. She locked the door behind her and stared at her laughing face in the mirror.

  “I loathe you,” she told herself.

  Still, it was the face of an angel, the astonishing blue eyes twinkling in the smooth, untroubled skin. She dried her eyes, powdered lightly, and returned to face Dr. Mannix, who stood solemnly in front of his desk, his eyes on the floor.

  “I’ve failed you, haven’t I?” he asked with troubled intensity. “I have failed myself. I have failed my profession.”

  “Oh, Gregory,” she said, “how could you fail me?”

  “I could and I did.”

  “No, Gregory.”

  “Yes.”

  Penelope realized that in these terms the argument could go on for a long time. She terminated it by stepping close to Dr. Mannix and giving him a firm kiss upon the cheek. Before he could react properly, she was closing the door of his office behind her.

  And there in the waiting room, under the watchful glare of Miss Doris Gilmore, and reading a three-month-old copy of The New Yorker, was Assistant District Attorney Larry Cohen. Penelope was surprised, but hardly dismayed.

  “You know, this is such a pleasure,” she said to Cohen. “I mean, the most desolate part of this life is the people you meet—well, you know, not exactly casually but like ships that pass in the night. There you were, and that absolutely darling Mr. Comaday, and I had to ask myself whether I would ever see either of you again.”

  “Did you want to?”

  “Well, do friends grow on trees?” Penelope asked with very gentle indignation. “Didn’t you want to see me again, Mr. Cohen?”

  Penelope found herself looking directly into Cohen’s gray-green eyes and trying to puzzle out exactly what the look in those eyes meant. She found herself pleasantly astonished at the fact that he was rather handsome, slim, with a long, narrow head that reminded of her childhood screen hero, Leslie Howard; and the memory of Mr. Howard and his untimely death during World War II had an immediate emotional effect upon her, making her eyes misty and her face so sweet and compelling that Larry Cohen said to himself, “Forty-four years be damned—this is the loveliest woman I ever laid eyes on.” He was an inwardly torn man as he agreed with Penelope that he certainly did desire to see her again. But that might well have been the effect of the kind of a day it was. June works wonders
in January.

  “Then we must, someday,” Penelope agreed, dropping her voice so that Miss Gilmore might catch no vibrations through what Penelope always thought of as her “quivering ears.”

  “‘Someday’ is always never. You know that, Mrs. Hastings.”

  “And shouldn’t it be, Mr. Cohen? We are both married.”

  “But not too well.”

  “Is anyone?”

  “That I cannot tell you.” He shrugged. “But today is a day of days. Such days don’t come twice in January. Have lunch with me?”

  Penny looked at him thoughtfully before she said, “Have you any idea, Mr. Cohen, how complicated my life is—without complicating it further?”

  “I think so.”

  “And still?”

  “One lunch—one day—one January—”

  “All right,” Penny agreed. “But a late one. Can you meet me at one o’clock?”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll be in a dress salon on Madison Avenue and Seventy-fifth Street. It is called Sadaba’s.”

  “Sadaba’s?”

  “Sadaba. Yes. It is a very strange name,” said Penelope, “but no stranger, I assure you, than the lady who runs the place.”

  “Sadaba,” Cohen repeated woodenly.

  “Are you quite all right?” Penelope asked; and at that moment, Doris Gilmore cut in with the news that “Doctor” would see Mr. Cohen.

  “All right? I’ll be there,” Cohen said.

  Penelope and Miss Gilmore looked at each other without pleasure. Then the nurse led Cohen into Dr. Mannix’s office, and Penelope went out into the kind January sunshine.

  Dr. Mannix, seated at his desk, did not even ask Larry Cohen to be seated. Instead, he let the district attorney stand while he continued to examine the small, white card that had preceded Cohen. Finally, Cohen wondered whether so little type took so long to read—aloud.

  “Humor?” Gregory asked coldly.

  At that moment, Larry Cohen remembered that Penelope had not spoken a single word in reference to his being there, as to what he was doing there, or why he was consulting Dr. Mannix—but simply took it for granted, and was at her gracious best.