coming back to you after you told her so explicitly three years ago that you never wanted to see her again under any circumstances. A talent like yours should not be subjected to this sort of persecution, just when you’ve really got going on the new book, too! You know a vicious woman like Vera could ruin you utterly. Please let me know if there’s anything Gus or I can do. Would it be a good idea if she stayed with us when she reached New York? I can’t imagine a more difficult house guest, but I’d gladly take her in if that would leave you free to go on with your work unmolested. Perhaps Tony Kane can help. As your publisher, he ought to. He knows lots of people. Perhaps he could get her a part in some Broadway play. That would keep her away from you, though I pity the producer—she’s such an embarrassingly incompetent actress. Anyway, let us hear from you as soon as possible and don’t despair. We’ll do something.
Best wishes from both of us,
As ever,
She signed herself “Meg” with Polly’s red crayon. She found a stray envelope in the stamp drawer and typed the address.
AMOS COTTLE, ESQ.
ROGUE’S RIDGE
WESTON, CONNECTICUT
She sat still a moment, frowning. Then she put another sheet of writing paper in the typewriter and began to type more slowly.
My dear Vera,
I learned from this evenings’ paper that you are planning to return to the East. After all that has happened, I’m sure, you won’t care to see Amos, but Gus and I should be glad to help you get settled here. We have a large apartment now with a pleasant guest room. Would you care to stay with us for a few days while you look about for a place of your own? Do say yes.
We both look forward to seeing you soon and hearing all the latest Hollywood gossip.
Yours sincerely,
Meg Vesey
The sincerely cost her a grimace, but a more intimate ending would have been even more repugnant. She didn’t use a crayon for a scrawled signature this time. She found a fountain pen in her handbag and wrote her name carefully, wondering why antagonism should be more polite than affection.
After another search, she turned up an air-mail envelope and typed rapidly:
MISS VERA VANE
CATAMOUNT STUDIOS
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA
As she licked the air-mail stamp, she wondered if the letter could reach Vera before she left the West Coast. Surely she would stop at the studio to collect her mail before she boarded the plane on Sunday.
Did the letter sound too friendly to be real? Vera must know how everyone who cared for Amos felt about her. Or did she? Probably not. Her vanity was a thick shell, lined with mother-of-pearl illusions which she secreted from her own press releases. Every irritating foreign substance—like lukewarm praise of her acting—was soon turned into a pearl.
“Mommy!” The door burst open and Hugh catapulted into the room. “I didn’t even know you were home till I went in the hall and heard the typing.” A touch of surprise and reproach in this, then forgivingly: “Joe Devlin wants me to spend the night with him. They live in a penthouse. They have a dog and a pet turtle. They don’t know his sex—the turtle’s—so they call it He-she, and…”
“Just a minute, Hugh. Let me get these letters off.”
“But, Mommy, I want to wear my blue suit and Maddelena can’t find a white shirt and…”
They found the last clean, white shirt in the toy chest in Polly’s room.
“Now how did it get in there?” mused Maddelena, with Sicilian indolence in every line of her ample body.
“You should know. If only…” Meg checked herself.
“If only Daddy and Maddelena and Polly and I would be neater,” put in Hugh. “You’ve said that a million times, too. And when you were a little girl, your mother’s house was five times as big as this apartment and everything was always in apple-pie order and nobody ever lost anything and…”
“All right, Hugh. I see I have the makings of an old bore. Don’t rub it in.”
“Mom-mee!” Polly’s talent for tragedy at the age of five almost equaled Mrs. Siddons’s who could bring tears to a shopkeeper’s eyes when she asked for a spool of thread. “Mom-mee, nobody ever asks me to spend the night. What shall I do now?”
“Would you like to color?”
“I’ve been coloring all afternoon’“
A whoop from Hugh, who had wandered back to the study. “Christmas presents! Oh, Mommy, who are they for?”
“I can’t imagine, can you?”
Polly was at the desk. “Why has this envelope got pretty little red-and-blue stripes on it? And why is there an airplane on the stamp?”
“Oh, Polly, darling, please don’t ever touch anything on Mother’s desk. That’s an air-mail letter and I must get it off right away.” Meg grabbed the envelope from Polly, put the letter inside and sealed the flap. “Hugh, are the Devlins calling for you?”
“Yes, in half an hour.”
“Then let’s pack your bag. You may drop this letter in the mail chute for me on your way out.”
Packing Hugh’s bag in half an hour was an exhausting ordeal for everyone concerned. In the children’s rooms, hairbrushes and combs, toothbrushes and toothpaste all had wings and vanished the moment you turned your back. “It’s The Borrowers,” said Polly.
Gus arrived in the middle of the riot and watched them with affable unconcern in his handsome, dark, eyes. Gus hailed from Louisiana originally and he had enough Mediterranean blood to believe that Maddelena’s light hand with a soufflé more than made up for her impressionistic housekeeping. An earlier, bachelor existence in shabby, furnished rooms had left him as indifferent to disorder as a gypsy. “But why shouldn’t I keep that TV script in the kitchen salad bowl? If it’s there, I’m sure to see it when I want it.”
Meg loved him and made a great effort to conquer her Northern yearning for a well-run household, but it was a partial conquest that made her sometimes irritable and often confused and distracted. Like that time they were sailing for South America and couldn’t find their passports at the last moment…
Mrs. Devlin and Joe arrived just as the hasps of the suitcase were snapped shut. After a five minutes’ search for Hugh’s rubber snow boots, that should have been in the hall closet and were, strangely, under the dining table, Hugh departed with the Devlins, clutching the air-mail letter in one hand, and Meg was left to cope with Polly’s disconsolate wail: “But what shall I do-o-o?”
Maddelena took Polly into the kitchen to help make some cookies for dinner.
“Alone at last!” Gus took Meg in his arms and kissed her in the way that made her realize Mediterranean blood had its advantages. “What’s on your mind?”
“What makes
