“Well, why don’t they use them then?” asked Douglas. He began to gaze over the rooftops.
“Come down here where I can talk to you. I don’t like shouting at the top of my lungs.”
“I can hear you okay,” said Douglas, climbing a little higher.
Mrs. Bridge found herself getting furious with him, and was annoyed with herself because it was all really so trivial. Besides, she had begun to feel rather foolish standing under a tree waving a towel and addressing someone who was probably invisible to any of the neighbors who might be watching. All she could see of him were his tennis shoes and one leg. Then, too, she knew he was right, partly right in any event; even so, when you had guests you put guest towels in the bathroom. That was what everyone did, it was what she did, and it was most definitely what she intended to continue doing.
“They always just use their handkerchief or something,” said Douglas moodily from high above.
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Bridge. “From now on you leave those towels alone.”
There was no answer from the tree.
“Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” said Douglas.
14 • LATE FOR DINNER
Not long after the battle of the guest towels he came in late for dinner, and when asked for a suitable explanation he announced with no apparent concern, yet with a faint note of apology discernible in his tone as though he had let himself be tricked, “I got depantsed.”
“You what?” Mrs. Bridge exclaimed, clutching her napkin. She and the girls were halfway through dinner, having decided not to wait on him any longer. Mr. Bridge was not yet home from the office.
Douglas stepped over the seat of his chair as if it were a hurdle and sat down astraddle. This was a habit that exasperated his mother; he knew it and she knew he knew it.
“Why must you do that?” she asked. She was relieved he had come home, but she could not help scolding now that she knew he was safe.
“Do what?”
“You know perfectly well what.”
Every time they argued about the way he got into his chair he proceeded to explain that he did it in order to save wear and tear on the carpet. It was his theory that if he pulled out the chair every time, it would soon wear a groove in the carpet, and he was only trying to save things from wearing out because she was always telling him not to be so hard on the furniture. This was the way the argument went; it was quite familiar to everyone.
“Now,” said Mrs. Bridge, settling the napkin in her lap and beginning to butter a hot biscuit, “let’s start all over again.” As soon as she said this she regretted it.
“They depantsed me,” Douglas repeated cheerfully.
“What are you talking about?”
“They took my pants and threw them up on top of Goldfarb’s garage.”
“Who did?” she said, putting down the biscuit.
Carolyn, who often imitated her mother, also stopped eating and assumed a severe expression. Ruth quietly went on with dinner.
“Oh,” said Douglas, “the guys. You know. Tim and Louie and those guys.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.” He was not greatly interested in the conversation. He began to help himself to everything on the table, building a mound of food just high enough to exceed the limits of good manners but not quite high enough to draw fire from his mother. He was quite conscious, however, that she was observing the size of the helpings.
“Well, for heaven’s sake, they must have had a reason. Hadn’t you done something to provoke them?”
“Nope. We were just wrestling in the vacant lot—sort of gang piling, you know—and I was on the bottom and then just all of a sudden they decided to depants me, that’s all.” He was ladling gravy onto his plate; he had built a semi-circular dam out of mashed potatoes and was making the lake with gravy.
“Now that’s enough, do you hear?”
With a pained expression he put down the gravy and began looking around for something else.
“I simply can’t understand why they would do a thing like that,” she went on, half to herself.
“They just felt like depantsing somebody, I guess,” Douglas went on obligingly, “and I was on the bottom, that’s all. We depantsed Eliot Hoff a couple of weeks ago and he yelled bloody murder and cried all over the place.”
“All right, all right, that’ll do,” said Mrs. Bridge. “I think we’ve covered the situation.”
“How did you get them back?” asked Carolyn.
“Oh, I just climbed the telephone pole and there’s a big cable that leads over to Shafer’s garage, so after I got there I just took a run and jumped across to Goldfarb’s garage.” He was becoming voluble now. “Those garages look pretty close together from this side of the fence, but when you get up there, why, they’re not, because I didn’t think I was going to make it. I was just up there like the man on the flying trapeze without any pants and—”
“That will do!” Mrs. Bridge interrupted, looking him firmly in the eye.
“Well, gee whiz—”
“The subject is closed.”
“Okay, okay,” he muttered, and reached suddenly for the gravy.
15 • HOLIDAY NEWS
On the fifteenth of each month there appeared in the south side of Kansas City a magazine called The Tattler. It was very thin—sixteen pages of coated ivory stock—but the format was large: it was about half the size of a newspaper. The typography, for reasons known only to the publisher, was in the style of 1910. The Tattler was Kansas City’s magazine of society; it consisted of photographs of significant brides, of visiting celebrities feted at the homes of wealthy Kansas Citians, and pictures of subscribers, together with long lists of names of those who had either given or attended social affairs during the month. These lists of names were so long that it was found advisable to break them up into paragraphs and from time to time to insert a description of something—anything—that was reasonably pertinent. A typical entry:
Seen wolfing the delicious hors d’oeuvres at the charming Lane Terrace residence of the Bob Brewers (she, née Nancy Page of Santa Barbara, California) a week ago Tuesday-last were Humboldt Aupp, Jr., Buzz Duncan with his captivating guest from Dixie, Lola Anne Sharpe in a positively stunning cardinal gown with net bodice; Nathalie Blakely, Gordon A. Spencer III home with Yule tidings from Yale, Jo Power with her sister-in-law from Gotham, Mrs. Andrew Koeppel and hubby (he the newly appointed chairman of the board of Koeppel, Koeppel & Ingle), the McKinney twins indistinguishable in saffron except for Wendy’s rhinestone bracelet and Lt. Hal Graves, and last but far from least in stunning shell pink taffeta aglow with sequins, Mrs. Albert Tate fascinated by Mrs. Russ Arlen on the topic of Bermuda.
There followed a list of about thirty names, a description of the rumpus room, and more names.
The Tattler mentioned Mrs. and Mrs. Bridge whenever they were present at a major social function, and occasionally took their picture. The most memorable photograph of Mrs. Bridge was taken during a family vacation in Colorado. She had always been rather fond of horses, and before her marriage she used to go riding. In recent years, however, she had not had much to do with horses, partly because she was growing stout and was apprehensive that from certain angles she might not cut so sleek a figure in jodhpurs as she used to. In fact, at the time this picture was taken, she had not been on a horse for about ten years. The