Reunion

This is one about a brother and sister and the sister’s husband and the brother’s wife. The sister’s name was Rita Mason Johnston; she was married to Stuart Johnston, whose intimates called him Stu, which was appropriate only on special occasions. The brother was Bob Mason, originally and recently from Buchanan, Michigan, and in between whiles a respected resident of Los Angeles. His wife was a woman he had found in San Bernardino and married for some reason.

Rita had been named after a Philadelphia aunt with money. The flattered aunt had made Rita’s mother bring Rita east for a visit when the child was three or four. After that, until she met Stu, she had spent two-thirds of her time with her aunt or at schools of her aunt’s choosing. Her brother Bob, in bad health at fourteen, had gone to California to live with cousins or something. He had visited home only three times in nearly twenty years, and not once while Rita was there. So he and Rita hardly knew each other, you might say.

Johnston and Rita had become acquainted at a party following a Cornell-Pennsylvania football game. Johnston’s people were decent and well-off, and Rita’s aunt had encouraged the romance, which resulted in a wedding and a comfortable home at Sands Point, Long Island.

Bob Mason had first worked for a cousin in a Los Angeles real estate office, then had gone into business for himself, and finally saved enough to bring his wife to the old Michigan homestead, which had been left him by his father.

He and Jennie were perfectly satisfied with small-town life. Once in a while they visited Chicago, less than a hundred miles away, or drove up the lake shore or down into Indiana in Bob’s two-thousand-dollar automobile. In the past year they had been to Chicago three times and had attended three performances of Abie’s Irish Rose. It was the best play ever played; better, even, than Lightnin’.

“I honestly think we ought to do something about Rita,” said Jennie to Bob one June day. “Imagine a person not seeing their own sister in nearly twenty years!”

“I’d love to see her,” replied Bob, “and I wish you’d write her a letter. She don’t pay no attention to mine. I’ve asked her time and time again to come out here and stay as long as she likes, but she hasn’t even answered.”

“Well,” said Jennie, “I’ll write to her, although she still owes me a letter from last Christmas.”

“Stu,” said Rita to her husband, “we’ve simply got to do something about Bob and his wife. Heaven knows how many times he’s asked us to go out there and visit and now here is a letter from Jennie, inviting us again.”

“Well, why don’t you go? You’d enjoy it, seeing the old home and the people you used to play around with. I’d go along, but I haven’t the time.”

“Time! You have time to go to the Water Gap or up to Manchester for golf every two or three weeks. As for me wanting to see the old home, you know that’s silly!”

“Well, we won’t argue about it, but I’m certainly not going to waste my vacation in any hick town where they’ve probably got a six-hole course that you have to putt on with a niblick! Why can’t they come here?”

“I don’t suppose they could, but if you want me to, I’ll ask them.”

“Suit yourself. It’s your brother.”

The Bob Masons boarded The Wolverine at the nearby metropolis of Niles and got off some twenty hours later in New York’s Grand Central Station. Compared with the jump from California to Michigan, it seemed like once around on a roller coaster.

Rita met them and identified Bob by the initials on his suitcase. He wouldn’t have known her. She was the same age as Jennie, thirty-five, and he had expected her to look it. Instead, she looked ten years younger and was prettier than a member of the Buchanan Mason family had any right to be. And what clothes! Like those of the movie gals who had infested his Los Angeles.

“Why, sis, are you sure it’s you?”

“Am I changed?” she said, laughing.

“Not as much as you ought to be,” replied Bob. “That’s what makes it so hard to recognize you.”

“Well, you’ve changed,” said Rita. “Let’s see⁠—it’s twenty years, isn’t it? You were fourteen and naturally you didn’t have that mustache. But even if you were clean shaven, you wouldn’t be a bit like the Bob I remember. And this is Jennie,” she added. “Well!”

“Yes,” admitted Bob’s wife.

She smiled and Rita noticed her teeth for the first time. Most of the visible ones were of gold, and the work had evidently been done by a dentist for whom three members of a foursome were waiting. Rita, Bob, and Bob’s wife, escorted by a red cap, walked through the Biltmore and across Forty-third Street to where Gates was parked with Rita’s sedan. Gates observed the newcomers as he relieved the red cap of their meager baggage. “Sears, Roebuck,” he said to himself, for he had lived in Janesville, Wisconsin.

“Oh, we forgot to see about your trunks!” exclaimed Rita when the car had started.

“We didn’t bring no trunks,” said Bob.

“We can only stay two weeks,” said his wife.

“That seems like an awfully short visit,” Rita said.

“I know, but Bob don’t feel like he can stay away from the garden this time of year. We left old Jimmy Preston to take care of it, but nobody can be trusted to tend to another person’s garden like you would yourself.”

“Does the place look just the same?”

“I should say not! It was in terrible condition when he first came East.”

“Came East?”

“I mean, to Michigan. But Bob spent⁠—How much did you spend fixing things up, Bob, about?”

“Over two thousand dollars,” said Bob.

“I thought it was nearer twenty-one or twenty-two hundred,” said his wife.

“Well, somewhere over two thousand.”

“It was more than two thousand,” insisted his wife.

“Look out!” yelled Bob, and the two women jumped.

They were on the Fifty-ninth Street bridge and Gates was worming his way through the myriad trucks and funerals that prevail on that structure at 11 a.m.

“What’s the matter? You scared me to death!” said Rita.

“I thought we was going to hit that Reo,” Bob explained.

“Bob’s a nervous wreck when anybody else is driving,” apologized Jennie. “I often think a person who drives themselves is more liable to be nervous when somebody else is driving.”

“I guess that’s true,” agreed Rita, and reflected that she had heard this theory expounded before.

“And I do believe,” continued Jennie, “that Bob is just about the best driver in the world, and that’s not because he’s my husband, either.”

This remark caused Gates to turn around suddenly and look the speaker in the eye, and the sedan missed another Reo by a flea’s upper lip.

The road leading from New York to the towns on Long Island’s north shore is, for the most part, as scenically attractive as an incinerating plant. Nevertheless, Jennie kept saying “How beautiful!” and asking Rita who were the owners of various places which looked as if they had been disowned these many years. Bob was too nervous to make any effort to talk and Rita sighed with relief when the drive was over.

“I’ll show you your room,” she said, “and then you can rest till lunch. Stu is in the city and won’t be home till dinner. But he only goes in once or twice a week, and he said he would arrange not to go at all while you’re here, so he’d have plenty of time to visit.”

Jennie was impressed with the luxurious guest room and its outlook on the Sound, but Bob had slept badly on the train and dozed off while she was still marveling.

“I don’t suppose you feel like doing much this afternoon,” said Rita when lunch was over. “Maybe we’d better just loaf. I imagine that tomorrow and the rest of the week will be pretty strenuous. Stu has all kinds of plans.”

So they loafed, and Jennie and Rita took naps, and Bob walked around the yard and plotted the changes he would make in it if it were his.

Seven o’clock brought Stu, who was introduced to the in-laws and then ordered to his room to make himself presentable for dinner. Rita followed him upstairs.

“Well?” he said.

“I’m not sure yet,” said Rita, “but I’m kind of afraid⁠—Bob is awfully quiet and I guess she’s embarrassed to death. I hope they’ve brought some other clothes, but then I don’t know⁠—A change might be for the worse, though it doesn’t seem possible.”

“Does she think,” asked Stu, “that just because she’s from the Golden State she has to run around with a mouthful of nuggets?”

“She’s all right when she doesn’t smile. You mustn’t say anything what will make her smile.”

“That’s going to be tough,” said Stu. “You know what I am when I get started!”

“And another thing I just thought of,” said Rita. “He didn’t bring any golf clubs.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. I can fit him out.”

The host and hostess joined their guests on the porch. A Swedish girl served cocktails.

“Are these⁠—is it liquor?” asked Jennie.

“Just Bacardi, and they’re awfully mild,” said Rita.

“But Bob and I don’t indulge at all,” said Jennie.

“This wouldn’t be indulging,” urged Stu. “This is practically a soft drink.”

“I know, but it would be violating the letter of the law,” said Jennie.

So Rita and Stu drank alone and the four moved in to dinner.

“What time do you get up, Bob?” asked the host, at table.

“Six o’clock, in the summer,” replied his brother-in-law.

“Oh, well, there’s no need of that! But it would be nice if we could get through breakfast tomorrow at, say, nine o’clock. I’m going to take you to Piping Rock. We’ll make a day of it.”

“That’ll be fine,” said Bob.

“What do you go around in?” inquired his brother-in-law.

“I’ve got a 1924 Studebaker,” said Bob.

“No, no,” said Stu. “I mean your golf game.”

“Me? I haven’t any golf game. I never played golf in my life.”

Stu’s expression would have made Rita laugh if she hadn’t felt so sorry for him.

“Bob can’t see anything in golf,” explained Jennie. “He says it’s a sissy game. I tell him he ought to try it sometime and he might change his mind. Why don’t you try it while you’re here, Bob? Maybe Stuart would show you the fine points.”

The host seemed not to have heard this suggestion.

“They have got a links near Buchanan, between Buchanan and Niles,” said Bob, “but they charge fifty dollars to join and thirty-five dollars annual dues. That seems exorbitant.”

“It’s an outrage!” is what Stu was going to say, but Rita shook her head at him. “I think you’d find it was worth the money,” is what he said.

“Lots of our friends play,” said Jennie. “Some of the nicest people in both Niles and Buchanan belong to the club, so it can’t be as silly as Bob thinks. But he gets an idear in his head and you can’t change him.”

“What’s on tonight?” asked Stu as the dessert was served.

“Well,” said Rita, “I thought these people would want to get to bed early after their trip, so we won’t go anywhere. We might have a little bridge. Do you feel like bridge, Jennie?”

“I’m awfully sorry, but neither Bob or I play. I know it must be a wonderful game and some of our best friends play it a great deal, but somehow or other, Bob and I just never took it up.”

This was a terrific blow to Rita, who counted that day lost which was without its twenty or thirty rubbers.

“You miss something,” she said with remarkable self-control. “Shall we have our coffee on the porch? I think it’s pleasanter.”

“What do you smoke, Bob? Cigars or cigarettes?” inquired the host.

“Neither, thanks,” Bob replied. “I never cared for tobacco.”

“You’re lucky,” said Stu. “A cigarette, Jennie?”

“Mercy! It would kill me! Even the smell of smoke makes me dizzy.”

Stu and Rita evidently missed this statement for they proceeded to light their cigarettes.

“Is bridge hard to learn?” asked Jennie presently.

“Not very,” said Rita.

“I was wondering if maybe you and Stuart couldn’t teach it to Bob and I. Then we could have some games while we’re here.”

“Well,” said Rita, “it’s⁠—it’s a terribly hard game to learn, that is, to play it right.”

“You said it wasn’t,” put in Bob.

“Well, it isn’t, if you don’t care⁠—if you just⁠—But to learn to play it right, it’s impossible!”

“Have you got a radio?” asked Bob. He pronounced the “a” short, as in Buchanan.

“I’m sorry to say we haven’t,” said Stu, who wasn’t sorry at all.

“I don’t know how you get along without one,” said Bob.

“We just live for ours!” said Jennie.

“What is it, an Atwater-Kent?” asked Rita.

She had seen that name in some paper yesterday.

“No,” replied Bob. “It’s a Ware Neutrodyne, with a Type X receiver.”

“And an Ethovox horn,” added Jennie. “We had Omaha one night.”

“You did!” said Rita.

There was a silence, which was broken by Bob’s asking his sister how often she went to New York.

“Only when I can’t help myself, when I simply have to get something.”

“Don’t you never go to the theater?”

“Oh, yes, if it’s something especially good.”

“Of course,” said Jennie, “you’ve seen Abie’s Irish Rose?”

“Heavens, no!” said Rita. “Everybody says it’s terrible!”

“Well, it’s not terrible!” said Bob indignantly. “That is, if you’ve got anywheres near as good a company here as they have in Chicago.”

“I’d like to see the New York company,” said Jennie, “and see how they do compare.”

This met with no encouragement and another silence followed.

“Well, Bob,” said Stu at length, “you must do something for exercise. How about a little tennis in the morning?”

“That’s another game I don’t play,” Bob replied. “As for exercise, I get plenty of it fooling around the garden and monkeying with the car.”

“Then all I can suggest is that we put in the day fishing or swimming or just riding around in the launch.”

Bob was silent, but his wife spoke up.

“You know, Stuart, Bob’s ashamed to admit it, but being on the water makes him deathly sick, even if it’s as smooth as glass. And he can’t swim.”

Bob didn’t seem to relish this topic and turned to his sister.

“Do you remember the Allens in Buchanan, old Tom Allen and his family?”

“Kind of.”

“Did you hear about Louise Allen running away and getting married?”

“No.”

“Well, she ran away with Doc Marshall and got married. And at first old Tom was pretty near wild, but when Doc and Louise came back, why one day Doc was walking along the street and old Tom came along from the opposite direction and Doc spoke to him and called him by name and old Tom looked at him and asked him what he wanted, and Doc said he wanted to know if he’d forgave him. So old Tom said, ‘Forgiven you! Have you forgiven me, is the question.’ So Doc said, forgiven him for what, and old Tom said, for not killing her when she was a baby. This put the laugh on Doc and the boys have all been kidding him about it. I guess you didn’t know Doc.”

“No, I didn’t,” admitted Rita.

“Quite a card,” said Bob.

Jennie had picked up a book. “May Fair,” she read. “Is it good?”

“Yes,” said Rita. “It’s short stories by Michael Arlen; you know, the man who wrote The Green Hat.”

“A detective story?” asked Bob.

“No, Michael Arlen. He was here last spring and we met him. He’s awfully nice. He’s really an Armenian.”

“There’s an Armenian comes to Buchanan two or three times a year,” said Jennie. “But he sells linen.”

Upstairs, two or three hours later, Stu made a brief speech:

“My God! He doesn’t play golf, he doesn’t play tennis, he doesn’t play bridge, he doesn’t swim, fish, drink, or smoke. And I’d arranged these two weeks for a kind of a vacation! Hell’s bells!”

In the guest room Bob said:

“I certainly miss the old radio.”

“Yes,” said Jennie. “We’d be getting the Drake Hotel now.”

“I’d like to see the New York company in Abie’s Irish Rose,” said Jennie at breakfast next morning. “I’d like to compare them with the companies that’s in Chicago.”

“Did you see it in Chicago?” asked Stu.

“Three times,” said Jennie.

“You must be sick of it,” said Stu.

“I couldn’t get sick of it,” replied Jennie, “not if I saw it every night in the year.”

After breakfast Bob tried to read the Herald-Tribune, the World, and the Times, but couldn’t make head or tail of them. He wished he had a copy of the Chi Trib, even if it was two or three days old.

“Do you go to pictures much?” inquired Jennie of her hostess.

“Hardly ever,” said Rita.

“We’re very fond of them,” said Jennie. “You know, we lived in Los Angeles for a long time, and that’s right near Hollywood. So we often saw different stars in person. And some friends of ours knew Harold Lloyd and introduced us to him. You’d never know him without those glasses. He’s really handsome! And democratic!”

“What is he running for?” asked Stu.

“Nothing that I know of,” said Jennie. “Is he running for anything, Bob?”

“I don’t think so,” said Bob.

The morning dragged along and finally it was time for lunch and Stu broke a precedent by having seven highballs with his meal.

“They’ll make you sleepy,” warned Rita.

“What of it?” he said, and there seemed to be no answer.

Sure enough, Stu slept on the porch swing all afternoon while Jennie struggled with the first volume of The Peasants and Rita took Bob for a walk.

“Do you remember Tom Allen?” Bob asked her.

“I don’t believe so,” she answered.

“Oh, you must remember the Allens! They lived next door to the Deans. Well, anyway, Tom had a daughter, Louise, about our age, and she ran away with Doc Marshall and got married. Everybody thought old Tom would shoot Doc on sight, but when they met and Doc asked Tom to forgive him, old Tom said he was the one that ought to be asking forgiveness. So Doc said forgiveness for what, and old Tom said, for not killing Louise when she was a baby.”

Near the end of their walk, Bob asked:

“Don’t you never go to New York?”

“Hardly ever, and especially at this time of year. It’s so hot! But I suppose you and Jennie would like to see something of it. We’ll arrange to drive in before you go home.”

Stu woke up a little after five and took on a fresh cargo of Scotch before dinner.

“You certainly ought to get a radio!” said Bob as the clock struck nine.

At half past, everybody went to bed.

“This will be our third day here,” said Bob, dressing. “We don’t start home till a week from next Thursday.”

“Yes,” said Jennie absently.

“I’d wear my other suit today, but it’s all wrinkled up,” said Bob.

“I’ll ask Rita for an iron and press it out for you. Or maybe we could send it to a tailor.”

“Tailor! There’s no tailor within miles of here, or anything else as far as I can see!”

Stu wasn’t up for breakfast, but joined the party on the porch a little before lunch time. He had started in on a new bottle.

“Bob,” he said, “you ought to fall off the wagon. I’ve got some of the most able-bodied Scotch on Long Island.”

“Thanks,” said his brother-in-law. “I may be tempted before long.”

It was late in the afternoon when Bob said to Rita:

“Do you remember old Tom Allen?”

“I think so,” his sister replied. “Didn’t his daughter run away with some doctor?”

“Yes,” said Bob, “and⁠—”

He was interrupted by Stu’s voice, calling Rita from upstairs.

“Listen,” said Stu when she had answered his summons, “A telegram is coming for me tonight, saying that my grandfather is sick up in Bennington, Vermont, or some place, and for me to come at once. And he’s going to stay sick for at least ten days, so sick that I can’t leave him.”

“No, sir!” said Rita firmly. “You don’t do that to me!”

“Well, then, how about this? Suppose it’s one of our dearest friends that’s sick and we’ve both got to go. Do you think they’d go home? You see, we could pack up some baggage and run in to New York and stay over night if necessary, and come back here after they’re gone.”

“If they ever found out, I couldn’t forgive myself.”

“They won’t. You let me plan it and we’ll spring it after dinner. I wouldn’t be so desperate if I hadn’t just got so I could break an eighty-five and if I don’t keep after it I’ll be back in the nineties.”

But after dinner, while Rita and Stu were sparring for an opening, Jennie said:

“Folks, I hope you won’t think we are crazy, but Bob is, almost. He’s worried to death about his garden. He read in the paper this morning that there’s a regular drought threatened all through southern Michigan. We were afraid of it, because it hadn’t rained for a long time before we left. And now it looks like everything would be ruined unless he gets back there and tends to things himself. We left old Jimmy Preston to look out for things, but you can’t trust things to an outsider. Bob feels like if he was there, he could see that things were taken care of. The garden will get plenty of water if Bob is there to see to it, but if he isn’t, there’s no telling what will happen. So if you’ll forgive us, we’re thinking about starting home on The Wolverine tomorrow afternoon.”

“Well!” said Rita.

“Well!” said Stu.

“Of course,” said Rita, “you know best, and it would be a shame to have your whole garden spoiled. But it does seem⁠—But of course we wouldn’t dream of urging⁠—”

“We’ve simply got to go, sis,” said Bob. “And another thing: Don’t bother about coming in to New York with us. Just send us in your car tomorrow forenoon, say, and we’ll have time to look around a little before we catch the train.”

The Masons were in their room at the Biltmore.

“It’s eight dollars a day without meals,” said Bob, “but we can eat out, some place where it’s not expensive, and besides, it’s only for a week. Tonight,” he went on, “Abie’s Irish Rose. Tomorrow morning the top of the Woolworth Building. Tomorrow afternoon, Coney. Thursday night, Abie again. After that, we’ll see.”

Jennie laughed nervously.

“I’ll be petrified every time we leave the hotel,” she said. “Suppose we should meet them on the street!”

“There’s no danger of that,” said Bob. “Sis never comes to town in summer and Stuart is taking a vacation. What I’m afraid of is that they’ll run acrost some article on the weather conditions in the Middle West and see where we’ve had the rainiest summer since 1902.”