After I had my breakfast, it was only around noon, and I wasn’t meeting old Sally
till two o’clock, so I started taking this long walk. I couldn’t stop thinking about those two
nuns. I kept thinking about that beatup old straw basket they went around collecting
money with when they weren’t teaching school. I kept trying to picture my mother or
somebody, or my aunt, or Sally Hayes’s crazy mother, standing outside some department
store and collecting dough for poor people in a beat-up old straw basket. It was hard to
picture. Not so much my mother, but those other two. My aunt’s pretty charitable–she
does a lot of Red Cross work and all–but she’s very well-dressed and all, and when she
does anything charitable she’s always very well-dressed and has lipstick on and all that
crap. I couldn’t picture her doing anything for charity if she had to wear black clothes and
no lipstick while she was doing it. And old Sally Hayes’s mother. Jesus Christ. The only
way she could go around with a basket collecting dough would be if everybody kissed
her ass for her when they made a contribution. If they just dropped their dough in her
basket, then walked away without saying anything to her, ignoring her and all, she’d quit
in about an hour. She’d get bored. She’d hand in her basket and then go someplace
swanky for lunch. That’s what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that
they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It made me so damn sad when I thought
about it, their never going anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn’t too
important, but it made me sad anyway.
I started walking over toward Broadway, just for the hell of it, because I hadn’t
been over there in years. Besides, I wanted to find a record store that was open on
Sunday. There was this record I wanted to get for Phoebe, called “Little Shirley Beans.”
It was a very hard record to get. It was about a little kid that wouldn’t go out of the house
because two of her front teeth were out and she was ashamed to. I heard it at Pencey. A
boy that lived on the next floor had it, and I tried to buy it off him because I knew it
would knock old Phoebe out, but he wouldn’t sell it. It was a very old, terrific record that
this colored girl singer, Estelle Fletcher, made about twenty years ago. She sings it very
Dixieland and whorehouse, and it doesn’t sound at all mushy. If a white girl was singing
it, she’d make it sound cute as hell, but old Estelle Fletcher knew what the hell she was
doing, and it was one of the best records I ever heard. I figured I’d buy it in some store
that was open on Sunday and then I’d take it up to the park with me. It was Sunday and
Phoebe goes rollerskating in the park on Sundays quite frequently. I knew where she
hung out mostly.
It wasn’t as cold as it was the day before, but the sun still wasn’t out, and it wasn’t
too nice for walking. But there was one nice thing. This family that you could tell just
came out of some church were walking right in front of me–a father, a mother, and a
little kid about six years old. They looked sort of poor. The father had on one of those
pearl-gray hats that poor guys wear a lot when they want to look sharp. He and his wife
were just walking along, talking, not paying any attention to their kid. The kid was swell.
He was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, but right next to the curb. He
was making out like he was walking a very straight line, the way kids do, and the whole
time he kept singing and humming. I got up closer so I could hear what he was singing.
He was singing that song, “If a body catch a body coming through the rye.” He had a
pretty little voice, too. He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell. The cars
zoomed by, brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and
he kept on walking next to the curb and singing “If a body catch a body coming through
the rye.” It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed any more.
Broadway was mobbed and messy. It was Sunday, and only about twelve o’clock,
but it was mobbed anyway. Everybody was on their way to the movies–the Paramount or
the Astor or the Strand or the Capitol or one of those crazy places. Everybody was all
dressed up, because it was Sunday, and that made it worse. But the worst part was that
you could tell they all wanted to go to the movies. I couldn’t stand looking at them. I can
understand somebody going to the movies because there’s nothing else to do, but when
somebody really wants to go, and even walks fast so as to get there quicker, then it
depresses hell out of me. Especially if I see millions of people standing in one of those
long, terrible lines, all the way down the block, waiting with this terrific patience for seats
and all. Boy, I couldn’t get off that goddam Broadway fast enough. I was lucky. The first
record store I went into had a copy of “Little Shirley Beans.” They charged me five bucks
for it, because it was so hard to get, but I didn’t care. Boy, it made me so happy all of a
sudden. I could hardly wait to get to the park to see if old Phoebe was around so that I
could give it to her.
When I came out of the record store, I passed this drugstore, and I went in. I
figured maybe I’d give old Jane a buzz and see if she was home for vacation yet. So I
went in a phone booth and called her up. The only trouble was, her mother answered the
phone, so I had to hang up. I didn’t feel like getting involved in a long conversation and
all with her. I’m not crazy about talking to girls’ mothers on the phone anyway. I
should’ve at least asked her if Jane was home yet, though. It wouldn’t have killed me. But
I didn’t feel like it. You really have to be in the mood for that stuff.
I still had to get those damn theater tickets, so I bought a paper and looked up to
see what shows were playing. On account of it was Sunday, there were only about three
shows playing. So what I did was, I went over and bought two orchestra seats for I Know
My Love. It was a benefit performance or something. I didn’t much want to see it, but I
knew old Sally, the queen of the phonies, would start drooling all over the place when I
told her I had tickets for that, because the Lunts were in it and all. She liked shows that
are supposed to be very sophisticated and dry and all, with the Lunts and all. I don’t. I
don’t like any shows very much, if you want to know the truth. They’re not as bad as
movies, but they’re certainly nothing to rave about. In the first place, I hate actors. They
never act like people. They just think they do. Some of the good ones do, in a very slight
way, but not in a way that’s fun to watch. And if any actor’s really good, you can always
tell he knows he’s good, and that spoils it. You take Sir Laurence Olivier, for example. I
saw him in Hamlet. D.B. took Phoebe and I to see it last year. He treated us to lunch first,
and then he took us. He’d already seen it, and the way he talked about it at lunch, I was
anxious as hell to see it, too. But I didn’t enjoy it much. I just don’t see what’s so
marvelous about Sir Laurence Olivier, that’s all. He has a terrific voice, and he’s a helluva
handsome guy, and he’s very nice to watch when he’s walking or dueling or something,
but he wasn’t at all the way D.B. said Hamlet was. He was too much like a goddam
general, instead of a sad, screwed-up type guy. The best part in the whole picture was
when old Ophelia’s brother–the one that gets in the duel with Hamlet at the very end–
was going away and his father was giving him a lot of advice. While the father kept
giving him a lot of advice, old Ophelia was sort of horsing around with her brother,
taking his dagger out of the holster, and teasing him and all while he was trying to look
interested in the bull his father was shooting. That was nice. I got a big bang out of that.
But you don’t see that kind of stuff much. The only thing old Phoebe liked was when
Hamlet patted this dog on the head. She thought that was funny and nice, and it was.
What I’ll have to do is, I’ll have to read that play. The trouble with me is, I always have to
read that stuff by myself. If an actor acts it out, I hardly listen. I keep worrying about
whether he’s going to do something phony every minute.
After I got the tickets to the Lunts’ show, I took a cab up to the park. I should’ve
taken a subway or something, because I was getting slightly low on dough, but I wanted
to get off that damn Broadway as fast as I could.
It was lousy in the park. It wasn’t too cold, but the sun still wasn’t out, and there
didn’t look like there was anything in the park except dog crap and globs of spit and cigar
butts from old men, and the benches all looked like they’d be wet if you sat down on
them. It made you depressed, and every once in a while, for no reason, you got goose
flesh while you walked. It didn’t seem at all like Christmas was coming soon. It didn’t
seem like anything was coming. But I kept walking over to the Mall anyway, because
that’s where Phoebe usually goes when she’s in the park. She likes to skate near the
bandstand. It’s funny. That’s the same place I used to like to skate when I was a kid.
When I got there, though, I didn’t see her around anywhere. There were a few kids
around, skating and all, and two boys were playing Flys Up with a soft ball, but no
Phoebe. I saw one kid about her age, though, sitting on a bench all by herself, tightening
her skate. I thought maybe she might know Phoebe and could tell me where she was or
something, so I went over and sat down next to her and asked her, “Do you know Phoebe
Caulfield, by any chance?”
“Who?” she said. All she had on was jeans and about twenty sweaters. You could
tell her mother made them for her, because they were lumpy as hell.
“Phoebe Caulfield. She lives on Seventy-first Street. She’s in the fourth grade,
over at–”
“You know Phoebe?”
“Yeah, I’m her brother. You know where she is?”
“She’s in Miss Callon’s class, isn’t she?” the kid said.
“I don’t know. Yes, I think she is.”
“She’s prob’ly in the museum, then. We went last Saturday,” the kid said.
“Which museum?” I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders, sort of. “I don’t know,” she said. “The museum.”
“I know, but the one where the pictures are, or the one where the Indians are?”
“The one where the Indians.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said. I got up and started to go, but then I suddenly remembered
it was Sunday. “This is Sunday,” I told the kid.
She looked up at me. “Oh. Then she isn’t.”
She was having a helluva time tightening her skate. She didn’t have any gloves on
or anything and her hands were all red and cold. I gave her a hand with it. Boy, I hadn’t
had a skate key in my hand for years. It didn’t feel funny, though. You could put a skate
key in my hand fifty years from now, in pitch dark, and I’d still know what it is. She
thanked me and all when I had it tightened for her. She was a very nice, polite little kid.
God, I love it when a kid’s nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or
something. Most kids are. They really are. I asked her if she’d care to have a hot
chocolate or something with me, but she said no, thank you. She said she had to meet her
friend. Kids always have to meet their friend. That kills me.
Even though it was Sunday and Phoebe wouldn’t be there with her class or
anything, and even though it was so damp and lousy out, I walked all the way through the
park over to the Museum of Natural History. I knew that was the museum the kid with
the skate key meant. I knew that whole museum routine like a book. Phoebe went to the
same school I went to when I was a kid, and we used to go there all the time. We had this
teacher, Miss Aigletinger, that took us there damn near every Saturday. Sometimes we
looked at the animals and sometimes we looked at the stuff the Indians had made in
ancient times. Pottery and straw baskets and all stuff like that. I get very happy when I
think about it. Even now. I remember after we looked at all the Indian stuff, usually we
went to see some movie in this big auditorium. Columbus. They were always showing
Columbus discovering America, having one helluva time getting old Ferdinand and
Isabella to lend him the dough to buy ships with, and then the sailors mutinying on him
and all. Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot
of candy and gum and stuff with you, and the inside of that auditorium had such a nice
smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn’t, and you were in the
only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. I remember you had
to go through the Indian Room to get to the auditorium. It was a long, long room, and you
were only supposed to whisper. The teacher would go first, then the class. You’d be two
rows of kids, and you’d have a partner. Most of the time my partner was this girl named
Gertrude Levine. She always wanted to hold your hand, and her hand was always sticky
or sweaty or something. The floor was all stone, and if you had some marbles in your
hand and you dropped them, they bounced like madmen all over the floor and made a
helluva racket, and the teacher would hold up the class and go back and see what the hell
was going on. She never got sore, though, Miss Aigletinger. Then you’d pass by this long,
long Indian war canoe, about as long as three goddam Cadillacs in a row, with about
twenty Indians in it, some of them paddling, some of them just standing around looking
tough, and they all had war paint all over their faces. There was one very spooky guy in
the back of the canoe, with a mask on. He was the witch doctor. He gave me the creeps,
but I liked him anyway. Another thing, if you touched one of the paddles or anything
while you were passing, one of the guards would say to you, “Don’t touch anything,
children,” but he always said it in a nice voice, not like a goddam cop or anything. Then
you’d pass by this big glass case, with Indians inside it rubbing sticks together to make a
fire, and a squaw weaving a blanket. The squaw that was weaving the blanket was sort of
bending over, and you could see her bosom and all. We all used to sneak a good look at
it, even the girls, because they were only little kids and they didn’t have any more bosom
than we did. Then, just before you went inside the auditorium, right near the doors, you
passed this Eskimo. He was sitting over a hole in this icy lake, and he was fishing
through it. He had about two fish right next to the hole, that he’d already caught. Boy, that
museum was full of glass cases. There were even more upstairs, with deer inside them
drinking at water holes, and birds flying south for the winter. The birds nearest you were
all stuffed and hung up on wires, and the ones in back were just painted on the wall, but
they all looked like they were really flying south, and if you bent your head down and
sort of looked at them upside down, they looked in an even bigger hurry to fly south. The
best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was.
Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would
still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south,
the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their
pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that
same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be
you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that, exactly. You’d just
be different, that’s all. You’d have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your
partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you’d have a new partner. Or you’d
have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you’d heard your
mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you’d just passed by one of
those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you’d be different in
some way–I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.
I took my old hunting hat out of my pocket while I walked, and put it on. I knew I
wouldn’t meet anybody that knew me, and it was pretty damp out. I kept walking and
walking, and I kept thinking about old Phoebe going to that museum on Saturdays the
way I used to. I thought how she’d see the same stuff I used to see, and how she’d be
different every time she saw it. It didn’t exactly depress me to think about it, but it didn’t
make me feel gay as hell, either. Certain things they should stay the way they are. You
ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I
know that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway. Anyway, I kept thinking about all that
while I walked.
I passed by this playground and stopped and watched a couple of very tiny kids
on a seesaw. One of them was sort of fat, and I put my hand on the skinny kid’s end, to
sort of even up the weight, but you could tell they didn’t want me around, so I let them
alone.
Then a funny thing happened. When I got to the museum, all of a sudden I
wouldn’t have gone inside for a million bucks. It just didn’t appeal to me–and here I’d
walked through the whole goddam park and looked forward to it and all. If Phoebe’d been
there, I probably would have, but she wasn’t. So all I did, in front of the museum, was get
a cab and go down to the Biltmore. I didn’t feel much like going. I’d made that damn date
with Sally, though.