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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781581952506 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Steerforth Press |
| Publication date: | 03/13/2012 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 245 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
When Dawn Powell died in 1965, virtually all her books were out of print. Not a single historical survey of American literature mentioned her, even in passing. And so she slept, seemingly destined to be forgotten – or, to put it more exactly, never to be remembered.
How things have changed! Numerous novels by Dawn Powell are currently available, along with her diaries and short stories. She has joined the Library of America, admitted to the illustrious company of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Adams, Frederick Douglass, and Edith Wharton. She is taught in college and read with delight on vacation. For the contemporary poet and novelist Lisa Zeidner, writing inThe New York Times Book Review, Powell “is wittier than Dorothy Parker, dissects the rich better than F. Scott Fitzgerald, is more plaintive than Willa Cather in her evocation of the heartland, and has a more supple control of satirical voice than Evelyn Waugh.” For his part, Gore Vidal offered a simple reason for Powell’s sudden popularity in the early Twentieth Century: “We are catching up to her.”
Dawn Powell was born in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, on November 28, 1896, the second of three daughters. Her father was a traveling salesman, and her mother died a few days after Dawn turned seven. After enduring great cruelty at the hands of her stepmother, Dawn ran away at the age of thirteen and eventually arrived at the home of her maternal aunt, who served hot meals to travelers emerging from the train station across the street. Dawn worked her way through college and made it to New York. There she married a young advertising executive and had one child, a boy who suffered from autism, then an unknown condition.
Powell referred to herself as a “permanent visitor” in her adopted Manhattan and brought to her writing a perspective gained from her upbringing in Middle America. She knew many of the great writers of her time, and Diana Trilling famously said it was Dawn “who really says the funny things for which Dorothy Parker gets credit.” Ernest Hemingway called her his “favorite living writer.” She was one of America’ s great novelists, and yet when she died in 1965 she was buried in an unmarked grave in New York’s Potter’s Field.
Read an Excerpt
Angels on Toast
By Dawn Powell
Steerforth Press
Copyright © 1996 First Steerforth Press editionAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-58195-250-6
CHAPTER 1
There was a bottle of Robinson's B.E.B. right in Lou's bag but Jay Oliver wasn't interested.
"The hell with cooping up here in the compartment," he said. "Let's go down to the club car. I like to see people."
"I don't," said Lou. "I got things on my mind."
The porter brought the ice, glasses and soda.
"Okay," sighed Jay. "I might as well stick around a minute."
He sat down and kicked his shoes off. They lay on the floor jauntily toeing out, reddish brown, sleek, very much Jay Oliver. He crossed his stockinged feet on the seat opposite and viewed them complacently, marked the neat way the crimson clocks in the gray hose matched the herring-bone stripe in his blue suit.
"Paid four fifty for these socks," he stated briefly.
Lou took his suit coat off and hung it in the closet. He had put on about ten pounds in the last year, but there was something about a little extra weight that gave a man a certain authority, he thought. All right so long as it didn't get him in the middle and he'd have to watch it so that he didn't blow up like his old man had. One ninety was all right for five-eleven — he could carry it because of his big shoulders — but two hundred was the beginning of the end. Even this ten pounds made him a touch short of wind and made sitting around in his clothes uncomfortable. He undid his collar — he wore a separate white with his new imported colored shirts — hung up the tie, a Sulka clover-leaf pattern, over the hanger, then sat down beside Jay's feet.
"Some shirt there, Lou," said Jay. "What'd it set you back?"
"Eighteen bucks," said Lou. "I swore I'd never wear a pink shirt but it was the goods that got me. Feel that material."
"Say!"
Jay leafed over the American and folded it at the sporting page so that the crouching figure of a Northwestern star, football under arm, seemed ready to whiz past Lou in a perpetual touchdown. Jay was still a little sore because Lou wouldn't wait over for the fight that night and plane out the next day, but he'd get over it. Lou hadn't told him that he had his reasons for booking the General. You don't have to tell all you know.
"If we got to take a train, why couldn't we have taken the bedroom train on the Century?" complained Jay. "Give me the New York Central any day. I took the Commodore Vanderbilt out of New York last month and slept like a baby. Not a jolt."
"Ah, you can't beat the General," said Lou. "You got to admit the Pennsylvania's got a smoother roadbed."
So far as he was concerned Jay could get out if he wanted to and let him do some thinking. Jay was all right, Jay was his best friend but a little bit of Jay went a long way. Lately, although their businesses were not the same, they seemed to be in everything together, and you can't have even a best friend knowing every damn move you make. Or was Jay his best friend? Jay was Whittleby Cotton and Whittleby Cotton was really his best friend. If Jay was ever eased out there his successor would be Lou's best friend.
"What's your wife think of your opening a New York branch?" Jay asked.
"What would I be telling her for?" Lou wanted to know. "I don't go round looking for trouble."
He was still disturbed by Mary refusing to say good-bye to him. He had been jumping in and out of town at a minute's notice for years, hell, that was his business, and she had never uttered a peep until this morning. What did she know? What did she suspect?
"You just got back from New York three days ago," she had said. "We've scarcely had one evening together since I got back from my cruise. I can't understand why you can't handle these things by telephone the way other men do."
"Honey, you wouldn't understand even if I told you," he answered breezily. "I'd be wasting my time."
"I really believe," she said in a low voice and then he realized she was serious about it, "you prefer being away from home."
So he explained how tricky his New York contracts were and how he had to keep feeding them in person — telegrams and telephone calls were never effective, but while he was talking she quietly rose and left the table, her coffee and the toast she had just buttered, untouched on her plate. He had always been glad Mary had been so well brought up that she wouldn't dream of making a scene; but this silent indignation could get your goat just as much as a couple of plates flying through the air. He started to go after her, then shrugged, you can't let these things get you. When he called out good-bye to her a few minutes later there was no answer from behind the closed bedroom door. The baby had been sick so he did not dare stop to say good-bye to her either, for fear she might be sleeping. Outside he looked up at the bedroom window, half-expecting Mary to be there waving goodbye, but the shade was drawn to shut out the sun — that meant she had one of her headaches — those headaches, he suspected, that came from controlling her feelings too well. It annoyed him now that such a little thing as his wife's unusual parting mood should cross his mind when he had so many important things to think of — a lot more than old Jay could ever guess. There was the matter of his ex-wife showing up in Chicago, old Fran whom he'd never expected to see again. As long as she hung around town there was the danger of Mary finding out he'd been married before. He was a closemouthed man and after he and Fran broke up, so long as she seemed unlikely ever to bob up again, he saw no necessity for going into all that business with the new friends he made in Chicago. By the time he and Mary were married it would have been senseless to bring up the matter. No reason why not, but it would be hard to explain that the sole reason for his keeping it secret was that he liked to forget the ups and downs of his life before he settled in the West. With old Fran running around Chicago, goodness knows what Mary was likely to hear. Smart man that he was he had certainly outsmarted himself in not making some deal with Fran last time he saw her to keep out of his territory. It was not like him to make such mistakes.
What really was on Mary's mind, he wondered. A little flea-bite, that's all it was, but that closed silent door of hers leaped out of the page of Jay's newspaper where the touch-down hero should be. It stuck out of flying Indiana villages, diminished, it winked at him from the highball glass in his hand. Lou clenched his fist and socked the green plush cushions. He could handle anything if he only knew what it was, but he hated being tormented with these trifles he did not understand. His wife not saying good-bye to him and then Judge Harrod, his wife's uncle, cutting him, sitting back there in the club car this very minute smoking a Perfecto and reading The Atlantic Monthly as intently as if it was the stock closing news — so intently that he did not see Lou's outstretched hand.
"Nuts," said Lou clearly and finished his drink.
Jay freshened up their glasses.
"Flo will tell Mary you're getting N.Y. offices," he said cheerfully. "Flo can't keep her trap shut five minutes."
Sure, Flo would tell her. That is, if Mary gave her the chance. Flo had met them at the Drake for lunch and heard them talking over the plans. Jay's main office had been in New York for years so he had plenty of suggestions, and Flo put in her oar now and then, as if she was an old New Yorker. Mary wouldn't mind not having been told the business details, she never showed much interest in the office anyway, but what would hurt her would be the fact that Lou hadn't asked her downtown for lunch when Jay had his wife down, especially when she loved eating in the Cape Cod Room as Lou well knew. Those were the things that hurt Mary, and the things that were least important to Lou. The point was that Jay took care of those little matters because he had a guilty conscience, but you couldn't explain that to Mary or she'd remember it someday when he, Lou, might have a guilty conscience himself and be fixing it up with a nice luncheon. Jay figured that if he buttered up his wife before every trip and brought her a present afterward it gave him his freedom.
"Personally, Lou, I'd take the Rockefeller Plaza office," said Jay. "It's central, and you got your address. Unless you think you'd get more prestige out of the Empire State building. Personally, I don't think you will."
Was anybody asking for advice?
"You don't need a whole floor, you know," pursued Jay. "You don't need a lot of antique furniture. All you need is a desk, a telephone and a good-looking receptionist."
"I suppose you'll pick her out," said Lou.
"I could," said Jay. "I know how to pick."
"I was thinking of a nice older type," said Lou with a straight face. "Lavender gray marcel, lorgnette, class, yes, but the mother type."
Jay gave a snort of laughter.
"Get a blonde and let me age her," he suggested. "Listen, Lou, no kidding, though, you don't need to set up a palace suite like you've got in Chicago. In New York when they see a swell suite of offices they think Chase National's just about to take over. Keep it simple."
How about letting Lou Donovan take care of his own business in his own way?
"I got my eye on a log cabin," said Lou, "unless you think I could do with one of those Hudson River coal barges."
"Indiana is a lousy state," said Jay looking out the window. "Take South Bend. Or Terre Haute. Flo wants to buy a melon farm down by Vincennes but I say if we buy any farm it'll be in Pennsylvania. That's a state."
"You going straight to the Waldorf?" asked Lou. "I got a suite reserved if you want to bunk with me."
Jay took out a pearl-handled knife and began paring his nails.
"Can't stay at the Waldorf," he said. "That's where I stay when I'm with Flo. I'll be at the Roosevelt."
"Looking for a little party?" Lou asked.
Jay shook his head.
"Ebie?" Lou asked, getting the idea finally.
Jay nodded.
"Getting on at Pittsburgh," he said.
Lou shrugged.
"Give me a hand with her if any of Flo's relations pop up, will you?" Jay asked.
Lou didn't say anything. Jay made more trouble for himself taking chances that way, saying good-bye to his wife at one station and picking up Ebie at the next. And like as not he would go into the club car any minute now and try to promote the first skirt he saw till Ebie got on. If he, Lou, was as scared of his wife as Jay was of Flo he'd give up running around, or else get out and stop making excuses. Lou used to run around but since he'd been married to Mary he kept out of trouble, still doing what he liked when he liked but in out-of-the-way sectors and on a strictly casual basis. Jay was forty, all tied up by Flo, but so afraid he'd miss something he could never enjoy what he already had. He said it was because he'd been in a t.b. sanitarium once for six years and always felt he had to make up for lost time. He couldn't say good night to a hat-check girl without getting all messed up in something, though. His friends were always fixing up Flo so she wouldn't walk out whenever she found out things. She never found out anything she didn't want to, though, she knew when to play dumb and get a booby prize of a new car or bracelet. It annoyed Lou for Jay, a pal of his, to never learn any technique, to go on that way, walking into trouble.
"All right, say it, you don't like the idea of Ebie," Jay said when Lou was silent.
Lou shrugged again.
"Ebie's a good egg," said Jay. "I always go back to Ebie. Don't get the idea she's a tramp just because she's an artist. Ebie's all right."
"Ebie's all right, then," said Lou. It was nothing to him what his friends did, but it irritated him to see a smart guy like old Oliver, a guy who pulled down between twenty and forty thousand a year, let any one woman get a hold on him. Ebie was a commercial artist, she hung on to her job, but how, nobody knew, because she skipped all over the country at a telegram from Jay. Jay thought she wasn't a gold-digger because she had gone to Art School and made her own clothes and asked for loans instead of out-and-out presents. You couldn't tell him anything.
"Oh, I admit she's not F.F.V. like your wife," said Jay, a little nastily just because Mary was not friendly with Lou's office connections, "but she's good-hearted. She'd give me the shirt off her back."
"I'll bet," said Lou.
"I think a hell of a lot of Ebie," said Jay. "Ebie's done a lot for me. Ebie's a darn good egg."
No sense in making him touchy.
"Ebie's all right on a party," said Lou. "You can have a good time with Ebie."
He was willing to bet money that anybody could have a good time with Ebie, if Jay only knew it.
"Ah, but there's more to Ebie than that," insisted Jay. "Ebie's got a deep side. Everybody sees those blonde curls and gets the idea she's a featherbrain, but I wish I had her mind. The other night we were sitting around listening to 'True or False,' and Ebie could answer four out of every five questions just like that. Reads everything."
"I'm surprised you don't cut loose and marry her," Lou said drily.
Jay Oliver was visibly shocked.
"Marry Ebie? Listen, you can't marry a woman that makes love as well as Ebie," he said. "You know that, Lou."
It was warmish in the little room in spite of air-condition and fans. Lou got up and propped the door open. It was one of those unexpected impulses he often had at certain moments that made him think he was born lucky, for a minute before or a minute later would have been wrong. This was the exact instant that a tall stooped man in loose gray suit was making his way down the corridor and Lou's hand was immediately outstretched.
"Well, Judge Harrod," he saluted him, "I didn't get a chance to speak to you in the club car. Why not come in and have a highball?"
The tall man shook hands without smiling. He was well over six feet and the sagging folds of flesh in his neck as well as the slow careful walk indicated that he was a man used to carrying a great deal more weight. His eyes, gray and almost accusingly penetrating, were deepset under a thick hedge of white tangled eyebrows and these with the high-bridged commanding nose and stern straight lips gave him a dignity that the wide, unmanageable ears and pure bald head bones, as openly marked as for an anatomy lesson, must have enjoyed mocking. His teeth, strong and yellow as field corn, were bared in a momentary smile, none too warm.
"You've heard of Judge Harrod," Lou waved a hand to Oliver. "My wife's uncle. This is Jay Oliver, Judge, Whittleby Cotton, you know."
"I see," nodded Judge Harrod gravely. "How do you do?" Jay made a reluctant motion to rise but was waved back to ease by the Judge.
"No, I can't join you, Louis," said he. "I have some papers to attend to in my compartment. I didn't know you were going to New York. Mary didn't mention it at lunch."
So Mary had been to the Harrods' for lunch.
"I guess she and Mrs. Harrod were going to a matinee," Lou ventured easily.
"A recital," corrected the Judge. "Myra Hess was the soloist, I believe. I understand she was to be guest of honor at cocktails later at our house."
"Oh, yes," said Lou, reddening, for this was another matter that annoyed him, that Mary should be an integral part of the Harrods' social life except when he, Lou, was home. He didn't really give a damn and, of course, Mary knew how musicales, contracts, and formal dinners made him squirm, but he would have liked to have all his customers see him making himself at home in the Judge's pleasant garden, large Tom Collins glass in hand, the Judge's blue ribbon Scottie sleeping trustingly at his feet, the Judge's big shot friends — governors, bank presidents, bishops, all hanging on to Lou Donovan's sound analysis of business conditions. If such pictures could have been distributed without the actual boredom of listening to an evening of musical baloney or highbrow chit-chat, Lou would have been quite happy. But after half a dozen efforts on both Mary's side and the Judge's to include Mary's husband in the Harrod social life with nothing but embarrassment on all sides, the contact dropped back to a family matter between the Harrods and their favorite niece, Mary. Lou suspected that he was barely mentioned, even, during these family conclaves. He found he could make use of the connection conversationally without the bother of going through the actual meetings, and this suited him fine, except for the increasingly rude attitude of both Judge and Mrs. Harrod when they met him. They knew well enough that Mary was crazy about him, but they acted when they met him alone, as the Judge was acting now, as if Lou Donovan, in speaking of Mary, was presuming upon a very slight acquaintance to refer to this intimate member of the Judge's private family. The fact that he happened to be her husband did not lessen the outrage.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Angels on Toast by Dawn Powell. Copyright © 1996 First Steerforth Press edition. Excerpted by permission of Steerforth Press.
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