Mr. Bridge_ A Novel - Evan S. Connell [75]
“I’m not defending everything he has, but I do think it would be good for you to take an interest in art.”
“If half that junk Alex has collected is ‘art’ I’m a Fiji Islander. Any time you want to go look at it you’re free to call up Alex or his little friend. They’d probably be delighted to give you the grand tour. So help yourself. But if you want my opinion, the children did better when they were five years old. Any one of them could paint a better picture right now than most of the stuff Alex has hanging on the wall. I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur of art. I never have. I don’t care for it very much, and Lord knows I haven’t the time, but I’m not afraid to say what I think. And I think most of that stuff is junk, junk pure and simple. So there you are.”
“My word, you sound so provoked!”
“Furthermore, I don’t believe he likes the stuff either. In my opinion it’s all a pretense, right along with his checkered vests and Italian suits and the rest of that nonsense. That’s why I sound ‘provoked,’ as you call it. Lord, if he had a Rembrandt or one of those Dutch sitting rooms where the people are recognizable human beings I could see the point of paying good money. But this African primitive business and these surrealist or cubist schools, or whatever they’re called nowadays—it’s too much for me, I tell you. And I’m willing to bet you a dollar to a doughnut that fifty years from today you won’t find hide nor hair of it.”
“I feel the same way,” Mrs. Bridge said. “My only point was that I did find it interesting for a change.”
“Suit yourself. Any time you want to look at it, call up Alex. You and Grace Barron hop right over there and admire it to your heart’s content. One more thing—those Negroes. There’s another example for you: he invited those people for one reason, and one reason only.”
“You know perfectly well they’re friends of his.”
“I know they are. But I also know he invited them because they’re black.”
“Now, Walter, that simply is not fair. You can’t possibly know he invited them for that reason.”
“As you like. As you like,” he replied in an uncompromising voice.
“They didn’t bite anybody.”
“I have not criticized those people in any way. I am talking about Alex. And the next thing you know, he’ll be inviting them to lunch at the Muehlebach.”
“I doubt if he’d go that far.”
“You don’t know the man. I do.”
“I scarcely know him at all. Perhaps you’re right. In any case, I am awfully glad we went to the affair. And if you’d acted a bit more sociable you might have had a good time yourself.”
“I did have a good time,” Mr. Bridge said. “I don’t need to trot around shaking hands with every Tom, Dick and Harry in order to prove it.”
“I know, but you see so much of Stuart and Virgil and the other men that I should think this would have been an opportunity to meet somebody new.”
He replied that he knew more than enough people already.
80 Wastebaskets
That summer Ruth applied for a job with a local company called Blissco, which produced an assortment of household and office novelties. The founder and president of this company was a young man named Harry Bliss, who hired Ruth as soon as he saw her. When he discovered that she could not take shorthand and could barely operate a typewriter he put her to work painting phosphorescent floral designs on wastebaskets, an item he invented at that moment.
Her parents were pleased that she had found a job, because they had expected her to spend the summer as usual, tanning herself beside the pool at the country club and loitering with Dodie in a booth at the Walgreen drugstore. They agreed the job would be good for her. She did not like to work, she had never done much work of any sort. She slept late and always seemed to be lying around the house.
From what she told him about the company Mr. Bridge surmised that Blissco might not last very long, but if it was able to pay her salary every week he could see no harm in allowing her to paint wastebaskets. If Carolyn