The Late John Marquand Read Free

mother’s “seed” money had come down to her, her spending had escalated sharply. She bought compulsively, incessantly. John had given up on her.
    Adelaide’s acquisitiveness and stubbornness had also, a few years earlier, been responsible for an embarrassing lawsuit between Marquand and his first cousins, the Hales of Newburyport. John had lost the case and, as a result of the bitterness it stirred up, the Hale cousins, once his good friends as well, no longer spoke to him.
    And now, on this autumn day in 1953, the Marquands’ marriage had deteriorated to such a state that there was barely any communication between them. A few weeks earlier, Marquand had written to the Brandts in New York suggesting that he meet them in Boston for the week end, as soon as his doctor gave him permission. They would make a party of it, a kind of celebration of John’s release from doctors’ care. They would all stay at the Ritz-Carlton, and the high point of the reunion would be when the three friends drove over to Cambridge to inspect the house that his wife had bought. Naturally they would pick a time when Adelaide and the children were far away in Aspen. Now, in September, the moment was at hand. Carol Brandt came up on a Friday evening train, and Carl Brandt joined them on Saturday.
    From the outset, the week end had been gloriously mirthful. Marquand and the Brandts set themselves up in an adjoining pair of the Ritz’s famous suites, all of which contain—in addition to other amenities that have long since disappeared from American hotel-keeping elsewhere—wood-burning fireplaces in the sitting rooms. The three had thrown open the connecting doors so that the partying could be general, back and forth, and Marquand, after the slow weeks of recovery, was in top form. It was he who set the tone ofthe gathering, which was one of mockery mixed with spite. “Adelaide,” he said, “Adelaide” —thrusting a sneer into the very pronunciation of her name—“it seems that Adelaide has purchased another house .”
    He struck a characteristic pose. Standing, drink in hand, he hunched forward, scowling darkly with beetled brows and pursed lips, and clapped his other hand to the back of his neck, gripping it as though he feared his head might be about to fly from its perch between his shoulders. In this pose, he paced the floor, back and forth—fireplace to window, window to fireplace. “A house . Which. We. Are. About. To. See!” A footfall accompanied each word and, as his nasal New Englander’s voice spat out each syllable, his voice rose in pitch until the final syllable came out almost as falsetto, while the pink color came in his cheeks.
    It was a stage performance, of course. Whenever he had an audience, particularly an audience of friends, he loved to perform these oral concertos. He had taught himself this exaggerated, theatrical delivery, and he did it well. He had become famous for the way he could hold a roomful of people as he told a story or delivered an anecdote, celebrated for the way he could build himself into a tower of mock rage over an apparent trifle. His imitations of people, particularly of the styles of other authors (he could do Hawthorne, Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, as well as any number of three-named lady writers), were incisive, cruel, and hilarious. But this afternoon in Boston, the fact that the target of his wit and venom was his own wife made his performance a particularly telling one. Though Carl and Carol Brandt were, at this point, no fonder of Adelaide than John was, it was hard to know, watching his dreadful parody of the woman, whether to laugh or weep.
    In the car going over to Cambridge, he continued his verbal assaults on, and imitations of, Adelaide—Adelaide who was now drinking more than she should, who had allowed herself to become much too fat, who could never seem to get herself anywhere on time, though John