Love & Mrs. Sargent by Patrick Dennis Page A

I’ll treat this sullen Mr. Johnson just as I’d treat any other guest in my house. If he likes me, fine. If he doesn’t, then he can write whatever he. . . .”
    “Floodie said you wanted me, Mother,” Dicky said, entering from the garden. “Oh, hello, Uncle Howard.” With a monumental effort, Dicky had endured the stinging cold shower, downed the black coffee. He was feeling a little better—not much, but a little. His ears rang slightly from the large dosage of Ritalin.
    “Dicky, I haven’t seen you all day. Now what have you written this afternoon besides Tom Jones, Vanity Fair, The Brothers Karamazov and Les Miserables?” She threw her arms around him. “Darling, your hair’s all wet.”
    “I just combed it,” Dicky said.
    “There’s a good, neat boy. Kiss Mother. Hmmm, You’ve been wolfing peppermints out there. Just like your father. Howard, do you remember how Big Dick used to lock himself into that room over the garage with about ten dollars’ worth of penny candy? So what did you do with chapter three, darling?”
    “Nothing. Not a mumbling word. I just sat there staring at the pad.”
    “What’s the matter?” Malvern said. “Muse not courting you today?”
    “Not today or any other day. I can’t write and I know it. And you know it and Mother knows it and. . . .”
    “Dicky!” Sheila said. “Honestly, darling, if I closed my eyes just then I’d have sworn it was your father talking. Do you remember, Howard, how every time Richard would start in on a big article or a book or something really important like that he’d say exactly the same thing. And then, bang! Out would come another Pulitzer Prize.”
    “But he really could write and I can’t. It’s no use, Mother, I. . . .”
    “Dicky, dear, you’re tired. Tomorrow I’ll come out to the tool shed and we’ll put our heads together and see if we can’t. . . .”
    “Good God,” Malvern said, “I almost forgot. Here’s an advance proof of the Chicago Trie’s best seller list for Sunday. Just look where your book is, Dicky.”
    Sheila snatched it from him. “Howard, you dog! You’ve been sitting here all this time and didn’t even tell me! Oh, Dicky, just look. Number Five. Bitter Laughter by Richard Sargent, junior.Isn’t that tremendous! Your hook not even out for a week and already ‘way up on the best seller list.”
    Dicky, whose grasp on reality was tenuous at best, took the proof and shook his head. “I—I cant believe it,” he said. “Is—is there a review as well?”
    “Uh, they didn’t say,” Malvern said uneasily. “They just sent this one clipping around.” Mr. Malvern had been worrying about ten or fifteen far more important matters that morning when his secretary Miss Roseberry had been on the telephone to Miss Goodwin at the Chicago Tribune, Miss Roseberry was quite a talker and, over the years, Mr. Malvern had acquired the knack of tuning her out while seeming to listen. In that way each could pursue a favorite pastime: he could go right on worrying while Miss Roseberry went right on talking. But now, in the light of Peter Johnson’s appraisal of Bitter Laughter, Malvern dimly recalled Miss Roseberry’s quoting something to the effect that if the Trihune couldn’t say something nice about a Chicago Sargent, it preferred to say nothing at all. “I’ll call Robert Cromie at the Trib tomorrow and find out. And here, as a matter of fact, is a proof of the Weekend Bookworm. Very favorable notice, I’d say. They gave you a full column.”
    “Oh, read it, Dicky,” Sheila said.
    With unsteady hands, Dicky took the large, smudgy proof sheet. “ ‘Brilliant Novel of Prep School Life, Reviewed by Shelley Sands.’ Who is Shelley Sands?”
    “Why,” Malvern commenced, “she’s a . . . .”
    “He’s a very famous critic,” Sheila said quickly. “I’m surprised you’ve never heard of him. You know— The New Republic and all of those highbrow magazines. But read it.”
    “’Bitter