Meeting with Phoebe

STORYTELLER. She wakes up very easily. I mean you don’t have to yell at her or anything. All you have to do, practically, is sit down on the bed and say, “Wake up, Phoeb,” and bingo, she’s awake.

PHOEBE. Holden! (put her arms around my neck and all)

STORYTELLER. She’s very affectionate. I mean she’s quite affectionate, for a child. Sometimes she’s even too affectionate. (I sort of gave her a kiss)

PHOEBE. Whenja get home?

STORYTELLER. She was glad as hell to see me. You could tell.

HOLDEN. Not so loud. Just now. How are ya anyway?

PHOEBE. I’m fine. Did you get my letter? I wrote you a five-page—

HOLDEN. Yeah—not so loud. Thanks.

STORYTELLER. She wrote me this letter. I didn’t get a chance to answer it, though. It was all about this play she was in in school.

HOLDEN. How’s the play?

PHOEBE. It stinks, but I have practically the biggest part.

STORYTELLER. Boy, was she wide-awake. She gets very excited when she tells you that stuff.

PHOEBE. Are you coming to it? (She was sitting way the hell up in the bed) That’s what I wrote you about. Are you?

HOLDEN. Sure I’m coming. Certainly I’m coming.

PHOEBE. Listen. Mother said you’d be home Wednesday. She said Wednesday.

HOLDEN. I got out early. Not so loud. You’ll wake everybody up.

PHOEBE. They went to a party. Guess what I did this afternoon! What movie I saw. Guess!

HOLDEN. I don’t know—Listen. Did they say what time they’d be back, or didn’t they?

PHOEBE. No, but not till very late.

STORYTELLER. I began to relax, sort of. I mean I finally quit worrying about whether they’d catch me home or not. I figured the hell with it. If they did, they did. (She had on these blue pajamas with red elephants on the collars)

HOLDEN. Listen, I bought you a record. Only I broke it on the way home. (I took the pieces out of my coat pocket and showed her) I was plastered.

PHOEBE. Gimme the pieces. I’m saving them. (She took them right out of my hand and then she put them in the drawer of the night table. She kills me.)

HOLDEN. What’d you do to your arm? (she had this big hunk of adhesive tape on her elbow)

PHOEBE. This boy, Curtis Weintraub, that’s in my class, pushed me while I was going down the stairs in the park. Wanna see? (She started taking the crazy adhesive tape off her arm)

HOLDEN. Leave it alone. Why’d he push you down the stairs?

PHOEBE. I don’t know. I think he hates me. This other girl and me put ink and stuff all over his windbreaker.

HOLDEN. That isn’t nice. What are you—a child, for God’s sake?

PHOEBE. No, but every time I’m in the park, he follows me everywhere. He’s always following me. He gets on my nerves.

HOLDEN. He probably likes you. That’s no reason to put ink all—

PHOEBE. I don’t want him to like me. (looking at me funny) Holden, how come you’re not home Wednesday?

HOLDEN. What?

STORYTELLER. Boy, you have to watch her every minute. If you don’t think she’s smart, you’re mad.

PHOEBE. How come you’re not home Wednesday? You didn’t get kicked out or anything, did you?

HOLDEN. I told you. They let us out early. They let the whole—

PHOEBE. You did get kicked out! You did! (hit me on the leg with her fist)

STORYTELLER. She gets very fisty when she feels like it.

PHOEBE. You did! Oh, Holden! (her hand on her mouth)

STORYTELLER. She gets very emotional, I swear to God.

HOLDEN. Who said I got kicked out? Nobody said I—

PHOEBE. You did. You did. (smacked me again with her fist)

STORYTELLER. If you don’t think that hurts, you’re crazy.

PHOEBE. Daddy’ll kill you! (flopped on her stomach on the bed and put the goddam pillow over her head)

HOLDEN. Cut it out, now. Nobody’s gonna kill me. Nobody’s gonna even—C’mon, Phoeb, take that goddam thing off your head. Nobody’s gonna kill me.

STORYTELLER. She wouldn’t take it off, though. You can’t make her do something if she doesn’t want to.

PHOEBE. Daddy’s gonna kill you. (with that goddam pillow over her head)

HOLDEN. Nobody’s gonna kill me. Use your head. In the first place, I’m going away. What I may do, I may get a job on a ranch or something for a while. I know this guy whose grandfather’s got a ranch in Colorado. C’mon. Take that off your head. C’mon, hey, Phoeb. Please. Please, willya?

STORYTELLER. She strong as hell. You get tired fighting with her.

HOLDEN. Phoebe, please. C’mon outa there. C’mon, hey… Hey, Weatherfield. C’mon out.

STORYTELLER. She wouldn’t come out, though. You can’t even reason with her sometimes. (I got up and went out in the living room and got some cigarettes out of the box on the table and stuck some in my pocket) I was all out. (When I came back, she had the pillow off her head all right—but she still wouldn’t look at me, even though she was laying on her back and all. When I came around the side of the bed and sat down again, she turned her crazy face the other way) She was ostracizing the hell out of me. Just like the fencing team at Pencey when I left all the goddam foils on the subway.

PHOEBE. Daddy’ll kill you.

STORYTELLER. Boy, she really gets something on her mind when she gets something on her mind.

HOLDEN. No, he won’t. The worst he’ll do, he’ll give me hell again, and then he’ll send me to that goddam military school. That’s all he’ll do to me. And in the first place, I won’t even be around. I’ll be away. I’ll be—I’ll probably be in Colorado on this ranch.

PHOEBE. Don’t make me laugh. You can’t even ride a horse.

HOLDEN. Who can’t? Sure I can. Certainly I can. They can teach you in about two minutes.

PHOEBE. (very snotty) I suppose you failed in every single subject again.

STORYTELLER. She sounds like a goddam schoolteacher sometimes, and she’s only a little child.

HOLDEN. No, I didn’t. I passed English. (I gave her a pinch on the behind, she tried to hit my hand anyway, but she missed)

PHOEBE. Oh, why did you do it? (It made me sort of sad, the way she said it)

HOLDEN. Oh, God, Phoebe, don’t ask me. I’m sick of everybody asking me that. A million reasons why. It was one of the worst schools I ever went to. It was full of phonies. And mean guys. You never saw so many mean guys in your life. And they had this goddam secret fraternity that I was too yellow not to join. There was this one pimply, boring guy, Robert Ackley, that wanted to get in. He kept trying to join, and they wouldn’t let him. Just because he was boring and pimply. I don’t even feel like talking about it. It was a stinking school. Take my word.

STORYTELLER. She always listens when you tell her something. And the funny part is she knows, half the time, what the hell you’re talking about. She really does.

HOLDEN. Even the couple of nice teachers on the faculty, they were phonies, too. There was this one old guy, Mr. Spencer. His wife was always giving you hot chocolate and all that stuff, and they were really pretty nice. But you should’ve seen him when the headmaster, old Thurmer, came in the history class. After a while, he’d be sitting back there and then he’d start interrupting what old Spencer was saying to crack a lot of corny jokes. Old Spencer’d practically kill himself chuckling and smiling and all, like as if Thurmer was a goddam prince or something.

PHOEBE. Don’t swear so much.

HOLDEN. It would’ve made you puke, I swear it would. Then, on Veterans’ Day. They have this day, Veterans’ Day, that all the jerks that graduated from Pencey around 1776 come back and walk all over the place, with their wives and children and everybody. You should’ve seen this one old guy that was about fifty. What he did was, he came in our room and knocked on the door and asked us if we’d mind if he used the bathroom. He said he wanted to see if his initials were still in one of the can doors. What he did, he carved his goddam stupid sad old initials in one of the can doors about ninety years ago, and he wanted to see if they were still there. So my roommate and I walked him down to the bathroom and all, and we had to stand there while he looked for his initials in all the can doors. He kept talking to us the whole time, telling us how when he was at Pencey they were the happiest days of his life, and giving us a lot of advice for the future and all.

STLR. Boy, did he depress me! I don’t mean he was a bad guy—he wasn’t. But you don’t have to be a bad guy to depress somebody—you can be a good guy and do it. All you have to do to depress somebody is give them a lot of phony advice while you’re looking for your initials in some can door—that’s all you have to do.

HOLDEN. God, Phoebe! I can’t explain. I just didn’t like anything that was happening at Pencey. I can’t explain.

PHOEBE. (She had the side of her mouth right smack on the pillow) You don’t like anything that’s happening.

HOLDEN. (even more depressed) Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don’t say that. Why the hell do you say that?

PHOEBE. Because you don’t. You don’t like any schools. You don’t like a million things. You don’t.

HOLDEN. I do! That’s where you’re wrong—that’s exactly where you’re wrong! Why the hell do you have to say that?

STORYTELLER. Boy, was she depressing me.

PHOEBE. Because you don’t. Name one thing.

HOLDEN. One thing? One thing I like? Okay.

STORYTELLER. The trouble was, I couldn’t concentrate too hot. Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate.

HOLDEN. One thing I like a lot you mean? (She didn’t answer me, though. She was in a cockeyed position way the hell over the other side of the bed. She was about a thousand miles away)

PHOEBE. You can’t even think of one thing.

HOLDEN. Yes, I can. Yes, I can.

PHOEBE. Well, do it, then.

HOLDEN. I like Allie. And I like sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and—

PHOEBE. Allie’s dead—You always say that! If somebody’s dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn’t really—

HOLDEN. I know he’s dead! Don’t you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can’t I? Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake—especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all.

PHOEBE. All right, name something else. Name something you’d like to be. Like a scientist. Or a lawyer or something.”

HOLDEN. I couldn’t be a scientist. I’m no good in science.

PHOEBE. Well, a lawyer—like Daddy and all.

HOLDEN. Lawyers are all right, I guess—but it doesn’t appeal to me. I mean they’re all right if they go around saving innocent guys’ lives all the time, and like that, but you don’t do that kind of stuff if you’re a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys’ lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys’ lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn’t.”

STORYTELLER. I’m not too sure old Phoebe knew what the hell I was talking about. I mean she’s only a little child and all. But she was listening, at least. If somebody at least listens, it’s not too bad.

PHOEBE. Daddy’s going to kill you. He’s going to kill you.

HOLDEN. You know what I’d like to be? You know what I’d like to be? I mean if I had my goddam choice?

PHOEBE. What? Stop swearing.

HOLDEN. You know that song ‘If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye’? I’d like—

PHOEBE. It’s ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye’! It’s a poem. By Robert Burns.

HOLDEN. I know it’s a poem by Robert Burns.

STORYTELLER. She was right, though. It is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.” I didn’t know it then, though.

HOLDEN. I thought it was ‘If a body catch a body. Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.

PHOEBE. (long silence) Daddy’s going to kill you.”

HOLDEN. I don’t give a damn if he does. (got up from the bed) I have to make a phone call. I’ll be right back. Don’t go to sleep.

PHOEBE. Holden! (I turned around) I’m taking belching lessons from this girl, Phyllis Margulies. Listen.

STORYTELLER. I listened, and I heard something, but it wasn’t much.

HOLDEN. Good. Then I went out in the living room and called up this teacher I had, Mr. Antolini.