“Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes” (1951)

This story by J.D. Salinger is skillfully done, a kind of tawdry sex farce that takes a hard turn toward pathos at the end. A gray-haired man is in his bedroom with a woman when the phone rings. He asks if she has any reason for him not to answer it. “God,” she says in perfect Salinger diction. “I don’t know. I mean what do you think?” He answers the call. All clues point to it being the husband of the woman. The gray-haired man is a colleague of the husband (they are lawyers). The husband is looking for his wife. She isn’t home yet. He’s distraught. The gray-haired man tries to soothe him, says she probably went off somewhere with mutual friends. All of them were at a party that night. It’s late now, the wee hours. The husband is also worried about a case he lost. The gray-haired man finally calms him—at one point the husband says he wants to come over for a drink—and gets him to go to bed and rest, assures him his wife will show up eventually, it’s just one of those nights. A few minutes later the phone rings again and it’s the husband, calling to say no worries, his wife just got home. It’s a searing, poignant moment. We know it’s a lie—she’s still there with the gray-haired man. But the husband obviously doesn’t want him to worry. Office politics is mixed up in this too. The husband is worried about his job and doesn’t want to alienate the gray-haired man. He may need allies. Yes, it’s another midcentury New Yorker story about white men philandering, but Salinger pulls it off well. As always he is a master of dialogue, with the italicized syllables and everything, and the story is mostly dialogue. It zeros in on the loser in this triangle, the hurt one, however incidental he may ultimately be to either or both the wife and the gray-haired man. The husband is generally annoying and whiny, but the story makes us feel for him. The setup may or may not have been original in 1951 but it’s not new now. We’ve seen countless scenes like it. But like Bob Newhart, Salinger makes the most of a one-sided phone conversation. It’s not presented to the reader that way, we get both sides, but we’re mindful the wife is getting the one-sided version, which adds another dimension. Solid story—more evidence Salinger was one of the best at the form.

J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
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