Secrets, Lies, and Guilt

At the start of the story "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes," from J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, we are thrown into a phone conversation between two coworkers: Lee and Arthur. A worried Arthur is calling Lee to inquire if Lee has recently seen his wife Joanie, as she has apparently left without notifying Arthur about her destination. We learn that while this phone call is occurring, there is a girl sitting in Lee's room intently observing Lee as speaks to Arthur over the phone. At first, the dynamic of the conversation simply appears to be one of a supportive friend, Lee, consoling his concerned coworker Arthur, assuring him that he has nothing to worry about and saying that wherever Joanie is, she will surely return to him soon. As we continue to follow the conversation, however, we get more and more clues that point to the fact that the woman inside Lee's room is actually Joanie, and that everything Lee is saying is not a genuine attempt to aid his friend, but simply a form a deception to get himself out of and future trouble. This notion becomes particularly unsettling when we consider Arthur's attitude in the conversation. Several times he states that he doesn't want to burden Lee with his problems or keep Lee up. Assuming the girl in Lee's room is indeed Joanie, Lee is the one entirely in the wrong here, but it is Arthur who feels like he is bothering his friend. Just as it seems like we have figured it all out, that Joanie is the one in the room, Arthur makes a puzzling second phone call to Lee, telling him that Joanie has returned home and that everything is under control. Through Lee's subtle interactions with the girl during his phone call with Arthur, we can deduce that the girl in his room is actually Joanie, and conclude that Arthur lied to Lee about Joanie's return, because he felt guilty for pitting his troubles and sorrow on his friend.

Right after picking up the phone, and several times throughout the rest of the first phone conversation, Lee's actions are very suspicious, indicating that there is more going on under the surface of this phone conversation. The main way in which Lee expresses this are through his numerous subtle glances towards the girl in his room. After he hears a mere one sentence from Arthur over the phone, Lee "glance[s] briefly left, at the girl" (116). Immediately after hearing his voice, Lee knows that it is Arthur at the other end of the line and looks at the girl. The fact that after hearing Arthur's voice, before even hearing his predicament, Lee's first instinct is to look at the girl indicates that there is a good chance the girl is Joanie. Upon realizing that it is Arthur on the other end of the line, Lee understands the situation realizes how much trouble he is in, and guiltily glances at Joanie as a result of this. This is the only plausible explanation that would prompt such a response from Lee. While we might forgive Lee and pass this off as a coincidence if it only happened once, it is the fact that Lee constantly makes these guilty glances towards the girl that further support the motion that his friend's wife is currently in his room. The second time Lee looks at the girl, he tries to be more covert about it, looking "left again, but high this time, away from the girl, who was now watching him..." (116). In the time span of what has to be only a few seconds, Lee looks at the girl twice. The second time, however, Lee doesn't look directly at Joanie, but looks above her, while still turning in her direction, making it appear as though he doesn't want Joanie to realize that he's looking at her. When Lee looks at the girl for the fourth time, he tries to appear as inconspicuous as possible: "The gray-haired man turned his head again toward the girl, perhaps to show her how forbearing, even stoic, his countenance was. But the girl missed seeing it" (122). This time, when Lee looks at Joanie, he tries to dupe her into thinking that nothing is wrong, by putting on a blank, unemotional face. He knows that if he appears worried, Joanie will realize what's going on and tries hard to prevent this through his stoic facial expression. Lee's constant glances heavily imply that the girl in his room is indeed Joanie.

So, if the girl with Lee is Joanie, why does Arthur call Lee for the second time, this time claiming that Joanie has just returned home and thanking Lee for his help? At first, when Arthur makes this call to Lee, the very belief that the girl is Joanie is once again thrown into question, but further analysis reveals that the notion still stands, and that it is Arthur who has lied to his friend in an attempt to relieve the perceived burden he has placed on Lee's shoulders, while cleansing his own guilt that he feels. Arthur speaks: "Yeah. She just barged in. [...] I just thought I'd give you a ring while she's in the john" (128) Arthur's tone of voice appears drastically different from the previous conversation. This would be understandable if Joanie had actually come home and Arthur's tone turned more relived and relaxed, but instead, Arthur speaks very casually, using language such as "give you a ring," and "in the john." Arthur's tone is so casual that his words almost seem forced during this scene, as if he is trying as hard as he cant to get Lee to believe his lies. The reason Arthur goes to such an extreme measure is because he has no knowledge that Lee is with Joanie. As a result, he simply thinks that his friend Lee is taking time out of his day to help him. This explains why Arthur constantly asks if he is "waking" Lee, and ultimately why he lies to him by telling him that Joanie has come home. He feels terribly guilty for imposing all of his problems onto Lee, and finally decides that he has burdened Lee enough, proclaiming that his wife has come home and that Lee can forget about it, even if this means Arthur must figure out his dilemma alone. Lee, who knows for a fact that Arthur is lying, because Joanie is still in his room, reacts accordingly, by "bridg[ing] his left hand over his eyes" and "leaving his fingers bridged over his eyes" (128). He knows that Arthur is lying and it pains him to see his friend have to lie to him because he guilty that he is taking up his time. As a result, Lee covers his face with his hand in frustration, agony, and guilt, knowing that it is he who is causing his friend all this pain, to the point where Arthur feels like he has to lie, but that he can't tell Arthur anything without jeopardizing himself.

An Interfamilial Relationship

Right off the bat in the story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," in Salinger's Nine Stories, we are introduced to Muriel, a daughter on vacation with her war-veteran husband Seymour. Not long thereafter we are introduced through the phone to Muriel's mother, who wastes no time in interrogating Muriel about whether she is safe or not and bringing up Seymour and his mental instability. Her mother clearly does not trust Seymour, as she constantly feels insecure about his peculiarities and behaviors in context of his mental state. The entire dynamic of the conversation itself shows the difference in interests between the two parties. At first, Muriel is not nearly as invested in the conversation as her mother is, and only later begins to speak more substantially in order to calm her mother down. Muriel's mother, on the other hand, evidently cares about Muriel's safety, but her constant interruptions and excessive questioning of Muriel give us the sense that she is just an overprotective mother and Muriel is the young, calmer kid in this relationship. Interestingly, after reading the last lines, we learn that it is the extensively overprotective mother who was closer to the truth after all.

On the first page of the story, we already get a sense of Muriel's disinterested nature with respect to the phone call: "She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty" (3). Although Muriel is the one who originally dialed in the call to her mother, even after the long two and a half hour wait she is less that eager to pick up the phone. She specifically knows that it is her mother on the other end of the line, but immediately appears aloof and uninterested, as she takes her sweet time to pick up the phone, waiting until "it was the fifth or sixth ring" (4) to pick it up. This, in stark contrast to Muriel's mother's fast-paced bombardment of questions, lead us to see Muriel as the cool, confident daughter who is constantly fending off her overprotective mother's far fetched worries in this classic mother-daughter relationship. A mere seconds after confirming that it is indeed Muriel on the other side of the line, the mother cuts off Muriel's explanation of why she took so long to call to simply ask "Are you all right, Muriel" (4). This abrupt interruption on the part of Muriel's mother, not even taking into account what Muriel was saying, insinuate towards Muriel's true worry in the conversation: Seymour. Her constant repetition of the question "Are you all right?" as well as her manner of rapidly asking things such as "when did you get there?" and "who drove" (5) portray her as a stereotypical, overprotective mother. While Muriel does interrupt her mother herself at times, it is mainly to calm her mother down. Her responses are reasonable and coherent, and it is because of this that the mother's constant fretting about Seymour appears unwarranted and futile; it seems that Muriel  is safe has everything under control, as she constantly seeks to reassure her mother that everything is in order every time her mother interrupts with worry.

In addition to the dynamic of the conversation itself, it is important to note that the setting of this scene of the story itself takes place in the hotel at which Muriel and Seymour are staying, and not, conversely, at Muriel's' mother's home. Because we see this phone conversation through the eyes of Muriel, we can observe the little subtleties in the way she talks to her mother that sway us, as readers, towards her side of the argument. The first instance of one of these subtleties is the moment when Muriel "turned the receiver slightly away from her ear" (4) after having exchanged a mere two sentences with her mother. This implies that the mother is borderline shouting her overzealous worries into the phone, to the point where Muriel has to literally increase the distance between the receiver and her ear in order to prevent damage to her eardrum. The fact that she has to repeat this action and "increase[] the angle between the receiver and her ear" (4), accentuates this notion. In conjunction with this action of moving the receiver away from her ear, Muriel's actions of smoking in this scene speak to her attitude towards the conversation. Interrupting her mother, Salinger narrates after Muriel speaks: "Just a second, mother," the girl said. She went over to the window seat for her cigarettes, lit one, and returned to the seat on her bed. "Mother?" she said, exhaling smoke" (6). We can observe from this scene how Muriel feels about her mother's claims and the conversation as a whole. She interrupts her mother's recounting of last nights events just to go outside and light a cigarette. It's almost as if Muriel knows that she is in for a long, tiresome conversation, and decides to smoke a cigarette to try and alleviate some of this frustration that results from fending off her mother's worries. The exhaling of smoke act as a sort of a mental preparation to continue the conversation with her mother. The whole procedure of interrupting her mother to light and smoke a cigarette implies that Muriel is confident in herself, and truly believes that everything is fine and that her mother shouldn't worry. She supposedly knows what the situation is better than her mother, and it is now just a matter of convincing her mother that there is no need to worry, taking a quick smoke to relieve herself and prepare her for the rest of the conversation. Ironically, as we are built up to lean towards Muriel, and this notion holds up for all but the last page of the story, it in this last page, when Seymour kills himself for no apparent reason, that forces us to look back and realize that maybe Muriel's mother's worrying wasn't so unwarranted after all.