High Time (7 page)

Mrs. Feeley and her friends admired the bedspread and the dolls. Suddenly Darleen had an inspiration. She opened the door of her clothes closet and hauled down a huge cardboard box.

‘I knew I had something I wanted to give you!’ she said, turning to Mrs. Rasmussen. ‘Johnny won it and a ham at the same time. He took the ham back to the ship, but we didn’t have no use for this.’

The ladies crowded around as Darleen unpacked something large and gleaming. It was an enormous aluminum pressure-cooker.

Mrs. Rasmussen’s eyes popped out on her face like a sand crab’s.

‘Them costs every bit of twenty dollars—an’ a prior-ority! You ain’t aimin’ to give that away?’

‘Johnny only paid a quarter for the chance—and I wouldn’t never use it in a million years,’ Darleen said. ‘I don’t even know how you use it,’ she confessed. ‘But I’d be proud for you to accept it!’

Mrs. Rasmussen was speechless. All her life she had longed to own a pressure-cooker. Not that she couldn’t cook things tender with a good slow fire! But there was something aristocratic about having your own pressure-cooker. Almost as good as being in Navy society and having your electric washing machine all paid for.

Even Mrs. Feeley couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘A magnificent bit of apparatus!’ Miss Tinkham said.

‘You will take it, won’t you?’ Darleen coaxed.

‘You had oughta let us buy it from you,’ Mrs. Feeley said at length.

‘It isn’t for sale,’ Darleen said firmly. ‘It is a small token of the respect and esteem—’ Darleen’s carefully thought-out speech broke down in the middle. ‘It’s on account of you-all being so good to me and me so proud that you’ll let me associate with you! You got to keep it!’ she finished in a spurt. ‘You can cook stuff for the twins in it!’ She drove the final nail home.

Since it was offered in the name of the twins, the ladies saw no way to refuse the gift gracefully. Especially since they were dying to accept it.

‘We sure thank you!’ was the best Mrs. Rasmussen could do. But she made a silent vow to teach Darleen all there was to know about cookery from artichokes to zucchini.

‘Let’s have some music,’ Darleen said brightly, and turned on her record-player. The ladies listened blissfully to ‘Why Don’t You Do Right?’ and Darleen set up more beer. She simply could not do enough to entertain her distinguished guests. She opened a bag of salted peanuts and passed them around. Mrs. Feeley took a handful and grinned up at Darleen.

‘I ain’t got no teeth, but I can sure gum hell out of ‘em!’

Miss Tinkham breathed deeply and voluptuously when Darleen lit the incense burner. This was really a lovely soirée—the beers were beginning to take effect.

‘The blessing of friends!’ she cried. ‘We have received nothing better from the Immortal Gods, nothing more delightful!’

The phonograph was automatic and the ladies admired it enormously; you didn’t have to hop up and down every minute to change it. And nobody whanging away at you every two minutes, like those fool announcers on the radio.

The four women were sitting in blissful enjoyment when a sharp bell rang. Darleen went to her bedside and removed an ornate doll from
the telephone. The ladies looked at one another in amazement: her own telephone right by her bed! They tried politely not to hear the conversation, but the room was not large.

‘No, the ship isn’t in,’ Darleen said.

‘I’m not at home,’ she said to her invisible
vis-à-vis.

‘I don’t care! I’m not at home!’ she said in a sharper tone.

Miss Tinkham got up stiffly and marched over to Darleen; she put her arm around her shoulders and said:

‘Pardon me, dear! Might I interrupt you a second?’

‘Sure,’ Darleen said, holding the mouthpiece of the telephone against her chest.

‘Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute!

What you can do, or think you can, begin it!’

Miss Tinkham recited with
élan
and strode back to her chair.

‘No—it won’t do you no good to call back later,’ Darleen said calmly into the telephone and hung up. ‘Honestly, these men won’t hardly give a lady no peace!’ Darleen was so annoyed that she snapped the cap off a bottle of Seven-Up.

‘No couth! They ain’t got no couth at all!’ Mrs. Feeley said. ‘You sure got him told, though!’

Darleen basked in the approving smiles of her guests. She glanced at her watch—they would have to hurry to carry out all that she had planned for their entertainment. It was funny how the hours flew when you were with congenial people. Her feet would have been awfully sore by this time if she had been at work.

‘Now see,’ she explained to her guests, ‘on account of me not knowing how to cook, or having no kitchen privileges if I did, I can’t reciprocate your hospitality the way I had ought to. So I done the best I knew how, and ordered us all a nice shore dinner for ten o’clock down to the Red Sails in The Sunset Inn. It’s a classy joint! The taxi will be here in a few minutes. In case you’d like to fix your face or anything, it’s right down the hall.’ And she led the way.

The ladies were stupefied. Darleen certainly went whole-hog when she did anything.

‘I can see you entertain royally when you do entertain,’ Miss Tinkham beamed as she went out the door.

‘Shore dinner!’ Mrs. Rasmussen gloated.

‘Ersters! Good for the verse! That’s how they talk in Brooklyn!’ Mrs. Feeley quipped.

Darleen came back and fixed her hair before the mirror and the ladies stood around admiring her. Mrs. Rasmussen took notice of just how she did it.

Suddenly a terrific uproar came from the next room. Glasses or bottles crashed and dishes smashed on the floor. Hair-raising shrieks and yells nearly shook the walls down.

The residents of Noah’s Ark looked questioningly at Darleen.

‘It’s Pierpont and Myrna!’ she sighed.

‘It’s which?’ Mrs. Feeley asked.

‘C’mon! I’ll show you,’ Darleen said wearily and led the ladies into the hall. She opened the door next to her own and the ladies saw a small wizened face appear. It belonged to a boy four or possibly five years old. His bullet head was covered with a shaggy black thatch. His eyes were green and slanty, and his sharp, peaked features were spattered with big jagged freckles as though someone had coughed bran in his face.

‘What’s the matter with Myrna?’ Darleen demanded, shoving her foot in the door. The ladies stayed right behind her and they all went in.

‘All that noise come outa them two mites?’ Mrs. Rasmussen gasped, pointing at Pierpont and Myrna—aged three. Pierpont’s sister was microscopic—with short, wiry red curls all over her head. She had a long upper lip and an outthrust lower lip. Her eyes were like two blueberries in a muffin.

‘Damn if they can’t make the most noise of any two I ever seen! For their size!’ Mrs. Feeley exclaimed.

‘Such lovely curls,’ Miss Tinkham said, and put out her hand to touch them. Myrna promptly sunk her teeth in Miss Tinkham’s wrist.

‘What was you yelling for?’ Darleen insisted, as the ladies looked at the filth and squalor of the room and Miss Tinkham nursed her wrist.

‘Myrna won’t eat her cherry oats!’ Pierpont snarled. ‘She wants sweet milk! ’Cause the milk was sour she got mad an’ broke the bottle! Now we won’t get the nickel!’

‘Wanna hot-dog! Wanna hot-dog!’ Myrna chanted.

‘Hot-dog! My—’ Pierpont wriggled as Darleen clapped her hand over his mouth.

‘Jeez! Wanna hot-dog!’ Myrna insisted, jumping up and down.

‘Where’s your mom?’ Darleen demanded. ‘You mean it’s ten o’clock and you haven’t ate yet?’

Pierpont shook his head.

‘Mrs. Feeley, will you ladies wait in my room just a minute while I run down to the comer for a bottle of milk? I sure hate this inconvenience to arise, but I’ll tell the taxicab to wait!’

The ladies followed Darleen back to her room, looking over their shoulders nervously at the occupants of the next room.

‘There’s a couple of beers left. You split ’em till I get back,’ Darleen said as she left the room.

A few sips of beer restored the equilibrium of the Noah’s Arkies.

‘I’ll bet my bottom dollar that boy ain’t five years old, an’ already as tough a mug as I ever seen!’ Mrs. Feeley said.

‘And that dreadful little girl,’ Miss Tinkham moaned, unwrapping her handkerchief to look at the bite on her wrist.

‘Regular varmints, them two,’ Mrs. Rasmussen agreed. ‘Wonder how come the Children’s Society ain’t got ’em?’

‘I wonder!’ Mrs. feeley mused. ‘Sure can’t have much of a mother! Wasn’t that ol’ clabbered milk awful spattered all over that way?’

‘An’ that crib! Smelled like a badger’s nest! Foo!’ Mrs. Rasmussen held her nose.

Darleen returned with the milk before the discussion could go further. The ladies followed her into the next room to watch.

Pierpont took two dishes and climbed up on a chair and washed them in the wash-basin. Then he brought them back to the rickety card-table, filled the bowls with dry cereal and poured some milk on it. He sprinkled sugar on top from a torn paper bag. Myrna had already climbed up on a chair and was spooning away greedily. Pierpont dived in, too.

‘Now, you all go right to bed the minute you finish, you hear?’ Darleen admonished. ‘Don’t try to wait up for your mom! C’mon, ladies; our taxi is waiting!’ she said, and they all went downstairs.

The three ladies and Darleen sailed wing and wing into the cozy, rose-lighted Inn. Mrs. Feeley looked at her friends and moved her eyebrows up and down several times in anticipation of a big time. Darleen certainly knew her way around: she had even had a nice table reserved. The waiters bowed deferentially, and when one of them pulled Mrs. Feeley’s chair out for her, she turned to him in the most friendly fashion and asked: ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’

When he had gone away the ladies agreed he was sure a nice feller.

‘We’ll have beer,’ Darleen ordered. ‘And some clam-juice for me!’

The Noah’s Arkies enjoyed their beer out of the nice tall Pilsener glasses. Mrs. Rasmussen inquired in subtle pantomime whether or not she should take some of the glasses home by way of souvenir. Mrs. Feeley shook her head because Darleen was evidently well known here, and it might come back on her. Miss Tinkham loved the little red silk shades on the electric candles at each table. She was stowing away oyster crackers at a fine clip. Soon the oysters on the half-shell arrived. Darleen swallowed hers whole, but the ladies chewed away in moist appreciation. Mrs. Feeley told the joke, ending: ‘I try heem once, I try heem twice, I try heem three times, but he no stay down!’ Truly a festive occasion.

To take away the chill of the oysters, the party enjoyed large deviled crabs served in their bright red shells. Plenty of Tartar sauce and French fried potatoes accompanied the crabs. Mrs. Feeley almost told a joke about crabs, but thought better of it Darleen never let the beer-glasses stay empty a minute. She was some hostess.

When the crabs had gone the way of all flesh, each lady was served half a lobster with mayonnaise. Even Mrs. Rasmussen had to admit that the accompanying cole slaw and French rolls were very tasty.

‘Something so festive about lobster!’ Miss Tinkham beamed at Darleen. ‘It has an air about it!’

‘I’m sure glad you like it,’ the hostess replied.

Everyone was busy gouging and prying out the precious pink morsels. Mrs. Feeley said she didn’t know when she had been in such a nice, genteel place. The juke-box played softly and continuously. When it came to ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,’ she grinned and remarked: ‘That sure as hell don’t apply to us, does it?’

The waiter was slightly bug-eyed at the amount of food and beer his table consumed, but he knew Darleen was good for the bill. They had an awful time deciding between broiled red snapper and fried abalone steaks. The red snapper won. Mrs. Feeley decided that she had better go and wash her hands if she expected to stow away the next course in comfort. Darleen pointed out the door to her and off she went.

Miss Tinkham was beginning to get the far comers filled up and had time for conversation once more.

‘My dear, Johnny should be very proud of you! You are a gracious hostess and preside beautifully!’

Mrs. Rasmussen nodded, although she did not know what it all meant. Neither did Darleen, but it sounded impressive. Mrs. Feeley came back and said she was ready to start all over again. She pulled some folded papers from her pocket and showed them to her friends. They were tissue seat-covers. She handed them to Mrs. Rasmussen and said:

‘Just put these in your bag! We may not always have the luck to be in elegant dumps like this!’

‘What will the ladies have for dessert?’ the waiter asked.

‘Bring me some ham an’ eggs,’ Mrs. Rasmussen laughed.

‘Some toasted crackers and Camembert?’ the waiter coaxed.

‘By all means!’ Miss Tinkham said. ‘Camembert! My favorite cheese!’

‘Sure! Bring on the cheese! Go good with the beer!’ Mrs. Feeley commanded, back in her element now that she knew what he was talking about.

The ladies looked curiously at the runny triangles of cheese.