Home Truths (3 page)

“Well,” said Ruth,
“I’ll
have chocolate ice cream with marshmallow. No, wait. Strawberry with pineapple.”

May forgot her sister. The choice before her was insupportable. “The same as Ruth,” she said, at last, agonized and uncertain.

Mrs. Holland, who loathed sweets, ordered a sundae, as a friendly gesture, unaware that in the eyes of the girls she had
erred. Mothers and their substitutes were expected to drink tea and nibble at flabby pâté sandwiches.

As soon as their ice cream was before them, Ruth began again about the chocolate bar. “My father never eats chocolate,” she said, quite suddenly. “And he knew it was mine. He’d never touch anything that wasn’t his. It would be stealing.”

“Maybe it got thrown away,” said May.

“That’d be the same as stealing,” said Ruth.

Mrs. Holland said, “Ruth, I do not know what became of your bit of chocolate.”

Ruth turned to Mrs. Holland her calm brown eyes. “Goodness!” she said. “I never meant to say you took it. Anyway, even if you did make a mistake and eat it up sometime when you were driving around – Well, I mean, who cares? It was only a little piece, half a Cadbury bar in blue paper.”

“I seldom eat chocolate,” said Mrs. Holland. “If I had seen it, let alone eaten it, I should certainly have remembered.”

“Then he must have had somebody else with him,” said Ruth. The matter appeared to be settled. She went on eating, savoring every mouthful.

Mrs. Holland put down her spoon. The trend of this outing, she realized now, could lead only to tears. It was one of the situations in her life – and they were frequent – climaxed by a breakdown. The breakdown would certainly be her own: she wept easily. Ruth, whose character so belied her stormy Latin looks, had rarely wept since babyhood. May, the thin, freckled one, appeared quite strung up about something, but held in by training, by discipline. I lack both, Mrs. Holland thought. As for the big girl, Helen, Mrs. Holland had already dismissed her as cold and stupid. Mrs. Holland said softly,
“Les
larmes d’un adolescent.”
But it doesn’t apply to cold little Canadians, she thought.

“I know what that means,” said Ruth. She licked her spoon on both sides.

Mrs. Holland’s phrase, the image it evoked, came from the outer circle of experience. Disturbed, the girls moved uneasily in their chairs, feeling that nothing more should be said.

“Don’t you girls
ever
cry?” said Mrs. Holland, almost with hostility.

“Never,” said Ruth, settling that.

“My sister cried,” said May. She turned her light-lashed gaze to Helen and said, “And Helen cries.”

“I don’t,” said Helen. She drew in, physically, with the first apprehension of being baited. “I do not.”

“Oh, Helen, you do,” said May. She turned to Ruth for confirmation, but Ruth, indifferent, having spoken for herself, was scooping up the liquid dregs of her ice cream. “Do you want to see Helen cry?” said May. Like Mrs. Holland, she seemed to have accepted the idea that one of them was going to break down and disgrace them; it might as well be Helen. Or perhaps the remark went deeper than that. Mrs. Holland, who could barely follow Ruth’s mental and emotional spirals, felt unable, and disinclined, to cope with this one. May leaned forward, facing Helen. Mrs. Holland suddenly answered “No,” too late, for May was saying, in a pretty, piping voice, “Hey, Helen, listen. The King has left us, and Kipling is dead.”

Helen failed to reward her. She stared, stolid, as if the words had been in a foreign language. But there remained about the table the knowledge that an attempt had been made, and Mrs. Holland and Helen, both natural victims, could not
look away from May, or at each other. Ruth had finished eating. She sighed, stretched, began to tug on her coat. She said to Mrs. Holland, “Thankyouverymuchforalovelytea. I mean, if our darling new headmistress asks did we thank you, well, we did. I was afraid I might forget to say it later on.”

“Thanks for a lovely tea,” said May. She had been afraid to speak, in case the effort of forming words should release the tight little knot of tears she felt in her throat. It was so much more difficult to be cruel than to be hurt.

“Thank you,” said Helen, as if asleep.

“I
can only hope they thanked you,” the headmistress said when Mrs. Holland delivered them, safe, half an hour later. “Girls are apt to forget.”

“They thanked me,” said Mrs. Holland. The three girls had curtsied, muttering some final ritual phrase, and vanished into an area of dim, shrill sound.

“Study hall,” said the headmistress. “Their studies are over for the term, but they respect the discipline.”

“Yes, I suppose they do.”

“It was kind of you to take them out,” said the headmistress. She laid her cold pink hand on Mrs. Holland’s for a moment, then withdrew it, perplexed by the wince, the recoil. “One forgets how much it can mean at that age, a treat on a rainy day.”

“Perhaps that’s the answer,” Mrs. Holland said.

The headmistress sensed that things were out of hand, but she had no desire to be involved; perhaps the three had been noisy, had overeaten. She smiled with such vague good manners that Mrs. Holland was released and could go.

From an upstairs window, Ruth watched Mrs. Holland make her way to the car. May and Helen were not speaking. Helen was ready to forgive, but to May, who had been unkind, the victim was odious, and she avoided her with a kind of prudishness impossible to explain to anyone, let alone herself. They had all made mistakes, Ruth thought. She wondered if she would ever care enough about anyone to make all the mistakes those around her had made during the rainy-day tea with Mrs. Holland. She breathed on the window, idly drew a heart, smiled placidly, let it fade.

A
summer night: all night someone has been learning the Charleston.

“I’ve got it!” the dancer cries. “I’ve got it, everybody. Watch me, now!” But no one is watching. The dancer is alone in the dining room, clinging to the handle of the door; the rest of the party is in the living room, across the hall. “Watch me!” travels unheard over the quiet lawn and the silent lake, and then dissolves.

The walls of the summer house are thin. The doors have been thrown back and the windows pushed as high as they will go. Young Irmgard wakes up with her braids undone and her thumb in her mouth. She has been dreaming about her cousin
Bradley; about an old sidewalk with ribbon grass growing in the cracks. “I’ve got it,” cried the witch who had captured Jorinda, and she reached out so as to catch Jorindel and change him into a bird.

Poor Mrs. Bloodworth is learning to dance. She holds the handle of the dining-room door and swivels her feet in satin shoes, but when she lets go the handle, she falls down flat on her behind and stays that way, sitting, her hair all over her face, her feet pointing upward in her new shoes. Earlier, Mrs. Bloodworth was sitting that way, alone, when, squinting through her hair, she saw Irmgard sitting in her nightgown on the stairs. “Are you watching the fun?” she said in a tragic voice. “Is it really you, my sweet pet?” And she got to her feet and crawled up the stairs on her hands and knees to kiss Irmgard with ginny breath.

There is prohibition where Mrs. Bloodworth comes from. She has come up to Canada for a party; she came up for just one weekend and never went away. The party began as a wedding in Montreal, but it has been days since anyone mentioned the bride and groom. The party began in Montreal, came down to the lake, and now has dwindled to five: Irmgard’s mother and father, Mrs. Bloodworth, Mrs. Bloodworth’s friend Bill, and the best man, who came up for the wedding from Buffalo. “Darling pet, may I always stay?” said Mrs. Bloodworth, sobbing, her arms around Irmgard’s mother’s neck. Why she was sobbing this way nobody knows; she is always crying, dancing, embracing her friends.

In the morning Mrs. Bloodworth will be found in the hammock outside. The hammock smells of fish, the pillow is stuffed with straw; but Mrs. Bloodworth can never be made to go to bed. Irmgard inspects her up and down, from left to
right. It isn’t every morning of the year that you find a large person helplessly asleep. She is still wearing her satin shoes. Her eyeballs are covered with red nets. When she wakes up she seems still asleep, until she says stickily, “I’m having a rotten time, I don’t care what anybody says.” Irmgard backs off and then turns and runs along the gallery – the veranda, Mrs. Bloodworth would say – and up the side of the house and into the big kitchen, where behind screen doors Mrs. Queen and Germaine are drinking tea. They are drinking it in silence, for Germaine does not understand one word of English and Mrs. Queen is certainly not going to learn any French.

Germaine is Irmgard’s
bonne d’enfant
. They have been together about a century, and have a history stuffed with pageants, dangers, near escapes. Germaine has been saving Irmgard for years and years; but now Irmgard is nearly eight, and there isn’t much Germaine can do except iron her summer dresses and braid her hair. They know a separation is near; and Irmgard is cheeky now, as she never was in the past; and Germaine pretends there have been other children she has liked just as well. She sips her tea. Irmgard drops heavily on her lap, joggling the cup. She will never be given anything even approaching Germaine’s unmeasured love again. She leans heavily on her and makes her spill her tea. Germaine is mild and simple, a little dull. You can be rude and impertinent if necessary, but she must never be teased.

Germaine remembers the day Irmgard was kidnapped. When she sees a warm August morning like this one, she remembers that thrilling day. There was a man in a motorcar who wanted to buy Irmgard ice cream. She got in the car and it started moving, and suddenly there came Germaine running behind, with her mouth open and her arms wide, and Molly,
the collie they had in those days, running with her ears back and her eyes slits. “Stop for Molly!” Irmgard suddenly screamed, and she turned and threw up all over the man’s coat.
“Le matin du kidnap,”
Germaine begins softly. It is a good thing she is here to recall the event, because the truth is that Irmgard remembers nothing about that morning at all.

Mrs. Queen is standing up beside the stove. She never sits down to eat, because she wants them to see how she hasn’t a minute to waste; she is on the alert every second. Mrs. Queen is not happy down at the lake. It is not what she expected by “a country place.” When she worked for Lady Partridge things were otherwise; you knew what to expect by “a country place.” Mrs. Queen came out to Canada with Lady Partridge. The wages were low, and she had no stomach for travel, but she was devoted to Lady P. and to Ty-Ty and Buffy, the two cairns. The cairns died, because of the change of air, and after Lady P. had buried them, she went out to her daughter in California, leaving Mrs. Queen to look after the graves. But Mrs. Queen has never taken to Canada. She can’t get used to it. She cannot get used to a place where the railway engines are that size and make that kind of noise, and where the working people are as tall as anyone else. When Mrs. Queen was interviewing Irmgard’s mother, to see if Irmgard’s mother would do, she said she had never taken to the place and couldn’t promise a thing. The fancy might take her any minute to turn straight around and go back to England. She had told Lady Partridge the same thing. “When was that, Mrs. Queen?” “In nineteen ten, in the spring.” She has never felt at home, and never wants to, and never will. If you ask her why she is unhappy, she says it is because of Ty-Ty and Buffy, the cairns; and because this is a paltry rented house and a
paltry kitchen; and she is glad that Ty-Ty and Buffy are peacefully in their graves.

The party last night kept Mrs. Queen awake. She had to get up out of her uncomfortable bed and let the collies out of the garage. They knew there was a party somewhere, and were barking like fools. She let them out, she says, and then spent some time on the gallery, looking in the living-room window. It was a hot, airless night. (She happens to have the only stuffy room in the house.) The party was singing “Little Joe.” Apparently, she did not see Mrs. Bloodworth dancing and falling down; at least she doesn’t mention it.

Mrs. Queen is not going to clean up the mess in the living room. It is not her line of country. She is sick, sore, and weary. Germaine will, if asked, but just now she is braiding Irmgard’s hair. Eating toast, Irmgard leans comfortably against Germaine. They are perfectly comfortable with each other, but Mrs. Queen is crying over by the stove.

I
rmgard’s cousin Bradley went back to Boston yesterday. She should be missing him, but he has vanished, fallen out of summer like a stone. He got on the train covered with bits of tape and lotion, and with a patch on one eye. Bradley had a terrible summer. He got poison ivy, in July, before coming here. In August, he grew a sty, which became infected, and then he strained his right arm. “I don’t know what your mother will say,” Irmgard’s mother said. At this, after a whole summer of being without them, Bradley suddenly remembered he had a father and mother, and started to cry. Bradley is ten, but tall as eleven. He and Irmgard have the same look – healthy and stubborn, like well-fed, intelligent mice. They
often stare in the mirror, side by side, positively blown up with admiration. But Bradley is superior to Irmgard in every way. When you ask him what he wants to be, he says straight off, “A mechanical and electrical engineer,” whereas Irmgard is still hesitating between a veterinary and a nun.