Letty Fox (15 page)

The whole family went to the funeral and even Aunt Amabel, though now separated from Uncle Philip, came down, in a black dress, and held Philip's arm. Grandmother had bought a blanket of roses for her husband. They recited the Lord's Prayer; a second cousin, Reverend Poote, made a beautiful speech about the old gentle man, saying things about him which sounded so true, so touching at the moment, that everyone burst out crying. I flung myself into my mother's legs, crying as loudly as I could. My father was there and went off with us.

At the funeral, standing in the background, we had also seen Jape in his best brown suit, lanky, with a black band on his arm. He looked oddly old, poor and cross, in his best clothes. It was only in his old faded blues that he seemed a nice man. Jape walked away after saying hello to several people, and took the bus home. They thought it was funny but degrading afterwards, that Jape had taken a drink or two on the way home and told everyone at length about the beautiful funeral, how fine it was, and what a fine man my grandfather was.

The truth was, though we made a great noise about it, being a very sentimental family, we had all thought Grandfather slightly in the way for years. The old women at the Inn spoke about the old man for a few days, though no one had known him, but had only seen him sneaking merrily along the old carriage drive behind the laurel bush, and many had not known who he was at all.

They were interested in Grandmother, now a widow; it was almost a fete. Within a week Grandmother had a proposal from a fashionable grocer in the town who had been her acquaintance for years. In four months, just before my father sailed for England, this propertied grocer, a stout, short, strong man, some years younger than Grandmother, had Grandmother in a flutter. He wanted to marry her at once; it was not only a good business proposition, but he loved her. Grandmother's hair was by now white as snow, but her eyes were black, sparkling, and though generally brutal or even hard, could turn tender and sweet. Grandmother at once forgot everything else in hand and asked advice from all her friends and relatives. Her children were indignant. Phyllis was not yet married, Mathilde was in trouble, Philip was getting a divorce, two or three other uncles of mine, unimportant, sedate men, were scandalized; all of them feared the influence of the new husband. For Grandmother was a gay sentimental creature who, if she threw over the Inn (which kept some of the family working and occasionally cast a spray of furs and diamonds over the family), might travel the country or the world and throw all that was hers, not into the Inn where it belonged, but to her husband.

“You have earned a rest, retire,” said the willing fiancé.

“For shame, Mamma, you are old,” said the children.

Grandmother was as glorious, timid, and vain as a young girl. She dashed into town almost every day to see people, buy clothes, and ask advice. At last, she felt quite distracted and announced a great family party, to celebrate her birthday, and consult all her dear friends. My father was asked to come, and while he was there they could also, she said as an afterthought, give him a send-off. Joseph Montrose, who was leaving on the same boat as my father, was asked, so that he might see Phyllis, “my little queen,” said Grandmother; and many other distant relatives and friends came. Grandmother, they said, was celebrating her freedom, but she was too modest an old sinner to admit anything improper.

Two days before the party, Jape was taken to the hospital from the Inn, and without regret, for Jape's work had dwindled and now Grandmother felt he was only an expense. There were difficulties at the hospital: no one knew Jape's surname, nor where he came from. He left the hospital the day after the great party, and for a few months disappeared. His room was then opened, and in the room they found just his best suit of clothes, an old lawn mower, and an enlargement of an old photograph of my grandfather taken twenty years before and showing that he had been a remarkably handsome, gentle-looking man, with a sweet, sad smile and a face that looked spiritual. Nevertheless, there is no doubt he was far from spiritual.

A
s the women had all advised my mother, at this great party of the family, to make peace with my father long enough to beget, and as they had given her prescriptions for having a son, and as she was so harried and hunted by them that she had no more conscience of her own, my mother sent us away the very next day to Grandmother Fox's, so that she and my father would have the last few days together.

She was anxious about the step she was now taking and thought it was for us she was doing it, and though she was almost desperate with doubt about whether it was dishonorable or not, and whether, too, this trick would bring my father back at the end of his visit, she decided to try it. She could not understand this shoddy, shameful, cruel life she was leading. It was not chosen; it was some magic by which she was trapped. She had acquired all the advertised products, love, a husband, a home, children, but she had not the advertised results—she recognized nothing in the landscape.

Her mind was torn up by advice from casual visitors and sermons that were almost rough insults. What she underwent when we were away was more like the trial for witchcraft of a helpless, gossip-ridden girl in the bad Puritan days. The relatives tried her. If she failed she was proved a worthless woman.

While this nocturnal magic was going on, and my father was receiving this love drink, Jacky and I were with my Grandmother Fox, who lived in a small apartment on the fifth floor in East Eighty-fifth Street, with her niece, Lily Spontini. Lily Spontini's maiden name was Hart, like Grandmother Fox. She was the youngest daughter of Grandmother's eldest brother, and at sixteen had come to New York to try her luck, and to live with her aunt, Jenny Fox, who was my grandmother. Grandmother Fox, who never had a daughter, remembered Lily as she was at that time:

“A beauty! I never in my life saw such a beauty! Such a skin, white as snow, red lips without paint, and such sweet eyes and such a sweet smile! Oh, I could have fainted with joy. I thought birds were singing. I said, ‘Is this my niece?' And in a week, in two weeks, there was not a boy on the street but was coming round to the house, and wanted to marry her. Such shoulders, such arms, and such sweet little hands, I could have kissed every finger,” and Grandmother would mumble with her withered lips, “Such a beautiful girl was never seen on the street.” She scowled, thinking of the street, “It was a shame to see this girl on that street. Before a month passed a boy came to me and asked to marry her. This boy, Spontini, would not eat or sleep, until at last his parents came to me and said, ‘Mrs. Fox, please let Lily marry him; he is ill and we are afraid he will die.' Lily did not want to, but she liked the parents, especially the mother, Mrs. Spontini, an Italian woman, but very nice, very goodhearted. At last, to please the mother, she agreed to marry the poor boy. She was a widow at eighteen. But she is still a great friend of Mrs. Spontini. She calls her her real mother. She goes to see her every year on her birthday, and on the boy's birthday, and Mrs. Spontini's birthday.”

My grandmother, sitting in her dragging skirts and wrinkles, would sigh and again kiss her hands, looking angrily at us, “I will never see such a beauty again! Don't talk to me about that Clara Bow, Theda Bara—pooh! The men followed her in the street; Lily never looked at them. She—a girl who could have had— The boys came round in front of the house till it was like a show; but she didn't care for them. She did not want to get married; she only did it to please Mrs. Spontini, who came to her and begged her with tears in her eyes, and kissed Lily's little white hands and said, ‘My darling, my dear one, marry him before he dies; there is not much left for him on this earth, and he has never had any pleasure, but he is an angel. Marry him, my dear one, and you will always be my daughter.'

“Lily married him, but she did not want to get married, and she was hardly married when he died. He only had an iron bedstead and a few books to leave her. Lily has the books somewhere in a trunk, but the bedstead she sold; she didn't want to look at it. They had no home, poor things, but lived with the parents.”

Grandmother, forgetting us, would retell this tale as we rested after school, sitting on the floor, making up our stories of horrible adventure and diamond-sprinkled love. Sometimes she would come to herself, smooth our hair, kiss us, and say, “You cannot under stand all that, thank God!”

At other times she talked angrily to Lily about us and about our father and mother. She did not like to have us with her, though she boasted about us to visitors. She had been living with Lily Spontini for many years and did not like to be disturbed. Lily was now twenty-eight and had plenty of boy friends, and Grandmother's mind was divided between getting her married again and keeping her to herself. Grandmother had very little money, all given to her by my father, and Lily earned a little in one of the poorest of occupations. When she first came from the country Grandmother had got her a job ironing babies' dresses in a factory. Lily had worked all the time, paying rent to Grandmother, except during the three months when she had been married to young Spontini.

For ten years Lily had been pasting labels on bottles in a workroom with about fifty girls, and had worked up by seniority to the first ten girls. She was a close friend of the wives of the workroom manager and the factory owner. Sometimes she quarreled with the girls who said she was a favorite; when, after a few slow, reasonable words, in a slightly raised voice, she would cry quietly. They were rather fond of her. She avoided all the rough ones, made friends of polite foreign girls and older women, and one or two women who read books. She talked about her relatives and “my boy friend,” always looked clean and modest, had a pleased, kind smile, and never used a dirty word. Sometimes, in a chuckle, after a silence, in a modest undertone, she would tell Grandmother something bad that had been said at work. Grandmother would say, “Pooh! Disgraceful!”

Lily would apologize and gently laugh. Then, after another silence, Grandmother would laugh too, and make one of her burning, sour jokes. These silences between them, in their hour-long conversations, were like the silences between birds settling for the night.

Grandmother was a passionate party lover, mad for details of parties gone to. Lily was always visiting. Getting friends, holding them, and visiting them was her gift and her pastime. It was for this, too, that Grandmother Fox clung to her. Grandmother herself was no longer invited to family parties, although a cultivated woman and eager for company. Few understood why. Perhaps she was too thirsty for it; perhaps she gossiped. She did not invite people in return. She had always been a queer little thing, sharp, angry, and disappointed.

It was Lily who brought us to Grandmother Fox's after the great party that Grandmother Morgan gave. Mrs. Fox was not pleased to see us, we thought; but she flew and kissed us with a lot of affectionate chatter. Then she got rid of us, telling us to brush our hair while she hurried to the kitchen to speak to Lily. Only a few words were soft, and then, as usual, she spat her words out, slapping Lily into alertness, “Why did you get here so late, stupid? Well, never mind. Sit here, darling. Sit down, sit down. What's that?”

Lily's sleepwalking voice said, “I stayed the night at Mathilde's—”

“I know, I know, you stupid. How did the children get here otherwise?”

“Mathilde sent you half a roast chicken with her compliments, and said she hopes you're all right.”

“Well, good, that's good. Yesterday I ate a bit of rice, and that's all. I have nothing in the house when you're out. It was raining. Yesterday Mrs. McAlan called on me. She said she was getting a good dinner ready for him. A good wife! It's easy to be a good wife, why not? For money you have honey. He goes to the stores for her. But I had celery, rice; sit down, Lily. What did you have yesterday? What did they serve, Lily?”

“We had cocktails,” said Lily, as if dreaming. “I had a good supper, Auntie; don't worry. With Mrs. Morgan, you know. Soup, cutlets, cakes, fruit cup, everything.”

“Ca-akes? Ca-akes?” said Grandmother, thoughtfully. “What kind of cakes? Where did she buy them?”

“I don't know. They were provided I think. From a bakery, I think.”

“What sort of bakery? A good one?”

Lily's sunny laugh came through the noise of cups and spoons, “What do I know about their bakery, in the restaurant, Auntie?”

“What an idiot,” cried Grandmother, “you ate them, didn't you?”

Lily clinked her spoon, and laughed, “But the cakes did not say which bakery they came from; Auntie, you're so funny. Which bakery—who knows?”

“Well,” said Grandmother after a moment, “and did Mrs. Morgan like your coat?”

“It's all right,” Lily said briefly; “Auntie, the whole week I had a headache, the whole week, this week.”

“You don't sleep. You don't sleep. You must take your rest. You keep worrying. Now, now, darling, sit in that other chair. It's more comfortable. It's the best we have. It's that old one Mathilde gave me. She's a nice woman just the same. Look, something's spilled here. I must have it cleaned. The whole chair, yes. What's that? A hat?”

“That's from Mathilde,” said Lily, “a friend of hers, Dora, gave it to her, but it doesn't suit her.”

“She doesn't wear hats,” said Grandmother sadly, “but she can easily get them, as many as she wants; a young woman is something different from me. What an idiot! That's nothing to laugh at. Yes, it's pretty, Lily. Very pretty. But not for me. I don't need hats. I'm not joking. I'm through, that's all, my girl. No hats, no coats, no cakes, nothing. All that rubbish. And did you see Phyllis?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night, of course.”

“When?”

“Last night.”