Letty Fox (16 page)

“At the party?”

“Of course.”

“Has she got a boy?”

“No special boy.”

“Special boy—such a pretty girl as that, and no special boy yet! I don't understand it. If I had such a pretty daughter—she is nice, Mrs. Morgan, but she doesn't look after her daughters. None of them. What had Mathilde to say?”

“Nothing. Sol is staying there tonight.” “Why shouldn't he stay with his own wife? What's news in that?” “A painter painted the living room in a different color and the bedroom, nice.”

“Very nice, very nice,” said Grandmother, sadly; “and the children's room, Tootsy's and Jacky's? Jacky—for a girl! I don't like these new customs. Poor children; they're so innocent. So he stays there tonight, this week?” She whispered loudly, “They made it up—h'm?”

“She hopes, she doesn't know.”

“She was beautiful,” said Grandmother, “that Mathilde. The whole family, beauties, even the boys. The mother used to be good-looking, but running after men—no, no, no, when her daughters are not married yet. Oh, Mattie is such a beauty, and Mrs. Morgan, never mind, never mind, she's a fine woman, though she used to dye her hair. She is very smart, a snappy dresser. And Phyllis, I never saw one like that—what a shame! But if a woman doesn't care for her daughters—but she doesn't dye it now, much better!” Grandmother sighed. “And when will he come?”

“He will come tomorrow to bring the children home.”

“Tomorrow, and he's going away to England. It's my finish,” said Grandmother. “All right, let him go; he can't help it; he must support his family, I understand that, but it's the end of everything. The poor innocent children. It isn't right to leave them like that. And she, that Mattie, though for an actress very ladylike. And—
Die Konkubine
—eh? Did you see her?”

“Yes, I saw her.”

“All alone, poor Mattie!” sighed Grandmother; then said hastily, “How does she look? She's not pretty, is she? Who could guess? Who could guess?”

“She's not bad,” said Lily.

“Who? Who? Who's not bad? What an idiot!” cried Grandmother.

“She—
Die Konkubine
.”

“Stupid idiot!” cried Grandmother; “did she give you something to eat? You ate at her house?”

“Yes, of course! I was invited there.”

“And did you tell Mathilde? Oh, dear, dear, dear.”

“Of course I didn't tell. Am I an idiot?” cried Lily.

“What did you eat? Is she a good cook, eh?”

“Yes.”

“What did she give you?”

“We had a Wiener schnitzel, duck soup, salad, apple tart.”

“What? What do you say? Are you crazy? Duck soup, apple tart—was it a party?”

“No, it was just dinner. I was invited to dinner.”

“Was there cream with the apple tart?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Was there some left over?”

“Some what?”

“Apple tart, cream—anything, you idiot,” cried Grandmother, running about the kitchen in her fury.

“I don't know, Auntie.”

“Don't know! Don't know bakeries, don't know cakes, don't know boy friends. Are you crazy?” piped Grandmother. “What sort of eyes? What sort of a girl? You're there, but you see nothing.”

Lily laughed.

“Perhaps it was all in the icebox after and you didn't see what was left,” said Grandmother suddenly, mournfully.

“Maybe!”

“And he was there, Sol?”

“Yes.”

“I can't understand it,” said Grandmother, softly, to herself. “It's beyond me. But she's clever. Mattie is a good woman, but too honest. You mustn't be too honest in this life. What a world! A man on the phone was asking for you! I don't know what he said—General Askas—I don't know—”

“General Askas—” Lily smothered her sweet, rich laughter; “oh, Auntie! Jimmy Brant? Who was it? Mr. Ender? Who?”

“Askas, Askas—a fine name,” said Grandmother in confusion. “What is it? Russian, foreign, I don't know.”

After a long silence, during which life went on mysteriously in the kitchen at the end of the passage, Grandmother said, “Were you at Rose's on Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“Were you there alone?”

“No, Tony, too.”

“And why not Marion?”

“Perhaps she wasn't invited.”

“It's a funny thing not to invite your daughter-in-law. Perhaps they quarreled.”

“I don't know, Auntie.”

“That's a very funny thing.”

We never had anything to do at Grandmother Fox's, in the wretched back room which was their sitting room and which looked over an asphalted courtyard. But at night we stayed up half the night, leaning over the window sills black with soot, breathing in the thick air, for drunken couples quarreled, dirty names were called out in clear voices, a place with red blinds had Chinese shrieks coming from it, and people stood in the courtyard and called upstairs to closed windows in the tall brick wall at all hours of the night. Grandmother snored or prowled. Lily slept heavily, or got up to make herself tea. Sometimes Grandmother went into her room and the two cronies, the beautiful pony-faced girl and the wrinkled old woman with straggling hair, held councils relating to their long wedded existence.

And this night, coming suddenly out of the darkness, in the middle of the night, we heard two clear voices, “And you went and you saw she was going away?”

“Yes. Everything is being packed.”

“
Die Konkubine
?”

“Yes.”

“She is so clever. It's strange, I tell you.”

“Yes, but he is packed too. He is going to sail.”

“Yes, it is nice, it is right.” After a moment, Grandmother added, “But such a clever—it is useless if a clever woman—men are taken in, and—but packed up and going already! Going where?”

Wearily, Lily said, “I don't know, Auntie.”

“I smell a rat,” said Grandmother thoughtfully; “now a woman—”

“I got such a headache, Auntie.”

“Sleep, sleep, darling! It sounds right, but—h'm—you know it's all too nice.”

“Why wouldn't he go back to his wife?”

“Yes, yes. And will you be laid off another week, Lily?”

“Yes.”

“I say, people must work. Everyone must work. I have no money for instance—and my poor boy has to work; but it's very strange, Lily.”

“Yooh! Ye-oh! Oh!”

“She got another job, Lily? She—?”

“I don't know.”

“She goes and no one knows? Something wrong. No? And he goes to England? I smell a rat.”

“Go to sleep, Auntie!”

“Sleep—I am too old to sleep. The old do not sleep. What do you know about it? Everyone tells me to rest—what about? You have to have something to rest about! He's like his father. A woman can do anything with him. Pooh! Don't talk to me about his father. I could have had him back, too, but I would not say the word. Pooh! Run after a man? Never!”

“I have such a headache, Auntie! Oh!”

“I'll get you an aspirin, darling. It's because you're worried about not working. I would be, too. People are supposed to work. Otherwise how can you eat? Have you a man to keep you? No!”

Grandmother got up and pattered down the hall in her bare feet, happy to have something to do in the night-time. She was heard in the bathroom, in Lily's room, and coming back to her own bedroom. In the middle of the hall, continuing a conversation she had with Lily in the last minute or two, she said, “And in Europe they're all crazy, as well! They wear fancy costumes all the time, gold braid, feathers in their hats, swords—mad people. It's like a lunatic asylum. What does he want to be there for? His father had no sense either. His father had no brains; he just got those certificates to hang on his wall to show people. Crazy, like a European! Pooh! All men— pooh! All nonsense.”

Silence.

“Where did she get another job?”

Silence.

“You don't know. No, no one knows. Something fishy?”

Silence.

“I am old,” said the old woman. “Running about—”

I
n the deep, dead afternoons of August, Mother sat with us on the side porch of Green Acres Inn trying to knit herself a green sweater. The needles and wool lay in the lap of her flowered apron. She wore slacks and a pale yellow cotton blouse. She watched the opposite house, now an inn for elegant old maids, ladies past their bearing and retired gentlemen who imitated Indian colonels, the pure Connecticut line.

The easterly porch on which we were had a private sitting room of white iron and glass for the Morgan family, or for any family which arranged for the privilege. This was the still season. Most young people were off at the beaches or even in Europe, and only a few old-timers who could not resist Mrs. Morgan, or Green Acres, or poker, were left at the Inn. Grandmother would have closed the Inn and gone away to the beaches herself, if she could have done without this crowd and her poker.

It was about four. Few people were about. Most were up in their shaded, sweaty rooms, resting. Two old ladies and a middle-aged man were playing pinochle in the long dining room, just inside the windows, near my mother. We were sitting on stools covered with
petit point
, chattering about the dump heap we had seen—all kinds of food, good things thrown away.

“Mother, why do they throw away all that bread, those chairs and things?”

Mathilde sat still and stared across the two lawns.

From within came the voice of Mrs. Polk, a neat, highly rouged old woman, with clean collars and tarnished brassy hair, “There's your answer, Cissie!”

Another old woman's voice said, “That finishes me. I'm through. It's too hot.”

Mr. Manners's dull, well-bred voice said, “Isn't Mrs. Harkness playing today?”

Jacky said, “Grandmother, can I have a lemonade?”

“Go away, don't bother me,” came Grandmother's rich voice, automatically.

“Your grandmother's playing cards,” said Mother, bitterly, her eyes still fixed across the lawn. On a birdcage porch upstairs, two ladies had come out and were having tea under a red and white awning. Starlings hopped on the lawn.

“Big, ugly blackbirds,” said Mathilde.

A car came into the drive, doors slammed, and a loud voice was heard.

“That's Looper,” said Grandmother in the dining room, slapping down her cards. “She must have mail.” She got up and rushed out of the dining room, calling, “Betty! Is that Betty Looper?”

There was a row of voices outside. Some new women surged into the dining room, and one with a reinforced Georgia brag, cried, “I just got one dozen pairs; they don't know what bargains they've got there. Two old maids. I saw them there yesterday and just thought! Hello there, Mr. Manners, come and see what I got and see if you don't want to buy me some more,” and she thrust out her leg.

I laughed aloud and went into the dining room to see the Georgia belle, an old, fat woman, with an artificial complexion and white hair. With her were her two toadies, New York women who lived in a residential hotel and went to her room for secret drinking; she took them driving and to tea.

It was nearly five. The other women were waking out of their siestas. One came downstairs laughing and calling, “Mrs. Mason!” to the Southern belle, and two others strolling out on the veranda pretended not to notice her return, but kept their eyes stretched toward her, hoping for an invitation.

“Mr. Manners thinks I'm a wicked, wasteful woman, don't you, honey?” she said to the man “But you know how women love to spend—though Mr. Manners is a bachelor!”

Mr. Manners smiled and cut his speed coquettishly, as he approached the women. They all looked at him. There were only two male residents at present in this half-deserted hotel and one was an old fellow in Palm Beach suits and a panama, who mumbled shamefacedly in a white mustache and otherwise spoke to none. Mr. Manners was, for them, quite a young man, not more than forty-five, tall, mule-faced, half bald, with a slow, monotonous delivery. He was a kind-hearted, stupid man, polite to the women, modest and cautious—an anxious liberal because an assimilating, atheist Jew. The women, mostly New Englanders, tough, fierce “liberals,” were anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-Mexican, anti-Italian, but they excepted their Mr. Manners: “He is not a Jew; such gentlemen are Hebrews,” said even the most ill-natured of them.

Mrs. Morgan, with her love affairs, had no more than friendly good-days for him. Mathilde, with her eyes far away, did not notice him at all; but the others, rabid, Republican, selfish, coddled this only eligible man.

Mrs. Mason, the Southern belle, made a great noise about asking Mr. Manners to sit at her table, not his own, that night. Mrs. Polk, the brittle, dismantled New Yorker, lifted her voice to say that he had never sat with her, but her voice was lost in the brass band which surrounded Mrs. Mason. Rudely she swept the women out of Mr. Manners's precincts and onto the porch, where she waved airily to my mother, “Mrs. Fox! All alone on this lovely day, honey? You want to go out for a run; you don't want to sit and brood. Your hubby will soon be back.”

My mother raised her large, dark blue eyes, let them settle on Mrs. Mason, said nothing.

Mrs. Mason went to a group of wicker chairs around a table and sat down with her brass band. She shouted, “I was just saying, dearie, that you ought to go out and get yourself some of these stockings. I drove over all the way to get them. I guess it cost me more in gas than it saved, and then we went to a cunning little place for tea, out of town. We had cocktails in fact, but no one must tell Mrs. Morgan what naughty girls we were. Some time you must come with me, Mrs. Fox, honey!”

“Thanks,” said Mother.

Now Mrs. Looper came stumping onto the porch. Before she was well through the dining room, she cried in her virile voice, “Mrs. Fox! Are you there?”