Belles on Their Toes (12 page)

The company arranged a press conference for Mother in New York. The resulting stories, besides telling of Mother’s plans, managed to give the impression that our kitchen in Montclair also was a model of efficiency.

Actually, the exact opposite was true. Our kitchen, the one Tom used, was a model of inefficiency. Not that there was a handpump over the sink or a spit to roast fowls on, but it was almost that bad.

Our house had been built when the stress was on spaciousness, and the original owner had planned the kitchen to accommodate three or four servants.

When Tom baked a cake, or baked what he said was a cake, he had to walk about half a mile.

The distance from the sink, which was at a back-breaking level, to the old-fashioned gas stove was a good twenty feet. The food was kept in a pantry twenty feet from the stove and forty from the sink. And the dishes were in a butler’s pantry, about the same distance away but in the opposite direction.

The refrigerator was in an alcove by itself. To get to it, you had to detour around a stand holding the bird cage; around a table holding Tom’s tools, a plumber’s friend, western story magazines, and back copies of
The Newark Star-Eagle;
and usually around Mr. Chairman, or Fourteen, or both.

But on the strength of the write-ups about the contract, a newsreel man phoned Mother and said he’d like to bring a crew to Montclair to photograph her in her efficiency kitchen.

“I’d love to have you,” Mother told him, “but you see we haven’t set up the efficiency kitchen yet. All we have are the blueprints.”

“That’s all right,” the newsreel man said, “we’ll just shoot you in your kitchen there at the house.”

“I don’t believe that would be exactly suitable,” Mother gulped.

“The public would never know the difference. They don’t know one efficiency kitchen from another.”

“They don’t?” Mother stalled.

“No. And I’m sure that, being an efficiency expert, the kitchen in your home must be pretty much the latest word.”

“But what we want,” said Mother, “is the very latest word, isn’t it? Not just pretty much.”

“What we really want, Mrs. Gilbreth, is just some human interest stuff. Nothing scientific. Just you in the kitchen with the children around.”

“I see,” Mother said brightly, groping desperately for a way out. “Human interest.” She thought of Tom’s kitchen. Now if what they wanted only were animal interest. “We can come out any day this week that’s convenient.”

“I’m afraid I’m all booked up this week. How about some other time?” Her tone of voice was meant to convey that some other time like the year after next would be just right.

“We want to get this while the story’s still news. It’ll be fine publicity for your business. And it will only take a few minutes.”

“All right,” Mother surrendered. “Let’s make it Saturday, then. Say three o’clock Saturday afternoon.”

The course wasn’t in session on Saturdays and, more important still, Tom would be off duty. Both Dad and Mother had tried in the past to modernize the kitchen, but Tom and his predecessor had been set in their ways. Mother decided that the least said to Tom about the matter, the better.

She drew up a diagram for our kitchen, and she arranged with a plumber and a gas man to come Saturday to raise the sink and move the stove.

Tom usually left the house after lunch Saturdays, and returned early Sunday mornings. This time, Mother gave him the whole day off and he departed shortly after breakfast. He was in a gay, holiday mood. He intimated that a large segment of the female population of West Orange, a town bordering on Montclair where Tom spent most of his time off, was going to be in for a pleasant surprise when he made his appearance four hours ahead of schedule.

The plumber and gas man finished their work by noon. We carried Tom’s tools and the reading material down into the cellar, and put the canaries in his room in the attic.

Then Mother made chalk marks on the floor, from her diagram, showing us where she wanted the refrigerator, the table, and a cabinet for food, pans, and mixing bowls. We moved them into place, gave the room a scrubbing, and set up a sort of breakfast nook in the unoccupied half of the kitchen, where the stove used to be.

Mother went through the motions of making an apple cake, in a dry run to familiarize herself with the location of everything. She scarcely had to move her feet at all. She could reach each appliance from a spot in the center.

Apple cake, incidentally, was the only dish whose ingredients Mother thoroughly understood. She had grown up in a home where a Chinese chef ruled the kitchen. And she hadn’t had time, since her marriage, to learn much about cooking. But apple cake had been one of Dad’s favorite dishes, and Mother had memorized the recipe and just how it went together, so she could fix him midnight snacks when he worked late.

When the newsreel crew arrived, we were dressed in our best clothes—especially Ernestine and Martha, who weren’t overlooking any bets in case Hollywood was hunting for new talent.

While the crew was setting up lights in the parlor, the man in charge explained what he wanted.

The idea was that Mother would be playing the piano, and we’d be grouped around singing. Mother would turn and ask a question, and we’d lick our lips and rub our stomachs. The scene then would shift to the kitchen, where Mother would be making something with a minimum of motions. And the finale would be in the parlor again, where we’d be eating what she had cooked.

“Is there something you can make that won’t take too long?” he asked Mother.

“I think so,” she said.

“How about chicken chop-suey?” asked Bill.

“Or blueberry pie?” said Frank.

“I don’t believe there is a blueberry in the house,” Mother smiled.

“There are apples, though,” said Ernestine, coming to her rescue.

“Apples?” said Bill, as if he were reading a part in which he had been carefully coached. “That sounds simply capital.”

“Bully,” said Frank in the same tone of voice. “I have a suggestion to make, Mother. Why don’t you make us an apple cake, for a change?”

“Cease and desist,” Mother laughed. “The children are teasing me,” she explained. “I’m really not much of a cook. Apple cake is about the extent of my repertoire.”

The newsreel man said he was sure Mother was being too modest, and that apple cake would be splendid.

The scene in the parlor went fine. Of course the movies were silent, and everything was done in pantomime.

Then we adjourned to the kitchen, and the men were impressed with the arrangement of the appliances.

“I don’t see why you hesitated a minute about having pictures made of this,” the man in charge said. “Women are going to go crazy when they see this setup.”

“Of course the stove isn’t what it should be, and neither is the refrigerator,” Mother explained. “I want a stove that stands up high, so you don’t have to bend over to see what’s in the oven. And I want a refrigerator that you don’t have to lean into.”

The lights were adjusted, and Mother stood in the center of the working space. She lighted the oven. She pared and cored the apples with a gadget Mr. Yoyogo had made for her. She mixed and sifted the dry ingredients, and she greased the pan. So far, not more than four or five steps. The camera ground away.

Then she opened the refrigerator door, leaned in, and picked up two eggs with one hand, and a bottle of milk with the other. Just as she started to bring them out, Fourteen appeared from under a table, and jumped. She landed on the small of Mother’s back.

“Eyow,” Mother screamed. She threw her hands up over her head, and scattered dairy products from the breakfast nook to the butler’s pantry.

“Cut!” roared the head of the newsreel crew. “What in the devil goes on here?”

“Who did that?” Mother shouted accusingly to Frank and Bill. “It’s all right to tease, but Mercy Maude!”

Fourteen strutted across the top of the refrigerator, obviously proud of herself. Mother looked at the cat as if trying to decide whether to wring her neck now, or wait until the company had gone.

“I’m sorry, boys,” she said. “I should have known you wouldn’t have done it, at a time like this.”

We couldn’t help but giggle. And the cameramen, who had been trying not to laugh, exploded.

“Down, Fourteen,” said Mother, still a little indignant and making an ineffectual swipe or two at the cat. “Down I say, Sir.”

Fourteen, who knew Mother well enough to be certain nothing would come from the swipes, continued strutting. Mother reached over the sink to the shelf where Tom kept his Quinine Remedy, and the cat jumped down and slunk out of the room.

Mother started chuckling herself, and then she had an awful thought. A few years before, a newsreel company had taken some pictures of us at the dinner table in Nantucket. When they were released they were preceded by a caption saying: “The family of Frank B. Gilbreth, time-saver, eats dinner.” Then the action was projected at about ten times the normal speed, while the theater audiences howled.

“I want you to promise me,” Mother said to the man in charge, “that you won’t show the part with the cat.”

“Good night, lady, I know you’ve got eleven mouths to feed,” he protested. “I wouldn’t do you like that.”

He kept his word, too.

Ernestine and Martha mopped up the eggs and milk, and Mother started in again, at the point where she leaned into the refrigerator.

Tom picked that particular Saturday to return early from West Orange. It always made him nervous, anyway, to be away from the younger children for too long, since he was convinced no one else looked after them properly. He also was sure that, as soon as he left the house, we turned his room and kitchen upside down, looking for candy or for future surprises that he might have hidden from us. Having left home earlier than usual, he apparently had decided that he’d better get back earlier, too, and check up on us.

He came in the back door, just as Mother was putting her cake in the oven. His first glance at the rearranged kitchen confirmed everything he had suspected. He stood there glowering, until the final cut.

“Oh, good afternoon, Tom,” Mother said guiltily as she stepped out of the work space.

“What’s happened to my kitchen?” Tom demanded. “And who scared my cat so she won’t come into the house?”

Mother wanted to get the cameramen out of there before Tom said any more about the kitchen being rearranged.

“If you gentlemen will just step into the parlor,” she told them, trying to push them through the door.

“And where are my birds at?” asked Tom. “You know I can’t do no cooking without my birds.”

“I’ll tell you about it later, Tom,” Mother said firmly. “This way, gentlemen, if you please.”

The cameramen, who were picking up their lights and other equipment, were frankly intrigued.

“This is Tom, our cook,” Mother finally introduced him. “We couldn’t get along without Tom, could we, children?”

“You’re going to have to get along without me,” Tom sulked, “if someone don’t help me move my stove and freeze box back acrost the room where they belong.”

“All right, Tom,” Mother gave in.

“I ain’t going to work all hemmed up like that,” Tom pouted, half apologetically. “I ain’t no midget, you know.”

11.
Lynching Party

M
OTHER’S COURSE RECESSED FOR
the Christmas holidays. Anne arrived home from college December 19, and Al Lynch came to visit Ernestine the following day.

Ernestine had spent the preceding month instructing us on how to behave in his presence.

No one was to start eating at mealtimes until everyone was served. Frank was not to forget to help Mother into her chair. Martha was to refrain from discussing the cost of various items on the menu. Mother was to be sure Bob and Jane didn’t go around the house with their rompers unhinged. All of the boys were to give Al top priority in their bathroom.

“All I’m asking,” Ern kept telling us, “is that for four days you try to make believe that we’re reasonably civilized.”

It seemed like a fair enough request. Our first impression of Al had not been favorable. But first impressions often are unreliable, and if Ernestine had her heart set on impressing him, we thought the least we could do was cooperate.

“We’re going to try to make everything go smoothly,” Mother promised her. “Now don’t you worry, dear.”

Frank and Bill moved out of their bedroom, and doubled up with Fred and Dan. Anne and Martha helped Ernestine change the sheets on one of the beds, clean the room, and stow away radio parts, arrowheads, hockey sticks, some things in glass jars containing formaldehyde, and other miscellanea. The girls also cleaned the parlor, since Ern planned a buffet supper so that her Montclair friends could meet Al.

We knew Al was driving down from college, and we expected he’d arrive in an old Model T, probably with writing on the body. We were sitting in the dining room, just finishing lunch, when a new, 1925 Packard roadster pulled into the driveway. There was no writing on it, except for the initials A.L., in six-inch letters on the doors. Behind the wheel, wearing the most luxurious raccoon coat we had ever seen, was Al.

“That coat,” Martha whistled, “cost $600 if it cost a nickel. And goodness knows what a Packard costs.”

“Don’t you ask him what it cost, either!” Ernestine warned.

“You can count on me to act civilized,” Frank told Ernestine. “If you can land him, none of us will ever have to work.”

“Get away from those windows,” begged Ernestine, who herself was peeking from behind a curtain. “Golly, look at that catsy car!

“Everybody sit down,” Mother ordered. “Where are your manners?”

We came back to the table and heard Tom go to answer the doorbell. A moment later he opened the door from the front hall into the dining room, and stuck in his head.

“It’s for you, Princess,” he announced. “And from the coat he’s wearing, it’s a good thing nobody ain’t out hunting today in the royal woods.”

“That will do, Tom,” Mother said sternly.

“Henc, henc,” Tom wheeled. “I seen him before at Nantucket.”