Belles on Their Toes (14 page)

“A little number,” said Al, “entitled ‘When Bathing Girls Take Up Aviation, I Want to Be There at the Takeoff.’” He laughed and strummed. You had to admit he was handsome. “Dew ackker dew ackker dew.”

Ernestine was flushed and out of breath. She knew she couldn’t stand another number, no matter how little.

“First Al,” she begged, “please get up off your knees and let me introduce you.”

“I already introduced myself, baby,” Al protested. He got up nevertheless.

“This is Mr. Lynch,” Ern said, beginning to make the rounds. “He’s visiting us for a few days, and we’re having a peachy time.”

“Meased to pleet you,” grinned Al. He pressed the flesh.

Ern relieved him of his ukulele and put it on the back of the piano, where she hoped he wouldn’t find it. Al drifted from group to group, listening to conversations about New York band leaders, Princeton and Dartmouth, new musical comedies, and happenings in Montclair. At first he tried to hold his own in the small talk, but no one seemed interested in hearing about the annual classic involving Wallace Teachers.

Even before supper was served, Al decided he had had enough of the party.

“Listen,” he said, getting Ern into a corner, “get me out of here. Let’s go for a ride or something.”

“You know I can’t leave now.”

“What’s the matter with your friends, anyway? Why don’t they wake up?”

“Nothing’s the matter with them,” Ernestine said hotly. “It’s you. You’re acting like a fish out of water.”

“I am eh? Well, even a fish wouldn’t dare go in the water around this house. In the first place, he’d freeze to death.”

“I’m sorry about the hot water. But that’s no excuse for you to act like you’ve been doing.”

“And in the second place, a lot of wise guys would run him crazy parading around his goldfish bowl.”

“What,” said Ernestine, putting her hands belligerently on her hips, “do you mean by that crack?”

“I suppose you don’t know your brothers keep parading in and out of the bathroom?”

“How would I know about that? And why didn’t you lock the door?”

“And one of your brothers,” said Al, ignoring the questions, “dressed up like a girl.”

“No,” moaned Ernestine. “Oh, no!” Then she started to giggle. “That must have been Frank or Bill. They’re wise guys, all right.”

“Just wait till I get my hands on them.”

“It must have been kind of funny at that,” Ernestine laughed, putting her hand on his arm. “Poor Al. What did you do?”

“It may seem like a joke to you,” said Al, tilting up his nose, “but I found it typical of everything around here, including your friends.”

“And how have you found everything around here?” Ernestine demanded.

“In bad taste. Extremely bad taste.”

Considering the source, Ernestine thought that was one of the nicest compliments she had ever heard. She took off the Tau Tau Tau fraternity pin and handed it to him, and Al went up to get his bags. While he was upstairs, she took his ukulele from the back of the piano, and put it with his raccoon coat. Then she went in the darkened dining room, closed the door, and watched through a curtain as he got in his car and drove off to the tune of “Jingle Bells.”

There wasn’t much satisfaction, she thought, in the knowledge that time heals all wounds. If she could just be sure that time wounded all heels …

After Al left, the party was a big success. One of Ern’s friends from Dartmouth monopolized most of her evening. Everyone seemed to understand about Al. No one asked where he’d disappeared to.

12.
Ashtray Christmas

W
E DIDN’T HAVE VERY
much money to spend for Christmas, but it always was the most important day of the year in our house, and Mother intended to make it so again this year.

“I’d much rather have something you made especially for me, like a calendar or a desk blotter, than anything expensive from the store,” she told us. “The best present of all is something given with love and affection.”

We had been saving our allowances ever since summer, so there wasn’t any real danger that we were going to have to rely exclusively on blotters and calendars. Also Ernestine and Martha now had lunch-time jobs as cashiers in the high-school cafeteria, and Frank and Bill had been doing yard work for neighbors.

A good many tree decorations from previous years were stored in the attic. But Mother knew there was happiness in anticipation of something pleasant, so she encouraged us to make fathom after fathom of paper chains from colored advertisements and illustrations that she’d clip out of magazines.

It was customary for each member of the family to give individual presents to all other members. But as fights and arguments occurred, the gift list of each of us seemed to become considerably shortened.

Almost every argument between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas ended with the announcement that the two participants were irrevocably severing Yuletide relations, and cutting each other off without so much as a blotter.

“Just for that,” one participant would shout, “you’re off my Christmas list forever. I’m taking the present I had for you right back to the store.”

“I wasn’t going to give you anything, anyway,” the other participant would bellow. “Besides, that’s the fourth time this week you’ve taken me off your list.”

Of course all was forgotten and forgiven by Christmas. But if one had kept tabs, it would have appeared that only Mother was certain of getting presents from any of us.

In a good many families, the parents trim the tree on Christmas Eve, and surprise the children the next morning. Mother and Dad thought this was doing things in reverse—that the parents had both the fun of trimming and of watching the looks of pleased surprise. In our house, the children trimmed the tree, and the parents were surprised.

Mother was banned from the parlor on the day before Christmas. She wasn’t even allowed to witness the arrival of the tree, which was brought home on Fred’s express wagon and smuggled in through the kitchen door.

We trimmed the tree that night, while Mother worked alone in her office. We sang carols as we weaved on the tinsel and spread paper chains from the mantel to the chandelier.

Mother’s office was separated from the parlor by a large sliding door, and sometimes we’d hear her soprano joining in. We seldom thought of Mother as being lonesome any more. But perhaps she was lonesome that Christmas Eve.

In a big family, the Santa Claus secret often leaks pretty far down the line. Not that anybody deliberately gives it away, but because too many lay it on too heavily for it to remain plausible. In our family, only Bob and Jane were believers, and even they were confused by the conflicting information heaped upon them.

Nevertheless, all of us hung up our stockings. After Bob and Jane went to bed, Mother filled our stockings and we filled hers. We carried our stockings to her, and then brought them back again when they were filled, since she wasn’t allowed in the parlor.

With the bulging stockings hanging by the fireplace, we surveyed our night’s work and found it good.

“The whole room,” Jack sighed happily, “looks just like Wool’ worth’s, only even better.”

We usually had trouble going to sleep Christmas Eve. But once we dropped off we customarily slept soundly until about six o’clock, when Mother and the young children would rout the rest of us out of bed.

That Christmas Eve, Martha was restless and couldn’t go to sleep at all. About two o’clock, she heard some tiptoeing on the stairs and a light click on. Martha waited a few minutes, and then put on a bathrobe and some slippers, and suspiciously tiptoed down, too.

The parlor door was open and the light was on. Sitting on the floor by the tree, with her back to the door, was Mother.

Martha saw her reach through the presents we had piled under the tree, select one, and then feel it, pinch it, rattle it, and smell it. Something must have told Mother she was being watched, because she finally looked stealthily over her shoulder and saw Martha.

Martha stood disapprovingly with hands on hips, and tapped her right foot on the floor. She didn’t say anything.

“What are you doing up at this time of night?” Mother asked sternly, apparently deciding that a good offense was the best defense.

Martha shook her head and clicked her tongue.

“You should have been asleep hours ago,” said Mother. “You’ll be exhausted by dinner time.”

“I’m going to tell on you,” Martha informed her. “You’re worse than Bob and Jane, aren’t you?”

“I’d like to know what you mean by that,” Mother protested. “Do you think that’s any way to talk to your mother?”

“You can’t be trusted a minute, can you? Just as soon as you think everyone’s asleep, what do you do?”

“I investigate,” said Mother, “to make sure everything is shipshape.”

“What you mean is that you peek.”

“A person with a naturally suspicious nature might put it that way,” Mother admitted.

“You know you’re not allowed in the parlor until we let you in. That’s tradition.”

“I know it,” Mother giggled. “But your father and I always came down for a preview.”

“You mean all those ohs and ahs, and the time Dad fell down in a dead faint, dawled by all the brilliance, were just an act?”

“If you tell the others,” Mother warned, “you may find ashes in your stocking.”

“I always thought there was something funny about that fainting act.”

“Up to the brim with ashes,” Mother repeated.

“So all you want for Christmas,” Martha said, “is a little love and affection. Well, you can’t shake, pinch and smell those!”

“Sit down and have a pinch,” Mother grinned. “I won’t tell on you, if you don’t tell on me.”

“I’ll be doggoned,” said Martha, squatting next to her on the floor. “Do you see any for me?”

“Here’s one to you from Anne,” Mother replied, feeling, rattling, listening, smelling and using every other sense known to man—and some known only to women. “I think it’s a pocket book.”

“You
think.
” Martha scoffed. “You’re as sure as if you had taken the package to the hospital and had it X-rayed.”

WE WENT DOWN
and got our stockings Christmas morning, and Mother took her first official look at the parlor. She didn’t forget to “oh” and “ah,” and to tell us that the tree never looked lovelier. We took the stockings upstairs to Mother’s room, and opened them there. Then we cleaned up the wrappings, had breakfast, and walked to church. The air was bracing, and all of us felt happy and good.

Tom had a fire for us in the parlor when we returned. Mother sat down at the piano, and we went up to the second-story hall and formed a line by ages. Then Mother started to play
Adeste Fidelis.
We sang and marched single-file down the stairs and into the parlor. Anne led the way, as she always had done. In the past, Dad had brought up the rear, either carrying the baby or letting the baby stand on his shoes, while Dad took big steps and sometimes long jumps. This year Jane brought up the rear by herself.

We wound up the song standing around the piano, pushing as close to Mother as we could. Frank did his best to sing bass, but all of us knew something was missing from the harmony.

Underneath the tree, besides the presents we had wrapped, were twenty or more cartons from relatives and friends. Mother slipped into the office to get a stenographer’s pad and pencil, to make notes for the thank-you letters.

Frank started passing out the presents. The custom was that only one gift was opened at a time, so that everyone could watch and so that Christmas would last longer.

That year Dan had insisted that he was old enough to do his own Christmas shopping, and Mother had agreed. He had gone downtown by himself, pulling the express wagon after him, and had come home with the wagon piled high. No amount of pumping, even on the part of Fred from whom he had few secrets, could elicit the slightest information about the nature of the gifts.

It was obvious, though, from just a casual glance under the tree, that Dan’s purchases were identical and that he had wrapped them without assistance.

There were eleven of them. He had placed them in a row, a little away from the general pile. Each was as large as a basket ball, although irregular in shape.

Each gift, whatever it was, was enmeshed—trapped rather than wrapped—in green tissue paper, held in place with scores of stickers. Some of these wished you a joyous Yuletide; others voiced dire threats about what would happen if you opened it before Christmas.

All of us had wondered about Dan’s presents, ever since he had brought them down from his bedroom the night before. Even Mother and Martha hadn’t managed to pinch out a single clue.

In Christmases past, Dan had been primarily interested in presents for himself. Sometimes he had been impatient at the delay involved in distributing the gifts one at a time, and had asked Dad to dig through the pile and find all of the presents for him.

But this Christmas Dan was quiet. Even when he opened a present for himself, he seemed detached and the usual enthusiasm was lacking. He kept his eyes on the eleven packages he had wrapped.

Mother sensed the situation and whispered something to Frank. Frank walked over to the row of misshaped green bundles and picked up one.

“To Mother with love from Dan,” Frank read the scrawl on the tag. “Here you are, Mother.”

Dan now was squirming with eagerness and embarrassment. “You probably won’t like it,” he mumbled. “It isn’t much.”

“I wonder what in the world it can be,” said Mother.

“It’s nice,” Martha told her, dropping her voice, “that you have at least one surprise left.”

“I can’t imagine what it is, Dan,” Mother said.

“Aw, I’ll bet you’ve already guessed what it is,” Dan replied. “It isn’t much.” His cheeks were flushed and he was staring at the floor. He knew all eyes were on him, and he didn’t want to meet them.

Mother pulled off the last of the paper, and the thing stood naked and revealed.

To begin with, let us say it was a very big china ashtray, large enough to accommodate a whole family of chain smokers, which our family certainly was not.