Belles on Their Toes (18 page)

“If you had a job, you wouldn’t be any help running the house,” said Mother, emphasizing her logic by slapping her where she sat down. “Why I’ll be tickled to death to get rid of you.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you were,” Anne sighed. “I honestly wouldn’t.”

“But I do think it would be best to wait until you graduate. Just to set an example to the other children, for one thing.”

Anne said that waiting a year wouldn’t be anything. It was waiting fifteen, that had her worried.

“I wouldn’t even ask you to wait that long, but you know how much your father wanted all of you to finish college,” Mother explained. “I guess it’s something I promised myself I’d do for him.”

“And you’re sure you’re not going to need me at home?”

“It’s a mistake ever to think of yourself as indispensable,” said Mother, rubbing, and then slapping her in the same place again. “Why don’t you telephone him and ask him if he can’t spend the rest of the holidays with us. We’d all like to meet him.”

Anne leaped from the bed. “I sure will,” she shouted. “Why he’ll pack up in a minute and … Wait a minute. You’re not trying to give him the Al Lynch treatment, are you?” she asked suspiciously.

“Not unless he brings a ukulele.”

“He’s not like that. You’ll see.”

WE CALLED HIM DOCTOR BOB
, to distinguish him from our own Bob. We couldn’t decide whether we liked him or not, at first, because he was quiet until you got to know him. He had a conservative black Ford coupe, with Michigan license plates, and he dressed like a businessman rather than a college boy.

Frank and Bill had moved out of their room again, and doubled up with Fred and Dan. When Doctor Bob found out about that, he made Frank move back with him.

“For the last ten years I’ve been living in fraternity houses and hospitals,” he said. “I wouldn’t feel at home in a room all by my self. And there’s no need for you four to be crowded up like that.”

The bathtub maneuver, with Frank masquerading as a girl, had worked so well on Al that the boys had considered trying it on Doctor Bob. But after he relieved the congestion in Fred’s and Dan’s room, they decided to drop the whole idea.

“It wouldn’t work on him anyway,” Bill explained. “If anyone walked in on him, he wouldn’t mind. He’d probably say, ‘Hi, Sis,’ and go right on washing.”

Tom stood in some awe of Anne’s fiancé, since he was a doctor, although a young one. But the awe was not sufficient to prevent Tom from giving him a piece of his mind one night, when he found Doctor Bob sitting on his kitchen table.

Tom was particular about the table. It was his office, and it symbolized something that was exclusively his. He ate off it, kept his tools on it, and maintained a bed for Fourteen under it. Although Tom often cleaned chickens and skinned squirrels on his table, none of us was allowed to place anything unsanitary upon it, particularly ourselves.

Anne was preparing a midnight meal after the movies, and Doctor Bob was watching from the table, when Tom came down from his room to get a pitcher of ice water.

“My table,” Tom gasped. “Get your hiney offen there.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Bob,” Anne blushed. “He does that to everybody.”

“I have to eat my food offen there, you know,” Tom screamed.

“You’re not dealing with children any more,” Anne told him furiously. “You go back to your room and be quiet.”

“I quit,” Tom shouted, reaching behind him in a familiar gesture to untie his apron, but finding only the rear of his bathrobe. “Let your Mother find someone else to do all the dirty work around here.”

“Wait a minute,” said Doctor Bob, sliding off the table, “I’ll sit in a chair. There’s nothing to get excited about.”

Tom seized a dishrag and a bar of soap, and scrubbed the table officiously.

“I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t eat offen here,” he kept mumbling. “It’s bad enough having members of the immejate family sitting on it.”

“I don’t blame you,” sympathized Doctor Bob, who had heard from Anne about Tom’s ideas concerning his own illnesses. “A man who’s been through what you’ve been through can’t be too careful about germs.”

“That’s right,” Tom agreed, somewhat mollified. “But nobody around here don’t consider that. How did you know?”

“Come over here in the light.” Doctor Bob spread open one of Tom’s eyes and peered into it. “Now open your mouth and say ‘ah.’”

Tom opened his mouth and said it.

“Clear history of pleurisy. You’re in good shape now, but watch the germs. If you ever feel an attack coming on, there’s an old medicine on the market that’s better than any of the new things. It’s called …”

“Quinine Remedy,” Tom beamed.

Doctor Bob nodded sagely.

“Yes,
sir
,” said Tom, sucking in his stomach, and spreading newspapers over his table. “You can sit up here, now, Doctor, if it’s more comfortable.”

“I’m all right, here in the chair.”

“Come on, sir,” Tom begged. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Doctor Bob climbed back on the table.

“For Pete’s sake,” Anne said incredulously. “You’re the first one he’s let do that since Dad died.”

“I don’t mind when there’s papers on the table,” Tom explained patiently. “I used to spread out papers for your father, too. I got to eat offen there, you know.”

“You can’t be too careful,” Doctor Bob agreed.

BY THE SECOND DAY
of Doctor Bob’s visit, all of us had decided we wanted him as a member of the family. So much so that we began to take precautions to make certain Anne wouldn’t lose him.

Frank, Bill, and Fred drew up a schedule and stood watch in the mornings, so that no one would make any noise and awaken Doctor Bob. Frank had the duty on the second floor, Bill on the first, and Fred outside his window. Tom fixed special desserts for him, and was always sending milk and sandwiches up to his room.

Some mornings, when he was up before Anne, Doctor Bob would play baseball with the boys or take the girls riding in his car.

“Are you sure you’re having a good time?” we’d ask him. “Would you like us to call Anne, now? She’s slept long enough. Ordinarily, she’s up with the birds, doing all the housework.”

“No, that’s all right. Let her sleep.”

“And, boy, is she a good cook!”

“I’ll bet,” he’d grin.

“Is there anything we can get you? How about another cup of coffee?”

“No thanks. I’m doing fine.”

Anne finally complained about it to Mother.

“He’s going to think they’re all dying to get rid of me,” she moaned.

“He’s got more sense than that,” Mother said.

“It used to be, when I had a fellow over, that I couldn’t get rid of the kids. They’d be all over me, or hiding under the sofa, or peeking through the keyhole, or making loud sounds of kisses every time anyone tried to hold my hand.”

“I know it,” Mother sympathized. “And your father used to egg them on. I used to speak to him about it.”

“I know you did. I’m not blaming you. But I’ll swear all that was better than what they do now. When we walk into a room now, they all nudge each other, when they think we’re not looking, and then get up and leave. It’s almost indecent.”

Mother shook her head and tried not to smile. “They’re the limit,” she agreed.

“They invent all kinds of excuses about why they have to leave. The lamest you ever heard—and they expect him to swallow them. Like, it’s high time they taped the handle of their base-ball bat. Or they’d better go check and see whether Fourteen has had kittens. Or they promised Tom they’d help him sift the ashes.”

“It’s hard to be the oldest,” Mother agreed.

“If Bob and Jane don’t get the hint, the others pick them up bodily and carry them out. And then Frank and Bill mumble something about saving electricity, and go around switching out the lights. My shins are all barked up from bumping into things in the dark.”

“It just means the children like Doctor Bob,” Mother said. “It’s a compliment to him, really, dear.”

“But suppose,” Anne groaned, “he gets the idea that all that business of turning off the lights has been going on with every boy I’ve ever had over here before?”

Doctor Bob liked children and knew how to talk with them. Bob and Jane started following him around the house, and wouldn’t go to bed at night unless he’d come up and tuck them in. Although we tried to keep them out of the way, they started begging to be taken along when he and Anne went out in his car in the afternoons. Bob would sit between Doctor Bob and Anne in the coupe, and Jane would sit on Anne’s lap. We were horrified, but the two youngest children wouldn’t listen to reason.

“I give up,” Anne told her fiancé, on one such afternoon excursion. She adjusted Jane on her lap. “Either they’re in our hair, like right now, or they’re tiptoeing around turning out lights.”

“I don’t mind it either way,” her Bob chuckled. “Except I never saw a house where they had more baseball bats to tape or more ashes … Look, Bobby,” he said, pointing out his window. “See the choo-choo train?”

“Where?” said Bob, leaning across him. “Where, Doctor Bob?”

“We just passed it. Look out the back window, and you’ll see it.”

Bob stood up on the seat and then, so he could get a better view, stood on Doctor Bob’s thigh. “Choo, choo, choo,” he said. “Big son of a gun, isn’t it, Doctor Bob?”

“It sure is. One of the biggest.”

“At one time,” said Anne, “I was silly enough to think that by the time I was engaged I might occasionally ride in an automobile without holding children in my lap. I used to have dreams, when I was a little girl, of sitting up front and having a whole half-seat, all to myself. I used to dream … Look, Janey, see the horsey?”

“Where, Anne? I don’t see the horsey?”

“We just passed it,” said Anne, holding her up so she could look out the back window.

Doctor Bob reached over and squeezed Anne’s hand. Her diamond solitaire picked up a piece of the sun and sparkled.

THEY WERE MARRIED
in September of the following year, after Anne had received her diploma. The wedding was at our house. At Anne’s insistence, Mother herself gave the bride away.

The minister of our church in Montclair, who was to officiate at most of our weddings and a dozen or so christenings of Mother’s grandchildren, performed the ceremony.

The minister had children of his own, and a good deal of poise. He wasn’t upset when Lillian and Fred blundered into the room that had been assigned to him, while he was slipping into his vestments. And he chuckled, along with everyone else, when young Bob jumped onto Anne’s train and brought the wedding procession to a faltering halt.

It was a happy wedding, but we felt sorry for Mother. We thought we knew what was running through her mind. Anne was the first to leave the fold. Ernestine and Martha would probably be next. How would Mother get along with a family of only eight children? How would she feel when all of the children, even Jane, had married and left home?

Poor Mother, we thought. Poor, poor Mother.

Tom watched the ceremony from the back of the crowd, occasionally producing a none-too-clean hand-kerchief to dab at his eyes. When it was over, he pushed his way up to Anne, fished in his pocket, and handed her twenty crumpled one dollar bills.

“If he ain’t good to you,” he said, “I want you to buy a ticket and come home.”

Anne looked for a minute as if she might lean over and kiss him, but Tom went into his fighter’s crouch, weaving and making fierce faces.

“If he don’t behave hisself,” said Tom, “let him have the left like I learned you, and follow it with the right, like this.”

He feinted twice at Doctor Bob, who made believe he was baffled and completely helpless under the onslaught.

“If I find him with so much as an elbow on my kitchen table,” Anne promised, “I’m sending for you.”

It wasn’t until Anne and Doctor Bob got their suitcases and started for their coupe that Jane and Bob realized the newlyweds were going away on a trip.

“Take us with you, Doctor Bob,” they begged, lunging for his legs. “You haven’t taken us for a ride all day.”

He lifted up Jane and kissed her, and looked helplessly at Anne.

“No, sir,” said Anne, trying to disentangle them. “Not on our honeymoon. On that I positively draw the line.”

17.
Pop and the Weasel

M
ARTHA HAD CONTACTS, ALTHOUGH
she never went out of her way to develop them. She knew the mayor, the mayor’s secretary, librarians, store managers, motormen, policemen, delivery boys, and firemen.

With Anne married and Ernestine at Smith, Martha took charge of the household when Mother was away on business, and stretched the budget further than it ever had gone before. Without spending any more money, she saw to it that each of us got a few more of the things he wanted.

Martha ran the house in the same manner that she performed her school work—effortlessly and efficiently, but without pretense of perfection. She saw to it that the necessary and important things got done. And she refused to allow the unnecessary or unimportant ones to cause her any concern.

If she could settle for a “B” or a “C” in a school subject, she saw no point in slaving for an “A.” Of course, if an “A” came naturally, and occasionally one did, so much the better.

Likewise, if we swept and dusted the house in the mornings, she saw no reason to nag if we sometimes forgot to wipe our feet or hang up our overcoats when we got home from school in the afternoons. Besides, sometimes she wasn’t too careful about wiping her own feet, or hanging up her own overcoat.

Martha’s contacts in Montclair made things easier for all of us. She’d get the grocer’s delivery boy to stop by the hardware store to pick up something we had bought. She’d ask the men who drove the city’s snow plow if they’d mind taking a few minutes to clear our driveway. If Tom were sick, she’d get the milkman to help Frank and Bill carry the furnace ashes from the basement to the yard.

People seemed to like doing things for her, and Martha didn’t, mind helping them. She knew whom to call if a street light were broken, or if the garbage man had forgotten to come by our block, or if a rabid dog were reported in the neighborhood. Mother, and even the neighbors, began to depend on her when they wanted something done by the town.